The Sunday Hangman kaz-5

by James McClure

  “How was that?”

  “She thought I’d come to say, Bring on the dancing girls, lady-your naughty little boy is back.”

  “You are talking about the old lady?” Zondi queried.

  “That’s right. Ma Roberts-but she hasn’t bloody seen him for five years!”

  “Hau!”

  “I tell you, it was rough, hey. You should have seen the look of disappointment on her face.”

  Zondi shrugged. “But why should you blame yourself for this, Lieutenant? You only-”

  “I could have checked with Henk Wessels first, and saved a lot of bloody time. What if I say that her son was better known as Ringo?”

  Zondi frowned, searching that near-photographic memory of his, a legacy from his years in a mission school where the one textbook for each subject had to be shared. Then his face registered a hit.

  “Hau, but that was long ago, boss! The Vasari case?”

  “Not bad, my son. I couldn’t even get the wop’s name.”

  “Anthony Michael Vasari,” Zondi said slowly, “who was convicted for killing a pensioner he robbed on the Bluff. Ringo was his accomplice, but he turned state evidence after first pleading not guilty at the preliminary examination. But why didn’t Cleo tell us this?”

  “Probably didn’t make the connection either. Ringo’s a Beatle name, came along much later than when they were in Steenhuis, and so Erasmus-ach, that isn’t a point that’s important. Our problem is where we’re going to find the bastard.”

  “Can his mother not give any clues?”

  “Take a look at this,” Kramer said by way of an answer.

  He slipped a hand into his jacket and produced a mimeo copy of PLEASE HAVE YOU SEEN MY ONE AND ONLY SON? It gave a full physical description of Peter David Roberts, also known as Peterkins, and then listed his endearing habits, considerable gifts, and sophisticated tastes in food, drink, and clothing, as only a mother could know them. At the end it implored: “Amnesia (Forgetting One’s Memory) Can Happen to Anyone-Help Peter and Me (Widow amp; Pensioner) Like You would Want to Help YOURSELF.”

  “Mangalisayo,” murmured Zondi, skimming through it. “This is very sad, boss. The woman has a great heart.”

  “Whenever she can save up enough, she gets a few more run off and posts them to shipping offices, new dam projects, hospitals, loony bins, et cetera.”

  “But what is your own reading? That this small-time fellow went to try for big time in Jo’burg?”

  “Could’ve done,” Kramer agreed, but his heart wasn’t in it; there was more, which he’d been trying not to think about. “On the other hand, his ma alleges he was a changed character after the trial, having nearly taken a one-way to Pretoria. He got himself a job in an electrical-goods store, worked hard there, and found himself a steady girlfriend, whose brother was going to let him have a share in a ski boat. All set up. Got a phone put in, started saving for an MG-next thing he was gone.”

  “Like-?” Zondi flipped a hand.

  “Uh huh. One Saturday afternoon he walked out, saying he was going swimming, and never came back. Underneath all this, you can see she thinks a shark might have got him. He always said the beach was too crowded where the nets were; liked to go to deserted areas.”

  “Then maybe she is right, boss. He took no case or anything?”

  “Just a towel,” said Kramer, and felt as flat as he sounded.

  Zondi started the car up. “So this is why you think we waste time, Lieutenant? Yet Ringo could have planned for a fresh start more cleverly than she suspected.”

  “Ja. I’d better check with the locals-but let’s get some grub first.”

  The Chev moved off slowly.

  “Oh, and another thing,” Kramer added, finally facing the futility of his morning. “Ma Roberts had never heard of bloody Witklip.”

  10

  Dr. Strydom was by now in something of a state. No fewer than four inquests, each indicating an excusable error of judgment, had come to light-and this wasn’t counting the observations he himself had made at Doringboom, of course.

  His feelings of conflict were very natural. It seemed incredible that he should, within so short a time, and with the ungainly means at his disposal, pick out this number of cases for reappraisal. But then again, there just weren’t that many white suicides by hanging in Natal each year, and Alfred had obeyed his direction to ignore any obviously narrow ligatures; between them, they had called a halt in the late ’60s before three o’clock. It also seemed incredible that one of these likely oversights appeared to have been his own.

  Incredible, but not impossible, because this time around he had known what to look for, and had not presumed a thing. The remains in question had been those of a white adult male, aged somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, discovered in a skeletal condition at the foot of a small krantz or ravine. One end of a rotten rope had been found around the neck-of which very little remained, due to decomposition and rodent life-and the other end had been tied to a broken branch. It had not taken him long, on that wet and chilly afternoon, to agree with the police that the branch, which came from an overhanging tree, told the whole story. The deceased had secured the rope to it, allowing himself virtually no slack because of the length involved, and had stepped over the cliff’s edge. The sudden weight had been just enough to snap the branch and send him plunging to his death-a death that could have been attributed to several causes, among them exposure brought on by the paralysis of a broken neck. Strydom’s only comfort was that he’d not been dogmatic in his summation, because, when looked at from another viewpoint, that broken branch could have come as a surprise only to the hangman, hurriedly ridding himself of a night’s work.

  Having gone over it again in his mind briefly, he could see that his first assessment had probably been correct, but there were the two others. One was the product of slapdash, lamentably perfunctory work on the part of a district surgeon known for his high output and habit of dribbling cigarette ash into things: he had simply not made any real effort to ascertain anything about the white male, suspected of being a tramp, who’d committed suicide by hanging in an empty barn. Not even the hyoid bone had been examined. This was in direct contrast to the fourth DS involved, whose punctilious treatment of a witch doctor’s death deserved the highest praise. “An interesting case,” he had written, “in which the deceased did as neat a job as any state executioner. Note the low tree stump used as a platform, but the weight of animal skins, etc., he was wearing would presumably contribute to producing the minimal force necessary. Taylor reports one fracture-dislocation in 52 cases-this is my first in 109.” The man’s lack of experience had, however, led him to overlook a couple of things which Strydom spotted as soon as he saw the photographs. They showed a small contusion on the left jawline and the knot at the occiput-or back of the head-where all it would have achieved was mere strangulation.

  “Alfred,” said Strydom, as the messenger returned with a wrapped sandwich for him, “we’ve got something really weird on the go here.”

  “No cheese-n-tomato, master. I bring ee-ham.”

  “Different DS, different magisterial district each time-have you noticed? There could be method in that.”

  “Uh-uh,” corrected Alfred, with a firm shake of his wooden earplugs. “Ee-ham.”

  Pursuing the Roberts angle with obtuse Detective Sergeant Prins in the Durban Murder and Robbery Squad office that afternoon was definitely a mistake, Kramer told himself, and wished he had gone straight up to the records section instead. Not only was Prins being as condescending as he dared about an out-of-town inquiry, but he kept breaking off to shout abuse at a suspect crouched in the corner, and several times he had got up to kick him.

  “Where was I?” Prins asked.

  “In your chair,” Kramer replied wearily, having lost the thread of the conversation once again.

  Prins grinned-a quick show of very white, very narrow teeth in a deeply tanned face that seemed made up entirely of straight lines, like
a brown paper bag still showing its packing folds. “And so, with Ringo being of age, and us having no warrant out for him,” he said, sitting down again, “the fact that-stay still, bliksem! — he went off into the wild blue yonder was of no bloody consequence to us. Adult persons can go where they like-correct? As I said to that crazy old woman myself, she’d best forget the bastard and start enjoying life. But no-still! — she has to go on and on. Even wanted us to make whites carry proper passes as well, so we would know their whereabouts at any given-stop that noise, you hear? Last time I really lost my rag and warned her-quite still! — er, and now she does the same to you. Man, I’m sorry about that, hey?”

  “No consequence to you? What she says about him going straight is-”

  “Ja, we scared the poop out of him that time, I can tell you. And if he had been in any more trouble, I’d have been among the first to know.”

  “You weren’t suspicious about him going like that?”

  Prins dragged his attention back from the corner. “In the first place, she didn’t report him missing for nearly a week in case he was mixed up in something. And in the second, Ringo was a nothing, Lieutenant; I’m even surprised Erasmus ever remembered them.”

  “Them? Vasari was at Steenhuis, too?”

  “Ach, of course! They started early together on the bag snatch.”

  Kramer pulled out his notebook. “Did Vasari have a brother or anything?”

  “Two sisters. But they’re not around here anymore.”

  “Gone far?”

  “Italy.”

  “Uh huh?”

  “Buried the bastard and went. The whole family.”

  Prins began to fidget impatiently with an ebony ruler, rolling it between his lean, carefully kept hands.

  “Ringo had no other known associates?”

  “None,” Prins stated categorically, getting to his feet. “Looks like you’ve picked a lulu, hey, sir? No other leads you can try? I can’t see that yellow shit as your man in a million years, if I can be honest-it was him who panicked out there on the Bluff. Why not drop him and see who in that dorm was talking about Witklip?”

  “Thanks,” grunted Kramer, knowing a dead end when he saw one, without needing to have it pointed out.

  But he went on sitting there, doing his own bit of fiddling with the old woman’s pathetic circular, and wondering if he shouldn’t make at least some attempt to trace Roberts; a quick glance through the list of unidentified white males, kept in the inquest place back in Trekkersburg, might well be all the time it would take. The whole thing had that feeling to it. There was the backwash as well as sharks, and hands didn’t last long in the Indian Ocean-but with an approximate date and a description of stature and clothing, he just could save her the cost of the printing. He watched the ruler arc into the corner, and the man go to fetch it.

  “Just a sec!” exclaimed Prins, twisting round with a squeak of his rubber heel. “I’ve seen a way to work this.”

  “Oh, ja? With a pencil and paper, you mean?”

  Prins laughed. “That comes later. No, this Witklip hideout idea, Lieutenant: would it be Tollie’s style to tell the female where he got it from exactly? He could never say anything without a bloody twist to it.”

  “So what? Roberts has already proved wrong.”

  “But before you go looking for the rest of them, Tollie was sure it was a big secret, right? Who keeps the best secrets? Doesn’t tell tales? Do you get it?”

  “Vasari,” said Kramer, but did not thank him.

  Instead he got the hell out of Durban.

  Colonel Muller passed the sugar bowl to Doc Strydom, then popped two self-righteous small tablets into his own coffee with all the blatant stealth of a stage poisoner. He stirred, tapped his spoon on the lip of the cup, and placed it in its saucer.

  Kramer, who had come straight up to the office from the car park, in response to a tip-off from Henk Wessels that something funny was going on, watched all this with one eyebrow raised. While he had expected some sort of reaction to his investigations in Durban, this prolonged and rather smug silence was baffling him.

  “And so, Tromp,” the Colonel said at last, “so far as you are concerned, the reason for Erasmus choosing Witklip has now been satisfactorily explained away. Is that correct?”

  “Right, sir. We’re back at square one again.”

  “My grandma” murmured the Colonel, dunking a Marie biscuit and winking at Strydom, “used to have a saying, you know.”

  “Oh, ja?”

  “When I was a little boy, she would tell me that whenever one door closed, then another would open.”

  “Colonel?”

  “Are you prepared to accept that?”

  Kramer shrugged. “What’s the game?” he asked irritably.

  “I’m trying to clear your mind, Tromp. I’m trying to get you ready for a little shock that still has me shaking. In fact, now I’ve heard your story, too, I’m shaking even harder.”

  Then he handed Kramer a file which contained inquest papers relating to the discovery of a body at the foot of a krantz.

  The only shock Kramer experienced was that of having been preempted. “Who the hell thought of looking for this?” he said softly. “Did Mickey get in touch with you?”

  Strydom shook his head.

  “How well do those particulars match the ones on that form thing of yours?” the Colonel asked.

  Kramer had no need to read Mrs. Roberts’s appeal again-it was part of him. “The date is almost spot on, sir; the hair coloring and length is the same as Ringo’s, allowing for sun-bleaching; five-foot nine is the right height. Does it say here one blue eye was found? That would be correct as well.”

  “No; better disregard that for now,” Strydom said cautiously. “Eyes have been known to regress to blue after death.”

  “Where’s the list of clothing, Doc?”

  “That investigating officer will be getting his arse kicked,” the Colonel growled, making a note. “It’d rotted off, but he should have recorded buttons, zips, footwear. No fingerprints of course, as you can see from the picture.”

  Then Kramer felt the shock pass and his natural distrust of the fortuitous take its place. “These four common factors don’t actually count for much, not when you see them against a fair percentage of the white male population, do they? How about these five extractions and two temporary fillings? I’ve got nothing on the teeth, but you must have sent round the dental chart.”

  “No takers,” Strydom disclosed. “The fillings were on the crude side, like you’d get on a ship or any army camp-not done by a dentist, I’m pretty sure of it.”

  “Ringo was never on a ship or in the army,” the Colonel added. “How do you feel about it now, Tromp?”

  “Inconclusive. But what made you look at this suicide in the first place? I can see it’s one of Doc’s, only-”

  They told him.

  Then added the three other inquest files to make a chronologically arranged row across the Colonel’s desk, while Strydom provided a thumbnail sketch of each one as it was laid down.

  “Have you gone mad?”

  “I hoped you’d say that, Tromp. Those were my exact words when Chris first came rushing in here. It shows there was no ill will on my part, hey?”

  Kramer sat down, stunned and unable to control the seethe of implications filling his head.

  “Chris?” prompted the Colonel.

  Strydom did a very old-fashioned thing and mopped his brow. “Perhaps I should explain a little. You see, most DS’s are busy family doctors with no special interest in forensic work per se, and they don’t-um-come into contact with each-”

  “I meant the facts, man! That’s what Tromp wants to hear about,” Muller said.

  “It’s a fact that Natal’s bigger than a lot of tin-pot countries,” Strydom dared defensively. “Instead of blaming us, you might see that in dotting them around, his executions are-”

  “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.