Riotous Assembly (6 page)

 Lying impaled on the iron spikes at the bottom of the haha, his screams echoing
across the Park, Luitenant Verkramp, half dead with fear and pain, stared upwards and knew
himself eternally damned. In his delirium he saw a face peer down into his grave, a face
diabolically satisfied: the face was the face of Els. Luitenant Verkramp passed out.

His two companions had by that time reached the foot of the hill. They had fled, leaving
behind them not only the Luitenant but a trail of leaves, branches, helmets, and all the
impedimenta of their profession. They need not have hurried. The news of the encounter
had preceded them. Konstabel Els’ yell, terrible even diminuendo, had wafted like some
fearful confirmation of doom to the cars that still jammed the Vlockfontein road.

The policemen lounging by the lorries and armoured cars grew rigid at its import. Men
who had been erecting some of the rabies and bubonic plague billboards stopped work and
stared into the darkness trying to make out what new horror had sprung from the deadly
bush. Even the guard dogs cringed at the sound. And in the middle of Jacaranda Park,
Kommandant van Heerden, in terror of his life from the Ming, halted involuntarily at
the sound. No one who heard that scream was ever likely to forget it.

If Konstabel Els had been astounded at the effect of the elephant gun, he was even
more astounded at the results of his experiment in psychological warfare. His
imitation of the awakened dead had borne fruit among his vegetable enemies to an extent
he wouldn’t have believed possible, but as he stood listening to the ebbing screams from
the ditch, a momentary shadow of doubt crossed his mind. There was something about those
screams, something about their tone that was vaguely familiar. He went over to the haha
and peered down, and was just able to make out through the foliage that covered it, a face,
and again there was something familiar about the face. If it hadn’t been for the bulbous
nose and the puffed-up cheeks, he might have thought it was Luitenant Verkramp down there. He
grinned to himself at the thought of the Luitenant lying on those spikes. Serve the bastard
right if he had been down there for keeping him hanging around all night when he should have
been relieved hours ago, he thought as he entered the blockhouse.

He took another swig of brandy and was just putting the bottle back in his hip pocket
when he heard a sound that sent him hurrying to the gun port. Something was coming up the
road. Some vehicle, and a touch of familiarity caught his ear. It sounded for all the
world like a Saracen armoured car. “About bloody time too,” Els thought, as the headlights
swung round the corner and lit up for a second the bodies lying on the hillside
opposite. A moment later a fresh light was thrown on the scene. A searchlight probed
through the night and turned the privet hedge into one brilliant spot in an otherwise dark
world.

“All right, you bastards, enough’s as good as a fucking feast,” Els yelled into the
night, and before he could say more the privet hedge began to disintegrate around his
shelter. As the bullets tore into the blockhouse walls and the gun port was aflame with
tracer bullets, Els knew that he was about to die. This wasn’t the relief he expected. In
one last desperate move to avert tragedy, Konstabel Els aimed the elephant gun at the
armoured car. He held his fire until the Saracen was only ten yards from the gate and then
pulled the trigger. Again and again he fired, and with a mixture of awe and satisfaction
saw, silhouetted against the searchlight, the great armoured vehicle grind to a halt and
begin to disintegrate. Its guns were silenced, its tyres were shreds of rubber and its
occupants trickled gently but persistently through a hundred holes drilled in its
sides. Only one man was even capable of trying to leave the thing and as he emerged
convulsively from the turret-top, Els saw with appalling clarity the familiar uniform
and cap of the South African Police. The body slumped back inside the turret, and Els,
understanding dimly for the first time the enormity of his offences, knew himself but a
stone’s throw from the gallows. He fired his last shot. The searchlight exploded into
darkness and Els, with desperate energy, gathered up all evidence of his recent
occupation and stumbled out of the blockhouse and dragging his awful accomplice,
sneaked off across the Park.

Behind him the armoured colander burst into flames and as Els hurled himself towards
Jacaranda House the night sky was bright with the flames and the delicate tracery of
exploding ammunition.

In Jacaranda House, Jonathan Hazelstone was singing in his bath. He was wearing a rubber
bathing-cap to protect his delicate ears from the water, and partly because of the cap
and partly because he was rather deaf, he was singing rather more loudly than he imagined.
As a result he heard nothing of the noises of battle that accompanied his rendering of
Onward Christian Soldiers. Around him the pink water eddied and swirled, assuming
strange intricate patterns as the percussion of the elephant gun reached it. But Jonathan
Hazelstone had no time for observing such trifles. His mind was preoccupied with his own
shortcomings. Shame and a guilty pride at his own achievement mingled in his thoughts and
over them both there hung the awful remembrance of things past.

He tried to put the dreadful business out of his mind but it came back insistently.
Still, in spite of his remorse he had to smile to himself a little. After all, he thought,
there couldn’t be many men still alive who could say that they had done what he had and got
away with it. Not that he was given to boastfulness, and he certainly was not going to go
about broadcasting his deed. On the other hand he had been provoked quite horribly, and
in the event he felt that his action had to some extent been excusable. “Old Rhino Skin”,
he thought, and shuddered, and was about to remind himself that he must tell the cook never
to use the beastly stuff for cooking again, when he remembered that there was in fact no
cook to tell.

He looked sadly at the pink ring on the sides of the bath and then hurriedly got out and
emptied the water. He sluiced the bath clean, refilled it and added bath salts and then lay
down in the hot water to consider what to do next to erase the effects of the afternoon’s
events. He was faced, he knew, with a terrible problem. True, his sister had promised to
make a full confession to the police and that was all right as far as it went, but it wasn’t
going to help him to escape scot-free. There were bound to be repercussions, and the whole
episode was hardly calculated to help his career. It was a ghastly business
altogether. Not that he had a great fund of sympathy for that damned cook. If it hadn’t
been for him, none of this would have happened. Besides, there were some things that Jonathan
Hazelstone could never forgive. Perversion was one of them.

 Kommandant van Heerden would have shared all these sentiments had he known about
them, but by this time his faculties were all focused on one simple realization, that
his career as a police officer and probably as a free man had almost certainly been
ended by his handling of the Hazelstone Case. The explosion that heralded the end of the
armoured car had made that clear as daylight to him. Disgraced, cashiered and convicted of
being an accessory before, during, and after the murder of the policeman who had
undoubtedly fallen before Els’ tornado of gunshot at the main gate, he would share the
rest of his life in prison with men who bore him debts of ingratitude no amount of
suffering would ever repay. The day he entered Piemburg Prison might not be his last, but
it would undoubtedly be his worst. Too many men had signed confessions after being
tortured by Konstabel Els in the cells of Piemburg Police Station for him to relish the
prospect of their company in prison.

After a brief spell of sobbing Kommandant van Heerden tried to think of some way out of
the mess Els had got him into. Only one thing could save him now and that was the
successful capture of the murderer of Miss Hazelstone’s Zulu cook. Not that he placed
much hope in that achievement and it wouldn’t help to explain the bloodbath Els had
initiated. No, Els would have to stand trial for wholesale murder and there was just a
chance that he could be persuaded to plead insanity. Come to think of it, there was no need
for the bastard to have to plead. He was obviously insane. The facts spoke for
themselves.

Urged forward by this faint hope and certainly not by the exploding ammunition in
the once-mobile incinerator, Kommandant van Heerden reached the Park gates.
Clambering over the pile of contorted metal the Kommandant stood and looked about him. A
pall of black smoke darkened the night sky. It poured from the open turret of the Saracen
and issued from the holes in its sides. Even the distracted Kommandant was aware of its
smell. It smelt like nothing on earth. Taking a deep breath of the disgusting stuff,
Kommandant van Heerden bellowed into the night.

“Konstabel Els,” he yelled, “Konstabel Els, where in fuck’s name are you?” and
recognized the stupidity of the question as soon as it was uttered. Els was hardly
likely to come forward at this juncture. More likely he would consign his commanding
officer to eternity with the same relish he had employed on his other comrades. After
a moment’s silence punctuated only by the bang and whizz of bullets ricocheting round
the interior of the Saracen the Kommandant shouted again.

“This is your commanding officer, I order you to cease fire.”

Down the road the sound of Kommandant van Heerden’s strange order puzzled the men in
the convoy and brought a warm glow of admiration to their hearts. The Kommandant was up
there by the gates and had evidently captured the maniac who had been slaughtering them.
They were amazed at this development, for the Kommandant was not known for his physical
courage. Slowly but surely in little groups they made their way hesitantly up the road
towards him.

 Konstabel Els was making off in quite a different direction and racking his
brains for a way of getting out of the mess he was in. First of all he had to conceal the
elephant gun and then he would have to concoct an alibi. Considering the size of the gun
he wasn’t sure which was going to be the more impossible task, and he was just debating
whether or not to put it back on the stoep, where he had found it, when he ran across another
privet hedge. His recent experience of privet hedges had taught him that they were ideal
places for hiding things in. In this case the privet hedge hid a swimming-bath. Els peered
round the hedge, and after reassuring himself that the swimming-bath was what it
purported to be and not yet another of Sir Theophilus’ little traps, he stole into the
enclosure and across to a small and elegant pavilion which stood at one end. He groped
round in the dark for a moment and then struck a match. By its light he saw that the pavilion
was a changing-room with pegs along its wall for hanging clothes. To his horror he saw that
one of the pegs was being put to good use. A suit of dark clothes was hanging there.

Els doused the match and peered out at the pool. The owner of the black suit must be out
there watching him, he thought. But the surface of the swimming-bath was unbroken by
anything more sinister than reflections of the stars and a new moon which had just begun
to rise. The edges of the pool held no unaccountable shadows and Els knew himself to be
alone with a suit of dark clothes, an elephant gun, and the need to concoct an alibi.

“Privet hedges seem to bring me luck,” he said to himself and promised himself to plant
one in his front garden if he ever got out of this scrape alive.

He lit another match and examined the clothes. He thought at first that he might be able
to use them as a disguise but the trousers were much too large for him, while the jacket
which he tried on would have done as a winter coat. He was a little puzzled by the black
waistcoat with no buttons on it until he spotted the attached dog-collar. Konstabel
Els gave up all thought of using the clothes as a disguise. He had too much respect for
religion to profane the garments with his own person. Instead he used them to wipe the
elephant gun clean of his fingerprints. An expert in removing vital evidence, by the
time he had finished there was nothing to connect him with the gun.

Twenty minutes later Konstabel Els stepped jauntily out of the pavilion and
sauntered cheerfully across the Park towards Piemburg. Behind him he had left
everything that connected him with the massacre at the main gate. The elephant gun was
concealed under the clergyman’s clothes. In a back pocket of the trousers was his
revolver while the jacket pockets bulged with the empty cartridge cases he had
carefully collected from the floor of the blockhouse. Each and every article had been
meticulously polished. No fingerprint expert could prove that they had been used by
Konstabel Els. Finally, and with a touch of whimsy, he had put the half-bottle of Old
Rhino Skin into the inside breast pocket of the jacket. It had been quite empty and he
had no use for empty bottles anyway.

It was while he was shoving the bottle into the pocket that he made another useful
discovery. The pocket contained a wallet and comb. Konstabel Els searched the other
pockets and found a handkerchief and several other objects.

“Nothing like doing a job properly,” he thought, pocketing the things and set off for
the blockhouse for one final visit. By the time he reached it his confidence had
returned. Policemen were wandering around looking at the burning Saracen and no one
took any notice of the Konstabel who nipped for a second behind the privet hedge before
strolling off down the road in the direction of Piemburg. On the way he stopped to read a
notice which was being hammered into place by a group of policemen.

An hour later, foaming at the mouth and exhibiting all the symptoms of rabies,
Konstabel Els presented himself at the casualty department of Piemburg Hospital.
Before they could get him into bed he had bitten two nurses and a doctor.

 At the entrance to Jacaranda Park Kommandant van Heerden was exhibiting
similar symptoms to the men who gathered round him under the pall of smoke. The
disappearance of Luitenant Verkramp particularly incensed him.

“Missing? What do you mean missing?” he yelled at Sergeant de Kock.

“He came up here to reconnoitre, sir,” answered the Sergeant.

“Any chance he came in that?” asked the Kommandant more hopefully, looking at the
burnt-out Saracen.

“No sir. In disguise.”

“In what?” yelled the Kommandant.

“He was disguised as a bush, sir.”

Kommandant van Heerden couldn’t believe his ears. “Disguised as a bush? What sort of
bush?”

“Difficult to say, sir. Not a very big one.”

Kommandant van Heerden turned to the men. “Any of you men seen a small bush round
here?”

A hush fell over the policemen. They had all seen a small bush round there.

“There’s one just behind you, sir,” a konstabel said.

The Kommandant turned and looked at what remained of the privet hedge. It was
obviously nothing like Verkramp disguised or not. “Not that you fool,” he snarled. “A
walking fucking bush.”

“I don’t know about that bush fucking, sir,” said the konstabel. “And I daresay it can’t
walk, but I do know the bloody thing can shoot straight.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” snapped the Kommandant as a nervous giggle ran
round the crowd.

Sergeant de Kock enlightened him. “The fellow who knocked out the Saracen took cover
behind that bush.”

A moment later Kommandant van Heerden was peering through the doorway into the
blockhouse. The interior was still filled with the fumes of burnt powder, but even so
Kommandant van Heerden’s olfactory nerve could detect a pervasive familiar smell.
The blockhouse stank of Old Rhino Skin. On the floor there was further evidence. A wallet,
a comb, and a handkerchief lay in the middle of the bunker. The Kommandant picked them up
and gingerly held them to his nose. They were practically soaked in brandy. He opened the
wallet and saw stamped in gold letters a name he was also familiar with, “Jonathan
Hazelstone”.

Kommandant van Heerden wasted no more time. Leaving the bunker, he gave his orders.
The Park was to be surrounded. Road blocks were to be set up on all roads in the vicinity.
Searchlights were to illuminate the entire area of the Park. “We’re going in to get him,”
he said finally. “Bring up the other Saracens, and the guard dogs.”

Ten minutes later the five remaining Saracens, a hundred men armed with Sten guns and
the sixty-nine tracker dogs were assembled at the Park gates ready for the assault on
Jacaranda House. Kommandant van Heerden climbed aboard a Saracen and addressed the men
from its turret.

“Before we start,” he said, “I think I had better warn you that the man we are after is a
dangerous criminal.” He paused. The policeman who had seen the burnt-out armoured car
and the corpses littering the hillside needed no telling. “The house is practically a
fortress,” continued the Kommandant, “and he has at his disposal an armoury of lethal
weapons. At the first sign of resistance you have my permission to open fire. Are there any
questions?”

“What about the Black Death?” Sergeant de Kock asked anxiously.

“The black’s death? Oh yes, caused by gunshot wounds,” replied the Kommandant
enigmatically, and disappearing inside the turret slammed the lid. The convoy moved
off cautiously down the drive to Jacaranda House.