The Song Dog by James McClure

how, but I’d be delighted to help where I can—er, what did you say your name was, Sergeant?”
    “Lieutenant Kramer, Trekkersburg Murder and Robbery Squad.”
    “A lieutenant! I do beg your pardon. They really are bringing in the big guns! We’ll pop up onto the stoop and I’ll see to some refreshments. But first, if you’ll be good enough to carry on ahead of me, I’ve a spot of tidying up to do …”
    Kramer, at ease in a comfortable verandah chair, lit a Lucky and watched Grantham supervise the removal of the two unconscious dogs by four of his kaffir weeding team, all of whom seemed to have difficulty in not grinning as they did so. This was especially true, he noticed, of one with a scarred left arm that hung slack.
    “So you see, Lieutenant,” said Grantham, raising his gin and tonic, “Maaties and I go back quite a way—a small toast to his memory …”
    Kramer nodded. “Did this mean you’d count yourself as a friend of the late lamented as well as a customer, hey?”
    “I’d most certainly like to think so! Many’s the time the pair of us have sat out here in the evening, just chewing the fat.”
    “How about food?”
    “Did we ever dine together, d’you mean? Oh, indeed yes, on any number of agreeable occasions.”
    “He was a hell of a bloke for a certain dish, wasn’t he?”
    “I can’t remember his having a particular preference for anything,” said Grantham, shrugging. “Always ate what was put in front of him. Very partial to a brandy to round things off with, though, now I come to think of it.”
    “Oh, ja? And when was it he last ate here, Mr. Grantham?”
    “Let me see … Tuesday last week? We went on until aftermidnight. I could always double-check with my cook boy if it’s important. Servants tend to remember this sort of thing rather better, God knows why.”
    “Ach, no, forget it for now. All I wanted was to be able to put a tick on my list of the nights when his movements aren’t accounted for. That’s our problem, you see—and here I’m trusting you to keep things to yourself—we don’t know the reason for Maaties being out and about last night. We’ve nothing to connect it with.”
    “And an explosion of all things! How bloody bizarre! What was it? A homemade bomb?”
    “Something of the kind.”
    “Intended for the Gilletses?”
    “Must have been, only Lance Gillets had been unexpectedly called away. Talking of Tuesday, though, I don’t remember Maaties’ list of recent cases saying anything about trouble here at Moon Acre last week …”
    “It wouldn’t,” said Grantham, taking Kramer’s empty glass to refill it with another bottle of Castle lager. “A purely social call on his part. If you ask me, he was simply escaping that frightful, neurotic wife of his. Poor chap seemed a bit down.”
    “In what way?”
    “Well, our conversations are usually fairly lively and wideranging—
were
, I should say—and touch on many topics of local interest. For once, Maaties hadn’t much to say for himself, and I was left scraping the barrel a bit. Mark you, he cheered up a fraction when I told him about my little clash with the Parks Board and that jumped-up box wallah they’ve brought in to boost, as they call it, the tourist trade in these parts. Sent
him
packing, by Christ! I’m having nobody bugger about with my cane fields.”
    “Ta,” said Kramer, taking his refilled glass and having a sip from it. “That sounds interesting.”
    “Far from it: a lot of bureaucratic balls. That’s also my landyou see, down there between Nkosala road and this ridiculous game reserve they’re creating, and they wanted to do something about widening the track leading through. Only it’s my road, a private road, and I’m damned if I’m prepared to lose two feet off either side for improvements out of sheer public spiritedness. Have you any idea how much land those two strips would add up to in
acres
? So I simply named my figure, watched him go an ungodly