James McClure - The Caterpillar Cop

“But why hadn’t I said so in the first place? he wants to know. Look, it’s a favor I’m asking, I say. When you ask a favor, you try not to cause any inconvenience. I’m in a hurry, right? Surely it’s better I come round and see if he is already awake? And, if not, wait a while in the car outside? I arrive, I see the kid in the passage, I hear he’s awake, I ask to see him. Then, because it’s a favor, I dither about before asking him because it could be a big waste of time.”

Zondi gave the sort of grunt that implied he could not agree more. He picked up speed again.

“The main thing is to let Mr. Nielsen feel important and then send him away happy,” Kramer said, really trying to convince himself, rather than Zondi, it was worth all this to avoid a fuss.

“Maybe he will find something, boss.”

“True but unlikely. I’d thought of that; either way we can’t lose.”

They arrived at CID headquarters.

“I want the car for an hour, Zondi. See you here at eight and we’ll be up at the country club by the time he’s finished with his traps.”

“Where do you go then?”

“One more bit of unfinished business before I really get stuck into this case. Cheers.”

As Kramer drove off, he cursed himself loudly and viciously for having been so impulsive. From here on in, caution was the watchword. What a start to a sodding lousy morning-with the prospect of many more to come. This was definitely not his kind of case. Sod it.

The Widow Fourie presented her cheek to be kissed much as a bishop might his episcopal ring-there was no promise whatever of more intimate communion.

As Kramer never kissed women on the cheek, he ignored it. He pinched her instead.

“Trompie!”

Now that, too, was unlike her.

“What is it?” he asked. “Time of the month?”

“Yes,” she said.

“The curse?”

“That’s right.”

But which curse? A good question. Right from the moment he entered the flat, with just enough time for bed and breakfast, he sensed a definite change in her. It was as though she dreaded something dark she could not quite see over his shoulder.

“Where are the kids?”

“Out.”

“So early?”

“I asked Mr. Tomlinson down the passage to take them in the car-he passes the school on his way to varsity.”

“It isn’t raining, you know.”

“I know.”

“And so?”

“Nothing.”

A whimsy caught Kramer unexpectedly. In the good old days, this would have been his cue to bash her one with a club and drag her off by the hair. Hit her hard enough and temporary amnesia would take care of her troubles. But this was the twentieth century, Western civilization, and she was wearing a wig.

“I’m waiting,” she said.

“What for?”

“Did you get him? Or are my kids still-”

“ Ach! Don’t worry, we will.”

Strained silence.

“How did you get your hands so dirty?”

“I’ll wash.”

The Widow Fourie shuddered and went into the kitchen, pausing just inside the doorway until she heard the taps running. Her shadow was a dead giveaway.

It was shorter than she was, squat and broad and a little bowed; come to think of it, rather like the shade of some primitive ancestor apprehensive at the mouth of her cave.

Now a hunter sought admission but, having come from where the sounds of the night were made, his scent would lead the unthinkable right to her litter within.

Suddenly he saw it all.

“I’ve fried you a couple of eggs. There’s no bacon left.”

The plate stared balefully up at him with its two yellow eyes, waiting to be blinded by the knife.

“We know who the kid was. He-”

“I don’t want to hear.”

“But usually-”

“It’s repugnant to me.”

“Repugnant? Where did you get that one from? The crossword?”

“That’s what Mr. Tomlinson called it and he’s right. Repugnant.”

“Ah, yes, our English-speaking university intellectual.”

“He’s a very nice man.”

“Not repugnant.”

“No, but-”

“Go on. Were you going to say…?”

She responded eagerly to the kettle’s whistled summons.

And returned with his coffee to find the room empty. Kramer had got the message.

The fresh-water crabs must have thought themselves especially favored when enough food to last them through two generations landed in their irrigation ditch. It came sealed in a big brown wrapper. After a week of high excitement, they had just started to get this off when it vanished.

And wound up on the next slab along from Boetie Swanepoel in the Trekkersburg police mortuary.

“I’ll start on the Bantu male,” Strydom told the attendant, Sergeant Van Rensburg. “No sense in trying to concentrate with a stink like that hanging around.”

Van Rensburg had already made the preliminary incision from throat to crotch. All Strydom had to do was reel off enough routine observations to fill up the form. The plain fact of the matter was that a rural Bantu had died because he ate too little.

“Natural causes,” Strydom concluded, moving on to the other table.

Boetie lay awkwardly on the channeled porcelain; the headrest was chiefly to blame for this-like the headrest on a barber’s chair, it was not designed for the young. But his spare frame left plenty of working space all around him, which made a nice change.

Van Rensburg wheeled the light over and the examination began.

“Yes, someone definitely put their fingers in this lot,” Strydom murmured, indicating a smear running up the belly from the lacerated loins. “Yirra, and look at this mark in the leg, man!”

Strydom had spread the legs apart and exposed a bloody mark on the inner thigh.

“That’s the shape of the weapon we’re after-remind you of anything?”

“No, Doctor.”

“Well, it does me. Funny how the end is chopped off nearly at right angles like that.”

“Could be the point snapped.”

“Hmmm. Anyhow, I think I’ll just save this for closer examination before you wash down.”

Strydom flayed the area with his scalpel and laid the skin in a small dish. On a flat surface, the dominant characteristic of the weapon’s imprint was even more pronounced. They both peered at it closely.

“That thing had a real curve on it,” Van Rensburg said. “It wasn’t a sheath knife for sure. What about one of those Arab daggers?”

“Not very likely. The width of those blades gets smaller all the way down to the tip. This one stays the same. Also it seems the blade was very flat or it wouldn’t have made a clear mark like that. Finished?”

The blood was gone. The wounds were short, deep slashes that gaped like the mouths of smiling babes, each with a rim of subcutaneous fat to give an illusion of toothless gum within.

Strydom found them beguiling; he was sure they could tell him something. And would, given time.

Van Rensburg watched for a while and then helped his Bantu assistant remove the other corpse. A splintery coffin, made by a timber firm that also churned out fruit trays for farmers, was waiting for it in the refrigerator room.

As he measured and probed, Strydom could hear the widow being cursed for having come alone with her small son. So she had brought the coffin along on her head, Van Rensburg bawled, but how the hell did she think she would take it away again full? Still, that was her problem. No, he would not telephone for a taxi. The box scraped over the concrete floor, one bent nailhead screeching, and then the hot draft through the outer door ceased to blow. The fly screen beyond clattered.

“Damn fool,” Van Rensburg grunted, taking up his clipboard for notes.

“And a lot of damn noise,” Strydom rebuked him.