The Blood of an Englishman (26 page)

“You would?”

“It could be the answer, Colonel—but you know how it is, I’ve gone completely stale on that case. When did you get the inspiration?”

“Ach, it was more a combined effort in some ways,” began Colonel Muller, stopping to light his pipe. “If you say you’re—”

“One thing, Colonel.”

“Lieutenant?”

“Well, to be honest with you, I can’t see where I’d be wanted. Frans de Klerk is your man, surely? I’m not enjoying it anymore and there’s one hell of a backlog to catch up—any chance of me coming off it for a couple of days?”

“Er.…” said Colonel Muller, as though something had just been snatched from the tip of his tongue, then he looked at Kramer even more warily. “Is this some of your sarcasm, hey?”

“Sorry, sir?”

“You know, maybe you’re right, Tromp!” said Colonel Muller, offering him one of the tennis biscuits he treated himself to for his elevenses. “Statistically, all we’ve got here is one murder, two attempted, and the dead man was virtually a foreigner. It must be more than a week since we added—”

“Then can I get weaving, clear up some of the routine stuff, sir?”

“Certainly! If you don’t mind Frans—”

“Mind? To be honest, Colonel, I’m bloody relieved to get shot of it,” replied Kramer, truthfully.

“What have you first on your list then?”

“An easy one. I thought I’d help Zondi nail this Banjo Nyembezi for the fatal stabbing down at Mama Bhengu’s.”

“Ah.”

For an instant, as he saw Colonel Muller stealthily slide a neatly typed memo slip under his blotter, Kramer felt his new approach to life threatened. Then he rationalized that there was nothing he couldn’t achieve by picking his targets and keeping things light-hearted.

“You said ‘Ah,’ sir.”

“Well, Bantu Detective Sergeant Zondi is at present seconded to Frans’ group, so he can keep an eye on him. I can put him back on general duties, naturally, but first I must satisfy myself about something. You know I’m prepared to overlook last night’s unfortunate little incident on the grounds of the stress and strain you have been under these past weeks. But what was Zondi’s excuse? Did he deliberately accompany you to that small holding in the knowledge you were contravening my strict instructions? Or was he obeying orders?”

Kramer got off the corner of the desk with a grin. “Hell, Colonel, he’s only a kaffir, isn’t he? What do you think?”

They caught up with Banjo Nyembezi at four o’clock that same afternoon. His mistake was leaving a string of gambling debts behind him, and the word had gone out that he was no longer to be trusted. This meant that gamblers far and wide had been keeping a sharp eye out for him, and when they heard that Kramer and Zondi had a warrant for his arrest, they couldn’t do enough for them. Flashy cars zipped this way and that in Peacevale, stopping at street corners, pausing briefly down alleyways, and much the same happened in Trekkersburg’s two more recent black townships. Eventually Yankee Boy Msomi, a professional informer with sad eyes like two boiled eggs in black eggcups, pinpointed his position in a tin shack at the edge of the Baptist mission.

“You see how you add to the violence around here, man,” Yankee Boy complained to Zondi, from his customary seat in the rear of a rusting Plymouth in a scrapyard. “Banjo never packed a rod till an hour ago, when he heard the whisper that you and Uncle Tom over there was a-gunnin’ for him.”

“Banjo’s got a gun?”

“Too right—already hurt a man bad to get it, only
his
name stays a secret with me, brother. But you dig what I mean?”

“What kind of gun?”

“Some kinda six-shooter, I guess. Ain’t you pigs comin’ a little heavy for a gamblin’ debt?”

That made it Zondi’s turn to smile crooked. “What debt? The warrant we’ve got is for murder.”

“Oh, wow, man!” Had Yankee Boy’s eyes had shells on them, they’d have cracked right then. “If us cats had known it was a hangin’ matter, why she-it, you’d notta heard a goddamn word!”

“We figured that,” said Zondi, who’d also read a few American paperbacks in his time. “He’s a bad bastard then?”

“He’s
mean
, brother, really
mean
. Just see you don’t goof this up and let him run free, ’cos Yankee Boy for one ain’t ready to head for the hills yet! Maybe I should go hide down a big hole.”

“It’ll be okay,” Zondi reassured him.

He couldn’t remember when last the Lieutenant had been so relaxed or in a better mood, and that was half the battle when dealing with a desperate killer like Banjo Nyembezi.

The tin shack was poorly positioned. The only cover in front of it was an old oil drum filled with stagnant water, and that still left a ten-yard gap to the door. There was a low stone wall behind the shack, but between it and the small back window was a litter of fire-damaged cast-iron beds, almost as difficult to cross in a hurry as a barbed-wire entanglement. To complete the problem, down each side of the shack was a thick row of prickly-pear cactus.

“We’ll give him a chance to come out with his hands up,” said Kramer, surveying the scene from a corner of the mission chapel. “I’ll get in behind the oil drum, and you circle round behind the wall at the back. Not used a gun before, you said?”

“So Yankee Boy tells me,” confirmed Zondi.

“Then he’ll be a lousy shot. If he wants to play this one for keeps, how about trying the old up-and-under?”

“Sounds good, boss. All gamblers are pretty fast in their counting.”

The missionary tugged at Kramer’s sleeve. “Pardon me,” he said, anxiously, “but I couldn’t help overhearing. You’re not contemplating dealing with this man on your own, I hope? I’ve got children all over the place, and if he—”

“They’ll be all right, reverend, so long as you keep them behind the church like I said.”

“But it’s still only a matter of a hundred yards from there to here,” protested the missionary, squinting at the shack through a pair of cheap, cracked spectacles, and the purple birthmark on his blanching cheek stood out like an ink blot. “He could cover that in twelve seconds!”

“Even ten seconds, reverend. Only he won’t get the chance.”

“But how can you—?”

“Watch,” said Kramer, “and pray, if you like, but for Christ’s sake keep your head down.”

Two minutes later, under a gloriously hot afternoon sun, Kramer crouched basking behind the oil drum, with the door of the shack in his sights. He heard a shrill whistle, which indicated that Zondi was ready, and whistled back. A shot cracked out from the PPK, pinging harmlessly off the roof of the shack.

“Police!” Kramer called out loudly. “That was a bullet from the gun of Sergeant Zondi, Banjo Nyembezi! He is behind you, I am in front of you, there is no escape! We know you have a gun—just chuck it out of the door, then come out slowly with your hands up!”

There was a bang and dust spurted up three yards to the left of the oil drum.

“So now you’ve only got five bullets left!” shouted Kramer. “How many have we got, Banjo Nyembezi? There are still six in my gun! Yes, six! And Zondi has eight in his! What are the odds, hey? Can you win this?”

A torrent of Zulu obscenities came from the shack, and Kramer was amused to see the missionary regain some of his color. “Reverend?” he called back to him. “Will you try telling him how hopeless his situation is? Swear on your bible oath everything you say is true.”

The missionary began pleading loudly with the fugitive in urgent Zulu from the corner of the chapel. Nyembezi interrupted him with a question, which he answered after some hesitation.

“What was that, reverend?”

“He asked if there really were only two of you, and I’m afraid I couldn’t lie to him. I said, Yes, just the two, as God is my witness.”

“Just the job,” said Kramer, who knew the man’s reputation for complete honesty among the blacks. Then he turned his attention back to the shack. “Your last chance, Banjo! I count to five, and if you’re not out, then Sergeant Zondi has my permission to kill you!”

The missionary gasped.

“One,” began Kramer. “Two, Nyembezi! Three! Remember I have six bullets! Zondi has eight! Reckon the odds against you, Nyembezi! Four, Nyembezi! How many bullets have you got left, Nyembezi?” He waited for the man to surrender. “Five!”

Two shots rang out from behind the shack in quick succession, followed by a louder bang from Nyembezi’s weapon. Zondi screamed, and became visible to one side of the shack for a moment, staggering back, throwing his gun high into the air. Then he collapsed behind the low wall.

“For the love of God!” cried the missionary. “Your African’s been—”

Kramer fired six times at the shack door, shouting out, “I’ve got you, you bastard! You’d never have got out that way!”

There was a scurry as Nyembezi crossed the floor of the shack, whipped open the door and came running straight at him, intent on closing the range to a dead certainty before he squeezed the trigger. Kramer hurled his empty magnum at him. Then he dropped into a crouch and shot Banjo Nyembezi with Zondi’s Walther PPK, which he had caught only moments before, as it completed its lazy, carefully aimed trajectory.

“You look like a man who has just seen the light, reverend,” said Kramer. “And don’t worry, hey? Banjo’s only got a flesh wound.”

“Mama, mama!” yelled the younger children, making Miriam hurry to the door. “Mama, look! Our father is back and it is still daylight!”

“It’s not even six o’clock!” she said, and her belly went hollow when she realized she’d heard no car draw up. “Mickey?” asked Miriam, as she met him in the road. “Mickey, what’s happened?”

“We had a good day, that’s all. The Lieutenant was in a bit of a hurry though, so he dropped me at the gates.”

“But when were you last home so early?”

Zondi shrugged. “It is our new way of working.”

“Hau! Then please God that it lasts!”

“Oh, I think it will,” said Zondi.

M
EERKAT
M
ARAIS WAS
wasting away in the toils of a total obsession, and looked each day more like a mongoose than ever.

The nympho from the telephone exchange was wantonly candid in her reactions to this unappealing metamorphosis. She told him that his tiny red eyes would soon be so red and tiny through staring at the wall that they would glow in the dark. She said his thin cheeks were becoming so pinched with never eating that they made his teeth look like small yellow fangs which needed cleaning. Finally, she also remarked on how creepy his skinny, hairy little body was beginning to feel, and rashly added that perhaps his cobra was past it, because it hadn’t raised its hooded head to her in a week. So Meerkat beat the hell out of her with the steam iron she was using, ironed her nipples flat, and took himself home to the scene of the crime above the dry-cleaning depot.

He had a vague description, that was all.

Vague because it had been given to him by an epileptic who also suffered from poor vision, and yet it did provide him with a basic impression of at least one of the two gun thieves. The man was white, he had darkish-brown hair, he was tall and aged somewhere between eighteen and perhaps as much as thirty. His clothes had seemed smart enough to suggest someone from a much better part of town, and they had included a dark suit,
a blue shirt and a striped tie, the colors of which eluded her. He had carried a black briefcase and had walked with a spring in his step. He had knocked on Meerkat’s door two or three times, before taking out a white card and disappearing into the flat. He had been there a very short time, and then had walked quickly away again.

“Come on, Dynamite! Let’s hear the rest, hey?”

“Grrrrr,” said Dynamite, wolfing down the whole can of Kit-eez Delite that his provider had thoughtfully shoplifted on the way home.

“You’re some watch dog,” grumbled Meerkat, not without a smidgeon of affection. “What I want to know is which Monday was this? Is that too much to ask?”

“Grrrrr,” warned Dynamite.

The trouble was of course that Meerkat had been away for eight days before he discovered the outrage, and for several other days here and there before that, making it impossible to be sure when the thing had occurred. Not that this was all that important in the final analysis, but his mind had taken to worrying over every single detail. That striped tie, for instance: the only striped ties that Meerkat knew about were either the fancy sort or the ones schoolboys wore, and the description, vague as it was, certainly didn’t describe a schoolboy. In fact the class of person it described was also bewildering, because smart young men never ventured down to his end of town unless they were selling insurance, and Meerkat had already pursued that line of enquiry to no useful conclusion. The other thing that sorely perplexed him was that the epileptic had seen only one person come to his flat, whereas the fingerprints on the tumblers indicated there must have been two.

Humming to himself, temporarily elated as always by a good beating, Meerkat decided to go back and take another look at those tumblers. It was just possible that one of them would provide him with the sort of a clue that Kramer went
wild for—a missing middle-finger among the impressions, for instance. The tumblers lay broken on the floor by his bar, but in quite a short time he had managed to sort them into two piles of their respective pieces, some of which were big enough to examine. The fingerprints seemed much fainter than they had done originally, and no matter how he twisted them to the light, a clear image eluded him.

“Prrrt?” said Dynamite, coming through and settling on his jacket.

But Meerkat was lost in thought. The men from Fingerprints used chalk dust, he remembered, and wondered if talcum powder would work as effectively. Not that he had any at hand, but he could always whip down to the corner and steal some. They also used a black powder a bit like soot from an oil lamp, but he hadn’t any of that around. They sort of puffed it on out of a rubber-ball thing, and then lifted the prints with a piece of Sellotape.

He had Sellotape all right, five cartons of it. Then he remembered that he also had a puffer filled with graphite powder, which was marvelous for lubricating locks and allowing a key to turn without a sound. Perhaps that would do the trick.