The Blood of an Englishman (29 page)

“Where’s Sammy Panjut now, Jiji?”

“Till five-thirties, he still that side, then we knocking off. You go see him?”

Zondi looked at his watch. “Who knows?”

“Always such a pleasuring,” said Jiji, cupping a hand, “to do great favor for number one Sergeant of all time.”

“And it’s a pleasure to do you one in return, Jiji,” said Zondi, who wasn’t going to part with a cent until having satisfied himself as to the strength of this tip-off. “If you go back ten yards, you’ll find some orange peel you missed.”

Then he strolled away, carefully returning the atlas to its brown-paper wrapper, and wondered why an early entry in Hookham’s diary had been hovering before his mind’s eye ever since that interruption. What had triggered it off? And why had he the feeling it held the key to the whole affair? On May 27th, Bonzo Hookham had still been in England.

T
ISH
H
AYES WAS
not waiting on the corner of Alemap Avenue and Reid Street when Kramer drew up punctually in the Chevrolet at five-thirty. He cut the engine and settled back to see what associated ideas he could find for 113 keys on a piece of knotted twine. He started by considering the possibility that 13 was significant, in that it was an unlucky number, but soon abandoned such fanciful nonsense. These were 113 small brass keys, smaller than door-size, and widely varied in shape. The next thought along was that they belonged to the keeper of a safe-deposit vault, but that received an instant thumbs down; twine, knotted or otherwise, just didn’t have the style to go with the job. He toyed with the idea of a locksmith, rejected it as too obvious, and went on to the notion that the keys belonged to a collector of old shop tills. Too fanciful again. Then Tish came out of the front of Jonty’s, and work was forgotten.

“Home, James, and through the park,” she sighed, flopping into the seat beside him. “God, I’m exhausted.”

“Has that bastard been giving you a tough time, hey? Maybe I should—”

“Don’t be horrid, Tromp. Jonty’s very sweet and he’s very hardworking, which is more than you can say for most bosses. I couldn’t just walk out and leave that old bat for him to finish off, you know. And besides, what about your undying gratitude to him?”

“Huh,” said Kramer, and swung into the traffic.

Tish smiled and put a hand on his knee. They drove like that for a dozen blocks, just pleased to be in each other’s company. And for a gentle joke, Kramer took a detour through a small park, skirting it under an avenue of oak trees.

“Tromp?”

“Mmmm?”

“You never did tell me what made you suspect Jonty and me were—y’know,” murmured Tish, giving his knee a squeeze. “Come on, what was it? I thought our little affair had been ever so discreet.”

“Aren’t you also from Southampton?”

“But you didn’t know that until our second night.”

“Those ornaments in your flat. They were expensive, very classy, intellectual—none of them was you.”

“Well, thanks a lot, Lieutenant Kramer!”

“You’re welcome, lady.”

They joined the rush-hour traffic again, but turned away down a quiet side street at the next intersection.

“What else?” asked Tish.

Kramer wished she hadn’t started this. One of the joys of being with her was that they had always lived in the present, making no mention of past or future, and simply savoring what each moment brought with it. Once begun, however, it was an inevitable conversation to be concluded as quickly as possible.

“Before we met,” he said, “there was that time right at the beginning when Jonty told me in the gym that you had the hots for me.”

“He didn’t!”

“Oh ja, and then he laid it on thick he was after the Swedish popsie, just so I’d feel free—if you see what I mean.”

“He’s got a cheek! I’d not said a word to him about you at any stage, and anyway I’d only seen you once in the salon, hardly even noticed you.”

“That wasn’t how it felt to me,” said Kramer, grinning at her. “Why, for instance, did he rush off to tell you I’d come to that party?”

She gave her throaty giggle. “What arrogance there is in the man! I took myself into the kitchen because that Texan fella seemed rather juicy.”

“You’re denying that Jonty practically threw you at me?”

“No,” she admitted, in one of those sudden turnabouts that made her mind so attractive, “he’d probably become as bored in bed as I was, and he probably thought, in his big-hearted way, that you were sorely in need of a distraction.”

“Some distraction!” Kramer laughed. “But—?”

“But I still retained the right to choose for myself—he’d been fobbing me off all night, you know. I saw this great boorish Boer standing there, the first I’d ever seen from close up, and thought to myself, Well Tish, how do you fancy a bit of rough? It must’ve been the booze and not having had it for a week.”

Kramer shook his head, still amused by the forthright way truly English girls appeared to talk, forsaking the salacious prudery of their South African cousins. “Are we still working on that backlog, hey?” he sighed. “Only I wanted to ask you if I could have a few nights off once we catch up.”

“Knackered?”

“If that means what I think it means,” replied Kramer, stopping the car outside her flat, “yes.”

But they were making love again within three minutes of getting inside, and it was a slow, sweet and quite effortless thing. The sunset came to pink the bedroom walls, a light breeze carried the scent of magnolia through the open window, and somewhere along the river bank a black man was playing a penny-whistle, soft and wistful. They dozed for a while, her small head resting beneath his chin, then stirred in the last of the twilight, refreshed and ready to lose themselves utterly in
a closed world of their own making. Kramer had never asked her the reason, but he sensed in Tish a great hurt somewhere.

“Your turn to count the daisies,” she whispered, rolling over on him, and bending forward to kiss his mouth. “I’ve been thinking. Wondering, really.”

“Tish?”

“Why don’t you ever ask me anything? You haven’t even asked the usual questions people ask about Jonty. Is he queer?—and all that.”

“But I know he isn’t queer. It’s all an act so the husbands don’t suspect the way he flirts with their wives, and it’s his sexy approach to them that keeps them coming.”

“No pun intended?”

“Hey?”

Tish laughed. “Nevermind, my grizzly Boer.… Some husbands aren’t so thick, though! There was one dowdy little thing with the most fabulous figure who—wait a moment, Tromp, I’m still talking.”

“I know: that’s what I’m trying to put a stop to.”

“But it’s
my
turn to—”

“Shhh,” said Kramer, touching her lips. “It’s our turn, let’s put it that way.”

“No, wait, I’m being quite serious.”

“What more must I know that I can’t see for myself?” he asked, looking up at her.

She was so frail and light on his loins, fragile almost, and yet fully a woman, with breasts that swayed heavy and ripe above his lips, inviting him to taste their strawberry-tipped sweetness; breasts with character too, one nipple an extrovert, the other turned in on itself until coaxed out gently, and both aware of the mutual pleasure they could bring. Her copper-colored hair, mussed and tickling, curled down over her thin shoulders, fragrant with her own special smell, and to the left of her navel, neat as a button, was the largest of her freckles,
shaped like a butterfly’s wing. He kissed it, and entered her as she sat back again.

But Tish made no movement. “Why won’t you ask me anything?” she repeated. “Wouldn’t you like to know, for example, what gifts I bought Jonty in exchange?”

“Ja, I have a question.”

“Which is?”

“How is it that your freckles stop when they get to your face and your hands?”

“I put some stuff on my skin,” she said crossly, and tried to roll off. “I really don’t think you’re interested in me as a person at all!”

“Ach no, you’re just a distraction,” said Kramer, holding her hips tightly, imagining he was pinning a butterfly to a cork board, making himself laugh. “You’re just
you
, woman! Can’t you understand that? You’re not parts of Jonty’s life, your uncles’, aunts’ and sisters’ lives. You’re everything, nothing further is needed! You’re Tish! Finished en klaar!” He had never spoken to anyone quite like that before in his entire life.

Tish stared down at him. “Do you know,” she said, “that’s the sort of adolescent thing a boy comes out with the first time he falls in love.”

“Perhaps that’s it,” said Kramer.

“But then surely I’d be part of your life, wouldn’t I? And wouldn’t the most important part of you be mine too?”

“Isn’t it already, hey? How can you sit there and ask such bloody silly questions? Can’t you feel it?”

Then Tish began to grin as well. “Oh, sit
here
, you mean?”

Their laughter set them in motion, bringing with it purely mechanical responses, and then a new wild joy took over, building its own steady rhythm. “One daisy,” counted Kramer. “Two daisies. Three daisies, four daisies, five dai—six! Seven! Eight! Nine!”

“Ooooopsy-daisy!”

And they fell out of the bamboo bed just as the telephone in the other room started ringing.

Zondi, watched by Sammy Punjat, and holding Meerkat Marais’ receiver in a clean handkerchief to safeguard any fingerprints that might be on it, waited impatiently for someone to answer. At their feet lay the dead body of a smartly dressed, gray-haired man who had fingernail marks in his throat, but seemed to have actually died of a heart attack. The flat was a shambles.

Rrrrr-rrrr
.

No answer. Zondi looked at his watch. It was almost six-thirty. Perhaps he should try again in another five minutes.

“Hullo?” said a breathless voice. “Tish—Tish Hayes, speaking.”

“Sorry to disturb the madam,” said Zondi, “but this is Bantu Detective Sergeant Zondi here. Is it possible for me to speak with the Lieutenant?”

“How did you know this number, Sergeant?”

“The Lieutenant gave it to me to keep for emergency uses only, madam. Many apologies, but—”

“Just hold on will you? I’ll see if he’s available.”

Zondi smiled. The Lieutenant had told him it was the telephone number of a flat down near the hospital, and flats didn’t have stairs that made people breathless. She sounded very nice, younger than he’d expected, and she’d not called him “boy.” Then the receiver at the other end rattled as it was snatched up.

“Christ, kaffir, this better be bloody good, hey?”

And Zondi’s smile faded.

“Did you have to speak to your colleague like that?” remonstrated Tish, when Kramer stumped back into the bedroom. “He did say it was an emergency.”

“Another bloody wild-goose chase, that’s what! Why are you getting dressed?”

“Because I thought you might be going out, and I’d love to come with you—can I?”

“I’m not sure I’m going to go anywhere,” said Kramer, and sat down on the bed.

Tish laughed and pointed at him. “My God, what would that sergeant have thought if he could have seen you like that! That’s my petti you’ve got keeping you decent—may I have it back?”

Kramer stripped the petticoat from around his waist, and tossed it over to her, giving in to a small smile. “Mickey’s had worse shocks in his life.”

“So that was Mickey! Why didn’t you say so?—”

“I don’t remember ever mentioning him.”

“Oh, but you do quite often,” said Tish, disappearing inside her dress, “while you’re asleep.” Her head emerged from the neckline and she shook her hair free. “Has he discovered the secret of the hundred and thirteen keys?”

“No, he’s found a man dead on the floor—but only of a heart attack.”

Tish raised her eyebrows inquiringly.

“A confidence trickster and jack-of-all-trades called Silver Touch Benson,” said Kramer, lying back. “An old rogue I’ve not had much to do with, but it’s where he was found that makes the difference.”

“Go on.”

“I’m thinking.”

“Think aloud then, let me share.”

“It’s back to the shootings case, hey? What a pain in the arse—and this only makes it even more mindbending. Mickey heard late this afternoon that somebody who’d been trying to buy a thirty-two around the time of that affair had been seen paying a call on a certain Meerkat Marais—Mongoose Marais to you, and a complete little psychopath who deals sometimes in firearms. Even though I’m sure Meerkat wasn’t implicated, Mickey now thinks it could have been unwittingly.
Anyway, he decides to check out this tip-off, and he speaks to a street cleaner, name of Sammy Punjat, who witnessed this visit. Punjat tells him that the visitor was a gray-haired, well-dressed-looking white male, carrying a briefcase. Mickey doesn’t connect the description with any of Meerkat’s known associates, which Silver Touch Benson wouldn’t rate as, and decides it warrants further investigation—in fact he admits he thought it could have been Digby-Smith.”

“Just what I was thinking!” said Tish, hopping on one foot as she fastened her other sandal. “And then?”

“He gets Sammy to go with him back to where Meerkat lives, they wait for a while outside in an empty lot, then Mickey goes up the fire escape and sees a cat walking out of the front door, which is standing open. He gets Sammy to call out like he’s a pedlar selling fruit, and when there’s no answer, he slips in and finds Benson lying there, dead as a doornail with scratches in his throat.”

“From the cat?”

“From its master more likely,” said Kramer, wiggling his toes. “Anyway, as soon as Mickey sees Benson, the nickname Silver Touch brings Bradshaw to mind, because there was once a dubious bit of business with some silver at his shop. That’s a possible three-way link, in his opinion, with a suggestion of the motive, so he rings me up.”

“And this Mongoose fella?”

“Gone. Sammy tells Mickey that Meerkat’s been hunting some youngster lately, who is probably also connected. Maybe it’s him he’s gone after. This Sammy hadn’t a description though.”

Tish threw him his trousers. “Get weaving, Tromp! This could be the break you’ve been waiting for! You’re not thinking of passing it on to Frans de Klerk, are you?” And she smiled openly at her piece of blatant manipulation.