The Song Dog (12 page)

“Let me say at the start,” Terblanche told him, after the introductions and handshaking were over, “that we’re both impressed, very impressed by your application to duty—you’ve certainly wasted no time, hey?”

“Just obeying orders, sir.”

“Oh, ja?”

“Troubled times, sir. Devices being detonated all over, political. Must take priority, sir, but we do our best, sir.”

“So you’ve ruled out this one being political?” asked Terblanche. “Only one of my blokes did have a theory that a saboteur from a sub could’ve—”

“Ruled out, totally, sir. Excessive-quantity explosives, sir. Sufficient, sir, for three acts of terrorism against the state, sir, and terrorists well trained, sir, but explosives in short supply. Other signs of amateurism, too, sir. Civilian, definitely, doubts none, sir.

“Oh, ja?” said Kramer. “Exactly how much dynamite are we talking about here?”

“Must have been seven sticks, minimum, sir,” said Dorf. “In all probability, blasting dynamite, plain, same as road and dam builders use. I need to request extra assistance to make a proper search for the wrapper fragments and other items.”

“Of course,” said Terblanche. “You can have any help you want, hey? Only what ‘other items’ are you searching for?”

“Source of primary detonation, sir, timing mechanism, batteries, wires, and so forth.”

“Timing mechanism?” echoed Terblanche. “So you have reason to believe that this
was
a time bomb?”

Dorf looked slightly bemused for an instant. “Naturally, sir. Is not that the whole point of using explosives?”

“In what way?”

“Well,” said Dorf, shooting Kramer a glance, “an explosive charge, detonated by timing device, allows the perpetrator to be removed from the scene of the crime at the time it is actually committed, yet rest assured the deed is done.”

“And so?”

“Alibi, cast-iron, sir, can be concocted.”

“But why would someone miles away be asked for his alibi in the first place, hey?” said Terblanche.

“Ah,” said Dorf. “That’s what they hope people will think. But there is invariably some known connection with the target, sir. Case of political act: known activist and state target. Case of civilian act: known associate and deceased target—business partner, spouse, established enemies, sir.”

“Spouse?” said Terblanche, his fists bunching.

“Themes, variations on, sir,” replied Dorf.

“Seems to me,” said Kramer, “the only bloody alibi with any relevance is the one pertaining to when the bomb was
placed
and not when it was set to go off, hey?”

“Very true, sir,” admitted Dorf. “Hence all the more
important, sir, to establish nature of device, timing, sir. In case of clock, ordinary alarm, for instance, maximum delay time equals one full rotation of the hands, hours twelve, sir.”

“And so,” said Kramer, “knowing that the blast went off at ten past midnight, the earliest the bomb could have been positioned—if an alarm clock was used—would have had to be just after midday on Monday?”

“Correct, sir. Alarm clock, ordinary, can be adapted to allow for greater delay, but would call for expertise not reflected in use of excessive quantity of explosive material, sir.”

“Uh-huh, so the chances are we’re looking for someone who was at Fynn’s Creek within those twelve hours before the explosion?”

“Everything points that way, sir,” agreed Dorf.

“Then our first job is to check on the movements of any known—er, associate?”

“Exactly, sir, pending a fuller—”

“Listen, man,” said Kramer, rising from his seat on the edge of the desk, “I know you’re pushed for time, so we won’t detain you any longer—you’re going back down to the beach?”

“As soon as I have the personnel to—”

“All the officers are at your disposal, hey? Just tell Sergeant Suzman to organize things, and Lieutenant Terblanche here and me will join you later. Okay?”

Dorf drew himself to attention again. “Very good, sir! Much obliged, sir!” The explosives expert did an about-turn and left the room, closing the spring-loaded door so carefully it suggested he hated the thought of anything banging behind him.

There was the long silence Kramer had expected, and then a hiss, which he hadn’t. Terblanche was on his feet the next instant, and smashed his right fist into the side of the filing cabinet. “Bastard!” he seethed between gritted teeth. “Bastard! Gillets, you—you—you—you
bastard!
” He was plainly
allowing himself just the one forbidden word, but making the most of it.

“Steady, Hans—you’ve only just started tidying up the place,” murmured Kramer.

Terblanche looked round with an expression so distorted by pain it was terrible to look at. It was an expression only to be imagined in the ordinary course of events—the expression of a child, say, being crushed beneath a bus. Then it was gone.

Quite gone.

“I’m sorry, Tromp,” mumbled Terblanche, straightening his tunic with a couple of tugs at his waistline. “Truly sorry, my friend. That was …”

“Only natural, Hans! You can’t keep bottled up forever.”

“Hey?”

“Don’t tell me the thought Lance Gillets might be responsible hadn’t already occurred to you,” said Kramer. “You knew Annika better than most people, all her troubles and woes. You even tried to stop the wedding taking place, and so–”

“Who’s been telling you all this?”

“You know damn well who,” said Kramer. “You obviously spent a lot of time with the Widow Fourie after her man had his accident. You know her mind, how it works, what interests her, how bright she is. And so, when you had to find me some accommodation, your first thought was to get her to leak the information to me in a—”

“Listen,” said Terblanche, raising an indignant finger to him, “so far as the Widow Fourie was concerned, my
only
thought was that she and the kiddies could do with the extra money. Nothing more than that! For heaven’s sake, I didn’t even
know
you then, which makes your—”

“You didn’t have to know me,” cut in Kramer. “So long as you made sure the investigating officer lodged with her, then you could be fairly certain that in this way, if in none other, he would soon learn a lot more about the whole Annika Gillets
affair, including a possible motive. Come on, man—try and deny it!”

Terblanche shook his head. “No,” he said. “I
can
deny it. I’m not clever that way. I’m not CID, I’ve told you so—how many times?”

“Then tell me this,” said Kramer, growing impatient. “Why, when we spent so much time together yesterday, did you never once tell me what the Widow Fourie told me last night? And yet you knew it! Because if she knew it, then you—”

“I said to you, Tromp, I said that you must always check with me anything anyone told you about Annika. I would have got round to—”

“Ja, but
then
you gave me the impression it was all old stuff, going back to when she was so-high to a bloody grasshopper! You never once implied anything up-to-date in your knowledge of her, any of the worries you had about her. Not one. Now explain that.”

Terblanche retreated to his seat behind the desk and sat down heavily, crossed his arms on his blotter, and rested his forehead on them. He stayed in this position a full two minutes, not lifting his head again until Kramer’s Lucky burned too low and he had to light another.

“I can’t explain it, Tromp,” he said. “I can only tell you that, since the moment I met Sarel down near Fynn’s Creek, my mind has been—well, I don’t know how to describe it. I’ve felt in shock, man. Real shock, like the time I found my ma dying in the small paddock, and thought at first she was a new foal trying to stand up, until I got nearer. Ja, shock like that, which is crazy! I’m a policeman, ja? I’m not meant to—”

“Fine,” said Kramer. “That’s all I wanted to know. I’m getting the picture and—”

“But
I’m
not!” protested Terblanche. “I don’t ruddy know what’s happening to me—I just watch. Do you know that? I just watch, and see everything happening far outside of me. I
knew I should tell you everything when you came yesterday, but that meant I’d have to think properly about what had happened, about
what I knew would bloody happen eventually
and had tried so hard to prevent. Oh, ja, that writing has been on the wall since the very beginning! But I couldn’t do it, couldn’t talk about her, it was all over. I also
knew
it had to be him, that Lance must’ve done it, but I couldn’t see
how
he’d done it. You know what? I even wondered, ja, when I got so angry there beside Kritzinger’s body, whether he’d been party to doing it, only he got caught short somehow—isn’t that terrible?”

“No,” said Kramer, “not really. It’s the way we in the CID think, hey? Maaties would have been proud of you.”

Terblanche gave a surprised laugh.

They traveled north within the hour, taking the Chevrolet. An apparently casual telephone call to Madhlala Game Reserve had established that Lance Gillets was still at the main rest camp. No longer drunk, but sunk in a deep depression, the game warden in charge had said. The doctor was about to pay a visit, and Gillets’ parents were expected at around eleven.

“Oh, shit,” Kramer said suddenly, several very muddy miles beyond Nkosala. “Didn’t someone tell me his pa’s a big-shot lawyer back in Durban?”

Terblanche nodded.

“Then, my friend, we better really step on it, before the bastard starts informing sonny boy of his rights or something.”

“But, Tromp, it’s nearly sixty miles of dirt road from here to there, hey? And we’re already going as fast as—”

“Ach, no, a better idea! I’ll ring and get the local cop shop to pick Gillets up right now and put him on ice for us.”

“But that could be really chucking petrol on the fire! What if we’re wrong? What if—”

“A lawyer ought to know the husband is always the number
one suspect in a wife murder, hey? That should make Pa Gillets keep things in perspective, and not—”

“No, Tromp, he’ll be a father first, man! I know I would. There’s really no way around this.”

“Except to go like the bloody wind, hey?”

T
HE FAMILY CARS
in line outside the game reserve’s main entrance looked every bit as respectable as their neat and tidy occupants, who gave details of their reservations to a Zulu game guard with a wide, welcoming smile. The Chevrolet joined the line like a drunken bum, hotfoot from the forces of law and order, crashing a PTA meeting: steam hissing from under its bonnet, another hubcap gone, and minus a wing mirror. Terblanche had to roll down his mud-splattered window before the game guard was able to see and recognize him.

“Hau
, greetings,
baba nkosi!”
the game guard said, shedding his frown to snap off a smart salute. “Straight through, suh! Straight through!”

And up went the barrier, which bore a warning that the speed limit within the reserve was 15 mph, and the next sign read
CAUTION
:
RHINO
.

“They should get a few more like that for outside the Colonel’s office,” grunted Kramer.

Terblanche chuckled. “Ja, only
bigger
,” he said. “Well, it isn’t much farther now, so can we have a quick recap? I didn’t, er, quite catch all you were saying on that last stretch …”

Kramer nodded. “We have a murder,” he said. “We have a known hard-case, we have motive, and we have method. All we’re lacking now is the opportunity—not so?”

“Opportunity?”

“To set a crude time bomb ticking. That is our one real problem. According to the cook boy, Moses Khumalo, Gillets left Fynn’s Creek in midmorning, so
theoretically
it was impossible for him to have used an alarm clock to trigger an explosion that happened more than twelve hours later—which it did.”

“Ja, but he could have sneaked back somehow,” said Terblanche.

“Exactly,” said Kramer. “Which is what we now have to find evidence to prove …”

As Terblanche had predicted, it did not take Kramer long to reach the main rest camp, his progress through that last mile or so of long, dry grass and flat-topped thorn trees being completely uneventful. He found this disappointing, never having been in a game reserve before, and having rather hoped he’d spot at least one species of lumbering brute he wasn’t accustomed to handcuffing.

The main rest camp turned out to be a bit of a letdown, too, being no more than an orderly collection of round, thatched rest huts, empty stockades, rock gardens, and a dozen or so larger cement-block buildings, also with thatched roofs, all set about with the same flat-topped thorn trees. Kramer had once visited a secret detention camp out on the edge of the Kalahari Desert very nearly as boring, but at least there every one of the shuffling inmates had been worth a second look, as opposed to what now confronted him: an asinine assortment of city dwellers, padding about in their shorts with red knees, flip-flop sandals, and garlands of bloody long-lensed cameras, looking like each had a multiple hard-on.

“Park over there where it says
RECEPTION
,” said Terblanche. “The Parks Board have got Gillets in that hut just behind it.”

“Like so, you mean?” said Kramer, bringing the Chevrolet to a sudden, sliding halt.

“Very nearly,” said Terblanche, opening his eyes again.

Almost immediately, as they climbed out, they were
approached by a stocky individual in game ranger’s uniform, who said in English: “Lieutenant Kramer, I presume?”—and smiled for no apparent reason at all, although he could have been trying to make some kind of joke.

The man was so deeply tanned that he was surely, however posh his English accent, in imminent danger of racial reclassification. As for his age, it was difficult to guess, late fifties to sixties, perhaps, but his background was obvious. Only an ex-military type would have known how to angle his Parks Board green beret quite so nonchalantly, while the cut of his khaki uniform suggested he was still using the same coolie tailor who’d kitted him out like a Boy Scout for the Battle of El Alamein.

“Ralph Mansfield, warden, chap in charge,” he said, extending a hand that was like taking a grip on an off-cut of pine. “Excuse fingers!” And he barked a laugh at what had to be a very old joke, intended to make him a bit of a character and to put people, new to amputees missing a set of digits, at their ease.