“Murders are,” snapped Colonel Muller.
“Query murders,” corrected Kramer, recognizing an urgent need in himself to treat the situation as routinely as possible. “Tollie’s is the only one we’re sure of.” Having said that, a calm settled on him, just as it might on a drunk who decides that the only important thing in his whirling world is to soberly select the right key for the right keyhole.
His quiet observation seemed to steady the others as well—God knew what wild imaginings they’d been through before his arrival.
Colonel Muller cleared his throat. “The period, gentlemen, would appear to be one of five years, with one hanging occurring each year. But not, you will notice, in any particular month or season, so the timing may be more random than it seems.”
“How many years were looked through in all?” Kramer asked, lighting up a Lucky.
“Alfred and me did another five before that.”
“And?”
“Three fracture dislocations, none of them arousing suspicion of any kind. One involving a fall on a ladder.”
“Uh huh. And how many of these are really borderline?”
Strydom mopped again. He was beginning to look like a man who’d cast his bread upon the waters and had forgotten to let go.
“If you’re having a few doubts now,” the Colonel said slightly sarcastically, “then which of these cases, not counting Tollie’s, are you quite certain of?”
“The railway foreman couldn’t have died under the given circumstances in the manner indicated.”
“And the others? What order of certainty would you place them in?” Kramer asked, noting this down.
“On the scanty information I have?”
“Whichever way you like.”
“The witch doctor I’m 80 percent sure of; the tramp, about 65. Make the krantz case 50.”
“Fifty-fifty? Why’s that?”
“Well, there were more variables involved in that one.”
“Like yourself, for instance?”
That got its laugh and the tension eased, placing the discussion on a more objective level. Kramer made the routine check for a pattern.
“No real pattern,” he said, “although it could be significant that there’s only one black, that there’s three unknown persons out of five, and that the other two had police records.”
“The hangman is more likely white, then,” Strydom suggested, with a logic that wasn’t altogether sound if you thought about how certain blacks felt.
“I don’t think we should waste time on surmising until we’ve more information,” the Colonel said firmly. “Nor do we need to worry about anything under 100 percent—again, on the same basis.”
“Or what about treating them as separate cases, each on its own merits?” Kramer put forward, aware that his conflicts arose from trying to relate such disparate individuals. “If, by some bloody miracle, they start linking up, then we’ll rethink our approach.”
“I like it, Tromp. Two murder inquiries and three suspicious deaths?”
“That’s right, sir. Zondi can take the witch doctor and Marais can see what he can get out of the other two.”
“But,” said Strydom.
“Ja, Chris?” Muller replied.
“What about the hangman and his—”
“Look, man! I told you how many times? That’s a dangerous fixation you’ve got, and I don’t like the words you use. They only confuse the issue, which is bad enough as it is.”
Strydom reddened. “Would you like a second opinion, Hans? I could take these down to Gordon in Durban.”
“God in heaven! Nobody must hear about this until at least I’ve had time to talk to the brigadier. Of course I trust your judgment, Chris; it’s just you must leave the investigation side to us, hey?”
Kramer went over to the door, wary of what more talk might do to the brittle simplicity of his present outlook.
“I’ll get the sergeants going,” he said, “and seeing as the Erasmus case has reached a blank wall, I might as well have a crack at railwayman Rossouw.”
“Fine,” replied Colonel Muller. “Is it okay for us to share your biscuit?”
Zondi took the photograph of the unidentified umthakathi down to the street of the witch doctors in the lower part of town.
Several of them there had wholesale departments, stocked with everything from bulk packets of aphrodisiacs to entire desiccated baboons, and also supplied the fur trappings a black man was no longer permitted to hunt for himself. He went from store to store, from fancy glass counter to self-service emporium, from holes in the wall to sinister back rooms, and from one end of the street to the other.
None of the fat cats he questioned had any recollection of the face cupped in his hand, nor were they much interested. Yet the effort involved wasn’t entirely wasted: the dead man, they said, sniffing, was plainly an ignorant old peasant. Anyone with a smattering of the art would have secured his release with a handful of the right seeds—not that they sold them personally, of course. This confirmed in Zondi’s mind what had seemed a rather strange paradox.
He hijacked a pirate taxi for a lift back to headquarters, put in a requisition for a dozen more copies of the photograph, and went to the Lieutenant’s office to await their delivery. It was difficult to think of what else he might do.
After pushing pins into the wall map, to represent where the five bodies had been found, he sat down on his stool near the door and propped his leg on the table. The rat released its grip, wriggled a little, then lay comfortably on its belly.
Then Sergeant Klip Marais came in, yellow mustache bristling and gray eyes aglint, and barely nodded as Zondi stood up. He dumped some files on the Lieutenant’s desk, retrieved a memo pad from the wastebin, and gave the telephone a dirty look.
“Did your boss ring this number?” he asked.
“I do not know, Sergeant.”
“Huh! As if a bloke hasn’t enough to do. What the hell are you doing here, by the way? You got your orders.”
Zondi explained where he had been, and that there would be at least an hour’s delay before he could have his photographs for distribution.
Marais, who never talked to him in the ordinary way of things, but was always happy to grumble, said: “Trust you to get off so lightly. The witch doctor is an easy one; me, I’ve been landed with the real bastards.”
“They have no fathers?”
“Hey? Not bastards—ach, forget it. There’s nothing on this tramp, and there never was. When I rang up the local station, they didn’t even know what I was talking about for the first few bloody minutes.”
“Hau!” Zondi sympathized.
“And Pa Henk couldn’t assist either.”
“Hau, hau!”
“And since then,” Marais went on, taking the Lieutenant’s chair, “it’s got worse. Look at this.”
Zondi examined the dental chart that had been sent spinning through the air for him to catch. Five extractions and two fillings; a wisdom tooth impacted.
“That’s a thing to show the teeth in the krantz case—the teeth in the skull, understand? The two black dots are where fillings had been put not so long before, and the crosses are teeth that had been pulled out. I got straight on to the old—to a Mrs. Roberts, and asked her what her son’s dentist’s name had been. Guess?”
“I could not do such a thing, Sergeant.”
“I’m not bloody surprised! He hadn’t got one! She said he’d always been poop-scared of dentists, and she had given up trying to get him to go to one. His teeth stayed perfect? Oh, dear me, no; some had been neglected so badly they’d had to be pulled out. Which ones? How many? Peterkins hadn’t told her—he’d just sneaked off and had it done. Fillings? She starts up all over again about how nervous and sensitive her little boysie was, and always left his poor teeth until they were completely buggered. You see what I mean?”
“Too difficult, this one.”
“So I start ringing round all the dentists she could think of�
��—Marais sighed, rising wearily—”but the receptionists all say the same thing. They say they don’t keep records of casual emergencies, if that’s what I’m talking about. Cheeky bitches.”
Zondi had been staring down at the chart and thinking, with some wry amusement, how like his own mouth it looked; not that fear kept him from the doctors who took turns at being the dentist down at the black clinic, but because they did only extractions, whatever shape the tooth was in. His gaze shifted to the black dots.
“A filling is plenty painful, Sergeant?” he inquired, with genuine curiosity.
“I don’t mind them—but my brother does. Hates the drill. It scares a lot of people.”
“Hau! Then maybe this skeleton boss was forced to have this filling done to him.”
“What?”
“He was forced,” Zondi repeated respectfully. “This treatment was not a matter of his own free will.”
Marais turned in the doorway, laughed, and said: “Forced? Trust a coon to think of that! Nobody forces you to do things with your teeth you don’t like, man! Have some bloody sense.”
Zondi laughed, too, then put his leg back on the table. He was sure he had something there, somewhere.
11
THE BEST PERSON to see about the unlamented railway foreman, everybody said, was good old Joep Terblanche. He’d hated the bastard. Hated him right down to his little blue socks, and then some. If, in fact, the good Lord hadn’t finally made Rossouw do the decent thing, then Joep would have seen him off personally. It had been as bad as that. And nobody could blame him.
Dear God, thought Kramer.
To find Joep, you had to try the bowls club, the jukskei pitch, the tennis club, and the fishing club’s stretch of trout water. Having run through all the amenities of the dorp of Olifantsvlei by then, there was just a chance he might be at home.
It started to rain heavily, so Kramer drove straight round.
The former station sergeant of Olifantsvlei, retired these three years on full pension, was living modestly in a tin-roofed bungalow overhung by tall pawpaw trees and their overripe fruit. The broad leaves shed by the Chinese fig tree lay undisturbed on the garden bench, and a pair of secateurs were rusting, forgotten, on a homemade sundial in the middle of the small, unkept lawn. It was also significant that the tracks down the clay driveway stopped at a point nearest to the front verandah, and that the garage, some ten yards farther on, had weed growing high against its dull green doors. Good old Joep, all this suggested, was a widower—and a fairly recent one at that, who hadn’t grown accustomed to his solitude.
Kramer made a dash for the verandah, and reached it with his hair plastered down. He gave the front door a rap. Something inside, either a ghost or a cat, set a dish clattering.
Then a battered Land-Rover chugged in at the gate and the whole feel of the place changed. Big and beaming, broad enough to wear a barrel without needing braces, Joep Terblanche came doubling across; two fish dangled from his left hand, and in his right he carried a six-pack.
“Caught in the act!” he said, tossing the fish aside onto a verandah table. “Lieutenant Kramer, here on business—am I right?”
The bush telegraph in Olifantsvlei was obviously not to be sniffed at. Kramer shook the outstretched hand, approved the firm grip, and told himself to come off guard. The man had a simple and tangible goodness as pronounced as freshly baked bread.
“I’m here to ask a few questions about one of your old cases,” he said.
“Ja, so I hear. Man, it’s a pity my sister has passed on, or she could really tell you a thing or two about Toons Rossouw! Like to come inside?”
They went through into a kitchen that had a strong under-smell of cockroach powder and very few signs of food. When Terblanche opened the cupboard to remove two glasses, only breakfast cereal packets were exposed, and it was reasonable to suppose that he now took his main meals with some family living nearby.
A sodden crash resounded loudly on the tin roof overhead, making Kramer glance up.
“Pawpaw.” Terblanche grinned. “The rain knocks them down.”
“Christ, I thought a bloody maternity stork had dropped its load.”
Terblanche frowned slightly, as though disapproving of that kind of humor—or perhaps it was that he just didn’t understand it. Then he smiled again, handing Kramer his beer and inviting him to be seated.
“Naturally, I’m curious to know why the interest in Toons Rossouw all of a sudden, Lieutenant.”
“You’re well rid of us now, man, so let’s make that ‘Tromp.’ ”
“I prefer ‘Joep’ myself.”
“Fine,” said Kramer, still stalling; his instincts were insisting that he play this one very cool. “Ever heard of Witklip?”
“Certainly. It’s that little place north of—y’know.”
“I’m involved in a murder inquiry there, and Rossouw’s name has cropped up in some of the past history. We don’t know exactly what it’s got to do with anything, so we hoped—by trying our luck this end—we might find out.”
“Witklip?” murmured Terblanche, twisting the tips of his graying moustache between thumb and finger. “I can’t see any connection either. Male or female involved?”
“Would you like to guess?”
“Huh! A woman, of course. But the railway doesn’t go anywhere near the place, and Toons stuck very much to this dorp, as far back as I can remember.”
“What was the story about him, Joep?”
“One you’ve heard before, that I’m sure of. He was a drunk, a fighter, a thief—when he got the chance—and a proper bad bastard all around. So who should agree to marry him? A little girlie he could crush the ribs of in one hand. Personally—and my sister Lettie also shared this opinion—the marriage was the minister’s fault.”
“Shotgun?”
“Hell, no!” said Terblanche, quite shocked. “Stefina came of a good family; poor like kaffirs, but good. He most probably thought she would reform him.”
This was indeed the old, old story. They clinked glasses and drank.
“Nobody can say that little girl didn’t try,” Terblanche went on. “Others in the community tried for them also. Oom Dawid let Toons rent a shack on his property, and Lettie went round collecting up old curtains and suchlike. The place wasn’t much, yet Stefina made it look as pretty as a picture from the catalogue. You could stop by there anytime, I’m telling you. The little black stove would be shining, there would be coffee in the pot, and always wild flowers in a jam bottle on the table given by the minister himself. I think you call it a card table, with folding legs; anyhow, it wasn’t fitting for his position.”
“And they lived miserably ever after?” Kramer asked.
“Ever after,” sighed his host, “until, of course, what happened came to pass. He was clever that one—oh, ja. The first time he took his belt to her, he was lucky and one of my men let him off with a warning. After that, when he came back drunk, or from his womanizing, he’d find ways of never leaving a mark. ‘Stefina,’ I would say—because Oom Dawid would always call me when he heard the screams—‘Stefina, you just make a charge and the doctor is sure to find marks.’ But she would shake her head. Not an ugly girl, you understand, although, in the eyes of some folk, a little on the plain side. It was her bones, man—bones like a little bird. To think of him beating her took you in the stomach. I tell you, when I got a chance, and had to have Toons in my lockup for the night, then he went in there off all four walls and the bloody ceiling. Mind you, like him, I had to be careful.”
Kramer drank to the irony of that.
“I wanted to slap charges on him—any bloody charges, so long as he’d be put away inside. But Lettie asked what would happen to Stefina then, out in the shack alone, with kaffirs all around, and the magistrate followed a similar line, giving him long lectures. They all wanted this dream of theirs—ach, I don’t know what to call it—to work out as it was planned and make them all happy. Never mind Stefina in the meantime! I wa
tched her turning to a shadow of the happy kid I had known. The round cheeks and big dimples and—hell, it was terrible. She’d sit in the church on Sunday, reading her Bible like it would put blood back in her veins. Then she became pregnant.”
“He resented the …?”
“No; for once he settled down. That was actually when the railway job came up—you know how they look after poor whites—and the first was born. A girl.”
“Ah,” said Kramer.
“And the second, also a girl. The third, Stefina told us, was a miscarriage.”
At this point, Terblanche rose and went off to fetch his fish from the front verandah. The rain drubbed harder on the roof and two more pawpaws burst and slid. Kramer switched on the kitchen light when he saw his host take out a gutting knife.
“There was a nagmaal,” the old man continued, talking now as much to himself as to anyone. “Folk came from every direction, from places you never even heard of. When we hold communion in Olifantsvlei, the minister likes to make a big thing of it—bigger than most ministers do, and I’m not sure it’s right. Anyhow, there were hundreds camping here, around the church and down by the river. You can imagine how many kids that added up to! They were the ones who began the talk.”
His knife slid into the fish’s belly rather too deep. He drew it out a little way and tried again, slitting up toward the head. He scraped the innards away.
“They told their parents and soon everyone was whispering and pointing behind Stefina’s back. Naturally, it wasn’t long before the story reached my ears, and when it did, I went straight to her. ‘Stefina, I want you to charge him,’ I said. ‘Your children are saying that their pa kneed their ma in the stomach, and this made her sit on the potty and do a baby there. Stefina,’ I said, ‘they think it was a joke, Stefina.’ ‘Leave my man alone,’ was all she said. I caught Toons not two minutes later, and he said, ‘That’s not true—why not ask my wife?’ So I looked for the kids, but Stefina had taken them away. Not a word would they say when I finally had them to myself. Nothing! You have never seen kids—or a woman—so terrified. And what could I do about it? Also nothing! Not with the minister and the magistrate and every other bugger on the opposite side!”
The Sunday Hangman Page 11