The Gooseberry Fool Read online

  “Hey, wife of Zondi! Is this how you would be seen? Would he not be ashamed?”

  That put a stop to her nonsense. Miriam looked up, proud, defiant of Fate—as Zondi had so often said, a true Zulu, a warrior’s woman.

  “My man said nothing else, Boss Kramer, for although he is very sick, his ears are those of a cat. He hears the men behind the curtain—I see his eyes go to them and back to me. He says he must sleep.”

  “And then?”

  “This man Mtembu comes in and gives him a big injection in the arm. I ask why they do this, and they say my husband wishes to sleep; it will help him.”

  Kramer backed to the door, bringing his finger up to beat out a warning.

  “Miriam Zondi, you promise that you will not say that you ever spoke to me on these matters. Understand?”

  “You do not know of them?”

  “Swear, woman! Mickey’s life.…”

  But Kramer had not really the time to spare for melodrama. He walked from the house without another word, started the Chevrolet, and drove carefully to the gates. Then gave the Widow Fourie’s children the most exhilarating ride of their lives back to the flat, where he dumped them, without ceremony, and still less explanation.

  Their mother, waiting anxiously on the pavement, had to go without one, too.

  11

  GONE WERE THE abstractions, the distractions, and the self-indulgences of seemingly purposeless existence; and with them the imaginary rats, the gory brothels, the impaled effigies in wax. Lingering was an impression that the iron had entered into Kramer’s soul, if such it was, to make of him a machine, resolute and ruthless. Then this idle fancy, too, was gone.

  For now Kramer had a purpose and no need for anything else. A very simple purpose, suggested to him in simple words by a simple woman, and that was to solve the riddle of Hugo Swart’s death by whatever method he chose. To solve it and then to wreak vengeance. As simple as that.

  And he did not pause to reflect upon the possible personal consequences, any more than a man would hesitate before galloping to his fallen brother in battle.

  He switched cars at Hunter’s Moon and headed in the twilight for Peacevale Hospital.

  Mrs. Delmain had run out to the Ford as he was unlocking it, carrying in her hand a note telling him to ring CID with reference to his Bantu sergeant, who had been hurt in an accident. Mrs. Delmain had said she took the message just as they were sitting down to the dinner he would have so enjoyed. Mrs. Delmain was a truthful woman, and a talkative one: she went on to say that the policeman on the other end had complained at having been unable to get through earlier. She knew that morning. Kramer thanked her kindly.

  The horse he had seen earlier in the day, wandering on the Peacevale road, was dead. Broken and bundled into the ditch by a bus that had seized up a mile farther on because of a damaged radiator.

  Then, against the sunset, the hospital rose in silhouette. He drove under its shadow and on, keeping an alert eye for the back road used by refuse trucks and other medically unfit traffic. He found it and circled around through the veld, closing in along a builder’s track that ran among weeds to the recently completed block for nonwhite physicians. There, beside a site hut, he left the Ford and proceeded on foot.

  The residence was pink brick with iron-framed windows and three floors. It had no kitchen, as presumably everyone ate over in the hospital canteen, and this eliminated one means of entry—but there was a fire escape. Kramer was moving toward it, close to the back wall, when he heard a voice unmistakably that of Dr. Mtembu. It came from a ground-floor window he had just ducked under.

  “No, I am quite well,” Mtembu was saying. “It is just I wish to remain in my room to study tonight.”

  “Then I’ll give the girls your love, all right?”

  “Please do,” Mtembu replied, wearily, and a door closed on a laugh.

  Kramer edged back. Mtembu must have just entered the room himself, for the light was still out and he was hanging his white coat on a hook in the wall. The doctor did not hear the window opening to admit an unexpected visitor. He just thumbed the switch and turned around very naturally, like a man relieved to be alone at last, not thinking at all.

  His head jerked in fright.

  “No noise,” warned Kramer. “You were going to work, so sit at your desk.”

  It was a table really, but covered with heavy books and clinical notes. Mtembu sat, his hands automatically clearing a space, finding a ball pen.

  “Am I to have no peace?” he said finally, peevishly, as their eyes broke contact.

  “None.”

  “It was not what you promised.”

  “I promised nothing.”

  “Your brother officers did.”

  “And what was that?”

  “No further impositions.”

  Kramer was not used to having a wog address him in such a tone, still less to hearing one speak proper English and with an English accent, too. The sheer novelty won him over.

  “But do you know who I am?”

  “A policeman. A lieutenant, you said.”

  “And my job?”

  The doctor hunched his shoulders.

  “I’ll tell you then. My job is to see that others do their jobs properly. Only without them knowing.”

  A wry smile greeted this improvisation.

  “You want to say something?”

  “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”

  “Hey? What bloody language is that?”

  Mtembu tapped the textbook before him.

  “Latin, sir. A necessary prerequisite of any student of medicine, or so those who set the Syllabus would have us primitive peoples believe. Such stresses are behind me now, of course, but I must confess to a liking for the literature. The methods of warfare, the short sword and shield, have much in common with those employed by the Zulu Caesar, Skaka: the stabbing spear and—”

  “Hold it! I didn’t ask you for a bloody lecture, I asked what you said! Trying to swear at me, were you? Piss what?”

  “Quis, sir. The quotation means ‘Who shall guard the guard?’”

  “Oh, yes? Well, let’s say you catch on quickly, Mtembu. I like that.”

  “Lieutenant?” Mtembu murmured, uncomfortable.

  “You’re not overdoing this stuff you’re giving Zondi then, Mtembu? The man is useful to me.”

  “I have prescribed no more than the minimal dosage, sir. It will keep him unconscious for an unlimited period without ill effect, provided care is taken with intravenous feeding.”

  “And his injuries?”

  “To hear the circumstances of his mishap, they are mercifully slight. The arm should already have begun to knit together.”

  “His head injury, I mean.”

  “Just a bump on the back, a cut cheek—all very minor.”

  Mtembu had looked surprised by the question but, no doubt used to the ignorance of laymen, spelled it all out. Quite unaware he was giving Kramer his first proper idea of the situation.

  “Fine. Then carry on as you are.”

  “I took the Hippocratic Oath, Lieutenant!” protested Mtembu in sudden rebellion.

  “Then see you don’t end up in court taking another one, my friend.”

  “Sir?”

  “I guard the guard,” Kramer replied. “Before you mention our little chat to anyone, and especially to a policeman, remember there is also a guard who guards me.”

  That took care of Zondi, in more ways than one. Now Kramer could concentrate exclusively on Swart. Naturally it had been a temptation to question Mtembu further, to discover how Strydom had been hoodwinked, to learn what pressures had forced the poor black sod into playing along, but unwise. Unwise because to know could have made him angry. Unwise because Kramer had within him a latent fury that needed only a single spark of emotion to set it off—to blast the buggery out of all and everything. To remain effective, he had to remain dull, plodding, bound to a logical process. And anyway, he was confident that having picked up th
e trail in Skaapvlei, he would ultimately be led back to Peacevale Hospital and to all the answers he could stomach.

  He parked his Ford half a block from Swart’s bungalow and found a footpath that ran around the edge of the racecourse behind it. Within five minutes he had stolen across the back garden, tinkered with the kitchen window, and let himself in.

  This was where the game began. But first, as in all such games, he had to throw a six.

  Huh, the vodka. But that had been an easy one. He was after real evidence now, and in the wake of the enigmatic John Scott, who had presumably removed everything of obvious significance. Still, if Swart had used the fridge for his booze cache, it stood to reason he might have used it for other things.

  Kramer opened the refrigerator door, almost starting back as the light came on. He depressed the trip switch and ran the beam of his penlight over the shelves. Fruit, milk, eggs, a small turkey, a pudding with a plate over it, a couple of eggplants—nothing. He glanced at the freezer compartment—nothing.

  Next Kramer examined the room as a whole, looking under the paper lining in each drawer, and digging a hand into the canisters of rice and sugar, well aware Swart was hardly likely to leave anything of importance where a servant might find it, but determined to overlook not a single crevice. This finally brought him to his knees and a minute examination of the floor. The linoleum, which smelled, not unpleasantly, of disinfectant, was so brightly patterned in mock mosaic that his eyes danced in their effort to spot the unconsidered trifle. So he swept a hand lightly over the surface, finding, with his fingertips, a shallow, irregular depression. He identified it as the mark made by the hearing aid when somebody, very likely the killer, had stamped on it. Kramer’s hand brushed a small object a few inches to the right of the dent, up against the sink cupboard: it was some sort of electrical component, a rod half the length of a matchstick with hair-thin wire bound neatly around it and two fine silver wires at either end. It also had two yellow bands. Big deal. Scott had not been very careful with his exhibits.

  Finally he was sure the kitchen had nothing to reveal, and so he began on the rest of the house. He did this with such painstaking thoroughness that his batteries gave out at one o’clock on Boxing Day morning. He moved to the study window. All Skaapvlei lay silent, all the little rabbits snuggled deep in their burrows of blankets, all with little distended bellies, brimming and bubbling with rich things, going through hell. Which was why he dared not switch on a light lest some bunny, on its way to the boggywoggy to do its business, noticed the gleam and called the cops. Which was bloody frustrating, as he had come across some papers in the desk that interested him.

  Kramer realized then that he was tiring, for all he had to do was light a match. Or better still, one of the small candles stuck in that holy object in the hall. He took a candle down to the far end of the main passage, where its faint light would never be seen from outside.

  First he examined brochures from two car-hire firms in Trekkersburg, both of which featured the latest models and had to be recent issues. He had come across them in the collection of motoring documents that Swart kept in his desk. They had attracted his attention because Swart’s car itself was a very recent model, and he could not see why the man had been interested in renting. Unless, of course, it was for someone else.

  But checking through the bank statements, he found that on four occasions Swart had himself paid by check for the hire of vehicles from a firm known as Trekkersburg Travel and Self-Drive.

  Then he cross-checked the dates on the invoices from the garage where Swart had his own car serviced: it appeared from these that on four occasions, and for reasons certainly best known to himself, Swart had arranged to have two cars at the same time.

  This, the first real indication that there was more to the case—in its own right—than met the eye, gave Kramer fresh impetus.

  He hurriedly sorted through the other motoring papers, but was unable to find anything from Trekkersburg Travel. A little elementary arithmetic, however, based on the amounts Swart had paid, and on the charges given in the brochure, sweetened the discovery by deepening the mystery: Swart had not used his hired vehicles, on any of the four occasions, to travel farther than the first twenty kilometers that were covered in the basic tariff. Trekkersburg Travel must have treasured his custom.

  What a balm to Kramer’s bruises. But, in the way of all ointments, it seduced a fly. This fly buzzed a warning that Scott would have to be an idiot to miss such intriguing transactions. For a moment Kramer felt duped, then he reasoned that he had himself missed out on them first time around. It all depended on just how intent you were on finding something. Scott, about whom he was forming several theories, all kept rigorously unexamined for the sake of objectivity, had seemed to lack motivation all along.

  Odd, but beside the point, for the moment.

  The CID building was quiet the way it was quiet perhaps only once a year. Christmas Eve it had echoed to the indignant cries of last-minute shoplifters, assault suspects waving mistletoe, and a store Santa found with aftershave in his sack. Christmas morning it was the turn of the Housebreaking Squad, trying to placate party-goers who had party-gone without securing their homes properly. By Christmas night everybody given to criminal irresponsibility had drunk too much to exercise it. Come Boxing Day, it was quiet.

  Kramer got the gist of this from grizzled Detective Constable Lourens, who, having failed his sergeant’s examination for three decades, haunted the building incessantly in the hope of being there, all alone, when it happened—it being, apparently, something unimaginable which would make a merit promotion imperative.

  “But what are you doing here at this time, if I can ask, Lieutenant?”

  “Ach, just come to pick up a few things before I blast off for the Free State.”

  “Leave, sir?”

  “Couple of days off. Anybody around?”

  “No, sir. Duty man in Housebreaking is investigating a report in Greenside, and then there’s me. Colonel was in earlier, round ten, with the new officer.”

  “Uh huh?”

  “Made a few phone calls and went off again. From the sound of it, the Colonel was having him back to his place.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Know what you mean, sir. Colonel Muller’s my man.”

  Kramer gave him a wink and then began up the stairs, pausing on the landing to light a cigarette and take a look at Lourens from behind his cupped hands. It was all right: the man was back sitting in his chair in the office by the entrance, where he had put his feet in a desk drawer and dropped his chin to his chest for another of those life-sustaining catnaps.

  Not that Kramer was planning to do anything illegal exactly, but he was decidedly anxious to be left to his own devices.

  He had to think his way into this one, just as he always did, by a careful examination of the murder scene. His real chance had been missed in a blasé exhibition mainly for Strydom’s benefit; now he had to settle for photographs, but they were better than nothing.

  Scott had been given a desk in the clerk’s office adjoining that used by Colonel Du Plessis. The photographs were in a brown envelope on the blotter.

  Kramer shook them out and studied each of the prints very carefully, struck as always by how much more depressing things looked in monochrome. He turned them this way and that, wondering why they seemed unusual; it was not so much the images but the feel of them. Then an idea occurred to him; he picked up the clerk’s ruler and measured the longest side of the photograph in his hand. There was no white margin—Photographic always printed edge-to-edge—and from one corner to the other it was nine inches. And yet Prinsloo, the resident cameraman, always spoke of “ten-by-eights.”

  He slipped them back in the right order into the envelope, replaced it in precisely its original position, and then went down the corridor and through Fingerprints to where Prinsloo had his domain. There he started on the negative file, finding the packet he sought almost immediately. The death of Hugo Sw
art had been recorded on 120 film by a camera that took square pictures. Usually this meant part of each picture was lost in the enlargement, but from the top and bottom and not the sides.

  The darkroom had been left in a state of readiness, with fresh developer in the tray, covered by a sheet of glass, and fixer ready-mixed in a Winchester bottle. Kramer, who had learned enough of the art in a special course at police college, set to work without wasting a moment.

  He selected a negative that seemed to be the same general shot which topped the pile on Scott’s desk, and placed it in the enlarger’s holder—having peered at it first in the light from the lamp housing but found the detail too small for the naked eye. He took a sheet of paper from the box by the easel and then racked the enlarger up so that the image it threw went edge to edge. There, on the right, was a small rectangular object about half an inch inside the full picture.

  Of course, the bloody hearing aid—a mere detail. All that effort wasted. Yet, talking of effort, someone had gone to the trouble of trimming all the prints down to an odd size. Perhaps he should make a print in case there was something else that had escaped him in the reversal of tones.

  So Kramer flipped on the red filter, replaced the ten-by-eight with an unexposed sheet, gave it a burn for five seconds, then dumped it in the first tray. He tipped a little of the fixer into the next one along, did a taste test on the acidity of the stop bath, and came back to watch.

  In the yellow light of the safety lamp, faint shadows stole onto the white bromide, darkening into two dark dots and an irregular streak; they were the eye sockets of Hugo Swart and his spilled blood. Shade by shade, the picture built up: the dead man’s face rounded then slackened, the pieces of glass sharpened to bright splinters, a stain appeared on the trousers by the crotch that had not been noticeable before. Finally each tiny particle of silver, which in other circumstances might have merged with others to create a thing of beauty, proclaimed the basic ugliness of man and his works.