James Mcclure - The Sunday Hangman

“Here,” Kramer ordered presently, handing half a cup of Oude Meester to Luthuli. “Start getting that down him.”

Zondi choked and sat up, pressing the cup away.

“Drink it, Sergeant!” said Kramer from behind the desk.

So Zondi drank it, coughed, beat his chest with one hand, and subsided. He thanked the men for their help, and added, as they withdrew, some Zulu witticism with un-Zulu squeaks in it.

“What makes that noise?” Kramer asked.

“Igundane.”

“Never heard of it. But tell me, what in God’s name happened to you today, old son?” Kramer asked as he went over and half knelt by the dagga sacks.

“Much happened, boss,” Zondi replied drowsily, his eyes closing. “Today I established that Izimu the witch doctor had committed a capital offense right here in.…”

“Witklip? Who was involved?”

“A baby. He stole the child of Mama Buza.”

“Sleep, you old drunkard,” growled Kramer. “That is more than enough for now.”

Then he rose and damn nearly danced for joy.

“Kidnapping?” Willie Boshoff said to Kramer, “is that the capital crime you have in mind, sir?” And he handed his glass back across the bar at Spa-kling Waters for a refill.

Ferreira took the glass and snorted. “Ach, come on, Willie! Who the hell’s going to pay two cents’ ransom for a bloody piccanin?” He poured the tot. “Here, you put your own ice in. I’m doing you another double, Lieutenant, okay?”

“Child-stealing,” said Kramer, before giving a nod.

The squirt of the soda-water siphon made an amusing sound effect to go with the sudden infusion of blood that turned Willie’s face crimson.

“Still got a lot to learn,” Ferreira stage-whispered wittily, passing Kramer his drink. “But he tries hard, Lieutenant, so you mustn’t be too tough on him, hey?”

“I–I forgot for a moment, sir,” Willie stammered. “There’s so many of them and-”

“Ja, enough to force old Jonkers into taking both his socks off,” Kramer said, then realized that not everyone might have heard of the Witklip computer. “You were just unlucky you didn’t join the force when I did, youngster. Then there were only the three: murder, rape, and treason-all straightforward.”

“When was that?” Ferreira asked.

“Mid-50’s or so.”

“Really?” said Willie, much impressed.

There the briefing lost impetus for the first time since Kramer had come bursting in, drenched by the last of the storm and tracking mud, about twenty minutes earlier. After an acrimonious start, caused by some indignity Ferreira felt he’d suffered, and remedied by a hearty slap on the back for initiative, it had seemed nothing would halt the reasoned flow. But now that the moment had arrived to actually make something of Zondi’s breakthrough, Kramer faltered. It wasn’t that he lacked material; his mind was sharp with new ideas, glittering theories, and a pricking of temporary oversights. It was simply that any attempt to think them into shape became like trying to arrange pins with a magnet-one move and the whole bloody lot leaped up in a willy-nilly clump, proving basic compatibility without achieving a sodding thing. Eventually, on the basis of things being easier said than done, Kramer decided to gibber on and see what came of it.

Willie was tapping ingenuously on the moldy, termite-ravaged hotel register that had so far been ignored as a remarkable piece of evidence, unearthed by sheer guts and determination.

“Ja, let’s have a look,” obliged Kramer, clearing a space on the counter before him. “Not that I doubt your word, of course, gentlemen. That one name was enough.”

amp; Master G. J. Vasari, Flat 27, 3 Bys St., Durban ignor A. C. F. Santelia, Via Civitavecchia 102, Milano

He read each line twice, solely for the pleasure of seeing it down in black and white, and then allowed the book to flop shut.

“Sorry the white ants ate the date and the room numbers off,” Ferreira apologized. “But coming first on the line, right by the edge, it was bound to happen, hey? Still, we’ve got an approximate date, I suppose.”

“Doesn’t matter that much, man.”

“What!” exclaimed Willie. “You’re not interested in these Italians anymore?”

Kramer smiled. “Not to the same extent, now we’ve found another road to Rome that isn’t so full of blind alleys and bloody pitfalls.”

“Christ, it makes your bloody head spin, doesn’t it?” remarked Ferreira, coming round to join them on the high stools. “Who could ever imagine such a thing? No wonder you first thought it was political!”

“Hey?” said Willie, frowning. Of his many lapses that evening, this was the most forgivable.

“Time we chuck out what’s irrelevant and see where we go from here,” Kramer suggested, as much to himself as to anyone else. “But before I do that, is there anything that strikes you immediately, gentlemen?”

“Ja; you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble by asking me about Izimu in the first place,” Ferreira answered with affected pique. “I did very good business out of that search, I can tell you! You should have been here, Willie, man; we all-”

“Was it reported in any newspapers?” Kramer asked, not wanting to have this thrust down his neck again, but needing the information to wind up the first part of his argument.

“Newspapers? Hell, no! They didn’t even put Tiens in, when he was crushed by his tractor.”

“Uh huh? So it was entirely a local affair?”

“Correct.”

“Which means that only somebody living locally would know of Izimu’s unpunished guilt?”

“Correct again.”

Kramer put down his glass and took out a crumpled sheet of foolscap which was covered in linked nooses. “Originally there seemed to be no pattern in this case,” he said, smoothing the paper, “but Izimu has provided the key factor by making Witklip the center of activity. Let’s take each of the three other cases I’ve outlined to you-forgetting the tramp, for whom we still have no information-and keeping in mind all the time that we’re not dealing with an ordinary murderer. This man sees himself as a hangman, carrying out impersonal executions which the law has been unable to conduct itself.”

“That’s the bit I-”

“Shhh, Willie! Give the Lieutenant a chance, hey?”

“You’ll notice, gentlemen, that the victims all fell within the area of this someone’s experience. Izimu is the most obvious example, and close behind him comes Rossouw, the railway foreman. You did say that people came back talking about him, Piet?”

This carefully timed flattery won an eager nod.

“From what you’ve told me, young Vasari made himself very memorable as well the night of the barbecue-that ‘little angel’ stuff, remember?”

“Ja, only I don’t get the paper except on Sundays if I’m in Brandspruit, so it never rang a bell.”

“A churchgoer-which ties in on Rossouw again-might have recognized the name, though. Agreed?”

“It’s very possible, Lieutenant. There’s another thing to bear in mind, too: I was only around seven myself at the time.”

“Point taken. Can you say what the talk would have been like in the bar if someone had noticed this trial and told the others?”

“Phaw! I reckon some could have been quite upset; they’d certainly have wondered about it, not knowing him like I did.”

“What the other one did would seem unfair anyway,” Willie got in, actually concentrating for once on what was being said. “The CID should never have allowed it, in my opinion. I can see those three now, but Tommy? He was here a hell of a time without anything happening and-”

“When did he come up with his story about the mission school?” asked Kramer, moving swiftly off thin ice.