Riotous Assembly

Chapter 13

The prison in Piemburg is situated on the edge of town. It is old and looks from the outside not altogether unattractive. An air of faded severity lingers about its stuccoed walls. Above the huge iron doorway are printed the words 'Piemburg Tronk and Gaol', and the door itself is painted a cheerful black. On either side the barred windows of the administrative block break the monotony of the walls whose heights are delicately topped with cast-iron cacti which give the whole building a faintly horticultural air. The visitor to Piemburg who passes the great rectangle of masonry might well imagine that he was in the neighbourhood of some enormous kitchen garden were it not for the frequent and persistent screams that float up over the ornamental ironwork and suggest that something more voracious than a Venus Flytrap has closed upon a victim.

Inside the impression is less deceptive. Opened by Sir Theophilus in 1897, the Viceroy had complimented the architect in his speech at the unveiling of the flogging post for 'creating in this building a sense of security it is hard to find in the world today', a remark which, coming as it did from a man in whom a sense of insecurity was so manifest, spoke for itself. Sir Theophilus' enthusiasm was not shared by most of the people who entered Piemburg Prison. Notorious throughout South Africa for the severity of its warden, Governor Schnapps, it had the reputation for being escape-proof and having the fewest recidivists.

If the prison was escape-proof, the Maximum Security Block was doubly so. Set near the execution shed which was appropriately nicknamed Top, the Security block huddling half underground was known as Bottom.

The Bishop could find no fault with the name. 'I can see it's the bottom,' he said to the warder who pushed him into his tiny cell. 'I don't have to be told.'

'I could tell you a few other things,' said the warder through the grille.

'I'm sure you could,' said the Bishop hastily. His experience with the hooded man in the car had taught him not to ask unnecessary questions.

'I have always kept this cell for murderers,', the warder continued. 'It's convenient for the door, you see.'

'I should have thought that was a disadvantage with prisoners who have such strong motives to escape,' the Bishop said, reconciling himself to the thought that he was a captive audience.

'Oh, no. They didn't escape. It made it easy to take them across to Top. We rushed them along the passage and up the steps and they were gone before they knew it.'

The Bishop was relieved to hear this. 'I am glad you put so much emphasis on the past,' he said. 'I gather there hasn't been a hanging for some time.'

'Not for twenty years. Not in Piemburg, that is. They hang them all in Pretoria these days. Taken all the fun out of life.'

The Bishop was just considering the dreariness of a life that found hangings fun when the warder went on, 'Mind you, it will be different in your case. You're a Hazelstone and you're privileged,' the warder said enviously.

For once in his life the Bishop was thankful to be a Hazelstone. 'Why's that?' he asked hopefully.

'You've got the right to be hanged in Piemburg. It's something to do with your grandfather. Don't know what, but I'll see if I can find out for you,' and he went down the passage and left the Bishop cursing himself for asking yet another silly question. As he paced his cell he heard the sound of vehicles outside and peering out through the tiny barred window saw that the Kommandant had arrived.

The Kommandant had taken the precaution of driving down from Jacaranda House in an armoured car and was busy explaining to Governor Schnapps that he was taking over his office.

'You can't do that,' the Governor protested.

'Can and will,' said the Kommandant. 'Got Emergency Powers. Now then if you'll be good enough to show me where your office is, I'll have my camp bed moved in and we can get down to business.'

And leaving the Governor to write a letter of complaint to Pretoria, the Kommandant installed himself in Schnapps' office and sent for Konstabel Els.

'Where's Luitenant Verkramp?' he asked. 'That's what I want to know.'

For once Konstabel Els was better informed. 'He's in hospital,' he said. 'Got himself wounded up at the gate.'

'That fellow shot him, did he? Deserves a medal.'

Els was surprised. What he had seen of Luitenant Verkramp's courage didn't seem to him to warrant a medal.

'Who? Verkramp?' he asked.

'No, of course not. The fellow who shot him.'

'He didn't get shot,' said Els. 'Threw himself into a ditch.'

'Typical,' said the Kommandant. 'Anyway, I want you to go and fetch him from the hospital. Tell him he's got to interrogate the prisoner. I want a full confession and quick.'

Konstabel Els hesitated. He was not anxious to renew his acquaintance with the Luitenant.

'He won't take orders from me,' he said. 'Besides he may have hurt himself seriously falling into that ditch.'

'I wish I had your optimism, Els,' said the Kommandant, 'but I doubt it. The swine's malingering.'

'Why not leave him where he is? I don't mind getting a confession out of the prisoner.'

The Kommandant shook his head. The case was too important to have Els botching it up with his dreadful methods.

'It's kind of you to offer,' he said, 'but I think we'll leave it to Luitenant Verkramp.'

'There's gratitude for you,' thought Els, as he went off to fetch Verkramp from the hospital.

He found the Luitenant lying on his stomach taking nourishment through a straw. Verkramp's back, it appeared, made it impossible to eat in any other position.

'Well?' he asked grumpily when Konstabel Els reported to him. 'What do you want?'

'Came to see how you were,' Els said tactfully.

'You can see how I am,' Verkramp answered, regarding Els' dirty boots with disapproval. 'I have been seriously wounded.'

'I can see that,' Els said, grateful that the Luitenant couldn't study his face. He regretted having peered down into the moat now. 'Got you in the back, did he?'

'Came at me from behind,' said the Luitenant who didn't like the imputation that he had been trying to escape.

'Nasty. Very nasty. Well, you'll be glad to know we've got the bastard. The Kommandant wants you to start interrogating him straight away.'

Verkramp choked on his straw. 'He wants what?' he shouted at the Konstabel's boots.

'He says you're to come straight away.'

'Well, he can say what he likes, but I'm not budging. Besides,' he added, 'the doctors wouldn't let me.'

'Would you like to tell him yourself?' asked Els. 'He won't believe me.'

In the end a telephone was brought to the Luitenant's bedside and the Kommandant had a word with him. It was rather more than one word and in the end Luitenant Verkramp was persuaded to report for duty. Short of facing a court martial for cowardice, desertion in the face of the enemy, and incompetence in that he allowed twenty-one policemen under his command to be slaughtered, there didn't seem much he could do to remain in hospital. Verkramp was in a very ugly mood and not altogether clearheaded when he arrived at the prison to question Jonathan Hazelstone.

It was hardly less ugly than the mood Kommandant van Heerden was in. After a momentary spasm of optimism that the case was as good as closed now that the prisoner was in Bottom, the Kommandant had succumbed to a state of extreme pessimism on learning that Miss Hazelstone was still at large. Since leaving the Park she had not been seen. The police Land Rover had been found abandoned but of Miss Hazelstone there was no trace, and while the Kommandant felt pretty sure she wouldn't break into the prison to renew their acquaintance, he had no doubt that what she might do outside was just as likely to jeopardize his future.

For one thing he couldn't afford to allow her to run about the country telling all and sundry that she had had him trussed to a bed in a rubber nightdress and that he hadn't been man enough to take an injection. He was just consoling himself with the thought that Miss Hazelstone's circle of friends was pretty exclusive, when he remembered that among other assets like gold mines, the Hazelstone family owned the local newspaper, whose editor had never shown any great regard for the police. Kommandant van Heerden had no desire whatsoever to provide copy for the _Natal Chronicle_ and the thought of headlines like: 'The Tiny Prick. Kommandant in Rubber Nightie says No to Needle', made his blood run cold.

He gave orders that road blocks be set up on all roads leading out of Piemburg and that the homes of all Miss Hazelstone's friends were to be raided. Every hotel and guesthouse in the town was to be checked and plain-clothes men were to mingle with the crowds in the shops. Finally, the Kommandant ordered that notices be put up announcing a large reward for information leading to the capture of Miss Hazelstone, but just to make sure that Miss Hazelstone's confessions did not reach the public, he plucked up courage and left the safety of the prison to pay a personal call on the editor of the _Natal Chronicle._

'I'm acting under Emergency Powers,' he told the man, 'and I am ordering you to publish nothing Miss Hazelstone may submit. In fact, if anything is submitted by her you're to forward it to me unread,' and the editor had gone off to cancel Miss Hazelstone's current contributions to the women's page which was called, 'How to Convert a Zulu Kraal into a Country Cottage'. He read it through to see if there was anything subversive in it, but apart from the recommendation to use latex for loose covers, he couldn't find anything unusual in it. In any case he had his hands full trying to find out how many victims there were in the bubonic plague and rabies epidemics that had apparently hit the community. As far as he had been able to ascertain, the only people exhibiting symptoms of rabies were the Piemburg police.

Throughout the night and the following day the search for Miss Hazelstone continued. Hundreds of plain-clothes men scoured the town or hung about indecisively in shops making life difficult for store detectives on the lookout for shoplifters. A number of elderly ladies suddenly found themselves in handcuffs and being driven at high speed in police cars to Fort Rapier Mental Hospital, where several had to be admitted with nervous breakdowns as a result of the experience.

On the roads out of Piemburg queues of cars and lorries waited for hours while policemen ransacked each vehicle. There were particularly tiresome delays on the Durban road where trucks carrying offal from the abattoir to the Jojo Dog and Servant Meat Cannery had to be searched. Since Kommandant van Heerden had impressed upon his men the need to search every square inch of every vehicle no matter how unlikely a hiding-place it seemed to be and since the Jojo trucks contained twenty-five tons of pig brains, ox guts and the inedible and doubtless nutritious entrails of every conceivable diseased animal that contributed its share to the liver and love Jojo promised the dogs and servants, the men at the Durban road search-point had to go to considerable trouble to make absolutely sure that Miss Hazelstone was not hiding in the disgusting mess that greeted them every time they stopped one of the lorries. The occupants of the cars piling up behind were astonished to see policemen clad only in bathing-trunks and with facemasks and schnorkels clambering aboard the Jojo lorries and diving into piles of semi-liquid meat so enormous that even the late and unlamented vulture would have been put off its feed. The policemen who finally emerged from their prolonged and fruitless search were hardly a sight to reassure the citizens of Piemburg that the police were looking after their interests, and faced with the prospect of so thorough a search a good many motorists decided to cancel the trips they were making and go quietly home. Those that stayed had the upholstery of their cars irremediably stained by the half-naked and bloodsoaked cops who climbed in and poked under seats and inside glove compartments for the elusive Miss Hazelstone.

In the meantime the homes of Miss Hazelstone's friends were being searched with equal thoroughness, and a good many people, who had boasted of an acquaintanceship with her which they had never enjoyed, found that Miss Hazelstone's friendship carried with it some awesome consequences, not the least of which was the knowledge that they were suspected of harbouring a wanted criminal.

In spite of all these drastic measures, Miss Hazelstone remained at large and cheerfully unaware that she was the object of such a meticulous manhunt.

After driving the police Land Rover through the gates of Jacaranda Park she had followed the main road to town, had parked the car in the main street, and had walked into the Police Station to give herself up.

'I'm Miss Hazelstone of Jacaranda Park, and I've come here to be arrested,' she said to the elderly Konstabel on duty at the desk, who was in fact one of the post-operative cases Kommandant van Heerden had insisted return to duty. Missing his gall bladder and the lower portion of his intestines, he had not lost his wits as well, and he had been in the police long enough to have got used to the queer customers who came in regularly to make false confessions. He looked the old gentleman in the salmon-pink suit up and down for a minute before replying.

'Oh yes,' he said sympathetically. 'So you're Miss Hazelstone are you, sir? And what do you want to be arrested for?'

'I've murdered my cook.'

'Lucky to have one to murder,' said the old Konstabel. 'My old woman cooks for me and if the state of my insides or what remains of them is anything to go by, she's been trying to murder me for years, and it's only thanks to the miracles of modern surgery that she hasn't bloody well succeeded. Do you know,' he went on confidentially, 'it took the surgeons four hours to cut away all the rotten stuff there was in me. They took my gall bladder and then my…'

'I have not come here to discuss the state of your health,' Miss Hazelstone snapped. 'It's not of the slightest interest to me.'

Konstabel Oosthuizen wasn't amused. 'If that's the way you want it,' he said, 'that's the way it's going to be. Now hop it.'

Miss Hazelstone wasn't going to be brushed off so easily. 'I have come here to be arrested for murder,' she insisted.

Konstabel Oosthuizen looked up from the medical dictionary he had been reading. 'Look,' he said, 'you've just told me you're not interested in my physical condition. Well, I'm bloody well not interested in your mental state either. So shove off.'

'Are you telling me you refuse to arrest me?'

Konstabel Oosthuizen sighed. 'I'll arrest you for loitering if you don't get out of here double quick,' he said.

'Good, that's what I've come for,' Miss Hazelstone sat down on a bench against the wall.

'You're making a bloody nuisance of yourself, that's what you're doing. All right come on down to the cells,' and leading the way down to the basement he locked her in. 'Give me a shout when you want to come out,' he said, and went back to read about diseases of the intestinal tract. He was still so engrossed in his own pathology when he went off duty that he forgot to mention her presence in the cells to the konstabel who relieved him, and she was still sitting quietly in her rubber suit next morning when he came on duty once more.

It wasn't until mid-morning that he remembered that the old gent was still down in the cells, and he went down to let him out.

'Had enough?' he asked, unlocking the door.

'Have you come to question me?' Miss Hazelstone asked hopefully. She had been looking forward to third degree.

'I haven't come to bring you breakfast if that's what you think.'

'Good,' said Miss Hazelstone. 'Let's get on with it.'

Konstabel Oosthuizen looked bewildered. 'You're a weird old buzzard,' he said. 'Senile if you ask me.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Kick you out,' said the Konstabel. 'I can't have you cluttering up the station.'

'I'm Miss Hazelstone of Jacaranda Park, and I'm wanted for murder. It's your duty to arrest me.'

'And I'm the Queen of England,' said Konstabel Oosthuizen. 'Go on, clear out of here before you get me into trouble.'

'I tell you I'm wanted for murder,' Miss Hazelstone insisted.

'You're certainly not wanted for anything else,' and the Konstabel picked up his medical dictionary and began to read about gynecomastia.

Miss Hazelstone tried to make him see reason. 'What do I have to do to get myself arrested if you won't arrest me for murder?' she asked.

'Try fucking a kaffir for a start,' suggested the Konstabel. 'That usually works wonders.'

'But that's what I've been doing for the last eight years,' Miss Hazelstone told him.

'Get along with you. I doubt if you've got the wherewithal,' was all the answer she got, and with the final comment that she looked as though she might have gynecomastia, which Konstabel Oosthuizen had just learnt was unusual development of the breasts of a male, the Konstabel went back to his book.

'If you won't arrest me, I demand to be taken home,' Miss Hazelstone said.

Konstabel Oosthuizen knew when to compromise. 'Where do you live?' he asked.

'Jacaranda Park of course,' said Miss Hazelstone.

'I might have known it,' said the Konstabel, and glad to be rid of her took her out into the station yard. 'Take the old gent up to Jacaranda Park,' he said to the driver of a police car that was just leaving, and with all the speed and social deference to which she was accustomed. Miss Hazelstone was driven to the gates of Jacaranda Park and deposited there. The car hadn't been stopped at the police checkpoints for obvious reasons.