The Blood of an Englishman (17 page)

Mrs. Westford nodded. “Timmy and I were disappointed, of course, but I was glad for his sake that he wasn’t having to rely on our company any longer. He said he’d been looking up two of the ex-RAF chaps he’d met—not people I’d have heard of, because they lived quite a way out in the country.”

“It’s a pity I haven’t addresses to go with these five names I’ve got,” Kramer grumbled, annoyed with himself for having not delegated the job to someone.

“But I’m sure he didn’t mention names.”

“What I meant was the addresses will help me to narrow this down,” explained Kramer. “Now was there an inconsistency in Mr. Hookham’s behavior that also boosted your anxiety?”

“In what way?” she asked, surprised.

“A few moments ago, Mrs. Westford, you said that Mr. Hookham had complete contempt for Bradshaw, right?”

“You’re putting words into my mouth, Lieutenant!”

“Ach no, all I—”

“All you’re doing is wording it too strongly. Ted just didn’t think much of Mr. Bradshaw, and felt sorry for his little wife, who seemed rather nice. When he feels contempt for someone, Ted makes jolly sure that they and everyone else know it!”

“Okay, he didn’t think much of him. And yet, if Mr. Digby-Smith is to be believed, he reacted very strongly to the news Bradshaw had been shot. Did this jar with you?”

Mrs. Westford frowned. “No, and I still can’t see why it should. In fact, I found it reassuringly
consistent
with his character. As surprising as it might seem to us, Lieutenant, I sincerely believe that Ted Hookham underwent some form of ‘culture shock’, as they call it, when he returned to South Africa. He repeatedly said he couldn’t adjust to the level of violence, and when a violent thing was done to someone he knew, even a chance acquaintance like Bradshaw, it epitomized the whole thing for him. It wasn’t Bradshaw he cared so much about, but the
idea
.”

“And he said all this to you that Saturday night?”

“Ted didn’t have to, Lieutenant,” she replied quietly. “We had become very close.”

Kramer had already had a taste of her powers of insight, but he still wasn’t getting the answers he wanted. “Sticking just to what
was
said,” he stressed gently, “can you remember anything to do with the RAF?”

“No, not apart from his usual chit-chat with Timmy, who dotes on some war comics he’s had for years. They made a practice of—wait a moment! You’ve just brought it back for me, word for word. Do you know that first story in the papers?”

“Ja, just saying Bradshaw had been shot, and before he started talking about a giant.”

“That’s right. Well, after the three of us had discussed it, Ted ended up by saying, ‘It’s a devil of a thing to survive what we did, and then to end up darn nearly catching a packet like that! Jerry must have come at him from out of the sun, Timmy!’ Then I spoiled his joke by saying it’d more likely have been Nemesis, and Timmy didn’t understand that.”

“Christ,” said Kramer, under his breath. “Just hold on a sec while I get that all down.”

“What’s so significant about—?”

“The way he worded it!”

“But that was for Timmy’s benefit, Lieutenant. Ted had been explaining to Timmy that a fighter pilot’s weak spot was—”

“Ja, consciously maybe, but subconsciously—listen, did Mr. Hookham make any other jokes?”

Mrs. Westford’s smile was bittersweet. “He was always joking! Although perhaps it isn’t surprising that Rupert didn’t tell you that.”

“You saw him the next night?”

“Timmy did. I was lying down in my bedroom next door with a dreadful migraine, and the pair of them sat in here making aeroplane noises.” She laughed softly. “Then Timmy found the Sunday papers which Ted had brought me with that ridiculous ‘giant’ story in them—a man like Bradshaw would obviously have to be attacked by someone bigger than him!—and Timmy became so overexcited, jumping about and pretending to be a giant himself, that I had to call out and ask Ted to go home. He was awfully apologetic when we saw him next on Tuesday night.”

“Can you remember any funnies from then?”

“None. As I’ve told you, it wasn’t a very funny occasion. I thought I’d never see him again, and.…” She bit her lip hard.

“But if you could tell me again, in more detail, it might—”

“I really can’t see the point, Lieutenant.”

“Ach,
please
, Mrs. Westford,” said Kramer, although he disliked causing this woman any pain.

She kept her head well down over her embroidery as she spoke. “Ted broke it very gently to us that he had decided to cut short his stay and return as soon as possible to England. He said he should never have come at a time when his mind was in such a turmoil, and then, suddenly, he was saying good-bye. Timmy went absolutely to pieces. He knows people tend to reject him, and he blamed Ted’s wanting to leave on himself. I told Ted to go and sit on the bed in my room, and I took Timmy on my knee, here on the sofa. I told him all about
Uncle Bonzo’s garden being in desperate need of watering, and we tut-tutted over how long he had left it to bake in the sun, and finally Timmy was quite happy again. Then Ted came back to join us, and we took him to the door and—goodness, do you know, you’ve just done it again! I’d heard about your methods, but I thought you used hose-pipes and bright lights and things.”

“Was it another joke?” urged Kramer. “Did he—?”

“Ted looked at me and his last words were, ‘Well, old thing, perhaps I’ll risk a final sortie. I could be back here on Thursday.’ That would have been tonight.”

“Hey? What’s a sortie, Mrs. Westford?”

“You really ought to ask Timmy that, but it’s a sort of flight somewhere, a journey—I took it to mean he’d be making one last call on us, and you’ll see I’ve bought some wine specially. A sortie is, well, a mission over enemy territory, or even.… Oh my God, now I see what you’re driving at!” She stood up and her embroidery fell to the floor. “Look, you’ve only said that Ted had been shot, but now I want to know where and how!”

“It’s twelve-thirty, Mrs. Westford,” said Kramer.

N2134 Bantu Constable Nxumalo had a remarkable physique beneath his khaki uniform. He had never been in a gym, neither had he subscribed to any course involving dynamic tension. But he had spent a decade or more lifting and carrying some extremely dead weights about, and this had put considerable muscle on him, particularly in the region of his shoulders and arms.

“Er, Nxumalo,” murmured Strydom, appearing without warning in the refrigerator room.

“The doctor boss wants me?”

It alarmed Nxumalo to turn about and find himself being surveyed like something on a slab, for truly the district surgeon
seemed to be looking right through his clothes. Then he saw a gleam of admiration, which was gratifying, and also a hint of surprise.

“You’re even better than I thought, hey, Nxumalo? It’s amazing the things you find right under your nose.”

“Boss?”

“Ach, just put the girl down and come this way.”

Nxumalo found a spare trolley to dump her on, and went through into the post-mortem room, where his lord and master, Sergeant Van, was standing red-faced and sweaty beside a strange contraption attached to an unattached arm.

“Hau!” exclaimed Nxumalo, breaking out into a sweat himself, then he realized to his great relief that it wasn’t the arm about which his conscience was bad.

“What I’ve done so far,” explained Strydom, “is I’ve ruled out the possibility that weight alone is sufficient to cause fractures of the ulna and radius bones at this point in the human arm.”

“What ‘weight alone?’ ” protested Van Rensburg. “How could I pull if I didn’t have a terrifying grip?”

“Now what I want you to try,” Strydom said to Nxumalo, who was trying to pick out Afrikaans words that he knew, “is to apply maximum force to—”

“It can’t be done,” said Van Rensburg, sniffing. “I tell you, Doc, with all respect, it’s just impossible.”

“Quiet, please, Sergeant—you have had your chance. Do you see these ropes, Nxumalo? Do you understand what they are designed to do?”

Nxumalo saw a piece of rope knotted around the arm, just below the wrist, and that one end of the rope was loose. The other end of the rope was attached to the hook at the bottom of a spring balance, and there was a second piece of rope, to provide him with something to pull on that side, attached to the ring on the top of the spring balance. If he took the two
free ends and tugged, the amount of force would register on the spring balance’s scale in between.

“Not understand, boss,” said Nxumalo.

“Well, that doesn’t matter, hey? Just do as I say. Take that end and that end and pull like hell!”

“Hau, but I break these bones, boss!” warned Nxumalo, in a state of confused alarm.

“You do that, hey, and I’ll give you one rand for each bone you snap! Ready now?”

“The rope’s wrong,” objected Van Rensburg. “I’ve heard it was a special kind of skipping rope with fancy handles.”

“This
is
that kind of skipping rope,” said Strydom. “I personally went into the shop this morning and bought one.”

“They rooked you, Doc. This one’s got no handles, hey?”

“I
cut
them
off
,” growled Strydom, implying a great deal more than he said, should this go on any longer. “Take hold, Nxumalo.”

Having thrown his inhibitions to the wind, and agog at the thought of how many cheap cigarettes he could buy for two rand, Nxumalo flexed his pectorals and took up the strain.

“The arm’s wrong,” objected Van Rensburg. “That’s a young arm, it can’t be more than twenty, and so it’ll break by sheer fluke after I’ve been weakening it up for an hour.”

“Stop!” Strydom ordered Nxumalo, then took a very deep breath. “My patience, Sergeant, is close to the end of its tether. A young arm will, in actual fact, be harder to fracture than one belonging to a fifty-year-old man, and you, you great clown, have weakened nothing
except
your facile case with that stupid observation!”

Van Rensburg went his predictable purple, but less predictably, stood his ground. “Oh ja? Let us see.…”

“On your marks, Nxumalo!” snapped Strydom. “Get ready! Go!”

Nxumalo applied a sudden violent jerk to the ends of rope in his iron hands. What happened next was over in an instant: the arm leapt up from the slab, the spring balance’s hook straightened out, and the spring balance itself went whizzing just over Strydom’s head, shattering a bottle of stomach contents on a shelf.

“Now
that
was clever!” chortled Van Rensburg. “Hell, that was a fantastic trick, Doc! Why not do it again?”

“There’s no need to do it again,” Strydom replied smugly. “The measurement doesn’t matter—the proof is enough.”

“Hey?”

“Look for yourself—both bones fractured, and in a manner identical to Hookham’s!”

Nxumalo wiped his right palm in readiness to receive those two rand notes. Perhaps he would keep only the one, and present the other to his wife.

“The experiment’s wrong,” objected Van Rensburg. “In Hookham’s case, the rope was knotted round two wrists, not just one. That’s why I couldn’t put my heart into it.”

Now Strydom started going purple. “
Wrong?
”

“By some fluke, Nxumalo has been able to break this set of bones,” conceded Van Rensburg. “I’ll even say, for the sake of argument, he used
x
amount of strength. But has he got twice
x
in his arms, Doc? Because, unless I’m very much mistaken, so far he has, as usual, only half-done a proper job.”

“It wouldn’t take twice—”

“But there would be a difference, Doc! As a man of science, you can’t deny that.”

Perhaps, thought Nxumalo, who couldn’t follow a word of all this incessant arguing, he would keep fifty cents for himself, give forty cents to his wife, and distribute the remainder among his many children.

“Nxumalo?” said Strydom gloomily.

“Two bones broken, boss!”

“No, forget that now and go back to work, hey? It looks like I’m going to have to start this whole frustrating business back at square one again.”

The Chevrolet’s tires squealed as Kramer swung from the dirt road out on the high-speed carriageway from the south leading back into town. In under a minute he was passing everything before him, and making up for all the time lost by the briefing he had given Zondi after leaving Mrs. Westford and Timmy at their gate. Mother and son had stood together, hand in hand, not waving, and the memory of that made him sick to the stomach.

“But,” said Zondi, looking at his watch, “it is only twelve-thirty now, boss, so why did you tell a lie to that woman?”

“I was trying to get out of telling her any of the details, Mickey. She was not to be fooled so easily, but I didn’t mention about the rope and the car boot and all that. I just said he’d been found in Gillespie Street.”

“Then she will
know
you are a liar!”

“They don’t get the papers, hey?”

Zondi used one of the two knives he carried in his trouser-tabs to clean the sand from under his fingernails. “You seem to like this woman, boss.”

“Very much.”

“How was it exactly that Boss Hookham started to go to her place?”

“Remember his Basil Strongpiece entry in the diary? He went there without the Digby-Smiths, and naturally these people tried to fill him in on all that’d happened since he left for the war. Obviously people who weren’t friends of the Smiths had a ball telling him about Rupert and his love life, and Hookham suddenly wanted to see his old girlfriend again. The Digby-Smiths had never mentioned in their letters that she’d had such misfortunes—I suppose they didn’t want him
to try and help her or something. Anyway, he made contact again, and that place must have become sort of an escape hole for him. At least he could talk about his wife to someone—nobody else wanted to listen, they said he mustn’t dwell on it or he’d become morbid—and with her knowledge of suffering, Mrs. Westford was just the right person. She thinks he was missing his grandchildren too, and Timmy was a bit of a substitute for that. Personally, I think it all went deeper than she lets on, but I’m not saying they were sleeping together or anything like that.”