James McClure - The Caterpillar Cop

“Hello, Bonita. I’m Lieutenant Kramer.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” she said, dry-eyed and somehow self-important.

Which struck Kramer as odd until they had completed an exchange of inanities appropriate to the occasion. Then it occurred to him that she was behaving as if Boetie had become a pop star, rather than a corpse, overnight. The impossible had been achieved. This wholly unremarkable young woman had become someone: no less than the blood sister of a posthumous celebrity soon to have his pictures in every paper. They would certainly want hers, too, no doubt artfully improved by holding a lacy hanky in the right place. She could tell her story of their happy childhood together and tug heartstrings loose from Table Mountain to the Limpopo. She could- Ach, maybe he was being too hard on her. Grief did funny things to people.

“You must understand I loved my brother very much,” Bonita declared clairvoyantly. “We were very close.”

“So you knew a lot about him-his friends and all that?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Can you tell me who his main ones were?”

“There’s Hennie Vermaak. He lives around the corner at 21 Retief Road. He’s twelve, too.”

“And how old are you, Bonita?”

“Sixteen.”

“Who else, then?”

“His schoolmates.”

“Uhuh?”

“I–I don’t know all their names.”

“Just some of them?”

She bit her lip.

“His teacher, Miss Louw, could tell you.”

“Fine. Now did he have any other friends?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Any older people? Menfolk, for instance.”

“Men?”

“Never mind. It’s just some lads get friendly with an old chap and listen to his stories and that.”

“He knew Uncle Japie but he’s dead now.”

This understandably broke the flow.

“Did Boetie make friends easily? Get on well with people?”

“Oh, he was very popular-everyone said so.”

“Did he have any hobbies? Collect birds’ eggs?”

“Just reading, I suppose. And puzzles-he really went for puzzles.”

“I see. How had your brother seemed lately? Did you notice anything different in the way he acted?”

“A bit jumpy.”

“Really?”

“Well, it’s exam time.”

“But I thought they were finished.”

“Only just.”

Kramer doodled another stick man on his notebook, behind the smaller one in the fork of a tree, and placed a question mark above him.

“That’s all for now, Bonita. If you think of anything else, just give us a tinkle.”

“Is it all right for me to ask you a question, sir?”

“Please-go ahead.”

“Does the paper know about poor Boetie yet?”

Zondi was catching up on breakfast two houses along. He was eating porridge out of a pot with his fingers and complimenting his host, a Zulu cook boy named Jafini Majola, on its excellence. Majola was enormously flattered. He pushed over a can of sour milk with just the right sort of lumps in it. Zondi drank deeply.

“ Hau, that was good.” He sighed again, wiping his mouth with the back of his tie. “Now we will go where this servant woman can be found.”

Majola led him out into the street and around the block to a traffic island in the middle of an intersection. On it were gathered about a dozen domestic servants, enjoying the morning break in a working day that lasted from 6:30 a.m. until well after dark. Plainly this was an Afrikaner area as very few of them wore the uniform of canvas breeches and tunic favored by English-speaking employers. Zondi, who had been a houseboy in his youth, had never finally decided whether one’s own rags really did add a touch of dignity.

As he and Majola approached, the group fell silent. If the face was not familiar, then the snap-brim hat and zoot suit were always enough to identify him.

Zondi gave the formal Zulu greeting and was grudgingly awarded the formal response.

Majola stepped forward.

“This is Sergeant Zondi, CID,” he said. “He is not interested in passes or matters of that kind. He has eaten with me and now wants to speak with my friends.”

Zondi sat down on his haunches like the rest of them. Nothing further was said for a while. And then a large house girl of roughly menopause age spoke.

“My little master is really dead?”

“Truly.”

“Who did this thing?”

“We will know soon.”

“And what will happen?”

“He will die, too.”

A couple of youngsters at the back whispered, then giggled. Zondi speared them with a finger.

“You two! What is the matter?”

No reply.

“They are pleased,” said the Swanepoels’ girl. “They did not believe me before.”

“ Pleased? That the boy is dead?”

“Of course,” muttered someone.

And, one by one, everybody there nodded their heads. Zondi remained outwardly calm with an effort; no child he had ever heard of was capable of antagonizing as many adults to that degree.

The other thing was these adults were all black.

When he rejoined the constable on duty at the gate, Kramer had already made up his mind to be alone for a while. So it was most convenient to be told that Zondi had wandered off and the man was buggered if he knew where.

“Tell him I’ll be back,” he said.

“When, sir?”

“If he asks that, you can also tell him not to be so bloody cheeky.”

That would give the pair of them something to think about.

The day was indeed a scorcher. Getting into the Chev, which had been left locked with the windows up, afforded an idea of what a Sunday joint went through. The steering wheel felt like a boiler pipe. The seat was warm enough to set his bowels fidgeting. None of this improved his mood; there were times when even a man’s body was unwanted company.

Kramer took off hurriedly and the artificial breeze caused by the Chev’s motion helped a little. His destination was the Boomkop Lower School, only half a mile off, but he knew a long detour he could take. He had to think.

Starting with the Widow Fourie…

The radio squawked. So much for the sodding privacy of a public servant.

“Yes?”

“Control here. We’ve got Colonel Muller on phone link-up for you.”

“Ta. Hello, Colonel?”

“No fingerprints on the bike, other than Boetie’s own, and nothing in Juvenile Records, Lieutenant. Bit of a long shot, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. But you know how these ministers are sometimes; they get a bit carried away. Any luck with the check on the local station?”

“No, not tried it yet. I think you’d better drop that one before word gets back to the family and we have some unnecessary problems on our hands.”

“Okay, sir-it doesn’t really add up anyway.”

“What doesn’t?”

“The idea Boetie could have been mixed up with a bad lot. They’d have knocked him off in an accident and no bother. This way, if there was any police history, we could trace them pretty easily.”

“What I was thinking. So now how do we go about finding a reason?”

“By finding out more about him. I’m still not satisfied with what I’ve got. I’m going round to the school now to see his friend Hennie Vermaak. News of last night isn’t common knowledge yet, so he’s probably there.”

“That’s the kid he was with before it happened?”

“Uhuh. I’ll get my questions in before he knows why.”

“Tread carefully, Lieutenant.”

“As always, sir.”

“Hmmm.” The Colonel rang off.

Kramer found he had driven directly to the school after all. It was coming up on his right and a lorry, assuming from his position he was about to turn, was overtaking him on the inside. So he had little choice but to enter the gates over the carpet of old bus tickets.