“Ja, but a DH-136 pine scent,” insisted Van Rensburg. “Sort of like a detergent only it’s also a disinfectant, cleans like magic. You must have noticed it in the P.M. room.”
Baksteen looked at Kramer and then back at Van Rensburg. “Well, thanks for the suggestion, not that there aren’t dozens of detergents on the market, all smelling of pine. On top of which, it may not even be a—”
“It’s not just the pine, Mr. Baksteen—ach, I can’t explain. I tell you what, though, let me show you.…” And off he went into the mortuary, returning only moments later, huffing and puffing, with a very large white plastic container. “OK, now take a sniff of this stuff as well, and you’ll see it’s identical.”
“I’m off,” said Kramer, who simply hadn’t the patience. “I’ll be phoning the lab at four for a result, hey?”
“But, Tromp, with all the possibilities there are, that’s asking for a—”
“Then stop arsing about with Balls-ache the Bloodhound and get on with it, man.”
Somewhere, Zondi felt sure, he had a scrap of paper that the Lieutenant had given him, bearing a telephone number at which Theo Kennedy could be contacted. He wished he’d taken the trouble to glance at it, imprinting it on his memory, because he wanted Naomi Stride’s servants off his hands and quickly. This whole stupid exercise of bringing them out to Woodhollow had proved, as he’d half-expected, a complete waste of time, and there were other things he could be doing. Like, for instance, finding out exactly what all the fuss was about Ramjut Pillay, the Indian postman, of which he’d heard rumours while picking up his police car this morning. He was certain his judgement of the man could not have been so wide of the mark that he’d overlooked a devious criminal brain beneath that childishly innocent exterior.
“Ah!” said Zondi, and took off his hat.
The scrap of paper was tucked behind the leather band inside it, and within seconds he had dialled the number and could hear the ringing tone.
“Hello, Vicki Stilgoe, here.”
“Good morning, madam, it is Detective Sergeant Zondi speaking, Murder and Robbery Squad. I have a message I must give to Boss Kennedy.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Madam can kindly pass on the message?”
“Madam can do better than that.…” There was the clunk of the receiver being dropped onto a hard surface, and then, faintly: “Theo, my sweet? It’s the police; some boy with something to say to you. Come on, Mandy, off Uncle Theo’s lap!”
“Hello, can I help you?”
Zondi again identified himself, and then explained that the dead woman’s servants had been brought back to Woodhollow.
“The problem is, sir, now we have finished with them, they ask what they must do. Is the boss’s wish that they stay working for him, or are their jobs at Woodhollow finished? They are very worried, sir, and—”
“Oh God, poor old Betty and Ben! And I suppose Harry the gardener is there, too?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Look, I’d best come over right away and see what I can do to put their minds at rest. I’d not given any of this a moment’s thought, to be honest! See you in two ticks, Sergeant.”
An unusual man, thought Zondi, as he replaced the receiver in Naomi Stride’s studio, who talked to you just as though you were another human being. Perhaps the Lieutenant’s own judgement hadn’t been at fault, either, when he’d dismissed the idea of his being a suspect.
“Detective?” said Harry Kani, appearing at the window.
“You have found something?”
“I have thought something, Detective. Will you allow me to show you?”
“Right,” said Jones, drawing up beside the Railway Street public park and clipping the kerb, “which bench did they say they’d found Pillay’s bag under?”
“This one by the drinking-tap, Lieutenant,” replied Mbopa, pointing to it proudly. “Marked ‘Non-whites Only.’ ”
“I can read, hey? And I don’t know why you keep on sounding so bloody pleased with yourself; it’s not as if you did anything special by asking Shabalala if you could look through the stuff those piccanins brought in with them. I had already organised a check on both lost and stolen property—so this bag would have turned up, whatever happened.”
Mbopa frowned, quite sure there was a flaw in that argument somewhere. “Ermph,” he muttered.
“So the bag,” said Jones, “must have been deposited here some time between Pillay leaving home in Gladstoneville and eleven o’clock, when the buses stop running. The first question we ask ourselves is, why?”
“Because he dropped it, Lieutenant?” suggested Mbopa.
“Quiet while I’m thinking.…”
Mbopa noticed a stealthy movement, over by the old Victorian bandstand in the middle of the small, triangular park with its threadbare lawn. Little by little, like a blood-red sun rising above the stage of the bandstand, the face of a huge white drunk appeared, and peered at the police car warily.
“I can’t see him just dropping the bag and not noticing,” murmured Jones. “Therefore it stands to reason he must’ve dumped it, wanting to get rid of two things that would help identify him: the book and the raincoat.”
The drunk was scratching the side of his nose with a hand bandaged in a filthy handkerchief.
“Don’t just sit there!” snapped Jones, jabbing Mbopa in the ribs with his elbow. “Take some interest, for Christ’s sake! Tell me, for example, how anyone could be stupid enough to dump incriminating property in full view of everybody.”
“Maybe, sir,” said Mbopa, nodding towards a litter-bin just behind the bench, “Pillay hid his bag in there, hoping the street cleaners would throw it away, but a drunk went looking into it, didn’t like the contents, and just left it lying under where he’d been sitting.”
“Possibly,” said Jones. “Next question, why did he choose this park to dump his stuff in?”
“Maybe, sir,” said Mbopa, “he did not want to be found with incriminating matter on a train. At the last minute, his idea was to leave it behind in Trekkersburg.”
“A train? But the Railway Police have already checked their Occurrence Book for yesterday, and they swear that nobody answering Pillay’s description—”
“With respect, Lieutenant, the Occurrence Book tells you only of arrests and other police matters. Why, if he had the money to travel, would they ever notice one coolie among so many?”
“But the ticket-seller for non-whites doesn’t remember his description, either, and I’m talking about the bloke who was on duty two-to-ten yesterday.”
“Well, then.…” Mbopa shrugged. “It is all a big mystery, Lieutenant.”
Jones opened his car door. “I’m going to go and see that Occurrence Book for myself. You stroll around the park, talk to people, try to find out whether anyone here saw Pillay yesterday.”
Mbopa followed him out reluctantly. Strolling around parks, talking to people, had never been something he was terribly good at; most people took one look at his approaching figure and left before he could get a word out. In a less namby-pamby world, a couple of rounds from his Walther PPK would easily overcome this problem of course, but such were the crosses a real man learned to bear.
“Hey, you!” boomed Mbopa, pointing a finger at an old coloured lurching towards a bench beside the grandstand. “I want to chat—come here.”
The white drunk dived out of sight, which was interesting, and the old coloured, having made a faltering turn to see who had called out to him, took off as sprightly as a springbok, leaping three black drunks in a row.
“Bastard,” grunted Mbopa.
Up came the white drunk’s head again, to show only the bloodshot eyes. There is something worrying that idiot, thought Mbopa, and wished he could go round, grab him by the scruff of the neck, and find out what it was.
“Lieutenant, sir,” he said when Jones returned, grimfaced from the station, “maybe you should interview the white man hiding over there. He is acting in a manner both str
ange and suspicious.”
“Immaterial!”
“Sir?”
“Haven’t you worked out yet why there is no trace of him at the station?” snapped Jones, heading for the car.
“Pillay had changed his name, boss?”
“Huh! Do you think that’d be enough to fool me? No, it was because, thick head, Pillay was never at the station yesterday. Leaving his bag here was simply a trick to make us think he’d gone somewhere by train, while all the time he’s probably still in Trekkersburg, laughing at us behind our backs!”
It hadn’t been a bad thought on the part of Harry Kani, the late Naomi Stride’s gardener, conceded Zondi. So far, all the emphasis had seemed to be on the murderer having used Jan Smuts Close to reach the property, whereas, as Kani pointed out, the killer could have used the servants’ path up through the wooded slope from a main road on the far side.
However, when all was said and done, now that Zondi had explored the path to the fence at the foot of the slope and had found nothing, the net gain was just one more hypothesis. To be sure, motorists could be asked in the press whether they’d seen a car left parked there on the night in question but, in terms of immediate significance, the score for the morning was still zero.
Slowly, Zondi made his way back up the path to the back lawn of Woodhollow, pausing only once to double-check on a mark that may have been made by a large footprint. Then he reached the top and was pleased to see Theo Kennedy at the side of the pool with Kani and the two Dubozas, both of whom were looking very much more cheerful.
“Sergeant Zondi?” asked Kennedy, extending a hand as he walked up.
Zondi shook the hand in white fashion, and said: “Thank you, sir, for coming over. Would it be convenient for me to leave them with you and—?”
“Hau, hau, hau!”
“What is it, Harry?” asked Kennedy.
“All these bits of rubbish people have thrown in!” protested Kani. “Who could have done this thing?”
No doubt, thought Zondi, the cigarette-packets, sweet-wrappers and peanut-bags had been tossed into the pool by uniformed onlookers before the body’s removal on Tuesday. “It’s all right, Kani, I can have them—”
“But the madam is very strict about such matters for fear they will cause a blockage in the filter! See down there?” And he pointed to a small grating in a corner of the deep end of the swimming-pool, a couple of metres below where they were standing. “There is rubbish all over. Also, what is that object?”
“Object?” echoed Zondi, crouching in an attempt to take a better look.
“It glitters orange,” said Kani, “like a jewel.”
“Yes, I can see it now, too,” agreed Kennedy, squatting by Zondi’s side.
“Stuck between the second and third bars of the grating. Very peculiar, isn’t it? Why hasn’t it been spotted before?”
“Could it be, sir,” suggested Zondi, “because this is the first dull day since the investigation began, and there is not a bright dazzle coming off the water?”
“You’re right. Shouldn’t we try to find out what it is?”
“Hau, I cannot swim, little master!” said Kani. “Never have I been in this water.”
Kennedy looked at Zondi, who shrugged and admitted: “My swimming has been only in a shallow river as a child, sir. I know how to stay on top, but not how to dive beneath!”
“But there’s no other way we’re going to get at it, is there?” said Kennedy, standing up. “I tell you what, I’ve an old costume in the house somewhere: so, if the police won’t have any objection, I’ll go in and put it on.”
It took Zondi a second or two to realise he was actually being deferred to, then he nodded gratefully and Kennedy ran off.
“Who are these?” whispered Betty Dobuza, inclining her head slightly to the left.
Zondi glanced that way, and saw a beautiful white child, with small dents in her cheeks, coming across the lawn towards them followed by a shy-looking woman in very plain clothes and a headscarf. “Some new friends of your little master’s,” he deduced. “Neighbours from where he lives. But tell me, Betty Duboza, is that frown on your face the same frown that your madam would always give if Boss Kennedy brought strangers to her house?”
And he knew he was right, because Ben Duboza grinned from ear to ear.
Faced with an indefinite delay on the Zuidmeyer front, while Baksteen analysed the samples taken from the shower curtain, Kramer decided to stop driving about aimlessly and pay a call instead on the offices of Afro Arts. He was curious to know exactly what had led to Theo Kennedy’s broken romance of a month ago, and secretaries, like servants, were often as good as a fifth column when it came to the activities of their lords and masters.
Afro Arts was the middle shop in a row of small businesses in an arcade off Trekkersburg’s main street. On one side was a stamp dealer’s, and on the other Camera Mart displayed shelf after shelf of secondhand photographic equipment. Afro Arts’s own window was black, save for an oval gap in the middle through which could be seen a clay head, lit by a small spotlight. He pushed open the door, which announced Retail and Wholesale in gold lettering, and stepped into a pleasing gloom. Here and there, more small spotlights picked out select examples of pottery, clay heads, reed basketry, woodcarvings and Zulu beadwork, leaving the rest of the showroom a dim jumble of countless other goods, like some sort of treasure cave.
“If you’re another reporter.…”
As his eyes adjusted to the low light, Kramer saw a young brunette standing behind a cash register at the rear of the shop, her arms folded across two enormous breasts. It was a shame the rest of her was equally enormous.
“Reporters are what I have for breakfast, lady. Tromp Kramer, Trekkersburg CID.”
“Thank goodness for that!” She smiled, showing perfect teeth, and switched politely to fluent Afrikaans. “Ja, Theo was telling me about you—he said you’d been very kind to him, poor soul. But he’s not coming in this morning after all, you know.”
“He’s not?”
“He rang me not long ago to say he’s having to go over to his mother’s house to see about the servants. Quite frankly, I’m amazed at how well he’s managing—he’s such a sensitive man—but I suppose he could still be in shock. My grandma was like that, went right through Gramp’s funeral, never used her lace hanky once, and then, three weeks later, in the middle of South Africa Today on the television, she bursts into tears and howls and howls!”
“Hell, hey?” said Kramer, taking out his Lucky Strikes. “You don’t mind if I—?”
“No, please do! I can’t agree with all the fuss there is these days about smoking, you know; I personally find it so manly. But where was I?”
“Telling me about your grandma, Miss—er?”
“Winny, Winny Barnes—but weren’t you quick to notice I wasn’t wearing a ring! I suppose that’s what being a detective is, training yourself to—”
“Ach, I’m sure I’m not the first bloke to check to see if the lady’s still available, hey? But you were saying about your grandma?”
“Look, I’d better get you an ashtray—oh, and while I’m about it, how about a coffee?”
“Winny, I’m dying for one, but only if it’s not too much—”
“Don’t be silly!” she said with a girlish laugh, and disappeared sideways through a bead curtain into the back, keeping her eyes on him.
Kramer watched her go, shook his head and murmured: “Tromp, there are times when you should feel bloody ashamed of yourself, old son.”
But he didn’t allow this to influence him unduly when she returned with the coffee, the ashtray and an eau-de-cologne respray job, saying: “I should’ve asked whether you liked milk. Theo does, and so I just automatically.…”
“With milk is exactly right, Winny. No, no sugar, ta.”
“You’re sweet enough as it is?”
“That’s what my old ma always tells me—but, then, she’s prejudiced.”
“Oh, I don�
�t know.…”
Kramer smiled at her and she giggled, crossing her legs with a loud rasping of nylon tights. “What about Theo,” he asked, “is he a sugar man?”
“Two lumps; one in tea.”
“Got it all pat, haven’t you? How long is it you’ve worked for him?”
“Would you believe it, it’s only been about a month, although I’ve known Theo for longer than that, of course, because he used to come into my dad’s shop—Camera Mart—for a chat when trade was quiet, and that’s how we two met, you know. Liz was still his assistant then; they sort of set Afro Arts up together, and I wasn’t the only one who thought it would go on to them getting married and everything, although she was a bit highly strung, being so artistic, and sometimes there were terrible rows me and my dad could hear right through the wall. But they weren’t serious rows, if you know what I mean, not those ones before about six weeks ago. It was things like Theo painting his Land-Rover to look like a zebra and Liz having a tantrum, saying it clashed with the ‘image’ she’d tried to create for him in the way the shop was arranged, the lights and that. In fact, as he only painted the Land-Rover in August, we thought it was the same row they were having on the morning she first went storming out, right past our window. Theo came round to see my dad, very upset, and they talked for ages, after which my dad caught Liz next time she went by and had her in. But she’d got into such a state by then, what with these phone calls still going on, that she wouldn’t listen or give Theo a proper chance. She said she just didn’t trust him any more, and that was that. I suppose there were two more big rows, she announced that she was going to the Cape to do design there and, next thing, Theo came round and asked me if I’d like to help him. He knew my dad didn’t really have much for me to do, and I’m hopeless with anything mechanical like cameras, and so, well, here I am. Mind you, I’m also his sort of secretary, so what with keeping the accounts, seeing to the Customs forms and—”
“My God, no wonder he speaks of you so highly!” said Kramer, putting down his coffee-cup. “But what sort of phone calls were these?”
“She never says who it is, but I always know straight away when the—”
The Artful Egg Page 18
