by Tom Sharpe
‘I thought it was a hoax,’ he told the Kommandant. ‘It was the way you were whispering.’
The Kommandant wasn’t whispering now. His voice could be heard in the cells two floors below. ‘A hoax?’ he yelled at the Sergeant. ‘You thought it was a hoax?’
‘Yes, sir, we get half a dozen every night.’
‘What sort of hoaxes?’ the Kommandant asked.
‘People ringing up to say they’re being burgled or raped or something. Mostly women.’
Kommandant van Heerden remembered when he had been a Duty Sergeant and had to agree that a lot of night calls were false alarms. He dismissed the Sergeant with a reprimand. ‘Next time I call you,’ he said, ‘I don’t want any arguments. Understand?’ The Sergeant understood and was about to leave the office when the Kommandant had second thoughts. ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ the Kommandant snarled. The Sergeant said that since he’d been up all night he was thinking of going back to bed. The Kommandant had other plans for him. ‘I’m putting you in charge of the investigation into the burglary at my house,’ he said. ‘I want a full report on who was responsible by this afternoon.’
‘Yes sir,’ said the Sergeant wearily and left the office. On the stairs he met Luitenant Verkramp who was looking pretty jaded himself.
‘He wants a full report by this afternoon on the break-in,’ the Sergeant told Verkramp. The Luitenant sighed and went back upstairs and knocked on the Kommandant’s door.
‘Come in,’ yelled the Kommandant. Luitenant Verkramp came in. ‘What’s the matter with you, Verkramp? You look as though you’d spent the night on the tiles.’
‘Just an attic of colack,’ spluttered Verkramp, unnerved by the Kommandant’s percipience.
‘A what?’
‘An attack of colic,’ said Verkramp trying to control his speech. ‘Just a slip of the foot … er … tongue.’
‘For God’s sake pull yourself together, Luitenant,’ the Kommandant told him.
‘Yes sir,’ said Verkramp.
‘What do you want to see me about?’
‘It’s about this business at your home, sir,’ said Verkramp, ‘I have some information which may be of interest to you.’
Kommandant van Heerden sighed. He might have guessed that Verkramp might have his grubby fingers in this particular pie. ‘Well?’
Luitenant Verkramp swallowed nervously. ‘We in the Security Branch,’ he began, spreading the burden of responsibility as far as possible, ‘have recently received information that an attempt was going to be made to bug your house.’ He paused to see how the Kommandant would take the news. Kommandant van Heerden responded predictably. He sat up in his chair and stared at Verkramp in horror.
‘Good God,’ he said, ‘you mean …’
‘Precisely sir,’ said Verkramp. ‘Acting on this information I put your house under twenty-four hour surveillance …’
‘You mean—’
‘Exactly, sir.’ Verkramp continued. ‘You have probably noticed that your house has been watched.’
‘That’s right,’ said the Kommandant, ‘I saw them there last night …’
Verkramp nodded. ‘My men, sir.’
‘Across the road and in my back garden,’ said the Kommandant.
‘Exactly, sir,’ Verkramp agreed, ‘we thought they might return.’
The Kommandant was losing track of the conversation. ‘Who might return?’
‘The Communist saboteurs, sir.’
‘Communist saboteurs? What the hell would Communist saboteurs want to do in my house?’
‘Bug it, sir,’ said Verkramp. ‘After the failure of their attempt yesterday I thought they might return.’
Kommandant van Heerden took a firm grip on himself.
‘Are you trying to tell me that all those Gas men and Water Board officials were really Communist saboteurs …’
‘In disguise, sir. Fortunately thanks to the efforts of my counter-agents, the attempt was foiled. One of the Communists fell through the ceiling …’
Kommandant van Heerden leant back in his chair satisfied. He had found the person responsible for the hole in his bedroom ceiling. ‘So that was your fault?’ he said.
‘Entirely,’ Verkramp agreed, ‘and we’ll see that repairs are carried out immediately.’
The news had taken a great burden off the Kommandant’s mind. On the other hand he was still puzzled.
‘What I don’t understand is why these Communists should want to bug my house in the first place. Who are they anyway?’ he asked.
‘I’m afraid I can’t disclose any identities yet,’ Verkramp said, and fell back on the Bureau of State Security. ‘Orders from BOSS.’
‘Well what the hell is the point of bugging my house?’ asked the Kommandant who knew better than to question orders from BOSS. ‘I never say anything important there.’
Verkramp agreed. ‘But they weren’t to know that sir,’ he said. ‘In any case our information suggests that they were hoping to acquire material which would allow them to blackmail you.’ He watched Kommandant van Heerden very closely to see how he would react. The Kommandant was appalled.
‘God Almighty!’ he gasped, and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. Verkramp followed up his advantage swiftly.
‘If they could get something on you, something sexual, anything a bit kinky.’ He hesitated. The Kommandant was sweating profusely. ‘They’d have you by the short hairs, wouldn’t they?’ Privately Kommandant van Heerden had to agree that they would but he wasn’t admitting as much to Luitenant Verkramp. He raced through the catalogue of his nightly habits and came to the conclusion that there were several he would rather the world knew nothing about.
‘The diabolical swine,’ he muttered and looked at Verkramp with something approaching respect. The Luitenant wasn’t such a fool after all. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ he asked.
‘Two things,’ said Verkramp. ‘The first is to allay the suspicions of the Communists as far as possible by ignoring this affair at your house. Let them think we don’t know what they are up to. Lay the blame on the Gas … er … Water Board.’
‘I’ve done that already,’ said the Kommandant.
‘Good. What we have to realize is that this incident is part of a nation-wide conspiracy to undermine the morale of the South African Police. It is vital that we should do nothing premature.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said the Kommandant. ‘Nation-wide. I had no idea there were so many Communists still at large. I thought we’d nabbed the swine years ago.’
‘They spring up like dragon’s teeth,’ Verkramp assured him.
‘I suppose they must,’ said the Kommandant who had never thought of it quite like that before. Luitenant Verkramp continued.
‘After the failure of the sabotage campaign they went underground.’
‘Must have done,’ said the Kommandant, still obsessed with the thought of dragon’s teeth.
‘They’ve reorganized and have begun a new campaign. First to undermine our morale and secondly, when that’s done, they’ll start a new wave of sabotage,’ Verkramp explained.
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ said the Kommandant, ‘that they are deliberately trying to obtain facts that can be used to blackmail police officers all over the country?’
‘Precisely, sir,’ said Verkramp. ‘I have reason to believe that they are particularly interested in sexual indiscretions committed by police officers.’
The Kommandant tried to think of any sexual indiscretions he might have committed lately and rather regretfully couldn’t. On the other hand he could think of thousands committed by the men under his command.
‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘it’s a good thing Konstabel Els isn’t with us any more. The bugger died just in time by the sound of it.’
Verkramp smiled. ‘That thought had crossed my mind,’ he said. Konstabel Els’ exploits in the field of transracial sexual intercourse were already a legend in the Piemburg Police Station.
‘In any case I still don’t see what you’re going to do to stop this infernal campaign,’ the Kommandant went on. ‘If it isn’t Els, there are still plenty of konstabels whose sex life could do with improvement.’
Luitenant Verkramp was delighted. ‘My own view of the matter,’ he said and took Dr von Blimenstein’s questionnaire out of his pocket. ‘I’ve been working on the problem with a leading member of the psychiatric profession,’ he said, ‘and I think we’ve come up with something that may serve to indicate those officers and men most vulnerable to this form of Communist infiltration.’
‘Really?’ said the Kommandant who had an idea who the leading member of the psychiatric profession might be. Luitenant Verkramp handed him the questionnaire.
‘With your approval, sir,’ he said, ‘I’d like to have these questionnaires distributed to all the men on the station. From the answers we get it should be possible to spot any likely victims of blackmail.’
Kommandant van Heerden looked at the questionnaire, which was headed innocuously enough ‘Personality Research’ and marked ‘Strictly Confidential’. He glanced at the first few questions and found nothing to alarm him. They seemed to be concerned with profession of father, age, and the number of brothers and sisters. Before he could get any further Verkramp was explaining that he had orders from Pretoria to carry out the investigation.
‘BOSS?’ asked the Kommandant.
‘BOSS,’ said Verkramp.
‘In that case go ahead,’ said the Kommandant.
‘I’ll leave you to fill that one in,’ said Verkramp, and left the office delighted at the turn of events. He gave orders to Sergeant Breitenbach to distribute the questionnaires and telephoned Dr von Blimenstein to let her know that everything was proceeding if not according to plan, since he hadn’t had one, at least according to opportunity. Dr von Blimenstein was delighted to hear it and before Verkramp fully realized what he was doing he found that he had invited her to have dinner with him that evening. He put the phone down astonished at his good fortune. It never crossed his mind that the pack of lies about Communist blackmailers he had told the Kommandant had no reality outside his own warped imagination. His professional task was to root out enemies of the state and it followed that enemies of the state were there to be rooted out. The exact details of their activities, if any, were of little importance to him. As he had once explained in court, it was the principle of subversion that mattered, not the particulars.
If Verkramp was satisfied with the way things were going, Kommandant van Heerden, seated at his desk with the questionnaire in front of him, wasn’t. The Luitenant’s story was convincing enough. The Kommandant had no doubt that Communist agitators were at work in Zululand. Nothing less could explain the truculence of the Zulus in the township at the recent increase in bus fares but that saboteurs disguised as Gas men had infiltrated his own home, indicated a new phase in the campaign of subversion, and a particularly alarming one at that. The Duty Sergeant’s report that the investigating team had discovered a microphone under the sink only went to prove how accurate Luitenant Verkramp’s forecast had been. Ordering the Sergeant to leave the investigation to the Security Branch, the Kommandant sent a note to Verkramp which read, ‘Re our discussion this morning. The presence of microphone in kitchen confirms your report. Suggest you take counteraction immediately. Van Heerden.’
With renewed confidence in the ability of his second-in-command the Kommandant decided to tackle the questionnaire Verkramp had given him. He filled in the first few questions happily enough and it was only when he had turned the page that there dawned on him the feeling that he was being led gently into a quagmire of sexual confession where every answer only dragged him deeper down.
‘Did you have a black nanny?’ seemed innocuous enough, and the Kommandant put ‘Yes’ only to find that the next question was ‘Size of breasts. Large. Medium. Small.’ After a moment’s hesitation not unmixed with alarm he ticked ‘Large’, and went on to consider ‘Nipple Length. Long. Medium. Short.’ ‘This is a bloody funny way to fight Communism,’ he thought, trying to remember the length of his nanny’s teats. In the end he put ‘Long’ and found himself faced with ‘Did black nanny tickle private parts? Often. Sometimes. Infrequently?’ The Kommandant looked desperately for ‘Never’ and couldn’t find it. In the end he ticked Infrequently and turned to the next question. ‘Age at First Ejaculation, Three years, four years …?’
‘Don’t leave much to chance,’ thought the Kommandant, indignantly trying to make his mind up between six years, which was quite untrue but which seemed less likely to undermine his authority, and sixteen years, which was more accurate. He’d just put eight years as a compromise based on a nocturnal emission he’d had when he was ten when he saw that he’d walked into a trap. The next question was ‘Age at First Wet Dream?’ This time the list started at ten years. By the time he had rubbed out his answer to the previous question to make it consistent with a Wet Dream at eleven years, the Kommandant was in a thoroughly bad temper. He picked up the phone and called Verkramp’s office. Sergeant Breitenbach answered the phone.
‘Where’s Verkramp?’ the Kommandant demanded. The Sergeant said he was out, and could he help. The Kommandant said he doubted it. ‘It’s this damned questionnaire,’ he told the Sergeant. ‘Who’s going to read it?’
‘I think Dr von Blimenstein intends to,’ the Sergeant said. ‘She drew it up.’
‘Did she?’ snarled the Kommandant. ‘Well you can tell Luitenant Verkramp that I have no intention of answering question twenty-five.’
‘Which one is that?’
‘It’s the one that goes “How many times do you masturbate every day?”’ said the Kommandant. ‘You can tell Verkramp that I think it’s an invasion of privacy to ask questions like that.’
‘Yes sir,’ said Sergeant Breitenbach, studying the possible answers on the questionnaire which ranged from five times to twenty-five times.
The Kommandant slammed down the phone and locking the questionnaire in his desk went out to lunch in a filthy temper. ‘Dirty bitch wanting to know things like that,’ he thought as he stomped downstairs, and he was still grumbling to himself when he finished lunch in the police canteen. ‘I’ll be up at the Golf Club if anyone wants me,’ he told the Duty Sergeant and left the police station. He spent a fruitless couple of hours trying to hit a ball down the fairway before returning to the Clubhouse with the feeling that this was not one of his days.
He ordered a double brandy from the barman and took his drink out to a table on the terrace where he could sit and watch more experienced players drive off. He was sitting there absorbing the English atmosphere and trying to rid himself of the nagging conviction that the even tenor of his life was being undermined in some mysterious way when a crunch of gravel in the Clubhouse forecourt made him glance over his shoulder. A vintage Rolls Royce had just parked and the occupants were climbing out. For a moment the Kommandant had the extraordinary sensation that he had been transported back to the 1920s. The two men who emerged from the front seat were dressed in knickerbockers and wore hats that had been out of fashion for fifty years, while their two women companions were attired in what appeared to the Kommandant to be fancy dress with cloche hats and carried parasols. But it was less the clothes or the immaculate vintage Rolls than the voices that affected the Kommandant so profoundly. High-pitched and languidly arrogant, they seemed to reach him like some echo from the English past and with them came a rush of certitude that all was well in the world in spite of everything. The kernel of servility which was Kommandant van Heerden’s innermost self and which no amount of his own authority could ever erase quivered ecstatically within him as the group passed him without so much as a glance to indicate that they were aware of his existence. It was precisely this self-absorption to the point where it transcended self and became something immutable and absolute, a Godlike self-sufficiency, that Kommandant van Heerden had always hoped to find in the English. And here it was before him in
the Piemburg Golf Club in the shape of four middle-aged men and women whose inane chatter was proof positive that there was, in spite of wars, disasters, and imminent revolution, nothing serious to worry about. The Kommandant particularly admired the elegance with which the leader of the foursome, a florid man in his fifties, clicked his fingers for the black caddie before walking over to the first tee.
‘How absolutely priceless,’ shrieked one of the ladies about nothing in particular as they followed.
‘I’ve always said Boy was a glutton for punishment,’ said the florid man as they passed out of earshot. The Kommandant stared after them before hurrying in to the bar to consult the barman.
‘Call themselves the Dornford Yates Club,’ the barman told him. ‘Don’t ask me why. Anyway they dress up and talk la-di-da in memory of some firm called Bury & Co. which went bust some years back. Red-faced fellow is Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon. He’s the one they call Bury. The plump lady is his missus. The other bloke’s Major Bloxham. Call him Boy of all things and he must be forty-eight if he’s a day. I don’t know who the thin woman is.’
‘Do they live near here?’ the Kommandant asked. He didn’t approve of the barman’s rather off-hand attitude to his betters but he desperately wanted to hear more about the foursome.
‘The Colonel’s got a place up near the Piltdown Hotel but they seem to spend most of their time on a farm in the Underville district. It’s got a queer name like White Woman or something. I’ve heard they have some pretty queer goings on up there too.’
The Kommandant ordered another brandy and took it out to his table on the terrace to wait for the party to return. Presently he was joined by the barman who stood in the doorway looking bored.
‘Has the Colonel been a member here long?’ the Kommandant asked.
‘A couple of years,’ the barman said, ‘since they all came down from Rhodesia or Kenya or somewhere. Seem to have plenty of spending money too.’
Aware that the man was looking at him rather curiously, the Kommandant finished his drink and strolled over to inspect the vintage Rolls Royce.