“Rubbish! How could he build on reserve land?”
“Some building that is there already?”
“That isn’t used?”
Zondi gave all his attention to the road. His speed had dropped considerably, for the moonlight tended to play optical tricks with the sharp bends.
“Use full lights and just belt it,” ordered Kramer.
“So he can see we follow him?”
“Wouldn’t know it was us. No, wait.”
The Chev crunched to a halt on the verge, held in check by the handbrake until they could resolve their dilemma: on the one hand, to continue in hot pursuit might be to precipitate events, while on the other, a more cautious approach might get them there too late.
“I think he must have seen Willie off already,” Kramer said softly. “He’s stopped now to set up his side show. We’ve no idea of how long ago he left the barbecue party.”
“Or he has already seen our lights,” Zondi suggested.
“Not a chance. He was facing the wrong way to get anything this high in his rear-view mirrors. Bugger,
Now that they had been in the dark for a minute or so, their night vision was improving; the valley was beginning to roughen up as areas of different tone became more distinct. There was a crescent of fairly pronounced shadow about two hundred yards to the right of where the truck’s lights had gone out.
“Hau, pillbox!” said Zondi, using English.
“And ‘pillbox’ to you, my son.”
“No, boss! That is what throws the shadow. The pillbox the English soldiers poked their guns from-round, with small windows.”
“Of course! Ja, I can see it now.”
The ubiquitous bloody pillbox; so much a part of the landscape in parts of Natal, you never noticed them.
“Which is where he’s got his scaffold, Mickey!”
“Maybe he just wants to hide on the side road.”
“No, man; that’s got to be where it is! Can you think of a better spot?”
Everything was making sense again. For a time, Kramer’s theory of a cool, impersonal hangman had been irreconcilable with the bitter, impulsively violent character of Gysbert Swanepoel. One of the chief reasons for this being the actual evidence they’d had of a humane, carefully conducted ritualism, which didn’t go at all with what Swanepoel was alleged to be capable of when crossed. And yet, in this very conflict of opposites, lay the knowledge that Willie was still very much alive.
“There’s no hurry,” said Kramer, lighting another couple of Luckies. “We’re not dealing with one man here, but two. The way he knocked Willie down was his straightforward, surface reaction to a problem-he avenged himself in a way not uncommon among country folk. Now his obsession with capital punishment has taken over- there can be no doubt he caught Willie in the act-and he cannot imagine a policeman being made to pay the ultimate penalty for such a crime. So he has decided to execute him, deluding himself there is nothing personal involved in the matter. You follow?”
Zondi’s grunt was noncommittal. He put his hand back on the handbrake handle.
“I know what you’re thinking, man-that he’s just a bloody killer-but if he saw himself that way, then why all this complicated fuss? Because he needs to delude himself he’s no more a killer than the state executioner! And for the delusion to work, he has to kill without murdering. What’s the only way you can do that?”
“Legitimately? But his-”
“By not using a murder weapon, for Christ’s sake! He can’t use a gun or a knife or his hands-it has
“Why should he care so much?” Zondi said, releasing the handbrake.
“The old, old story: he didn’t see what happened to the sodding victim. You have; you’ve seen the pictures. You know that old man was just as alive as the little bastard who shoved him over the railing-Vasari.”
The Chev picked up speed as it free-wheeled on down the slopes of the ridge.
“A long drop,” observed Zondi.
“Ja, and they say he screamed all the way down onto the rocks. Didn’t die either, until the coolies had called the ambulance. I reckon we’ll make it with five minutes to spare at this rate.”
“Yebo?”
“Has to check the traps and fix the slack. Huh, might even have the whole night, if he’s decided to stretch the rope properly, but I wouldn’t like to bet on that.”
“Maybe Boss Willie will give trouble as well, increasing our chance.”
“Oh, wog of little faith,” Kramer sighed, quite certain the right decision had been made-and for the right reasons.
Then he sat back to see what he could remember of the only pillbox he’d ever bothered to look at closely. The height would have been ideal-a good fifteen feet, even before you started to dig a pit into the earth floor-and there’d been stout wooden beams across the top. The windows and door had been bricked up, but not very effectively, and a good kick had given him access. These windows would also be bricked up, of course, to prevent any light from showing, and presumably the door would be some sort of restoration job. This left the roof as his most likely means of entry, providing it, too, was falling to bits like the other one. And that was some provision. With another sigh, Kramer realized he was saddled with a problem that had sorely taxed his forefathers, and that had seldom been solved without a considerable quantity of dynamite. That was, of course, why the bloody things were still about.
Willie came around again and knew that he had been moved. He was sitting, propped up in a corner, with something made of black material over his head. The change of position had relieved the congestion in his nostrils- he could feel the snot and blood sliding down his chin-and he could, very faintly, smell things. There was the shop freshness of the material, and, coming through it, an odor of disinfectant. He identified this as Jeyes Fluid, with which prisons and stationhouse lockups were traditionally saturated. The association paralyzed him.
Then a dark shape moved aside from his line of vision, allowing a bright, if slightly orange, light to penetrate the cloth and make it partially transparent. Like a child trying to cheat at a party game, Willie could see very little through it-except for the silhouette of something that hung between him and the light source. It was a noose.
A noose, Willie noted, with no slack taken up in the rope and neatly tied with packthread; a strangler’s noose.
He screamed, hoarsely.
“Nobody outside could hear you, even if there was anyone there,” said the voice of Gysbert Swanepoel, looming with the return of the dark shape. “I’m sorry you have to have the cap on so early, but I haven’t had time to make my usual preparations. I didn’t want you unduly upset.”
Willie tried to kick at him.
“Don’t make it harder for yourself, Boshoff. I’ve never had to tie anyone up before, and I’m hoping you’ll try to be a man when the time comes. Your execution will be at midnight, by the way, right on the dot.”
When Willie heard that, he stopped feeling terrified. He ceased to believe in what was happening. He sniffed and-as delicately as he could-spat.
“Shall we talk?” Swanepoel asked. “I’m afraid I have no assistance, so I have to play several roles at once. Let us suppose for the next few minutes that I am your kindly warder.”
“That rope’s wrong,” said Willie, amazing himself.
“In what way?”
“No drop.”
“Ah, but there is a drop, I assure you. I had you on the mealie scales before we came here. Eleven stone would give a standard American drop, as it happens-rather a fluke-but I’ve added three inches extra for reasons you
