The Blood of an Englishman (11 page)

In his second glance, he took in a small glass tank filled with tropical fish on the reception desk, and behind it, putting down a red telephone, was a buxom young woman with a thick blonde plait, flatish features and big Afrikaner-blue eyes. Glad to find something in the room that didn’t seem alien, he warmed to her instantly and introduced himself, for the first time that day, in his mother tongue.

“I am sorry,” she said shyly. “I am not long from Sweden. You speak English?”

“Ja, when I have to, miss,” he sighed. “I’m from the CID, the police—I’d like to see your boss.”

“One moment, please,” she lisped, pressing a hidden buzzer.

There was an awkward silence. Kramer stooped over the fish tank and pretended to admire its inhabitants. “I like your aquarium,” he said politely.

“I am sorry?”

It was hopeless.

Then the boss arrived, all two hundred and fifty pounds of him, dressed in white slacks, a singlet and white tennis shoes, walking with a spring in his step that looked very tiring. His big round head was notable for its glisten of sweat, its high pink
coloring, and some of the most horrible blackheads Kramer had ever seen on a face that size; it was like starting a conversation with a slice of watermelon.

“Glad to meet you, Lieutenant Kramer!” the owner of the gym said. “Jimmy Winters is the name, health and fitness is my game! You’ll find everything here to keep you in tip-top shape, right on your toes, ready for anything that comes up!” And all the time he went on shaking hands, trying to demonstrate his crushing grip.

“Do you do skipping then, Mr. Winters?” asked Kramer.

“Skipping! Weights! Isometrics!”

“I’m interested to know if you have such a thing as a Master Skip skipping rope,” said Kramer, quite prepared to go on shaking hands if it made the man happy. “I’m working on a murder case where one is involved, you see.”

“A Master-what? I don’t know, to be honest, but would you like to take a look?”

“Please.”

“Well, shall we …?” Winters had gone right up on to his toes, and seemed to want his hand back. “I mean.…”

“After you, Mr. Winters.”

A girlish giggle, Kramer decided, as he followed the great oaf down a narrow passage, could sound just as nice in Swedish, and he wondered what her name was. Then the passage ended in a dazzle of white light and gleaming equipment.

“Not bad, hey?” said Winters, proudly. “What you saw when you came in cost me a pretty penny, but this!—this is nothing but the latest, nothing but the best.”

“Uh huh.”

“And look at the clientele.…” Winters whispered behind a raised hand. “All the top-notch, the cream. You won’t find skolly boys in here pumping iron!”

It was certainly an educative and engaging sight to see so many of Trekkersburg’s leading citizens stripped down and
running over. What Kramer enjoyed most was the Supreme Court’s most pompous and self-righteous judge, so paunchy he looked pregnant, using a vibrating-belt machine with every indication that he hoped, with so much bouncing about, to procure an illegal abortion.

“The skipping ropes are kept over here,” said Winters, leading the way across to five pegs in the wall. “Probably what you’re after is this newish one—am I right?”

It had Master Skip imprinted in both handles, and that was it. Kramer gave the rope a turn around his left wrist, explained the business of the fractures to Winters and asked his professional opinion, not expecting very much.

“Well, anything’s possible, isn’t it, Lieutenant?”

“Have you anybody coming here who has a pull like that?”

“I couldn’t say for sure, but I doubt it.”

Bradshaw’s description of his attacker fell on equally stony ground. Finally, Kramer asked if any member of the regular clientele had expressed an interest in the Master Skip, and may in fact have purchased one for himself.

“But why should he buy equipment?” said Winters, very puzzled and finding a small area of hair at the back of his bald head to scratch. “That’s why they come here, Lieutenant.” He thought for a while, and then added, “Isn’t it?”

Kramer flipped the skipping rope back over its peg, and turned to take his leave.

“Hello, there!” said a voice under some form of press. “I was wondering when you’d notice us.”

By crouching down, Kramer was able to see Jonty the hairstylist flat on his back inside the gadget, straining at it with bulging arms. “I hadn’t noticed you actually, but tell me, have you got anything to report yet?”

“There’s been a little cracker in the salon asking questions about someone all afternoon.”

“Oh ja? About who?”

“You, old cock. Know who I mean? The red-head?”

“Ach, what I’m more interested in is—”

Jonty laughed. “You amaze me, Lieutenant! How can you ignore the sort of invitation I’m about to make? Come up to my place about ten and she’ll be there. There’s a crowd of us getting together after the drive-in.”

“Uh huh, but nothing on where Hookham could have got to last night?”

“And this new bird out front, she’ll be there too. You know, that cracking Swedish piece—I fancy a bit of smorgasbord!”

“I can’t believe there wasn’t talk in your salon this afternoon,” persisted Kramer, bringing an edge to his voice. “Or are you trying to bugger me about?”

Jonty sat up then, looking hurt. “Christ, no need to get your knickers in a knot, chief! If there had been anything worth passing on, don’t you think I’d have contacted you by now? All I know is there’s been a big ring-round on the phone, lots of excitement, but nobody had Hookham visiting them last night—or else they’re not coughing to it.”

“Thanks,” said Kramer, getting up.

“But what do I tell Trish? That you’ll be over at ten?”

Kramer left the question unanswered. He also left the Aquarius Health and Fitness Center quite convinced that, just as he’d expected, his visit there had been a complete waste of time and he hadn’t learned a thing.

Mama Bhengu stood with her arms folded at the front door of her whorehouse, doing the work—in terms of sheer physical obstruction—of four grown men. Her enormous dress hung partly unbuttoned from a pair of sloping shoulders rather like a polka-dotted bell tent, and peering out through the flap at the bottom, so to speak, was an evil-eyed billy-goat. Zondi made reasonably sure it was clamped tightly between her fat knees before advancing a step nearer.

“Greetings, Mama Bhengu,” he said, lifting his hat most politely. “All goes well with you?”

She spat to her right.

“All does not go so well?”

She shrugged.

“The murder here has been bad for business?”

She stared at him for a time, and the billy-goat grew restless.

Zondi decided to come straight to the point. “See this, Mama? I have in my hand the weapon that was pushed into Jackson Smith on these premises last Thursday night. Have you perhaps ever seen anyone with it?”

“Never.”

“You answer very quick.”

“And why not? I answer quick, you go quick—it is
you
who is bad for business, Michael Zondi.”

“My heart weeps for you, Mama Bhengu,” he replied, and drew his Walther PPK. “Of course, if you wish to see something
really
quick, then all I have to do is fire one shot in the air, and your customers will join us from every window.”

She threw back her head and laughed so heartily that the goat’s head shook up and down. “Come inside, Michael,” she said, shuffling backwards into the hall. “Come inside, and we will have gin together, son of my soul! What else is it you want?”

“To ask the same question of your nieces,” said Zondi, “if that is agreeable to you.”

“All are at work except my new niece.”

“Their work never takes very long, so I will wait—I am in no hurry.”

“Come, let us go through to the back room.”

Mama Bhengu took the goat by the horns, dragged it out from under her, and then led the way, keeping the animal firmly in check until she could tether it to a table leg in the back room. Half a dozen drunken customers were seated there
on stools made from condensed-milk crates, exchanging lewd predictions while they waited their turn; each seized up as he became aware of Zondi’s presence, but nobody made a move to run. Zondi put away his PPK and took a look at the new niece, who was perched on the arm of a sagging settee. Mama Bhengu ran one of the best brothels in the township, so he had been expecting another of her true Zulu beauties: a sturdy young heifer with golden-brown skin, full breasts, wide hips and big strong thighs with plenty of lift in them. The new niece had a golden-brown skin, but for the rest she was as skinny, flat-chested and narrow-hipped as a white woman, and topped it all off with an absurd yellow wig. He wasn’t in the least surprised to find her unoccupied.

“What do you think?” whispered Mama Bhengu, tipping her head toward the girl. “I tell you she is making me plenty, plenty money that one.”

“It does not look like it, Mama!”

“Huh! What do you expect on a Wednesday night? All these men here, what are they? Factory workers, laborers, loafers from the streets. But on Saturday night, Sunday night, those who find work in houses, cook boys, garden boys, drivers even, they all want to try out Missy Madam! Here take your glass and finish that while I fetch another bottle.”

Zondi tipped the dregs of the half-jack into the glass and sat back, keeping his shoelaces out of reach of the goat. The back room, as Mama Bhengu called it, was really a large, lean-to shed with walls and a roof made of corrugated iron, and a floor made of crumbly concrete. The waiting area occupied a narrow strip nearest to the house itself, and the remainder of the floor space was divided up into curtained cubicles that ran across his line of vision from left to right, totaling eight of them in all. Someone with especially good hearing could probably pick out various sounds coming from behind the curtains, but the record-player on the table drowned most of them in
a never-ceasing tumult of loud music, which was something to be grateful for. Zondi noticed that the last cubicle on the left, in which Willie Jackson had died, was empty and had its curtain pulled back.

“Are people afraid to go in there?” he asked Mama Bhengu when she returned with a full bottle of Gordon’s.

“Of course. The funeral is not until tomorrow, and his spirit is still so strong in the place. Such is always the way when a man is murdered.”

Zondi felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to face a wheeze of cane spirit. “What do you seek, brother?” he asked.

“Wunsh particle of information, Mr. Detective sir,” slurred the drunk, a degenerate Indian with red eyes and red teeth. “Wunsh small ray of kind enlightenment.… You are willing for me to say?”

“Say on,” invited Zondi.

“That most terrible weapon you are displaying on your arrival in our humble midst, can it be a revolver size thirty-twos?”

“Nine-mil automatic; the size is the same though.”

“Ah!”

Then Zondi steadied the man with one hand, and asked, “Why the interest, my friend?”

“Interesh?” The drunk frowned in thought. “To know, to acquire most telling information for which I am thinking Mr. De—”

“Yes, but why? What for?” Zondi rapped out.

“So I will know what I see when I see it, my goodness me, yes! But that one is no good, not automatic wanted—revolver.”

“Wanted by who?”

“Ah!” said the Indian, and looked blank.

“Mama, can I borrow that cubicle?” asked Zondi.

“Just to talk?”

“Just to talk, Mama.”

She gave her reluctant consent, hastily poured out free tots of gin for her other waiting customers (which stemmed a rising panic), and took the further precaution of turning the music up even higher.

Kramer coasted into another tree-lined street on Morninghill, having about nine minutes still to kill before he was due at 52 Armstrong Avenue.

His mood was brittle, far darker than it should have been, notwithstanding the skipping-rope fiasco, and he pondered the reason for this.

Eight minutes.

Finally, he had to admit to himself that it’d rankled when Zondi had decided to go back to the Willie Jackson case for the time being. Not that he could question the expedience of the move: Zondi was fluent in Afrikaans, English, Zulu, Xhosa and Sesuto, yet some levels of investigation were, for obvious cultural reasons, not open to him. Neither could he question Willie Jackson’s posthumous right to have his murderer brought to justice without delay, and if anyone could solve that particular puzzle, then it was Zondi. What troubled him was that, in deciding not to go along with him in a literal sense, Zondi might also be making one of his mute, more figurative protests.

Seven minutes.

And that led inevitably back to the hunch which had given Kramer his impetus—an impetus that, for want of any outside support, was beginning to flag slightly. He reached the end of a cul-de-sac and began to retrace his meandering route.

Six minutes.

Yet the feeling was still there. Not as strongly, perhaps, as when it had first taken hold of him, back in Bradshaw’s study after Mrs. Bradshaw had arrived all dripping, but it remained a sure sense of unexplained, inexplicable certainty none the less.

Five minutes.

It was impossible that Zondi, despite all his talk of putting plodding police work before flashes of intuition, had a hunch of his own about this, and that was what made him so damned stubborn. Kramer smiled to himself. Yes, that was indeed a possibility, and it’d place them on an equal footing: one hunch against another, and may the best man win! He checked his watch again.

Three and a half minutes.

“Ach, bugger this for a joke!” said Kramer, opening the throttle and arriving at 52 Armstrong Avenue in little more than a matter of seconds.

He parked in the street and picked his way up the verge of the newly surfaced driveway, shuddering at the ornamental statues around the lily pond. Anybody who enjoyed looking out of their windows, and seeing little kids stuck there in the garden forever, holding up things that were obviously too heavy for them, was just a bit sick in his opinion. It was not until he had climbed the steps to the front verandah of the house that Kramer realized he had seen only one car, and that a Morris Mini, parked in the street outside.