The Song Dog Read Online Free Page B

commander’s through here, Lieutenant …” Maritz said, leading the way.
    Cracked brown linoleum stretched the length of the long corridor, passing between scuff-marked cream walls painted green to waist height, and from the ceiling dangled unshaded light bulbs, sticky with tiny fried insects. The linoleum showed its greatest wear about halfway, where a short side passage met it at right angles. The side passage led in turn to a heavy, brown-painted door that bore a sign, in both official languages, declaring the room beyond it to be the station commander’s office.
    “In there,” said Maritz, pointing.
    “Bok, you’re invaluable,” said Kramer. “But have you any idea where the CID does its business?”
    Maritz nodded self-importantly. “Ja, of course! They’ve got two offices over the other—”
    “Then bugger off and start going through Maaties’ desk, hey? I want a summary of all recent cases he was investigating, and when you’ve gone through everything with a fine-tooth comb, I want a full report typed out in duplicate—one for the Colonel.”
    “The Lieutenant would entrust such a task to me?” said Maritz, so flattered he was barely able to contain himself.
    “Hell, why ever not?” said Kramer, who couldn’t think of a quicker, yet more bloodless way of getting shot of the idiot.
    Then, without knocking, he threw open the door to the station commander’s office and strode in.
    “Who the—!” began a startled fifty-year-old in uniform, as he looked around, a telephone receiver pressed to his ear.
    “Kramer, Murder and Robbery. You Terblanche?”
    The station commander nodded, covering the receiver’s mouthpiece with his hand. “Find yourself a seat, hey?—I’ve got the Colonel on the line.” Then he turned away and said, “Sorry, Colonel! Ja, it was—just arrived. Thank you, I’ll remember that, sir.”
    I’ll remember
what
, Kramer wondered, as he reversed an upright wooden chair, straddled it, and looked about him. Three gnawed chicken bones lay whitening on top of the one filing cabinet beside which slumped, on a slither of fresh black mud, a pair of filthy rubber boots. Half a packet of biscuits stood beside a cloudy water pitcher and its glass, and the window ledge was heaped with sun-faded dockets, shedding their contents. The only clean and tidy area in the room appeared to be the bottom of the large, wicker wastepaper basket.
    Terblanche himself certainly wasn’t a further exception to this rule, Kramer noted. Jafini’s station commander had small balls of blanket fluff in his spiky, Brylcreemed hair, something similar stuck to the razor nicks in his double chin, and a streak of maize porridge running grittily all the way down his uniform tie. There was also a dead moth in his right trouser turnup, made visible by his sitting with his unpolished shoes propped on a corner of a desk so cluttered it would take a bulldozer to make an impression.
    “Ja, Colonel, sir, all is arranged,” Terblanche was saying, and rose to his feet, almost to attention. “Very good, Colonel—I fully understand your orders, sir. Bye for now, hey? Bye …”
    Kramer, watching him replace the receiver, asked: “What is all arranged, hey?”
    “Ach, accommodation for you and your sergeant,” replied Terblanche. “There’s no hotel or anything here, see? So I’ve fixed you up with a couple of rooms with a widow woman I know. I’m sure you’ll like her.” Then he smiled shyly as he extended his huge hand. “The name’s Hans—a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
    “Tromp,” said Kramer. “Like a Lucky?”
    “Thanks all the same, but I’m a filter-tip man, myself.”
    Then Terblanche used a clapped-out lighter on first Kramer’s cigarette and then his own, before sagging back into his chair, looking exhausted. “I don’t mind telling you, this has been one heck of a day,” he said, knuckling his red-rimmed eyes. “I’ve only just got back from Madhlala, where I had to break