And his sense of loss, however irrational, made him suddenly very angry, the way wanting to relive a dream can sometimes do. For an intense moment, he wanted this young lady back, wanted to feel her warmth against him, and even to hear, perhaps, what she would cry out near his ear.
“I suppose I could have tried to arrange that in some semblance of anatomical order,” remarked Mackenzie, glancing across at him. “But if I know the undertakers, they’ll just tip the whole lot straight in its coffin, and so …”
Kramer took a moment to adjust. “Ach, I’m sure you’re right,” he said. “Done a dental check?”
“First thing I thought of, Lieutenant. I had her card picked up this morning, and the teeth match perfectly.”
“Oh, ja? I’ve not seen any …”
“Niko’s popped the jaws in ajar in case they’re needed for the inquest.”
“Careful you don’t leave it by your bedside,” said Kramer.
Then he went back to examining the clammy jigsaw spread out before him. He tried to make sense of each and every part, flipping over the fleshy pieces to see if there was skin on the reverse that would yield a clue to where they had once fitted together. It was like attempting a puzzle that was all sunset. Then he chanced across a well-tanned section, possibly from an upper arm to judge by its oval vaccination scar, that bore the bruises of what looked like three big knuckle marks.
“These bruises, Doc,” he said. “What did you make of them?”
“Bruises, where?”
“Right here, on the female deceased.”
“Oh, those,” said Mackenzie with a shrug. “Frankly, I’d not noticed them, but no harm done. They’re immaterial.”
“Immaterial? How’s that?”
“Can’t you see? They must be at least two or three days old, Lieutenant—nothing at all to do with the explosion.”
Kramer just stared, unable to quite credit for a moment what he had just heard. “I’d like, Dr. Mackenzie,” he said very softly, “to see that postmortem report on Mrs. Gillets. Pass it over, please.”
“But I’ve already—”
“
Give
!” barked Kramer, putting out his hand. “Let’s see what else you decided was bloody ‘immaterial’ in a murder case—Jesus Christ, man!”
The scribbled report was difficult to scan in a hurry, so Kramer turned to the summary section. Here he read:
Fragmented, no organic disease. Generative and other pelvic organs/tissue, including stomach, not present
.
“But how come all this is missing, when we’ve still got a nice chunk of bum right here?” he demanded. “Have you
looked
for the stomach?”
“I certainly did, but hold on a moment …” Mackenzie went over for his textbook. “Explosions can be very strange,” he said. “Might I read you this, Lieutenant, from
Taylors Medical Jurisprudence
? ‘1940—violent explosion at a small ammunition factory—some 339 fragments found—um, representing only a small part of three persons.’ So you see, the fact the stomach’s missing isn’t in itself of any particular significance, not when establishing the cause of—”
“No, I don’t bloody see!” cut in Kramer. “You seem to think all I’m interested in is knowing what killed these two people. Hell, we all know that already, so who needs you to state the bloody obvious? Let me explain something to you, Doc, about postmortems. They are not about blood and guts, man, they are
about
time
—and I don’t mean the split second these two went to their Maker, hey? I mean hours, days, even weeks … the things in their lives that led up to that moment. Understand me?”
Mackenzie frowned, as though trying to focus on a revolutionary concept, and Claasens kept his eyes averted.
“Then let me put it this way,” said Kramer. “I can see for myself that at least Kritzinger’s still got his stomach, because you’ve stuffed it between his feet here, but why haven’t you looked inside it? You had a go at most things.”
“Um, well, because it hasn’t any penetrating wounds that could add to our knowledge of the explo—”
“Ach, open it up, man! Come on, right now!”
For an instant Mackenzie hesitated, rebellion clear in the lift of his narrow shoulders, then they fell, with what looked like the practiced ease of the born loser. He carried the stomach over to his dissecting slab by the sink, selected his longest knife, and shakily divided the organ in two.
An immediate aroma of brandy was detectable, if only to be overwhelmed an instant later by a stinking sludge that included, quite plainly, lumps of part-digested curried meat, boiled rice, diced carrot and tomatoes, plus fragments of tinned peaches and, perhaps, pineapple.
“Excellent!” said Kramer. “Here we have his last meal, a proper sit-down dinner, not some snack snatched in a hurry or scoffed while he drove. Any idea of how long that had been in his stomach before the bomb went off?”
“Um, I can’t be certain, my experience being a bit limited in these matters, but everything is still so intact it can’t have been in his digestive juices for long, can it? Shall we say half an hour at the most?”
“My guess exactly,” concurred Kramer, “based on all the street drunks I’ve seen puke up, hey? But you’d best still send it to the lab for a double check.”
“Of course. Lieutenant!”
“Now do you see what I was making all the fuss about? This evidence makes it clear that one of the last things our friend did was to have a late supper. If we find out
where
he had that late supper, then we could also discover who tipped him off about Fynn’s Creek. A man doesn’t sit around stuffing his face when he’s on his way to stop a juicy little popsie being blown to buggery, does he? No, he—”
“Ach, meat curry you can get anywhere!” cut in Niko Claasens with surly impatience, speaking for the first time. “You’d go bloody mad trying to track that down.”
“I’m not sure,” said Kramer. “Maybe Kritzinger kept the bill for his expenses or something. Anyone know what was in his pockets?”
“No idea, I’m afraid,” said Mackenzie. “All bodies are stripped, with a sheet over them, by the time I—”
“What
bill
?” grumbled Claasens. “You tell me where you’re going to find a place that sells meals after nine in the country district! This isn’t Jo’burg, you know, it’s—”
“Just a bloody minute …!” said Kramer, who had been flipping back through the reports attached to the clipboard. “There’s no clothing listed here, not for either body. Why’s that? Did CID take it at the scene?”
Mackenzie flinched away from Kramer’s glare. “Niko?” he said. “This is more your department …”
Claasens glowered. “Ach, I did the usual when stiffs come in, Doc. I cut off and chucked it in the incinerator bag, same as we always do. Hans would have already done the pockets at the beach.”
“
What
?” said Kramer. “Clothing in a murder case can—”
“Look, Niko,” Mackenzie said hastily. “Be a good fellow and pop through to the refrigeration room and bring the bag back here for the Lieutenant to—”
“Bag’ll be gone by now,” said Claasens, with a shrug. “The boiler boy came down for it at ten. Anyway, it was just rags, not clothes. You know, filthy, useless bits of—”
“GONE, you bloody thick-head?” echoed Kramer, in total disbelief, his fists clenched. “Then you better get after it faster than my foot can reach your fat arse!”
Claasens ignored him, keeping his sullen gaze fixed on Mackenzie, like a wronged dog expecting his master to set things right, and this made Kramer so angry he lunged forward.
“Wait!” said Mackenzie, stepping hurriedly between them. “What Niko is implying, Lieutenant, is that the bag will have long since been incinerated by now—okay?”
“Okay?” echoed Kramer. “How can that possibly be—”
“Er, what I meant was, never to worry, there must be other ways of skinning the cat!”
“The cat, Doc,” said Kramer very softly, “is going to get off bloody scot-free in this business, compared to you and shit-for-brains here. There’ll be a report, concerning both of you and your conduct in these matters, going to Colonel Du Plessis, head of the division. Furthermore—”
“But, Lieutenant, surely—”
“Furthermore,” Kramer went on, “should I, at any stage of this investigation, decide that my inquiries have been impeded by the behavior of you two persons, and the course of justice obstructed, then I will be compelled to regard your actions in a very different light, and to charge you both with accessory to murder after the fact—ja, a hanging offense, for which there is evidence already available.”
Claasens certainly seemed to pale slightly, and Mackenzie went quite white, as Kramer then strode past them and made for the door.
“But—!” Mackenzie began. “But you simply can’t do that, Lieutenant! We’re doing our best for you! I’d take you for a fair man, but that’s not being fair on us at all!”
Kramer turned back for just a moment. “Doc,” he said, “the only thing that’s fair about me is the color of my hair. People should remember that.”
T
ERBLANCHE WAS AMBLING
back from the main hospital building, carrying a wrapped sandwich, when the mortuary doors crashed open. “Let’s go!” snapped Kramer.
“Heavens, what’s happened, Tromp?”
“Those two bloody baboons gave the boiler boy the deceased’s clothing to burn this morning!” he said. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on around here, but the Colonel’s going to hear about this!”
“Hold on a minute,” said Terblanche. “Here’s your—”
“Lost my appetite!”
“No, listen. You know what kaffirs are like, Tromp! Just because the boiler boy fetched the clothes bag this morning, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s remembered to put it in the incinerator yet, does it?”
Kramer hesitated. “Ja, but—”
“Then at least let me put it to the proof, hey?” said Terblanche, leaving the sandwich on the Land Rover’s roof and starting back toward the main hospital. “Oi, you!” he shouted out, beckoning. “Quick! Over here!”
A Zulu hospital guard in a khaki uniform three sizes too large came shambling up at a half-run, knobkerrie in hand, and delivered a salute that would have taken the top off a dinosaur egg. “
Yebo, nkosi?
” he said.
“The big boss here wants to talk to the boiler boy.”
“Please,
nkosi
, this way,
nkosi
…”
As they began following him, Terblanche said, “Er, these clothes, Tromp, what especially—”
“I want a good look in the bloody pockets, for a start!”
“But I saw Sarel go through them at the scene—just a wallet, with his warrant card and a few rand in it, plus his ballpoint, car keys, and a hanky. That was all.”
“You’re certain? No little slips of paper? Meal receipt? He turned every pocket properly inside out?”
“Well, maybe not exactly, but I mean you’ve got to bear in mind what a mess there was and it being a colleague and—”
“Ach, forget it!”
The boiler boy, a lean Zulu in his fifties, was bouncing an old tennis ball off the far wall of the boiler house, using his forehead and bare feet to return it with such vigor that, from a short distance, the steady
pock-pock-pock
sounded like an outboard engine.
“
Baa-bor
!” he exclaimed, mortified to have been caught at play, and bolted into the boiler room, where he came stiffly to attention beside the main boiler, the sweat pouring from his bare chest.
“Right,” Terblanche said to the hospital guard, “ask him what he did with today’s bag of clothing he took from the mortuary …”
The guard launched into what sounded like a long haranguing in Zulu, augmented by mime.
Kramer found this gave him plenty of time to note the spotless state of the boiler room’s concrete floor. He also noted the way in which each heap of coal had been neatly swept into an exact circle, and how brightly the copper piping gleamed. This meant he was not in the least surprised to hear, at the end of it all, that the boiler boy swore blind he’d instantly hurled the bag of disgusting rags into the flames that morning.
“Just how big a fool does he think I look?” roared Terblanche.
“Ask him that! And tell him he’ll go to prison if he tells me another untruth! I don’t believe a word of it!”
There was a further outburst of Zulu, followed by a few hesitant words of evident denial, and then the hospital guard reported back: “Boiler boy says, true’s God, he not lie to the boss, boss. He say all clothings go in the fire
mningi checha—
very, very quick.”
“Well, Tromp, what do you think?” asked Terblanche. “Is this cunning monkey telling the truth or what? Is there anything you’d like to say to him?”
“Ja, there is—catch!” said Kramer, tossing the man his tennis ball.
Twice on the way back to Jafini, Terblanche tried to begin a conversation; twice it got him nowhere. His third attempt carried a hint of desperation.
“This widow I’ve fixed you up with is a good woman,” he declared, apropos of nothing. “Big and cheerful, but a nice figure.”
Kramer flicked a cigarette end out of the window and dug in his shirt pocket for another Lucky. He was still seething over the Jafini shambles, made worse by the time wasted in the boiler room.
“Terrible what happened to the widow’s late husband,” Terblanche went on. “It was at the mill where Annika’s pa worked. You’ve seen the big vats they’ve got there of sugar all boiled up, swirling around. The poor bloke must have tripped—he went headfirst straight in, death instantaneous, came out coated in sugar as hard as anything. The DS we had at the time said it was like trying to do a postmortem on a giant toffee apple!”
Kramer shielded his match flame.
“She was left with four kiddies, and one just a babe—imagine that,” Terblanche added, with a doleful shaking of his head. “No family of her own to rally round, just the neighbors
to help, yet never once did anyone ever hear her complain. She simply—”
“This previous DS,” said Kramer, exhaling, “the one who carried out that postmortem you’ve just mentioned, what happened to him? Is he still in the vicinity? Could we get him in to double-check Mackenzie’s reports on Annika and Kritz?”
“Ach, no, Doc Abrahams retired and went to live with his daughter in the Cape. Anyway, as I was—”