James Mcclure - Snake

“You’ve got it. Find me that boy.”

Kramer would have sent Zondi around with Marais, but the sensitive little sod had disappeared before anyone noticed- which wasn’t at all strange in the circumstances.

Marais tried again. The wog was really giving him trouble. And people using the car park were watching.

“Were you, or were you not, on duty on Saturday night?”

“ Aikona. ”

“But your boss says you were!”

“The manager says that? But he knows the shift is changing Sunday.”

“Then who was on duty at half-past twelve-you understand that?”

Marais pointed out the exact position of the hands on his navigator’s wrist watch, which the attendant much admired and offered three rand for.

“You answer me!”

“At that time, sir, it was me here on duty.”

“Jesus H. Christ!”

“Amen, hallelujah,” murmured the attendant, rolling his eyes.

Marais grabbed him by the lapels. “Look!”

“That is Sunday-not Saturday, sir.”

“So you’re a clever dick, hey? Think you’re smart? Then I’ll tell you something-you’re under bloody arrest.” “ Hau! ” The lieutenant’s pet monkey could deal with him.

Kramer was caught right in the act.

“I heard from Wessels you’d got an idea to crack the alibi,” the colonel said, sitting down on the corner of the desk. “But that didn’t sound like this inquiry to me.”

“Marais has been gone about half an hour, sir. If you like to wait a minute, maybe you’ll hear the result.” Kramer moved his hand casually from the telephone receiver he had just replaced in its cradle.

“And who were you talking to?” the colonel persisted.

“That? Just a nun I know.”

“You let her ring you at work?”

Kramer’s grin pleased the colonel and they both eased the tension.

“One of Funchal’s daughters. I wanted to check on that centavos coin we found in the car yesterday, and asked for Da Gama. But he’s taken over the business affairs and was away in Durban, so she told me instead, after asking her granny, that her father kept one in the till because it’d been blessed by an archbishop or something.”

“Which clinches that,” said the colonel.

“Uh-huh.”

“But how about the button? I’ve heard nothing from you, and Wessels seems to think that the mother may not be running circles round us.”

“It smells, sir. Really it does. And I’m not at all happy about the time she really had in that bedroom before Marais joined her. That business about pretending he could be given the slip sounds a little too-”

“Talk of the devil,” said the colonel, as Marais came in, red and bad-tempered.

“I’ve got the car-park boy downstairs, sir, and I need Mickey to question him-his English is bloody terrible.”

“Ja, where is he?” asked the colonel.

Wessels wandered in and said, “Who?”

“Zondi.”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“And you, Lieutenant?” growled the colonel. “Or is he doing a ballistics test up the road?”

At that moment, Zondi skidded in through the door.

“Where have you been?”

“Colonel, sir?”

“Explain your absence from this office.”

“I’ve been to the Shirley residence, sir.”

“ What? To do what?”

“Make an arrest.”

The colonel jumped to his feet. “No! Who, you madman?”

“Oh, just the mother of the young master.”

Stunned, Kramer stared at him like everyone else, but seemed to see in his expression a smugness directed only at himself, as if a difference of opinion had now been settled most satisfactorily in the crazy bastard’s own favor.

Martha Mabile sat, her hands together and limp in her lap, on the stool in the interrogation room, quite removed from her surroundings.

So the men looking down on her simply talked as though Martha were not there at all.

“I helped you?” Kramer asked.

“ Hau, it was what you were saying about a mother’s love, Lieutenant.”

“ Ach, no!” objected Marais.

“You mean about sharing the risks of deception?”

“Spot on, and there was wisdom also in the statements made by Sergeant Marais, for he has a sharp eye and he told us that he could see no liking between the missus and the girl. Why should the girl stay at the house? She is clever and can get a good job somewhere else.”

“Lots of nannies become cook girls,” Marais broke in, to be silenced by the colonel’s frown.

“So I think to myself: What has this woman told me? That the child was hungry, so she fed it; that it was hurt, so she cared for it; then a most loving thing-when it was bad, she gave it chastisement.”

“That’s what a nanny’s for, stupid!”

“Marais…”

“Sorry, Colonel.”

“And when,” said Zondi, with the cautious tone of respect, “the child tells the missus that his nanny has beaten him, it is the nanny’s word which is the truth, as is always the word of a mother, right or wrong.”

Wessels asked, “What about all the other nannies?”

“They did not like him, because they could see no good- but Martha has eyes that go deep.”

“So she pretended the kid was hers?”

“I have known many cases, Colonel. Even among the women who have little ones that must stay on the homeland.”

“Hey, you know what this reminds me of?” Wessels said suddenly. “You remember when you played Rugby at a posh school? The cheering? The old wog girls who used to stand over behind the fence and say, ‘ Shiya sterek, Number Seven-a-teen, che-che! ’”

“Say?” hooted Marais. “The way I remember, they were all bloody shouting! And you remember how the other side would walk off without looking, thinking we would say they were kaffir-love-hell, sorry, Colonel.”

Kramer moved around to confront Martha, whose face was still as impassive as when she had been led into the room.

“Zondi, you’re saying that Shirley told this woman his troubles-just like his mum?”

Martha laughed softly.

“No, you do not understand, sir. This is the cook girl who looks after him, putting food in his stomach. Would he not be very ashamed?”

“That’s my point, man! How did she know to take the measures you accuse her of?”

“And she can’t read or write,” Marais added, “because Shirley himself told me-what does she know of police procedures?”

“No, this I want to hear from her,” Kramer decided.

Martha said something into Zondi’s ear. He patted her on the shoulder and turned to the colonel.

“Her English is bad; she asks that I interpret.”

“Fine, let’s hear it!”

“Only in Afrikaans,” Marais reminded him, taking out his notebook, “and in the first person.”

“I still do not know why there is all this trouble with the young master,” Martha began. “But when I see policemen come to the house and they are CID, then I am very afraid for him. I have this fear because of certain things I have noticed at the weekend that has just passed. The first thing is when Master Peter comes to my door in the middle of the night. He will usually call for me by the back door. I am so afraid that he will see my husband Aaron is sleeping with me, for he has no permit to be on the premises. So I go quickly to the door and when he asks for my clock I give it to him quickly also so he will not step inside. I think it is strange he does not tell me to change the hands, as this is a thing I have learned to do. Then I close the door and see that the time is just after half-past twelve, and I say to Aaron that the young master is home early for the weekend. Aaron says the clock is no good because his pocket watch says it is nearly one o’clock. We laugh then because I say to him, ‘That old thing is no good,’ and he argues, saying it has many jewels in it.”