The Song Dog Read Online Free PDF

other side of the estuary from here, where Grice’s farm is, and on my way there, I spied headlights coming. It turned out to be four blokes in a jeep who’d been down on the beach, having a barbecue and a beer drink after fishing. They claimed to have actually
seen
the thing go off, a big flash the other side of the estuary, Fynn’s Creek way. One said it was a bang just like you get with sticks of dynamite when they’re building a dam. You know what I thought it could have been?”
    “No idea,” said Kramer. “Civil engineer running amuck?”
    “Ach, no—no jokes. From a submarine.”
    Kramer blinked.
    “You know,” said Terblanche, “surely you’ve seen all these newspaper reports of Russian subs coming in along the coast? The ones dropping Commie-trained agitators?”
    It was true, Kramer had seen such stories. But after only three weeks in Natal, he had already decided that the English-speaking press should, in all fairness to its readers, make liberal use of “
Once upon a time
” at the start of its news items.
    “I see you’ve gone quiet,” said Terblanche. “Because it doesmake a kind of sense, not so? Commie agitators with bombs and suchlike in their cardboard suitcases, landing at a time when there is already so much trouble among the kaffirs, burning their pass books and so on. Maybe the bomb went off soon after the agitator landed—you can never tell with coons, he could have been fiddling with the detonator’s clock to see what time it was.”
    “So you’ve found a third body?” said Kramer.
    “Well, no, but at least it’s a theory.”
    “How about the theory that this explosion could have been accidental?” asked Kramer. “Did the Gilletses use bottled gas for cooking? Were petrol drums stored near the house?”
    “Ja, Lance did have two forty-four-gallon petrol drums, but set well back—they’ve gone untouched. The stove was just an ordinary paraffin one that obviously never exploded.”
    Kramer nodded. “Besides which,” he said, “the possibility of an accident wouldn’t have brought Maaties Kritzinger skulking around at midnight with his gun out. Why was he doing that, do you think?”
    “Not a clue, Tromp,” said Terblanche, shrugging. “I’ve never been one to push my nose into CID business. I just read their reports every month, then put my rubber stamp on.”
    “Making you the ideal boss, hey?”
    “Ach, no, not exactly—it’s just I find it hard enough to keep up with my own job, never mind theirs, and Colonel Du Plessis’s quite happy. Here it is, the Fynn’s Creek turnoff: you’d best grab something to hang on to …”
    The rough track to Fynn’s Creek looked like a dozen others leading off into the vast sugar fields, so Kramer memorized a distinctive clump of stinkweed near its entrance. Then for a mile or so, the tall cane blocked the view on either side, and the bumpy ride grew monotonous. The air, however, changed, taking on a tang and curious freshness.
    “It was about here,” said Terblanche, “that I found an old kaffir staggering around on his way home at close to four this morning. He said he was Moses Khumalo, the Gilletses’ kitchen boy, who’d gone to get drunk with his uncle in Jafini. When asked about a bang, he said it was true, he had heard lightning strike much early on, and that his young missus, who was alone, must have been very frightened. You could tell how drunk he was from that!”
    “So what did you do?”
    “Ach, I left him there, and started going really fast—believe it or not, I’d somehow forgotten there was a game ranger’s house at Fynn’s Creek! It’s a new reserve, you know, experimental, and it hasn’t been manned very long. Or maybe I didn’t want to think such a thing—who knows? Anyway, I went like a bullet, hey, worried about little Annika now I’d just heard she hadn’t got Lance with her.”
    “She was known to you personally?”
    “Of course! Her pa, Andries Cloete, was labor manager at the