The Blood of an Englishman (7 page)

“Ja, get out,” agreed the others, for once unappreciative of Mitchell’s razor-sharp wit. “Get out and stay out.”

Mitchell shrugged and turned his attention to the two .32 slugs that Botha had lined up side by side under the twin lenses of his instrument. “What are these?” he asked. “Don’t tell me Wonder Dog Kramer has come up with a match in the Bradshaw case?”

“Cast your own expert eye, if you like,” Botha invited him. “Not that anyone would need a second opinion.”

“Really?” said Mitchell, impressed.

Kramer slid down low in the front passenger seat of the Chevrolet and hooked his heels comfortably under the dashboard. With Zondi at the wheel, and in a somewhat exuberant state, it was often more restful not having a clear view of the road ahead. They were doing at least sixty along the crowded freeway back into the center of town.

“Ja, it’s all coming together,” he said, his mood much improved by the contribution that Zondi had made. “Don’t ask me
what
is coming together, but the two cases do seem definitely connected. If Ballistics can give us a positive on that slug we removed, then we’ll know for certain.”

Zondi intimidated a five-ton lorry and made a gain of fifty yards. “And if this man is truly big, boss, that will make our job much easier.”

“Right. None of that Oh-he-was-sort-of-average rubbish! How many times have you and me gone looking for Mr. Average?”

“Move it!” Zondi growled at a Mini dithering in front of him, then swept by on the wrong side. “Sorry, boss?”

Kramer had already gone back to reviewing the known facts so far. “So you say all the vehicles at the Digby-Smiths’ were being parked in the street?”

“Yebo, the men have been working on the drive for a week, they tell me, so the cars must be left outside.”

“How many do they have?”

“Three, boss. There is the Rover, Boss Digby-Smith drives a big Ford to work, and then they have this old one they use when the others are in the garage for servicing. It’s a Morris.”

“I see, so it wasn’t at all strange that the car should be left outside in the street last night. But what about the ignition key?”

Zondi snapped his fingers in irritation at himself. “That I forgot to tell you! The cook said her madam was complaining at breakfast this morning because the keys had not been put back on the silver tray in the hall. But her husband told her not to be so stupid, and to use the spare key instead.”

“Uh huh. Did you speak to any of the other servants?”

“The chief garden boy. He lives at Peacevale, so he didn’t know anything of what happened in the night. All he noticed when he came to work was that the dogs from all around were sniffing at the back of the car and peeing on it.”

“Didn’t that seem unusual to him?”

“It made him laugh,” said Zondi, grinning. “He said he had felt that way about his employer many times himself.”

Kramer chuckled. “But did you think to ask him if he’d seen anyone snooping round the property? The killer must have known about the cars being left outside.”

“Why ‘must’?” asked Zondi.

“Because—ach, we’ll try and sort that out later. Tell me more first about what the housemaid says she saw at one o’clock.”

Zondi throttled back as they approached the first set of traffic lights. “She saw this car come with only its small lights on. She saw it stop outside the hedge, and a big man get out—the street light over the other side was shining behind him. There were a lot of leaves in the way—I looked from the same place and that is true—so she thought maybe it was a different boss in a different car.”

“At that time of night? Wasn’t she suspicious?”

“Boss, boss, boss,” said Zondi, with a doleful wag of his head, “will you never learn that a black child is only seven years old when he stops wondering at the ways of white persons? They do so many strange things, believe so many strange things, that life is just too short.” Then he caught the green and surged across the intersection towards Boomplaas Street.

“But I
know
I’ve got one somewhere,” the district surgeon was saying to Van Rensburg, as they came out of the postmortem room. “And I’m not taking any excuses—just you find it!”

Nxumalo ran his duster over a mahogany coffin that rested on a pair of trestles near the fridge doors. Generally speaking, the only coffins ever seen in the mortuary were the splintery pine boxes which blacks provided for their relatives, while all white remains were removed by undertaking firms to be coffined on their own premises. From time to time, however, when the white remains in question were in a disgusting state and unfit to be later viewed by the family, it was judged more expedient to have them transferred straight into the chosen coffin and screwed down.
This had been the fate of Mr. Horace Austin, who’d been reduced—in Van Rensburg’s phrase—to “toast and gravy” by a blazing car, and then placed in the coffin now awaiting removal by Abbott & Son.

“Er, Nxumalo,” said Van Rensburg, crossing over to him, “there’s something I want to ask you.” He glanced at a list on his clipboard. “Where’s the body of Philemon Bapuna?”

“Gone, Sergeant.”

“Ja, I thought so. And Daisy Majola?”

“Gone, Sergeant.”

“Let me see.… This one is Mr. Austin—oh ja, what about Roger Dhlamini? Have we still got him round the back?”

“Gone, Sergeant!”

Van Rensburg’s face fell. “Now are you quite—?”

“Ach, come on, Van Rensburg!” barked Strydom, who had been at his elbow all the time. “What has this to do with finding that arm for me?”

“Er, I was only getting some routine matters out of the way first, Doc!” Van Rensburg looked appealingly into Nxumalo’s eyes. “Don’t tell me you have actually done what I said you must do this morning?”

“Oh, yes indeed, Sergeant!” replied Nxumalo, showing pride in his obedience. “I took my finger right out!”

Van Rensburg smiled at him wanly, and then turned to Strydom, whose foot was tapping impatiently. “I’m sorry, Doc, but I don’t think that arm is in the mortuary any longer,” he said. “I can’t remember why I believed this to be a fact, but perhaps you could try your experiment on—”

“Sergeant Van Rensburg,
come with me
,” hissed Strydom, and led the way back into the post-mortem room.

Alone once more, Nxumalo chortled and went on using his duster, pausing now and again to look with amusement towards the foot of the coffin lid.

Kramer had quite forgotten about Meerkat Marais, who was posed on the edge of the filing cabinet like The Thinker, with one fist pressed against his forehead.

“Well, well, my old friend,” he said, as he entered his office with Zondi in tow, “now you have had a chance to reflect on your sinful past, could it be you’re ready to change your tune?”

“For pity’s sake.…” whispered Meerkat.

“Good, now I’ll tell you what I want you to do. I’ve changed my mind about that statement we were going to write, and instead I want you to find out for me how many other thirty-twos have been on the market recently—okay?”

“Anything!” replied Meerkat, in the same strained whisper. “But can your Bantu go out for a minute while I talk to you?”

“Fine, and I also want you to look round for a very big bloke such as Archie Bradshaw described in the paper.”

“Look, Lieutenant, can I have a word in private?
Please
, man, this is an emergency!”

“I haven’t time now,” said Kramer, unlocking the handcuffs. “There, you can jump down and get on your way.”

“I can’t.”

Kramer turned to Zondi. “Dial Ballistics for me, Mickey.” Then he turned back to Meerkat with a menacing expression. “Do as I say! Jump down and bugger off! I’ll contact you later.”

“I can’t,” whispered Meerkat. “I can’t
move
.”

“Hey?”

“I dare not, Lieutenant!”

“I’m getting a bit edgy, Meerkat—you know that? What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“It’s my b-l-a-d-d-e-r,” Meerkat spelled out confidentially, with an anxious glance in Zondi’s direction.

“Your what?” Kramer began to grin.

“Shhh! Don’t say anything!” implored Meerkat, as though the dignity of his entire race was at stake. “Just tell your—”

“My God, Meerkat, you’re really sitting on a time bomb, hey? Just think what it would do to all those files underneath!”

“I realize that! Why do—?”

“Criminal damage, Meerkat! Wanton destruction of Government property!”

“It isn’t a joke! For four hours I’ve been—”

“Ballistics, boss,” interrupted a poker-faced Zondi, passing over the receiver.

“Hullo, Botha? Anything for me yet?”

The lab man tried unsuccessfully to keep the excitement out of his voice. “Congratulations, sir—you’ve had twins.”

“Come again?”

“The two bullets are identical—or, to put it another way, I think we can be one hundred per cent sure they were both fired from the same revolver.”

Even though he had been hoping for this result, Kramer needed a moment before it sunk in. “That’s the best news I’ve had all week, man. Next time we’re in the canteen together, the double brandies are on me.”

“There’s a bit more, sir.”

“Shoot.”

“I’ve just had a telex back from our top expert in Pretoria. I sent him the details of the first slug last Saturday, and he reports that this kind of soft-nosed thirty-two went out of production in the fifties. He also confirms that the five right-hand grooves suggest that the weapon is a Smith & Wesson. I’ve sent a copy of his report to the Firearms Squad, and we’re putting out a new circular.”

“Beautiful,” said Kramer. “And that’s the lot?”

“Ja, until you find the firearm and want it matched up as well,” joked Botha, and rang off.

Kramer winked his off-side eye at Zondi. “We’ve got a perfect match on the bullets, so the show’s on the road! But
first I’d better go down and tell the boss what the position is.” He started for the door.

“Not again!” whimpered Meerkat. “You can’t go off and—”

“Sergeant,” said Kramer, without breaking his stride, “do you think you could find this gentleman a m-i-l-k b-o-t-t-l-e?”

“Yessir!” said Zondi.

C
OLONEL
H
ANS
M
ULLER
, divisional commandant of the CID, leaned his elbows on his enormous desk and made a tent of his fingers. For a while he stared at the darker patch of cream wall where an official portrait of Balthazar John Vorster had hung for many years, and then he explored the ceiling for some sign of his small friend, a lizard that seemed also to have passed into retirement. Gradually, his craggy face assumed a degree of composure, and he collapsed the tent to place his hands a business-like foot apart on his blotter.

“What it all boils down to,” he said, “is that we’ve got a madman on the loose.”

“A killer on the loose, ja,” agreed Kramer.

“You must admit he was crazy to return the body like that to the Digby-Smiths’.”

“Not necessarily, Colonel; there could have been method in his madness.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know, but I’d prefer to keep my options open on his mental state. Bringing the body back does achieve one thing, so far as he’s concerned: we haven’t the slightest idea where Hookham was murdered.”

“True.” Colonel Muller flipped open the docket on his desk. “While you were out this morning, I had another look at the statement you took from Bradshaw. The description it gives of
his assailant is very woolly, Lieutenant, very subjective. All it says here is, ‘There was this massive bloke, built like a brick shit-house.’ Am I right in thinking you weren’t taking him too seriously at the time? I usually expect my officers to do better than that. I’m also grateful when the wording of a description can be used on a ‘wanted’ bulletin without causing grave offence to the general public.”

Kramer shrugged. “Okay, so I didn’t go into it too deeply, sir, but as we both agreed—”

“You didn’t go into it at all, Tromp! Let’s be honest about this. What we want is a little more precision. What we want is the best possible description of this suspect! Remember, he’s out there somewhere at this very minute, and—who knows?—he could be lining up his next victim!”

“That would depend—” began Kramer.

“Please, Tromp, no half-baked theories at this stage. If you find a pattern that links Bradshaw and Hookham together, well and good, but until such time, we must view this killer as some sort of maniac working at random. In my opinion, every living soul in Trekkersburg is at risk.”

“You could equally say—”

“And our only means of diminishing that risk is to provide ourselves with a clear picture of the enemy.
That
is your priority.”

Kramer gave up trying to finish a sentence, and reached over for the telephone. “You want me to see Bradshaw again, sir?”

“Who else? The housemaid’s the only other eye-witness so far, but she was too far away.”

“Right, then I’ll try and get him before he goes back to the river.”

“What river?” Colonel Muller raised a quizzical brow.

Kramer paused in his dialing only long enough to tap the topmost newspaper cutting in the docket, which Colonel Muller then read while they waited for a reply.

“After discharging himself from the hospital yesterday,” wrote the
Gazette
’s Crime Reporter, “Mr. Bradshaw said that he might take himself away for a few days to his fishing cottage. ‘It’s all been a bit of a shock to the system,’ he told me, ‘but it’s nothing that a day or two with a trout rod can’t cure! I just hope my arm will be up to it.’ It is believed that his son, Mr. Darren Bradshaw, will continue to run the family business until his father is properly recovered again. Mr. Bradshaw Jr. is a student at the Kritzinger Business Studies College in Johannesburg, and an Old Boy of Trekkersburg High.”

True to form, the telephone in the fishing cottage rang and rang. “I must have missed him,” said Kramer, “or perhaps he’s taken some sandwiches out with him.”

“Hey? No answer? I’m not sure I like that, Tromp!”

“Ach, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, Colonel. If you knew the—”

“But I mean, what the hell’s the
Gazette
publishing this sort of thing for? This is what I’m always saying about newspapers! Honestly, they are our number one cause of crime in this country! If our friend was determined to get him, then all he had to do was—”