James McClure - The Caterpillar Cop

Except perhaps gluttony. Someone had guzzled the sausage marker.

The Chevrolet was almost opposite the bulldozer on its way down again when the hair on Kramer’s neck lifted slightly: he was not alone. He thought about it for a fast quarter mile and then wound up his window. He sniffed carefully. The cheap pomade, so pungently sweet it was capable of fertilizing a paw-paw tree at forty yards, proved unmistakable. He found the other hamburger and tossed it over his shoulder.

“Fizz-bang, you’re dead,” he said.

“Very nice, too,” replied Bantu Detective Sergeant Mickey Zondi, who fitted exactly across the back seat but chose, for reasons of his own, to lie on the floorboards.

“And what are you doing in my car?”

No answer. Merely a steady munching.

“Were you questioning the Bantu staff in the kitchen?”

“No, boss. I got a lift up with Dr. Strydom.”

“He didn’t say anything about that.”

“He didn’t, boss?”

Kramer saw the point and laughed.

“You’re going to get me into trouble one of these days-you know that?”

“ Hau! I am very sorry.”

Then they laughed together, as they often did when on their own.

“Is this a Bantu case, boss?”

“Since when have kaffirs gone around committing sex killings on white kids? Of course not. Perfectly straightforward and I think we’re already on to the bugger that did it. Want to get off here and go back to Central?”

“I’ll come with.”

Kramer ignored all the traffic lights through the city center-it was still very early in the morning-and took the Durban road, watching the street names on the left. He swung into Potter’s Place. The homes round about were modest bungalows succumbing, in their middle age, to an ill-becoming trendiness; bright colors had been painted over the exterior woodwork and all sorts of rubbish, old street lamps and wagon wheels, littered the small frontages. No. 9 Potter’s Place was untidier than most and a child had been scribbling on the garage door. This door was closed, but the chunky tracks of a Land-Rover could be seen clearly in the dried mud of the short driveway.

The Chevrolet stopped two houses further on. Kramer and Zondi walked back and up the path. Somebody was singing in a low bass on the walled veranda.

“Stay here,” Kramer ordered, mounting the steps.

A Zulu houseboy jumped up, his knees red with the floor polish he had applied so lavishly, and went bug-eyed. He did it very well, considering the hour-which was, according to the grandfather clock in the hall passage, a minute after six.

“Police,” Kramer cautioned. “You shut up or I’ll call my boy.”

The Zulu peered over the wall at Zondi, dropped to his knees again, and slipped a hand under the brush strap. He went on scrubbing away.

“Every man to his job,” Kramer remarked with satisfaction, stepping into the house.

All was quiet; but nobody would think of stirring until the veranda shone like a tart’s toenail and the tea was brought in. There was ample opportunity for a preliminary survey.

Behind the door, where they had been dimly visible through frosted glass panels, were a collection of coats and other outdoor garments. The driver of the Land-Rover had been wearing something greenish. A scruffy sports jacket came as near to the color as any-and it had been hung up last of all.

Kramer lifted one sleeve to inspect the cuff. What he noticed there halted his breathing.

He wet a finger and dabbed at one of the brown specks, seeing his spittle turn pink. He gave it the nose test.

The same with the other cuff.

Blood.

It was too easy. Too easy and too like what happened when the gods played silly buggers. An alert sounded within.

Right then someone behind him said, “Stick ’em up.”

Kramer stuck them up. He waited a moment and then turned around, lowering one hand to lay a finger on his lips.

“Don’t shoot,” he begged in a whisper.

Bang.

“I said-”

“You’re dead,” the small boy informed him. “And when you’re dead, you can’t talk.”

“Quite right.”

“I know. I’m not stupid like Susan.”

“Who’s that?”

“My baby sister. She’s three.”

“And you are?”

“Fi-no, six. It was my birthday yesterday. Guess what I got?”

“A cap gun?”

“ And a microscope.”

So this was how a mad scientist appeared during his formative years.

“I say, Mungo?” The sleep-slurred voice came from behind a door on the bedroom side of the house. “What in heaven’s name are you doing? Not trying to frighten poor Jafini, are you?”

“No, Daddy, it’s a man.”

“What man?”

Mungo appraised Kramer, sizing him up thoroughly the way children do when they can see how tidy a fellow keeps his nostrils. Then he paused to wrinkle his brow and select a category.

“It’s an uncleish sort of man with very short hair and big front teeth like a rodent.”

Kramer snorted.

“Aren’t you an uncle?” inquired Mungo politely.

“No, I’m a policeman.”

“Oh, good! Then show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

“Hey?”

“ Your gun, of course!”

He damn nearly did.

“Get your father!”

“Will you?”

“Scoot!”

Mungo retired with dignity and there were whisperings. Kramer stepped back onto the doorstep. Things had got out of hand. Nor did they add up. Still, there was undoubtedly blood on that jacket and some family men had been known to live extremely private lives.

From the bedroom emerged a shock-haired, bearded weirdo in a tartan dressing gown and Wellington boots. He was about thirty-five, slightly built except for the hands, and like a tick bird in his movements-jerky yet enormously precise.

“Yes?” he said, bringing to his face a half-smile which never left it again. Kramer was immediately reminded of the anxious expression worn by travelers being addressed in a foreign tongue.

“CID. I’m Lieutenant Kramer.”

“Yes?”

“Phillip Sven Nielsen?”

“Correct.”

“You are the owner of a long-wheelbase Land-Rover registered as NTK 1708?”

Nielsen nodded.

“And you were driving this vehicle in the vicinity of the Trekkersburg Country Club at 12:30 a.m. this morning?”

“But-”

“Were you?”

“Oh, yes. I was out collecting.”

“What exactly?”

“Excreta.”

“Pardon?”

Nielsen looked to one side as if sneaking a peep at a phrasebook.

“Shrew shit,” he said.

Now there was something to conjure with.

Danny Govender did the job because his father, mother, three sisters, two brothers, widowed uncle, half-cousin, and half-witted grandfather needed the money. It was as simple as that, they told him, and would hear none of his protests.

Such was the price of success, limited though that might be for a twelve-year-old Indian.

In the beginning, Danny had been fired with ambition. Something all too obvious to the dispatch foreman at the Trekkersburg Gazette who gave him his first newspaper round. A bleak, slothful man himself, he had hoped to break the persistent little bastard’s spirit by awarding him the Marriott Drive area. This toy-block scattering of multistory apartment houses, with very few auxiliary lifts marked for non-whites, was generally too much for a full-grown coolie, let alone a bandy-legged runt.

But somehow the foreman’s plan had gone wrong-or right, depending on which way you looked at it. All of a sudden there were no more calls from irate subscribers down Marriott Drive way. Danny was getting up and down those stairs like a rock rabbit.

And more. He was rolling his papers neatly, being careful not to upset milk bottles, whistling silently, and winning the affection of every housewife up early enough to return one of his betel-nut smiles through her kitchen window. Someone even wrote a Letter to the Editor, saying what a joy it was to encounter a child who so loved his work.