No Ordinary Killing
Page 8
The light breeze had returned. Sure enough, on it, there came a mewing, a whimpering. They could all hear it now. Something sizeable, something in distress. Finally, their trophy.
They fanned out and homed in, spears ready. As they closed there came another sound, a frenzied snarling and yipping … The scavengers had arrived.
They were crouched on the ground, half crawling, mindful of the snakes. Round a low boulder pile they could see jackals biting and clawing at a hole under a rock, its entrance not much bigger than a large dinner plate.
A hail of stones sent the ragged dogs scampering.
Slowly they edged to the rock. The whimpering still came from within. The men displayed signs of puzzlement. A bushpig? It was unfamiliar.
That is not the sound of an animal.
Slowly, while the others stood ready to slay the beast when it charged out in a panic, one of their party crept forward and gently probed his spear into the hole.
There was a sharp yelp and he withdrew it. He went for a second attempt.
That is not the sound of an animal.
Before they could stop him, Mbutu had sprung forward and shoved the man out of the way. Against a clatter of protest, he thrust his own arm into the hole and pulled.
That is not the sound of an animal.
Standing before them now was a young girl, a white girl, of about seven years of age, her blonde hair matted, round blue eyes startled, her face, hands and white pinafore dress filthy with red desert dust.
Further scrambling and out climbed a woman, a white woman, equally dirty. Confronted by spear points, her expression was a picture of unbridled terror.
Chapter Fourteen
Finch must have uttered Cox’s name because chirpy Krajicek confirmed: “That’s right, sir …”
He read off from his notes.
“… Major Leonard Armstrong St John Cox.”
The cold sweat trickled down off Finch’s scalp. He took his desert-stained handkerchief and dabbed his forehead. The last thing he’d expected to see was the major silently scowling up at him. And on Christmas morning of all mornings.
“But how—?”
“That’s what we’re here to establish,” said Brookman.
Krajicek flipped through his papers.
“Cox, Cox, Cox … Yes. Long way from home, too, by the looks of things.”
Home? Was the Front now considered home?
“India, sir.”
Now Finch understood.
“Have his domestic residence listed as a villa in Sialkot … the Punjab … Alas, wife and three children.”
The little man tutted, as if Cox, by his own volition, had failed them.
A corporal appeared. He came and stood by Brookman. The detective nodded and he undid a button on the top pocket of his tunic to remove a notebook.
The sweat was streaming off Finch now. He could feel it beading on his forehead. A drip meandered down his nose.
“You all right, sir?” asked Brookman. “I’d have thought, as a medical man …”
“Glass of water?” added Krajicek.
“No, no. Good God, no. Nothing like that gentlemen,” Finch dismissed, embarrassed. “It’s just that it’s … a bit of a shock.”
“A shock, sir?”
Brookman raised an eyebrow.
“You see …” said Finch.
“Sir?”
“He’s my commanding officer … My CO.”
“Your CO?”
He studied the stony face again.
“Or rather was …”
Silence. Glances were exchanged between the detective and the deputy coroner.
“My, my, now I’m confused,” chimed in Krajicek, a little too theatrically for Finch’s liking.
He rifled through his paperwork again, making a great show of it.
“It says here …”
He proffered the clipboard to Finch so that he might examine the evidence for himself.
“…that the deceased was an officer with the 9th Queen’s Royal Lancers.”
The corporal ceremonially licked the stub of a pencil and recorded this detail.
“That’s how he’d registered his regimental affiliation … what his papers stated.”
The assistant brandished Cox’s cap, showing the crossed-spears brass badge. He replaced it on the pile of khaki sitting on the counter.
Brookman, overlooking the corporal’s shoulder, jabbed a finger at an apparent error in the note-taking.
“His serial number confirms it,” added Krajicek. “We’ve already cross-referenced, of course. Wonderful device, the telephone.”
All in the room bar Finch exhaled and shook their heads in enthusiastic and communal awe, as if a deity had been evoked.
Finch suddenly found himself on the defensive. The more he explained things, the more the sweat seemed to gush.
The Royal Army Medical Corps was brand new, he informed them. Doctors, surgeons … they had never before served in uniform. Many were civilian volunteers, like himself. For the time being, field units were being placed under the nominal charge of regular army officers, senior ones seconded specifically for the purpose.
“Believe me, it wasn’t Cox’s choice,” he quipped.
He studied the lifeless face again. Poor bastard. No honour for this soldier.
“How so, sir?” asked Brookman.
“Beg your pardon?”
“You said it wasn’t his choice.”
“I mean I’m sure he felt … I don’t know, inadequate … emasculated by the appointment … Not proper soldiering and all that … Especially when his regiment was actively engaged elsewhere.”
“You say you were sure he felt that way?”
Good God, was he to deconstruct every sentence?
“I’m guessing he felt that way.”
Brookman looked over the corporal’s shoulder and mumbled something, pointing out further additions. He didn’t look up.
“He told you this, sir?”
“Not directly.”
“So he didn’t tell you this?”
“I said not directly.”
Now Brookman raised his gaze.
“So, indirectly, he didn’t tell you that he that he felt his duties were not, as you say …”
He referred to the corporal’s pad again. He squinted hard.
“… ‘Proper soldiering’, sir,” clarified the corporal.
“I spent a lot of hours with the man. It was an—”
“‘Assumption’? Our old friend.”
“… an impression I formed.”
Finch mopped at his brow and neck.
“When did you last see the major?” asked Brookman.
Finch paused to work it out. The building was lit electrically. The ceiling lightbulb began buzzing. It flickered off then on again, as if responding to his thinking.
“A couple of days … three days ago, it would have been … the, what … 22nd? We were camped at the Modder River after the pull-back. Relief had arrived. He went on to Hopetown ahead of me … the train south.”
“How did he appear?”
“I’m sorry … How do you mean?”
“His demeanour, his manner—”
“What a bizarre question,” snapped Finch.
“Bizarre? Why do you think it bizarre?”
Brookman pointed at the notepad, ensuring that his underling had logged this apparently salient detail.
“Inspector, the entire army had just retreated … been redeployed … at a moment’s notice. Our unit – his unit – was scattered to the four winds. Major Cox was not exactly singing and dancing.”
“Come, come, sir. No need for sarcasm. If you could stick to the facts.”
Finch tried to recount it: the initial withdrawal – thousands of men, soldiers milling aimlessly while marshals steered queues over the bridge, the pack mules fording the shallows, steam tractors shovelling earth, the burning thorn scrub wafting across a makeshift tented city; the utter shambles over followin
g days as they gathered together an ad hoc field hospital to cope with it all.
“Cox has been described as an easy-going fellow. Jovial.”
“Inspector. If you’ve had any experience of battle you’ll know that men do not necessarily behave as one might expect …”
Brookman said nothing.
“There was not the usual relaxed assuredness he was given to exude, to be sure.”
“And that was the last time you spoke to him?”
“Yes … I mean no.”
“Which is it, sir?”
Finch picked his words carefully.
“I didn’t speak to him on that occasion. He was 20, 30 yards away. He nodded at me. Acknowledged me. That was it. The last time I spoke to him, if we are to make a distinction, was … well, a day or two before … routine stuff, evacuating the wounded and all that … He’d barely been around. Had been off all over the place, up and down the lines.”
There still was no reaction. Did they not believe him?
“We’d shipped nearly all remaining casualties south by then. Job done. He was going on to Cape Town ahead of me. ‘Business to attend to’ or something of that order.”
“Business to attend to?”
“Of that origin, yes. He was a resourceful man. Enterprising.”
“A black marketeer?”
“I never said that. Look Inspector, I just want to know how on earth … I mean, how the major ended up … dead?”
Brookman took his time. He recapped the basics – the body on the stoep … the maid …
The clipboard was passed to Finch again and, in a daze, he signed where Krajicek had scrawled ‘X’s.
One entry remained blank.
“Cause of death?” Finch asked.
“Well therein lies the question,” Krajicek replied. “It’s impossible to tell without a proper post mortem, of course, but we know that he’d not been dead long when we found him. With no onset of rigor mortis and in summer temperatures, it narrows time of death to between midnight and 2am I’d say.”
Finch checked his pocket watch. It had stopped at just after three – an ongoing fault in the winding mechanism daresay worsened by the blood and mud of Magersfontein.
He looked instead to the clock on the wall. It was just gone seven. Possibly only five hours ago, then.
“Yes, but how did he die?”
Krajicek hovered his capped fountain pen over Cox’s strangely lifeless mouth.
“See the discoloration around the lips?”
Finch nodded. They were bluish.
“Asphyxiation most probably.”
The assistant passed Krajicek a typed sheet of paper. He studied it.
“Yes, yes. There was vomit in the lungs and internal trauma to the windpipe, suggesting something had been forced into his mouth.”
“Into his mouth …?”
“Not difficult with a drunk, sir,” said Brookman.
“A drunk?”
Krajicek leaned toward Finch and lowered his voice.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the deceased had consumed rather a lot of alcohol.”
Half the army was drunk. Did one more officer really matter?
“Did they take anything?” asked Finch.
Everything stopped. For Brookman, this statement was so ripe with meaning that he chewed and savoured it like a rare filet mignon.
He repeated it slowly, for the delectation of all.
“You know, the thieves,” spluttered Finch.
Brookman paused, letting Finch wriggle on the hook.
“Thieves?”
“I just assumed …”
Damn.
Brookman showed mercy this time.
“His wallet was still on him,” he said. “Ten shillings in cash, his identity papers, plus a Zeiss wristwatch.”
“Oh.”
Krajicek seemed ridiculously perky.
“Unless the consequence of an extraordinary misfortune, the odds of which are hugely against, it appears this was no ordinary killing.”
“Ordinary killing?”
“You see, beyond the alcohol, the tobacco and the vomit, there’s another faintly discernible odour on the man,” enthused the deputy coroner.
“There is?”
“Yes, Captain. Some kind of chemical. Chloroform I’d wager?”
The shelves lining the walls were crammed with glass jars and bottles containing liquid of every hue. The entire atmosphere of the room was a pungent cocktail of cleansers and preservatives.
Snorted Finch: “How can you possibly tell?”
“Trust me, Captain. When you’ve been in the game as long as I have …”
He pointed at Cox again.
“You’re a doctor. See the purplish hue to the skin, the yellowing when you apply pressure.”
Krajicek wrestled off a glove. He pressed a thumb to the fleshy mound of Cox’s left shoulder. When he removed it, it left a creamy impression.
“Compatible with some kind of toxicity?” Finch ventured.
“Just a hunch,” said Krajicek. “An interesting turn of events, I’m sure you’ll agree.”
Finch chose his words carefully.
“You mean he was poisoned?”
Brookman came closer.
“Thieves in Cape Town are not so sophisticated,” he said.
Finch could feel his shirt collar now soaking.
“But I still don’t understand. Who the hell would do such a thing?”
Brookman gave a sniff, as if enjoying a private joke.
“The law of averages would dictate that either the body was deposited at the guest house by the person who killed him,” he said. “In which case the murderer was known to the deceased. He’d only stayed there one night, after all … Or—”
“Or?”
“Or it was dumped there in a panic. Most likely by a cabbie, I’d say … And, in either instance, said depositor would have known where to take him.”
There was nothing smug about Brookman’s pronouncement. Just the logical deduction of a seasoned professional.
“In my estimation, Major Cox died just before or even en route to his lodgings.”
With a sudden rush, Finch went to interject. Brookman cut him off.
“Not an assumption, Captain, a likelihood according to the criminal law of probability.”
Krajicek nodded at the assistant, who pulled the sheet back over.
“Logically, finding who deposited Major Cox’s body is the place to begin our investigation,” said Brookman. “We will do all we can to help, of course. But, like I say, after that, it’s over to the Military Foot Police.”
He pointedly took the clipboard from Finch.
“Thank you, sir.”
Krajicek rubbed his hands together in expectation. Brookman handed it to him, like a parent rewarding an excitable child.
“We can schedule a post mortem for this afternoon,” trilled the little man. “Quiet day. Shouldn’t take too long, sir.”
“All we ask, Captain,” added Brookman, “is that you don’t stray too far. Your hotel’s fine. City centre, too. But if you do go for a wander, be sure to advise of your whereabouts.”
“Why?” bristled Finch.
Brookman looked him straight in the eye.
“Just how well did you know Major Cox, sir?”
This was crazy.
“Quite well … I mean I’d worked with him, had dealings with him, in some capacity, every day for the past sixty or so …”
“Well then, there’s your answer, Captain.”
“Begging your pardon?”
“You’re now an important part of our investigation.”
“Surely you don’t think … I … ?” Finch spluttered.
“Can your account for your movements between midnight and two o’clock this morning, sir?”
Finch felt his cheeks flush. Christ, why was he sweating so?
“I had Christmas Eve dinner with company at the Mount Nelson. I arrived back at my ho
tel at about, I don’t know, half past one or thereabouts …”
He was racing through his answer. Too hasty.
“Front desk at the Belvedere can confirm my return.”
“With whom?”
“I’m sorry?”
“With whom did you have dinner, sir?”
“It was a mixed party. There were a French and German officer there. What, nine or ten well-to-do civilians? … Businessmen, some wives. Damned if I can remember the names. But it was hosted by a Mr Hal Lloyd, I can tell you that … a resident of the hotel … an American. Correspondent of sorts.”
The corporal was scribbling furiously.
Finch remembered something. He reached into an inside jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet. He handed a card to Brookman.
“The American Kinematograph Company?” read the inspector.
Finch couldn’t resist it.
“It’s the future.”
“The future?”
“Nothing.”
Brookman gave a harrumph. The corporal scratched out the last remark.
“What time did you leave?”
“I don’t know. Half past midnight? Quarter to one?”
“And after that?”
“Walking … coming back through town.”
Brookman pointed to Finch’s knee. He arched an eyebrow.
“On that leg, sir?”
“I was trying to …”
“I’m sensing from your tone that you weren’t overly enamoured of the deceased. Had you had any recent altercations with the major? Anything that—?”
Finch raised his voice.
“Look, I’m telling you …”
Brookman took his time. He nodded to the corporal who snapped shut his notebook and buttoned it back in his pocket. And then Brookman smiled.
“Don’t worry, Captain. I can read a man like a book. You’re not the killing type. But you see my point. At this present moment, we should rule out nothing.”
He turned on his heel, the signal for Finch to follow.
“Find the person who dropped the body and we’ll find the killer.”
Finch walked to the door.
“Oh, and sir?” Krajicek called after him. “Merry Christmas.”
Chapter Fifteen
The café had a high, tin-plated ceiling with floral patterns stamped into the metal. Around half of the rattan-backed chairs were occupied, largely by elderly couples in their church finery, white hair bobbing amid the palm fronds. Above them a slow, whirring fan sliced through the haze of cigar smoke.