James McCure - The Steam Pig

Then he had foolishly decided to move in on the Kwela Village terminus, thinking his only competition would be from a few young toughs who stopped once they had sufficient for drink and a dolly. The thing was he had never heard of any trouble there. Why he had heard nothing was ultimately made terrifyingly clear.

Come the first Friday night, his scouts returned with a shock report: the Kwela terminus was already being worked and so subtly that the passengers were bled dry even before they reached the shadows. No one had been able to detect how it was done.

When Shoe Shoe received the news calmly, they felt bewildered and nervous. Normally he reacted to any upset with a tantrum of appalling ferocity. But these were new men, they had not known him long enough to realise that he had got places by a careful study of what he reverently called Big Time.

And this was Big Time all right. It excited Shoe Shoe tremendously, making him repeat Big Time in every other sentence. It also made him determined to discover the system and apply it in Peacehaven, where a street-lighting project threatened to inhibit his present methods.

So he sent all his men in the following week. It was risky but worth it. Anyway, they had strict instructions to do nothing but watch. Big Time would be far too busy to notice.

Wrong again. Big Time decided to set an example-and extend its operations to Peacehaven. Which meant that when Shoe Shoe eagerly answered a knock on his door around midnight, he opened it on Big Time and bad times.

It happened very quickly. He was held down on his sagging divan and had his Palm Beach shirt ripped from tail to collar. A match flared briefly. The first prick of the spoke came near his coccyx-just his legs were to go; a minor infringement. Then the point began to tickle its way up. His arms as well. Higher still. The spinal cord was punctured.

It was a clean wound and healed in three days. The neurologist at Peacehaven Hospital found this evidence of sterile procedure even more disturbing than the impressive display of anatomical insight. He mentioned it to Dr Strydom. The DS shrugged and said that as there was nothing the hospital could do, it was rather ridiculous admitting such cases when there were so many patients that some had to sleep under beds occupied by more serious cases.

So on the fourth day Shoe Shoe was discharged before breakfast. Two porters carried him out and set him down on the lawn a few yards from the exit gate. There he sat, with a small plaster visible through his torn shirt, until eleven o’clock when the sun baked a thirst within him that made him call out for help.

It arrived in the form of Gershwin Mkize, following up a hot tip. Gershwin ran the beggar circus in Trekkersburg, often travelling far into the bush for his exhibits positioned strategically about the town, and he was always on the lookout for new attractions. This one needed no improvisation.

The State pension would provide half a loaf of bread a day. Gershwin could offer two loaves, a little meat, a pot of beer and a roof-plus the comradeship of other unfortunates who, between them, could assist in intimate matters such as feeding, dressing, moving and evacuating.

Shoe Shoe accepted without a word and seldom spoke again. A Bantu constable, fresh from the police college, made a few ineffectual inquiries. Shoe Shoe gave him an outline then clammed up. The constable’s superiors criticised the spelling in his report and left it at that. After all, this time society had been left better off by a crime.

Now Kramer wanted him to break that silence. He did not relish the thought of working over a man four parts dead already, but he was prepared to go beyond strenuous coaxing. He knew the link was tenuous. But he also knew that Shoe Shoe must have seen his assailants and thereafter maintained a particular interest in anything concerning bicycle spokes.

Kramer turned into Arcadia Avenue and slowed down. About half way along his headlights glinted off a brass plate and he killed the engine to glide up on the grass verge. As he got out he noticed half a dozen cars parked outside the house on the other side. Their owners were no doubt gathered to celebrate a golden anniversary, it was that sort of neighbourhood.

He took the path in four paces and rang the bell.

Dr Matthews was in the hall balancing on one leg. By extending the other as a counter-weight, he had been just able to retain his hold on the telephone receiver while using his free hand to grasp the doorknob. He grinned feebly. Just a smile in return would have been charitable.

“Police,” Kramer said, and walked past into the surgery, closing the thick door behind him.

He was immediately struck by the quiet and the stink of ether. Another man whose profession demanded soundproofing-and another cue to stop breathing through his nose. He went over to see if any of the windows were open behind the long, moulting drapes. Not one. Not touched in fifty years if the rest of the room was anything to go by. He noted the Victorian furniture, the quilted leather, the tassels, the instruments laid out in what resembled museum cases. Across the road there was a movement in the back of one of the cars-ah, the younger generation was succumbing to the wild wind.

And Kramer turned to stare at the couch, half screened off in one corner. So this was where Miss Le Roux had felt it right and proper to undress and recline. Sick. Horrible. The whole room was sick. It was certainly not the place to be told you had three months to go, taking things easy. For that you needed one of those unreal skyscraper suites with pretty receptionists to smile unwittingly at you on your way out to the lift shaft. At the very most it was a room which should serve only for offering up afflictions of the anal region. Which seemed to be Dr Matthews’s level anyhow, so maybe he was expecting too much.

The GP was in the room without warning, moving lightly as became a fat man so daintily shod. His likeness to his mother’s photograph on the desk was remarkable-except his moustache turned upwards.

“What brings you here, officer?” he said. “Don’t tell me-I’ve made a balls and so has Strydom but he’s also getting the glory, lucky man.”

He stopped and frowned.

“As a matter of fact, he was rather rude to me. I told him her history. I told him it was congenital angina. Remained quite unimpressed. Very rude when I said I hadn’t her previous records but one has to trust patients, hasn’t one?”

“And doctors,” Kramer observed, ignoring the outstretched hand.

“Now then!” Dr Matthews said. “May I take your coat?”

“No coat,” Kramer replied.

“Of course, I’ve been in touch with the medical association,” Dr Matthews continued unruffled. “Speaking to the secretary at his home only a moment ago. He said that off the record he was inclined to agree I’d come to a reasonable conclusion under the circumstances. One can’t go ordering post mortems for everyone who pops off.”

“But she was only twenty-two.”

“Good God, man, she’d had cardiac irregularities since she was nine!”

“Hearsay,” Kramer snapped, resorting to a bit of his own jargon. “Now just hand over that file you’re waving about, I want to take a look for myself.”

Dr Matthews did so with a mildly insolent thrust and then pottered about the room, humming plump, complacent hums. Eventually, however, he came to a stop behind his desk where he patted his pockets and took from them a stethoscope, auriscope, ophthalmoscope and stainless steel spatula. He was like a balloonist dumping ballast in an effort to regain height. He slumped down into the swivel chair, his clothes creasing into great loose folds.

Kramer closed the file and stared across at him. Then he picked up the ophthalmoscope, switched it on and played the tiny beam across the room until it stopped in the middle of the practitioner’s pink forehead.