“Max knew he was at Witklip?”
“Tollie said I shouldn’t tell him and he never asked,” she replied, putting her glass down. “How many more times? Nobody knew except me; it was meant to be secret. Tollie said Max was a good guy, but the fewer who knew made him safer.”
Kramer stood up and paced about a bit. The trollop was telling the truth, he felt sure of it, and yet this wasn’t making things any easier.
He snapped his fingers and spun round. “Why Witklip? What the hell put that into his head?”
“Oh, it was an old idea one of his friends once had. I can’t remember exactly. When he was in Steenhuis Reformatory and they used to talk after lights out. This bloke had been to it once with his folks, and said the store there didn’t even get a newspaper. Tollie checked while he was here and found it was still such a dump. They used to tease this guy—Robert? Ja, Robert or Roberts; that’s a name I remember. Nothing else, though.”
Then Cleo stiffened.
“You’re right!” said Kramer. “It wasn’t such a bloody secret after all, was it?”
9
SOMEONE HAD LEFT a fresh memo pad on his desk that rainy Thursday morning. Someone else had written the Widow Fourie’s home number on it, underlining the word Urgent five times. The next someone to poke his head into the office was liable to have it bitten off.
Kramer had spent a surprisingly bad night in the austere room he rented as, his landlady insisted on calling him, a paying guest. Presumably, he had slept. If asked to describe his night, however, he would have compared it to a bout of malarial fever, while being cynically aware of how unimaginative that sounded. His impatience to trace the man Robert or Roberts had been a primary cause of his restlessness, and had meant that, at first light of dawn, he had risen, taken a shower, and gone for a long walk. But even on this walk, which had led him down to the muddy sloth of the Umgungundhlovu River, his mind had never freed itself from a garish, sunset glimpse of the girl with honey hair.
“Why not?” he muttered, dialing the Widow’s number. “I heard you wanted me? The kids all right?”
“Term ended yesterday, so you can guess for yourself! How’s the case going?”
“Progressing.”
“I had an idea, Trompie. You know this business of the hangman knowing all the skills? I suddenly remembered my copy of The Vontsteen Case by that young chappie who was clerk of the court at the Palace of Justice. That had some details in it.”
“Nonsense; the law prohibits the publication of any matters pertaining to prisons unless—”
“Just listen, hey?” the Widow Fourie interrupted him. “Here’s the mention on page three which tells how they do it: ‘They are brought to the gallows at a quick trot, the measured rope is round the neck in a second, and at a push of the lever the floor opens beneath them. They tie a white cloth over the mouth because the blood tends to gush out.’ ”
Kramer lit a Lucky.
“Hello—are you still there?”
“You mean that’s all? It doesn’t tell you anything special—and that blood part sounds rubbishy to me. There wasn’t any blood coming out of Tollie.”
“I just wanted to help if—” she said, her voice catching. “Look, I want to talk to you about what I said about Mickey.”
“Hearsay,” said Kramer.
“Pardon?”
“That’s just something the writer picked up somewhere: The kind of information Doc’s all excited about would never be published in this country, and I can tell you that for a fact.”
There was a silence.
The Widow Fourie gave an uncertain laugh. “Man, to hear us you’d think we were an old married couple having a row!”
“Maybe that’s our problem,” Kramer remarked unkindly, surprising himself with his curious indifference. “So if there’s nothing else, I’d better get on, hey?”
She hung up on him. The memo pad went into the wastebin and the interdepartmental directory came out of its drawer. After a start like that, Kramer expected nothing to go right for the rest of the day. However, once he had convinced Steenhuis Reformatory that he wasn’t reporting an absconder, but inquiring after an inmate who must have taken his lawful leave some twelve or so years earlier, things began to happen. According to the records, there had been nobody in Erasmus’s dormitory called Robert, yet he had shared with one Peter David Roberts, whose last known address was 4D Rasnop Court, Dewey Street, Durban. Kramer thanked the clerk, rang off, and, encouraged by such luck, took a whimsical look in the ordinary telephone directory.
“Man, oh, man,” he said, stopping his finger at the same name, initials, and address.
Zondi came in at that precise moment, his expression strangely sullen, and wished him good morning.
“Don’t just stand there, old son—can’t you see the keys?” Kramer asked. “We’re taking a quickie to Durbs.”
“A lead?”
“Uh huh, and a good one. Brandspruit came through with the number of Erasmus’s contact, and she was right here in Trekkersburg. I’ll explain on the way.”
The keys were picked up off the desk and held in a clenched fist.
“What’s the matter, Mickey? I’ve just cut us a few corners, so let’s not hang around. Or have you something better to do?”
“No, boss.”
“Let’s go, then.”
Kramer noticed a puffiness under the eyes, as they were going down the stairs together, and concluded that he hadn’t been the only one thrashing about in the night. This hollowed his belly a little, and he eased the pace on reaching the sidewalk.
Zondi paused while unlocking the car door, and said, “Lieutenant, is it all right to ask you?”
“Ask me what?”
“Your meaning when you said I should go and find a job in the laboratory.”
“Hell, who’s getting sensitive?” Kramer replied, very relieved to discover the pain had only been mental. “You know we don’t allow you thick kaffirs in there.”
And with that they left for Durban.
Dr. Strydom was standing where he’d least expected to be that morning: in the showroom of a brand-new store that specialized in the sale of television sets.
His presence there owed nothing to rash impulse, however, but was the result of a long night spent worrying about poor Anneline and the time she was having to waste in front of the neighbors’ screen. As a study of the programs printed in the paper showed all too clearly, only seventy minutes of air time could possibly be of any interest to her on any one evening, and yet, having been asked over, she could hardly get up and leave, at the start of another documentary on Bushmen, without implying a severe, almost theological criticism of their investment. It wasn’t right that she should sacrifice so many precious hours in this way, simply because she had the manners of a true lady, and so he had finally found a solution to this problem—which was, of course, to invest in a set himself, while applying certain sensible rules concerning its usage. In fact, according to his calculations, fifty minutes a night would probably be more than she could happily assimilate.
But now he was finding he had other sums to do.
“That’s a price and a half!” he exclaimed.
“May I inquire, sir,” asked the pleasantly-spoken young salesman, “your profession? You certainly give the impression of a professional man, sir, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“I’m a surgeon,” said Strydom, wagging his stethoscope even more vigorously at the color set before him. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t express an opinion about highway robbery! It hasn’t even got proper legs for a thing that size.”
“I knew it, Doctor! I’ve always said that you can’t bamboozle a professional man into buying the first thing you show him, whether it’s a TV set or a swimming bath or a little runabout for his good lady. It isn’t the cost that matters to a man such as yourself, it’s the—”
“Legs,” snapped Strydom. “Do you seriously call those spindly things ‘legs’?”
The salesman smiled foolishly.
Strydom stared at the next set along and an idea occurred to him that put everything into a different perspective. If you pretended that the price tag was on a small car, just supposing that Anneline had learned to drive, then the cost came to about the same and seemed far less of a shock. Warming to this business of high-level decision-making, he decided on a sly compromise.
“How much is a black-and-white?” he asked.
“Ah, a black-and-white,” the salesman repeated. “A monochrome? I could have one brought up from the back, if you like. Monochromes do tend to be more a specialty of our nonwhite customers, so I’m afraid we.…”
He turned to call someone, but Strydom caught his sleeve.
“Just the price for comparison, hey? The wife said to ask—it’s her who likes to see the flowers.”
“There’s a coincidence for you, Doctor,” said the salesman, losing his look of embarrassment at being caught out. “Only yesterday we had a judge’s wife in here, and she wanted a panochrome for flowers, too! Let me see … the monos are about 50 percent cheaper, depending on this and that.”
“Interesting. Now, what about aerials and so forth?”
“We see to everything, and it’s same-day delivery, all-inclusive. Oops, that’s the volume control—no need to apologize. Would you like to be left to take your time browsing?”
“Ach, no,” Strydom replied casually, digging for his checkbook. “I’ve got a lot on this morning, and a television set is just a television set after all. Personally, I couldn’t care less if the Americans had never invented it!”
A feeling of heady well-being, puffed up by a sudden pride of ownership, and given an edge by the dread that always went with spending more than ten rand of his money at a time, then took Strydom round to the court records office with a decided optimism. It was exactly the moment to check on the incidence of neck fractures in hanging, and to prove how right he’d been in his original assessment.
“I want to look up suicides,” he said. “White, colored, Asiatic, and black.”
Being in Durban, the country’s major port and the playground of a nation, did nothing for Kramer. From the shark nets protecting the bathers off its whites-only beaches, to the suburban anthill of the Berea, its humid and lush sprawl caused him an unease that could be remedied solely by getting the hell out again, as quickly as possible. The snag was that he’d only just arrived.
Durban seemed soft to him, somehow alien; this wasn’t simply because there were so many Indians about or so much English spoken—Trekkersburg had, on a reduced scale, similar drawbacks. No, it had to do with the sea, and with the way you were exposed on the brink, facing God knows what insanities beyond the horizon. Any one of the waves, for example, could have creamed from the bows of a Chink battle cruiser to come all the way across to splash over a man’s kids. Just like the waves that had thrown up other people’s rubbish along the shoreline, all those Miami apartment blocks and English beach hotels and Spanish ranch houses. If you flew high enough, Kramer had noticed, then Durban looked like a high-water mark, with all sorts of tiny, nasty things crawling about among the pastel shells and the glitter.
Zondi liked Durban—it went with his sophisticated taste in neckties—and he murmured appreciatively as a bikini passed by, accentuating a fine, wide pelvis. If the girl had been topless, he wouldn’t have noticed.
“You’re not a detective; you’re a bloody obstetrician,” grumbled Kramer, who had taken the wheel and was searching the beachfront for the right side street.
“I’m also a damn fine navigator, boss.”
“Watch it.”
“Two blocks more.”
“Ask that churra over there.”
The Indian streetcleaner directed them two blocks north, one block west, and Kramer double-parked outside Rasnop Court soon afterward. By the look of it, the four-story building had just weathered a bad crossing from Singapore, but at least it was now in a white-zoned area.
“A few words?” Zondi suggested.
“Ideal. Don’t know a bloody thing about this bloke.”
So Zondi got out and went over to a pair of servant girls in grubby uniforms, who were gossiping at the entrance to the block. He flashed his shoulder holster at them. His jacket closed, their eyes opened wide, and none of those few words were wasted. He came back with his report.
“These females do not know of a Boss Roberts, but they say there is an old missus by that name. She stays on the top floor, flat number 4D, and her shopping time is eleven.”
Kramer checked his watch; ten forty-six. “Just make it. You talk nicely to the traffic cops, but don’t move if you can help it.”
Zondi caught the keys and took his place behind the wheel, tipping his hat forward for a short nap.
The lift was out of order, and as there wasn’t another for nonwhites, Kramer had to take the stairs. Some junior Michelangelo, living on or about the third floor, was all set to have an obscenities charge slapped on him for his murals. Kramer quite enjoyed the one depicting the depravities of kangaroos, though, and wondered what the old lady thought of them, as she came whizzing down the banisters each day at eleven.
Mrs. Wilfreda Roberts didn’t turn out to be that sort of old lady at all.
When she opened the door of 4D just a crack, it wasn’t really to hide behind—you could see practically all of her. She was so thin and so frail that her earlobes looked fat, and her pallor was like candle grease. But her empty eyes, much the same freckled gray as her dress and most tombstones, said she hadn’t been ill: it was just that life had sunk in its fangs and had a good suck.
“Lieutenant Kramer from the CID, madam,” he announced in English, smiling cheerfully.
She noticed this and became excited.
“Peter?” she asked. “You’ve come about my son?”
As she spoke the name, color came to her hollow cheeks, and she stepped back, drawing the door wide in invitation.
“Come in, please—do come in! But don’t say a word until I’m sitting down. Gracious, how sudden! You just can’t begin to imagine what this means to me!”
Kramer, who was in complete agreement with her, followed Mrs. Roberts with sudden reluctance across the small hallway, and then into a dim living room that was stifling with birds. There seemed close to fifty of them—parakeets, budgies, canaries, finches, and a parrot—in a dozen or so cages set on pedestals against the curtained windows. Even in the gloom, their plumage had a startling brilliance, and they immediately began a shrill clamor, as they fluttered against their silver bars, that was fairly startling in itself. Although the parrot, a molting African gray, merely blinked a bland eye at him, and went on picking its beak.
“Shoosh!” said Mrs. Roberts, and added, “Please excuse me for a moment while I get some lettuce.”
He glanced about to note what else she had managed to squeeze between the four cream walls. There was a fold-up writing desk, a drop-leaf dining table, a glass-fronted display cabinet, a small table supporting a radio, and two easy chairs. One of these had a darning needle stuck in an arm, where she must have left it to answer the door. On the foam-rubber seat of the other chair, a modern affair in light wood, lay a copy of that morning’s newspaper, a carton of American toasted cigarettes, a six-pack of Lion lager, a can of peanuts, and a ten-rand note twisted into the shape of a flower. Maternal goodies, it could be assumed, for the flashy young bastard whose portrait adorned the display cabinet in a thin silver frame.
Craaaaaaak! said the parrot.
“Who’s a pretty boy?” Kramer leered amiably.
That really set it off. Only its diction was terrible, and he felt sure the daft bugger kept saying Where’s a pretty boy? instead.
The task Strydom had set himself in a dusty corner of the court records office was fast getting out of hand.
Theoretically, it shouldn’t have been difficult to pick out a fair sample of death-by-hanging cases from which to extract his statistics, but in practice it
was like juggling fresh-caught flatfish. The papers from each inquest hearing were clipped together in an unwieldy, slithery mass—autopsy report, magistrate’s transcript, maps, plans, documentary exhibits, photographs—and stacked so that one clumsy move brought at least half a dozen flip-flopping out to spread over the floor.
And if this wasn’t enough to content with, he had just discovered a fracture dislocation of the neck that didn’t make sense.
The deceased, a railway foreman with a history of violence and aberrant behavior, had been found four years earlier hanging in a gangers’ portable rest cabin near a level crossing miles from anywhere. “Freakish misadventure sustained in pursuit of orgasmic enhancement,” the district surgeon had recorded, having noted the classic presence of lewd pinups on the wall and the corpse’s erection. He had also satisfied himself that there had been a perfectly good platform for the man to have stepped from: to wit, a large wooden box used for storing shovels and pickaxes. But this was textbook thinking; an erection was common to all forms of hanging, whereas, for a man of Strydom’s experience, there could be no ambiguity about the fact that the ceiling of the cabin was far too low to have afforded the right drop.
The Sunday Hangman Page 9