The Blood of an Englishman

by James McClure

  “But why were you living in Hong Kong?” asked the girl.

  “I was learning Mandarin Chinese—a very elegant language with only four tones. A dropping tone, a rising tone, a dropping-rising, and a fourth tone which is just a high flat note.”

  “You can actually speak it?” asked the man.

  The Texan smiled. “One night I had some friends coming for drinks at the college, and I went down to the kitchen to get some ice from the big ice machine they had there. The old cook was slaving over the stove. I was aware that most people in Hong Kong spoke Cantonese, but I thought they’d probably learn some Mandarin at school—the Communist government is trying very hard to make it the national language.”

  “Is that a fact?” said the girl.

  “He was slaving away over the stove, and I said to him in Mandarin, ‘How are you?’—Ni hao ma? Ni is ‘you,’ hao is ‘well,’ and ma is a verbal question mark. He looked at me and his mouth fell open! So I repeated myself, Ni hao ma? And then he started laughing, and he asked in English, ‘You speak Mandarin?’ ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Do you know what you say? Mandarin velly differlent flom Chinese.’ ‘No, I’ve no idea.’ ‘You say: “You velly good lacehorse!’ ”

  That got an even bigger laugh, and someone just behind Kramer joined in with a throaty giggle. He turned to find the little redhead from the salon standing there, half-tipsy and dressed in a wine-colored frock. She had a wide, quirky mouth, a neat snub nose, and cornflower eyes as round and as bold as her pair of high breasts.

  “Hi!” she said, smiling. “Remember me?”

  “Even the parts I didn’t see,” said Kramer. “You work downstairs for Jonty, am I right?”

  Her smile broadened. “I do a lot of things for Jonty.”

  “Oh ja? That sounds interesting.”

  “Are you going to interrogate me?”

  “Definitely,” said Kramer.

  “When? Now?”

  “No, first I’ve got to soften you up a little—can I fill that glass with something?”

  “I’m not sure I like the sound of this!” she said, and her blue eyes twinkled. “I can’t help feeling we’re talking at cross-purposes.”

  “Ach no, all I’m going to do is probe your innermost secrets, hey?”

  She laughed. “We’ll see about that! All right, I’ll have another—a long Campari, please. Lots of ice.”

  “One long Campari coming up.…”

  “I’m Tish.”

  “Gesundheit,” said Kramer. “I’m Trompie.” It all went with dreamlike simplicity after that, and had Kramer not been drinking on an empty stomach, he might have had his suspicions. They moved back into the main room, found somewhere to balance their glasses, and joined the dancers. For an hour or more, pausing only for quick refills in the kitchen, they took their cues from the raunchy, strutting music, letting it become a bond which grew until finally, dazed and intoxicated, they sank down on some cushions in the corner. Her pupils were huge as his hand slid from her shoulder and down inside her dress.

  Tish giggled. “That’s not going to soften me up, Trompie!”

  “So it seems,” he murmured, feeling her left nipple swell up hard against his cupping palm. “But what if I press this?”

  “You mean like a ‘play’ button? Ve haf vays of making you talk?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Press that and you just might start something you can’t stop!”

  “Should I, hey?”

  “You have been warned,” she said, nuzzling his ear.

  Kramer pressed the nipple, very gently, and started something all right. The kiss lasted until someone tripped over his legs, and he drew back astonished by her tongue.

  “Shall I confess now?” she asked. “Spill the beans on who had poor Bonzo to dinner? Tell you all that I know?”

  “Hey?”

  “Now don’t start looking serious,” said Tish, pouting and tapping him on the nose. “Not when we’re having fun.”

  “But if you’ve—”

  “Oh dear, what have I done now? I haven’t anything about the poor man, honest! Everyone’s been talking about him and that horrible Archie Bradshaw, but it never gets anywhere. All that really seems to matter to most of them is that super-stud Darren hasn’t been making the rounds of their daughters this time.”

  “So young Bradshaw’s a super-stud, is he?” muttered Kramer, finding another button to press. “What does he specialize in? Lacehorses or polo ponies?”

  “Velly lacey horses!” laughed Tish. “You know, the pearls-and-purer-than-driven-snow set. Usually he’s out every night on the prowl, so much so that last year a certain perfect young lady had to take a short trip to a London clinic, if you know what I mean! Hence the fact his dad banished him to Jo’burg, and why—Ooooo, that’s nice.…”

  “And this?”

  “Even nicer. Don’t you think we—?”

  “No stalling, hey? You do that and I’ll have to give you the full treatment.”

  “Lovely.” Her hand grasped him. “My God, a rubber truncheon! It’s all true what they say! Big bright lights and hand-cranked generators!”

  “That’s nothing, lady—wait till you see what I do with my little plastic duck.”

  They kissed again, then she pushed him away. “But not here, Trompie,” she whispered hoarsely. “Not out here, and I think there’s someone already in Jonty’s—”

  “No problem,” he said, standing up and lifting her to her feet. “Show me the bloody door then hide yourself for a minute.” Moving in a blur of flashing lights, throbbing sound, brandy and lust, he took out his Ruger magnum, burst open the bedroom door and strode in. “Police!” he snapped. “This place is being raided!”

  And all three people believed him.

  20

  “BUT THIS IS a horrific idea,” said Colonel Muller, glancing at the neatly typed report that De Klerk had handed him over his first coffee of the day. “A silencer, you say?”

  “I’m not so sure it is horrific, sir,” said De Klerk. “In fact, I would go so far as to suggest it is merely in line with some of your own theories about this lunatic, and that we can probably rest assured that his experiments are over for the time being.”

  “Really? What started you—?”

  “The trouble we had out at Six Valleys last night, sir, when nobody would swear to hearing a shot fired.”

  “But there were reports of—”

  “Oh, plenty of people thought they’d ‘heard a pop,’ and the kid with the bugle said it’d been two loud bangs, but what about Classina Baksteen? She never mentioned it.”

  Colonel Muller shifted uneasily. “That happens sometimes, as you’d know if you had worked in Murder and Robbery. People either take the bang for granted, or else the bullet seems to reach them before the sound does, which means—”

  “True enough, sir! But what about her parents?”

  “They had just started to watch that cowboy film which begins with all the shooting—nearly everybody was.”

  “Even so, Colonel, it rang a bell with me.”

  “It did?”

  De Klerk removed Bradshaw’s statement from the docket in front of him. “I remembered that although Mr. Bradshaw spoke of seeing a ‘flash’ come from the gun, he hadn’t mentioned a bang either.”

  “But he does say he was temporarily stunned when the bullet hit him, Frans,” Colonel Muller pointed out. “He could’ve been unconscious before he had a chance to hear it!”

  “I considered that possibility myself, sir, but I thought it still merited a quick check. I called in on the Bradshaws on my way to work this morning, explained the position, and asked him to go over this point in his mind.”

  “Oh, how was Mrs. Bradshaw this morning?”

  “I didn’t have time for one, Colonel, but Bradshaw came up with the goods in the end. Ach, to begin with, he scorned the idea of a silencer, and asked me who would ever believe such a thing. Yet I could see something in his eyes, and gradually I forced an adm
ission.”

  “That stupid bastard again!” seethed Colonel Muller, rising in agitation. “Don’t tell me he’d withheld another piece of information because he was scared of appearing a bloody fool? Well, he is a bloody fool!—I might even charge him!”

  De Klerk smiled placatingly. “Would that be fair, sir? It could be a matter of approach. I find that if Mr. Bradshaw’s not being forced to live up to his image of a big, tough man, when you treat him nice and gentle, then he’ll talk to you as freely as anyone. Here, in my hand, is his final statement, which includes the fact he heard no shot go off. Furthermore, I am confident we have all of it now.”

  “What else is there?” asked Colonel Muller. “Silencers! Criminal involvement! The mind boggles!”

  De Klerk’s smile held unwaveringly. “I doubt that, sir. Firstly, what criminal would be interested in Classina? And secondly, no silencer has ever been found on a criminal in Trekkersburg—or anywhere else in Natal, for that matter. They’re simply not sophisticated enough. But before outlining my personal theory, all that Bradshaw had to add was the fact he’d seen this tall young bloke with reddish hair on the racecourse a couple of times. He never talked to him, but he’d seen him stop and pat his dog—didn’t want to get into conversation, because even at a distance his manner seemed a bit strange. It wasn’t until I’d picked this out of his casual chatter that he saw a possible significance, and then I told him about the hair that’d been found inside the stocking. That shook him.”

  “I’ll say! But why didn’t Kramer get this? And where the hell is he this morning?”

  “You did tell him to get a good rest, Colonel. Poor old Tromp, he was in pretty bad shape last night.”

  Colonel Muller admired nothing more than loyalty among fellow officers, and smiled his approval. “You’re quite right, I did, Frans. Now let me hear your theory. Is it straightforward and simple?”

  “It’s mundane, I’m afraid, sir.”

  “Excellent!”

  “But it is backed up by the blokes in Ballistics, on account of the tow-velocity ammunition being used, which is imperative with silencers on conventional weapons. A thirty-two Smith & Wesson, for instance, which has fallen into the hands of an amateur gunsmith. I picture him as a very ordinary young man by all appearances, living in Six Valleys, on the quiet side, obviously not much of a shot, who none the less has this deranged side to his personality. A schizophrenic even, with paranoid tendencies, who gets his kicks from trying to match wits with us and—”

  “Enough,” said Colonel Muller, quite confident that at last a reliable pattern had emerged from the shootings. “I had a case not unlike it when I first started; a sixteen-year-old who killed four old ladies with a catty till I caught up with him. He would also ring me with messages, but where he went wrong was in first stealing this catapult from a friend of his, and then asking at his local garage for any old ball-bearings.”

  “Fascinating, Colonel,” said De Klerk, producing another neatly typed sheet. “My suggested plan for the day is outlined here, sir, and if you and Tromp think it’s any good, then I’ll be happy to—”

  “I think it’s a marvelous piece of work, Frans,” said Colonel Muller, giving the subheadings a quick glance. “And I don’t want us to waste any more time, hey? So off you go! Put your plan into action!”

  “But, sir.…” began De Klerk, looking appalled. “You’re worrying about your friend? Tromp will probably go berserk if—”

  “Leave that to me, Lieutenant De Klerk. I’ll think of something, and there won’t be any repercussions.”

  De Klerk left, plainly reassured by the ring of command in Colonel Muller’s voice, and the latter sat back well satisfied. It wasn’t going to be easy dealing with Kramer, yet a speedy conclusion to this case would make it well worth it.

  Kramer awoke to a new world that morning at a quarter past nine, and to a ceiling he had never seen before, decorated with pretty paper daisies.

  He sat up.

  He was in a bedroom with whitewashed walls, black woodwork, an uneven bare floor and a little louvred door in one corner. The furniture in the room was all made of bamboo. There were three big pictures on the walls—some sunflowers, a red café with a billiard table, a man not dissimilar to Meerkat Marais with a bandage over his ear—and near the door stood an old-fashioned hat-stand, on which were draped his clothes and his shoulder holster. A note written in blue crayon was stuck to the end of the bed with a piece of Sellotape.

  Some of us have a job of work to do. Your breakfast is in the warming oven, and your shirt and undies are drip-drying in the shower. See you at six? Tish

  Kramer flopped back and smiled at the daisies. Perhaps this is what it felt like to be born again, he thought, and considering his birthday-suit nakedness, an apt enough conclusion. He stretched, gathered the sheet about him like a trailing diaper, and went over to look out of the high sash-window. The flat was apparently part of an old house in the dip below the hospital, and faced the willows along the Umgungundhlovu River. Then he opened the little louvred door, discovered the shower, removed his things, and made good use of it. He would have liked to try some of the candy-colored potions arrayed on a shelf above the tap, but wasn’t too sure of their effects with a dodgy character like De Klerk around. The man protested too much. Tish had left out a proper Gillette razor with a badger-hair brush and a tub of shaving soap, slightly used; interesting and reassuring somehow.

  Once he had dressed and hurriedly strapped on his holster, Kramer felt decidedly hungry. He went through into the next room and found it to be a large kitchen-cum-lounge, with huge cushions instead of chairs, Venetian blinds over the windows, shelves stacked with books and records, and a number of expensive ornaments that didn’t quite belong; interesting.

  Your Breakfast said a second note on the warming-oven door, just in case he had missed the first one. It was a very good breakfast: four grilled lamb chops, six rashers of bacon, potato cakes, fried banana slices, egg-plant and mushrooms. Although usually a refueller rather than an eater, he sat at the chair marked Your Place and relished every morsel of it. His eye picked out another little notice propped against a glass bowl: Your Bullets. It didn’t trigger off any memory of his arrival in the flat, nor of his condition at the time, but it was extremely suggestive. He put the dishes in the sink for the flat girl, reloaded his Ruger and slipped on his jacket. Your Key read the label on the Yale key hanging on a pilak ribbon behind the door.

  “Whatever you say, lady,” said Kramer, leaving the ribbon behind and sauntering out.

  Zondi stood at the back of the briefing being held in the main CID office by Lieutenant De Klerk, and chewed on a matchstick.

  “Now I want you Bantu to listen to this as well,” said De Klerk, pulling back his narrow shoulders, “because the whole success of this operation depends on leaving no stone unturned. Those of you who are going into Six Valleys this morning must ensure that no property with a hobby workshop is overlooked. It is in this regard that the work of the Bantu officers will be most important: I want you to double-check with the servants at every address, just in case some householder, suspecting his or her son of illicit activities, attempts to mislead us.”

  Zondi chewed on his matchstick.

  “You will all be issued with a list, of course, which indicates what raw materials you should be looking out for. The same list will be carried by Group Two, who will visit metalwork classes, the technical college, and every other place of potential instruction in the skills required to build a silencer. Group Three, I want you to remember that you’re checking out every sports shop in the province, not just the ones in Trekkersburg, and not just because they sell guns and may know of a suspect answering our description. They also sell skipping ropes, don’t forget that! Ignore no coincidence, however slight, that could point to the man’s identity. And Group Four, as I said at the beginning, will remain here at headquarters and collate all the information coming in.”

  A groan escaped Detective Serge
ant Bateman, who had spent the previous day checking the gunshot reports.

  “It’s okay, Bateman,” said De Klerk with a neat, flashing smile beneath a precise mustache, “those gunshot reports are no longer considered relevant, and will simply be processed in the ordinary way by the girls in the office. Any questions?”

  “Yessir,” replied Detective Constable Van Rooyen, on loan from the Liquor Squad. “Where exactly does Lieutenant Kramer fit into these arrangements?”

  “Or do you mean when exactly?” quipped De Klerk, and got his roar of laughter. “If that’s all, men, you may dismiss.”

  Zondi spat out the matchstick, turned on his heel and went to ground in the loft above the non-white lavatory. From there, through a chink in the red tiles, he could keep an eye on the vehicle yard.

  Kramer arrived at the CID building at eleven o’clock, having found his car only after quartering the hospital area in a taxi. He loped into Colonel Muller’s office and sat himself down on a corner of the desk.

  “Morning, Colonel!” he said, winking an eye.

  Colonel Muller looked up at him wearily. “Is that what getting a decent sleep does for you?” he asked.

  “Not exactly, but where’s everybody, hey?”

  “Ah.”

  “Uh huh? And?”

  “And this,” said Colonel Muller, thrusting two neatly typed sheets at him, each initialed by his own fair hand. “Cast your eye over these, Lieutenant—they’ll give you an idea of the current position.”

  Kramer took the sheets so obviously prepared by De Klerk and skimmed through them without feeling a thing; his night—or what he could remember of it—made their contents seem as remote as an item in one of last year’s newspapers. As for any feelings of indignation, they were stillborn. Like Tish had said, locking her legs around him, all that truly mattered in the final analysis was that he enjoyed himself.

  “Really first-class, sir,” he said, handing the sheets back, “if it isn’t impertinent of me to state an opinion. There’s method there and there’s imagination. This silencer idea of yours! Hell, I’d have written all that off to poor observation, as per usual.”