Snake (18 page)

An electric cable had been run into the kiln to provide lighting while the bricks were stacked, and Zondi followed it alone, the
keshla
suddenly losing his lust for witnessing the confrontation.

There was none. The
induna
, found dozing behind some completed work, swore that Twala had not turned up for work that morning, and called over his work team to verify this.

How entirely true this was, they all agreed, and said what a shame it was that the policeman had come so far and found nothing. And on second thought, the Twala he described to them didn’t sound at all like the one they knew. Maybe he should try the aluminum factory or the car assembly plant.

In this they totally overdid it.

Zondi found his way out into the open again and looked around. Then he noticed that the entrance to number 8 was still short of its top six rows of bricks, and drew his pistol.

“Build,” he said to the men Nobody moved.

He caught one of them with his left hand, spun him around, and slammed him against the others.

“Build!” he shouted.

The kiln entrance was only five bricks wide, and took very little time to fill in, with nobody paying much attention to the niceties.

A terrified Gosh Twala erupted through it not long after.

From the railway up, the hillsides were a deep, lush green, and very few homes were visible from the road, although Marais could see rooftops here and there behind the hedges and bamboo thickets. Hibiscus grew on the broad lawns, and hydrangeas, their huge pale clusters of flowers as good as white stones, marked the entrances to many of the driveways. For its part in the luxuriant scheme of things, the municipality had planted thick-flamed cannas on the road islands and center strips.

The other traffic was made up mainly of delivery vehicles from the best stores, liquor orders on motorcycles, and small English cars filled with dogs and children with pedigrees.

Except for the usual nannies, playing with their charges out on the lawns where they could talk with friends, there was nobody about.

Marais wished he had thought to bring a map. Then he saw a burglar alarms maintenance engineer in a van and stopped him for directions.

The number of the place was 34 and it had a name as well, Glenwilliam, in wrought iron on the gate. The drive was long, bending round to the right under enormous fig trees, and it was not until Marais topped a rise in the straight section that the double-story house came into view between the silver flash of birch trees.

Three vehicles stood in the doorless garage which had been burrowed into a high bank covered in desert plants. There was a white Jaguar, a plum Datsun coupe, and a conventional Land-Rover with a towing bar for the motorboat nearby, leaving one bay empty but with sump stains that suggested it had an occupant overnight. He looked at his watch: only four twenty-seven. Mr. Shirley couldn’t be home yet, so he would wait a couple of minutes. Houses that size tended to belittle him.

Marais had hardly settled back when a middle-aged black girl came to rap at his window.

“The missus asks if the master wouldn’t like to come inside, please,” she said in a soft, unafraid voice.

“Are you sure?”

“I have made tea specially for you coming. Do not be afraid of the dog. He only bites persons he does not know—never persons who I take into the house.”

“Huh!” said Marais, not liking the way it growled deep in its wolfish chest, yet getting out before he remembered to check his hair in the rear-view. He did this in one of the car windows and then followed her across.

More servants should work in places like these and then there would be less complaining, he thought, amused by the fold of fat above each swinging elbow and by her waddle.

There were bulrushes on the wooden chest in the hall, and a mat that didn’t stick too well to the highly polished floor.

The room he was shown into was also a disappointment, no oil paintings on its walls, no huge, soft armchairs and highwayman’s pistols. Just some cane seats painted cream, one big table with flowers heaped on it, and some pots to arrange them in. The girl went out.

And her mistress entered a moment later, holding out a ringed hand with a straight arm. Her age baffled him: the wrinkled throat was like an old tree, but the face itself was as smooth as a wood carving—one that had been given a coat of almost pure white with no underseal, so it showed up gray in the incised lines down either side of the mouth.

“Oh, Martha has managed to coax you in. I’m so glad.”

The handshake was a touch.

“I’m his mother.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Shirley. You knew I was coming?”

“Peter phoned, wretched child, just as I was getting ready to go out to bridge. Insisted I should be here in case he might be a minute or two late.”

“
Ach
, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. One can’t treat guests in a cavalier fashion. Although you’re not quite a guest, are you?”

“Not exactly, but I don’t think you could call it business either.”

“I most certainly wouldn’t have one of his clients here, and he has tried that one on, Mr.… ?”

“Sergeant Marais.”

“What squad? I once met a colonel or something at a dinner—my husband is a retired judge, by the way.”

“Murder and Robbery, madam.”

“Do sit down, Sergeant. You’re making me quite wilt at the sight of you.”

Wilting was exactly what Marais felt he was doing; this was nothing like the reception he had imagined. Mrs. Shirley started to stick flowers onto the spikes in a round piece of lead.

“And this is all because of that horrid little man and his dreadful affairs? What on earth could he have done to her that we’re being fed these gruesome stories about puff adders or whatever it was?”

“That’s our job to find out,” Marais said, seating himself on the edge of a chair that squeaked.

“But is it really necessary?” she asked, taking up garden scissors to snip the heads off some roses.

“The law must be upheld, Mrs. Shirley.”

“Good heavens, you’re trying to tell me what the law must or mustn’t do? When I’ve been married to it thirty years? I meant is it really necessary, required of you, to hound Peter in this fashion?”

“Hey? I’m only doing what I was told—to get the accounts of movements by all members present in the club that night. Your son, Mr. Shirley, is just unfortunate that so far we haven’t been able to contact anyone who saw him leave—or, in fact, verify what happened to him after midnight.”

“Is that all?” Mrs. Shirley said testily.

“Sorry?”

“I’m sure Martha and I have distinct memories of his arrival home on Saturday night.”

“Oh, ja?”

“Or are you solely interested in what he has to say?”

Marais rose slightly to look out the window. No other car had arrived yet.

“If it’s not any trouble, I’ll appreciate it,” he said, taking out his notebook to reinforce this impression. “The more the merrier, as they say.”

Her cold stare went in through his eyes and all the way down his back.

This simply wasn’t his day somehow.

The door was locked and Zondi came to open it in his shirtsleeves, half smiling when he saw who it was.

“Any joy?” asked Kramer, entering the interrogation room and taking a look at what stood against the wall.

Gosh Twala had changed a lot since his last picture, as if it had been taken by one of those swanky crooks in the main street and now the retouching had come off. His cheeks were hollowed and his eyes had no brightness in them, while his skin had that dull look, like a blackboard not wiped properly, which was a sure sign of a really poor coon.

“He swears he was not absent on the days in question and says the
induna
will swear to this also.”

“Is that right, Twala?”

“
Hau
, yes, please, my master! True’s God!”

“This
induna
I know to be a liar,” Zondi said.

“So he could have been sneaking off?”

“It is possible.”

But Kramer knew from the way Zondi said it that little interest or conviction went with it.

“Why bring him in?”

“There were difficulties, boss. The foreman is a very formal man.”

“Oh, ja?”

“Also I want to know why he hides from me. He says it is because his name is being shouted at the office and the other boys tell him I am there.”

“I am fright!” said Twala, raising hands like a beggar.

“Pockets?”

“Nothing.”

“And of course he denies any knowledge of the robberies themselves?”

Zondi nodded.

“What about Constable Wessels? Has he seen him?”

Again Zondi nodded. The apathy was on its way again— still nothing positive. There had not been a single trace of a fingerprint or anything else in the yellow Ford.

“Have you made him do the jumps yet?”

“No, boss,” answered Zondi, and had Twala leap about so as to drop anything he might have secreted inside himself, a prison trick with tobacco readily adapted to hide
dagga
as well.

Then the door opened and Sithole said, “Excuse me, Lieutenant, but a car has been found.”

“
Ach
, I know that, man,” Kramer replied irritably, “so just bugger off.”

He was watching a scarlet stain spreading in the filthy pullover Twala wore next to his skin.

“Did you do that, Zondi?”

“
Hau!
Let me look! This is a knife wound, boss.”

“You’re slipping, hey?”

Then Twala began protesting he’d only been trying to defend himself, and it had been the other fool’s fault for drinking so much and he hadn’t killed him anyway, just taught him a lesson. The rest was entirely in Zulu.

At the end of which Sithole again poked his head in and said, “Excuse me, Lieutenant, but this is a crashed car with persons in it.”

Everything changed when Peter Shirley finally arrived home in his MG sports, most apologetic for having been half an hour late, but a couple of tasteless idiots had nearly driven him screwy by picking holes in a wall covering that was just perfect for them.

“Hardly a profession,” Mrs. Shirley sniffed, accepting her son’s peck on an uplifted cheek.

And then, to Marais’s considerable relief, withdrew.

Shirley was not quite as imagined either. He and Marais shared a stocky, fairly average build, and then went their separate ways. His hair was three inches longer, his body was good but a little soft, and his eyes had seen nothing. Also, his fingernails were bitten right down. His mum should have put aloe juice on them, or mustard; that would have killed the habit before it was too late. Yet, for all that, he still seemed a nice bloke.

“It doesn’t look as if you’ve had any of this tea,” Shirley said to him as soon as they were alone.

“Well—er—we were just having a chat. Your mum—Mrs. Shirley was giving me an account of your movements.”

“Great, but sorry you had to be stranded with the Dragon. Look, I’ll just get Martha to do us another pot.”

“But aren’t you in a hurry?”

“Nothing deadly—and don’t worry about Martha. She’s a poppet.”

Marais stood up and stretched, then inspected the flower arrangement, which was still unfinished, with all the long ones to one side instead of in the middle.

Shirley was gone only about two minutes, and then came back in, stuffing an enormous wedge of chocolate cake into his mouth. He held out a plate for Marais to select a piece of his own.

“That’s
lekker
, thanks, hey?”

“Martha again. Brilliant! Can do absolutely anything. I’ve tried to interest her in improving her literacy, though, but she won’t.”

“The best ones know their place.”

“There you and I might beg to differ,” Shirley replied, smiling warmly, “but naturally you see a much seamier side of African community life than I do. Must tend to distort things a little.”

“
Ach
, in my opinion, a kaffir is a kaffir—doesn’t matter what side you look at.”

Shirley laughed and choked on a cake crumb, patting himself hard on the back.

Then Martha brought in a fresh pot of tea and Marais made a point of thanking her for it in Sesotho, the only Bantu language he spoke. She giggled gratifyingly and wobbled off.

“I could speak Zulu as a kid,” Shirley said, “but now I’m afraid it’s all gone out of the window. Milk?”

“And three sugars, please.”

“Pity the old man’s away bundu-bashing. You two should get on famously; lots in common and all that.”

Marais nodded, very flattered that here at least was someone who regarded him as good as the next man in the pursuit of justice. Then he swallowed his tea hurriedly so he could get his notebook out and cause no extra inconvenience.

Shirley leaned toward him attentively, his chin cupped in one hand, and said, “Well? What exactly can I help you with?”

“Just routine, you understand: your movements last Saturday night.”

“God, what an evening! I had this little nurse lined up, positively aching to forget bedpans for a while, and she didn’t appear.”

“Should have asked us to find her,” joked Marais.

“Must remember that next time! Blind date, to be honest, waited for her at the nurses’ home and she didn’t pitch up. Left a note, thinking she might have been kept late on the ward— often happens—and went on waiting at the Wigwam. The usual crowd came in after a bit, but I wasn’t in the mood, and sat at one of Monty’s tables for two. I mean, she might have got a lift up at any minute, and I wasn’t having one of them get his paws on her.”

“You said Monty? You were on those sorts of terms?”

“Did his place for him; twenty percent discount and a free membership for life—oh, that wasn’t clever, was it?”

Marais took another slice of cake, leaving two for sharing.

“And then, Mr. Shirley?”

“Well, I watched Eve’s first number and decided to stay on for the second.”

“Would the nurse still come?”

“All that was forgotten by then, to tell the truth. I’d been knocking back a bit of plonk and that second act—not for your notebook, I think! You do get this down wonderfully fast.”

“That’s because I worked in the courts before joining the force.”