The Sunday Hangman

11

The best person to see about the unlamented railway foreman, everybody said, was good old Joep Terblanche. He’d hated the bastard. Hated him right down to his little blue socks, and then some. If, in fact, the good Lord hadn’t finally made Rossouw do the decent thing, then Joep would have seen him off personally. It had been as bad as that. And nobody could blame him.

Dear God, thought Kramer.

To find Joep, you had to try the bowls club, the jukskei pitch, the tennis club, and the fishing club’s stretch of trout water. Having run through all the amenities of the dorp of Olifantsvlei by then, there was just a chance he might be at home.

It started to rain heavily, so Kramer drove straight round.

The former station sergeant of Olifantsvlei, retired these three years on full pension, was living modestly in a tin-roofed bungalow overhung by tall pawpaw trees and their overripe fruit. The broad leaves shed by the Chinese fig tree lay undisturbed on the garden bench, and a pair of secateurs were rusting, forgotten, on a homemade sundial in the middle of the small, unkept lawn. It was also significant that the tracks down the clay driveway stopped at a point nearest to the front verandah, and that the garage, some ten yards farther on, had weed growing high against its dull green doors. Good old Joep, all this suggested, was a widower-and a fairly recent one at that, who hadn’t grown accustomed to his solitude.

Kramer made a dash for the verandah, and reached it with his hair plastered down. He gave the front door a rap. Something inside, either a ghost or a cat, set a dish clattering.

Then a battered Land-Rover chugged in at the gate and the whole feel of the place changed. Big and beaming, broad enough to wear a barrel without needing braces, Joep Terblanche came doubling across; two fish dangled from his left hand, and in his right he carried a six-pack.

“Caught in the act!” he said, tossing the fish aside onto a verandah table. “Lieutenant Kramer, here on business-am I right?”

The bush telegraph in Olifantsvlei was obviously not to be sniffed at. Kramer shook the outstretched hand, approved the firm grip, and told himself to come off guard. The man had a simple and tangible goodness as pronounced as freshly baked bread.

“I’m here to ask a few questions about one of your old cases,” he said.

“Ja, so I hear. Man, it’s a pity my sister has passed on, or she could really tell you a thing or two about Toons Rossouw! Like to come inside?”

They went through into a kitchen that had a strong under-smell of cockroach powder and very few signs of food. When Terblanche opened the cupboard to remove two glasses, only breakfast cereal packets were exposed, and it was reasonable to suppose that he now took his main meals with some family living nearby.

A sodden crash resounded loudly on the tin roof overhead, making Kramer glance up.

“Pawpaw.” Terblanche grinned. “The rain knocks them down.”

“Christ, I thought a bloody maternity stork had dropped its load.”

Terblanche frowned slightly, as though disapproving of that kind of humor-or perhaps it was that he just didn’t understand it. Then he smiled again, handing Kramer his beer and inviting him to be seated.

“Naturally, I’m curious to know why the interest in Toons Rossouw all of a sudden, Lieutenant.”

“You’re well rid of us now, man, so let’s make that ‘Tromp.’ ”

“I prefer ‘Joep’ myself.”

“Fine,” said Kramer, still stalling; his instincts were insisting that he play this one very cool. “Ever heard of Witklip?”

“Certainly. It’s that little place north of-y’know.”

“I’m involved in a murder inquiry there, and Rossouw’s name has cropped up in some of the past history. We don’t know exactly what it’s got to do with anything, so we hoped-by trying our luck this end-we might find out.”

“Witklip?” murmured Terblanche, twisting the tips of his graying moustache between thumb and finger. “I can’t see any connection either. Male or female involved?”

“Would you like to guess?”

“Huh! A woman, of course. But the railway doesn’t go anywhere near the place, and Toons stuck very much to this dorp, as far back as I can remember.”

“What was the story about him, Joep?”

“One you’ve heard before, that I’m sure of. He was a drunk, a fighter, a thief-when he got the chance-and a proper bad bastard all around. So who should agree to marry him? A little girlie he could crush the ribs of in one hand. Personally-and my sister Lettie also shared this opinion-the marriage was the minister’s fault.”

“Shotgun?”

“Hell, no!” said Terblanche, quite shocked. “Stefina came of a good family; poor like kaffirs, but good. He most probably thought she would reform him.”

This was indeed the old, old story. They clinked glasses and drank.

“Nobody can say that little girl didn’t try,” Terblanche went on. “Others in the community tried for them also. Oom Dawid let Toons rent a shack on his property, and Lettie went round collecting up old curtains and suchlike. The place wasn’t much, yet Stefina made it look as pretty as a picture from the catalogue. You could stop by there anytime, I’m telling you. The little black stove would be shining, there would be coffee in the pot, and always wild flowers in a jam bottle on the table given by the minister himself. I think you call it a card table, with folding legs; anyhow, it wasn’t fitting for his position.”

“And they lived miserably ever after?” Kramer asked.

“Ever after,” sighed his host, “until, of course, what happened came to pass. He was clever that one-oh, ja. The first time he took his belt to her, he was lucky and one of my men let him off with a warning. After that, when he came back drunk, or from his womanizing, he’d find ways of never leaving a mark. ‘Stefina,’ I would say-because Oom Dawid would always call me when he heard the screams-‘Stefina, you just make a charge and the doctor is sure to find marks.’ But she would shake her head. Not an ugly girl, you understand, although, in the eyes of some folk, a little on the plain side. It was her bones, man-bones like a little bird. To think of him beating her took you in the stomach. I tell you, when I got a chance, and had to have Toons in my lockup for the night, then he went in there off all four walls and the bloody ceiling. Mind you, like him, I had to be careful.”

Kramer drank to the irony of that.

“I wanted to slap charges on him-any bloody charges, so long as he’d be put away inside. But Lettie asked what would happen to Stefina then, out in the shack alone, with kaffirs all around, and the magistrate followed a similar line, giving him long lectures. They all wanted this dream of theirs-ach, I don’t know what to call it-to work out as it was planned and make them all happy. Never mind Stefina in the meantime! I watched her turning to a shadow of the happy kid I had known. The round cheeks and big dimples and-hell, it was terrible. She’d sit in the church on Sunday, reading her Bible like it would put blood back in her veins. Then she became pregnant.”

“He resented the …?”

“No; for once he settled down. That was actually when the railway job came up-you know how they look after poor whites-and the first was born. A girl.”

“Ah,” said Kramer.

“And the second, also a girl. The third, Stefina told us, was a miscarriage.”

At this point, Terblanche rose and went off to fetch his fish from the front verandah. The rain drubbed harder on the roof and two more pawpaws burst and slid. Kramer switched on the kitchen light when he saw his host take out a gutting knife.

“There was a nagmaal,” the old man continued, talking now as much to himself as to anyone. “Folk came from every direction, from places you never even heard of. When we hold communion in Olifantsvlei, the minister likes to make a big thing of it-bigger than most ministers do, and I’m not sure it’s right. Anyhow, there were hundreds camping here, around the church and down by the river. You can imagine how many kids that added up to! They were the ones who began the talk.”

His knife slid into the fish’s belly rather too deep. He drew it out a little way and tried again, slitting up toward the head. He scraped the innards away.

“They told their parents and soon everyone was whispering and pointing behind Stefina’s back. Naturally, it wasn’t long before the story reached my ears, and when it did, I went straight to her. ‘Stefina, I want you to charge him,’ I said. ‘Your children are saying that their pa kneed their ma in the stomach, and this made her sit on the potty and do a baby there. Stefina,’ I said, ‘they think it was a joke, Stefina.’ ‘Leave my man alone,’ was all she said. I caught Toons not two minutes later, and he said, ‘That’s not true-why not ask my wife?’ So I looked for the kids, but Stefina had taken them away. Not a word would they say when I finally had them to myself. Nothing! You have never seen kids-or a woman-so terrified. And what could I do about it? Also nothing! Not with the minister and the magistrate and every other bugger on the opposite side!”

The fish had begun to bleed.

“They didn’t mean any harm, Tromp. They said it just couldn’t be, they didn’t believe it. Not after Toons had been making such wonderful progress! But us bloody old sinners weren’t nearly so certain, and we made sure he knew it. We told Toons to his face. We said he was lucky it was nagmaal. Huh! So life goes. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard the rest?”

“How much later was he found in the gangers’ hut?”

“About a fortnight. The magistrate kept all this out of the inquest for Stefina’s sake; he said it wasn’t material.”

“Suicide, Joep?” murmured Kramer, emptying the last of his beer can into the glass before him.

Terblanche crossed over to the sink and carelessly inspected the cut in his palm. The tainted water eddied pink round the plug hole, not becoming any lighter.

“Now you’re asking, my friend. When she got over the shock, Lettie always used to put it best, I think. She used to say that no man is ever safe from the higher law, and this was what Toons Rossouw had forgotten.”

“Divine justice?”

“Call it what you like,” replied Joep Terblanche. “The man was a murderer.”

The color-control knob on Dr. Strydom’s new television set had his primitive employees in fits of laughter in the living room that evening. This was as well, because the cookboy, the gardener, and the maid had slightly annoyed him by taking his magnificent acquisition almost for granted, and by being less than astounded when the screen first lit up. It had been as disappointing as showing a conjuring trick to very small children, who simply accepted the magic as genuine and failed to appreciate the human ingenuity which lay behind it. Then it had occurred to him that they were probably unaware of the skill involved in getting a lifelike picture, and he’d given the knob a twist to the right. And now, as he exercised his power to transform the news reader from flesh pink to almost any shade of the rainbow, he was being rewarded by delighted giggles and guffaws that signified a proper degree of amazement.

“Didn’t you hear the phone?” Anneline said a little crossly, coming in with her knitting. “Gracious me, why’s that man gone green?”

“Er-a small teething trouble, I think. There, that’s fine now. The phone, you say?”

“He’s too flushed; looks like an immigrant.”

“Better?”

“Yellowy, like a Cape Colored.”

“Sorry. Try this.”

“Mmmm. But his tie was never so shiny as that. It was the Colonel.”

The servants took their leave then, thanking Strydom for his kindness and the demonstration, and he waved them out impatiently, eager to hear what else his wife had to say.

“What was Hans’s problem this time?”

“You don’t have to ring back; he just thought you’d be interested to know that one of your hanged bodies had been identified.”

“No! Really?”

Anneline paused to hear an item of interest to her, and then went on: “The krantz case-is that right? He says that Sergeant Marais had an inspiration and got in touch with the prison doctor where someone called Ringo had been kept during remand. This prison doctor remembered noticing two holes in the man’s mouth during the routine checkup, and having put some fillings in so there wouldn’t be any problems during the trial. Oh, a whole lot more, but that is the main gist of it. Can you do something about the sound?”

Strydom did do something-he wasn’t sure quite what-and then sat back on the sofa beside her, very content with the world and, in particular, with the way his day had been spent. As soon as the news was over, he and his huggable old helpmeet would certainly have a great deal to discuss.

The front doorbell rang.

“Oh, good,” said Anneline, elbowing him in the ribs. “That’ll be Hester and her mother from over the road. Go and welcome them in, Chris-this will be the first time they’ve seen it, poor things.”

Kramer returned from Olifantsvlei with a very definite idea of what he was up against; an idea that-as he’d been telling himself in the car-made the mind bloody boggle. It wasn’t so much a murderer they were looking for, but an avenger.

He chanced across Colonel Muller in the vehicle yard of police headquarters, just as the old bugger was sneaking off home after a long day, and they sat on the mounting step of a handy troop carrier for a quick debriefing.

“But I don’t see what you’ve established this afternoon,” the Colonel said, when each had given the other his news. “If the minister at Olifantsvlei claims there must have been folk from the Witklip district at his nagmaal, then surely that doesn’t in itself begin to clinch anything? What about all the other people from all the other places? Any of them could be equally suspect.”

“Sir?” muttered Kramer, replacing the notes on the positive identification of Ringo Roberts in the Colonel’s briefcase-and blocking an impulse to be distracted by them. “Oh, I just threw that in for good measure. It was the interview before that which clinched it-the one I had with Joep Terblanche, the ex-sergeant who eats his meals with the foreman’s widow.”

“Terblanche couldn’t see a Witklip connection. Haven’t you just told me that?”

“Please, sir, disregard Witklip entirely. In Terblanche’s mind, Rossouw had committed a capital offense-murder.”

“Ja, I understand that. Quite natural.”

“Then take the three hangings we know something about. Rossouw was, to all intents and purposes, a murderer-agreed? But weren’t Ringo and Tollie also involved in capital offenses?”

“Er-in a manner of speaking.”

This hesitancy really annoyed Kramer and goaded him into sarcasm. “It may be a fact that only one white rapist gets hanged for every hundred bloody ntombi shaggers,” he said, “but you’re not denying that even attempted robbery can, strictly speaking, get you the noose?”

The Colonel frowned. “Now you’ve lost me, man. Tollie’s wasn’t just attempted; it was a case of armed-and he took a shot at you! That wasn’t what I was getting at, but you just carry on. My dinner likes to get cold.”

“Then-”

“And what’s rape got to do with it?”

“It could,” replied Kramer, improvising swiftly, and rather wishing he’d left all this till the morning, “it could be the capital crime for which the tramp was executed.”

“Hey?”

“The same could apply to the witch doctor. There are nine different headings we can choose from, but those political ones seem a bit far out.”

“Unless,” said the Colonel dryly, “he had been putting evil spells on the government dipping inspector. I’m beginning to see where you’re going, and I must caution you not to slip into a trap.”

“Which is?”

“Coming back from Terblanche and using the word executed. So far, you and me have successfully avoided thinking about all this like some trashy newspaper, and that is the proper professional attitude. Stick to the correct terms, please.”

“But, Colonel, is it murder to kill a murderer?”

“Hey? If you’re speaking about doing it in cold blood, as part of a premeditated act and not where innocent lives are in any immediate danger, then obviously the crime is one of-”

“When you use a noose on a rope?”

During the clap of silence that followed, Kramer took out his Lucky Strikes, lit one, and flicked his match at the yard cat.

“The state,” began Colonel Muller, then seemed to lose the thread of what he was about to say.

“Is the embodiment of the people,” Kramer continued for him, “each being required to act in its interests. But let’s keep it simple.”

The Colonel humphed. “By all means, Tromp! By all means! What you’re going to say to me now is that this hangman bloke is just doing our job for us. And who are we to complain when he does it so nicely?”

“Not us, sir-the state.”

“My apologies.”

“I’d not actually taken it that far, though,” said Kramer. “I was looking at it in very practical terms, and just trying to see why he ever thought this was necessary. Never mind for the moment how he learned the tricks of his trade, or where he’s got his gallows; that can all come later.”

“Certainly! Who’s in a rush?”

“In each of the cases we know something about,” Kramer persisted, wanting himself to hear how it sounded, “the law-or the state-was not in a position to exact its due penalty. Rossouw’s is a prime example of the spirit of the law being defeated by the letter.”

“Hmmm. And what about the two cases we’ve nothing on? Do we conveniently overlook them meantime?”

“Hell, no! They give us all the more reason to believe that the state couldn’t act-simply because, ipso facto, it has remained in ignorance of the offenses committed!”

“Aha,” said the Colonel, bending to tickle the yard cat under her chin. “How are things with you, Ilahle, my girlie?”

“Look, sir-how many times have you known for an absolute fact that some bugger is guilty, only you haven’t been able to produce one bit of evidence to prove it?”

“Hoo!”

Evidently, the point Kramer was making had at last been handsomely conceded, and he sat back to await a more intelligent response, picking up the yard cat’s kitten as he did so. This was presumably Little Ilahle, as it too looked like a shiny lump of coal. They rubbed noses.

“I fully appreciate,” grunted Colonel Muller, “the importance of trying to form some idea of what’s going on, but you’re forcing things to fit. Do you see what I mean?”

By puffing air out of alternate corners of his mouth, Kramer-who otherwise felt undeflatable-made the kitten blink and shake its head.

“Ach, no, Tromp! I’m being serious, man! In what way would the state have been thwarted if this bloke of yours had reported Tollie’s whereabouts to us? We’d have nailed the bastard without any further assistance-correct?”

“But that’s presuming my ‘bloke’ did him for the bank job. Like I said yesterday, when we found the money, it might have been some other aspect of his past catching up. Christ, we’d had him in on suspicion often enough! Remember that unsolved shooting at the Wartburg garage?”

For a while, only the yard cat said anything. Then Kramer, who had talked his way into a clarity of thought, found himself becoming impatient with the Colonel’s apparent failure to grasp the situation. It wasn’t as if much imagination was required: the gallows provided, as it were, a ready-made and familiar framework of logic into which, sooner or later, everything must surely fit. You could no more dismiss the inherent premise of crime and punishment than you could try and call the bloody thing a weapon; it just wouldn’t work.

“I was wondering,” murmured Colonel Muller, “why Ringo had turned state evidence.”

“Hey?”

“When those two first appeared for remand, they stood every chance of acquittal: the prosecution’s case had holes in it a mile wide. I thought Ringo must have changed his mind in order to pass the buck on to Vasari, just on the off chance that things went wrong, but that doesn’t make sense anymore-not since I’ve read through the docket you brought up from Durban. That’s the trouble with these petty cases that are over quick-the newspapers don’t give you enough details. Did you yourself follow it at the time?”

“Only headlines and the first couple of paragraphs. Prins says Ringo was putty soft, so maybe his conscience pricked him.”

“In my book, conscience begins at home,” said the Colonel with a vague smile, fully aware he was being got at. “They were old friends, him and Vasari, and they’d always pleaded the same way together before. Huh! Here, let me have that fine little fellow.”

The kitten was passed over and its mother climbed into the Colonel’s lap. A huddle of manacled prisoners, being escorted across the yard by Security Branch plainclothesmen, looked at them curiously.

“Well, Colonel?”

The yard cat’s proud purring was like a row of dots.

“Well, Tromp, you just carry on, man. Let’s see where this theory of yours gets us. Personally, I find this case one big mess of assumption, presumption, names that link, names that don’t, and a bit of a nightmare into the bargain. But what else can one do? Blast away with your shotgun at anything that moves and you’re bound to hit something, I suppose.”

“Thanks, sir. It’s certainly reached that stage now.”

Colonel Muller yawned. “Only wish we’d managed one positive achievement today, that’s all.”

“Ach, we have,” replied Kramer, giving mother and son a last chuck under the chin. “I’d best go and give Ma Roberts a bell.”