James Mcclure - The Sunday Hangman

“Man, oh, man,” he said, stopping his finger at the same name, initials, and address.

Zondi came in at that precise moment, his expression strangely sullen, and wished him good morning.

“Don’t just stand there, old son-can’t you see the keys?” Kramer asked. “We’re taking a quickie to Durbs.”

“A lead?”

“Uh huh, and a good one. Brandspruit came through with the number of Erasmus’s contact, and she was right here in Trekkersburg. I’ll explain on the way.”

The keys were picked up off the desk and held in a clenched fist.

“What’s the matter, Mickey? I’ve just cut us a few corners, so let’s not hang around. Or have you something better to do?”

“No, boss.”

“Let’s go, then.”

Kramer noticed a puffiness under the eyes, as they were going down the stairs together, and concluded that he hadn’t been the only one thrashing about in the night. This hollowed his belly a little, and he eased the pace on reaching the sidewalk.

Zondi paused while unlocking the car door, and said, “Lieutenant, is it all right to ask you?”

“Ask me what?”

“Your meaning when you said I should go and find a job in the laboratory.”

“Hell, who’s getting sensitive?” Kramer replied, very relieved to discover the pain had only been mental. “You know we don’t allow you thick kaffirs in there.”

And with that they left for Durban.

Dr. Strydom was standing where he’d least expected to be that morning: in the showroom of a brand-new store that specialized in the sale of television sets.

His presence there owed nothing to rash impulse, however, but was the result of a long night spent worrying about poor Anneline and the time she was having to waste in front of the neighbors’ screen. As a study of the programs printed in the paper showed all too clearly, only seventy minutes of air time could possibly be of any interest to her on any one evening, and yet, having been asked over, she could hardly get up and leave, at the start of another documentary on Bushmen, without implying a severe, almost theological criticism of their investment. It wasn’t right that she should sacrifice so many precious hours in this way, simply because she had the manners of a true lady, and so he had finally found a solution to this problem-which was, of course, to invest in a set himself, while applying certain sensible rules concerning its usage. In fact, according to his calculations, fifty minutes a night would probably be more than she could happily assimilate.

But now he was finding he had other sums to do.

“That’s a price and a half!” he exclaimed.

“May I inquire, sir,” asked the pleasantly-spoken young salesman, “your profession? You certainly give the impression of a professional man, sir, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“I’m a surgeon,” said Strydom, wagging his stethoscope even more vigorously at the color set before him. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t express an opinion about highway robbery! It hasn’t even got proper legs for a thing that size.”

“I knew it, Doctor! I’ve always said that you can’t bamboozle a professional man into buying the first thing you show him, whether it’s a TV set or a swimming bath or a little runabout for his good lady. It isn’t the cost that matters to a man such as yourself, it’s the-”

“Legs,” snapped Strydom. “Do you seriously call those spindly things ‘legs’?”

The salesman smiled foolishly.

Strydom stared at the next set along and an idea occurred to him that put everything into a different perspective. If you pretended that the price tag was on a small car, just supposing that Anneline had learned to drive, then the cost came to about the same and seemed far less of a shock. Warming to this business of high-level decision-making, he decided on a sly compromise.

“How much is a black-and-white?” he asked.

“Ah, a black-and-white,” the salesman repeated. “A monochrome? I could have one brought up from the back, if you like. Monochromes do tend to be more a specialty of our nonwhite customers, so I’m afraid we.…”

He turned to call someone, but Strydom caught his sleeve.

“Just the price for comparison, hey? The wife said to ask-it’s her who likes to see the flowers.”

“There’s a coincidence for you, Doctor,” said the salesman, losing his look of embarrassment at being caught out. “Only yesterday we had a judge’s wife in here, and she wanted a panochrome for flowers, too! Let me see … the monos are about 50 percent cheaper, depending on this and that.”

“Interesting. Now, what about aerials and so forth?”

“We see to everything, and it’s same-day delivery, all-inclusive. Oops, that’s the volume control-no need to apologize. Would you like to be left to take your time browsing?”

“Ach, no,” Strydom replied casually, digging for his checkbook. “I’ve got a lot on this morning, and a television set is just a television set after all. Personally, I couldn’t care less if the Americans had never invented it!”

A feeling of heady well-being, puffed up by a sudden pride of ownership, and given an edge by the dread that always went with spending more than ten rand of his money at a time, then took Strydom round to the court records office with a decided optimism. It was exactly the moment to check on the incidence of neck fractures in hanging, and to prove how right he’d been in his original assessment.

“I want to look up suicides,” he said. “White, colored, Asiatic, and black.”

Being in Durban, the country’s major port and the playground of a nation, did nothing for Kramer. From the shark nets protecting the bathers off its whites-only beaches, to the suburban anthill of the Berea, its humid and lush sprawl caused him an unease that could be remedied solely by getting the hell out again, as quickly as possible. The snag was that he’d only just arrived.

Durban seemed soft to him, somehow alien; this wasn’t simply because there were so many Indians about or so much English spoken-Trekkersburg had, on a reduced scale, similar drawbacks. No, it had to do with the sea, and with the way you were exposed on the brink, facing God knows what insanities beyond the horizon. Any one of the waves, for example, could have creamed from the bows of a Chink battle cruiser to come all the way across to splash over a man’s kids. Just like the waves that had thrown up other people’s rubbish along the shoreline, all those Miami apartment blocks and English beach hotels and Spanish ranch houses. If you flew high enough, Kramer had noticed, then Durban looked like a high-water mark, with all sorts of tiny, nasty things crawling about among the pastel shells and the glitter.

Zondi liked Durban-it went with his sophisticated taste in neckties-and he murmured appreciatively as a bikini passed by, accentuating a fine, wide pelvis. If the girl had been topless, he wouldn’t have noticed.

“You’re not a detective; you’re a bloody obstetrician,” grumbled Kramer, who had taken the wheel and was searching the beachfront for the right side street.

“I’m also a damn fine navigator, boss.”

“Watch it.”

“Two blocks more.”

“Ask that churra over there.”

The Indian streetcleaner directed them two blocks north, one block west, and Kramer double-parked outside Rasnop Court soon afterward. By the look of it, the four-story building had just weathered a bad crossing from Singapore, but at least it was now in a white-zoned area.

“A few words?” Zondi suggested.

“Ideal. Don’t know a bloody thing about this bloke.”

So Zondi got out and went over to a pair of servant girls in grubby uniforms, who were gossiping at the entrance to the block. He flashed his shoulder holster at them. His jacket closed, their eyes opened wide, and none of those few words were wasted. He came back with his report.