The Blood of an Englishman Read Free Page A

him.”
    Meerkat blinked. “Hell, if you think I had anything to—”
    “Tell me!” snapped Kramer. “Tell me everything you know about Archie Bradshaw or two minutes from now you’re going for a ride in a cement bucket.”
    Meerkat swallowed hard and squirmed, as though his arse-hole was so tight it was pinching him. “Someone tried to wipe Bradshaw,” he said. “Six days ago, am I right? He was taking his dog for a walk, up by the racecourse, and the shot caught him here in the collar-bone. It stopped inside. He woke up and his dog was licking him. Myself I think it was the blood the dog was—” He cleared his throat nervously, seeing Kramer’s fists bunch. “Ja, well anyway, he got in his car and went home. It was automatic drive so that was all right. His wife saw all the blood and she asked him what happened. He wouldn’t tell her. Even when the doctor came, he wouldn’t say. Then they took him to hospital and he had an operation. After he came round, he saw the cops here because they’d found the bullet, and still he wouldn’t come out with it. The doctors all said he was in deep shock, most probably. It wasn’t till the next morning that his wife heard his story the first time. Bradshaw said he had been walking by the trees when he heard this noise in the bushes. He looked round, and all he caught sight of was this massive bloke—like a gorilla, he said, or maybe a giant—with this silver gun in his hand. He had never in his life seen anyone so huge, he said, and it was such a shock he just stayed turned like that. Then he saw the gun go off, before he had a chance to say anything, and it was like a—”
    “Meerkat!”
    “Ja, Lieutenant?”
    “You’re telling me what was in the papers!”
    “But—but—”
    “Come on, man,” said Kramer, getting up again and walking round to face Meerkat at close range, “let’s hear what the whole town doesn’t already know about. Let’s hear what you—”
    “Now, listen, please listen to me, Lieutenant Kramer sir, all I know about this matter is what I have also read in the
Gazette
—and that’s the honest truth.”
    Kramer took a small plastic bag out of his pocket and dangled the contents an inch from Meerkat’s nose, making his eyes cross. “What’s that, hey? A point-thirty-two revolver bullet.”
    “And so?”
    “A point-thirty-two isn’t really so common, is it?”
    “Maybe not, but—”
    “Bear that in mind,” said Kramer, and returned to his seat behind the desk. “There has been talk going round that a certain individual is in illegal possession of a point-thirty-two silver-plated, hammerless, five-chamber—”
    “Me?” Meerkat tried to make his laugh sound incredulous. “Things must be bad if you’re looking my way, man! Firstly, I’ve never even met this bloke Bradshaw, and—”
    “He swears he’d never seen this bloke before either.”
    “Oh ja? And do I look like a giant?”
    “The mind can exaggerate these things, as you can imagine. In my opinion, Meerkat,
anybody
pointing a gun straight at you can look a big bloke. I remember a kaffir that came for me and Zondi one time, out at Peacevale after an armed robbery, and he was as big as King Kong till we put some holes in him.”
    “Even so—”
    “He was twelve.”
    Meerkat looked at the calendar on the wall with the blood spots. “Six days ago would be the tenth,” he said. “I’ve got an alibi for the tenth.”
    “What’s her name?”
    “Staff Nurse Turner.”
    “And where were you and Staff Nurse Turner at the time in question? In the sack?”
    “I was. I was going to have a wisdom tooth out.”
    “Impossible,” said Kramer.
    Another fly came to trouble him. He swatted it with the docket on
Archibald Meredith Bradshaw, Attempted Murder
, and wished he had chosen some other way of making a living. In the six days he had been in charge of the case, he had done nothing but chase up one blind alley after another, getting nowhere. Soon his boss, Colonel