The Song Dog Read Online Free PDF Page B

sugar mill for as long as I can remember, and I’ve known Annika since only so high. She …”
    Terblanche bit down on his lip, and Kramer looked away, not wanting to add to the man’s troubles. They drove on without talking for a while, entering an area like some remote corner of a bad dream. Here the sugarcane had been set on fire, presumably to get rid of its leaves and the weeds, making it easier to cut, and everything had been blackened until the red earth itself was hidden by ashes. Half-obscured figures, hooded with sacking, paused in the cane and stood very still, long cane knives raised motionless in their soot-covered hands, while they watched the police Land Rover lurch slowly by. Kramer had never seen black men so black before, and the whites of their eyes were like the dots on the Devil’s dominoes.

    “Ja, you’re going to hear quite a few stories about—er, young Annika, let me warn you,” said Terblanche, stopping briefly to engage four-wheel drive. “But before you believe any of it, you come to me first, you hear?”
    “From that,” said Kramer, lighting himself a Lucky, “I suppose what we’re talking about is a real good-looker. Correct me if I’m wrong, but as soon as this Annika turned sixteen, every young bloke in the district started swearing to God he’d given her eight inches, while every mother took to swearing that, although boys will be boys, such a slut would never be welcome as
her
daughter-in-law. The usual bullshit.”
    Terblanche gave a surprised laugh. “Isn’t it just?” he said. “You can’t be as citified as you look in that suit and tie of yours …”
    “Ach, no—a farmer’s son, born and bred.”
    “Me, too. What kind of farm was your pa’s? Arable land? Dairy herd?”
    “We grew a lot of rocks,” said Kramer.
    Another laugh did Terblanche good, and he seemed far more relaxed as he drove on again. Perhaps, thought Kramer, the station commander was neither a pig nor gutless, but simply overworked to the extent he was playing footsie with a nervous breakdown. Not that this explained why he never appeared to use a rude word, which was always worrying in a police officer.
    “You’d just left behind the drunk kitchen boy and driven on,” Kramer reminded Terblanche. “What happened next?”
    “Next, more headlights! Not the Jeep’s, this time, but Sarel Suzman in the van, going hell-for-leather—we nearly collided! Then Sarel is out, babbling that Fynn’s Creek has been blown up, and two persons killed, and he doesn’t want to be the one to tell Hettie Kritzinger. ‘Hey, calm down, man,’ I say to him. ‘Calm down and tell me how you know this.’ Well, apparently Sarel had heard the bang and seen the flash himself, giving him some idea of where to look. But by trying to take a shortcutdown from Murray’s Bay, across that bit of beach there, he’d got in soft sand and had been stuck there for goodness knows how long. Let me warn you, that stuff can be murder if your vehicle hasn’t—”
    “Ja, ja,” said Kramer. “And then?”
    “And then, well, obviously Sarel had got to Fynn’s Creek, and couldn’t believe what his eyes saw there! In fact, he drove past the first time, he says, because he was looking out for the house from the beach—only it wasn’t standing any more. Then he got to the estuary and went back and started searching for survivors. Maaties he found almost straightaway, and for a time he thought he must be the only victim, concluding Annika and Lance were away for the night. Then he found part of her hair-style, and that sent him full tilt for Jafini—in the process of which, we met up, you see.”
    “Uh-huh,” said Kramer. “So Suzman had beaten you to it by only a few minutes?”
    “Five at the most,” said Terblanche, nodding. “Naturally, I issued him with certain instructions—to telephone the Colonel, and so forth—then went on to see for myself what had happened.”
    “How much farther now?” asked