James Mcclure - Snake

“Only if it’s pertinent to the matter in hand,” warned the colonel as Kramer came back into the office. “Then we’ll just have to start without Strydom.”

Kramer sat down and said flatly, “I was right. We didn’t crack Stevenson-the wife did.”

“Hey?” exclaimed Marais, in great surprise. “What the hell gave you that idea, sir?”

“Sergeant, if I blasted you in the bum with a twelve-bore, could you tell me which pellet hit first?”

Crushed, Marais put his head back in the morning paper.

“Maybe it’s time we all cooled down a bit,” the colonel suggested after a while. “We’ll give the DS two more minutes. Well, Tromp?”

“Sir?”

“Wouldn’t Sergeant Marais at least hear a bang first?”

“ Ach, I suppose it was the writing.”

“Ja?”

“The assumption was that the suicide note ended with the man’s initials, M.S. But the pencil line there was thin, so the pencil had to be sharp. So I read it again like it was what he first wrote-‘Why not ask Shirley…?’-and saw it was like a message he wanted passed on to me. ‘Too late’ could have been a reference to the time of night-you had used the word ‘late’ yourself, Colonel. He was in a hurry with an idea, but in writing it down this crystallized his position. Okay?”

“You’re saying the suicide was on the other side only?” the colonel asked.

“Uh-huh. Look how neat and determined it is-a man who has complete control of himself because at last he knows just what to do. Hell, you need that frame of mind to do what he did. With the socks.”

“But why no sign-off at the bottom?”

“No need. You expected me to take this personally, Colonel, and why? Because the tone is very personal, I agree. But did Marais or me give him orders to do anything? Christ, no. His appearance for remand was just a bloody fact -and Sam was supposed to get that through to him. And what do we, barbarians like us, care if he’s only sorry for Jeremy? By that reckoning, we couldn’t give a stuff. She didn’t require any signature. Simple.”

“And the pellets?” asked Marais, poised to begin a list.

“Oh, Jesus. Business so bad that ‘every penny counts’ and he pulls a stunt like this one, and yet his kid goes to riding lessons. The big come-down the wife made after she was sure she wasn’t involved in the inquiries. The way she tried to make sure she did all the talking while we were at the house. His fluster over the sweet machine because they hadn’t been able to prepare the idea quick enough in the bedroom when she was doing her so-called checking. She wasn’t expecting trouble-remember the crack about the Mormons? But she ad-libbed and it wasn’t bad. And him blushing and sweating and we thought he was trying to cover for himself! And then I rang the reporter on the Gazette and asked him to see when that gymkhana was held.”

“The one on their gate?” Marais asked.

“Uh-huh. That gymkhana was last Sunday. In other words, Ma Stevenson wasn’t going to let anything get between little Jeremy and his moment of glory.”

“But this is hypothesis, man,” the colonel objected. “Or are you sure? Is this from Sam or something?”

“What I got from Sam was just a confirmation. You know him, sir; you try to break his bloody ethics. First I did ring him and what I learned was that Stevenson was a henpecked runt and that she really ran everything from the home, using the phone and expecting him to report any problems. No ethics in that-common hearsay, so I find out. I warn him to go easy. He rings back, says I did him a favor, and then a real shyster comes through wanting to slap charges on me. Seems Ma Stevenson is in his place, shouting for justice. So I tell him, too, and he-”

“And that was the last phone call? But what exactly was his story?”

“As soon as Stevenson found the body, he naturally rang her. She said leave everything and come home because she has to think this one over carefully. And when you think about it, that was more a female’s reaction to a dead popsy with boobs like that. A bloke on his own would see Eve-”

“Ja, ja, as a terrible waste; I know. One thing more: do I take it these legal proceedings against us are now being reconsidered?”

Kramer nodded, and then the colonel announced they would wait until the quarter hour for Dr. Strydom to fight his way out of the jungle.

Constable Hein Wessels was so good at his job that if he’d tried free-lancing in another town he would have been arrested.

He stood on the corner of Monument and Claasens Streets, at the top end of Trekkersburg, looking like a waiting-room ashtray. And in unbelievable contrast, he pondered contentedly, to the trim figure, glowing with inner and outer cleanliness, that he had presented on the parade ground six months earlier. On the morning, for example, when he had been asked to forsake appearing in the graduation parade, and to grow his hair hideously long instead.

Now his double life was drawing to an end, but it had been good while it had lasted. As the Bible said somewhere, the better you were, the shorter time you stayed. A number of successful raids by the Drugs Squad, each initiated by his gift for timing, had begun to make things more difficult and, in some quarters, his stranger’s face had begun to ring a bell. Soon it would be back into uniform for him, and the bottom rung to climb. Well, perhaps not quite the very bottom one, because his work had won him praise from above.

Plus warnings from those who had passed on, and who claimed to know the dangers as well as pleasures of belonging to an elite-or thinking you did. They would, for instance, occasionally remind him that he carried no firearm, and ask him to consider why this was true of no other white policeman. But that, surely, was a form of eliteness in itself, Wessels felt.

His mind wandered into arguments like these when there wasn’t anything specific happening. Right then he was just keeping an eye on a yellow car with two black males in it, parked forty yards down Monument Street beside an empty plot and opposite a row of run-down shops, most of which were closed anyway. These blacks weren’t doing anything, simply sitting there, and it was an area with a real mix-up of races during the day, being so near the station.

But Wessels was no fool. He tried to read the mud-splashed registration plate, and then shuffled, hawking and spitting, a little closer. This could easily be a new dagga drop-off point. And being Hein Wessels, you just never knew your luck; he might even try and approach them.

Marais put down the telephone and said, “Not at the mortuary, the hospital, or the prison.”

“And who was that on the other line?” asked Kramer.

“Shirley’s office. They say he’s out and they don’t know where to contact him; they’re leaving a message. He’s an interior designer, whatever that means.”

“I don’t think, gentlemen,” said the colonel, “that Mr. Shirley will have anything very useful to add, or Stevenson would have thought of him much earlier. His final statement is accepted.”

That had a ring to it that Kramer accorded a gracious nod. Marais nodded, too, vigorously.

“Furthermore, gentlemen, through an inquiry I myself arranged this morning, the night watchman at the shoe shop by the entrance to the alley states under oath that Stevenson, a known figure to him, went home as the city hall clock was chiming twelve-thirty. He keeps awake by listening for it, he says.”

“Hey, that’s a help,” said Marais, then blushed.

“You have not spoken out of turn, Sergeant, so at ease, man. It is a big help. This watchman further states that nobody left the alley from twelve-thirty onwards.”

“What about before then?” asked Kramer.