Free The Song Dog by James McClure Page B

jacket and the pair of tennis shoes registered. Short Arse wason the move, as jaunty as ever, chewing on a length of sugarcane. He took absolutely no notice as the Chevrolet went by, enveloping him in a cloud of red dust that hung in the air for several seconds before disappearing.
    By then, Short Arse appeared to have disappeared himself, but the Chev was into the next corner before Kramer knew it, making it too late to verify this fleeting impression without reversing.
    “Ach, no, the bastard can’t have vanished,” Kramer told himself, not dropping speed, “but one thing’s for certain: I
have
seen that same walk before somewhere—and it
wasn’t
some other coon doing it …”
    MOON ACRE FARM — KEEP OUT warned the snazzy sign, and forced a quick turn to the left. The cattle grid between the gateposts clattered loudly under the Chev and then came the hiss of a wide drive, laid with gravel.
    Listen, Kramer told himself, you’ve already got too much on your mind to start worrying about this Short Arse nonsense, so just forget all about it until later, when there’s time.
    But he went on searching obscure corners of his memory for a matching mug shot until the farmhouse came in view, framed by the last rows of sugarcane. Beyond them stretched a lawn so green and neat a carpet would certainly have been cheaper, provided you cut holes in it for the trunks of the English trees scattered everywhere like in a park. Keeping the grass so green were more water sprinklers than Kramer had ever seen off a racetrack, and squatting kaffirs moved in lines, plucking out imperfections with watchmaker’s precision and placing them in burlap bags tied to their waists. The huge farmhouse itself was every bit as neat as the lawn, what with freshly painted columns holding up the verandah roof and bright, striped canvas making the deck chairs and other outdoor seating as cheerful as toffee wrappings.
    Kramer drove right the way up to the front steps, andswitched off his engine after a quick, loud rev to announce his arrival. Two wolves—or rather, two creatures that looked very like wolves—immediately sprang over the verandah railing and hurled themselves at him, snarling with astonishing ferocity. He felled the first with his car door as he stepped out and got the other in the throat with his toe cap, snapping its head back.
    “Well, that’s buggered the bastards as watchdogs,” said a cool voice in English. “I’ll have them destroyed.”
    Kramer looked around. Coming down the front steps was a man in his early sixties, lean as a whip and with a beak-nosed head that seemed a sunburned version of the busts printed on the Roman-Dutch lawbooks at Police College. He wore an elephant-tail bracelet on his right wrist, a fiddly watch filled with little extra dials on his left, and carried a fly whisk. The rest of his appearance was standard English-speaking farmer: short-sleeved, open-necked white shirt; khaki shorts to midthigh; long khaki stockings and tan desert boots.
    “Mr. Bruce Grantham?”
    “The very same. You’re obviously a police officer—poor old Kritzinger’s replacement? I’d been hoping it wasn’t true, the guff I heard this morning on the bush telegraph.”
    “Depends on what it was you heard,” said Kramer.
    “That Maaties had become involved in some God-awful explosion or other at Fynn’s Creek, and that young Mrs. Gillets had died with him. He’d been trying to save her, I believe?”
    “It certainly looks that way,” agreed Kramer. “You’d say that would have been in character?”
    “Oh, utterly—brave as a lion! Maaties has saved my bacon more than once, I don’t mind admitting, when my laborer wallahs have got a trifle out of hand. But what happened to him exactly? I think I was enough of a chum to be entitled to a few details.”
    “There really isn’t much to add,” said Kramer, “whichis why I’ve come to see you, hoping you can come up with some ideas.”
    “Damned if I can see