The Blood of an Englishman

by James McClure

  “So that’s it?” said Bradshaw. “You’ve come to sell tickets to a ball?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  The Bradshaws looked at one another.

  “But you said last night,” Mrs. Bradshaw began.

  “I was lying,” said Kramer. “I came here with only one purpose: to discover the whereabouts and associates of your son.”

  “What?” exclaimed Bradshaw, trembling. “My God, when I get hold of Colonel Muller, I’ll have him—”

  “I thought then that his life was in danger.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Bradshaw clasped her mouth. “But is he all right? Whatever was the matter? Why couldn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want to embarrass you, Mrs. Bradshaw. I’m afraid the news I bring this morning isn’t good.”

  “Didn’t want to embarrass me? I don’t understand!”

  Kramer felt his icy edge in danger of being blunted. “I wonder if I couldn’t have a word with your husband first?” he asked. “Perhaps you would like to go and put some clothes on.”

  “Yes, Myra, I think you’d better,” said Bradshaw, going over to her and touching her arm. “Please, my love.”

  She started slightly and looked at him in surprise, as though unused to any display of tenderness. “But not till I know Darren’s safe!”

  “He’s safe and sound where he is,” said Kramer, wishing she would get the hell out before he damned his soul any further. “I think what I’ve got to say is man talk.”

  “Man talk? Oh, he hasn’t! Is her father—?”

  “Your husband is the only father involved,” Kramer assured her.

  “Thank goodness!” sighed Mrs. Bradshaw, giving one of her scatty smiles. “Yes, it is rather chilly, and I’m in need of my cup of tea. Will you call me when it’s over?”

  Kramer nodded, then turned to Bradshaw. He was not watching his wife’s retreat into the house, but staring at him, gray about the cheeks.

  “Do I gather it’s bad news, Lieutenant? Is that why you’ve been acting so strangely?”

  “I wanted to find some way of getting Mrs. Bradshaw out of hearing.”

  “I’ve realized that. How bad is it?”

  “From your point of view, Mr. Bradshaw, I don’t think it could be worse. But don’t you think we’d better go inside as well? Into your study, maybe?”

  “But you’ve got to—”

  “Please,” said Kramer firmly.

  Bradshaw led the way, walking in a swift stumble. He was cracking badly, as might be expected of any man fearing the worst of his son, but what was interesting was the fright there had been in his face before Darren had become the focus of the conversation. There were yellow daisies in the lawn.

  “My study?”

  “That would be the ideal place,” agreed Kramer, playing all this by instinct and letting the vicious juices run.

  “Step inside, man! Step inside!”

  But Kramer wanted him right on the edge before he said another word, so he paused to wipe his feet on the doormat just inside the covered-in verandah. He did this meticulously, and while studying his shoes to gauge the effect, he noticed, as distinctly as green confetti on a black-tile floor, the little leaves of a water plant stuck to his shoe leather. He looked up with something close to murder in his eyes.

  “We’ve got Darren, Mr. Bradshaw,” he said.

  “Meaning?”

  “We’ve got him at Dargle police station. He’s locked in a small brick building round the back.”

  The truth, phrased carefully, could be a terrible weapon, and it was satisfying to see the way it made Bradshaw sag at the knees. He shuffled into one of the leather armchairs. Kramer entered the study and perched on a corner of the desk. His phrasing probably no longer mattered, for he felt certain Zondi’s insight would carry the day without any complaints being made to higher authorities, but he couldn’t resist breaking Bradshaw with a few more slaps of the velvet glove.

  “Last night, Mr. Bradshaw, acting on information received, and with the inadvertent help of your good wife, I went in the company of other police officers to the fishing cottage you own on the farm Twin Falls. There we found your son Darren in conversation with a known dealer in illicit arms. They were having an argument, a quarrel—you could even say a bitter engagement. It would appear that your son went to purchase an illicit firearm from this dealer, and finding him absent from his flat, he forced an entry and stole the—”

  “The fool! I gave him plenty of—”

  “Sorry, what was that, Mr. Bradshaw?”

  Bradshaw was grayer than gray now, and trembling. “Nothing,” he mumbled. “I gave him plenty of warnings about.…”

  “I see, so he had been warned? I thought you were going to say you’d given him plenty of money, but he must have stolen the gun instead and kept the money for himself.”

  “He did what?”

  “It’s the way it looks, Mr. Bradshaw. But don’t worry, in no way are you implicated in these matters. How could you be, when you yourself were a victim of the shootings?”

  “You believe Darren—”

  “Ach, I know it must be hard for you, hey? But do you see the water plant on my shoe here? Just the same as that found on Bonzo Hookham’s shoe? And the revolver in the dam? No, you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about, but Darren helped us a lot last night to finally bring the case to a satisfactory conclusion.”

  Bradshaw staggered to his feet. “My God, what did you do to my boy? He would never—”

  “It wasn’t so much what we did, Mr. Bradshaw. I regret to say that this illegal arms business has its own methods when it comes to dealing with people who try to cheat it. He lost a lot of blood.”

  With a groan, Bradshaw buried his head in his arms and stood rocking. Then he looked up. “You’ve got it completely wrong,” he said. “I never thought the boy would have it in him, but he’s been lying for my sake. Oh sweet Jesus!”

  “I’m sure Darren hasn’t told me any lies,” said Kramer. “Not one.”

  “But he must have done! If I prove it to you, will you let him go? I’ll give you the whole story!”

  “It better be good,” said Kramer.

  27

  COLONEL MULLER TAPPED on Zondi’s window. “Where’s your boss?” he asked. “What the hell went on up at Dargle last night? Why wasn’t I informed from the—?”

  “The Lieutenant is breaking the news of Boss Darren’s death to the parents,” said Zondi, getting quickly out of the Chevrolet.

  “Really?” Colonel Muller scanned the front of the house. “Oh, there’s Mrs. Bradshaw!” She was waving to him, and he waved back. “Doesn’t look to me as if she’s had bad news!”

  “I think the Lieutenant wanted to first tell Boss Bradshaw, Colonel.”

  “I’d better go and see how he’s taking it.”

  Zondi risked catching him by the sleeves. “Excuse me, sir, but the Lieutenant asked me to get your urgent opinion about a fresh clue to the shootings. Here, he left an atlas for you, and I will explain the full details.”

  “A fresh clue? I thought the case was dead? And what the hell has an atlas to do with it?”

  “You’ll find it interesting, sir.”

  “Ja, but—”

  “Will you look at it, please Colonel?”

  “On second thought,” said Colonel Muller, glancing again at Mrs. Bradshaw, “perhaps Lieutenant Kramer is welcome to what will happen to that poor lady’s face any minute now. Come, we’ll sit in my car.”

  After a prolonged, agonized silence, Archibald Meredith Bradshaw began to talk. He did so without fuss or preamble, just as a man might speak who simply couldn’t care less what he said anymore.

  “I killed Bonzo Hookham, Lieutenant Kramer. I did the deed—nobody helped me.”

  “Rubbish!” said Kramer. “Your one hand wasn’t working at the time, and that was a medical fact. How could you tie the rope like that? How could you—”

  “I will explain everything, I promise you.
”

  “Huh! What was your motive?”

  “Revenge, I suppose you’d call it.”

  “For what?”

  “Hookham had first tried to kill me.”

  “Hey?” Kramer’s head jerked back. “When was this? In the war?”

  Bradshaw smiled a ghost of a smile. “No, here in Trekkersburg just over a month ago.”

  This was too much to absorb immediately. Kramer took out his cigarettes and lit one, noticing that his fingers shook. He looked back at Bradshaw. The smile was gone.

  “I was walking my dog when I heard someone call out a name—not my name, a man’s name. I turned and saw him there against the sunset, with the gun in his hand. I couldn’t believe it. I took a step towards him and he fired. The bullet smacked into my shoulder and I went arse over tip. I may have fainted for a second. The next thing I knew was that my whole shirt on that side was soaked in warm blood. He was trying to get near me, trying to see where the bullet had gone, but all the blood must have hidden the little tear eight inches above my heart. My dog was keeping him off, it was going for him. Jesus, I thought, if he sees I’m still alive, I’ll catch another one. It was amazing how clear my thoughts were. I realized he must be able to see me breathing, so I gave this choking sound, went tense then flopped. I held my breath and my dog went on barking. I heard him saying something to himself that gave me a sudden insight into what was going on. Then, just as my lungs were bursting, I heard my dog’s barks getting fainter, and I raised myself just a fraction to see him running away. Then I fainted properly, and when I woke up again it was dark and the dog was licking my face. It just shows you what life is like, Lieutenant: three days later that same dog, a loyal friend, was hit by a car and died in my lap.”

  “And then? You crawled to your car?”

  “I hobbled—it was agonizing. Once I had managed to make myself believe what had happened, I started becoming very angry—furious! Outraged is perhaps the word I’m looking for, and I made up my mind to take my revenge.”

  “Stop,” said Kramer. “Already you’re lying, Bradshaw. I thought this story was meant to be the truth?”

  “It is the truth!”

  “Revenge of that kind is police business, Bradshaw. Why didn’t you come and tell us all this?”

  “Because you would have arrested him, and have found out his motive. I didn’t want you to do that.”

  Kramer blew a smoke-ring. “What was his motive?”

  “Do you need to know that? So far as I know, Lieutenant, the prosecution doesn’t have to prove the motive, and I don’t intend on revealing it to you.”

  “Why not? Was it based on another of your deeds, hey?”

  The ghost of a smile came back. “I gathered so, although it’s not one which I’ll ever feel any personal guilt about—it occurred under unusual circumstances. Nonetheless, it isn’t something I’m proud of, and if people knew about it, I’d be ruined at the very least.”

  “We’ll leave that for now, hey?” said Kramer. “So far you have said nothing that convinces me that Darren—”

  “Then listen, damn you!” growled Bradshaw, gripping the arms of his chair. “The crux of the matter was that I knew I could never feel safe again. Hookham would either make another attempt on my life, or he would spill the beans—something like that. There was a terrible light in his eyes, and he’d been made unstable by his wife’s death. I am certain he was in a state of not caring very much what he did anymore.” The gray cheeks puffed out for a second. “Huh! My first reaction, I remember, as I was driving home, was based on some kind of stupid guilt, I suppose. I remember thinking he must have some kind of divine guidance on his side, which had made our paths cross as they did. But once I rationalized, it was almost natural that they should at some time or other. He was one of those typically ‘English’ types that only Trekkersburg seems to produce—you know the kind I mean? The ones who call England ‘home’ in conversations, even when they’ve never been there? And I had moved here after the war for that very reason: ‘English’ types don’t only ‘dote’ on antiques, but they provided me with plenty of untapped sources of their own stuff to flog around the country to other dealers.

  “Then again, we were both ex-Raf, so it wasn’t a freakish chance that we should bump into each other at a flying club social. Once I got rid of those stupid fears, I decided the most sensible thing would be to kill him. God, I must have killed thousands with my bombs, people who’d never done a thing to me directly, and one more wasn’t going to make much difference to my immortal soul—certainly not when he was a murderous bastard to boot! I had no need of moral scruples, and besides, I’ve never let anyone push me around without me getting even.”

  “You’re a bastard,” said Kramer, “I know that. But forget all this philosophy crap! Facts are what are needed to save your son’s reputation.”

  “Listen!” Bradshaw urged once again. “Here are the facts! Fact one is that I decided to wipe him out. But I needed to think first, make a plan. Until I’d done that, I made up my mind to remain silent, to fake amnesia, deep shock, whatever you like. So when I got home, I said nothing, and I said nothing that night in the hospital either. By the morning I knew what I had to do first. I had to take Hookham right off his guard—I could imagine what must have gone through his mind when he saw the paper that Saturday morning, when he saw I was still alive! That was the worst day of all: dreading he would come to you and give himself up. His only other alternative, as I saw it, was to get the hell out back to England.”

  Kramer nodded. From the evidence, that’s exactly what had passed through Hookham’s mind.

  “So what did I do?” Bradshaw went on, and despite everything the braggart came close to the surface then. “I turned the little runt into a sodding giant! I fed you a whole lot of total bullshit about the ‘looming figure against the sky,’ I think the Gazette called it, and that wasn’t all. I knew that a hard case like yourself wouldn’t take that kind of story too seriously, and would think me an idiot, while trying to find better things to do.”

  “You are an idiot, Bradshaw. Go on.”

  “Yet you still need me to tell you what happened!” Bradshaw shot back, almost cocky with it. “Be careful who you call an idiot, Lieutenant. You never stood a chance.”

  “Right, you’d put Hookham off his guard—although let me tell you he probably had his suspicions—and now you made your plan of attack.”

  “Correct, and that included the possibility that Hookham wasn’t completely fooled, but in no position to tell anyone else this. I decided to use the fact he would most likely come after me again—and where was he most likely to do this? I couldn’t go walking round deserted parts of the racecourse until he pitched up! Obviously, he’d known about that habit of mine from our conversation at the social, and so I decided to let him use something else he had picked up, when I’d described the whereabouts of our fishing cottage to him. Again the Gazette did the work for me there, and published the story about me going trout fishing. Have you got the picture? I had set my lure for him.”

  Kramer nodded. That story had appeared at the beginning of the week, and coincided with the night Hookham had got very drunk with his friends on the lawn in Morninghill.

  “My next concern was how to kill him,” said Bradshaw. “It’s so easy to make mistakes with a murder, and leave clues that lead straight back to you. Ah, I thought, I will leave clues deliberately; nice big clues that will stand out in front of any I overlook myself—that water plant gave me a nasty moment when I read about it, I can tell you!” He was almost enjoying this recital; like the perpetrator of any ‘perfect crime,’ his only disappointment had been making do without his rightful share of applause. “Then I took it a step further. I reasoned that, rather than a ragbag of mixed-up clues that could lead anywhere and might even backfire on me, they should point in a specific direction. Where better than at a giant I knew didn’t exist? That was brilliant, I told myself, because if it seemed that Hookham had been mu
rdered by the same person who’d tried to kill me, then I would be the last ever to be suspected!”

  “Uh huh.” Kramer could not but concede that.

  “How would I achieve the impression of a giant? Well, what we were really talking about was strength, and so first off I made a fist out of an old golf club, holding the thing in a vice and rubbing with a rasp in my left hand. That was another nasty moment, by the way—when that fool De Klerk started going mad about home workshops! I covered the club with its leather hood, and tried a swing with it—plenty of leverage, you see, and I burst a pumpkin in bits. But I needed more than that. The skipping rope occurred to me, as it was bound to send you running round all the gymnasiums in town until you’d had a gutful. Myra had given it to me some months ago, after visiting Jo’burg, and I’d told her I’d accidentally thrown it away, not wanting to join in her bloody nonsense every morning. It looked too obvious with the handles on, so I cut them off and burned them, fairly sure your forensic experts wouldn’t let me down. A good tight knot, tighter than any normal man could manage, was my next idea. I tried the pulleys I’ve got outside for my hammock, attaching extra rope on either side, but it was too cumbersome, so I left it for the moment. What would really clinch the whole thing would be if I could fake a bullet to match the one found in me, but I knew that was impossible. For one crazy moment, I thought of burgling the Digby-Smiths’ house, to see if I couldn’t find the actual gun Hookham had used—he must have borrowed it from someone without their knowing. Then I had to accept that it wasn’t likely to be that poof’s weapon—he’s a pacifist, you know—and that Hookham must have snitched it somewhere else.”

  Kramer nodded. Dear God, Mrs. Westford had said that her husband had left behind everything that a woman needed to protect herself when living almost alone in the country, and this would no doubt have included a lady’s handgun, a .32 probably kept on top of the wardrobe or beside her bed. On that last night, just before deciding to go on his final sortie, Hookham had been alone in the bedroom for some time, while she calmed Timmy down. From the rest of what Hookham had said, just before leaving her, it was now fairly plain that he intended to kill Bradshaw and possibly stay on.