The Caterpillar Cop (A Kramer and Zondi Mystery) - Softcover

McClure, James

3.86

159 ratings by Goodreads

9781569476536: The Caterpillar Cop (A Kramer and Zondi Mystery)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1569476535 ISBN 13: 9781569476536

Publisher: Soho Crime, 2010

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When a twelve-year-old boy is found strangled to death with multiple stab wounds, his killer is assumed to be a pedophile. Lieutenant Tromp Kramer and his sidekick, Bantu Detective Sergeant Mickey Zondi begin to investigate and soon learn that the boy had been involved in a detective club that encouraged children to spy and snitch on people, and no one likes a snitch. Whom was Boetie spying on? As the two men look into possible leads on the case, they must also navigate increasing tensions surrounding racism in the ’70s in South Africa, and Kramer finds himself on the receiving end of much of the hatred himself.

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About the Author:

James McClure (1939-2006) was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he worked as a photographer and then a teacher before becoming a crime reporter. He published eight wildly successful books in the Kramer and Zondi series during his lifetime and was the recipient of the CWA Silver and Gold Daggers. His other novels include Imago: A Modern Comedy of Manners, Rogue Eagle, and Four and Twenty Virgins.

THE SOUTHERN CROSS marked the spot where Jonathan Rogers laid his dinner jacket and prepared to lay Penny Jones. Stretched out side by side, just their elbows touching so far, they could see the constellation framed directly above them by a small, wavering gap in the wattle trees surrounding Trekkersburg Country Club. And it seemed somehow so much more romantic than the moon.
That was the secret of the thing, after all—making out this was the Big Romance, soon to be filmed in fabulous Technicolor on a wrapround screen. Even if you, for one, knew nobody would be out fooling with a glass slipper come morning. Even if you were doing it only because they said it had never been done before. At least to Miss Jones.
Jonathan found her hand, gently broke its clasp on a paper tissue, and mated his fingers with hers. Then he had his thumb describe tight, tickling circles on the moist little palm.
“Don’t!” she whispered.
Instantly he went limp as a scolded spaniel.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was just I—”
“Never to worry.”
“No, honest. I don’t want you to be cross.”
“I’m not.”
“Promise?”
“Take your time, Pen.”
She squeezed and sighed happily.
But don’t take all night about it, darling—they had put a deadline on this one. The singles play-off would begin at nine sharp and the team were expected back in town at the hotel by midnight. Jonathan lad, they had said when they fixed him up with her, Jonathan lad, we give you until eleven-thirty, okay? They were a good bunch of blokes in the team, but never liked having any of their traditions broken. In fact, it was considered an ill omen if they were not all gathered together again for a final round before leaving. And as the law dictated that no female might venture into a South African bar, it meant Jonathan would have to get it all over and done with outdoors. Pronto.
He set his thumb to work again.
“What’s it like?” she asked timidly.
“Hey?”
“Being a tennis champion.”
“I’m not really that.”
“You will be, though—tomorrow.”
“Going to watch again?”
“Of course!”
His turn to give a squeeze, sigh, and say nothing. It worked.
“What’s wrong? Don’t you want me there?”
“Got to keep my eye on the ball, haven’t I?”
She laughed.
“You say you’ve seen me spectating all last week?”
“Gave me a hard time of it, you did.”
“Where was I sitting, then?”
He gave it a pat.
“Jonathan!”
Silence—the kind judges use before calling for a verdict.
“Now you’re cross, Pen. Aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Sure?”
“I’m not.”
“Can I kiss you then?”
“If you want to.”
He tried another. It was no better than the first half-dozen; her lips were soft enough but they parted wrongly so their teeth clinked together and she had pretty hard teeth.
“Oh, Jonathan ...”
He sat up slowly and looked about while he wondered if he dared risk his tongue.
It was surprising how bright it seemed inside the forest once your eyes had adjusted from the fluorescent blaze of the ballroom. He could see very well, in fact. The wattle trunks rose quite distinctly above the bracken ahead of him. He could even pick out spiders’ eyes glinting in tiny clusters on the invisible webs strung between them. And a strip of rag left on a sapling as a marker in some cross-country run. The moon was lurking about somewhere, that much was obvious, and doing its best to curry favor. Only he was impatient for it to edge its way through the trees and do miracles with a pair of bare, if otherwise unremarkable, breasts. He closed his eyelids to see what his imagination could find to project onto them.
That was the moment, as he so often said later, when he should rather have glanced back over his shoulder into the undergrowth. Just a quick glance and everything would have been so different. Horrible, of course, but not in the same way. Then he would shudder and think of Miss Jones, while his friends would try to make of their embarrassment a silent tribute to her memory. Poor old Penny Jones, spinster of the parish. Forevermore.
“What’s the matter?”
He kept his eyes shut and his slight smile turned away.
“Nothing.”
“You’ve gone all funny, Jonathan. Why are your eyes closed?”
“I was listening.”
“Oh? Is there someone ...?”
“I told you we’d be all right here; there’s not a wog for miles. It’s something else—can’t you hear it?”
“Music?”
“Yes.”
“It’s coming from the clubhouse.”
“That’s right. And the tune?”
Trust old Steve. Every team had its funny man and he had the ability to be funnier than most. Right now he was up on the bandstand doing a takeoff of Sinatra, belting out a ballad, and making damn certain it would reach his doubles partner in the woods. No doubt the rest of the crew were falling about the place busting a gut.
“Don’t know it. But I never listen to the radio much, just the ‘Hit Parade’ when my sister’s got it on.”
Which was as well, perhaps. Steve was giving with the oldie “Have You Met Miss Jones?”
“It’s our tune.” Jonathan chuckled.
“Really?”
More than that: it was a challenge. On court or off, the lads depended on their captain to boost morale by doing the impossible. There was no going back now with his shirttail between his legs.
Jonathan began peeling the bark from a fallen branch, slyly twisting his body so that she could see nothing but his back. He waited. The singing petered out. He waited some more.
“There is something the matter!” she said.
He shrugged.
“You must tell me. What is it?”
“Hell. I suppose it’s because you’re different.”
“In what way?”
“Just different, that’s all. Not like the others.”
“Who?”
“The girls at these dances for us—you know what I mean.” “No, I don’t.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then you must have a very sheltered life. Haven’t you heard why most of them come? It’s like being a pop star. You know.”
“You mean ...?”
“Yes.”
“I see.”
Count to ten slowly.
“No, you don’t. I’m not talking about that. Not exactly.”
“Oh?”
“Pen, I think I love you. Isn’t that crazy?”
One, two, three, four, five, six—“Why should it be?”
“Why should it be?”
Seven, eight, nine, ten.
Seven, eight, nine, ten.
“So you don’t think it’s crazy? Even if we only met tonight?”
“I—I cut your picture out of the paper last year.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re different, too, Jonathan. I’ve told everyone that.”
“How could you tell?”
“I know.”
He flipped the branch away into the bracken.
“Are you going to lie down again, Jonathan?”
“No.”
“But you said—”
“You’re different, Pen. Different. It makes me scared.”
“What does?”
“The way I still want to—kiss you, and that.”
“Perhaps I’m like them.”
“Don’t be sick! I told you the way I felt. Never happened to me before.”
“I meant ... I love you, too, you know.”
“It’s a bloody mess.”
Her hand stirred from the leaves at her side.
“I’ve taken them off, Jonathan.”
Hell. Without her spectacles, Penny Jones looked suddenly very unlike a trainee schoolmarm. Now her thick, long lashes came into their own and so did the pert nose with its dusting of cute freckles. Myopia lent the finishing touch by introducing a wide-eyed, trustful innocence.
The total effect was really quite appetizing.
So Jonathan made a slow-motion descent, took the first part of the kiss with a wary pucker, worked gently at her jaw with his fingertips the way he did when giving a worm pill to his dog, and gained entry to her oral cavity.
For one terrifying moment he thought he would have to learn to talk with his hands. And then she abandoned herself to her first adult sensation and took his breath away.
Literally.
Using every muscle in his athlete’s torso to subdue a coughing fit, he went straight into the next stage. Once again his superb fitness was of paramount importance as it allowed him to rest himself gently on top of her right half while taking the weight on his offside limbs. All he had to do now was keep her lips occupied while his body heat sneaked across.
She melted rapidly right down the middle and his knee sank into her warmth. He began a restrained rhythmic movement. Her thighs clamped on his leg so hard he involuntarily broke the embrace.
“You’re strong,” he murmured.
“Riding,” she said. “I’m in the pony club.”
God, you had to laugh. They both did. Only she apparently found humor in the absurd, while he saw it in the unwittingly apt. His laughter was also the release of tension caused by a final anxiety—if she had been pounding about on a saddle, then there would be no need to deflower and that was always a relief. Especially if you had a date with the lads.
“I love you, Pen,” he said.
“Do you really?”
“All of you. Every bit. Can I look?”
Before she could lift her head, he weighed it down with his mouth and sent his left hand down the front of her quasi-Regency dress to twitch the long line of buttons free. His right skillfully disengaged her bra hooks through the thin material at the small of her back.
Then he sat up—startled.
Never, never look a gift horse in the saddle blanket. Underneath, she was incredible. Like cream poured from a jug—a continuity of changing shapes each retaining a perfection of form. It was impossible to note detail.
“You’re ...”
Words genuinely failed him.
“Aren’t my bosoms too big? That’s why I always wear dresses like this one.”
“Hey?”
“But this isn’t fair, Jonathan.”
“What isn’t?”
“You looking at me. I can’t see you—can I?”
“Do you want me to ...?”
“I mean—without my glasses.”
“Pen, I’m going to, though—all right?”
She nodded.
And when he was naked to his black socks she giggled and said, “You’re still just a blur. You’ll have to find them for me.”
“Touch me instead, Pen.”
She did so, hesitantly. Then like a sculptor running a hand over a work by Michelangelo; there was awe and an urgent lust to create.
He touched her, too, selectively, and forgot to keep saying how much he loved her.
Not that it mattered any longer.
She was drawing him down into her.
It was sheer instinct.
Instinct.
Like the primeval leftover that alerts modern man to a pair of staring eyes.
Jonathan brought his chin up onto her forehead and looked into the bushes.
The eyes stared back.
There was a face, too. The face of a youth with blond hair who was smiling at him through a low fork in a tree.
“Jonathan?”
Her voice was anxious.
A terrible rage lifted him from her and he rolled to one side. She grabbed at him.
“What’s wrong now? Please! We so nearly ...”
He pushed her away. He was shaking uncontrollably. His face expressed one thing: revulsion.
Before she could ask him again, he was gone—blundering through the bracken, sobbing, cursing, heading straight for the youth behind the tree.
Who never moved.
Until he was caught by the shoulders and hurled to the ground. Jonathan was drawing back his foot for a kick to the groin when something made him so dizzy and nauseated that he staggered three paces and fell over a log.
Seconds later, she came hopping, a thorn in her foot, into the glade. Bibbity-bobbing about like anything. Weeping, too.
“Love me,” she cried. “I’m not different!”
And she threw herself down beside the dim male form and pulled a limp hand to her breast.
Then she felt the rigor of the flesh.
And blood where manhood should be.
“Jonathan!”
“I’m over here,” he gasped, “by the log.”
For her last rational thought, Miss Jones resolved never again to take off her spectacles.
Poor old Penny Jones.

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