The Sunday Hangman

“On Sarge Arnot’s desk, Lieutenant. But your boy hadn’t pitched up when we left, so I didn’t bring him.”

“Quick thinking,” Kramer said, and turned back to the two district surgeons. “By the way, this lot found two firearms hidden in the deceased’s car.”

Strydom nudged Myburgh and half whispered, “Did you hear that? I told you this wouldn’t have escaped you in the end!”

“I’m not so sure about that, but thanks, sir.”

“Oh, Lieutenant, the sarge says he’s got something for you on that number plate of yours,” Van Heerden added, dragging his eyes from Erasmus’s paunch fat, which was as thick as four fingers.

“I’ll go and see him now. Well, gentlemen, anything more that’s new?”

Myburgh looked into the sink. “Bladder had been voided, but we knew that already from the state of his pants. Fresh hair clippings in the ears. No, I don’t think so.”

“Me neither,” concurred Strydom. “We’ll get this little lot stuffed back in and stitched up, then I will be ready to leave when you are.”

Kramer neglected to respond. Something Myburgh had just said-to do with either the pants or the hair-had sounded very wrong somehow. It was awakening obscure echoes of some previous investigation, and making him feel pretty certain that, right at the start, he’d overlooked an obvious incongruity.

With a grunt, he left for the main building, resigned to the fact that bad news must await him there. If it had been anything else, then the duty sergeant would doubtlessly have been across the yard in a great cloud of dung and dust.

5

The bad news read as follows:

TO SAP DORINGBOOM: LICENSE PLATES STOLEN FM TRACTOR ON SMALLHOLDING MOUNTAIN OUTLOOK, LICENSEE REPORTS NO KNOWLEDGE THEFT AS TRACTOR ABANDONED IN FIELD AFTER TOTAL BREAKDOWN. THEFT CD HV OCCURRED ANYTIME SIX MONTH PERIOD. FORD SEDAN STOLEN FM JHB CAR HIRE FIRM YEAR AGO. ORIGINAL COLOR BLUE. BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME. ENDS.

“I must say I’ve always preferred a blue myself,” said Strydom, folding the Telex message and handing it back. “But where would this bloke find mountains to stare at?”

“Probably the bloody mine dumps,” answered Kramer, giving the Chev the gun as Doringboom petered out.

“You’re a bit upset?”

Hearing it put this way, Kramer had to smile. “Ach, not really, Doc. At least it backs up what we collected on Tollie: he’d never have bought himself a motor that was warmer than a sodding Easter egg.”

“I suppose it’s over to Jo’burg now?”

“That side of it. Christ, it was lucky you were around today.”

They covered a silent kilometer.

“No, I meant what I said to young Myburgh, Tromp; he’d not have missed the brandy, nor would he have left matters after the firearms find. He could have received the same help from several sources besides myself-Prinsloo, for instance. The basic trouble was our dependency, to a degree, on textbooks from England.”

“Oh, ja?”

“The English are not, you see, taken on average, a very big race. Or at least this appears to be true of their criminal classes, and so these misunderstandings occur when generalizations are made. Now, don’t mistake me; the English had hanging down to a fine art before they chickened out, but all that doesn’t go into a forensic handbook. Myburgh reacted as I would have done under similar circumstances.”

“All the same,” said Kramer, accepting his light, “I still say it was one hell of a coincidence.”

Strydom looked away. “Okay, so I admit it.”

“What?”

“That this trip wasn’t so coincidental. It didn’t even have anything to do with Erasmus, except maybe indirectly. You could say it sort of triggered off an idea.”

“I’m not with you, Doc.”

“Er-this really ought to have come up naturally. You know? I just thought it would be a good opportunity for you and me to have a little chat. Man, you don’t know how impossible it is normally to get you alone in one place for more than two minutes. However, you brought Zondi to do the driving and-”

“Ach, I see!”

“No, Tromp, I don’t think so,” Strydom replied grimly.

Kramer, whose thoughts had been trying to fit around the idea of an execution, which was harder than grabbing wet soap with boxing gloves on, realized abruptly what was being said. While he couldn’t read the innuendo, some kind of trouble lay very plainly between the lines. This baffled him because, whatever they might say behind each other’s back, he and Strydom got on well together, being always careful whom they said it to. And when it came down to sorting out a stiff, the Doc seldom let you down. Yet morgue work was only a single aspect of the DS’s duties, Kramer remembered now, and felt himself tensing up. Strydom was also required to attend corporal punishment at the triangle, to investigate complaints by political detainees, to give yellow fever shots to air travelers, and to care for the health of all police personnel and their dependents, under the force’s free medical scheme. Being rather dull by comparison, this latter function wasn’t one that sprang readily to mind-as it certainly should have done.

“Doctor, what the hell are you trying to say?” Kramer demanded. “It’s about Zondi, am I right?”

Strydom sighed, turning the sound into a low chuckle of respect. Then he took off his glasses to clean them- an old ploy of his when he wanted to appear defenseless-and began speaking again in an entirely different tone. At a guess, it was intended to be soothing, but its effect rivaled the scrape of fingernails down a whitewashed wall.

“I know you’re a bit touchy in this regard,” Strydom said. “You even proved as much this afternoon, by making him walk five kilometers just to impress me.”

“Rubbish.”

“You had no special need for the information at that stage, Tromp. I know it was my presence that influenced-”

“Ach, kak! You had nothing to do with it!”

“Then why did you, Tromp? Even Van Heerden looked a bit surprised.”

“It was a job he could do best.”

“So you might believe, but-”

“No, in his bloody opinion!” Kramer chopped across. “It was also his idea.”

Strydom put his glasses back on and stared for a while.

“Can you explain that some more to me?”

This wasn’t a topic Kramer liked in the least, and he wished he’d not responded at all, but the damage was done, and he had to go on.

“It would have been hard on the man to say no. Zondi has never done less than his best.”

“Nobody’s arguing. But you know that it’s my duty to report on the fitness of all CID staff, and that I depend on all senior officers for help with my assessments. Not once have I had anything from you, and that is making my position with Colonel Muller very difficult. I can’t keep writing ‘Progress as expected’ week after week without him wondering when all this progress is going to stop, and he has an A-l Bantu again. You do know that he insists on every member of CID being 100 percent fit, hey?”

“I heard it was 100 percent efficient.”

With an uneasy laugh, Strydom said, “And I’d always understood that the two went together.”

“So what do you want me to say? Chuck him on the scrap-pile?”

“We didn’t say that when you got yourself shot up in that Portuguese cafe, Tromp. Please don’t get unreasonable.”

It was on the tip of Kramer’s tongue to point out how unreasonable a comparison that was, and to do this