The Gooseberry Fool (12 page)

Cinderella, however, did not look as if she was going to make this ball. She stood a little behind the two dumpy ladies dealing briskly with an old couple’s returned books, her face hidden by long blinkers of soft straight hair. It was bright black hair, in the same way a gun barrel could be bright black, and made a sharp contrast with the coarse weave of her smock.

Kramer hesitated and looked around for something more like what he was after. But a sharp remark from one of the others had the girl come forward to take the book.

“But this … ” she said.

“Yes, miss?”

“Nothing.”

She opened it to show its date-stamp insert and then began picking through the wide tray of card holders on the counter. She found the right one and pulled out a card that had on it in block letters: MR. M. C. WALLACE, 9 CHESTNUT ROAD, CALEDON, TREKKERSBURG, and in printing: “For Fiction Only. This Card Cannot Be Transferred.”

That brought her head up, too fast for the hair, and Kramer could see she was wishing she could turn into a pumpkin. He was also aware of looking at a girl who was, in her very own way, not pretty but possibly beautiful. He had never been sure about these things since meeting the Widow Fourie.

“What’s the matter, miss?”

“I—You aren’t who it says here.”

“No? You know all your customers, hey?”

She went red.

“My name’s Kramer, miss. And yours?”

“Sa—”

Almost, but not quite, an automatic response; it showed she had control of herself.

“Then I’ll take a guess: Samantha?” But she turned from him.

“Miss Finlay, please,” the girl called to a colleague, turning, her voice lower than she had expected it to be.

“Don’t do that, Samantha—not if you don’t want a fuss,” Kramer warned softly.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

“A police officer, and I want a quiet little chat. Are you going to the party?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll be outside at six, on the steps. If you’re a sensible girl, you won’t try to leave by the back.”

“Can I be of assistance, Miss Simon?” cut in the same woman who had been a busybody before.

Samantha Simon. The two names went together very nicely.

“It’s all right, thank you, Miss Finlay.”

But the busybody was only getting started.

“Some little difficulty, Mr. Wallace?” she inquired abruptly, cheating at cards and getting caught.

“Ach, no, lady. I’m from the police—see?” Kramer sighed, showing her his identification card but keeping a thumb over Murder Squad.” “Some kind bloke finds your book lying on a bus. This bloke brings it to us. The charge office hears I’m going this way. I hand it in.”

“That’s all right then.”

“Which is what I said, Miss Finlay.”

“Why the fuss though, Miss Simon?”

“No fuss,” she said, staring in emphasis across to Kramer.

“Happy Christmas, ladies,” he said, and left.

Zondi identified himself properly to the inhabitants of Jabula as an arm of the law—one with a Walther PPK nine-millimeter automatic pistol conveniently near the end of it. Perhaps there was some risk in displaying the weapon, but it was a quick way of convincing a largely illiterate crowd of skeptics that he was what he claimed to be. Conviction did not, however, bring with it cooperation. Only the potbellied children, excited out of their lethargy, were eager to do as he asked. The rest glowered from doorways or impeded the search, moving about incessantly, so it was quite possible for Shabalala to keep changing his hiding place.

While the mob’s behavior exasperated Zondi, it also served to reinforce his suspicion that Shabalala was somewhere very close at hand. And, when he finally blew his top, it took no less than two shots into the air to clear everybody from where the huts and tents stood.

Zondi made them all stand on the other side of a line between two white flags, and then threatened to shoot anyone who crossed over. As he could not see to this order being obeyed and carry out the search simultaneously, he called up his child auxiliaries and offered a bounty of ten cents to the one who first spotted Shabalala.

The mothers watched dull-faced as their small sons and daughters scampered back into the living quarters, shrieking merrily as they invaded other people’s privacy. The old blind woman started wailing: the whole world had gone mad, and she was going to step over the line and end it all. When her daughter angrily offered to point her in the right direction, she shut up again. Meanwhile, the woman who had the flies back on her sores tried to impress upon the people around her that the fugitive was a dangerous man—a killer. Those who troubled to listen were left apparently unmoved.

After ten minutes or so, the children began to drift back. One had sugar on its face and another a bulge in the cheek.

“Look!” a grizzled-haired old man suddenly cried out in horror. “Our food! The children have been taking the food!”

Zondi snatched out his pistol and leveled it at him.

For even before the first anguished words, he realized he had made the worst mistake of his life by sending in the children. Potbelly, empty belly—it was an old saying. And youngsters had no idea of tomorrow, they did not understand rationing, nor had they learned to ignore the gnaw of hunger. Let them see food and they grabbed it—provided no adult was there to prevent them. It had been like inviting a swarm of locusts to find ten cents’ worth of grain hidden in a wheat field.

“We shall starve! Starve!”

“Stay back!”

But the people were beginning to move toward Zondi, taking up the old man’s cry of starvation, and waving their fists. They were no longer afraid. The gun was a quick death; what they faced now was slow and terrible.

“Back, or I shoot!”

They came on. All their pent-up frustration, their bewilderment, their anger focused on this one man—this maniac who had already virtually destroyed them.

“Bulala! Bulala!”

The three most dreaded syllables in the ears of any lone policeman—the Zulu chant for “Kill!” Once uttered, the word was an incantation that totally banished fear and replaced it with a wild blood lust only bullets could halt—if you had enough of them. Zondi had four.

“Bulala, bulala, bulala!”

The tempo was increasing and the front rank of the mob was twenty yards away. The shadow of a stone grazed Zondi’s gun hand. Keeping calm was fine, but had its limitations. If they reached him, he could count on killing four, perhaps five with a lucky shot close up. This would still leave him with something like over two hundred fifty berserk women. They would assuredly tear him apart with their hands and their teeth. Four rounds. He could fire three and use the other on himself. He not necessarily stop them. He could run.

Zondi aimed suddenly at the tail vane of the windmill, pulled the trigger, and the bullet ricocheted loudly. The musical sound was unexpected: it made heads turn on reflex. He ran.

Surprisingly, Scott had not been unduly put out when Kramer came back to say all the shops had shut so he would have to go down to the Indian quarter for the present.

“Trust the bloody churras to be Mohammedan,” Scott grunted. “Do anything to keep their shops open.”

“So you don’t mind?”

“I’m having a loaf, aren’t I? Besides, Colonel Dupe knows where I am if anything comes up.”

Which went some of the way toward explaining the plain orange juice.

“Nothing so far from Zondi?” Kramer asked casually.

“Nothing. Looks like he decided to knock off early for Christmas.”

“Ach, who knows?”

Kramer gave a nod and left the Albert Hotel once more, heading for the library. This time the streets were almost deserted, which allowed him to concentrate on wondering just what had really become of that crazy black bastard. On past performances, Zondi would have been back with his prisoner by now—or would have at least telephoned in to report developments. Kramer hoped fervently he had not gone and done something stupid.

Samantha Simon backed out through the library doors, thanking the head librarian for thinking of her, but insisting she had to get home. Then she turned to find Kramer right there.

“My place or yours?” he said.

“Pardon?”

“Where are we going to have our little chat? My office down at CID?”

Talk about an initial response. The mention of his office dilated her nostrils like the thrust of two thick fingers.

“But what’s this all about?”

“First things first. Where? You’ve got a flat near here, haven’t you?”

“Me? No, miles away. In Greenside.”

“Very swanky.”

“It’s only an old servant’s room.”

“Then I know a place where it’s quiet,” Kramer said, steering her abruptly down an alleyway leading into the legal quarter. Right between the chambers of two eminent advocates was a small tearoom which flourished on a lunchtime trade of forensic take-aways. The sign in the window was showing closed, yet the door finally opened to Kramer’s loud knocking.

“Lieutenant, what a pleasure!”

The smarmy creep who ran it ushered them in and then went behind his counter. Plastic holly was melting on the top of his espresso coffee contraption, and it stank.

“A little late to call, perhaps, and it is Christmas Eve, of course, but a pleasure all the same,” the creep said. “What is it to be?”

“Two coffees, black, put sugar and milk on the table.”

“But that’s no way for me to treat an honored guest, Lieutenant!”

“You’re on fire.”

“Oh, I’m most terribly sorry.”

The creep removed the decoration from the machine, gratifyingly burning his fingers in the process.

“Tough luck,” said Kramer. “Hurry up with those bloody coffees, then push off.”

“Anything you say, Lieutenant.”

The coffees, the milk, and the sugar were put down with great care before them. Then the proprietor made for the rear door, leading to his flat.

“I said push off, Gordon. You want me to put it differently in front of a lady?”

“But—but where?”

“Out. In the street. And don’t come back till that says ‘Open.’”

“I must say this seems a bit of a liberty.”

“Nothing like the one you take with certain matters, shall we say, overheard on these premises? Sam Safrinsky still wants to know how news of his surprise witness got to Oosthuizen.”

“You’re not suggesting—”

“I’m saying. Now go.”

Samantha had sat stiff and quick-eyed through this exchange, one which Kramer had contrived more for its effect on her than on sulky Gordon, now clicking away indignantly on elevator shoes.

“Relax,” he said to her affably. “I’m only like that if I think somebody’s trying fast ones on me. Milk?”

She took hers black and without sugar. Took a small sip and did not relax at all.

“I wish to interview you in connection with a certain Mr. Mark Wallace,” Kramer began. “You have been associating with Mr. Wallace over a period, and this association—”

“How do you know?”

“Simple. It was a fact that there was another woman involved, but nobody could understand how Wallace could see her in only half an hour a day, during which time he also changed his library books. This suggested one of two things to me. The first was that he got his lady friend to change his books for him earlier in the day, and he picked them up when he saw her. But then one of his friends said that he was not the sort of bloke to go talking to strange women. I wondered what women in his life were not quite strangers, might have something in common, as you say. That’s why I put the two together and came up with yourself.”

“With me? Why not one of the others?”

“You’re young and pretty.”

“Pah!”

Kramer stirred his coffee, trying to decide whether her laugh was as bitter as the muck he had been given to drink. He decided it was. But did nothing.

“Can I ask you something? What right have you got to bring me here?”

“Now don’t start that nonsense, Samantha, because there could be a serious charge, you know.”

“Adultery?”

Again a laugh—without sugar.

“So that is what’s on your mind, girlie? How many times?”

“You must be joking! Adultery? Where? In the Romance section between F and K?”

Kramer’s laugh was pure amusement, sired by surprise: these modern girls.

“No, I didn’t reckon on action on weekdays—but nobody’s said anything about weekends to me yet. That’s what I’ve put money on.”

Samantha bit her lip. She was now waxing mildly emotional. Good.

“Weekends? I don’t know what he even looks like at weekends—I’ve never seen him then. And—and if you want the truth, I’ll tell you something else.”

“Go on.”

“The bastard’s never touched me.”

Then she leaned forward over her coffee, hiding behind that bloody hair again. The shoulders alone betrayed she was sobbing.