The Blood of an Englishman

by James McClure

  “Er, Nxumalo,” said Van Rensburg, crossing over to him, “there’s something I want to ask you.” He glanced at a list on his clipboard. “Where’s the body of Philemon Bapuna?”

  “Gone, Sergeant.”

  “Ja, I thought so. And Daisy Majola?”

  “Gone, Sergeant.”

  “Let me see.… This one is Mr. Austin—oh ja, what about Roger Dhlamini? Have we still got him round the back?”

  “Gone, Sergeant!”

  Van Rensburg’s face fell. “Now are you quite—?”

  “Ach, come on, Van Rensburg!” barked Strydom, who had been at his elbow all the time. “What has this to do with finding that arm for me?”

  “Er, I was only getting some routine matters out of the way first, Doc!” Van Rensburg looked appealingly into Nxumalo’s eyes. “Don’t tell me you have actually done what I said you must do this morning?”

  “Oh, yes indeed, Sergeant!” replied Nxumalo, showing pride in his obedience. “I took my finger right out!”

  Van Rensburg smiled at him wanly, and then turned to Strydom, whose foot was tapping impatiently. “I’m sorry, Doc, but I don’t think that arm is in the mortuary any longer,” he said. “I can’t remember why I believed this to be a fact, but perhaps you could try your experiment on—”

  “Sergeant Van Rensburg, come with me,” hissed Strydom, and led the way back into the post-mortem room.

  Alone once more, Nxumalo chortled and went on using his duster, pausing now and again to look with amusement towards the foot of the coffin lid.

  Kramer had quite forgotten about Meerkat Marais, who was posed on the edge of the filing cabinet like The Thinker, with one fist pressed against his forehead.

  “Well, well, my old friend,” he said, as he entered his office with Zondi in tow, “now you have had a chance to reflect on your sinful past, could it be you’re ready to change your tune?”

  “For pity’s sake.…” whispered Meerkat.

  “Good, now I’ll tell you what I want you to do. I’ve changed my mind about that statement we were going to write, and instead I want you to find out for me how many other thirty-twos have been on the market recently—okay?”

  “Anything!” replied Meerkat, in the same strained whisper. “But can your Bantu go out for a minute while I talk to you?”

  “Fine, and I also want you to look round for a very big bloke such as Archie Bradshaw described in the paper.”

  “Look, Lieutenant, can I have a word in private? Please, man, this is an emergency!”

  “I haven’t time now,” said Kramer, unlocking the handcuffs. “There, you can jump down and get on your way.”

  “I can’t.”

  Kramer turned to Zondi. “Dial Ballistics for me, Mickey.” Then he turned back to Meerkat with a menacing expression. “Do as I say! Jump down and bugger off! I’ll contact you later.”

  “I can’t,” whispered Meerkat. “I can’t move.”

  “Hey?”

  “I dare not, Lieutenant!”

  “I’m getting a bit edgy, Meerkat—you know that? What the hell’s the matter with you?”

  “It’s my b-l-a-d-d-e-r,” Meerkat spelled out confidentially, with an anxious glance in Zondi’s direction.

  “Your what?” Kramer began to grin.

  “Shhh! Don’t say anything!” implored Meerkat, as though the dignity of his entire race was at stake. “Just tell your—”

  “My God, Meerkat, you’re really sitting on a time bomb, hey? Just think what it would do to all those files underneath!”

  “I realize that! Why do—?”

  “Criminal damage, Meerkat! Wanton destruction of Government property!”

  “It isn’t a joke! For four hours I’ve been—”

  “Ballistics, boss,” interrupted a poker-faced Zondi, passing over the receiver.

  “Hullo, Botha? Anything for me yet?”

  The lab man tried unsuccessfully to keep the excitement out of his voice. “Congratulations, sir—you’ve had twins.”

  “Come again?”

  “The two bullets are identical—or, to put it another way, I think we can be one hundred per cent sure they were both fired from the same revolver.”

  Even though he had been hoping for this result, Kramer needed a moment before it sunk in. “That’s the best news I’ve had all week, man. Next time we’re in the canteen together, the double brandies are on me.”

  “There’s a bit more, sir.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I’ve just had a telex back from our top expert in Pretoria. I sent him the details of the first slug last Saturday, and he reports that this kind of soft-nosed thirty-two went out of production in the fifties. He also confirms that the five right-hand grooves suggest that the weapon is a Smith & Wesson. I’ve sent a copy of his report to the Firearms Squad, and we’re putting out a new circular.”

  “Beautiful,” said Kramer. “And that’s the lot?”

  “Ja, until you find the firearm and want it matched up as well,” joked Botha, and rang off.

  Kramer winked his off-side eye at Zondi. “We’ve got a perfect match on the bullets, so the show’s on the road! But first I’d better go down and tell the boss what the position is.” He started for the door.

  “Not again!” whimpered Meerkat. “You can’t go off and—”

  “Sergeant,” said Kramer, without breaking his stride, “do you think you could find this gentleman a m-i-l-k b-o-t-t-l-e?”

  “Yessir!” said Zondi.

  6

  COLONEL HANS MULLER, divisional commandant of the CID, leaned his elbows on his enormous desk and made a tent of his fingers. For a while he stared at the darker patch of cream wall where an official portrait of Balthazar John Vorster had hung for many years, and then he explored the ceiling for some sign of his small friend, a lizard that seemed also to have passed into retirement. Gradually, his craggy face assumed a degree of composure, and he collapsed the tent to place his hands a business-like foot apart on his blotter.

  “What it all boils down to,” he said, “is that we’ve got a madman on the loose.”

  “A killer on the loose, ja,” agreed Kramer.

  “You must admit he was crazy to return the body like that to the Digby-Smiths’.”

  “Not necessarily, Colonel; there could have been method in his madness.”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d prefer to keep my options open on his mental state. Bringing the body back does achieve one thing, so far as he’s concerned: we haven’t the slightest idea where Hookham was murdered.”

  “True.” Colonel Muller flipped open the docket on his desk. “While you were out this morning, I had another look at the statement you took from Bradshaw. The description it gives of his assailant is very woolly, Lieutenant, very subjective. All it says here is, ‘There was this massive bloke, built like a brick shit-house.’ Am I right in thinking you weren’t taking him too seriously at the time? I usually expect my officers to do better than that. I’m also grateful when the wording of a description can be used on a ‘wanted’ bulletin without causing grave offence to the general public.”

  Kramer shrugged. “Okay, so I didn’t go into it too deeply, sir, but as we both agreed—”

  “You didn’t go into it at all, Tromp! Let’s be honest about this. What we want is a little more precision. What we want is the best possible description of this suspect! Remember, he’s out there somewhere at this very minute, and—who knows?—he could be lining up his next victim!”

  “That would depend—” began Kramer.

  “Please, Tromp, no half-baked theories at this stage. If you find a pattern that links Bradshaw and Hookham together, well and good, but until such time, we must view this killer as some sort of maniac working at random. In my opinion, every living soul in Trekkersburg is at risk.”

  “You could equally say—”

  “And our only means of diminishing that risk is to provide ourselves with a clear picture of the
enemy. That is your priority.”

  Kramer gave up trying to finish a sentence, and reached over for the telephone. “You want me to see Bradshaw again, sir?”

  “Who else? The housemaid’s the only other eye-witness so far, but she was too far away.”

  “Right, then I’ll try and get him before he goes back to the river.”

  “What river?” Colonel Muller raised a quizzical brow.

  Kramer paused in his dialing only long enough to tap the topmost newspaper cutting in the docket, which Colonel Muller then read while they waited for a reply.

  “After discharging himself from the hospital yesterday,” wrote the Gazette’s Crime Reporter, “Mr. Bradshaw said that he might take himself away for a few days to his fishing cottage. ‘It’s all been a bit of a shock to the system,’ he told me, ‘but it’s nothing that a day or two with a trout rod can’t cure! I just hope my arm will be up to it.’ It is believed that his son, Mr. Darren Bradshaw, will continue to run the family business until his father is properly recovered again. Mr. Bradshaw Jr. is a student at the Kritzinger Business Studies College in Johannesburg, and an Old Boy of Trekkersburg High.”

  True to form, the telephone in the fishing cottage rang and rang. “I must have missed him,” said Kramer, “or perhaps he’s taken some sandwiches out with him.”

  “Hey? No answer? I’m not sure I like that, Tromp!”

  “Ach, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, Colonel. If you knew the—”

  “But I mean, what the hell’s the Gazette publishing this sort of thing for? This is what I’m always saying about newspapers! Honestly, they are our number one cause of crime in this country! If our friend was determined to get him, then all he had to do was—”

  “It doesn’t give the whereabouts of the fishing cottage, Colonel,” Kramer pointed out.

  “Would that be so difficult to discover? Don’t be damned silly, man! God, if I’d only seen this before, I’d have—”

  Kramer killed the call and dialed another number.

  “Who are you ringing now?” asked Colonel Muller.

  “Bradshaw’s house. It’s possible that he’s come home already.”

  An engaged tone.

  “Why haven’t you been keeping a proper check on his movements, Lieutenant?”

  “Didn’t see the need, Colonel. In fact, not until—”

  “But this is ridiculous, man! No answer?”

  “They’re still talking.”

  “Are they?” Colonel Muller snatched up the other telephone. “What’s the number of the Bradshaw house?”

  Kramer told him, and listened to the brief exchange that followed with the chief switchboard operator at the General Post Office.

  “Lieutenant,” said Colonel Muller, a minute or so later, “I’ve got some news for you: nobody is talking on that line. Either the receiver’s off the hook, or.…” And he bunched his fists dramatically.

  “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” Kramer replied, getting up off his corner of the desk, “but if you like, I’ll go down and take a look.”

  Zondi nosed the Chevrolet into another small backwater down in the oldest quarter of the city, and Kramer pointed to a street-sign half-engulfed by an unruly hedge. “Kitchener Row,” he said, relieved they had found it at long last. “Now what we want is Number Forty-two. It’s amazing he’d want to live in a dump like this—he’s certainly got the money to be somewhere much posher.” All his previous dealings with Bradshaw had taken place at either the shop in Ballard’s Arcade or in the hospital.

  “Forty-two will be on that side,” said Zondi.

  Kramer scanned the line of dreary orange-brick dwellings that stood so close together that some were almost touching. He had always had a strong antipathy for turn-of-the-century, jerry-built architecture, with its pointed cornices, pretentious Doric columns along the verandahs and steeply pitched tin roofs, and regarded them as the stuff of which bad dreams were made. He’d once had a witchlike aunt who’d lived in one, steeped in her memories and general incontinence, and given to pinching the pink cheeks of any young guest before offering them a biscuit.

  The car stopped.

  “This shouldn’t take long, Mickey,” said Kramer, patting his pockets to make sure he had his notebook, and discovering he was still carrying the length of cord about. “Here, play with this while I’m inside, and see if you can make out what it’s from. Doc Strydom thinks this frayed section half-way along is significant.”

  “Why are the ends cut off, boss?”

  “To make it shorter, of course! Hell, sometimes I think it must be true what they say about you kaffirs.…”

  Zondi laughed and settled back behind the wheel with the cord. “Some kind of pulley?” he murmured, becoming immediately engrossed.

  No. 42 Kitchener Row was a very small, unremarkable house that nobody would look at twice unless he was trying to find its front door. Kramer found it behind a faded canvas roller blind and knocked twice. When this failed to bring a response, he tried to find a doorbell, couldn’t see one anywhere, and knocked again. There wasn’t a sound from inside.

  He left the verandah and took a narrow footpath running between the left-hand side of the house and a high brick wall that cut off the neighbors. At the far end of the path was a wooden gate with a latch in it. He slipped the latch and stepped into a garden that took him quite by surprise; it wasn’t only far bigger than he’d imagined, but landscaped and filled with every tropic-bright bloom he had ever seen. Clearly such a garden could not have been put together in a decade or two, but must have been created by the original owners of the drab little house—all except for the swimming pool beyond the mulberry trees. As he advanced towards the pool, having caught a glimpse of movement there, the high wall all around enveloped him in a sense of total privacy that he coveted.

  He coveted even more the stunning if diminutive female form in a bikini who stood with her back towards him at the near end of the pool, adjusting her yellow bathing cap. The legs were long and slender, the buttocks were firmly rounded, the waist was small, the shoulders wide, and from what he could see of the left breast, its perky promise was worth fighting and dying for. It was all he could do to keep walking, and not to throw himself forward, taking her—in every sense of the word—completely by surprise. What a wild, truly magnificent encounter that would be, there among the birds and the bees and the flowers, two strangers locked in lusty celebration of Nature’s Way, panting and.…

  “Miss?”

  She turned and said, “Why, hello, Lieutenant Kramer! How nice to see you again!”

  This second surprise stopped him in his tracks. He recognized the plain, weak-eyed, rather blotchy face under the yellow bathing cap instantly, but simply couldn’t reconcile the rest of Mrs. Archie Bradshaw with the dowdy, dull little figure he had last seen beside her husband’s hospital bed.

  “Very nice!” echoed Archie Bradshaw. “You’re always welcome, Lieutenant! Can I offer you something cold to drink?”

  Kramer twisted round. Bradshaw was seated with his arm in a sling under one of the mulberry trees. Leisure clothes did little to make him appear less overbearing; although of average height, there was a bulk and a belligerence about the man that filled the eye. His jaw was heavy, his forehead sloped back sharply, and beneath his door-knob of a nose was a gray mustache of short bristles as abrasive as his manner. But it was with fresh insight that Kramer now regarded the antique dealer, seeing him not only in matters of business—but of the heart and home too—as a singularly successful snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.

  “Er, I had a couple of lagers not long ago, thanks,” he said. “It’s just that we rang you a few—”

  “Have you met Darren?” asked Mrs. Bradshaw, proudly.

  Kramer nodded to the head that had just surfaced in the pool and was treading water with its foreshortened body. “Hullo, Darren—how goes it?”

  “This is the detective in charge of your father’s case,” explained
Mrs. Bradshaw.

  Bradshaw Junior, a belligerent-looking young man of about twenty with weak eyes, said, “Really?” And swam away under water.

  “Well, um, wouldn’t you two like to go up to the house?” suggested Mrs. Bradshaw, in the awkward way of an embarrassed parent. “I’m sure you’d both be more comfortable there!”

  Kramer noticed the antique dealer wincing at every other step as they crossed the patch of lawn leading to the back verandah. “Still giving you trouble, hey, Mr. Bradshaw?”

  “Damn right it is! Partly my own fault though, thinking I could go after trout in this condition. Hooked a three-pounder, had to use the net, and bloody nearly passed out—rush of black blood to the head, y’know what I mean. Really started playing up yesterday and finally last night I got the hell in, sent for young Darren to come up and collect me.” He stopped and turned. “Darren? Don’t forget we open at two sharp—right on the dot!”

  “Haven’t forgotten,” came back a bored drawl from the pool.

  The back door led into an enclosed verandah off which was the kitchen and a room Bradshaw described as his study. There was nothing whatsoever to study in it, unless one counted the piles of invoices and auctioneers’ catalogues scattered about, and there were no antiques either, compounding the impression the dealer was just that, with no finer feelings for the aesthetic side of his trade. The telephone was off the hook.

  “Cranks,” said Bradshaw, noticing Kramer’s glance. “We’ve had the bastards pestering us for days—they even come to the front door, so we’ve had the bell taken away. Best of the bunch was this funny man who said he’d read about it in the paper, and he’d brought along his Scotch terrier called ‘Jock the Giantkiller!’ ”

  “Uh huh, you always get them. So you got back last night?”

  “Early hours of this morning, to be exact. Darren came up about ten, ten-thirty, and we had a couple of beers and chewed the fat for a while. Sure about that drink?”

  “Perfectly,” said Kramer.