Indecent Exposure

by Tom Sharpe

  On the other hand he had a far clearer picture of the sort of man who had transracial sexual tendencies. According to Dr von Blimenstein the signs to look for were solitariness, sudden changes of mood, pronounced feelings of sexual guilt, an unstable family background and of course an unsatisfactory sex life. As the Luitenant went through in his mind the officers and men in Piemburg one figure emerged more clearly than all the others. Luitenant Verkramp had begun to think he was about to discover the secret of the change that had come over Kommandant van Heerden.

  Back in his office he read through the directive from BOSS just to make sure that he was empowered to take the action he contemplated. It was there in black and white. ‘You are hereby instructed to investigate suspected cases of liaison between police officers and Bantu women.’ Verkramp locked the memo away and sent for Sergeant Breitenbach.

  Within the hour he had issued his instructions. ‘I want him watched night and day,’ he told the Security men assembled in his office. ‘I want a record of everything he does, where he goes, who he meets and anything that suggests a break in his usual routine. Photograph everyone visiting his house. Put microphones in every room and tape all conversations. Tap his phone and record all his calls. Is that clear? I want the full treatment.’

  Verkramp looked round the room and the men all nodded. Only Sergeant Breitenbach had any reservations.

  ‘Isn’t this a bit irregular, sir?’ he asked. ‘After all, the Kommandant is the commanding officer here.’

  Luitenant Verkramp flushed angrily. He disliked having his orders questioned.

  ‘I have here,’ he said, brandishing the directive from BOSS, ‘orders from Pretoria to carry out this investigation. Naturally,’ his voice changed from authority to unction, ‘I hope as I’m sure we all do that we’ll be able to give Kommandant van Heerden full security clearance when we’re finished but in the meantime we must carry out our orders. I need, of course, hardly remind you that the utmost secrecy must be maintained throughout this operation. All right, you may go.’

  When the Security men had left, Luitenant Verkramp gave orders for the questionnaire to be xeroxed and left on his desk ready for distribution the following morning.

  Next day Mrs Roussouw, whose job it was to superintend the black convicts who came from Piemburg Prison every day to do the Kommandant’s housework, had her work cut out answering the front-door bell to admit a succession of Municipal Officials who seemed to think there was a damaged gas pipe under the kitchen, a mains short circuit in the living-room and a leak in the water tank in the attic.

  Since the house wasn’t connected to the gas and the electric stove in the kitchen functioned perfectly while there were no signs of damp on the bedroom ceiling, Mrs Roussouw did her best to deter the officials who seemed determined to carry out their duties with a degree of conscientiousness and a lack of specialized knowledge she found quite astonishing.

  ‘Shouldn’t you switch off the main supply first?’ she asked the man from the Electricity Board who was laying wires in the Kommandant’s bedroom.

  ‘Suppose so,’ the man said and went downstairs. When ten minutes later she found the light still on in the kitchen, Mrs Roussouw took matters into her own hands and went into the cupboard under the stairs and switched the mains off herself. There was a muffled yell from the attic where the Water Board men had been relying on a handlamp connected to a plug on the landing to help them find the non-existent leak in the cistern.

  ‘Must be the bulb,’ said one of the men and clambered down the ladder to fetch another bulb from the Kommandant’s bedside light. By the time he was back in the darkness of the attic the Electricity man had assured Mrs Roussouw that there was no need to cut the mains off.

  ‘You know your own job, I suppose,’ Mrs Roussouw told him rather doubtfully.

  ‘I can assure you it’s quite safe now,’ the man said. Mrs Roussouw went back under the stairs and turned the supply on again. The scream that issued from the attic where the Water Board man had his fingers in the socket of the lamp was followed by an appalling rending noise from the bedroom and the sound of falling plaster. Mrs Roussouw switched the electricity off again and went upstairs.

  ‘Whatever will the Kommandant say when he finds what a mess you’ve made?’ she asked the leg that hung through the hole in the ceiling. An answering groan came from the attic. ‘Are you all right?’ Mrs Roussouw asked anxiously. The leg wriggled vigorously.

  ‘I told you you should have cut it off,’ Mrs Roussouw told the Electricity man reprovingly. In the attic the remark provoked a string of protests and the leg jerked convulsively. The Electricity man went out onto the landing.

  ‘What’s he say?’ he asked peering up the ladder into the darkness.

  ‘He says he doesn’t want it cut off,’ said a voice from above.

  ‘Just as you say,’ said Mrs Roussouw and went downstairs to turn the mains on again. ‘Is that better?’ she asked pulling the switch down. Upstairs in the Kommandant’s bedroom the leg twitched violently and was still.

  ‘You just hang on and I’ll give you a shove from below,’ the Electricity man said and clambered onto the bed.

  Mrs Roussouw emerged from the cupboard and went upstairs again. She was getting rather puffed with all this up and down. She had just reached the landing when there was another terrible yell from the bedroom. She hurried in and found the Electricity man lying prostrate amid the plaster on the Kommandant’s bed.

  ‘What’s the matter now?’ she asked. The man wiped his face and looked up at the leg reproachfully.

  ‘It’s alive,’ he said finally.

  ‘That’s what you think,’ said a voice from the attic.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know what to think,’ Mrs Roussouw said.

  ‘Well I do,’ the Electricity man told her sitting up on the bed. ‘I think you ought to go and cut the main supply off again. I’m not touching that leg till you do.’

  Mrs Roussouw turned wearily back to the stairs.

  ‘This is the last time,’ she told the man, ‘I’m not running up and downstairs any more.’

  In the end with the help of the black convicts they managed to get the unconscious Water Board official down from the attic and Mrs Roussouw was persuaded to give him the kiss of life on the couch in the Kommandant’s sitting-room.

  ‘You can get those kaffirs out of here before I do,’ she told the Electricity man. ‘I’m not doing any kissing with them looking on. It might give them ideas.’ The Electricity man shooed the convicts out and presently the Water Board official recovered enough to be taken back to the police station.

  ‘Bungling idiots,’ Verkramp snarled when they reported back to him. ‘I said bug the house not knock it to bits.’

  *

  When Kommandant van Heerden arrived home that evening it was to find his house in considerable disorder and with most of the services cut off. He tried to make himself some tea but there was no water in the tap. It took him twenty minutes to find the stopcock and another twenty to discover a spanner that fitted it. He filled his Five Minute kettle and waited half an hour for it to boil only to learn at the end of that time that the water in it was still stone cold.

  ‘What the hell’s wrong with everything?’ he wondered as he filled a saucepan and put it on the stove. Twenty minutes later he was rummaging about under the stairs trying to find the fusebox with the help of a box of matches. He had taken all the fuses out and put them back again before he realized that the main switch was off. With a sigh of relief he pulled it down to ‘ON’. There was a loud bang in the fusebox and the light in the hall which had come on momentarily went out again. It took the Kommandant another half an hour to find the fuse wire and by that time he was out of matches. He gave up in disgust and went out and had dinner in a Greek café down the road.

  By the time he got home again Kommandant van Heerden’s temper was violent. With the help of a torch which he had bought at a garage he made his way upstairs and was appalled by the me
ss in his bedroom. There was a large hole in the ceiling and the bed was covered with plaster. The Kommandant sat down on the edge of the bed and shone his torch through the hole in his ceiling. Finally he turned to the phone on his bedside table and dialled the police station. He was sitting there staring out of the window wondering why it took so long for the Duty Sergeant to answer when he became aware that what looked like a shadow under the jacaranda tree across the road was smoking a cigarette. The Kommandant put the phone down and crossed to the window to take a better look. Staring into the darkness he was startled to notice another shadow under another tree. He was just wondering what two shadows were doing watching his house when the phone behind him on the bed began to squeak irately. The Kommandant picked the receiver up just in time to hear the Duty Sergeant put his down. With a curse he dialled again, changed his mind and went through to the bathroom which overlooked his back garden and opened the window. A light breeze drifted in, ruffling the curtains. The Kommandant peered out and had just decided that his back garden was free of interlopers when an azalea bush lit a cigarette. In a state of considerable alarm the Kommandant scurried back to his bedroom and dialled the police station.

  ‘I’m being watched,’ he told the Duty Sergeant when the man finally picked up the phone.

  ‘Oh really,’ said the Sergeant who was used to nutters ringing him up in the middle of the night with stories of being spied on. ‘And who is watching you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ whispered the Kommandant. ‘There are two men out front and another in my back garden.’

  ‘What are you whispering for?’ the Sergeant asked.

  ‘Because I’m being watched, of course. Why else should I whisper?’ the Kommandant snarled sotto voce.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said the Sergeant. ‘I’ll just get this down. You say you’re being watched by two men in the front garden and one in the back. Is that correct?’

  ‘No,’ said the Kommandant who was rapidly losing patience with the Duty Sergeant.

  ‘But you just said—’

  ‘I said there were two men at the front of my house and one in the back garden,’ the Kommandant said, trying to control his temper.

  ‘Two … men … in … front … of … my … house,’ said the Sergeant writing it down slowly. ‘Just getting it down,’ he told the Kommandant when the latter asked what the hell he thought he was doing.

  ‘Well, you’d better hurry up,’ the Kommandant shouted, losing control of himself. ‘I’ve got a dirty great hole in the ceiling above my bed and my house has been burgled,’ he went on and was rewarded for his pains by hearing the Sergeant inform somebody else at the police station that he had another nut case on the line.

  ‘Now then, correct me if I’m wrong,’ said the Sergeant before the Kommandant could reprimand him for insubordination, ‘but you say there are three men watching your house, that there’s a dirty great hole in your ceiling and that your house has been burgled? Is that right? You haven’t left anything out?’

  In his bedroom Kommandant van Heerden was on the verge of apoplexy. ‘Just one thing,’ he yelled into the phone, ‘this is your commanding officer, Kommandant van Heerden, speaking. And I’m ordering you to send a patrol car round to my house at once.’

  A sceptical silence greeted this ferocious announcement. ‘Do you hear me?’ shouted the Kommandant. It was clear that the Duty Sergeant didn’t. He had his hand over the mouthpiece but the Kommandant could still hear him telling the konstabel on duty with him that the caller was off his head. With a slam the Kommandant replaced his receiver and wondered what to do. Finally he got to his feet and went to the window. The sinister watchers were still there. The Kommandant tiptoed to his chest of drawers and rummaged in the drawer containing his socks for his revolver. Taking it out, he made sure it was loaded and then, having decided that the hole in his ceiling made his bedroom indefensible, was tiptoeing downstairs when the phone in his bedroom began to ring. For a moment the Kommandant thought of letting it ring when the thought that it might be the Duty Sergeant ringing back to confirm his previous call sent him scurrying upstairs again. He was just in time to pick the receiver up as the ringing stopped.

  Kommandant van Heerden dialled the police station.

  ‘Have you just rung me?’ he asked the Duty Sergeant.

  ‘Depends who you are,’ the Sergeant replied.

  ‘I’m your commanding officer,’ shouted the Kommandant.

  The Sergeant considered the matter. ‘All right,’ he said finally, ‘just put your phone down and we’ll ring back to confirm that.’

  The Kommandant looked at the receiver vindictively. ‘Listen to me,’ he said, ‘my number is 5488. You can confirm that and I’ll hold on.’

  Five minutes later patrol cars from all over Piemburg were converging on Kommandant van Heerden’s house and the Duty Sergeant was wondering what he was going to say to the Kommandant in the morning.

  3

  Liutenant Verkramp was wondering much the same thing. News of the fiasco at the Kommandant’s house reached him via Sergeant Breitenbach, who had spent the evening tapping the Kommandant’s telephone and who had the presence of mind to order the watching agents to leave the area before the patrol cars arrived. Unfortunately the microphones scattered about the Kommandant’s house remained and Luitenant Verkramp could imagine that their presence there would hardly improve his relations with his commanding officer if they were discovered.

  ‘I told you this whole thing was a mistake,’ Sergeant Breitenbach said while Luitenant Verkramp dressed.

  Verkramp didn’t agree. ‘What’s he making such a fuss about if he hasn’t got something to hide?’ he asked.

  ‘That hole in the ceiling for one thing,’ said the Sergeant. Luitenant Verkramp couldn’t see it.

  ‘Could have happened to anyone,’ he said. ‘Anyway he’ll blame the Water Board for it.’

  ‘I can’t see them admitting responsibility for making it, all the same,’ said the Sergeant.

  ‘The more they deny it, the more he’ll believe they did,’ said Verkramp, who knew something about psychology. ‘Anyway I’ll cook up something to explain the bugs, don’t worry.’

  Dismissing the Sergeant he drove to the police station and sat up half the night concocting a memorandum to put on the Kommandant’s desk in the morning.

  In fact there was no need to use it. Kommandant van Heerden arrived at the police station determined to make someone pay for the damage to his property. He wasn’t quite sure which of the public utilities to blame and Mrs Roussouw’s explanation hadn’t made the matter any clearer.

  ‘Oh you do look a sight,’ she said when the Kommandant came down to breakfast after shaving in cold water.

  ‘So does my bloody house,’ said the Kommandant, dabbing his cheek with a styptic pencil.

  ‘Language,’ retorted Mrs Roussouw. Kommandant van Heerden regarded her bleakly.

  ‘Perhaps you’d be good enough to explain what’s been happening here,’ he said. ‘I came home last night to find the water cut off, a large hole in my bedroom ceiling and no electricity.’

  ‘The Water Board man did that,’ Mrs Roussouw explained. ‘I had to give him the kiss of life to bring him round.’

  The Kommandant shuddered at the thought.

  ‘And what does that explain?’ he asked.

  ‘The hole in the ceiling of course,’ said Mrs Roussouw.

  The Kommandant tried to visualize the sequence of events that had resulted from Mrs Roussouw’s giving the Water Board man the kiss of life and his falling through the ceiling.

  ‘In the attic?’ he asked sceptically.

  ‘Of course not, silly,’ Mrs Roussouw said. ‘He was looking for a hole in the cistern when I turned the electricity on …’

  The Kommandant was too bewildered to let her continue.

  ‘Mrs Roussouw,’ he said wearily, ‘am I to understand … oh never mind. I’ll phone the Water Board when I get to the station.’

  He had bre
akfast while Mrs Roussouw added to the confusion in his mind by explaining that the Electricity man had been responsible for the accident in the first place by leaving the current on.

  ‘I suppose that explains the mess in here,’ said the Kommandant looking at the rubble under the sink.

  ‘Oh, no that was the Gas man,’ Mrs Roussouw said.

  ‘But we don’t use gas,’ said the Kommandant.

  ‘I know, I told him that but he said it was a leak in the mains.’

  The Kommandant finished his breakfast and walked to the police station utterly perplexed. In spite of the fact that the patrol cars had been unable to find any evidence that his house had been watched, the Kommandant was certain he had been under surveillance. He even had an uneasy feeling that he was being followed to the police station but when he glanced over his shoulder at the corner there was no one in sight.

  Once in his office he spent an hour on the phone haranguing the managers of the Gas, Electricity and Water Boards in an attempt to get to the bottom of the affair. It took the efforts of all three managers to convince him that their men had never been authorized to enter his house, that there was absolutely nothing the matter with his electricity or his water supply, and that there hadn’t been a suspected gas leak within a mile of his house and finally that they couldn’t be held responsible for the damage done to his property. The Kommandant reserved his opinion on this last point and said he would consult his lawyer. The Manager of the Water Board told him that it wasn’t the business of the board to mend leaks in cisterns in any case and the Kommandant said it wasn’t anybody’s business to make large holes in the ceiling of his bedroom, and he certainly wasn’t going to pay for the privilege of having them made.

  Having raised his blood pressure to a dangerously high level in this exchange of courtesies, the Kommandant sent for the Duty Sergeant who was dragged from his bed to explain his behaviour over the phone.