James McClure - The Caterpillar Cop

“Yes,” Kramer prompted irritably. “What do you say?”

“Gerald Jones got me out to take a look at his daughter Penelope. Where is she?”

“Second door down.”

“Really? Quite finished with her, are you?”

A specialist in sarcasm, too.

“Yes-and worth quite a penny to you by now.”

Without having once broken his stride, Kramer continued on his way.

Kritzinger accosted him in the lavatory a minute or so later.

“ Ach, there you are, Lieutenant! I’ve been all round the building. They’ve got a possible identification for you.”

“Oh, yeth?”

Kritzinger tactfully averted his eyes. Kramer was washing a denture under the cold tap.

“That’s better; bloody hamburger had chips of bone in it. Got underneath. Go on, Bokkie.”

“There’s a boy aged twelve answering the description, including the birthmark, who was reported missing around midnight. Name’s Boetie Swanepoel and the address is 38 Schoeman Road.”

“Close by, isn’t it?”

“At the bottom of the hill, over the river. They last saw him at lunch.”

“But twelve years old and they only report it at midnight?”

“Told Central that they’d been to a special church meeting.”

“Hey?”

“I know, sir. Perhaps we’d better send a bloke around to clear up the details right away.”

“Isn’t the father coming up?”

“Their minister asked if he could do it instead and the Colonel said yes.”

“So the Colonel’s here now?”

“In the ballroom, seeing to the briefing for you.”

“Thank God for that.”

Kritzinger grinned. Kramer’s total aversion to working with a team, let alone organizing one, was well known. Legendary, almost. In fact, there was a joke about it in the NCO’s mess which had for a punch line: “So the lieutenant says to her, ‘But of course I came by myself, lady!’ ”

“What the hell’s the matter, Sergeant? Did I put them in upside down?”

“Sir?”

“Never mind. Come, let’s see what the Colonel’s up to before we plan anything else. We could even get lucky and be sent home to bed.”

“After you, sir.”

They arrived in the ballroom just as the last of the search parties tramped off into the night across the wide veranda. Colonel Hans Muller was all by himself at a table littered with maps, snacks, bottles, and party hats. He was trying on the helmet of a London Metropolitan policeman.

Now there was a man who came damn close to being after Kramer’s own heart. Tall enough to look you straight in the eye, and broad-minded enough not to go asking a lot of fool questions all the time. A real professional, in other words-and what a change from Du Plessis. He was also, as the papier-mache headgear indicated, possessed of a winning cynicism that sorted the sheep from the goats.

As of that moment, Kritzinger was finding it almost impossible not to look like an astonished merino.

“Hello, sir,” Kramer murmured casually, keeping his eyes perfectly level.

“Lieutenant Kramer-I was hoping you’d turn up. The men and the dogs are out but I don’t think we’ll get very far with them.”

“Good for the papers, sir.”

“Exactly. Now you must have a few things to tell me, but I don’t think we need detain the sergeant.”

“Bokkie, go and see that the Jones mob push off.”

“And then, sir?”

“Listen for the phone in the secretary’s office.”

The Colonel waited until they were alone.

“Right, take a seat, tell me about the blood on those two.”

“Not material to the case.”

“Don’t waste time on it, then. I hear the murder was sometime around six.”

“Thereabouts. Strydom isn’t going to swear to anything more definite.”

“And otherwise?”

“Usual bit of passion and panga.”

“You mustn’t get me wrong, Lieutenant, I want to get this bastard, but-hell! — it makes me bloody tired just to think of all the trouble it’s going to be.”

“And then we might not make it.”

“True, too.”

The Colonel picked out an unopened bottle of lager, opened it, halved the contents, and handed a glass to Kramer.

“Cheers.”

“Cheers, sir.”

Kramer allowed his thoughts to rise with the tiny amber bubbles and pop unconsidered on the surface. The only sound was the swish of the big fans hanging from the ceiling. He wished it could stay that way for a while. He needed a break.

“Hmmm. Wrapped up the Shabalala case this morning?”

“Yes, sir. Remanded to the Supreme Court on the fourteenth.”

“You’re free, then?”

“Sir.”

“Well, I’m a long way behind on the armed raids in Zululand so I’m giving this one back to you-it’s all yours.”

“What exactly do you mean by that, Colonel?”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Until I’ve got something?”

“No, got someone. Okay?”

Kramer raised his glass to him-and noticed the funny hat was gone.

“So let me show you what I’ve arranged here tonight…”

The Colonel took a sausage and placed it carefully on the already stained map.

“There is the body.”

He arranged a handful of cocktail sticks around it so they radiated out down the hill.

“I’ve put teams out to search along these lines-the dogs are just picking up what they can. You’ll see that the fellows going along this way must meet the others along that stick and so they’ll cross over and double-check on the way back here. Like you, I haven’t much hope they’ll find anything so you’d better start working through known weirdos first thing in the morning. Any questions?”

“Have a nut, sir,” Kramer said, offering him a bowl of them. “Make sure you get the right one.”

Swish-swish went the big bright blades overhead.

And then the Colonel smiled with great care, as if his teeth were bad. They were not. It was just the awkwardness of a well-mannered man who sees only his own jokes.

But the point had been made.

“Don’t worry, I know the problems,” he said. “Every mother in the town will be screaming for your blood if-We’ve got a visitor.”

The middle-aged man advancing recklessly across the slippery dance floor wore the solemn garb of a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. His smooth, flat face was paper white, making his mustache somehow not quite part of it-rather like a black postage stamp affixed beneath the blunt nose. This illusion was heightened by the way he kept pressing at it with the back of a hand.

Predictably he went right on by to be sick in the azaleas before returning to introduce himself.

“I’m Dominee Pretorius,” he said. “Please forgive a moment’s weakness. The Almighty has never before made such demands.”

Kramer immediately gave up his chair.

“Was it Boetie?” the Colonel asked.

Dominee Pretorius nodded woefully.

“And have you known him long?”

“Since a babe in arms. Since a movement in his mother’s womb.”

What you might call a real friend of the family. Kramer brightened.

“But can you tell us anything about him as far as today-I mean yesterday-is concerned? Have you seen his parents?”

“Seen them? I’ve been sitting up with them until half an hour ago, going over it again and again.”

“What?”

“Where he was-what might have become of him. Dear God, we never imagined anything like this.”

“Then can you tell us his movements?”

“Look, I must be going,” the Colonel interrupted. “I’m sorry if I seem rude, Dominee, but there’s work waiting at HQ. Anyway, Lieutenant Kramer is in charge of the case-I know you’ll give him all the help you can.”

“Of course.”

“And you are sure that you’re quite free, Lieutenant? There are no little jobs left over I could delegate in the morning?”