James Mcclure - Snake

Then Kramer opened the front door, counted three, stepped back inside, and closed it.

They waited. Not a murmur.

“We try plan B,” he said into Marais’s ear, knowing he would like it put that way.

Kramer took hold of a carpet sweeper, which the maid had left handy to clear away their crumbs, and wheeled it down the passage. It made very good squeaks when scrubbed back and forward. He began to bump its rubber trim against the wainscoting, and to hum one of the Zulu love chants he had heard Zondi hum so often at the steering wheel. The sweeper collided with the shoes and Kramer paused, keeping the sound in the back of his throat as high-pitched as possible.

“Oil Gladys!” roared a wide-awake voice behind the door “Bloody bitch, think you’re back in your kraal, do-”

“Hello again,” said Kramer as the door was jerked open.

“You!”

“And you. Come in the front room for a moment-don’t bother to change.”

Years of calling on homes early in the morning had taught Kramer that unless a man went in for boxing or wrestling, he generally felt most vulnerable in his dressing gown. And it certainly saved everyone time.

Presently, seated in a black silk kimono, with Japanese egg stains, Monty Stevenson told them everything he knew. It was the same old story, with the alibi of the sweet machine tacked on the end.

“Have to have a finger in a lot of pies in my game,” he explained. “There’s the club and my traveling disco for house parties, then my catering course for Indians, and I’m negotiating rights for-”

“Uh-huh. But according to a bus inspector I know, your chocolate machine at the depot is empty.”

“Wonderful news-knew it would catch on.”

“Because it’s broken.”

“What?”

“Smashed by vandals on Saturday.”

“The bastards!”

“All bluff,” Kramer admitted, adding for Marais’s benefit, “Remember, that bus inspector needs a kick up the arse sometime-said he’d got better things to do than doing stupid inquiries for CID.”

“Then it’s not bro-”

And that was it. The quick flip-flop of conflicting fact caught up with Monty Stevenson and laid him low. Then he told them the true story of what had happened at the Wigwam that weekend.

He’d met this very old friend and they’d taken a bottle of the best into his office to enjoy it in private and then he’d suddenly noticed the time and had to rush home and lie because she didn’t like this particular old friend very much. Who had, unfortunately, left town for a job opportunity in Australia.

“That’s what I wanted to hear,” said Kramer.

“Thank God.”

“So get dressed. You’re under arrest.”

There was an obvious place to look. For all his healthy cynicism, Yankee Boy Msomi was a hypochondriac. And the private surgery of Dr. Arthur Pentecost Thlengwa, which took in hundreds of rand a day, welcomed his drop in the ocean. It was Msomi’s kidneys that primarily concerned him.

But he was not in the long queue of people who preferred to pay for their suffering.

So Zondi half-heartedly tried the pandemonium of the overcrowded outpatients at Peacevale Hospital, and drew another blank.

He was third-time lucky back in the lower end of Trekkersburg, where the herbalists and witch doctors had their shops in a modern block with prosperous Indian families living above them. Msomi was studying a rack of desiccated baboons and other specialist items outside the entrance to Ntagati and Son. He had already made several purchases, which stuck out of his overcoat pocket.

Zondi parked on the other side of the street and was quickly camouflaged by idlers too idle to notice who he was, and who chose his car to lean against.

The problem was making discreet contact with Msomi in daylight. But now that he knew where Msomi was, he knew he could always follow him until the right moment came. One thing was for sure: Zondi was not going to be given the slip.

He began the wait by lighting a cigarette.

Msomi must have seen something in the reflection of the shopwindow, because he turned and, to Zondi’s great surprise, gave him the nod.

“Sta-tion,” he mouthed, and then went back into the store. To anyone else watching, it would have looked like nothing more than a man fighting off a sneeze.

They met on platform 2 behind a pile of mailbags, screened by rough rustics wearing blankets and sitting on wooden suitcases.

“Where are you going?” Zondi demanded.

“To the tribal homelands, you dig? Way, way away. Things is hottin’ up here and it’s time I went see where my roots come from.”

Then he told Zondi hastily about what had occurred in Beebop’s shop, and about the slaughtered butcher, who was a stranger to them both. And rounded off by agreeing that the robberies were something else.

“Brother, it’s this way. A guy here, a guy there, they know how I make a bit of bread on the side, see? Now just say I do pick up somethin’ that spins you by the tail-what then? What if I don’t, but word gets out anyway? And they think it’s me? Can I convince them? Let’s say the big heat is really on and-”

“They kill you to shut you up?”

“There you have it, little bird. Yeah, man. But if I’m outa town when it happens-well, groovy, baby.”

“You’ve hung six hard men on the rope,” Zondi reminded him. “What scares you so much this time?”

“What I’ve done seen today with my own two eyes! Guys comin’ and goin’ and nothin’ in between.”

“Huh!”

Zondi thought it over. Msomi had a ticket and a bag which must have been standing in Ntagati’s. He plainly meant to be on that train north. Therefore he had arranged this meeting because he knew that Zondi would follow him and he wanted his departure to be unimpeded by misunderstanding. That all made sense. But not his degree of apprehension.

“ Aikona, those two eyes saw more,” said Zondi. “You’ve got papers to travel?”

“Cool it, Mickey. Since when did Yankee-”

“Sergeant! Sergeant to you! And it’ll be a sergeant who arrests you, here right now, if you don’t speak the rest!”

There was a great hiss of steam and the enormous locomotive, pushing its water tender, slid in on platform 2, bringing the rustics to their feet. It was Msomi’s train, too.

Zondi caught him by the hair on his coat.

“Okay, okay,” Msomi said despairingly.

“Then what?”

“Chainpuller! Now can I blow?”

Zondi let go. Watching Msomi run for a place on the benches, and feeling a clawed fist grab the walls of his stomach.

Chainpuller.

The walls were pale lime with scuff marks. A map of Trekkersburg almost covered one of them. There was a gray filing cabinet to which a calendar had once been glued. A small table with a stool, and a large desk with pigeonholes and a chair. Two wire wastepaper baskets and a pair of telephones. Two ashtrays: one an inverted piston head, the other an empty paper-clip tin. A wooden pole with a leather loop at one end. Daubs of white paint saying CID on anything worth stealing. In other words, the office was not much to look at, but it had atmosphere.

Monty Stevenson apparently thought so. He stood on the scarred linoleum flooring as if expecting matter-of-fact violence to be done to his person at any moment. He shivered.

And the walls went on whispering.

“Still here?” inquired Kramer, just back from the same old story in Peacevale, yet with calculated suddenness behind his back.

Stevenson went rigid, which had its comic side.

Kramer picked up the pole, slipped the thong over his wrist, and let it swing to and fro.

“Getting stuffy,” he remarked, and used the pole to open both fanlights. Then he hung it up on its hook.