James McClure - The Caterpillar Cop

“And your dog-is it licensed?”

“I don’t have one.”

“I see.”

Kramer took out an invoice he had received for a dozen red roses.

“What’s that?” Jarvis asked.

“The counterfoil of a dog license issued in your name by the Trekkersburg Municipality. It’s expired.”

“So I was informed this morning,” Jarvis said coldly. “But as the wretched animal itself expired about a week ago, I don’t see the point of all this. As a matter of fact, I-”

“Yes?”

While awaiting an answer, Kramer wheeled over an easy chair and then commandeered a small table for his foot. He made himself comfortable. And noted that now he was closer to Jarvis, the man reeked of strong drink.

“This is intimidation!” Jarvis declared.

“Asking about a dog license?”

“The hell with that. What are you really? Special Branch?”

“ Ach, no, just a bit of an all-rounder.”

Kramer lit a Lucky.

“Well?” challenged Jarvis, bringing a small tumbler out from behind a pile of books.

“Cheers!” said Kramer.

Jesus, it was bizarre. Only a genuine psychopath could have lasted as long in a situation engineered to disorientate a suspect and now having much that effect on Kramer himself. You had to be mad to treat it anything like normal-and to rationalize so fluently, as with the Special Branch remark. On another level, these were the responses of a man entirely confident of his position; nothing would be achieved by trying Boetie’s trick of flushing out fact with a well-aimed fistful of surmise. It would clatter off the cold-blooded bastard like pellets off a croc. The most Kramer could hope for would be a cynical, private admission of guilt, without any indication of where concrete evidence, fit for public judgment, could be found. For that sort of information, the abandon of high passion was required; this in turn meant a change in metabolism, something that would raise the body temperature high enough for careless talk. Kramer had a plan, based on first reverting Jarvis to basic behavior, that might or might not work. It was worth a try anyway.

“Going to sit there long, Lieutenant?”

“Just giving my foot a rest. I cut it yesterday.”

“Always a nasty business. What on?”

“With a sickle, actually.”

A gleam shone momentarily in Jarvis’s monocled eye. Then he leaned across his desktop.

“Isn’t it time you ran along, Lieutenant? It does seem as though we were just going to waste each other’s afternoon.”

“I’d hoped…”

There were slithering footsteps in the passageway outside.

“Just a minute, Captain Jarvis, I’ve got a small surprise for you before I go.”

Kramer went quickly over to the door, took a large zinc bath from Zondi, and returned with it to the desk. The stench which suddenly filled the room was incredibly awful.

“Good God! What have you there?”

Kramer let the bath fall on the desk with a thump.

Inside it was a shape, a long shape as shiny as a prune, only hairy in parts, and acrawl with a mass of maggots more numerous than the grains in an orphanage rice pudding. A snarl of teeth gleamed at one end.

But it was undoubtedly the smell that made Jarvis spew violently over himself as he turned his head away, ruining the right sleeve of his smoking jacket. Some of his lunch-barely digested-splattered more considerately into the wastepaper bin. If the stuff had its own smell, it was certainly not discernible against such competition.

Kramer switched to autopsy breathing and concentrated on the next phase of the operation. He tipped the bath up a little and shook it. The dead dog released gas bilaterally.

“Oh, my Christ!” gasped Jarvis, doubling up to dry retch.

Meanwhile, Kramer resumed his seat, sick to the stomach with the pain in his foot. He should have foreseen that carrying over the bath would place an agonizing weight on it every other step. But somehow he managed to maintain an air of bright interest in the proceedings.

“Sis, man, you’re disgusting!” he said finally, with a laugh. “Where’s the pride of the regiment now?”

This brought back the color to Jarvis’s puffing cheeks-and then some. His head became engorged with blood until it threatened to seep steaming through the pores. He gave a hoarse shout and lunged.

The black pupil of the Smith amp; Wesson stared him back to the far side of the desk, yet it could not silence Jarvis.

“You swine!” he said. “You filthy Boer bastard! Bringing a thing like that into a man’s house!”

Come to think of it, the incongruity alone was powerfully disturbing. There squatted the servants’ bath, smack in the center of a rosewood veneer clean enough to eat off and surrounded by such elegance as a silver inkstand; a crystal goblet containing a single, immaculate rose; an ivory paperweight carved with great delicacy; and a picture in a leather frame of a young woman with her two little girls.

“ Ach, yes, it would have been nicer to bring Boetie along, but his ma wouldn’t let me,” Kramer replied.

Jarvis jarred, as if struck a blow by the words.

“My God! Is there no limit to the way you Afrikaans scum behave? First the Junior Gestapo and now you.”

“But you wouldn’t have killed him if you’d really thought he worked for us,” Kramer said quietly.

“Oh, no? Prove it!”

And there it was: that incautious bravado Kramer had planned on producing.

“Mrs. Jarvis is already being a great help.”

“ Sylvia? She wouldn’t tell you a damn thing as long as I live.”

“Don’t tempt me, Captain.”

“I see, you’re going to build a case on bluff and bullshit.”

“How come I decided to dig up this dog, then? You didn’t notice her at the window? Take a look at its throat now the fur has fallen off.”

“But she couldn’t know anything else anyway-that’s not enough and you know it.”

“I’ve got plenty. You should have treated her better.”

“ Me? Why, I-”

Jarvis struggled out of his jacket, hurling it into one corner.

“How shall I put it, Captain? Mrs. Jarvis has promised to help us with the Swanepoel case if we don’t reopen the Cutler one.”

“The woman’s mad! It would all come out in court anyway.”

“Not necessarily. She was expecting, for the sake of the family’s name, that you would-well, you know.”

“And get strung up as a sex killer? Good God Almighty, what help would that be?”

“The medical evidence is against that for a start-and the element of premeditation. If you like to fill in a few more details, maybe I’ll be able to think of something.”

It seemed Jarvis was no longer aware of the seething corruption before him as he collapsed into his chair, shattered with the realization he had already talked too much. He was not his abnormal self.

The sewing machine refused to keep a neat stitch. Pembrook, whose mother was a dressmaker, assured Mrs. Jarvis he could repair it in a trice.

“You’re such a nice boy,” she said.

All along she had been struggling to contain her hysteria with her stiff upper lip. But she had refused adamantly to make any statement, for fear of what her husband would do.

“Be nice to us, then,” coaxed Pembrook. “We can’t help it if there is this order from New York through Interpol. It won’t be in any of the local papers.”

“Will it work now?” she asked, putting an arm over his bowed shoulders.

Kramer had Zondi remove the bath and then drew his easy chair up closer to the desk.

“From what you tell me,” he said to Jarvis, “you planned the whole thing too well. Take the sickle, for instance, chucking it out of your car window where a wog would find it means we’ll never trace it now.”