Read The Song Dog for Free Online Page B

on your arrival, and to collect up Gillets’ things, any valuables and that.”
    “Fine,” Kramer said again, and they reached the outer edge of the debris.
    A second police Land Rover stood parked there, and against it leaned a big, vicious-faced coon, built like a brick abattoir and dressed in a pale yellow suit with yellow, pointed shoes to match. He was rolling himself a cigarette and at first, in an astonishing display of insolence, did not trouble to look up and acknowledge their approach. Then he raised his bloodshot eyes lazily, licked his cigarette paper, and rumbled some unintelligible greeting in Zulu.
    “Now listen to me, Mtetwa,” said Terblanche, “this is Lieutenant Kramer, the new CID boss who’s come to take charge. So just you see that anything the Lieutenant here wants, the Lieutenant gets—okay?”
    The Bantu detective sergeant looked at Kramer, flicked a salute like brushing a fly from his right temple, and began what sounded like a long complaint, again in Zulu, while making no attempt to stand up properly in a respectful manner.
    Kramer scratched at his left armpit under his jacket, plucked his Walther PPK from its shoulder holster, and fired, slamming a steel-jacketed bullet into the mud within an inch of the bastard’s left foot.
    “
SHIT
!” bellowed Mtetwa, startled into a wild, sideways leap, his eyes popping with fright.
    “Good, so you
have
mastered another language—that’s all I wanted to know,” said Kramer, reholstering his gun. “Just see it’s the one you address me in on future occasions, hey, kaffir? Or, better still, Afrikaans.”
    The rest of the introductions went very smoothly after that. Kramer, however, was not overimpressed by his first sight of the so-called manpower now being placed at his disposal.
    Crew-cut Detective Constable Jaapie Malan only just topped the minimum height of five-six and breathed through his mouth, never closing it. He was the sort who wore rugby stockings with his khaki shorts, hoping this would make him appear more of a man, and yet was still having difficulty, aged about twenty-five, in getting a moustache to grow. Probably to make up for this, the squeeze of Malan’s handshake was so sudden and excessively hard that Kramer imagined he spent a good deal of time locked in the bathroom, struggling to get toothpaste back into its tube.
    In direct contrast, Sergeant Sarel Suzman’s handshake was the almost illusory contact contrived by someone who hates to be touched, just a brushing of palms and a quick, light clasp of cool fingers. It wasn’t a pretty thought, picturing what Suzman would be like should a prisoner try to wrestle with him, and he obviously had his revolver out a lot, to judge by the worn look of his button-down, leather holster. Aged about thirty-one, his blue uniform had the knife-edge creases a good wife would insist on her washerwoman making, yet he wore no wedding ring.
    Lastly came the two Bantu detective constables Mtetwa had with him, whose names Kramer didn’t catch and wouldn’t have remembered anyway. One was skinny and the other had most of an ear missing.
    “And now,” said Terblanche, “I’m going to step aside and the Lieutenant here will take charge of this double murder inquiry. Okay?”
    “Excuse, sir,” said Suzman hesitantly.
    “Ja?” invited Kramer.
    “I thought this was actually a single murder, and poor Maaties getting killed was more of a case of—”
    “Bad timing?” said Kramer. “Good, Sergeant, I’m glad someone is using his brains. It’s important we make that distinction right at the start, or a hell of a lot of time is going to getwasted through sheer bloody emotionalism. The
target
here was clearly Annika Gillets—maybe even her hubby as well—and not Maaties Kritzinger. Got that?”
    Everyone nodded.
    “And by the same token,” Kramer went on, “it’s only by investigating this target that we stand any chance of establishing motive—our key to who might have committed