The Song Dog Read Online Free PDF Page A

the news to Lance Gillets.”
    “That’s the husband of the female deceased?”
    Terblanche nodded. “Game ranger. I had a job finding him, too, until someone told me he’d been picked up by plane at Fynn’s Creek yesterday to help catch a rhino for some American zoo or other. He was at the main rest camp.”
    “Uh-huh—and how did he take it?”
    “How do you think? Badly, really badly—Annika was his world to him. He went berserk, understandably. I thought they’d have to use the knockout gun on him, same as with the rhinos, but now the other rangers have got him locked up in a guest hut, pouring neat gin down him.”
    “What time did this plane pick him up yesterday?”
    “I didn’t ask, hey?” Terblanche gave a weary, lopsided smile. “I thought whoever came from Murder Squad could catch up on that sort of finicky detail later.”
    “There speaks a true Uniform man.”
    “You’re right,” agreed Terblanche, heaving himself to his feet once again. “And since you’re here now, ready to take over,I’d best put you in the picture as quickly as possible. Easiest would be if I took you to the scene of crime, and explained on the way—after which, I’m off home to get some sleep for a change, I can tell you!”
    His face showed a grimness that Kramer recognized, having come across it in a few mirrors himself: it was the look of a man pushed to the limit of his endurance, willing himself to grit his teeth and make one final effort before going down in a heap, pole-axed by exhaustion.
    Even so, it was odd, thought Kramer, as he followed the station commander out of his office, that not once so far had Terblanche mentioned, even in passing, his late colleague—the otherwise deeply lamented Detective Sergeant Kritzinger.

4
    K RAMER AND T ERBLANCHE left Jafini in a scarred, long-wheelbase Land Rover that had been fitted with a wire cage on the back for Bantu prisoners. “The track down to Fynn’s Creek is truly terrible,” explained Terblanche. “It’d totally wreck that nice new Chevy of yours! You know about this bloke Fynn?”
    “One of the best?” ventured Kramer.
    Terblanche didn’t bat an eyelid. “He was some mad Irishman, a white hunter,” he said. “You know, back in the days of the early settlers in Natal. He came up this way and got in cahoots with Shaka, I think it was—anyway, the Zulu king at the time. They became such big pals that Fynn married all these kaffir maids, even started his own sub-clan with his own
impi
, his own Zulu warriors, and went completely native. Disgusting really, I suppose.”
    “Uh-huh,” said Kramer. “That takes care of Fynn, but what the hell does ‘Creek’ mean, hey?”
    “It’s English for sort of a stream, I think.”
    “Ah. Colonel Dupe tells me you heard the explosion.”
    “No,” said Terblanche, “it was my lady wife. She gave me a shake and said there must have been a bad car crash. You know how they sound like a big bang going off, when you’re close enough? But as for myself, I was out cold. Monday had never stopped, I promise you!”
    Kramer lit another Lucky. “And then?” he prompted.
    “And then the telephone goes,” Terblanche continued. “I answer it and it’s the Bantu left in charge of the station. He’s heard the big bang, too, and he’s panicking a bit because Sarel Suzman—my Uniform sergeant—is out patrolling in the van and he doesn’t know where to get hold of him. Man, it’s high time they gave us radios in the SAP, same as cops in America! Take that mess-up at Sharpeville when all those coons got shot. Now, if we’d been issued with radios, then instead of hitting a panic, they could’ve called for backup and—”
    “Ja, ja, so what happened next? You went out looking?”
    “I went to pick up a boy at the station first, and heard there’d been phone calls reporting the noise from all round, but nobody seemed to know exactly where it had come from. We drove all over, round and round. I even tried the