The Sunday Hangman

8

There was a decided contrast between the weekly tariff pinned behind the door of Room 14 and the standard of amenities to be found therein. The floor was red concrete, softened and warmed over one square yard by locally made grass matting, and the four unevenly plastered walls were sloshed over with lime that came off on your hand. The plumbing to and from the cracked washbasin was the gray plastic stuff trained baboons can screw together, and both taps said cold on the top. The wardrobe and dressing table were so flimsy they moved bodily toward you at the tug of a knob, and the bed, a knee-high divan, seemed to have prolapse problems. Without question, the only furniture worth a second glance-not excluding the two blotchy mirrors-was an armchair of vast proportions in front of the French windows.

These windows, Kramer discovered, opened into an enclosed courtyard once used as a KIDDIES KORNER. He turned away with a slight shudder and applied himself to searching the room very thoroughly, scoring a great big fat zero. So he began on the armchair again, and Ferreira lost interest, mumbled something, and went off to have the leper’s bell rung for tea, leaving him alone.

Zondi slunk in then, raised an eyebrow, and said, “The very object of my intentions, boss.”

“This chair? Why? Have you picked up something?”

“Maybe. The bedroom boy has been telling me what a strange boss this was. He says that every morning, when he came to do the room, Boss McKenzie would be sitting in the big chair and wouldn’t move. This made his task very difficult, and so he reported it to Boss Ferreira, but he said it didn’t matter.”

“How about that?” Kramer said, tipping the chair back.

“There was another strange thing about him as well-he would wash his underwear instead of leaving it for the girls to do.”

“Uh huh? Or are you pulling my leg?”

Grinning, Zondi went on: “Honest to God, boss. He would leave it in the basin to soak, then hang it up in that courtyard out there. The bedroom boy was very cross about this because it meant he had to go into the next room to damp his cleaning cloth.”

Kramer laughed and tried the chair for comfort. “He just sat like this? How? Like a dummy?”

“Reading a book or a newspaper, the bedroom boy says. Never has he known another person in this place to behave in such a fashion.”

Back went the chair again. “Come on, you’ve got the skinny arms,” Kramer ordered. “Let’s see what you can bloody find.”

They spent twenty minutes on the stuffed armchair in Room 14, littered the floor with tufts of horsehair, and found nothing but a mouse’s nest, long vacated.

“Bugger,” said Kramer. “I’m damned sure he must have been up to something-agreed? But if he wasn’t sitting tight on it, what was he doing?”

“Perhaps just watching the boy, boss.”

“Do what?”

Zondi opened the French windows. “When the boy had gone, he would come out here to hang up his washing.”

“Hmmm. Doesn’t grab me. How many other doors open onto it?”

“Three.”

“We’ll take a look, anyway,” Kramer suggested, following him out. “You have a go at that sandpit, while I poke around the toys.”

What was left of the toys, to be pedantic, because the hotel must once have catered to a particularly destructive bunch of little bastards-just the sort, in fact, who’d have parents capable of breaking in wild mustangs. The rocking horse was legless, rockerless, and eyeless, the pedal car was a write-off, and the playhouse had been trampled flat; only a few items in stout plastic and a scattering of big wooden blocks had survived intact, or almost.

“Nothing buried here,” Zondi said presently, dusting off his hands.

“See what you make of this, then.”

Kramer had just come across a blue hula hoop with a longish piece missing from it; one end had separated at the join, but the other seemed to have been severed by a sharp penknife or razor blade. The cut marks were fairly recent, too.

“Ah, there is the rest,” said Zondi, going over to where he’d spotted a length of blue tubing sticking out of a small plastic watering can with lamb decals on it. “Hau, it is very clean.”

“Ja, that’s true,” Kramer murmured, taking the tube from him to examine. “What the hell can you do with a thing like this?” He tried a bugle call.

Zondi shook the can and listened.

“Hear anything?”

“Rain water.”

“Time you got that job in the lab, man. That’s brilliant.”

“Huh! You do not believe me?” snorted Zondi, spilling a little into his left palm and licking it. “Correction, boss. Soapy water.”

He grimaced and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

“This way!” Kramer said, plunging back into Room 14 and confronting the washbasin. “He always had his underpants in there, right? So we put in the plug. We add water, soap, and …?”

“We put the pipe in.…”

There seemed no point to that. Zondi lifted out the tube and held it vertically, bringing the watering can up underneath it. He began lowering the two things together.

The idea struck them simultaneously.

“Siphon!”

“So the water will not-”

“-go down the outlet pipe!” Kramer rounded off, bending to sniff at the plug hole.

“Drugs, boss?”

“Drains. Push the chair back, and let’s pull this whole bloody thing apart.”

The hotel manager and his friendly neighborhood police chief returned to the room at that moment, but went totally ignored. Very sensibly, they said nothing.

A blank was drawn with the U-tube, although it was bone dry, and the same went for the first short section down to the elbow joint. But when the main length of plastic piping was eased away from the wall, improvised stoppers could be seen protruding slightly at either end. One of these was tugged out, the piping held upright, and the best part of twenty thousand rand, bound tightly in fat cylinders of used bank notes, bounced on the grass matting and rolled under the bed.

Piet Ferreira looked as sick as any man might who discovers a little too late that, by simply turning on one of his own cold-water taps, he could have struck oil. As for Frikkie Jonkers, he just gaped.

“This is a security matter,” Kramer stated briskly, recovering to break the prolonged silence. “It would be unwise for either of you to ask any questions, or to mention this to anyone.”

He saw Zondi blink.

“What-er-what do I say if someone here asks?” Ferreira asked anxiously, his avarice having died of frostbite. “Asks where Tommy is, I mean.”

“Just say that he ought to be back soon. Any problems on your side, Sergeant?”

“None, sir!” replied Jonkers, coming to attention.

“Then let me give you one. This guest was making long-distance telephone calls recently; I want you to contact the Brandspruit exchange and tell them I need those numbers chop chop.”

“Immediately, sir. Anything else?”

“Ja, your friend here can see if he’s got a nice metal strongbox for me to stash this stuff in. Go.”

Both men hurried from the room, closing the door very gently behind them. Zondi’s low, puzzled laugh followed as the thud of their footfalls died away.

“Boss? There are times when you do things I do not fully understand.”

Kramer grinned. “If you knew how I’d been misleading them this afternoon, maybe you’d appreciate how much explaining I’ve just saved myself. Besides, it’s nice to see a bit of action.”

“So you do not suspect-”

“Ach, of course not! Which isn’t to say this case has got any less peculiar. What’s your view?”

“Hau, hau, hau,” sighed Zondi, kneeling on the mat. “This money was not my expectation.”

They began to gather up the rolls.

“Could be that we fell into the old trap of presuming too much,” Kramer said, sitting back on his heels, “because, from one angle, it still being here does make sense.”

“How is that?”

“Well, everything they’ve told me makes Monday night sound as if it came as a nasty shock to him. He had his bum in the butter and could easily have stayed another three months, I reckon. Out he goes, expecting to be so short a time he doesn’t bother to make his usual lying excuses to Ferreira, and they nail the bastard. He won’t tell them where the moola is, takes the drop, and they’re left scratching their arses. Now all you’ve got to do is explain why, if they knew where to contact him, they didn’t come here and turn the place over.”

Zondi pursed his lips.

“What’s the problem?”

“I am a kick-start kaffir, boss, as you well know.”

“Oh, ja?”

“I would first like to hear about these telephone numbers.”

“Can’t help you there, man,” Kramer said, smiling as he recognized the same pattern of thought that had him in a tangle. “But I do know one thing: whoever was on the receiving end would know from the operator where the call originated, even if he didn’t tell them himself. ‘We’ve got Witklip on the line,’ and all that. He’d know this, too, and the chances are that only persons he really trusted would-”

“A big mistake?” Zondi broke across. “He chose unwisely?”

“Either that or one of his contacts was got at. The timing of all this does suggest nobody knew where he was until he began the calls.”

“Hmmm.”

“Tollie would recognize the risks himself?”

“Yebo, and this does not tell us why the telephone became necessary to him.”

“Boredom? He’d begun to hit the bottle a lot harder. Might have been checking to see if we were still so interested. Then we start the other permutations: Why should he be worrying about anyone except us? Wasn’t it natural for him to keep in touch? Et cetera.”

“We could go mad.”

“True. Is that the last one?”

Zondi flipped the roll over. “There is no necessity for us to consider this matter, boss. What you said just now is the important thing: If we can find one person who was aware of the whereabouts of this man, then we have a lead.”

“Let’s hope so. Those numbers could all be for public phone boxes.”

“In Zambia,” added Zondi, and enjoyed his joke hugely until Jonkers came tiptoeing in.

“Hell, I haven’t got such good news for you, Lieutenant,” he said nervously. “The exchange says finding your information isn’t going to be all that simple, although the night shift may be able to get it for you by the morning.”

Kramer had, however, been expecting a cloddish reversal of this kind, and refused to allow it to spoil his mood of mild jubilation. With a maturity he very much admired, he waved aside the apology.

“We’ve got to get the tom back, anyway,” he said, taking the strongbox Jonkers was carrying. “Ring them again and say they’ll find me working under Murder and Robbery in Trekkersburg.”

And so it was, not a quarter of an hour later, that they bowled out of Witklip, feeling justly pleased with their day but somehow unable to reconcile themselves to the idea it had ended.

“We might look in on the exchange on our way through,” Kramer suggested.

“Can do, boss.”

“So tell me when we hit Brandspruit.”

“Okay.”

Zondi seemed about to add something. Kramer waited in case he did, then settled down comfortably, with his knees against the dashboard, to ruminate and even to doze a little. Very soon he was forcing his eyelids open for just long enough to see-and instantly forget-any onrushing obstacle. This was no more than a reflex response to a slight change in his center of gravity, caused by Zondi’s easing up momentarily on the throttle; the donkey carts, ox sledges, and wobbling cyclists were in themselves very dull. A farm truck appeared, heeling over against the sunset, dark and menacing, and gave them a long, angry blast on its horn, before scraping by with a broadside of loose stones.

“Jesus!” said Kramer, sitting bolt upright.

This amused Zondi.

But Kramer’s smile never made it. About nine kilometers from Witklip, on a road leading nowhere else he knew of, he’d just seen an enormous man with a beard at the wheel of a farm truck. And-in what had been like a remembered glimpse of a dream, so vivid it had made his loins leap-he had seen, on the far side of this man, a beautiful girl with honey hair and blue eyes and a mouth like a whore. She had laughed at him.

“Fluke!” muttered Strydom, putting down his favorite work, The Essentials of Forensic Medicine by Cyril John Poison, who was a barrister as well as a pathologist, and could be depended upon for a very dry wit.

“You’re not still moaning about what Trompie said,” grumbled his wife, Anneline, as she came in from watching the neighbors’ television set. “It was lovely, Chris; you really missed out. And do you remember The World at War you saw last week? Well, tonight Maria’s husband told us that those Nazi concentration camps were all faked by the Jews afterwards.”

“Rubbish,” said Strydom, who was still wrapped up in his own problems of conscience.

“I told him you’d say that, and he lent me this clipping from the Jo’burg Star. It’s a letter from a Mr. G. Rico, who states that the figures were grossly exaggerated. ‘Furthermore, any such casualties as did exist were not victims of any premeditated act.’ So what do you say now, before I have to give this back?”

“The chances of the drop being a fluke are a million to one,” began Strydom, then realized that these odds were greatly exaggerated.

“Ach, you’re impossible, Chris! You mustn’t let Trompie prey on your mind like this-and if it isn’t him, it’s that damned boy of his with the leg.”

“I’ve got to make certain, Anneline. I could be wasting everybody’s time.”

“Like mine, for instance?”

“Sorry, my poppie,” he soothed, getting up to hug her plump warmth. “I’ll leave this till tomorrow, when I can get at some old P.M. reports and study the incidence.”

“Tomorrow night the TV’s in Afrikaans,” she said, keeping hold of his hand, and they went automatically through to the kitchen for their coffee. “They’ve invited us again, so can you come over?”

“What’s on?”

“An Australian baritone singing translations from real Italian opera. I’m going.”

That, thought Strydom, was exactly what the old Minister of Posts and Telegraphs had warned about when describing television as the Devil’s instrument. Not once that week had they sat down together as man and wife and talked over his more interesting cases.

Zondi had hitched a lift home in a patrol van by the time Colonel Muller and the bank officials had released Kramer from their small private celebration. There was a note to this effect propped against the water carafe in their office.

Kramer looked at his watch and was disappointed to find that he could still focus: ten minutes to midnight. The whole object of drinking so much bad wine had been to take the edge off his sensibilities; in a deep and disturbing way, he was still feeling the tantalizing impact of that encounter. This was, of course, ridiculous.

He sat down at his desk and put a hand on the telephone. As it happened, he had a perfect right to ring Ferreira and ask him what the hell he’d meant by saying there were no women about-a statement which had been clearly contradicted. Arseholes to the fact it was the middle of the night: this was a murder investigation! And the girl could have been a casual visitor.

The telephone rang under his hand and startled him.

“Can I speak to Lieutenant Kramer?” asked someone who spoke slowly and distinctly. “Or perhaps leave a message for him?”

Kramer frowned; he knew that voice, a very recent addition to his collection. Then it clicked: he was being addressed by the chief telephonist at Brandspruit exchange, who had ears that stuck out at right angles until he slipped on his headset.

“Speaking,” he said, grabbing up a ballpoint. “You’ve got something for me?”

“We’ve been through every log going back until the date you gave us, Lieutenant.”

“Uh huh?”

“It would appear that the caller invariably asked for the same number-and it’s a Trekkersburg one, too, you may be glad to hear.”

“Shoot, man.”

“Trekkersburg 49590. The subscriber’s name is Miss Petronella Mulder, of 33 Palm Grove Mansions.”

“Never!”

“So you know the lady, I gather?”

“Ach, anybody can,” replied Kramer, “providing you fork out ten rand and don’t mind injections. Thanks a lot, hey? I must be going.”

And, after a short stop at the coffee machine, he went.

The small block of flats was up near the railway station and seemed a little like an extension of the marshaling yard. Puffing couples in drab coats were forever shunting their shabby trunks and packing cases along its mean balconies, either on their way in or on their way out, for few ever stayed there very long, despite the low rent. The snag was that the pock-necked little runt who owned the place gave nobody more than an hour’s grace to pay up, and this was a deadline many found impossible to meet in a lean week. It never worried Miss Mulder, however, whose delivery time was reputedly under seven squalid minutes.

Kramer raised his knuckles to the door of Number 33 with the expression of a man about to crack a rotten egg.

“Who-zit?” came the challenge from within.

“Vice Squad.”

The welcoming smile soured the instant she recognized him, but by then Kramer had his foot in the doorway and crushing down on her instep. While she blanched, gasped, and hopped about, he opened up properly and went in. The room was its usual shambles, and looked like a flying cosmetics display that’d hit a concrete mountain. The pity of it was that the smell didn’t match.

He kicked ajar the bathroom door. Nothing. No well-known city Rugby players in the kitchenette either.

“Alone at last,” said Kramer, turning to face her. “And how is my pretty tonight?”

Cleo de Leo, as she preferred her clientele to call her, was sitting on the edge of her tumbled bed holding her foot. The black wig was askew, one eyelash had come adrift, and her limbs, which had the shiny pneumatic look of a bus seat, were inelegantly positioned. The crumpled kimono gaped, exposing such gifts as she had to bestow: a sag of breasts as pendulous as two grapefruit in a pair of Christmas stockings, a navel like a novelty pencil sharpener, and a rusty pot-scourer. For lips, under a faint mustache, she had hemmorhoids.

“You stinking pig bastard!”

“Ach, no, be fair,” Kramer protested mildly, “because if you’re what you say you are, then I’m an amateur photographer.”

“You call that a lens?” she sneered, snuffling into a tissue.

“I get results.”

“Oh, really? You must try and show me sometime.”

“Now, if you like.”

She reached for her menthols. “For free? You must be joking! Just because you’re big and pissed doesn’t entitle you to anything.”

“For free,” said Kramer, handing over the mortuary photograph of Tollie Erasmus with a rope around his neck.

It made an impression.

“No!”

“We found him yesterday, near Doringboom.”

“But Tollie wouldn’t-”

“He didn’t. He was murdered.”

“Hey?”

Her surprise was so complete that she turned into a human being. The eyes which knew it all suddenly knew nothing, and at the drop of her jaw, the hard little face shattered, showing the soul-sick slack underneath.

Kramer took back the picture and said nothing. He watched her close her gown, drag off her wig, and bring her knees up to hug them. He stood there while she began rocking to and fro, her gaze fixed on the floor. Then he poured her a stiff gin and a straight lime and water for himself.

“You bastard,” she whispered, thanking him with a nod as she lifted the glass.

“Give me a chance next time, Cleo, and things will be different. Who else knew he was at Witklip?”

“Where?”

He straddled a chair opposite her, folding his arms over the back of it. “Don’t be that way,” he coaxed, and then pursued the most perverse line possible: “Even if you deny setting up Tollie, I’ve still got you cold as accessory after the fact and harboring a known criminal.”

Cleo’s head jerked. “Setting him …?”

“Ja, his murder. Mind you, I think that one will stick.”

“Me? Are you crazy?”

“Logical, Miss Mulder. We have proof from the post office that he was in contact with you here on 49590, from which it follows that they must have worked through you to-”

“I told-told nobody!” she stammered.

Kramer sighed.

“No, that’s the God’s truth. I swear it!”

“Uh huh? Maybe the judge will believe you. Personally-”

“Just you listen! All right?”

Fear, shock, and gin soon had the facts tumbling out, and Kramer was kept busy rearranging them in chronological order. Erasmus had apparently found her number scrawled in a phone box on the day of the raid, and had asked her if she was willing to perform a “special” for R100 cash. Once inside her flat, he had offered another R100 a day for nothing but the use of her telephone and somewhere to lie up. He had been no trouble. Then on the fourth day he had made a further offer: R200 down and a lump payment of R500 later if she agreed to act as “middle man” in a transaction. All she had to do was relay on any messages she might take from a man called Max, who would be ringing her sometime in the near future. Max was, in fact, helping him to get out of the country, but there were complications caused by the number of black states now surrounding South Africa. This Max had rung her twice, both times to say it would take a little longer, and recently Erasmus had been becoming very restless and nervous. Instead of his weekly call on a Saturday night, he’d been in touch almost every other day. And that’s all there was to it, as Cleo de Leo saw no percentage in moral side issues.

“Max knew he was at Witklip?”

“Tollie said I shouldn’t tell him and he never asked,” she replied, putting her glass down. “How many more times? Nobody knew except me; it was meant to be secret. Tollie said Max was a good guy, but the fewer who knew made him safer.”

Kramer stood up and paced about a bit. The trollop was telling the truth, he felt sure of it, and yet this wasn’t making things any easier.

He snapped his fingers and spun round. “Why Witklip? What the hell put that into his head?”

“Oh, it was an old idea one of his friends once had. I can’t remember exactly. When he was in Steenhuis Reformatory and they used to talk after lights out. This bloke had been to it once with his folks, and said the store there didn’t even get a newspaper. Tollie checked while he was here and found it was still such a dump. They used to tease this guy-Robert? Ja, Robert or Roberts; that’s a name I remember. Nothing else, though.”

Then Cleo stiffened.

“You’re right!” said Kramer. “It wasn’t such a bloody secret after all, was it?”