The Song Dog by James McClure Read Free Book Online

this act. Eventually, of course, that means we’ll probably find out the same things that Maaties must have found out, and which brought him here early this morning. You’ll get your chance for revenge then, I expect.”
    “Good!” said Suzman and Malan together, and there was a grunt from Mtetwa as well.
    “Anyone found anything interesting yet?” asked Kramer.
    There was a shaking of heads.
    “Any questions?”
    “Er, ja, if you don’t mind, sir,” said Malan, tugging up one of his rugby stockings. “Is there anything special we should be looking for?”
    Kramer nodded. “Means of detonation,” he said. “There’s a bomb expert on his way apparently, but in the meantime we can try and find out what made the thing go off. Was it lit by hand—or was there a timing device? In other words, was the murderer here in the vicinity at the time—or had he got himself off to a safe distance?”
    “You want us to search for clocks and wires, sort of?” asked Sarel Suzman, looking up from his notebook.
    “Ja, and don’t forget one of the simplest fuses of all, hey? An ordinary cigarette gives you about eight minutes to—”
    “
Cigarette
?” echoed Malan. “Hell, there’s cigarette ends every bloody place here, Lieutenant! Surely, you can’t expect us to—”
    “But I do,” said Kramer. “I want every cigarette end picked up, and I want the envelope you put it in marked with theexact position in which it was found. What was that remark, Malan?”
    “Me, Lieutenant?” said Malan, who’d just muttered something and was now turning red in the face. “I never—”
    “You did, so let me warn you now: any childish nonsense from you again, and I’ll kick your arse so hard the echo will break both your bloody ankles—understood?”
    Malan glared at Mtetwa, who was fighting off a smirk, and then gave Kramer a curt nod.
    “Well, back to work, chaps, hey?” said Terblanche in a jolly tone obviously intended to lighten the mood. “Would you like to see around now, Tromp?”
    It was a moment Kramer had been almost avoiding, his own close inspection of the site. Usually, at a murder scene, the trick was to look for something that seemed out of place, but here
everything
was bloody out of place.
    “Why not?” said Kramer. “Starting with where Kritz’s body was found …”
    Terblanche took him to a spot a good twenty yards from where the front steps to the house still stood, attached to the wooden piles. “He was lying here on his back,” he said, “with one leg sort of bent under him.”
    “Not much sign of blood.”
    “Plenty in his clothes, and it’s this sea sand—soaks up everything that touches it.”
    “Uh-huh. Whose is the boot, about five yards closer in?”
    “Probably Lance’s—it’s for fishing. Shall we move closer in now?”
    Treading carefully, they advanced over a litter of wooden fragments and river-rush thatch, sidestepping sharp slivers of window glass.
    “You’ll notice,” said Terblanche, “the floor of the house is only missing totally from one of the rooms, the little one at theback. The kitchen boy says it was going to be the guest room for scientists staying overnight when they came to study the birds. It just had an unmade bed in it.”
    “Where’s this kitchen boy now?”
    “In his hut back there—I told him not to go anywhere in case you wanted to question him.”
    “Fine. Let’s take a look where the guest room was.”
    Kramer found there exactly what he’d expected: scorch marks at almost ground level on the wooden posts immediately below the gaping hole in the floor. “So the bomb must have gone off on the ground here,” he said. “Where was the female’s body found?”
    Terblanche swallowed hard. “All over, really,” he said.
    “Then how did you identify her?”
    “Er, the hand. The left hand, the one with the rings on it. Like I told you, it was a matter of being blown to bits. I don’t think I’ve ever—”
    “What was she doing in the