The Song Dog (20 page)

He’d had words with the sea earlier. It had seemed so huge and unreasoning, poised there behind his back, filled with dark mysteries and horrors, showing off its immense strength in breakers that boomed above the shriek of the wind, that he had become not at all sure that it would remain much longer below land level, but might decide tonight was the night for a little slap and tickle among the sexier ladies of Jafini, sparing not a thought for the poor bugger it drowned on the beach on its blundering way there.

“So watch it,” he had warned. “Any more of your nonsense, hey, and I’ll come and bloody piss in you!—and that’ll change you
worldwide
, you hear?”

Now, in a different mood, waiting for the next all-too-brief gap in the scudding clouds, Kramer gradually became aware that the sea in fact made him edgy in much the same way as when there was a woman behind him who kept staring, yet turned her face away whenever he looked round.

Suddenly he stiffened, holding his breath.

In that instant, the sea, wind, the very universe itself, personified by the great, dizzy dome of star pricks wheeling overhead, ceased being of the slightest importance; Kramer had just seen, without the shadow of a doubt, something man-size scuttle like a huge crab across the mud behind the cook boy’s hut.

Then the biggest cloud in the sky hid the moon.

Without even pausing to curse, Kramer heaved himself forward, nosedived down the far side of the dune, and started doing a form of breaststroke, propelling himself as fast as possible down that slope of fine, slithering sand. The stuff began to pack the inside of his jacket, fill his top pockets, work its
way even into his mouth as he gasped silently, quickly breathless with such sudden exertion. Yet he hardly noticed this, so intent was he on reaching the bottom of the dune undetected.

There, he had barely recoiled from the clammy feel of the mudflats when a flashlight came on, directed at the new padlock and bolt which Malan had fitted to the hut door that day, unwittingly inviting just such a covert inspection.

“Christ, it’s worked!” said Kramer, in the softest of whispers. “It’s bloody worked!
I’ve got you
. Short Arse, you bastard …”

And he knew his words would be safe with the wind, which blew hard, harder, began to howl, shriek, to whip up flapping debris, slam it against the Parks Board Land Rover, making the flashlight whip round. Seconds later, however, the bright beam was back on the padlock, and Kramer advanced swiftly to crouch behind the Land Rover’s tailgate, pistol in hand.

Then a great, thick crowbar could be seen, in that wavering circle of light, being pushed in behind the padlock and levered violently upward. Because of its size—Short Arse must certainly have assessed the situation earlier—the crowbar made very short work of the bolt, ripping it out of the door, still attached to a fair bit of splintered wood, and a split second later, the flashlight moved inside the hut, to be directed at something on the floor there.

“April fool,” murmured Kramer, standing up just as the moon broke big, bright, and beautiful behind him.

It sent his shadow like an assegai into the hut, and left him in clean-cut silhouette, like a combat target on a shooting range.

“Police!” he bellowed, bringing his pistol up, two-handed, aiming for the center of the hut’s doorway. “Come out backward with your hands on your—”

Vvvvvvit-ting!

Curiously, he didn’t hear the firearm actually being discharged, only the sound of the bullet ricocheting off the Parks
Board Land Rover to his immediate left. He did, however, see the muzzle flash within Moses’ hut, and diving into the prone position, he instantly took aim and squeezed the trigger.

His Walther PPK didn’t even go click. He squeezed the trigger again, but it seemed to have locked solid. His heart hammering, he tried to work the cocking slide, but the slide barely moved before it also jammed, grating on an intrusion of fine dune sand. This wasn’t something Kramer heard but
felt
, sickening him to the pit of the stomach, and leaving him, in that terrible, terrifying instant, with bluff his only weapon.

“Hold your fire!” he shouted as calmly as he could. “You’re totally cornered in there, you have no escape route, so be sensible, hey? Just chuck your weapon out and—
Jesus!
”

Kramer ducked as another muzzle flash lit up the inside of the hut, to be followed by two others; the bullets struck either side of him, stinging his cheeks with fragmented debris. He rolled twice to the left, tugging frantically at the cocking slide, and came up on his elbows again, aware of one thing: if he didn’t manage to return this fire within seconds, then the next muzzle flashes would be from outside the hut—and the bastard would come straight for him. Cornered men were men with few options; cornered kaffirs—who could hang for aggravated burglary, let alone murder—had no options at all: it was kill or be killed, and Short Arse bloody knew it.

“Your last chance!” Kramer yelled out, wishing to God he knew how to say this in Zulu. “I don’t want to shoot unless I have to!”

The moon hid its face, plunging everything once more into total darkness, and he took swift advantage of this by again rolling over, changing his position, trying to wrench back the slide, not bothering to take aim, tugging with all his strength on the trigger anyway, knowing it wouldn’t work, getting ready to
throw
the bloody thing.

The next bullet seared Kramer’s right shoulder even before
he was aware of seeing the muzzle flash, so near and so bright it almost blinded him. Hurling his pistol as hard as he could into the lingering dazzle, he made a bid to leap up, turn, and run, but missed his footing and fell, his left knee hitting his chin so hard that, half concussed, he ended up sprawled groggily, flat on his back, his arms and legs no longer seeming part of him. At which precise instant the wind seemed to catch its breath, for there was sudden silence that lasted just long enough for an abrupt, chesty cough to be heard, followed by the unmistakable hammer click of a double-action revolver cocking itself, perhaps only a yard away.

“No!” snarled Kramer, trying to heave himself up, his head swimming. “Don’t you bloody dare, you little black—”

There was a deafening bang, a gasp, someone shouting out an order to “Drop your gun!” in Afrikaans, and the next two muzzle flashes came from behind the hut. They were answered immediately by three more deafening bangs, just before somebody running full pelt tripped over Kramer’s right foot and landed heavily beside him, completing his sense of total confusion.

“That was—a big help, Lieutenant!” wheezed a voice in the darkness, sounding winded. “I hope—you realize—he’s—got clean away now …”

“Who the hell?” demanded Kramer, trying to raise himself on an elbow only to flop back, dizzy and nauseous, his eyes impossible to keep open, his jaw feeling broken in a dozen places. “Is that you, Malan?”

There was a low, rumbling laugh from his rescuer. “No, sir, not Malan. I am—a detective sergeant.”

“Oh, ja? Stationed where?”

“At present, sir? Nkosala.”

“Then what in buggeration are you doing here, man?”

“That, Lieutenant, is a long story, which can wait for now. How badly are you injured?”

Kramer, who detested being like this, as helpless as an upturned dung beetle, and with his head still behaving as though he’d just drunk a Cape wine cellar dry, merely grunted.

“Look, sir, maybe it’s best if I help you into that hut over there and—”

“No, wait, let’s hear this long story of your first, hey?” insisted Kramer, playing for time, determined to force himself unaided to his feet the moment his sense of balance stopped playing silly buggers. “How did you guess there might be trouble with Short Arse here tonight? Nobody knew—”

“Short Arse, Lieutenant?”

“Ach, you know, the coon who was doing all the shooting—alias Elifasi Ndhlovu, the bastard who killed Maaties and the nympho!”

The detective sergeant laughed the same low, rumbling laugh as before, but this time there was an odd edge to it.

“Listen, what’s so bloody funny about that, hey?” growled Kramer, willing his eyes open and twisting round to see what sort of expression went with such a laugh.

He timed this well, because, just as he turned, the moon came out again, lighting up the man’s features.

Kramer never forgot that moment. It was Short Arse.

“YOU!”
K
RAMER SAID
, thunderstruck.

“Me, my boss: Bantu Detective Sergeant Mickey Zondi—the Lieutenant wishes to see my warrant card?”

And I’m meant to bloody believe this, thought Kramer, trying to reconcile the faultless Afrikaner accent with the kitchen matches poked through each earlobe, or indeed the Walther PPK with the burlap-sack hood and cane knife, but making sense of only the pair of well-fitting tennis shoes, ideal for hard, fast running across the Fynn’s Creek mud flats.

“Boss, my warrant,” said Zondi, holding out his opened wallet.

Kramer knocked it aside. “Then who in Christ’s name was that, taking potshots?” he demanded, his senses still reeling from the blow he’d given himself on the chin.

“No idea, Lieutenant—I did not see the face.”

“Bastard! Me neither. Oh,
shit …
”

A splatter of fat raindrops had swept over them, as a sudden squall came rampaging in off the sea, and Kramer tried to rise, but lost his balance. Before he knew it, he had been hauled up bodily and was being hurried over into the cook boy’s hut, most of his weight being borne by a spare, muscular frame, not all that much shorter than his own, which then quickly and discreetly disengaged itself, leaving him to crash down in a heap on the sagging divan.

“Now, listen, kaffir!” Kramer began, attempting to get his feet back on the floor.

“
Hau
, my boss, give me a minute first, okay?”

“Like hell, I will! I want to know exactly what is going on around here, and I want to know
fast
. Have you got that?”

There was a nod, and Kramer slumped back, disguising his giddiness as nonchalance. It was only after he heard the hut door close and a match being struck that he realized his orders were being totally ignored. Infuriated, he heaved himself up on an elbow.

“Cigarette, Lieutenant?” asked he who had been Short Arse, handing him both a Texan and the bedside candle to light it from. “Not your brand, I know, but Boss Kritzinger, to judge by the ashtray in his car, thought very highly of it.”

Kramer heard himself give a surprised laugh. “Christ, man, what sort of kaffir
are
you?” he asked, touching the Texan to the candle flame.

“Black, same as all the others, Lieutenant.”

“But what else?”

Zondi took off his burlap-sack hood, tossing it into a corner of the hut. “I’m also from Trekkersburg Murder and Robbery, Lieutenant, sir; Bantu section; seconded to work solo undercover in Zululand on the Mslope case.”

“Never bloody heard of it.”

“Bantu male Matthew Mslope, Lieutenant, wanted in connection with the murder and rape of three white nuns, one charge of arson, and the illegal possession of firearms. He led a mob that destroyed a mission school in a valley far up in the mountains last Christmas Day, sir.”

“But why you, hey? And why undercover?”

“Because all other attempts to find Mslope have failed, Lieutenant. The people must be protecting him. Another problem is the fact Mslope is a raw native, sir, of whom no photographs
have ever existed—to track him down you must have someone who knows him well by sight so he can recognize him, even if he has taken the necessary steps to alter his appearance.”

“And you think you could do that, hey?”

“Yes, my boss. I am certain of it.”

“How come? You’ve arrested him in the past?”

“Mslope has never done any wrong before, Lieutenant. I know him because I was a pupil at that mission school many years ago, the same time as he was. He is my cousin.”

Kramer raised an eyebrow. “You would send your own cousin to the hangman in Pretoria?”

“I would prefer to kill Mslope myself, sir,” said Zondi, touching his shoulder holster. “There would be some dignity in such a death, which would greatly benefit the spirits of our ancestors.”

Giddiness again overtook Kramer, forcing him to lie back, half aware that this clammy coldness he felt was possibly some form of delayed shock. “But what the hell has all that nuns nonsense got to do with this business?” he demanded.

“Nothing, Lieutenant, except that it brought me down into this district from the mountains three weeks ago in search of Mslope,” replied Zondi. “And tonight I just happened to be passing this way when I—”

“Don’t give me that bullshit, man. You’ve been treading on my bloody shoelaces from the start! Why was that? You’d better start explaining yourself, hey?”

Zondi lifted his cigarette to his lips to hide a smile and said, with a shrug: “I was made curious, sir.”

“Oh, ja? By what?”

“By the enormous explosion three nights ago, Lieutenant. Only I was on surveillance at the time, and so I had to wait until morning before I could go along to Jafini police station and see what there was to be overheard in the charge office. I soon—”

“Why didn’t you just ask them straight out?”

“Mslope has excited much sympathy, even among those duty-bound to report his whereabouts, Lieutenant, and so I am under strict orders from Captain Bronkhorst not to allow anyone to know that I am a police officer until the time an arrest has been made—or whatever.”

“Then you’ve made a total balls of things tonight, haven’t you, hey?” said Kramer. “But never mind that for now. What happened when you got to the police station?”

“I told the Bantu constable on counter duty that I was seeking advice concerning my pass book, sir. He said I must sit and wait because he was very, very busy. So I sat with an old woman whose fowls had been stolen and with a man who had come to report there was a penknife in his back. Slowly, slowly—we sat on that bench many hours—I learned some of the details of these killings and I was made shocked and angry, for Lieutenant Kritzinger had seemed a very good boss, very fair.”