James Mcclure - The Sunday Hangman

“I get results.”

“Oh, really? You must try and show me sometime.”

“Now, if you like.”

She reached for her menthols. “For free? You must be joking! Just because you’re big and pissed doesn’t entitle you to anything.”

“For free,” said Kramer, handing over the mortuary photograph of Tollie Erasmus with a rope around his neck.

It made an impression.

“ No! ”

“We found him yesterday, near Doringboom.”

“But Tollie wouldn’t-”

“He didn’t. He was murdered.”

“Hey?”

Her surprise was so complete that she turned into a human being. The eyes which knew it all suddenly knew nothing, and at the drop of her jaw, the hard little face shattered, showing the soul-sick slack underneath.

Kramer took back the picture and said nothing. He watched her close her gown, drag off her wig, and bring her knees up to hug them. He stood there while she began rocking to and fro, her gaze fixed on the floor. Then he poured her a stiff gin and a straight lime and water for himself.

“You bastard,” she whispered, thanking him with a nod as she lifted the glass.

“Give me a chance next time, Cleo, and things will be different. Who else knew he was at Witklip?”

“Where?”

He straddled a chair opposite her, folding his arms over the back of it. “Don’t be that way,” he coaxed, and then pursued the most perverse line possible: “Even if you deny setting up Tollie, I’ve still got you cold as accessory after the fact and harboring a known criminal.”

Cleo’s head jerked. “Setting him …?”

“Ja, his murder. Mind you, I think that one will stick.”

“Me? Are you crazy?”

“Logical, Miss Mulder. We have proof from the post office that he was in contact with you here on 49590, from which it follows that they must have worked through you to-”

“I told-told nobody!” she stammered.

Kramer sighed.

“No, that’s the God’s truth. I swear it!”

“Uh huh? Maybe the judge will believe you. Personally-”

“Just you listen! All right?”

Fear, shock, and gin soon had the facts tumbling out, and Kramer was kept busy rearranging them in chronological order. Erasmus had apparently found her number scrawled in a phone box on the day of the raid, and had asked her if she was willing to perform a “special” for R100 cash. Once inside her flat, he had offered another R100 a day for nothing but the use of her telephone and somewhere to lie up. He had been no trouble. Then on the fourth day he had made a further offer: R200 down and a lump payment of R500 later if she agreed to act as “middle man” in a transaction. All she had to do was relay on any messages she might take from a man called Max, who would be ringing her sometime in the near future. Max was, in fact, helping him to get out of the country, but there were complications caused by the number of black states now surrounding South Africa. This Max had rung her twice, both times to say it would take a little longer, and recently Erasmus had been becoming very restless and nervous. Instead of his weekly call on a Saturday night, he’d been in touch almost every other day. And that’s all there was to it, as Cleo de Leo saw no percentage in moral side issues.

“Max knew he was at Witklip?”

“Tollie said I shouldn’t tell him and he never asked,” she replied, putting her glass down. “How many more times? Nobody knew except me; it was meant to be secret. Tollie said Max was a good guy, but the fewer who knew made him safer.”

Kramer stood up and paced about a bit. The trollop was telling the truth, he felt sure of it, and yet this wasn’t making things any easier.

He snapped his fingers and spun round. “Why Witklip? What the hell put that into his head?”

“Oh, it was an old idea one of his friends once had. I can’t remember exactly. When he was in Steenhuis Reformatory and they used to talk after lights out. This bloke had been to it once with his folks, and said the store there didn’t even get a newspaper. Tollie checked while he was here and found it was still such a dump. They used to tease this guy-Robert? Ja, Robert or Roberts; that’s a name I remember. Nothing else, though.”

Then Cleo stiffened.

“You’re right!” said Kramer. “It wasn’t such a bloody secret after all, was it?”

Someone had left a fresh memo pad on his desk that rainy Thursday morning. Someone else had written the Widow Fourie’s home number on it, underlining the word Urgent five times. The next someone to poke his head into the office was liable to have it bitten off.

Kramer had spent a surprisingly bad night in the austere room he rented as, his landlady insisted on calling him, a paying guest. Presumably, he had slept. If asked to describe his night, however, he would have compared it to a bout of malarial fever, while being cynically aware of how unimaginative that sounded. His impatience to trace the man Robert or Roberts had been a primary cause of his restlessness, and had meant that, at first light of dawn, he had risen, taken a shower, and gone for a long walk. But even on this walk, which had led him down to the muddy sloth of the Umgungundhlovu River, his mind had never freed itself from a garish, sunset glimpse of the girl with honey hair.

“Why not?” he muttered, dialing the Widow’s number. “I heard you wanted me? The kids all right?”

“Term ended yesterday, so you can guess for yourself! How’s the case going?”

“Progressing.”

“I had an idea, Trompie. You know this business of the hangman knowing all the skills? I suddenly remembered my copy of The Vontsteen Case by that young chappie who was clerk of the court at the Palace of Justice. That had some details in it.”

“Nonsense; the law prohibits the publication of any matters pertaining to prisons unless-”

“Just listen, hey?” the Widow Fourie interrupted him. “Here’s the mention on page three which tells how they do it: ‘They are brought to the gallows at a quick trot, the measured rope is round the neck in a second, and at a push of the lever the floor opens beneath them. They tie a white cloth over the mouth because the blood tends to gush out.’ ”

Kramer lit a Lucky.

“Hello-are you still there?”

“You mean that’s all? It doesn’t tell you anything special-and that blood part sounds rubbishy to me. There wasn’t any blood coming out of Tollie.”

“I just wanted to help if-” she said, her voice catching. “Look, I want to talk to you about what I said about Mickey.”

“Hearsay,” said Kramer.

“Pardon?”

“That’s just something the writer picked up somewhere: The kind of information Doc’s all excited about would never be published in this country, and I can tell you that for a fact.”

There was a silence.

The Widow Fourie gave an uncertain laugh. “Man, to hear us you’d think we were an old married couple having a row!”

“Maybe that’s our problem,” Kramer remarked unkindly, surprising himself with his curious indifference. “So if there’s nothing else, I’d better get on, hey?”

She hung up on him. The memo pad went into the wastebin and the interdepartmental directory came out of its drawer. After a start like that, Kramer expected nothing to go right for the rest of the day. However, once he had convinced Steenhuis Reformatory that he wasn’t reporting an absconder, but inquiring after an inmate who must have taken his lawful leave some twelve or so years earlier, things began to happen. According to the records, there had been nobody in Erasmus’s dormitory called Robert, yet he had shared with one Peter David Roberts, whose last known address was 4D Rasnop Court, Dewey Street, Durban. Kramer thanked the clerk, rang off, and, encouraged by such luck, took a whimsical look in the ordinary telephone directory.