“It bloody does work! Was-girl-doing-it-with-him? You can bet your socks she was, Boetie my lad. Hurry and get this all down.” A judge to the prisoner in the dock: “So we meet again. Aren’t you ashamed to be seen in court so often? I would be.” The old lag replied: “What’s good enough for you, m’lud, is good enough for me!” Chewsy Chuckle No. 317
Zondi added it to the other two on his slip of paper and handed it over.
“You made a mistake in this last one when I read it out. No, maybe you’re right after all-I’m certain Boetie meant that. One of the first things I learned about English was there were many words that sounded the same but were spelled different. It’s so stupid it sticks in your mind. Here he’s found a use for it.”
The slip read: “Bad sitting on him. Cowboy/Was girl doing it with him/To meet in wood good for me.”
Kramer was elated. He slapped Zondi on the shoulder and they each nearly broke a bone.
“See? This last one? He thought he would have it all wrapped up after this meeting in the wood.”
“A good time to kill him, boss?”
“You’re so right. What a fluke we did them in their correct sequence, although it wouldn’t have taken much effort to sort out anyway.”
An uneasiness stirred in Kramer as he said this-flukes were seldom to be trusted.
“Boetie must have worked hard to find good jokes.”
“Ones that would carry his message? Well, obviously he had more than three hundred of the buggers to choose from-and all the rubbish bins at school to find them in.”
“It is a shame.”
“What do you mean?”
“That he did not write these things another way. Have you noticed that not one of these papers has a word that connects the case with the foreign boy?”
“Except for cowboy.”
“But, boss, you said that-”
“ He, Andy, could have been the one doing the sitting.”
“Then why say ‘bad sitting on him’? Surely the man who is bad is the one that does the deed that is evil? I tell you it is not a plain matter at all.”
Zondi was right. The bastard.
Traveling at 400 mph toward the northwest, an agitated air stewardess reached the flight deck of the South African Airways Boeing 727.
“We’re flying as low as we can,” the first officer protested. “Who’ve you got in there that’s making such a fuss? This isn’t the first time we’ve lost a bit of cabin pressure, and never have I heard-”
“A policeman.”
“They’re as tough as bloody nails.”
“Shame, he’s got a bad head cold. Says his ears are giving him hell and he feels dizzy.”
“Look, tell your friend that we’re very sorry, but another two feet down and we’ll be plowed in as fertilizer. Okay?”
“Cure all our troubles,” muttered the navigator, a sour man.
So she returned to Pembrook’s seat beside the starboard wing. He appeared to have fainted.
Argyle Mslope had a bed in the passage at Peacehaven Hospital-the wards were too crowded for critically ill patients. The noise out there did not trouble him, as he was heavily sedated.
And quite unaware he had a visitor. Zondi used the bandaged head for a hatstand and then made himself comfortable in a stray wheelchair.
The blood dripped very slowly from the suspended bottle, about once every four heaves of the great chest beneath the sheet. Whether the tubes up the nose were going in or coming out was a moot point. There was a needle taped to the back of one hand, ready for the next syringe, and a label around the other wrist.
It was good to see Argyle still had both hands.
“Can I help you?” a woman said in brisk, affected English.
Zondi swung round in the wheelchair and there was an African staff nurse surveying him with arms akimbo. She had been trying to bleach her facial skin and it was a sickening color.
“Elizabeth Mbeta! It is a long, long time. When did you come down from Zululand?”
“Zondi?”
“The same, my beauty. Are things going well with you?”
“Can’t you see? I am a staff nurse.”
“But you wanted to be a teacher.”
“They do not pay you in the holidays.”
“True, true.”
“There is not much choice for an educated girl. It was this or work in the prison. Here we have nice rooms-even a tennis court.”
“How do you like it, though?”
She made no reply, pointing instead at Argyle.
“He is strong, that one.”
“He’ll be all right?”
“If he…”
“Yes?”
A shrug, that was all.
If she had been any less of a bitch, she might have thought of something comforting to say in Zulu.
Lisbet had not, as she pretended, just finished preparing her own supper when Kramer arrived. The whole flat was filled with the smell of food that had been in the warming oven overlong. However, it still smelled extremely good, and the demijohn of Cape wine on the table looked even better.
“Was the letter any good to you?” she asked, heaping his plate with mutton curry. “I was so excited at the time, but afterwards I wondered why.”
“Call it feminine intuition,” he replied gallantly.
“What did you learn, then?”
By the time the last banana fritter disappeared and the coffee was poured, he had brought her up to date on the investigation.
“Mind if I say something, Trompie?”
“Hell, no.”
“Then I don’t think your explanation of why Boetie left the coded papers with Hennie is very convincing.”
“You have a better one?”
“Maybe, although it’s along the same lines. I think he was going to show off with them when it was all over; give Hennie and the others the wrappers and let them see for themselves what a smart guy he was. You hear it every day in the classroom, especially on Mondays. Someone says he spent the weekend hunting buck with a rifle and all the rest say, ‘ Ach, we don’t believe that! ’ There would naturally be a gap before the papers say anything and that’s when he’d have shown them.”
Kramer half-closed his eyes.
“You sound as if you’ve gone off Boetie a bit.”
“Well, am I right?”
“Nearer the truth than myself? Probably. This is all guesswork. But what is it about Boetie that’s changed your attitude?”
“I was looking through his compositions today. He was very self-assured, you know, and almost frighteningly correct in his outlook. You should see the one he did on his beach holiday-a long complaint about litter and girls indecently dressed. He even quoted the regulation they have in the Free State for keeping sunbathers at least eighteen inches apart around swimming baths.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. All in favor of it. And then he-”
“What?”
“Had the cheek to do this-to carry on his own investigation. That card the club issued him with stressed cooperation with the police, but he didn’t seem to take too much notice of that.”
“Everyone twists the law a little at times.”
“But he had no right to! He was a child.”
“Quite right. Boetie was a bad boy but you can’t blame him altogether. He was provoked by the station commander.”
“The last time you were almost defending the man!”
How galling it was to discover that even Lisbet argued like a woman.
“Well, that’s the sergeant off the hook now-nobody to write in with his name, rank, and number.”
Lisbet smiled wryly.
“Jan has already seen to that. In fact, they all spent their free period composing flowery tributes for the letter section.”
“Christ! The Colonel doesn’t want the club to become involved in this stupid incident.”
“Don’t worry. I offered to post them all in one big envelope-it’s behind you on the telephone table.”
“That’s my girl!”
“Oh, thank you, Lieutenant, I thought you would never say it. More coffee?”
It was virtually impossible to gauge how jocular that remark had been intended to sound. Kramer recognized its potential in terms of the elusive signals exchanged by the more modest mammals during mating season, but decided to dwell on work a little longer until he was certain of pleasure.