The Song Dog (23 page)

“Murder and Robbery. How about you?”

“Ach, still Uniform, still trying to stop these mad kaffirs from killing each other. Faction fights every weekend in the reserves is one thing, just a few hundred huts burned, a few bodies. But this business between the Sithole clan and the Shabalalas is turning to war, man, and the Colonel has suddenly ordered us in, following reports that hundreds of bloody servant boys are buggering off on compassionate leave to come home and take part in one big final battle. It’s supposed to start first thing in the morning, and we’re one of the three groups going to come down hard on the bastards, put a quick stop to it. Man, I’d booked a court to play tennis.”

“Another new face?” said an amiable voice, and Kramer
turned to see a portly, grey-haired man in an SAP raincoat, his pajama trousers and slippers showing beneath it, come waddling across. “Sergeant Stoffel Wessels, sir, station commander here at Mabata. You can’t know how good it is to have company, hey? Eleven months of the year, the best conversations I have are with billy goats!”

“
And
with the Oude Meester, Stoffel!” said Van Vuuren, with a wink for Kramer.

Wessels smiled beneath his walrus moustache. “Very true, Aap, very true. And a most cultivated old gentleman he is, to be sure—a brilliant philosopher! What profound thoughts he encourages in a man! What profound thoughts!”

“Oh, ja?” said Kramer. “But right now, my interest is more in witch doctors and other such tomfoolery. You know one hereabouts with a ‘song dog’?”

“Of course, Mama Pelapela! What a character! What a character! Is this to do with poor Maaties?”

“Uh-huh. I want to know if—”

“Poor Maaties! Difficult to believe! Difficult!”

Perhaps, thought Kramer, billy goats needed everything said twice to them before it sank in properly, but Wessels was beginning to get very definitely on his nerves. “How far is it to her place?” he asked. “Could I get there tonight?”

“Tonight? Ach, no, not a hope, I’m afraid! It’s three hours on foot there, and three—”

“Shit!” said Kramer.

“Can I help?” offered Van Vuuren. “I mean,” he said, turning to Wessels, “can you point to this place on a map?”

“Now what?” Zondi murmured to himself in Zulu, left alone on the front seat of the Land Rover, pinned down there by a dozen pairs of hostile eyes wondering what in Christ’s name this strange black thing was doing in their deeply tanned midst.

He lit a Texan and sat back, tipping his hat down over his nose.

It had been quite a night, one way and another, and very little of it could be said to have had anything to do with his own quarry, cousin Matthew Mslope.

Poor Matthew. Whenever he thought of him, he could smell again the eucalyptus scent of the blue gums surrounding their mission school, deep in that remote Zululand valley. There the best dreams of his life had been dreamt; all you had to do, the white nuns had said, was to learn your lessons well and then, when you grew up, you would be the equal of any man and could do whatever you wanted to do. They had been wrong, those stupid, kind women, who believed all men were brothers, totally wrong, but Zondi still could not feel bitter. Unlike his classmate, his cousin Matthew Mslope, who had gone back with a mob to burn, pillage, rape, and wreak his revenge. Which had also been wrong, and meant that he, too, had to die now.

Or rather, once this intriguing business of explosion at Fynn’s Creek had reached some sort of conclusion. Zondi had always derived a particular pleasure from a white killing. Not for the reasons that many might suppose, being quick to suggest racial, political, even arithmetical implications well worth a lick of the lips—but because nonwhite killings tended to be so banal, so straightforward: hot-blooded outbursts of violence that left nobody guessing. Here was the hacked-up body, here was the kindling axe, here were thirty-six eyewitnesses, and here was the murderer, still hanging around, looking a bit weary, but quite prepared to go to his fate in order to spare the spirits of his ancestors any further turbulence.

A white killing, on the other hand, almost invariably—possibly because there had been so many ingenious books and films made about them—contained a strong element of mystery, making a man really “put his thinking cap on,” to use one of Sister Theresa’s favorite expressions. Yes, it was
as though most white murderers felt they had a tradition to maintain, certain standards to uphold, and so acted accordingly. Or was it because they tended, in the main, to be less passionate, less impulsive, and far more cold-blooded in their killing, more calculated, and certainly more conscious of the possible consequences?

“Interesting …” murmured Zondi, tapping his ash into his other hand and then sending it, with a puff, out of his window.

“Grantham wasn’t bullshitting me,” said Kramer, sliding into the driver’s seat of the Land Rover. “Stoffel Wessels, the station commander here, says that Kritz came back from seeing this old witch-doctor crone in one hell of a state. All he wanted to do was get drunk and he flattened nearly a case of Castle lagers before saying a bloody word to him.”

“And, Lieutenant?” prompted Zondi.

“Apparently, Kritz really did go to find out about something he was investigating—what he described as a ‘series of fatals.’ ”

“A
series
, you say, boss?”

“Well, the impression he gave Wessels was definitely of more than one.”

“
Hau!
Did this include the young madam’s parents?”

“Wessels wasn’t given any details.”

“But what other ‘fatals’ do we know of, Lieutenant?”

“Buggered if I can tell you!”

“What else did Boss Kritzinger let slip, boss?”

“That he was very worried by something the Song Dog had warned him about.”

“Which was, boss?”

“No idea, he wouldn’t tell Wessels, and then tried to turn it all into just a joke. Listen, you and me are going to be at this cave place first thing tomorrow, and we’re going to find out exactly what—”

“First thing, boss? That cave is many, many—”

“Ach, I know! But it’s all fixed up. You see that old colleague of mine over there? He’ll have us whipped in and out in no time.”

“You mean, Lieutenant, we are to ride in a helicopter? I, er, would rather …”

“Hell, you’re not afraid to fly, are you? You, a bloody Zulu warrior, the bravest of the brave, scaring everyone shitless in your monkey skins and snazzy leopard trimmings, hey?”

“The Lieutenant has placed his finger
right
on the problem, boss! As he can see, I am simply not dressed for the occasion,” said Zondi.

A
N HOUR AFTER
first light, an Alouette helicopter rose with a high whine and clatter from the bare patch in front of Mabata police station, tipped forward, and headed westward, climbing.

“Hey, Tromp,” Aap van Vuuren shouted in Kramer’s ear, “you must introduce me to this new girlfriend of yours, when you get the chance!”

Kramer frowned. “What the hell do you mean by that?” he demanded.

“You obviously don’t realize what a state she left you in last night! Grass stains, ja, that’s one thing, but Jesus, your clothes were covered in mud and blood, man! She must be a proper bloody tigress!”

“Hell, no,” Kramer shouted back, “she’s a librarian.”

Van Vuuren grinned, and then leaned over to check that the Defence Force Pilot had the right map strapped to his thigh, showing the wax-penciled course the helicopter was to follow.

Kramer glanced back at Zondi, crouched behind them, grim-faced but intent on the scenery below. “Well?” he said. “This beats bloody walking, kaffir, you’ve got to admit!”

“It makes me frightened about God, boss,” said Zondi.

“Oh, ja?”

“From up here, Lieutenant, a man is
nothing
 …”

“Maybe that’s what improves the view.”

Which was remarkable in its way, if you liked mountains that resembled sections of browned backbone exhumed from a shallow grave, complete with the usual snail-trail patterns of footpaths and the snails themselves, represented here by pointy-roofed Zulu mud huts adhering to the steep slopes in village circles. Later, slow coils of smoke would rise from the fireplaces outside each main hut, but presumably it was still far too early for even the youngest wives of a sub-chief to be stirring. Cattle panicked, though, starting skinny stampedes at the sound of the helicopter’s rotors, and tiny herd boys, roused from their half-slumber, shook feeble fighting sticks, as the giant dragonfly shadow skidded over them.

“The general idea is,” said Van Vuuren, still shouting in Kramer’s ear, “we’ll drop you off at this witch doctor’s, knock some sense into these bloody kaffirs, then come back and pick you up again on the way home, okay?”

Kramer, who had already agreed to this plan at least five times that morning, nodded.

“In other words,” said Van Vuuren, “we should be back no later than twelve noon.”

“Ja, ja, so you said.”

“Give or take a few minutes.”

“Ja, fine.”

“Depending on how things go.”

“Of course.”

“About noon, then?”

“Ideal.”

“Or maybe a little after, who knows?”

Dear God, thought Kramer, no wonder Van Vuuren had a reputation for getting the suspects he interrogated to sign
anything
.

Zondi chose his footholds on the steep path with care, aware that his legs were still a little shaky after that helicopter ride.
As interesting as it might have seemed at times, a man had to draw the line at what was natural.

Pausing to catch his breath, he looked back down at the landing place but failed to spot the Lieutenant, who must have found himself somewhere comfortable to sit out of sight and smoke his Luckys.

“This witch-doctor business is kaffir’s work,” the Lieutenant had said after the helicopter had gone. “Just see that I’m not disappointed.”

And Zondi had been greatly relieved, because visiting a
songoma
, more especially one of such extraordinary repute as Mama Pelapela, called for a show of respect that most whites would find too humiliating even to attempt, thus jeopardizing everything.

“Which again poses the question: What sort of man could this Maaties Kritzinger have been?” Zondi said to himself, continuing his climb. “Unusual, to say the least …”

Then the mountainside began having the strangest effect on him. Perhaps it started with the crow which swooped suddenly, cawing, making him turn and watch it rise again into the sky. For several seconds, he felt a child again, always fearful when a crow warned him about something—as his grandmother swore they did—yet never knowing what it was. And when his gaze returned to the path ahead, he kept on seeing that differently, too. Like a child, his eyes picked out creatures he’d so far not noticed: a grotesquely faced grasshopper bobbing on a grass stalk, two bustling dung beetles, a praying mantis gorging itself, spiders, ants, lizards … no snakes, although he did come across the sloughed skin of a puff adder, which made his heart beat faster. How
alive
that slope now seemed, how filled with stings and bites and certain death, and how much more alive he himself felt, how much more at home, a million miles from the sidewalks of Trekkersburg, the alleys, shantytowns, and city stench.

A goblin sprang up in front of him, hideous, prancing, waving its tiny cowhide shield and assegai, uttering a long, wavering cry, barring his way in a kilt of monkey tails.

For an instant, Zondi froze.

“Who is it that travels this path?” came the shrill challenge. “Who is that
dares
approach the cave of She Who Hears the Song Dog?”

Then Zondi laughed. “Tokoloshe!” he said, recognizing the Zulu dwarf in that instant. “Man, I’ve often wondered where you’d got to!”

“Oh, shit,” said Tokoloshe in English, letting his arms drop. “Not
you
, Sergeant Zondi …”

“The self-same, my friend! Where was it that we met last? Ah, I know! At Trekkersburg bus station—you were pickpocketing a crowd of white school kids.”

“Never!”

“Oh, ja? That isn’t how I remember it. But tell me, why the change of occupation?”

“An honest living, Sergeant …”

“That I can’t believe!”

“You’re right, it was a bit more complicated than that.”

“I wish I had time to listen—later, maybe?”

“Perfect!” replied Tokoloshe, with resounding insincerity, and then switched back to Zulu to say: “The
songoma
will want to know why you have come to see her. What should I tell her this is about?”

“If she’s any good, she’ll know already,” said Zondi, holding out a ten-rand note.

Snatching it from him, Tokoloshe went leaping up the footpath like a goat, beckoning to Zondi to follow him.

Ridiculous! thought Kramer, coming to his senses in the shade of an overhanging rock. I must be mad. No wonder Van Vuuren and his cohorts had lifted off in a state of snide giggles, at last
able to express their amazement that any white man, let alone a senior CID officer in the SAP, should take some black bitch of a witch so seriously he would go to these lengths to include her in his investigations.

“Totally ridiculous!” he said aloud, stamping on the Lucky Strike he had only just lit. “Zondi, you come back here, you hear?”

But when he looked up the side of the mountain, Zondi had vanished, leaving just an old crow stropping its beak on a boulder.

The cave mouth, invisible from the air on account of surrounding foliage, mostly an out-of-place granadilla vine, had an unexpectedly homely appearance. Two empty milk bottles stood just outside the entrance, as though the National Cooperative Dairies milk cart was likely to call by at any minute, and a pair of pink, knee-length bloomers had been hung out to dry on a thorn bush.

“Wait here,” ordered Tokoloshe, pointing his spear at a spot just beside the fireplace, which was defined by a ring of baboon skulls. “I must first announce your presence!”

Zondi, who suspected that the helicopter had already done all the announcing necessary, nonetheless squatted down as directed.

That was when he noticed that the milk bottles each contained something after all: pubic hair suspended in fine spiderweb.