The Blood of an Englishman (27 page)

“Stand aside!” he said to Dynamite, “Sherlock Houses is on his way!”

Dynamite fell into a deep, digestive sleep, and paid no heed to the excited activities that filled the next five minutes. Fortunately there was nothing in Meerkat’s jacket pockets that he wanted.

“Hell, look at that!” exclaimed Meerkat, as he peeled away the Sellotape and found on it a set of clear impressions. “Now let’s see what we can see.…”

He screwed a jeweler’s eyepiece into his right eye, having always believed that he would find a use for it eventually, and tried to detect what Fingerprints men detected in such
circumstances. He was amazed by how distinctive the patterns were, with spirals on one finger contrasting with a sort of banana shape on another. He went on to make further comparisons with his own fingerprints, which had also been lifted by the Sellotape in his handling of it. But instead of his fingerprints looking entirely different, they looked exactly the same to him. His hands began to shake. He checked and double-checked.

“Oh no.…” groaned Meerkat, “one of those glasses was mine all the time!” And he should have realized this at the start, being hopeless at taking things through to the kitchen to wash up, instead of jumping to wild conclusions that had cost him weeks of fruitless endeavor. “I’m looking for only one guy, Dyna, not a gang of two, and that makes all the bloody difference, hey?”

Or was the other glass marked with his prints as well? he wondered with a shudder. “That would really put the cat in among the penguins, hey?” But it wasn’t; those fingerprints looked to him entirely different.

“Now what?” said Meerkat, taking an unbroken tumbler and trying to find something left he could put in it. “Where do we go from here?”

Before trying to sort that out, his mind went back to the smart young man and did some fresh reasoning. Maybe he wasn’t a professional after all. Maybe those drawers had been pulled out, starting with the bottom one and working upwards so time wasn’t wasted by pushing them in again, by Meerkat himself, acting through sheer habit and training. Maybe he was just a clown from the smart side of town who wanted a gun and had somehow heard that Meerkat was in the market. That fitted: only that type of person would be mad enough to come buying guns in broad daylight, carrying his briefcase full of used notes, and expecting to take the gun away in it afterwards. And then? No answer to his knock, and he had knocked
again, needing a gun very urgently. So badly, in fact, that he had decided to break in, and had used a trick with a credit card that he had seen on the films, and which actually worked. Once inside, however, the baboon had started to panic, unsure of where in all the mess he would find what he was seeking. He had gone to the bar and steadied his nerve with a slug of Scotch. But why suddenly look in the fridge? That was simple: because he just might have seen the same television program as Meerkat had seen—and now he came to think about it, fridges had featured more than once in such stories, making it not such a smart place to hide things. Anyway, the youngster had gone through, found the revolver in the ice compartment, which did look a little like a safe on reflection, had kicked Dynamite and hurried out, too scared by then to check that he had closed the door properly. No wonder the epileptic had said he’d had a spring in his bloody step!

Meerkat drank three fingers of creme de menthe and felt quite certain that this time he had it right; it was more than a hunch, it was a dead certainty. Then his mood changed abruptly from euphoria to a blind rage at the thought of having had something stolen off him by a brat whose parents had always given him what he wanted. Meerkat’s parents had never given him a thing, apart from abuse, scalds, cigarette bums, fractured arms and a starvation diet, and the shrieking injustice of the crime made him clasp his hands to his ears, sob and sit on the floor rocking to and fro.

He was still rocking to and fro on the floor of his living room when he heard a cheery voice from above him.

“My God, Meerkat! It must be some hangover you’ve got there!”

Meerkat looked up and saw Basil “Silver Touch” Benson, a con-man who specialized in cleaning out stupid old women, in one of his best suits and happiest moods. “Go,” said Meerkat, unable to trust himself to say more.

“Steady on, old thing,” murmured Benson, who also dabbled in porn films, dirty magazines and almost any other sudden yen felt by the mugs at his end of the trade, “I do think I’ve been frightfully patient.”

“About what, hey? Because I’m not in a patient—”

“That spot of commission you owe me—y’know, young gent making vague enquiries about a shooter. Well, it has been well over a month since then, and I was getting just a little concerned about our—er, little arrangement? Been looking for you everywhere. Been holed up, what? Pretty young thing, was she?”

Meerkat sprang for Benson’s throat and sank his uncut nails into it. “You! You sent him here?”

“Ste-steady on,” gasped Benson, collapsing backwards onto the sofa. “Not been involved in any jobs, y’know! Pure collector interest, every reason to believe—ugh!”

“Basil,” said Meerkat, very softly, and Dynamite fled the room. “I’m not going to hurt you, Basil, but don’t try biting me again, hey? Just tell me who wanted—”

“Gun-gun enthusiast, collects ’em, I only spoke to the chap in between, of course, very discreet,
very very
discreet, that I can assure you! Old ammuni—”

“
When?
” demanded Meerkat, breaking a standard lamp. “
And who?
”

“Mon-Mon-Monday just over a month ago! Oh God, I’m going to have a heart—”

“
Who?
” screamed Meerkat.

But Benson was out cold, blue-lipped and breathing like a pair of leaky bellows. Meerkat took his hands away, wiped them on the seat of his trousers, and picked up his jacket. He would have a cigarette to calm him down while the old fool completed his act. Once a con-man, always a con-man, and Meerkat Marais felt confident that his terrible revenge was only a matter of hours away now. He could afford to relax for a bit.

W
HEN
K
RAMER ARRIVED
at the mortuary that afternoon a little after four, he found Van Rensburg in such a deep sulk that he was spared the usual small talk. They simply nodded to one another, and Van Rensburg muttered, “The so-called district surgeon isn’t here yet.”

“Uh huh. I’ll go through where it’s cooler.”

There was a body waiting on each of the five slabs in the postmortem room. The nearest had to be very fresh, because the sheet covering it was a sticky scarlet. He took a look at the white male beneath it, saw a face mutilated beyond all recognition, and decided these were probably the remains of some young motorcyclist who’d tried to take a bite out of a lamp-post. The three corpses in the middle he ignored, and then flipped back the sheet on the fifth, exposing a white female of about twenty who had been murdered in the Blue Stream Motel the night before. What made it a potentially fascinating case was the ligature used to strangle her: a piece of knotted twine on which were threaded 113 keys. He had counted them personally.

A movement two bodies away made him glance up sharply. There it was again. A bump in the sheet, which he had taken to be a protruding naval, was moving towards the chest. He approached the slab cautiously, half-amused by his own trepidation, and removed the sheet with one quick pull. It was a snail.

“Bloody hell,” he snorted. “Come on, my friend, out you go!” And he tossed the snail through an open fanlight.

“Hullo, Tromp!”

It was Strydom, bustling in cheerfully, followed by a heavily built garden boy and Nxumalo, who were carrying four viscera buckets covered by wet towels. “Over there by the sink, Josiah,” he ordered. “Just put them down and wait for me by the car, okay?” The buckets were deposited and the two Zulus slipped out.

“Having a busy day, Doc?” asked Kramer.

“Ach, no busier than you, I’m sure,” replied Strydom, carelessly, “and you’re looking all right on it! Have you been putting on weight recently, by the way?”

Kramer shrugged. “Never fitter.”

“It was all that living on your nerves,” said Strydom, trotting over to see what lay in store for him. “This bloke’s still warm hey? Oh ja, this must be the lady with the faulty hair-curlers. And this?”

“Ja, I know about that one,” Kramer confirmed. “Unidentified Bantu male, aged around fifty, found with his head on the main line this morning. Apparent suicide.”

“Really? No papers or anything?”

“He was in rags,” said Kramer, puffing a stray lash out of the eyesocket of the motel victim. “If you look closely at her nose, she may have had plastic surgery. Do you think you might be able to give us some sort of lead from that? She’s also unidentified.”

“Are you in a big rush? There’s something.…”

“Go right ahead, Doc.”

While Strydom was out of the room, Van Rensburg came in and glared at the buckets. “Not more,” he muttered darkly.

“Not more what, Van?”

“You wouldn’t believe me, Lieutenant,” said Van Rensburg, and went out again.

Kramer was about to go over and examine what was in the buckets, when Strydom returned, carrying an electric-kettle flex and with Nxumalo in tow.

“Now this won’t take a minute,” said Strydom, baring the body of the apparent suicide. “I’ve been waiting weeks for a chance like this—the last one I tried wasn’t the right build or age, you see.” He lifted the arms, knotted the flex around the wrists and held out the ends to Nxumalo. “You know what to do?”

“Two rand, my boss?”

“Four,” said Strydom.

“Ach, no!” laughed Kramer, realizing what the district surgeon had in mind. “Isn’t it time all that was finished and forgotten? You know Frans de Klerk nearly ended up a basket case because of it.”

“This is something of a personal matter, Tromp—although not between you and me, you understand. Proceed, Nxumalo.”

The Zulu wound the ends of the flex around his fists, braced his massive shoulder muscles, and gave a sudden, sinew-cracking jerk. The wrists bounced on the abdomen and lay there, bound unbelievably tightly together.

“But the bones aren’t bust,” observed Van Rensburg, who had joined them unnoticed. “I’ve already said it a million times, Doc—it’s bloody impossible.”

“What was that about the nose?” Strydom asked Kramer, turning to face the table behind him. “Out you go, Nxumalo! This is a white lady here.”

Nxumalo left crestfallen, and Van Rensburg indulged a lofty expression until he caught sight of something on the spring-balance above the sink. Kramer noticed it too. It was a snail.

“Look at that!” protested Van Rensburg. “I tell you, Dr. Strydom, this can’t go on! Yik!”

“Science doesn’t recognize your petty prejudices, Sergeant,” said Strydom, taking up his biggest knife. “If you organized things better, it wouldn’t happen anyway.”

“Science, the man calls it!” said Van Rensburg, addressing a despairing appeal to Kramer. “It’s scientific to have slimy creepy-crawlies all over a State mortuary? Leaving their trails everywhere? That’s not scientific! That’s how mistakes are made!”

“Rubbish!” snapped Strydom, transferring his aggression by slitting the murdered woman open from pubis to mandible.

“Oh ja?” retorted Van Rensburg. “And who was it last week who thought he found the glisten of semen stains on that poor income tax inspec—”

“De Klerk’s back in Housebreaking, I hear,” said Strydom, changing the subject. “I must say he did a first-class job on following all those early leads until they petered out, but his basic premise couldn’t have been right.”

“Maybe he should have used snails, hey Doc?”

“Which theory was that?” asked Kramer, lighting a cigarette to ward off the smell of the motel’s cooking. “He went through quite a few near the end, hey? The best one was when he tried to pin it all on Digby-Smith.”

“Never!” gasped Strydom. “What had Hans Muller to say to that?”

“He cried for a whole afternoon, Doc.”

Van Rensburg felt the edge of his bone-saw. “If I could get them all in one long line,” he said, “then maybe I could cut through the lot in one chop.”

“Quiet!” growled Strydom, snipping the ribs. “But why? What happened exactly?”

“Well, for a start, he went out to Morninghill and challenged Digby-Smith to deny his allegations.”

“Before he’d consulted Hans?”

“I think he was hoping to surprise him,” said Kramer, smiling at the memory of that particular afternoon. “Mind you, it was all fairly logical except for one or two details.”

“Go on.”

Kramer was bored with the story, having already told it to Tish and to the Widow Fourie, before she took her children down to the beach for their holidays, but felt the effort might be worth Van Rensburg’s silence. “Ach, De Klerk’s basic theory was that Digby-Smith had suddenly gone snap, being a strange sort of bloke filled with ‘pent-up’ emotions—his phrase. There was the resentment he’d felt for Hookham over the years, coupled with the humiliation he’d suffered at the hands of Bradshaw. It all began, De Klerk decided, when Hookham came back from the flying club social and, instead of being grateful to Digby-Smith for suggesting such a nice evening, he’d drunkenly teased him about Bradshaw—probably said far too much. Digby-Smith could have imagined, for instance, that Bradshaw had told Hookham how he’d rooked his stupid brother-in-law, and they’d been laughing at him behind his back. It’s true enough that Digby-Smith said to me it was a pity the bloke hadn’t emerged to shoot Bradshaw properly, and Colonel Muller had passed this on.”

“I see—so he just went on the warpath generally?”

“No, it was only Bradshaw to begin with, De Klerk worked out. A sort of blind rage made him want to kill him, even though he was a pacifist, didn’t know anything about guns, and—”

“Was a terrible marksman,” chortled Strydom, catching the drift. “After all, he did miss two times out of three in effect!”

“Uh huh. Hookham may have told Digby-Smith about the conversation regarding walking dogs on the racecourse, and so he found himself an old gun—probably a revolver left by his father or something—and went after him. He thought the first shot had killed him, left him lying there and rushed home, maybe already terrified of what he had done. What happens next? The paper the following day says that Bradshaw isn’t dead after all! And Digby-Smith gets the shakes, thinking Bradshaw must have identified him.”