The Sunday Hangman

by James McClure

  “Oh, ja? What does he have to say?” Kramer inquired, taking his usual seat on a corner of the big desk.

  “Careful! No vibrations, please. This isn’t as easy as it looks. Anyway, as I was saying, Myburgh sounded an intelligent fellow. He gets a lot of hangings, of course, being in a rural area and the Bantu not having sleeping pills and all that rubbish to play around with. Quite a lot of experience for his age.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Interested in what we had to tell him about the deceased. Said it would account for Erasmus carrying no identity—which shows he isn’t a fool.”

  “And?” prompted Kramer, wary of the build-up.

  “Well, he told me he’d visited the scene in person. No signs of violence, no strangulation prior to suspension, and a nice little fork in the tree to jump off. Nothing to make—”

  “But, Colonel—”

  “Ach! Look what you made me do! I don’t want bloody sunflowers, hey? If you’ll just let me finish.… The one slightly unusual feature was Tollie’s bust neck and his use of a drop—most suicides just sort of strangle.”

  “Slightly unusual? Christ, I’d like to hear what our own DS has to say about that,” Kramer retorted, confident that his doubts would be shared by Dr. Christiaan Strydom, the gifted if eccentric garden gnome with whom he generally worked.

  “Your wish, Trompie,” murmured the Colonel, good-humoredly, “is my whatsit. I checked with the very same not five minutes ago, and Chris agreed that a fracture was rare—although far from impossible, given the circumstances I described. He also made a couple of very sound observations, one of which Doc Myburgh had himself already noted.”

  Instead of explaining what this was, the amateur artist gave his undivided attention to the spread of the next disgusting yellow stain.

  “Do I have to just guess, Colonel?”

  “Hmmm. You could try, if you like: what have—or had—Doc Strydom and Tollie Erasmus got in common?”

  The answer he received was deservedly coarse.

  “Then let me give you a clue: where have they both, in a manner of speaking, served a term?”

  Kramer kept silent, regretting he’d ever bothered to pay the bastard the courtesy of a quick call. But his mind childishly insisted on solving the riddle: Strydom and Erasmus had both spent time in Central Prison, Pretoria, the site of the Republic’s gallows and, for this reason, one of the few places blacks were able to share the same amenities, however briefly.

  “Full marks,” Colonel Muller continued, taking Kramer’s correct assumption for granted. “… where it would surely be impossible for a man to remain in ignorance of what takes place there on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Every warder has to witness at least one little send-off, and I’m sure he then feels it his duty to pass on the deterrent effect to those maximum-security prisoners in for rehabilitation. Tollie must have heard their stories dozens of times during his last stretch—and maybe even the sound of the trap going down. And so, when he felt in need of an instantaneous death, guaranteed by the government itself, then—”

  “Tollie? That’s crap!” snapped Kramer.

  “Then I hesitate to ask you to bear it in mind, Lieutenant. Nonetheless, such an approach would be entirely rational on Tollie’s part, especially if he’d thrown away his gun and left himself just with a tow rope. Don’t let the statistics fool you: very few members of the ordinary public know anything about a drop or more would use it.”

  “You’ll be saying he did it out of conscience next!”

  The Colonel looked up. “Now who’s in the crap business?” He chuckled, leaning back. “That’s one kind of trouble our friend never got himself into, having a bad conscience. But you’ve got to admit that, in this context, there’s nothing inconsistent about the method used.”

  “I’d be surprised if he hanged himself any other way, sir—which doesn’t mean that I think, for one minute, he did it.”

  “A feeling in your water?”

  “Other inconsistencies, beginning with—”

  “Hold it; point two coming up. Doc Strydom shares your respect for precedent, you see.”

  “Oh, ja?”

  “Hanging, he reminds us, is a form of violent death that’s different to all the rest, inasmuch as the forensic presumption is, for once, that death was self-inflicted. In his strange mind, even judicial hangings are self-inflicted, but we won’t waste our time going into—”

  “Ach, why not?” Kramer was niggled into saying.

  “Watch it. You should be asking why this presumption is made. Simply because self-inflicted hanging has millions of precedents—going right back to Judas, if you like—whereas homicidal hanging is a crime that’s virtually unprecedented. Follow? In fact, the only case Doc could cite offhand was one in Paris in 1881.”

  Kramer lit a Lucky Strike and rode out a few waves of doubt in that water of his. For a moment there, this talk of precedent had impressed him, then he’d realized that the Colonel’s whole argument depended solely upon the number of homicidal hangings that had been actually detected.

  “A handy presumption,” he remarked dryly. “Hell, if my love life ever gets too complicated, I might give it a whirl myself.”

  “You do that, Tromp—providing you’re picking on two-year-olds these days, or on junkies stoned from here to bloody Christmas. Because the DS will still be making his routine check, and is certain to note any signs of secondary violence, such as might be needed to control your victim. Erasmus was conscious at the time, and there was no evidence of recent bruising.”

  “Fully conscious? How could Myburgh tell?”

  “Ah,” said the Colonel, appearing shifty on purpose, “here is the unbelievable part of the story. It seems that Tollie had in his left hand a small, leather-bound copy of the Holy Bible. He must have been holding it hell of a tight, and then the fatal spasm kept it there.”

  Of course, Kramer could believe that: sudden and violent death was capable of many tricks. He had once spent ten minutes trying to free a hair drier from the grasp of a skinny typist electrocuted in her bath. He had found a brier pipe, not unlike the Colonel’s, clenched in the teeth of a steeplejack impaled on a parking meter. And if anyone was to turn to Jesus in extremis, then it was invariably the scum of the earth—see the prayers scratched on any cell wall.

  But he said with conviction: “Ach, somebody stuck it in afterwards.”

  The Colonel wagged a hairy finger.

  “Sir?”

  “The truth of the matter is, Trompie, that you wanted this Tollie Erasmus for yourself. And now you can’t get him, you want someone else to take the stick.”

  Kramer shrugged.

  “Furthermore, it’s no use you and me jumping to wild conclusions, and saying Tollie was too psycho to ever think of such an idea, because we aren’t qualified to make that kind of judgment—I would go so far as to say that nobody is. Let us keep to the facts, and both our feet on the ground. I don’t want you going to Doringboom and forcing a confession out of Dr. Myburgh, for instance; or some other bloody thing, equally typical of you in a frustrated state. The facts, the hard facts, and how they concern us as of now—understood?”

  “There’s the money, sir.”

  “Just what I had in—”

  “I meant: would you kill yourself if you had twenty thousand rand still to spend?”

  “God in heaven!” protested the Colonel. “Since when was that known to you as a fact?”

  “Ach, sir; we’d have at least heard as much, if Tollie had been giving it a tonk. It’s obvious that he was waiting for the pressure to come off first. Probably shacked up in a flat somewhere with a little goose to do the cooking and run errands for him.”

  “Ja? The same little goose who maybe ran away with his golden egg one night? After doctoring up the curry? That has happened before—and it can leave a man very depressed.”

  Much to the Colonel’s evident satisfaction, the telephone rang at that moment, creating the right sort of pause.

  O
r so he thought.

  “Hey, when are you going up to Doringboom?” the Colonel asked a few moments later, cupping a hand over the mouthpiece. “Your old pal’s on the line, wondering if there’s a lift for him available. I thought it wouldn’t be long before he wanted to get his nose in there! You know how Doc is about these matters.”

  Kramer frowned; he also knew that Strydom had an official car of his own, which made the request seem rather odd, and that he didn’t like the idea of being tied down to bringing the silly sod back again.

  “Tell him I’m sorry, Colonel, but I’m not even waiting for lunch. We’re leaving straight away at one o’clock.”

  “Hello, Chris? He’s charging out of my office right now.”

  The Colonel listened for a second or two longer, chuckled, and then replaced the receiver with a flourish, thereby regaining Kramer’s undying loyalty and respect.

  “All fixed up, Tromp,” he said blithely, flicking the rest of his tobacco juice at the wood paneling behind him. “You’ll find Doc waiting on the corner of Parade and Ladysmith Street on your way round the block. And the next time you try to cut short a briefing with me by saying you’re leaving town at one o’clock sharp, make sure that it isn’t already after bloody ten past.”

  A total adjustment, it seemed, had been asking too much.

  3

  THE VELD ALL around them was as parched as an old tennis ball and much the same color. Apart from some thorn scrub, there were no trees except those gathered together for a definite purpose: to shade a tin-roofed homestead, or to provide a trading store with its windbreak. The sort of God’s own country where every farmer began his day with a very deep sigh.

  Wearied simply by looking at it, Kramer turned his gaze back on the road ahead. Puddles of mirage water shimmered across the asphalt, putting a wobble into the broken white line, and, a long way off, an oncoming bus glinted like a pinhead in the bright sun, before looming huge. Then the buffet and shake of their passing was over, and a distant Volkswagen entered the lists. Soon it, too, was left cross-eyed behind them, and the one-horse town of Doringboom drew that much closer. Mickey Zondi was driving as he always drove: not as though the Chevrolet were a taut extension of mind and body, but like a man who has given his bolting horse its head, being content to merely rake it in the ribs now and then, Kramer personally found the technique stimulating, yet he could tell—from the awed silence on the back seat—that their passenger thought differently.

  “Do you get up this way often, Doc?”

  “Er—not what you would call a lot.”

  “Then it must be nice for you, hey? Especially when you can just sit back and enjoy the scenery.”

  “Very nice,” said Strydom, whose narrowed eyes never left the road. “It was one of the main reasons I asked the favor.”

  Not that he’d put forward any other reasons so far, the devious old bastard. He had mumbled something about a radiator and water leaks and then let it trail. However, once you had a few minutes to reflect, it was simple enough to guess his strategy: by actually traveling with the investigating officer, he felt able to gate-crash Myburgh’s morgue party, and no ethical questions asked. That young bloke had better watch himself, or he’d find a paper being poached from right under his nose.

  A signpost flashed by: DORINGBOOM 22 KM.

  “Look, sir,” murmured Zondi. “This is maybe the place.”

  The road had just twitched into a straight and level section that arrowed across a bleak plain, brushing a dark smudge at about the halfway mark, before disappearing into the drifting haze of distant grass fires. And the vulture-eyed bugger was right: in no time at all, the smudge had resolved itself into three concrete picnic tables, a large refuse bin, and half a dozen flat-topped thorn trees—plus a police Land-Rover, parked with its doors left open. Two Khaki-trousered Bantu constables were crouched with a tape measure, while a white constable, in his blue tunic and shorts, made notes on a clipboard. As a roadside attraction, it was too good to be missed.

  They came to a sliding halt, waited for their dust to clear, and climbed out. The white constable approached, treating them to a full measure of rustic caution. He was a scrawny lad, knobbly at knee and elbow, and heavily reinforced by the revolver sagging at his side.

  “Lieutenant Kramer?”

  “That’s right—and this is Dr. Strydom, senior DS.”

  “Van Heerden, sir,” said the youngster, shaking hands with the civilian. “Hell, you were quick! When Sarge warned me to get down here and finish my plan, instead of finding those sheep, I didn’t see what the panic was about.”

  He had an engaging innocence that wouldn’t get him very far in the force.

  “Let’s have a look, then.”

  “Please, sir, it’s only in rough. If you will wait a minute, I’ll—”

  “Ta,” said Kramer, jerking the clipboard from him. “I see what you mean: lots of nice sums and pretty letters, but no bloody plan begun—let alone finished. You are an idler, aren’t you?”

  “Very idle, sir. Only there’s this sheep business to worry me, and the tape’s got no meters, so I’m having to convert. My boys brought the wrong one.”

  “So relax,” Kramer grunted, handing the board back.

  Then he went over to where the dirt met the tar, and looked to the right and to the left. You could see a considerable distance in either direction, and at night, any approaching vehicle would give at least sixty seconds’ warning before its headlights became effective.

  “How about the whatsit itself?” suggested Strydom, who was showing a decided stubbornness regarding precedent.

  “Doc, you think of everything.”

  “Out of the officer’s way!” barked Van Heerden, bustling through a wide gap between his black assistants. “This is the tree in question, right here. And to be strictly fair, sir, if you give my plan another look, you’ll see that I have called it A.”

  The tree called A was the second tallest of the group. It had a very hard, grayish-yellow bark, and supported an umbrella of tiny, dusty leaves, protected from long-vanished giraffes by clusters of big thorns. The trunk, which was roughly the thickness of two telephone poles, rose fairly straight, dodging a few imaginary redcoat shells near the top. There it divided into a spread of twisted spokes, with the stoutest branch going off horizontally, away from the road. And then, because asymmetry was a quirk of all thorn trees, the neat look of the thing had been spoiled by a secondary trunk, sprouting out of the main one at head height, on the other, picnic-spot side.

  “Shall I explain, Lieutenant?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “The deceased was dangling over this exact area where you see the red ants going in and out of their nest. His toes were almost touching, because of the stretch in the neck—it was terrible. So, as you can see, the rope went up and over that biggest branch, and down to where it was tied on the main part.”

  “Just hold on,” Strydom interrupted, his head tipped back. “How could he have got it over a branch as high as that? He couldn’t have thrown it, with all the rest of the sticks in the way.”

  “That was also a bloody long tow rope,” Kramer added.

  “Not really, sir; usual double-length. Can I show you?”

  “You’re about the right size.”

  Grinning, Van Heerden went around to the far side of the tree and sprang onto a large boulder. He reached up, took a grip on the offshoot from the main trunk, and hauled himself into the air. Then he slipped his foot into the fork, swung round and stood triumphant, with his underpants showing.

  “Very clever, Van. You worked that all out for yourself?”

  “Didn’t have to, Lieutenant. This is where the end of the rope was tied, after he’d dropped the noose part over the branch. In line here with my face, when I’m upright, you see. Actually, it was Sergeant Arnot who said how obvious it was, when we were undoing the knot this morning.”

  There he went again; no idea of tact at all.

  But Doc Strydom s
eemed delighted, and took out his notebook to make a quick sketch.

  “Don’t you see, Tromp? That must have also been how he achieved his drop. There’s nothing else he could have been standing on.”

  “What about the rock?”

  “You couldn’t swing off from there, man! Talk sense. The tree’s in the way, for a start. Van Heerden, will you try something for me?”

  “Anything, Doctor, sir.”

  “Stand on the fork with one foot only and see if you could jump out this side.”

  The experiment was nearly a traumatic success.

  “Excellent! And the Bible was in his left hand—yes, that would be in perfect keeping; he’d grip with his right.”

  “Erasmus,” muttered Kramer, “was left-handed. One reason we didn’t spot his gun the moment—”

  “Ach! Van Heerden, can you do the same the other way round the trunk?”

  This was attempted and then aborted, when Van Heerden’s head engaged some minor branches.

  “I’m sorry, Doctor, but a bloke can’t manage it if he isn’t standing up straight; you get too bulky, if you understand. You don’t have to grip hard though—just a touch to keep your balance.”

  “See, Tromp?”

  Kramer glanced around for Zondi, and picked him out in conversation with the two Doringboom Bantu constables. Then he beckoned to the young demonstrator.

  “Okay, Tarzan, it’s time for walkies, so down you come. I want that sketch plan, correct in every detail, on your sergeant’s desk before I leave today. In inches as well, okay? Because all this metrication business gives me a pain in the arse.”

  “What would you estimate the drop at?” Strydom said, stepping back to improve the perspective. “I’d say it was approximately two—er—six feet. Pity we didn’t ask the lad to take the tape measure up with him.”

  Van Heerden laughed as he overhead this, and tapped his clipboard. “There’s no need for all that fuss, surely? You measure from where his foot was, on the fork, and then down to a couple of inches from the ground, where his foot ended up! Five foot ten, I’ve got here.”