James McClure - The Caterpillar Cop

Dominee Pretorius poked his head in.

“Boy, your boss is outside now. Beauty, what’s wrong with the bell? I rang it three times from the front room.”

“ Hau, shame! I hear nothing.”

Zondi sidled past, giving her a secret pat on the bottom, and went out the back door.

He was just in time to see the Chev drive off without him.

Kramer brought it back a few minutes later with what almost amounted to an apology. He explained that after Hennie disgraced himself in the classroom, it had only been right to take the poor little bastard straight home before his pals saw him. In his hurry he had forgotten to inform the school and, on realizing this, had shot around the corner to use the call box.

“He was very frightened, boss?”

“Poop scared. But he wouldn’t tell me why-and he wouldn’t tell his mother. You see, I don’t think he really knows himself; it’s just a feeling I got.”

“This is strange.”

“But bugger-all use to us. Could be he just fancies he’s next in line because they were great mates. You know kids.”

“This Boetie fellow was also strange, boss,” Zondi said softly.

“Why’s that?”

“The servants all around here say he made life very hard for them. He looked at their passes.”

“He what? ”

“Checked their passbooks. Wanted to know if they had bike licenses. Went to their rooms at night to see if there were strangers sleeping there unlawfully.”

“Never!”

“He also arrested three Bantu youths for loitering with intent.”

“I don’t bloody believe it.”

“My people did not lie to me, boss. I sat with them for an hour.”

It seemed to Kramer longer than that before he found his tongue again.

“Man, I’ve heard of playing cops and robbers…”

“Playing? It was not toys he showed them.”

“Hey?”

“Beauty says he had everything-truncheon, whistle, and handcuffs. Real ones.”

Kramer snapped his fingers. A subliminal image had started to nibble at the wall of his conscious mind. It was not going to make it, but a strong impression filtered through: Boetie’s bedroom was the place to be. Something there had already made sense of all this.

“Back into the house,” he said, pushing at Zondi to open the car door and sliding out after him.

Once back in the room, Kramer stood in the center of it. He was searching for a cue rather than a clue. He simply let his eyes pan uncritically over everything within the four walls. They stopped dead on a neat pile of magazines by the bed.

“Of course!” Kramer said, scooping one up and ruffling through it. He found what he sought on page three-a three-column panel headed DETECTIVE CLUB.

Zondi took another issue and they sat down on the bed together to read them.

Kramer found that the panel was made up of three parts. There was a chatty article by a senior police officer, a section for members’ letters, and a block explaining the Detective Club rules with an application form included in it. Membership was open to all Afrikaner boys aged between twelve and sixteen who had never committed a criminal offense. They had to get their parent or teacher to sign beside their own signatures. If they were accepted, then they would be sent a card, initialed by the head of the South African Police, that gave them the right to “cooperate” with local representatives of the force.

Just what this meant was obvious from the letters. A boy writing from the Orange Free State said: “I spent nearly my whole holiday working as a member of the Detective Club. The station commandant said I was very useful to him as I arrested nine Bantu altogether and one Colored female. I also went on raids in the van. It was very nice.” Another, this time a thirteen-year-old in the Transvaal, wrote: “In our English-language oral exam I had to pretend that I was a member of the Special Branch finding out if a man was a liberal. Because I belong to the Detective Club I knew the proper way to ask questions. The inspector said I was so good that I made him feel like a real communist!!! Thank you, Detective Club!” The editor had added in italics: “Glad that the Club is bringing you good results. Remember, the rest of you, courage and loyalty is not everything a good detective needs-he also has to have brains.”

Zondi whistled low.

“Well, are you thinking what I’m thinking, kaffir? ”

“Too right, boss.”

Being a detective was one sure way of getting yourself thoroughly disliked.

The colonel put it another way when he arrived in Railway Village some minutes later. He said, “Man, it’s funny, but having a policeman sniffing around can do something extra nasty to a mind that’s warped already. You know what I mean?”

Kramer knew; one of his early colleagues, investigating the death of a racing driver whose car was suspected of having been sabotaged, had his face held in the radiator fan of an engine running on a test block. Things like that stick.

“But you did say policeman, sir.”

“I take your point. So you can’t find any trace of his membership card or the handcuffs and things?”

“Zondi and I have been all over-the garage, too. The only place left is his folks’ bedroom but he wouldn’t have kept them there.”

“Could he have had them with him yesterday?”

“Hennie didn’t say.”

“And that’s not all he kept quiet about.”

“Of course, we are taking it for granted that Boetie was in the Detective Club.”

“A reasonable assumption, Lieutenant.”

“Then the next step is to contact Pretoria and have them ask this magazine for its list of members.”

“Better still, ask his sister.”

“Oh, she thinks he might have been playing about with some silly game, she says.”

“Then ask Hennie. You’re going to see him again.”

“It would be an advantage if I also knew his position beforehand. Why can’t we-”

The Colonel turned over the magazine he had been studying and showed the back to Kramer.

“Always read the small print, Lieutenant. Down at the bottom of the page…That press is owned by a cabinet minister-and so is the magazine. Send a man around there and you’ll attract a lot of attention from high up.”

“But-”

“Which would be a pity if this affair has only a slight connection with the Detective Club. And it would be more than a pity if it had nothing to do with it. Remember, the English-speaking press has its spies everywhere, too-they would make a meal of a morsel if they got the chance.”

“What about the trial, sir?”

“Ah, thinking well ahead, I see. Well, I’ll expect you to have enough evidence by that time to make your preliminary inquiries irrelevant.”

“How do I go about it, then?”

“Keep it in the family. Ask the local sergeant a few casual questions.”

“And what do we tell the papers meantime?”

“That there’s a madman on the prowl. It’s still the truth, to my way of thinking.”

There was a tautness in Kramer’s face that the Colonel could not help noticing.

“ Ach, I know I’m probably making your job harder this way, Lieutenant, but I must be fair. Every time one of my men does something that’s not in the book, I try to see the whole force doesn’t take the blame in the eye of the public. Am I right?”

“Yes, sir. We appreciate it.”

“Good. Now you just get going again and keep me in touch. Need any extra help?”

“Sergeant Zondi and me are doing all right so far.”

“I bet.”

Boetie Swanepoel was indeed a familiar name to the station commander, who had just returned from a fishing weekend to start his two-to-ten shift behind the counter in the township’s charge office.