James Mcclure - The Sunday Hangman

“Hau, but that was long ago, boss! The Vasari case?”

“Not bad, my son. I couldn’t even get the wop’s name.”

“Anthony Michael Vasari,” Zondi said slowly, “who was convicted for killing a pensioner he robbed on the Bluff. Ringo was his accomplice, but he turned state evidence after first pleading not guilty at the preliminary examination. But why didn’t Cleo tell us this?”

“Probably didn’t make the connection either. Ringo’s a Beatle name, came along much later than when they were in Steenhuis, and so Erasmus-ach, that isn’t a point that’s important. Our problem is where we’re going to find the bastard.”

“Can his mother not give any clues?”

“Take a look at this,” Kramer said by way of an answer.

He slipped a hand into his jacket and produced a mimeo copy of PLEASE HAVE YOU SEEN MY ONE AND ONLY SON? It gave a full physical description of Peter David Roberts, also known as Peterkins, and then listed his endearing habits, considerable gifts, and sophisticated tastes in food, drink, and clothing, as only a mother could know them. At the end it implored: “Amnesia (Forgetting One’s Memory) Can Happen to Anyone-Help Peter and Me (Widow amp; Pensioner) Like You would Want to Help YOURSELF.”

“Mangalisayo,” murmured Zondi, skimming through it. “This is very sad, boss. The woman has a great heart.”

“Whenever she can save up enough, she gets a few more run off and posts them to shipping offices, new dam projects, hospitals, loony bins, et cetera.”

“But what is your own reading? That this small-time fellow went to try for big time in Jo’burg?”

“Could’ve done,” Kramer agreed, but his heart wasn’t in it; there was more, which he’d been trying not to think about. “On the other hand, his ma alleges he was a changed character after the trial, having nearly taken a one-way to Pretoria. He got himself a job in an electrical-goods store, worked hard there, and found himself a steady girlfriend, whose brother was going to let him have a share in a ski boat. All set up. Got a phone put in, started saving for an MG-next thing he was gone.”

“Like-?” Zondi flipped a hand.

“Uh huh. One Saturday afternoon he walked out, saying he was going swimming, and never came back. Underneath all this, you can see she thinks a shark might have got him. He always said the beach was too crowded where the nets were; liked to go to deserted areas.”

“Then maybe she is right, boss. He took no case or anything?”

“Just a towel,” said Kramer, and felt as flat as he sounded.

Zondi started the car up. “So this is why you think we waste time, Lieutenant? Yet Ringo could have planned for a fresh start more cleverly than she suspected.”

“Ja. I’d better check with the locals-but let’s get some grub first.”

The Chev moved off slowly.

“Oh, and another thing,” Kramer added, finally facing the futility of his morning. “Ma Roberts had never heard of bloody Witklip.”

Dr. Strydom was by now in something of a state. No fewer than four inquests, each indicating an excusable error of judgment, had come to light-and this wasn’t counting the observations he himself had made at Doringboom, of course.

His feelings of conflict were very natural. It seemed incredible that he should, within so short a time, and with the ungainly means at his disposal, pick out this number of cases for reappraisal. But then again, there just weren’t that many white suicides by hanging in Natal each year, and Alfred had obeyed his direction to ignore any obviously narrow ligatures; between them, they had called a halt in the late ’60s before three o’clock. It also seemed incredible that one of these likely oversights appeared to have been his own.

Incredible, but not impossible, because this time around he had known what to look for, and had not presumed a thing. The remains in question had been those of a white adult male, aged somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, discovered in a skeletal condition at the foot of a small krantz or ravine. One end of a rotten rope had been found around the neck-of which very little remained, due to decomposition and rodent life-and the other end had been tied to a broken branch. It had not taken him long, on that wet and chilly afternoon, to agree with the police that the branch, which came from an overhanging tree, told the whole story. The deceased had secured the rope to it, allowing himself virtually no slack because of the length involved, and had stepped over the cliff’s edge. The sudden weight had been just enough to snap the branch and send him plunging to his death-a death that could have been attributed to several causes, among them exposure brought on by the paralysis of a broken neck. Strydom’s only comfort was that he’d not been dogmatic in his summation, because, when looked at from another viewpoint, that broken branch could have come as a surprise only to the hangman, hurriedly ridding himself of a night’s work.

Having gone over it again in his mind briefly, he could see that his first assessment had probably been correct, but there were the two others. One was the product of slapdash, lamentably perfunctory work on the part of a district surgeon known for his high output and habit of dribbling cigarette ash into things: he had simply not made any real effort to ascertain anything about the white male, suspected of being a tramp, who’d committed suicide by hanging in an empty barn. Not even the hyoid bone had been examined. This was in direct contrast to the fourth DS involved, whose punctilious treatment of a witch doctor’s death deserved the highest praise. “An interesting case,” he had written, “in which the deceased did as neat a job as any state executioner. Note the low tree stump used as a platform, but the weight of animal skins, etc., he was wearing would presumably contribute to producing the minimal force necessary. Taylor reports one fracture-dislocation in 52 cases-this is my first in 109.” The man’s lack of experience had, however, led him to overlook a couple of things which Strydom spotted as soon as he saw the photographs. They showed a small contusion on the left jawline and the knot at the occiput-or back of the head-where all it would have achieved was mere strangulation.

“Alfred,” said Strydom, as the messenger returned with a wrapped sandwich for him, “we’ve got something really weird on the go here.”

“No cheese-n-tomato, master. I bring ee-ham.”

“Different DS, different magisterial district each time-have you noticed? There could be method in that.”

“Uh-uh,” corrected Alfred, with a firm shake of his wooden earplugs. “Ee-ham.”

Pursuing the Roberts angle with obtuse Detective Sergeant Prins in the Durban Murder and Robbery Squad office that afternoon was definitely a mistake, Kramer told himself, and wished he had gone straight up to the records section instead. Not only was Prins being as condescending as he dared about an out-of-town inquiry, but he kept breaking off to shout abuse at a suspect crouched in the corner, and several times he had got up to kick him.

“Where was I?” Prins asked.

“In your chair,” Kramer replied wearily, having lost the thread of the conversation once again.

Prins grinned-a quick show of very white, very narrow teeth in a deeply tanned face that seemed made up entirely of straight lines, like a brown paper bag still showing its packing folds. “And so, with Ringo being of age, and us having no warrant out for him,” he said, sitting down again, “the fact that-stay still, bliksem! — he went off into the wild blue yonder was of no bloody consequence to us. Adult persons can go where they like-correct? As I said to that crazy old woman myself, she’d best forget the bastard and start enjoying life. But no-still! — she has to go on and on. Even wanted us to make whites carry proper passes as well, so we would know their whereabouts at any given-stop that noise, you hear? Last time I really lost my rag and warned her- quite still! — er, and now she does the same to you. Man, I’m sorry about that, hey?”