“We did.”
“Had she left everything so you’d not break—”
“She had,” Kramer admitted. “Your compromise was?”
“To wait until Gysbert had left for the hotel this afternoon, and to remove his three precious books.”
“It would only have been a matter of time before—”
“I see that now, Lieutenant. I can see that nothing could really have stopped you reaching him, but I felt—I felt it was a chance worth taking. Then, of course, I had to spoil everything by choking Willie off in the bar.”
“Uh huh; why did you do that?”
“I had to. I had to say something before Gysbert went off the rails—you’ve no idea how much that kind of talk upsets him. It was the worst dilemma I’ve ever been in, God knows! And—huh—I thought I’d pulled it off, too.”
De Bruin sipped a little of his brandy. The cockroach still scuttled; the horse had possibly dozed off. Except for that one scratching noise, like the first grooves on an old record, the night was deathly quiet.
“Now I have to explain why I did this, and I only hope you’ll see some excuse for me. Gysbert and I have always been friends, dating right back to junior school. I was one of the quiet boys, and he was even quieter. This gave us something in common, understand? So when the war broke out, and we were wanted to help out with essential services in Durban, it was natural we should go together. We found a room to share in the house of a young Italian lady, whose husband had been interned. There were quite a few other lads there—from other parts, of course—and the atmosphere was very friendly. But Gysbert couldn’t adjust to city life. The girls made him even more shy than the ones back here, and he dodged getting in a crowd whenever he could. As far as I was concerned, having so many new people to meet was a pure pleasure, and I changed quite a lot. This meant poor old Gysbert got left on his own with his books a lot of the time—he’d always been a big reader, and the public library was the one place he would go to. The lady seemed to understand him and his reasons for being the way he was, and often invited him into her parlor. Actually, we were entitled to the use of it, but you know what I mean. We all loved that lady—she was like a big sister to us all, but I think Gysbert loved her like a mother, his own having never much liked him. One night, I remember, he came up to bed and he’d been crying; you could see how red his eyes were, and I’m sure she had comforted him, because he talked to me for a long while about how wonderful she was. I was in bed with the flu. Ja, that was it. Then the end of the war came and, one by one, we started packing up. I only had to give a week’s notice, but Gysbert’s was a month. Something like that. Well, he came home, and got on with his job on the farm. His parents died—very close to each other—and he was left with no one. I admit I was the one who put the idea of marrying Annie Louw into his mind. With some men, especially Gysbert’s sort, a widow can be ideal. But, man, he was so formal! Did his courting the old style, going round to her place and sitting at the table until the little candle he’d brought had burned down. Annie used to whisper to me on Sunday and say she wished she could put some saltpeter in it! They hit it off better than anyone had expected, and little Suzanne was born. Then came the first of the tragedies, when Annie died—must’ve got TB from one of the natives. We’ll never know. Gysbert went into a terrible depression.”
The cockroach stopped moving.
“Then, out of the blue, when Lettie and I were despairing, this lady arrived at the hotel to spend a long weekend, bringing her son along. She also had with her her husband and her brother. She and Gysbert had a long talk together in the first afternoon, and that did him all the good in the world. You know, I’ve often wondered if he’d written to her, asking for her help. Anyway, had she only told us they were coming, I wouldn’t have had to give old man Ferreira such a blasting. He didn’t—ach, it doesn’t matter. Years went by without us hearing from the family again, then all of a sudden, one Sunday when Gysbert and me were picking up the paper after church, there they were again—and in terrible trouble. Ja, the youngster I was telling you about.”
“What had he done?”
“The allegation was murder. He had just been brought up in the regional court to be sent for trial. Gysbert wanted to go rushing down there, then he decided this would be taking too much on himself. Finally, what he did was to offer to pay for the best defense in Natal, and I loaned him the money—all paid back now. But things went wrong and the boy was sent up to Pretoria. An appeal was useless, and there was nothing left but prayer. I used to go over to Swartboom three or four times a week with my Bible. That’s when his obsession began: he told me he had to know what kind of death the boy would suffer, whether it would be merciful and quick. He dwelled on this so much he started taking trips to bars which prison warders frequented—or rather, he’d do this when delivering his venison to order. We get a call, you see, if they’re going to have a special menu or whatever, and we shoot—”
“Please, carry on with this business of the bars,” Kramer asked him, wondering if the wall was thin enough for Mickey to hear all this.
“That was a terrible mistake. He must have heard stories like young Willie was telling, because one night I went over and found him beaten up badly. He’d attacked some man. If you don’t mind, I’m not going into the details.”
“I get the point, Mr. de Bruin.”
“I don’t know whose idea it was to try and find out from books—perhaps it was his. His very first one was a Benjamin Bennett—you know the Cape crime reporter?—and he gave a very good account which set Gysbert’s mind at ease. The day they hanged the boy, he spent the whole time by himself in the veld. We had him home that night, and he told us he had seen it happen, just like in a vision. It had been quick and clean; the boy had walked to the gallows singing ‘Ave Maria.’ He was at peace with himself for months after that. Then he came across, in some secondhand bookshop in Durban, the smallest of those books you found in my truck. Night after night I sat and argued with him, while he chewed over the shocking things that were in it. He withdrew into himself and there wasn’t anything I could do. That Bennett book was an old one, you see, and by then Gysbert knew all the figures. He said he had begun to believe what a prison warder had told him, and blamed this on the 600 percent increase in hangings between 1947 and 1970. Suddenly, he went very silent on the subject, which worried me. I tried to get some account to contradict what he’d heard, but—huh!—we come back to the Prisons Act. It was almost becoming an obsession with me, because all the time poor little Suzanne was suffering; weeks would pass and he’d hardly notice her. She so craved affection. Then Lettie had a letter back from a bookshop we’d written to months before, offering us the book you have on this desk here. We bought it on spec and it was one of the best things we ever did. Let me show you.”
De Bruin took up the book and turned to the preface, holding his finger against a paragraph he wanted Kramer to read:
“I operated, on behalf of the State, what I am convinced was the most humane and the most dignified method of meting out death to a delinquent—however justified or unjustified the allotment of death may be—and on behalf of humanity I trained other nations to adopt the British system of execution.”
“Got that.”
“And now, on page seventy-nine it should be—yes, just listen: ‘Travel today seems to imply only long journeys—to South Africa or the Mediterranean or the Riv-something—and I have made all these trips in my time.’ ”
“Which doesn’t necessarily mean—” Kramer began automatically, then stopped.
“Perhaps not, but the arguments are strongly in favor of it being the case, and Gysbert is able to take great comfort from the words of this man. They give him the authority to reject anything he finds unacceptable.”
Kramer was staring at the master hangman’s blurb on the back of the book, which De Bruin was still holding:
Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing but revenge.
Suddenly, he’d
had enough of books and of stories that didn’t quite match in all their details. There was some irony in knowing that Swanepoel was guilty, without having any real evidence to prove it, but the final solution seemed only a hair’s-breadth away now. He stood up.
“Do you believe me? Do you see what I’m trying to get across?” asked de Bruin.
“I believe what you’ve allowed yourself to believe, Mr. de Bruin. You have certainly told me most of the truth.”
“What is that supposed to mean, damn you!” de Bruin exploded. “I’ve put all my cards on the table; now what about yours? Have I your assurance that, having heard the full story, you will not pursue any pointless inquiries in that direction?”
The temptation was too much for Kramer—and the truth would emerge soon enough; he palmed his small batch of photographs, just as that oaf had done back in the bar on Tuesday morning, and then dealt them out, one at a time, face upward on the desktop.
“Those are my cards,” he said, and went to call Willie to action stations.
But Mr. and Mrs. Haagner, just returned from the barbecue, having been the last to leave, said they’d only that minute looked in on his room and he hadn’t been there. Although, as a giggly Mrs. Haagner conceded, he might have been outside making a weewee. Kramer went to Willie’s room and found a small magazine propped up at the foot of the bed to show off an old-fashioned nude to advantage. He took the magazine and brushed passed the Haagners, not saying good night. He checked to see if the Chev was there, and it was. He broke into a run and went round to the yard, yanking open the stable door and finding the stall vacated. He heard a telephone ringing. He saw, through the barred window of the station commander’s office, de Bruin answer it. He sprinted to the window and heard the man groan.
“Quick! Who is it?”
An eternity later, Karl de Bruin clattered the receiver into its cradle, and stumbled over to hold onto the bars in a state of near-collapse.
“Suzanne. Pa came home, found her door unlocked. She said must’ve been servant girl. Hit her, wouldn’t believe her. She said policeman had been there. Hit her. Swore it. Hit her, went looking. Found Willie. Hit Willie. Hit her. Only got to phone now, bleeding. Willie gone. Game truck. Said he was going to—going to … Willie.”
“Ambulance!” Kramer shouted over his shoulder.
As he raced to the front, the Chev’s lights came on and it roared toward him, slewing round, the passenger door swinging open.
“Let’s go, boss,” said Zondi.
20
LIKE A SKULL on a dunghill, the great white stone shone in the moonlight, becoming smaller every minute behind them. The Chev howled and slithered and clawed its way up to the pass. No dust showed in its headlights.
“Ten-minute start,” said Kramer.
“Five, more like.”
“Never make it.”
“Before?”
“The fork down the other side.”
Bracing himself against the movement of the car, Kramer lit two cigarettes and stuck one of them in Zondi’s mouth. Then he flicked on the map-reading light and held the magazine beneath it.
“Dear God,” he murmured. “This is so old she could be his bloody mother.”
“Sorry, boss?”
“Sick.”
“Not your fault, Lieutenant,” grunted Zondi, missing the point and a sheer drop simultaneously. “You must take it easy, or you will do a foolish thing. What is the procedure when we overtake this vehicle?”
“Huh!”
“It is a good road for a puncture.”
“Trust a kaffir!”
“Every time,” added Zondi.
And they laughed.
It was the release Kramer had needed. “The procedure,” he said, “is simple. If he won’t pull up, then I’ll do as you suggest and take his tires out.” He placed his Smith & Wesson .38 on the map shelf in readiness.
“From the back or side?”
“Either. Willie will be all right—the doors and walls on that thing are so thick they’ll stop any spare slugs.”
He didn’t go into what might happen if the truck, losing a tire at high speed, left the road; that smattered of trying to think too far ahead.
“Let us hope that his gallows place is far from here,” said Zondi, making careful use of the ashtray. “The longer he drives, the better our chance will be.”
“While you’re at it, let’s hope I’m somewhere near right with my bloody theory.”
“That he must do the deed properly?”
“Uh huh. It depends on how far off the rails he’s gone, I realize that, but I’m certain all the fiddling about is essential to him. He’s got to weigh—”
“But what charge, boss?
“I’ll let you guess,” said Kramer, and outlined what had happened after the visit to Swartboom.
They were nearing the crest of the pass by the time he had finished. There was still no dust suspended in the beam of the headlights, and unless they reached the fork on the far side in time to see some telltale sign of his passage, their chances of ever catching up would be halved.
“Well, Mickey?”
“Can the fire be blamed?” Zondi replied enigmatically.
Then he gunned the Chev into the final S-bend before the top and the plunge into the long descent.
Willie Boshoff lay on his back, cold sober and terrified, the floor beneath him bounced, tilted sideways, and rolled him over again, smashing his face against something hard in the dark. Bound hand and foot, he could do nothing to save himself, and back he rolled again, tasting the blood and mucus from his broken nose. He retched.
The truck changed up. It began to move faster, more smoothly.
He should never have done it. The transfer would have been his without any extras. He should have told the Lieutenant instead of pretending to go off to bed.
His mind was repeating things. Playing over the way Swanepoel had questioned him when the Lieutenant and de Bruin had left. Making him see and hear again those little giveaways which had given him his idea. The Lieutenant can nail the hangman, he had thought, but I’ll be the one who gets the credit for his assistant. All I have to do is ask his daughter a few questions.
The truck—it sounded like a Bedford—slipped back into a lower gear, and Willie rolled again, the victim of his own inertia.
He had never got near her.
He’d never know what had made him mad enough to risk what he had done; never. Never know why it had been something he didn’t want to share. But to keep to himself, as he acted compulsively, slyly, stealing away on the horse and climbing in through the open bedroom window. To lose all sense of time when he discovered, left lying around quite openly, a leather demonstration carrying case of the kind that traveling salesmen use. A case packed neatly with all the tools of a terrible trade—the very same case and contents as described by Dr. Strydom in his Telex: the rope, with metal eye and rubber washer; a wrist strap and leg strap, unused; the black cap; fine copper wire; packthread; tape measure; two-foot rule; pliers; spare shackle.
The truck was slowing down. And down. And coming to a stop.
Pray God, a roadblock. Willie, who had recovered consciousness only momentarily, felt a greater darkness overwhelm him before he could find out.
Zondi snapped off the Chev’s headlights.
“Why the—”
“Down there, boss! At one o’clock!”
Kramer looked and saw, far below them on the valley floor, a pair of stationary headlights. An instant later, they were switched off. No other lights shone anywhere.
“But that’s bloody miles before the fork, man!”
“It must be where he has his place.”
“Rubbish! How could he build on reserve land?”
“Some building that is there already?”
“That isn’t used?”
Zondi gave all his attention to the road. His speed had dropped considerably, for the moonlight tended to play optical tricks with the sharp bends.
> “Use full lights and just belt it,” ordered Kramer.
“So he can see we follow him?”
“Wouldn’t know it was us. No, wait.”
The Chev crunched to a halt on the verge, held in check by the handbrake until they could resolve their dilemma: on the one hand, to continue in hot pursuit might be to precipitate events, while on the other, a more cautious approach might get them there too late.
“I think he must have seen Willie off already,” Kramer said softly. “He’s stopped now to set up his side show. We’ve no idea of how long ago he left the barbecue party.”
“Or he has already seen our lights,” Zondi suggested.
“Not a chance. He was facing the wrong way to get anything this high in his rear-view mirrors. Bugger, why has he stopped?”
Now that they had been in the dark for a minute or so, their night vision was improving; the valley was beginning to roughen up as areas of different tone became more distinct. There was a crescent of fairly pronounced shadow about two hundred yards to the right of where the truck’s lights had gone out.
“Hau, pillbox!” said Zondi, using English.
“And ‘pillbox’ to you, my son.”
“No, boss! That is what throws the shadow. The pillbox the English soldiers poked their guns from—round, with small windows.”
“Of course! Ja, I can see it now.”
The ubiquitous bloody pillbox; so much a part of the landscape in parts of Natal, you never noticed them.
“Which is where he’s got his scaffold, Mickey!”
“Maybe he just wants to hide on the side road.”
“No, man; that’s got to be where it is! Can you think of a better spot?”
Everything was making sense again. For a time, Kramer’s theory of a cool, impersonal hangman had been irreconcilable with the bitter, impulsively violent character of Gysbert Swanepoel. One of the chief reasons for this being the actual evidence they’d had of a humane, carefully conducted ritualism, which didn’t go at all with what Swanepoel was alleged to be capable of when crossed. And yet, in this very conflict of opposites, lay the knowledge that Willie was still very much alive.
The Sunday Hangman Page 23