The Blood of an Englishman (19 page)

“Ja, I can appreciate that. But what about Mr. Hookham? Have you any—?”

“Hardly said a word to him, which I was sorry about—and I’ve been even sorrier since I read this. They can be a bit of a pain, his type, but he struck me as a nice guy and I’ll always listen to their stories once. The first chance I got was when Bradshaw was monopolizing him. They were talking about the best places to take dogs for a walk, comparing notes on it, and I tried then to break in. But Bradshaw was soon off on one of his amazing yarns about how he’d shot down half the Luftwaffe single-handed and I gave up.”

“So they spoke about the raids they went on?”

“Naturally! With sound effects and all the usual trimmings.”

“People standing near them could overhear this?”

“When the band wasn’t playing, they must’ve done. Both were ticking quietly by this time, of course.”

“They’d been drinking for how long? Was this near the end of the evening?”

“Oh no,” said Du Plooi, “about halfway through. I tried again on my way back from the bandstand, where I’d been making some announcements, and by then they were swapping Stalag numbers. That could have been quite interesting, because I’d already heard that Hookham had escaped from his POW camp and made it right back to England, using disguises and all sorts. But Bradshaw was holding the floor about his own escape, and—”

“So that’s something else they have in common?”

“Well, yes and no,” said Du Plooi, grinning. “Archie didn’t tell you he’d been a POW? I’m not surprised, really, because it wasn’t one of the more glorious pages in his history! He can’t avoid the subject quite so easily among the sort of people the club collects, so he tries to make a joke of it. His bunch were picked up in France in about two minutes flat, when one of them, he alleges, dressed up as a nun, let go a fart in a railway carriage. If that’s true, I think we’ve all got a shrewd idea who that might have been!”

“Ja, no prizes for that one,” laughed Kramer.

“And I’m pretty sure Hookham didn’t miss it either! But after the laugh had died down, I could see Bradshaw’s never-ending blah-blah-blah was making our guest of honor’s smile wear a bit thin, so I found an excuse to take him across to meet Ernie and the others. On the way over, I suggested to Hookham that he should come out and meet the family some time, and he seemed very grateful, so we left it that he’d give me a call when he had a Sunday free. Then Ernie and the others took over, practically carried Bonzo back to the bar, and they all had such a fantastic time that there were complaints from two of the ladies that I had to cope with. Ja, I suppose if I must find a silver lining in all this, then it’s how over-the-moon Hookham looked when Ernie and his pals carried him out and took him home.”

Kramer frowned. “He didn’t appear excited? Nervous?”

“I defy
anybody
to look nervous after what he’d put away that night!” chuckled Du Plooi. “He was gurgling like my young son over there.”

Drank very heavily
, Kramer added to his notes.
Obvious reaction to stress
.

“But if you’re trying to push this ‘things in common’ business any further, Lieutenant,” said Du Plooi, “you come unstuck when you get to Ernie Wilson. In a literal sense, he never set foot outside England.”

“No, that non-active service side is irrelevant, thanks. What I want to know is, did you see Hookham speaking to anyone else, apart from his RAF colleagues, at any stage in the evening?”

“Umm, no, I can’t say I did. But as I’ve already explained, I was running about and—”

“Fine. Now these guests were a mixed bunch?”

“To a degree—club members, regulars at our socials, parachute club kids trying to fix up free drops, one or two strange faces—but all loosely connected with flying, I’d imagine.”

“Different races?”

“Hey?” said Du Plooi, baffled.

“Ach, I meant nationalities, different nationalities,” said Kramer, then decided to cut a corner by being less subtle. “Any Germans or people of German origin?”

Du Plooi reddened. “That could depend—my mother’s family are from the Lutheran community at Leeukop.”

“I’m making a fool of myself, hey?” said Kramer. “So I might as well go the whole hog: any ex-Luftwaffe belonging to the club or at the social?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” replied Du Plooi, losing his look of annoyance and smiling. “I see the line you’re taking, but again I think you could come unstuck. The Luftwaffe dropped a few bombs themselves, you know—think of the Blitz, Liverpool, Coventry—and could have some, er, sympathy? Flying is its own brotherhood in a way.”

“Okay, but you agree it’s feasible that this conversation could have provoked someone listening in?” persisted Kramer.

“It might have done, Lieutenant. I’ve known similar sorts of talk start a punch-up, but here I’m thinking more of rivalry between different air forces, that kind of thing. What I’ve certainly never come across is someone being provoked into—”

“A bad war experience could do permanent damage to the mind,” Kramer pointed out. “Who knows how long it might simmer away inside until something goes snap?”

Du Plooi reached for his memo pad. “What you want the committee to do is draw up a list of people at the social—am I right?” His quick, efficient mind was a tonic.

“Please, man, and as soon as possible.”

“Can’t be done before tomorrow, I’m afraid!”

“Oh?”

“The chairman, John Hill, is crop-spraying in Zululand, and Dawie van Niekerk, he’s the treasurer, is negotiating a deal in Port Elizabeth overnight. We do have a club guest book, of course, because of the license, but—between you and me, and
don’t tell the Liquor Squad—things tend to get a bit sloppy on these occasions. The three of us will have to put our heads together, and even then you may find one or two names missing.”

Kramer stood up. “I’ll be grateful for anything. But how about a short list meantime? Leaving out people you are sure of?”

“Would that be wise, Lieutenant?”

It was a sound observation and, despite his extreme frustration, Kramer settled for the best list they could manage by two o’clock the next day. There were, of course, plenty of other things he could do in the meantime, including trying to cheat the killer of his next victim.

“Not so fast,” objected Colonel Muller.

It seemed the most ludicrous thing anyone could think of uttering after nearly two hours had been squandered in bringing the old stick-in-the-mud up to date with the investigation.

“But, sir,” said Kramer, who had just looked up Ernie Wilson’s telephone number, “I feel there’s some urgency involved here! By five o’clock, Wilson could have left his work, and it might be difficult to contact him with our warning.”

“
Your
warning, Lieutenant.”

“Sir?”

“For a whole two hours I have listened to your theory and the evidence you claim supports it. A marathon session which began, let me make it quite clear, with me having no strong views one way or the other. Perhaps I was even a bit biased in favor of this hunch of yours, because a detective always likes to find a pattern.”

“Then surely, Colonel, you—”

“One moment, please! It is my turn to talk. Everything you learned from Mr. Digby-Smith, give or take a few details, can be dismissed as background.”

Kramer bristled. “Really? Are you dismissing the man’s demeanour in that? The diary entry when he says he’s feeling so alive? The man on the phone with a strange accent?”

“Hookham’s reported demeanour was always in keeping with the straightforward and sympathetic explanations offered by two people who knew him well, his brother-in-law and his old girlfriend,” replied Colonel Muller, firmly. “It is only when passed through the sieve of your personal theory that they take on qualities that are no longer humdrum.”

“What sieve?” began Kramer, growing angry.

“This idea of yours with all the holes in it, Tromp. The man goes out, has a hell of a thrash at the flying club, comes back so drunk that his writing in the diary is all over the place when he does his ‘comment,’ as you call it, and you can’t accept he’s just alive with happiness. Do you see? A piece of logic is missing there. And another piece then goes missing when we come to speak of the ‘strange accent.’ Which is more likely? Digby-Smith’s belief that it really was an old school chum wanting to surprise Hookham? Or your processed version, in which we are meant to believe that a killer rang up to talk to his victim?”

“Perhaps he was just trying to discover Hookham’s whereabouts that night, Colonel.”

“Ach! There you go again!”

“But what about Mrs. Westford and what she had to say?” asked Kramer, digging his heels in. “What about those ‘jokes’ of Hookham’s? Many a true word is spoke in—”

“Tromp, Tromp, Tromp,” sighed Colonel Muller. “I’ve already touched on all that. Mrs. Westford thought she understood both remarks—and so she probably did!—until your RAF obsession started twisting them for her. Tell me, after you reached that point in your interview, did she come out with anything else which seemed of importance?”

“Er, not that I remember, Colonel.”

“That proves my point. Don’t get me wrong, hey? I listened to all that in high hope of hearing something to our advantage—I was on your side! But I ended up very disappointed. There was always a reasonable explanation for everything.”

“Which proves my point,” countered Kramer. “I can’t see how my deductions could be anything but reasonable, given the facts, and—”

“Lieutenant!” snapped Colonel Muller. “Now don’t you start trying to twist
my
words! Your explanations are nowhere near reasonable—they exist on a plane of total fantasy!”

“Oh ja? What’s so fantastic about—?”

“Germans taking revenge on these ‘Terrorflieger’ blokes? The Second War World still going on in Trekkersburg? You seriously have to ask me that?”

Kramer shrugged. “It was your idea in the first place, Colonel. You started off this case by saying the killer had to be mad, and what world do the mad live in, if it isn’t a fantastic one?”

That put Colonel Muller back in his seat, but his head came up again just as quickly. “That I admit,” he said. “But I’ll bet you right now that
his
fantastic reason for shooting these two is nothing so fantastic as the one you’ve dreamed up! Honestly, I find it embarrassing.…”

“Embarrassing?” Kramer echoed in total disbelief. “And that’s why you don’t want me to alert Ernie Wilson to the fact he could be next for the chop?”

“Do you want me to look a complete laughing stock in Pretoria? First we have bloody giants, next it’s Germans on the warpath—what next? Homicidal gorillas from Mars?”

Hearing it summed up like that, Kramer’s own sense of the absurd took the wind out of his sails momentarily, and his hunch—being, like most hunches, a fairly frail craft—drifted dangerously towards the jagged reef of self-doubt.

Colonel Muller struck. “If you had found me one piece of corroborative evidence from
outside
your highly personal interpretation of all this, then you could do as you like, Lieutenant. But, before any more time is frittered away, there are these items of physical evidence to be examined, checked, double-checked, accepted or eliminated. You still haven’t bothered to say what you thought of Galt’s highly significant deduction.”

“Ach, that fits in with my theory too, Colonel,” said Kramer, rallying his reserves. “Do you recall the part when Hookham went on a ‘final sortie’ looking for this bloke? It’s just possible he found him at the very same spot as Bradshaw was—no, what most likely happened is that he was bound up and taken there to be executed. In a crazy way, that could seem very fitting.”

“No, I’m not listening to any more of that rub—”

“Can you suggest how he got there, sir?”

Colonel Muller faltered for only a moment. “Yes, he was taken there, like you suggest,” he said. “What I’m disputing is the
motive
.”

Then Kramer had a sudden, quite brilliant idea.

K
RAMER’S IDEA WAS
this. If Bradshaw and Hookham had provoked someone with their boisterous reminiscences of death and destruction, and if Hookham had noticed this someone looking less than amused by their talk, then it stood to reason that Bradshaw might have noticed that someone too.

“I don’t call that a brilliant idea,” grunted Colonel Muller. “I call it further time wasted.”

“I only said a ‘quite’ brilliant idea, sir—not a ‘very.’ In a way, it’s a self-evident idea at this stage of the investigation.”

“Only if you subscribe to the lunatic link you’ve constructed between these two blokes. Why, for example, hasn’t Bradshaw come forward with such information himself?”

Kramer smiled. “Well, for a start, he’s one hell of a thick-skinned bugger. I’m sure angry looks just bounce off him unnoticed.”

“Then what is the point in going to see him?”

“Prod his memory a bit, sir.”

“Oh no,” said Colonel Muller, wagging that hairy great finger again. “I think you’ve fed enough people their lines so far, Lieutenant Kramer. Does he know about your RAF theory?”

“No, not since I’ve developed it. When I saw him yesterday, I just asked him and his wife to go over every factor they might have in common. Look, I promise I’ll—”

Colonel Muller stood up. “Promise nothing, Lieutenant. You still feel this is worth putting other things aside for? That this Mr. Wilson could be in danger?”

“I do, Colonel.”

“Okay, then I’ll tell you what: we’ll give this old cat one more swing by the tail. But if you don’t get your corroboration, then that whole avenue of enquiry is closed forthwith.”

“Fair enough,” agreed Kramer. “I’d better get a—”

“Not so fast,” Colonel Muller again reprimanded him. “I said
we’ll
do this—together, hey? I’ll do the talking, and you will just sit there, shut up and, let me warn you, don’t try any hypnotism!”

What it was, Kramer thought, as they went down the stairs, to be trusted.

Zondi, who had been included in the party as its official driver, which lent the divisional commandant’s descent to the remote back streets a degree of dignity, crouched beside the big, flashy Ford and watched a stag beetle trying to right itself on Kitchener Row.