Kramer cuffed the grin off Zondi’s face and then the pair of them got out, averting their eyes.
Van Rensberg reached them, turned his broad back on Zondi, and saluted Kramer. A very excellent salute that should have been available for all recruits to study. A text book salute slow enough for Kramer to note the wide gleam down Van Rensberg’s right forearm. So he had not found what he sought after all.
“Hear you’ve got a real farty one for me, sir.”
“Sorry, Sergeant. He’s been out in the sun for a day or so.”
“That’s all right, sir-I’ll get your Bantu to put him on the tray.”
Kramer glanced over his shoulder.
“Sergeant Zondi’s not a big man.”
“ Ach, he can roll him, sir.”
“Fine, but just wait for the doctor first, hey?”
“Okay, sir.”
It was a long wait. Kramer and Zondi spent it on the humdrum of investigation; measuring the distance between the road and the body, calculating the wheelbase of the car which had left the tracks, making rough sketches and compiling notes. Van Rensberg followed them about, talking with inordinate nostalgia of his days on the beat down in Durban where, it appeared, he had done little else than solve famous cases. It soon became obvious that a flash of executive genius had given him the dead for company.
Dr Strydom stepped out to a warm welcome from him.
“So we meet again, Doc?”
“You’d think once a day was enough, Sergeant. What is it this time, Lieutenant?”
“Bantu male, a cripple.”
“Oh?”
“Your old friend Shoe Shoe.”
“What has he been up to?”
“Nothing. For too long.”
“I must see this.”
And away he trotted, blinding himself by pulling the rubber apron over his head and nearly falling right over the corpse. He took a long look.
“It’s not often these things affect me, but I must say Lieutenant this really gets my goat. It’s the most bloody inhuman…”
Obscenities failed him.
“I’d say the girl had it easy by comparison,” Kramer murmured.
“Too right you are. Quick and clean. Nothing in this axilla but bugs.”
“What?”
“Armpit,” Van Rensberg explained smugly. That was another thing about him: he had all the irritating traits of medicine’s sucker fish.
“Fetch the tray, Sergeant Van Rensberg,” Kramer ordered.
“Come,” Van Rensberg ordered Zondi.
“Yes, there’s not much more I could tell you now,” Dr Strydom said. “I think you’re right, it’s exposure. I’ll do a check for poison and anything else I think of. No bruises of course, no need to be.”
“The important thing is: how long?”
“Oh, at least three full days out here-today’s Wednesday-make it Saturday.”
Zondi slouched up, dragging the tray behind him.
“Are we finished now, Doctor?”
“He’s all yours, Van Rensberg. I’ve just got an internal check to do tomorrow.”
“Right you are, Doctor. Hear that, Zondi? You can use your foot to push him over. Just lay the tray alongside-like so. Now shove hard, man.”
Shoe Shoe went over slowly with a long belch like a reveller leaving his bench for the straw. A group of startled dung beetles, suddenly exposed in the middle of a round damp patch on the ground, scuttled for cover.
Kramer felt suddenly much happier about missing his lunch; one of the beetles had gone up his trouser leg.
“Shall we leave it to the experts?” Dr Strydom suggested.
“Fine,” Kramer replied, stamping the intruder free on the way back to the road.
“By the way, were the lab reports satisfactory on the girl, Lieutenant?”
“Not bad.”
“And you’ve seen Matthews?”
“Yes, we had our little talk. Quite a good bloke actually. Careless.”
“We all are some time or another.”
“No, I mean he even had her eye colour down wrong in his file-which he only bothered to fill in after you rang.”
“They’re brown.”
“Yes, but he swears they’re blue. Although I bet he never looked before yesterday.”
“How extraordinary! Old Georgie Abbott does, too.”
Kramer stopped short.
“It’s more than that then, it’s bloody peculiar. Now I just took a look through the slits and saw brown-did you open them properly?”
“Yes, in the prescribed manner.”
“Which is?”
“Are you doubting my word, Lieutenant?”
“No, man, don’t get in a knot. I just wanted to know.”
“Like this then; fingertips on the temples, thumbs facing in on the eyelids, a gentle push up.”
“I see.”
“Where does that get you?”
“Nowhere, I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, man.”
Kramer kicked at a stone.
“How about that stained-glass of Georgie’s? Could that have affected observation?”
“The theatre light was on. I don’t know, it might I suppose. But isn’t this a rather trivial point?”
“Yes, but strange.”
“Let’s have another look, shall we? I’ve got time before punishment.”
“What’s it, four o’clock?”
“Twenty past.”
“That’s pushing it. Like you said, it’s a small point.”
“Please yourself.”
Kramer helped him off with the apron as Zondi came over smelling his hands gingerly.
“Perhaps you have some tissues in your bag for my sergeant,” Kramer asked.
Dr Strydom looked a little surprised but began to rummage about.
“He’s driving my car, you see.”
“Ah, of course. What about some TCP? That should do the trick. And spirits to dry it off.”
“Ta,” Kramer said, leaving the effusive thanks to a dutiful Zondi.
Then the meat wagon took a short leap at them. Van Rensberg leaned across the front seat and bawled his farewells over and under the roar of the engine. Kramer caught a line about working office hours and returned the salute. That got rid of him. Off he hurtled, clearing the traffic for them all the way back into Trekkersburg.
“I’ll take you up on that offer, Doctor,” Kramer said suddenly. “Come on Zondi, don’t bugger about, man. It’ll stop you picking your nose.”
They detoured to pass the Market Square, with Dr Strydom still tailing them, and confirmed that the yellow Dodge had left it.
“This shouldn’t take long but I want to see Farthing if I can,” Kramer explained. “So I want you to leave the car with me and get down to Trichaard Street on foot. Don’t do too much or get too close. You could ask Maisy if Gershwin’s mob have been in for extra booze lately.”
“Okay, boss.”
“If I finish early, then I’ll drive down Trichaard Street once, fast, and you meet me in Buller’s Walk.”
“Got it.”
“And if not, then come back to the office by seven.”
“Yes, boss.”
Zondi got out at the next traffic light and Kramer drove the rest of the way cursing himself for not thinking of radioing headquarters earlier and asking them to warn Mr Abbott they were coming.
But there he was, scrubbing away at his palm in the yard doorway to the mortuary. He looked somewhat perplexed by the sudden arrival of the law. And a little concerned. Poor Georgie.
“Well, what can I do for you this time?” he asked.
“Tell me the colour of Miss Le Roux’s eyes.”
“Hey? Blue of course.”
“Why: Of course?”
“Because her hair’s such a lovely blonde.”
It was not very pleasant when a man in his profession spoke of the dead in the present tense. It could be just a slip of the tongue though, just as thinking a blonde had blue eyes could be a mere slip of the mind.
“Thank you, Georgie. Now our friend Dr Strydom would like another look at the person in question.”
“Certainly, certainly, come through, gentlemen. Please don’t mind the mess.”
The mess he referred to was a very orderly arrangement comprising a trolley of embalming instruments, two arterial drains on stands and an enamel bucket of viscera. At the centre of them a small, shrivelled man of about eighty lay on the table with his shroud pulled up.