Riotous Assembly (5 page)

The detonation that followed was of an intensity and had about it a seismic quality
which came, when he could pick himself off the floor of tie blockhouse where the recoil had
thrown him, as a complete surprise to Konstabel Els. Not that he hadn’t heard it before,
but on that occasion he had been slightly distracted by the attentions of the
Dobermann. This time he could appreciate the true qualities of the weapon.

With a white face and with his eardrums reverberating quite astonishingly, he peered
through the gun port and observed his handiwork with a sense of satisfaction that he had
never known before, not even on the day he had shot two kaffirs dead with the same bullet.
That had been a triumph. This was a masterpiece.

The four barrels of the elephant gun erupting simultaneously had opened up a vista
before him he would never have believed possible. The great wrought-iron gates of
Jacaranda Park lay a twisted and reeking heap of partially molten and totally
unidentifiable metal. The stone gateposts had disintegrated. The boars rampant
sculpted in granite that had surmounted the posts would ramp no more, while the roadway,
itself bore witness to the heat of the gases propelling the shells in the shape of four
lines of molten and gleaming tarmac which pointed down to what had once been the thick
bushes that had obscured his view of his adversaries. Konstabel Els had no need now to
complain that he couldn’t see what he was shooting at.

The cover his enemies had used was quite gone. The hillside was bare, barren and
scorched and it was doubtful if it would ever regain its original look. There was no such
doubt about the five objects that remained littering the ground. Bare, barren and
horribly mutilated, the five plain-clothes policemen who had sought cover from Els’
fire in the bushes needed far more cover now than mere bushes could provide. Dying
instantaneously, they had in some sense been luckier than their surviving comrades,
some of whom, Els noted with satisfaction, were wandering about naked and blackened and
clearly in a state of mental confusion. Els took advantage of their defenceless and
shocked state to wing a couple with his revolver and wasn’t very surprised that they seemed
to take little notice of these new wounds which were obviously an anti-climax after
the ravages of the elephant gun. The rest of the plain-clothes men who had been spared the
effects of the volley, having dragged their naked and bemused colleagues out of the way of
Els’ gratuitous target practice, fell back down the hill and awaited the arrival of the
main convoy before resuming their attack on the privet bush.

Standing in the turret of the leading armoured car, Luitenant Verkramp had heard the
enormous explosion and had immediately jumped to the conclusion that the magazine at
the police barracks had been blown up by saboteurs. Coming as it did in the wake of the
chaos and panic that had marked the progress of the convoy through the countryside, it came
as no great surprise. But looking down over the town he could see nothing to support this
supposition. Piemburg lay in its quiet and peaceful hollow under a cloudless and azure
sky. The only unusual feature he could spot through his binoculars was an unbroken chain
of cars moving slowly along the main road from Vlockfontein.

“Funeral down there,” he muttered to himself, and, puzzled by the enormous length of
the cortège, wondered what great man had died. It was only when he turned the next corner
and saw the tiny group of naked and hysterical plain-clothes men that he realized for the
first time that Kommandant van Heerden’s frantic instructions had not after all been
unwarranted. Whatever was going on at Jacaranda Park deserved the extraordinary show
of force the convoy presented.

He held up his hand and the task force ground to a halt. “What the hell has been going on?”
he asked. There was no need to ask what had been coming off. Naked and blackened, the little
group of plain-clothes cops presented a pitiful sight.

“Something has been shooting at us,” one of them managed to blurt out at last.

“What do you mean, something?” Verkramp snarled.

“It’s a bush. A bush up by the gateway. Every time anyone goes anywhere near it, it
shoots them.”

“A bush? Someone hiding behind a bush you mean. Why didn’t you fire back at them?”

“What the fuck do you think we’ve been doing? And it’s not anyone behind a bush. I’ll
take my oath on that. We’ve pumped hundreds of rounds into that fucking bush and it still
goes on firing back. I tell you it’s bloody well bewitched, that bush.”

Luitenant Verkramp looked up the road uncertainly. He certainly wasn’t going to fall
for any crap about bewitched bushes but on the other hand he could see that something
pretty extraordinary had reduced the men to their pitiful condition. It was on the tip
of his tongue to say, “You’re out of your minds,” but since they were out of just about
everything else he thought it better not to. The question of morale was important and it
had been at the back of his mind ever since they had left the station. One false move now and
there would be a panic in the convoy. He decided to set the men an example.

“I want two volunteers,” he told Sergeant de Kock and while the Sergeant went off to
dragoon two mentally retarded Konstabels into volunteering, Luitenant Verkramp
turned back to the plain-clothes men.

“Where is this bush?” he asked.

“Just inside the gateway. You can’t miss it.” they told him, adding, “And it won’t miss
you either.”

“We’ll see about that,” muttered the Luitenant and clambering off the Saracen he began
to prepare for the reconnaissance. Luitenant Verkramp had attended an anti-guerrilla
course at Pretoria and was well versed in the art of camouflage. By the time he had
finished the three men who began crawling up the ditch towards Konstabel Els’ privet
bush resembled nothing so much as three small bushes themselves. They were not so well
trimmed, it was true, and certainly not so bullet-proof, but whatever else their
camouflage served to conceal it was quite impossible to tell even at close range that
here were three uniformed men of the South African Police.

Kommandant van Heerden had just paused for breath under an oak tree in the middle of
Jacaranda Park and was trying to pluck up courage to return to the house when Konstabel
Els fired the elephant gun. In the wake of the detonation that followed the Kommandant
had his mind made up for him. For one thing a vulture which had been waiting with evident
prescience in the branches above him was startled into flight by the roar of the gun and
flapped horribly up into the sky. For another the Kommandant readied the immediate
conclusion that the company of Jonathan Hazelstone was infinitely less murderous than
the holocaust Konstabel Els was generating at the main gate. He left the cover of the
tree and raced ponderously towards the house, looking for all the world like the maddened
pachyderm the elephant gun had been designed to incapacitate.

Behind him the silence of recent death hung sombrely over Jacaranda Park. Ahead he
could just make out the tall elegant figure of Miss Hazelstone standing on the stoep. She
was looking tentatively up into the cloudless evening sky. As the Kommandant plunged
past her into the drawing-room he heard her say, “I thought I heard a clap of thunder just
now. I do believe it’s going to rain.” It was good to be back in a world of sanity, the
Kommandant thought, as he dropped limp and exhausted into an easy chair.

Presently Miss Hazelstone turned from her study of the sunset and entered the room. She
carried with her an atmosphere of tranquillity and an acceptance of life as it came to
her unique, or so it appeared to Kommandant van Heerden, among the people who were living
through the events of the afternoon at Jacaranda Park. The same could hardly be said of
Konstabel Els. Whatever life was coming his way he certainly wasn’t accepting with
anything faintly approaching tranquillity. The only consolation Kommandant van
Heerden could find was the thought that by the sound of it Els had blown himself and half the
neighbouring suburb up.

Miss Hazelstone moved pensively and with an air of gentle melancholy to her
wing-backed armchair and seating herself in it turned her face with a look of the
profoundest reverence towards a painting that hung above the fireplace.

“He was a good man,” she said at last in a low voice.

Kommandant van Heerden followed her gaze and studied the painting. It portrayed a man
in long robes and carrying a lantern in his hand at the door of a house, and the Kommandant
supposed it to be yet another portrait of Sir Theophilus, painted this time, to judge by
the robe he was wearing, while the great man had been serving in India. It was entitled,
“The Light of the World”, which even the Kommandant for all his admiration of the Viceroy,
thought was going a bit far. Still he felt called upon to say something.

“I’m sure he was,” he said sympathetically, “and a very great man too.”

Miss Hazelstone looked at the Kommandant gratefully and with new respect.

“I had no idea,” she murmured.

“Oh, I practically worship the man,” the Kommandant continued, adding as an
afterthought, “He knew how to handle the Zulus all right,” and was surprised when Miss
Hazelstone began to sob into her handkerchief. Taking her tears to be a further
indication of her devotion to her grandfather, van Heerden ploughed on.

“I only wish there were more of his sort about today,” he said, and was gratified to
notice Miss Hazelstone once more gazing at him gratefully over her handkerchief. “There
wouldn’t be half the trouble there is in the world today if he were back.” He was about to
say, “He’d hang them by the dozen,” but he realized that hanging wasn’t a tactful subject
to bring up considering the likely fate of Miss Hazelstone’s own brother, so he
contented himself by adding, “He’d soon teach them a thing or two.”

Miss Hazelstone agreed. “He would, oh, he would. I’m so glad, Kommandant, that you of all
people see things his way.”

Kommandant van Heerden couldn’t quite see the need for her emphasis. It seemed only
natural that a police officer would want to follow Sir Theophilus’ methods of dealing
with criminals. After all, Judge Hazelstone hadn’t sucked his known preference for
hanging and flogging out of his thumb. Everyone knew that old Sir Theophilus had made it
his duty to see that young William early developed a taste for corporal punishment by
inflicting it on the boy from the day he was born. The thought of duty recalled the
Kommandant to his own distasteful task, and he realized that this was as good a moment
as any to break it to her that he knew that Fivepence had been murdered not by her, but by her
brother Jonathan. He rose from his chair and relapsed into the formal jargon of his
office.

“I have reason to believe…” he began, but Miss Hazelstone wouldn’t let him continue.
She rose from her chair and gazed up at him enraptured, a reaction van Heerden had hardly
expected and certainly couldn’t admire. After all, the fellow was her own brother, and
only an hour before she had been willing to confess to the murder herself just to shield
him.

He began again, “I have reason to believe-”

“Oh, so have I. So have I. Haven’t we all?” and this time Miss Hazelstone gathered the
Kommandant’s large hands into her own tiny ones and gazed into his eyes. “I knew it
Kommandant, I knew it all the time.”

Kommandant van Heerden needed no telling. Of course she had known about it all the time,
otherwise she wouldn’t have been covering up for the brute. To hell, he thought, with
formalities. “I suppose he’s still upstairs in the bedroom,” he said.

The expression on Miss Hazelstone’s face suggested a certain wonder which the
Kommandant assumed must be due to her sudden recognition of his talents as a
detective.

“Upstairs?” she gasped.

“Yes. In the bedroom with the pink floral bedspread.”

Miss Hazelstone’s astonishment was obvious. “In the pink bedroom?” she stammered,
backing away from him.

“He’s not a very pleasant sight, I’m afraid,” the Kommandant went on. “He’s as drunk as a
lord.”

Miss Hazelstone was verging on hysteria. “As the Lord?” she managed to gasp at
last.

“Soused,” continued the Kommandant. “Blind drunk and covered with blood. Guilt’s
written all over him.”

Miss Hazelstone could stand no more. She made for the door but Kommandant van Heerden
was there before her.

“Oh no you don’t. You’re not going upstairs to warn him,” he said. “He’s got to take
what’s coming to him.” Kommandant van Heerden had private doubts if the fellow was still
upstairs. Even a blind drunk must have been jerked awake by that explosion. Still the man
was a maniac and one never knew with lunatics. Their actions were likely to be
unpredictable. There were symptoms too, he now noticed, of irrationality and
unpredictability in Miss Hazelstone’s behaviour, and signs that she could behave in a
manner neither sweet nor gentle.

“Come, come, my dear Miss Hazelstone. There are some things we must learn to accept,” he
said reassuringly, and as he said it, Miss Hazelstone knew only one thing for certain,
that nothing on God’s earth would persuade her to come anywhere within striking distance
of this fat perspiring policeman who thought that Jesus Christ was lying dead drunk and
covered with blood upstairs in the pink floral bedroom. There might be, she conceded
generously, certain irrational tendencies in her own psyche, but they were as nothing
to the inescapable symptoms of insanity that the Kommandant was displaying. She sprang
back from him white and gibbering and, seizing an ornamental scimitar that hung on the
wall, held it above her old grey head in her two hands.

Kommandant van Heerden was taken totally by surprise. One moment he had been
confronted by a dear old lady who held both his hands in hers and gazed tenderly up into
his face, and the next she had turned herself into a dancing dervish evidently intent on
slicing him in half with a terrible knife.

“Now, now,” he said, unable to adjust his pattern of speech to his new and terrifying
predicament. A moment later it was clear that Miss Hazelstone had taken his “Now, now” as
an indication that he wanted his death to be immediate. She was moving crablike
towards him.

Miss Hazelstone was, in fact, trying to reach the door into the hall. “Stand aside,” she
ordered, and the Kommandant, anxious to avoid causing her the slightest pretext for
bifurcating him with the scimitar, leapt to one side, colliding as he went with a large
Chinese pot which toppled from its stand and crashed to the floor. For a second time the
expression on Miss Hazelstone’s face demonstrated that capacity for rapid change the
Kommandant had already noticed. Now she was clearly mad with rage.

“The Ming! The Ming!” she yelled and brought the scimitar crashing down from above her
head. But Kommandant van Heerden was no longer there. He was charging across the room
leaving in his wake the shattered art treasures of several millennia of Chinese
history.

As he plunged across the verandah he could still hear Miss Hazelstone screaming to her
brother.

“The Ming! The Ming!” she yelled and judging the Ming to be some indescribably
powerful weapon hanging ready to hand on the wall of the gallery, the Kommandant raced
across Jacaranda Park yet again, but this time in the direction of the sound of renewed
gunfire at the gate, a sound he now welcomed as indications of normal healthy violence.
And as he ran, he thanked his lucky stars that dusk was already turning into night, to
obscure the path of his flight.

The first indication that Konstabel Els, still smirking at the effects of his
marksmanship, had that several new factors had entered the little patch of Western
civilization he was defending so manfully, came as dusk began to fall over the Park’s
contorted gates. He was just having a swig of Old Rhino Skin brandy to keep out the night
chill, when he heard a strange scratching noise outside. He thought at first that a
porcupine was scratching itself against the armoured door of the blockhouse, but when he
opened it there was nothing outside, while the sounds were getting closer. They seemed to
emanate from a hedge down the road, and he had just begun to think that they could only be
explained by supposing that a rhinoceros suffering from impetigo was seeking relief
from its irritation by rolling in a thorn tree when he saw three remarkably agile
agglomerations of vegetable matter scuttle across the road. Evidently the next attack
was about to begin.

Konstabel Els sat back and considered the position. He had repelled one attack with
his revolver. He had decimated a second with the elephant gun. It was time, he felt, to go
over to the offensive. In the deepening dusk Konstabel Els left the shelter of the
blockhouse, and clutching his revolver crawled silently towards his attackers, whose
polyphonic progress drowned any slight noises he might make.

By the time Luitenant Verkramp and his two volunteers had crawled three-quarters of a
mile to the top of the hill, Verkramp had begun to wish that he had come up in the armoured
car after all, and to doubt the value of the whole exercise. It was already so dark that
while he might not be able to miss the bush that was giving so much trouble, he probably
wouldn’t be able to see it. His hands were scratched and torn, and he had come within
spitting distance of two puff-adders and a cobra, which had been an undoubted tribute to
his skill in camouflage, but one that he could well have done without. He had never
realized before what a profusion of wild life there was in the hedgerows of Piemburg.

The spider that had bitten him on the nose as he tried to disentangle himself from its
web had been of a size and malevolence he would never have believed possible if he hadn’t
seen it with his own one eye, the other being obscured by the spider’s three feet which it
had fastened there to give it a good foothold while it injected 50 cc of toxic venom into
his left nostril. He had almost turned back at that point because the poison spread so fast
and with such evident effect that even after the giant spider had been good enough to let
go of his cornea he still couldn’t see out of it. That side of his face was pulsating
alarmingly and his sinus appeared to be filled with some caustic liquid. Realizing
that the expedition must proceed with some urgency before his breathing apparatus
seized up for good, Luitenant Verkramp and his two men crashed on through the infested
undergrowth towards their quarry.

Konstabel Els, crawling with less haste and more anonymity, had, in the meantime,
discovered Sir Theophilus’ terrible haha and had observed with considerable
satisfaction its effects on its latest victims. Els lay back in the grass and debated
some further means of satisfying the clearly insatiable appetite of this offspring of
Sir Theophilus’ anxiety. The sounds reaching him from the hedgerow seemed to indicate that
his enemies were already suffering some trepidation. To the sounds of breaking twigs
that had accompanied their progress were now added the occasional whimper and what
appeared to be chronic catarrh. Konstabel Els waited no longer. Crawling soundlessly he
avoided the murderous haha and stationed himself in the grass beside the road.

To Luitenant Verkramp crawling doggedly in the hedge nothing seemed ominous or
unusual. His nose was giving him trouble, it was true, and the spider’s venom had spread
alarmingly so that now his eyes were playing him up and now his ears, but if his interior
world was full of flashing lights and strange drumming noises, outside all seemed peaceful
and quiet. The night was dark, but overhead the stars shone and the lights of Piemburg in
the valley below gave to the sky an orange glow. The lights of Jacaranda House twinkled
invitingly across the Park. Crickets sang and the distant murmur of traffic wafted
gently to him from the Vlockfontein road. Nothing in the world prepared Luitenant Verkramp
for the horror that was to strike him so suddenly.

Not that anything struck him physically. It was worse than that. There was an almost
spiritual quality about the scream that exploded in his damaged ear, and about the
appallingly crooked and malignant shape that suddenly loomed above him. He couldn’t see
what it was. He knew only its disgusting breath and with it a banshee yell, malignant
beyond belief, and coming, he had no doubt at all, from the very depths of hell. Any doubts
Luitenant Verkramp had entertained about the story of the bewitched bush disappeared in
a trice, and in another trice Verkramp, hurling himself sideways, dropped into the very
pit of hell he suspected the scream came from.