Snake (23 page)

Kramer was caught right in the act.

“I heard from Wessels you’d got an idea to crack the alibi,” the colonel said, sitting down on the corner of the desk. “But that didn’t sound like this inquiry to me.”

“Marais has been gone about half an hour, sir. If you like to wait a minute, maybe you’ll hear the result.” Kramer moved his hand casually from the telephone receiver he had just replaced in its cradle.

“And who were you talking to?” the colonel persisted.

“That? Just a nun I know.”

“You let her ring you at work?”

Kramer’s grin pleased the colonel and they both eased the tension.

“One of Funchal’s daughters. I wanted to check on that centavos coin we found in the car yesterday, and asked for Da Gama. But he’s taken over the business affairs and was away in Durban, so she told me instead, after asking her granny, that her father kept one in the till because it’d been blessed by an archbishop or something.”

“Which clinches that,” said the colonel.

“Uh-huh.”

“But how about the button? I’ve heard nothing from you, and Wessels seems to think that the mother may not be running circles round us.”

“It smells, sir. Really it does. And I’m not at all happy about the time she really had in that bedroom before Marais joined her. That business about pretending he could be given the slip sounds a little too—”

“Talk of the devil,” said the colonel, as Marais came in, red and bad-tempered.

“I’ve got the car-park boy downstairs, sir, and I need Mickey to question him—his English is bloody terrible.”

“Ja, where is he?” asked the colonel.

Wessels wandered in and said, “Who?”

“Zondi.”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“And you, Lieutenant?” growled the colonel. “Or is he doing a ballistics test up the road?”

At that moment, Zondi skidded in through the door.

“Where have you been?”

“Colonel, sir?”

“Explain your absence from this office.”

“I’ve been to the Shirley residence, sir.”

“
What?
To do what?”

“Make an arrest.”

The colonel jumped to his feet. “No!
Who
, you madman?”

“Oh, just the mother of the young master.”

Stunned, Kramer stared at him like everyone else, but seemed to see in his expression a smugness directed only at himself, as if a difference of opinion had now been settled most satisfactorily in the crazy bastard’s own favor.

Martha Mabile sat, her hands together and limp in her lap, on the stool in the interrogation room, quite removed from her surroundings.

So the men looking down on her simply talked as though Martha were not there at all.

“I helped you?” Kramer asked.

“
Hau
, it was what you were saying about a mother’s love, Lieutenant.”

“
Ach
, no!” objected Marais.

“You mean about sharing the risks of deception?”

“Spot on, and there was wisdom also in the statements made by Sergeant Marais, for he has a sharp eye and he told us that he could see no liking between the missus and the girl. Why should the girl stay at the house? She is clever and can get a good job somewhere else.”

“Lots of nannies become cook girls,” Marais broke in, to be silenced by the colonel’s frown.

“So I think to myself: What has this woman told me? That the child was hungry, so she fed it; that it was hurt, so she cared for it; then a most loving thing—when it was bad, she gave it chastisement.”

“That’s what a nanny’s for, stupid!”

“Marais.…”

“Sorry, Colonel.”

“And when,” said Zondi, with the cautious tone of respect, “the child tells the missus that his nanny has beaten him, it is the nanny’s word which is the truth, as is always the word of a mother, right or wrong.”

Wessels asked, “What about all the other nannies?”

“They did not like him, because they could see no good— but Martha has eyes that go deep.”

“So she pretended the kid was hers?”

“I have known many cases, Colonel. Even among the women who have little ones that must stay on the homeland.”

“Hey, you know what this reminds me of?” Wessels said suddenly. “You remember when you played Rugby at a posh school? The cheering? The old wog girls who used to stand over behind the fence and say, ‘
Shiya sterek
, Number Seven-a-teen,
che-che!
’”

“Say?” hooted Marais. “The way I remember, they were all bloody shouting! And you remember how the other side would walk off without looking, thinking we would say they were kaffir-love—hell, sorry, Colonel.”

Kramer moved around to confront Martha, whose face was still as impassive as when she had been led into the room.

“Zondi, you’re saying that Shirley told this woman his troubles—just like his mum?”

Martha laughed softly.

“No, you do not understand, sir. This is the cook girl who looks after him, putting food in his stomach. Would he not be very ashamed?”

“That’s my point, man! How did she know to take the measures you accuse her of?”

“And she can’t read or write,” Marais added, “because Shirley himself told me—what does she know of police procedures?”

“No, this I want to hear from her,” Kramer decided.

Martha said something into Zondi’s ear. He patted her on the shoulder and turned to the colonel.

“Her English is bad; she asks that I interpret.”

“Fine, let’s hear it!”

“Only in Afrikaans,” Marais reminded him, taking out his notebook, “and in the first person.”

“I still do not know why there is all this trouble with the young master,” Martha began. “But when I see policemen come to the house and they are CID, then I am very afraid for him. I have this fear because of certain things I have noticed at the weekend that has just passed. The first thing is when Master Peter comes to my door in the middle of the night. He will usually call for me by the back door. I am so afraid that he will see my husband Aaron is sleeping with me, for he has no permit to be on the premises. So I go quickly to the door and when he asks for my clock I give it to him quickly also so he will not step inside. I think it is strange he does not tell me to change the hands, as this is a thing I have learned to do. Then I close the door and see that the time is just after half-past twelve, and I say to Aaron that the young master is home early for the weekend. Aaron says the clock is no good because his pocket watch says it is nearly one o’clock. We laugh then because I say to him, ‘That old thing is no good,’ and he argues, saying it has many jewels in it.”

The colonel said just, “God!”

And the two voices went on. “In the morning I make the young master his breakfast and put it in the dining room, and while he is in the bath I go to tidy his room. Ever since he was a small boy, his room has been untidy and clothes just thrown on the floor. I take the dirty washing and I see his shirt has a button that I must find and put on. But although I look and look by the place where he undresses, there is no button fallen there so I think he has been with girls again. He boasts to me of such things to show me he is a man now. I brush his jacket, which has got a white mark on it, then I also notice.…”

“What’s up, Zondi?”

“
Hau
, she says this part is not for the ears of the white masters. Better she leaves it, for she is too shy and ashamed.”

“Tell her we will not be angry.”

Zondi, looking uncomfortable himself, persuaded her to continue.

“I have the young master’s shirt and his undershirt and his socks and then I realize I do not have his underpants. So again I look on the floor and all around. Then I did a thing without thinking, for I had done it so many times long before.”

“Keep going,” said the colonel.

“When he was becoming a man, he would like to hide his pajamas under the mattress, like so, when in the morning he took them off. It was my instruction that pajamas must be placed under the pillow when the bed was made, so I searched hard until I discovered this was his habit. I think he did this because when in the night his dreams spilled seed and—”

“Okay, skip the history, Zondi.”

“I found the underpants under the mattress and there was a little seed on them. But for a long time the young master had not been ashamed of such things, and I wonder what it is making him to do this. Then I think of what Aaron said about the clock, although it seemed I had woken the missus at the right time. Then the CID come and I am asked what time, what time, and I see that the clock was important in some way I can choose to say only what the young master tells me, or what Aaron has said. But this is not trouble for Aaron, so I just say—”

“And the button?” asked Marais, dropping his pen.

“She was the one with all the time to shoot upstairs,” Kramer said. “She had a quick look for the shirt, tricked Ma Shirley over the right number, and all without really knowing what the sod was going on.”

Zondi spoke in Zulu to Martha and then confirmed this had been the sequence of events—although she had nearly been seen by her employer.

Marais got an attack of the old trouble and hastened off to the bog.

Martha said something else.

“She asks if she can now know what girl has made a complaint against her master,” Zondi explained. “She is not stupid, this one.”

“What we need now,” said Kramer, rising to the surface, “is that husband of hers to testify about the time. Where does he live? Bloody Durban, I suppose?”

“
Hau
, no, Lieutenant. He is the first one I catch.”

“Hey? How come?”

“The story Boss Wessels told about a man in her
kia
sounded strange in my ears, because I can see she is a churchwoman and would not give away her favors.”

“Where was he, then? You had only—”

“Right next door at number thirty-two. I said to him there would be no trouble about the permit offense this time if he was willing to be of assistance.”

“Quite right,” said the colonel, and then noticed it was half-past four.

Marais had been sent on his own to bring Shirley in for questioning, so Wessels shot over to the canteen to buy himself a quick Coke.

He was drinking it in the doorway, glorying in what he knew and yet had to keep to himself for the moment, when Warrant Officer Gardiner waved him over; then, realizing Wessels was armed and couldn’t enter, actually made his way across to him.

“How’s the case going?” Gardiner asked.

“Not bad at all, sir.”

“Then you’ve found the third guy?”

“Oh, that one, you mean. We haven’t had time for that business today. When I left CID to come over, the lieutenant had just started getting brainwaves that the shooting was done by the one at the back door.”

Gardiner’s eyebrows did their thing.

“Ja, and then there was the problem of where did the passenger go, and Mickey said why not under the dashboard?”

“I must be pissed,” said Gardiner.

“No, even for a coon, that’s logical. They used old cars, which still had the high doors, and there are no pavements in Peacevale to give passers-by the extra elevation, no double stories either. And as Kramer says, you count the number of persons in a vehicle by counting the heads, and if one suddenly goes you think you must have missed looking that way for a moment.”

“Let’s talk in the passage,” said Gardiner, pushing Wessels out with a friendly poke in the belly. “Now try and explain this better where I can hear you.”

“It’s dead simple, the way he’s got it now. The one round the back in the bandages—maybe they are even hiding the gun—arrives at the scene independently and on foot. The other two roll up in front of the shops, and the passenger gets his head down. It’s the driver that keeps the lookout for when the pedestrian traffic drops, then he gives a honk like I heard him do, but the kaffirs are so used to their own kind doing noisy things like that they forget. And the shots have them—”

“And the one with the gun?”

“By that time, when the horn goes, he has found a shop that isn’t being guarded at the rear. He goes in, looks round to see there are no customers, shoots the storekeeper, grabs the money, and he’s out the back way while everyone is coming up off the grit watching the car tear away. Now even if that car hits a roadblock, the two in it have no money, no gun—nothing to worry them. And they meet up again later.”

Gardiner shook his head.

“It’s not all just imagination, sir. It seems that the lieutenant warned this Lucky bloke, for instance, and now he points out that Lucky was shot, not near his till, but up near the shopwindow, as if he’d seen the car and was watching it. Plus Doc Strydom said he’d been shot on the turn—the turn
towards
, not away, you see? And wouldn’t Lucky have backed towards his till if the man came in the front? Just think how many times that car may have stopped at different places and the back doors were shut. Or they could have got the record shop instead of the butcher—maybe that was their intention Pot luck, Kramer says!”

“Sick!” Gardiner laughed Three prisoners were led between them down to the cells.

“And another thing about Lucky—his shop is built so high off the ground it’s possible he could see the passenger was ducking down and felt no immediate danger. Then he hears a sound, turns, and the shot gives the car its signal—”

“Okay, okay, I’ve got the picture,” Gardiner said, handing his glass to the small black helper. “But there’s a few things wrong with it. Fine as far as Peacevale goes, but there was no way that bugger could have attacked from the rear in the café. I drew the plans.”

“They’ve got them out now. Kramer’s working on the theory he came in through the bog window and out through the gents’ door under those stairs. I admit that once the car was gone I didn’t think to seal off—Jesus!”

“
Aikona
, he couldn’t have had time to grab even the small change and get back to the bog door before the coolie looked out of the kitchen.”

“The lieut’s thought of that. He could have stood behind the kitchen door when it came open.”

“And how long did you take to come in the front?”

“
Ach
, these aren’t my ideas, you know! That Mickey is now suggesting they’d thought of a better plan and that’s why they came into town, to try it on an easy place first. He’s just copying one of Kramer’s old ideas, thinking it’s smart.”