“So you’d let yourself think that, Colonel? You would let it colour what you—”
“Hey, Tromp,” said Colonel Muller, wagging his pipe-stem. “I see what you’re driving at now, and I don’t want any more of that talk. Nothing has ever been proved in connection with the allegations against Willem Zuidmeyer. I have never liked the man, I admit that, but you have to be fair in these matters.”
“Ach, Colonel, you know as well as I do—”
“I know this, Lieutenant Kramer. I know that if what you’re hinting is that Zuidmeyer has repeated—what shall we call it, an expedience used in his past?—then that doesn’t make sense in the slightest. Why would he do something that’d attract immediate suspicion?”
“Ah, so you’re admitting that—”
“I’m admitting nothing. I’m asking you a question.”
“Well,” said Kramer, glancing at the garage, “could it be because you can’t expect an old dog to learn new tricks?”
There was a prolonged silence, which Colonel Muller spent digging carefully about in his new briar with a match, and tamping down the tobacco again. “I had hoped,” he said eventually, “that you’d be able to help me in forming a nice, clear, unbiased picture of the situation. It’s what I need most, Tromp, if I’m to handle matters with the discretion expected of me as the head of CID in Trekkersburg and district.” And he sounded very lonely.
Kramer slid off the Datsun, chastened to see an old friend reduced to being almost human. “You’re right, Colonel,” he said. “We mustn’t prejudge, we must stick to the known facts. Who knows? This could all have been another of God’s little jokes. Now, there’s a bloke with a bloody sick sense of humour.”
“And the known facts are?” asked Colonel Muller, getting his smile back.
“That father and son repeatedly give contradictory accounts. One says the deceased was alive when roughly manhandled from the shower; the other that she was dead upon removal and there was no manhandling to have caused bruising, which suggests it must have occurred earlier. We now have to turn to the District Surgeon in the hope he can confirm one or other of these two stories, and he has invited us to attend his postmortem one hour from now. When we know whose story to believe, the father’s or the son’s, then we will know how this case should be regarded. Either as a simple accident enquiry, or as a full-blown murder investi—”
Colonel Muller shuddered. “Enough, Tromp! That’s all I wanted. Now, let me see, if we go down to the mortuary a little early, do you think Doc Strydom might start sooner than five o’clock?”
“I think,” said Kramer, “it’ll depend more on how the afternoon has treated its resident ghoul, the charming Sergeant Van Rensburg.”
With the smell of hot horsehair mattress thick in his nostrils, Gagonk Mbopa took out his snuff-horn and dosed himself with two large pinches. He also put a little snuff behind his lower lip.
“Now, that,” muttered Jones, poking about between the joists and the corrugated-iron roof of Ramjut Pillay’s lean- to bedroom, “is what I call a truly disgusting habit.”
“Ermph.”
“What did you say?”
“Ermph, Lieutenant.”
“That’s better! What do you think he needed this bottle of stuff for?”
Mbopa took the small brown bottle and cautiously unscrewed its top before taking a quick sniff at its contents. “Lemon juice, Lieutenant.”
“Fresh, is it?”
Mbopa tasted a little and nodded. “Maybe it is some kind of churra medicine,” he suggested.
“There’s also a pen up here he’s been stirring it with. God, have you ever seen such an assortment?”
“Never, sir.”
“Then, let’s get out in the open again for some air, hey? I need to think about this—it’s queer we’ve still found nothing.”
“The Lieutenant is sure there is something to find? We have searched this place for many—”
“Ja, ja, all afternoon, I know! But I’m sure I’m on to something here; my nose tells me.”
Wiping the sweat from his brow with an already sodden handkerchief, Mbopa stepped out into a mild breeze, wishing it could reach the most uncomfortable part of his anatomy. To this end, he did a couple of deep knee-bends, tugged at his trouser seat and turned his back to leeward.
“Right,” said Jones, taking out a wine gum to suck, “what we do now is put this place under surveillance, while at the same time we issue out a warrant for this bastard’s arrest.”
“Hau!” said Mbopa.
“Just listen, man.… Who allegedly found the body? Who couldn’t explain what his boots were doing outside the sun-lounge? Who stays up all night, doing God knows what in his room? Who borrows a bike and goes rushing into town? Who comes back, not on the bike, and sneaks down here, grabs a big bag and goes sneaking away again, trying not to be seen? Who?”
“Er, this Pillay, Lieutenant.”
“And now tell me there’s nothing in all that to arouse any normal person’s suspicions! You can’t, can you?”
“No, Lieutenant,” admitted Mbopa.
“Well, then, what you’ve got to add to that is all his disguises and—”
“Disguises, sir?”
“You’ve seen them, man! He’s got enough different uniforms and suchlike in there to dress up as almost anything, go out and commit a crime, and who’s to know it was only a coolie postman? I bet you that’s what he had in the big bag he took away—another costume to disguise himself in.”
“But, Lieutenant—”
“Watch it! How many times must I warn you not to say ‘but’ to me when I’m talking?”
Mbopa fell silent, directing a jet of snuff-brown spit at a locust on a nearby boulder.
“Now, where was I?” said Jones. “Oh ja, and then there’s that detective course he’s been taking.”
“That is what I wanted to say, Lieutenant. You speak as though this Pillay is a big, big criminal. Only, why would a—?”
“Ach, don’t you ever use your brains? It’s obvious he must have taken that course so he’d know what methods would be used against him, giving him a chance to plan accordingly!”
“Hau,” said Mbopa, impressed despite himself, and making up for this by hitting the locust full-on with his second shot. “So we have found Suspect Number One, sir?” Jones shrugged and popped another wine gum. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say that at this stage, Gagonk, but I reckon he’d definitely be worth asking a few questions—out at the playground, maybe?”
“Any time, Lieutenant!” chuckled Mbopa.
“Hey, and you know what else I’ve just worked out? That he’s probably, at this minute, making a run for it in that disguise of his! Didn’t you notice he didn’t leave a single cent behind? We’d better get on to the bus station and so on straight away, hey? Although there’s just one snag.…”
“Sir?”
“This Pillay’s description. We need it quickly to circulate, but neither you nor me has ever seen him. Who can we ask? His pa’s obviously half-witted, the Post Office is probably closed by now, and so we’ll probably have to end up getting Kra—er, Lieutenant Kramer or his pet monkey to provide the necessary informa—”
“No need. Lieutenant!” said Mbopa, making for the lean-to.
“I’ve already thought of that,” said Jones. “You’re going to guess his size from those clothes, right? But you can’t, hey, because I’ve already looked and they’re all different.”
But Mbopa ignored that remark, and searched at the bottom of a pile of papers for one of the first documents he’d glanced through. “Ah, here it is. Lieutenant! Just what is wanted!” And he handed over a half-finished letter.
“ ‘Dear Esteemed Pen Pal,’ ” Jones read out. “ ‘Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Ramjut Pillay, my age thirty-one years, and I am most Gandhi-esque in appearance, save for a full head of splendidly healthy hair. To help you picture me further, I must modestly reveal that I weigh 81.64 kilos, stand a very fully educ
ated 176 centimetres, and have most excellent eyesight. I work as a postal operative and have the reputation of—’ ” Jones broke off, and raised an eyebrow. “What does this ‘Gandhi-esque’ nonsense mean?”
“Can it be churra talk for Asiatic, sir?”
“Of course!” said Jones. “Then, we’re in business, Gagonk! Everything we need is here, so don’t just stand around bloody grinning—let’s get to a phone, man!”
* * *
Acting like a waiter who has been asked to lay and serve a table after closing-time, Sergeant Van Rensburg was banging trays about in his mortuary, dropping knives everywhere, making snide remarks about what sort of tip he’d be getting, and pretending that Marie Louise Zuidmeyer wasn’t on the menu.
“Ach, now take a pull at yourself!” remonstrated Strydom. “You know very well that the deceased was brought here in an ordinary ambulance so as not to tip off the neighbours that there’d been a death.”
“An ordinary ambulance?”
“Ja, the kind with red crosses on. She was on a trolley with a grey blanket over the top.”
“I’ve had enough of this,” said Kramer, and went through to the refrigerator room, where he took Van Rensburg by the nose and twisted it until his eyes watered and tears streamed down his fat cheeks. “Fine, then, now you look as though you’re putting some feeling into your work, move.”
Very shortly after that, Mrs. Zuidmeyer’s considerable bulk was moved from a trolley on to the channelled stone slab, and Colonel Muller raised a copy of the evening paper in front of him. There was an unusual creaking sound in the room, as Van Rensburg tiptoed about on the wooden duckboards, and Kramer made no attempt to meet Strydom’s reproachful looks, which somehow suggested he had interfered with time-honoured tradition. Instead, he concentrated on the dead woman’s face, and tried to read a little of her life from it.
Her hands told him more. For a white woman, they were remarkably work-worn, and all the more so for a wife in her position, with a good-sized pension coming in. This would naturally have something to do with there being no servant on the premises of course, but he could also see, from the pads on her fingers, that she had done a great deal of heavy sewing, and remembered then that the red Datsun had had new upholstery. The narrow strip of indented skin on her ring finger hinted at a cheap wedding band.
“I’ve seen fat before, but this is like cutting through a churn of farm butter,” grunted Strydom, his gloved hand disappearing as it parted glistening yellow slopes in search of red tissue.
“Chocolates,” said Kramer.
“What gives you that idea?”
“They go with reading love stories in a hot bath.”
“But wouldn’t they melt in the steam?” asked Van Rensburg, and looked even more unhappy when nobody troubled to reply to him.
Mrs. Zuidmeyer, on the other hand, was looking quite contented, and for once the phrase “passed peacefully away” seemed wholly appropriate, notwithstanding her undoubtedly violent departure. Perhaps, mused Kramer, she’d reached the stage when her only concept of peace was death, and she’d welcomed it, however it had come to her. Then, again, she might have lived her life as one of those irritating women who always looked peaceful, making one want to drop mice down their fronts, and this expression of supreme superiority had become fixed. Her eyes, he noted, were also one blue and one brown, so he’d been wrong about young Jannie sharing no resemblance. The nose was ordinary enough, but the mouth troubled him; even now it seemed turned in on itself, as though sworn never to impart secrets learned from bad dreams dreamed beside her through many a bad night.
“Jelly beans,” said Strydom, opening the stomach over by the sink.
“Close enough,” said Kramer. “Any sign of breakfast?”
“None.”
“Uh-huh. And how much of a general picture have you so far?”
“She definitely slipped in that shower cubicle. Extensive bruising to the toes of her right foot, and bleeding under two toenails, consistent with it shooting forward and striking the porcelain surround. Also, massive bruising of the left buttock area, where she landed. Y’know, going down with a helluva bump. When I get inside the head, I’d like to bet we’re going to find the base of the skull fractured by upward compression, with maybe secondary fracture-lines extending from it. Overweight people falling hard on their bums are always doing that to themselves.”
Van Rensburg looked round hopefully, in obvious expectation of someone making a callous remark, as would be customary, regarding his own chances of longevity in view of this bleak fact, but again went ignored. With a trembling sigh, he began to saw off the top of Mrs. Zuidmeyer’s cranium, almost as tenderly as though it were his own.
“All right, for the last time of asking,” said the white constable in the Railway Police office, shaking a broken chair-leg in Ramjut Pillay’s ashen face, “how come you were hiding on Platform One while not in possession of a train ticket, platform ticket, travel warrant, railway employee’s pass or other form of necessary authorisation?”
“For the last time of replying sir,” said Ramjut Pillay, “I was never hiding. I was making a private thing of my grief at having such a ruthless thief for a father.”
“You have a father? Don’t make me laugh!”
“I have no wish for humour at this particular moment myself, kind sir, but—”
“Hey, that’s enough, coolie!” said the constable, breaking another large piece off the chair-leg by bringing it down hard on the scarred table. “More than I can stand! There are only two ways you could have got on to that platform without a ticket. Either you came in from the street and sneaked through the ticket barrier while old Fannie had his back turned, helping that young lady with her cello, or you sneaked off a train here, having travelled to Trekkersburg as a stowaway. Now, tell me, which was it?”
“Er, my throat is very dry, sir—would it be permissible for me to have a little water?”
“Have all the water you like!” shouted the constable, snatching a red fire-bucket off its bracket on the wall and tipping it over him.
“Hey, what are you doing with that, Wessels?” asked a Railway Police sergeant, entering the office at that moment. “Don’t you know I’ve put fertiliser stuff in there for my ferns?”
“You mean it’ll make this loony pregnant, Sarge?”
“Wessels! Atten-shun!”
There was a thunderous stamping of boots behind Ramjut Pillay.
“Right, Constable Wessels,” crooned the sergeant, in a very unpleasant way, “that’s you finished, once and for all. This isn’t the first time I’ve come across this attitude in you concerning my ferns, and everyone from the stationmaster down, who has one of my ferns hanging directly outside his office, seems to be aware of it, too. In fact, old Jannie told me only three minutes ago that he had spied a Peter Stuyvesant filter-tip stubbed out in a fern-basket on Platform Two. What is your brand of cigarette, may I ask?”
“Stuy-Stuyvesant, Sergeant. Only, hundreds of buggers must—”
“Constable, riiiight turn! Preee-pare to … march! The rest of what I have to impress on you can only be done in complete private, man to man. Understood?”
“Sergeant, I—”
“Quick march, you buffoon! Hup-hi! Hup-hi! Hup-hi.…”
And at last Ramjut Pillay had a moment alone to himself in which to think. He thought so furiously he found he was straining at his handcuffs and making his wrists hurt. How long had he been manacled to this table? Two hours? Was it three? It was well after five on the big clock behind the charge-office desk.
“By jingo!” he couldn’t help blurting out, as a sudden, very sweet realisation hit him. “SAP are very late in telling Railway Police to beware of Ramjut Pillay, most wanted fugitive! This must mean that they have altogether forgotten! And if they have forgotten, then Railway Police do not have my descriptions. Oh, jolly good.”
But that still left him with the problem of explaining how and why he had been found ticketless on Pl
atform One. Telling the truth would be no excuse, and in no time he’d be appearing in the local magistrate’s court for all the world—including the Trekkersburg CID—to see. Telling a lie would simply mean appearing in another magistrate’s court somewhere else, on the more serious charge of using public transport without paying for it, and then a wanted poster would no doubt have been circulated. If only he’d allowed Tomato Face to have his damned sock, how very much simpler life would be!
If only there were another way … just one more inspiration was all he asked.
“Right, you,” said the Railway Police sergeant, sucking a bruised knuckle as he came back into the charge office, “I want the truth, the whole truth, and not a word of nonsense. How did you get on that platform?”
“I fall out of the sky, kind sir.”
“Oh ja? What are you? A parachutist or a bloody nutcase?”
“Parachutist,” said Ramjut Pillay.
“I suppose it says that on your papers?”
“I am never reading the papers, sir. Only the prophecies of Allah, who was also a great parachutist.”
“No papers, no money, no bugger all, just one sock full rubbish,” the sergeant muttered to himself, reaching for his telephone directory. “Are you going to tell us your name now, so I can pass it on to the hospital that’ll come to fetch you?”
“Peerswammy Lal,” said Ramjut Pillay.
Hopeful Dumela put his head into the main interrogation room and said: “Excuse me, Lieutenant sir, but Colonel Muller is coming down the corridor.”
“You’ll go far,” murmured Kramer, as he stepped past him through the doorway. “Hello, Colonel. Any news, sir?”
“Of?”
“Doc Strydom’s little games with his microscope.”
“No, not a word yet,” said Colonel Muller, looking very agitated. “And you? What have Mrs. Stride’s servants got to say for themselves?”
“A lot, sir—but nothing that’s been a big help so far. They say she was a good, kind madam, that she had fights with her son over money, that nobody came as a visitor to the house during the week before they left. The cook remembers her burning some blue envelopes in the Aga stove in the kitchen last Wednesday, but says he didn’t see their contents. The most we’ve got out of them is that nowhere in the house did she keep a sword.”
The Artful Egg Page 15
