James Mcclure - The Sunday Hangman

“Let’s hear it,” Kramer said, winding down his window.

“Two things, Lieutenant.”

“Shoot.”

“Number one, I have reason to believe,” replied Zondi, who was such a flagrant mimic most of his subjects never noticed, “that the body of the deceased was brought to this place after his demise.”

“What?” said Strydom, leaning across. “Did someone see this?”

“Not in as many words, Dr. Strydom, sir, but observations were indeed made. My witnesses stand over by the fence.”

Two potbellied, small Zulu boys, possibly aged five and eight, dressed in a man’s ragged shirt and a woman’s torn summer shorts, respectively, peered at them from behind hands shyly raised.

“Part of the raiding party here today,” Zondi explained, a smile flickering. “I thought it expedient to have them return with me, and to discuss exactly what they had seen upon arrival. They told me it is their custom to hide behind a tree while they ascertain whether the occupant of any parked vehicle-they had, of course, seen the deceased’s car from a distance-will take exception to their presence.”

“Uh huh, so they hide behind tree A -it’s the farthest back,” said Kramer, trying to speed this up.

“Correct, Lieutenant. Except when the sun comes out and the day grows hot, then they may wait by another one.”

“Why?” asked Strydom.

“The ants, Doctor, sir.”

“Oh, ja.”

“This has some bearing?” Kramer grumbled. “Come on, I can see you’re enjoying this, but get to the bloody point.”

“May I speak without reservation, sir?”

“You heard what I said, man!”

“Then I must confess shamefully that the children of my people have very crude natures,” Zondi went on, and Strydom nodded. “Urination affords them many primitive delights. It gives them a true sense of power to see the creature upon which they have committed this act hop so swiftly away. Then there is the pleasure they take in seeing a man doing such a babyish thing as to wet down his trousers when he is drunk. For them to see a European-”

“Zondi! You’re a bastard, aren’t you?” Kramer laughed, his memory of an investigation in which ants had provided vital evidence, along with a caterpillar, suddenly restored. “History repeats itself?”

“Lieutenant?”

But Zondi hadn’t recalled the case; his bewilderment was as great as that being shown by Doc Strydom, who was becoming very irritable, too.

“Just get on with it,” Kramer sighed.

“Well, sir, all that happened was that these children expressed some surprise to find the ants still in their home beneath the place where the deceased was hanging. Ngidi had told me of the unfortunate condition of the trousers in question, and I could see what they were saying was true. It is common knowledge that ants will take away their eggs if someone makes water on them. But those ants are all happy-as you may come and see.”

They did just that, to suppressed giggling from the far side of the fence, and Strydom finished up on his hands and knees, grinning down the ant hole.

“So who gets the Nobel this time?” he said over his shoulder to Kramer. “Yet those umfaans are quite right. These little chaps would have still been in there before eight, having their kip, and that’s why none of this occurred to Sergeant Arnot-he was here too early.”

“It also clinches your theory, Doc.”

“Too right, it does!”

Kramer helped him back onto his feet, and checked to see what time it was: five on the dot, and getting pretty late, considering he and Zondi hadn’t stopped in more than twenty-four hours.

“Now, what about the other thing you mentioned?” he asked, lighting a Lucky. “Let’s hear it, then get the hell out of here.”

Zondi lost some of his confidence, and pointed to the taller child.

“I am not so sure if this is important, Lieutenant, but that one picked up a bag near the stone this morning. He didn’t tell Ngidi because the question put to him was had he taken from the deceased’s car or person?”

Familiar with how literal the illiterate poor could be in their interpretations, Kramer found nothing remarkable in this, but he did wonder why Zondi was being so half-hearted. And he said so.

“It is a worthless cloth bag, sir. The only thing special is that it was not here yesterday, although I could not see a connection between-”

“Not perhaps a bank’s bag?”

“Oh, no, Lieutenant-proper trash, and not strong enough to carry money, even notes. I will get it for you, as I left it in his possession.”

The bag that Zondi brought back to them was black and made of a cheap cotton fabric, hand-stitched clumsily up the sides. There was no drawstring, nor any indication of what it might have been used for. Kramer looked down into it and saw, as Zondi must have done, that there wasn’t even a little fluff at the bottom. Then, noticing the material was slightly stiffer at one point, he turned the thing inside out. The saliva stain wasn’t all that became visible then-so did several blond hairs, fairly obviously from the head of Tollie Erasmus.

“God almighty,” gasped Strydom. “It’s a hood! A proper executioner’s hood!”

“Boss?” said Zondi, startled into forgetting himself.

Very briefly, Kramer filled him in on the post-mortem results, and then, because this recital revived the initial impact of their bizarre discovery, stood in a brown study, his gaze fixed farther along the fence. When he focused again, he found himself looking at the desiccated forms of two finches, pinned onto the barbed wire by a shrike.

“If this bloke knows all about drops,” he said quietly, “and wanted to fake a suicide, then he’d have easily found another tree with a platform the right height beneath it. But he didn’t. He didn’t even bother to find out where the hood had got to. Just stuck his kill up there for all the world to see, as if he couldn’t give a bugger.”

“Gives me the bloody creeps, Tromp. I get visions of a first-class scaffold, with provisions for half-inch adjustments and all the rest of it. Pit, steps going down. Hell.”

This was too much for Kramer, and he snapped out of his reverie. “Ach, steady on, Doc! If you ask me, some bastards tried to screw the cash out of Tollie with a little homemade third degree, and it all went wrong. Must have been at least two of them involved, so that one could drive his Ford here.”

“I disagree,” Strydom said huffily.

“Well, something like that. Can’t guess any better until we know where he’s been the last three months. Probably got up the nose of a Jo’burg mob.”

“I’m objecting to you treating this fracture as a fluke, Lieutenant. Hell, the flukes themselves are rare enough, without hoods and metal rings and God knows what else. Do you want me to prove that to you?”

The Colonel was scrutinizing his ceiling, where he had a favorite lizard that caught flies for him. But the hour was late and it had probably left the office.

“Just give me an outline to be going on with,” he told Kramer, “as you’re too bloody shagged out to talk any proper sense this evening. So let’s stop psychoanalyzing Doc’s little obsession and concentrate on what action you’re taking.”

“Firstly, sir, I don’t want this getting to the press before we understand it better. You can see the effect it’s had on a supposedly mature-”

“Consider that done.”

“Ta. I’ve already handed the firearms over to Ballistics, and they’re sending specifications to every gun squad from here to Cape Town. Not much of a lead, I admit.”

“Worth trying.”

“The usual forensic checks are going ahead on Erasmus’s clothing, vehicle, and so on. Also the hood we found.”