James Mcclure - The Sunday Hangman

“In terms of striking force, because that is the crucial factor, nearly half a ton of difference,” Strydom replied, taking out his notebook.

“Now, listen here, Doc-”

“Patience, Tromp. Try judging it for yourself. The optimum striking force has been standardized at twenty-four hundred weight, or 2,688 pounds. Any more or any less, and you could find yourself in trouble. And I’m not going into neck characteristics here, because both examples are good and sound, but very different.”

“Twenty-four; I’ve got that.”

“Which would suit Van Heerden exactly, and remember he’s roughly ten pounds under average. However, give a six-foot drop to this bloke, and the striking force would be thirty -four hundred weights-or in the region of 1,120 pounds too many. I leave the rest to your imagination.”

Myburgh actually seemed to shudder.

“Okay, Doc-so how much did he get?”

“Three feet.”

“He couldn’t have jumped from the fork in the tree.”

“No.”

“Or from the-”

“No.”

This time the match made it to Kramer’s Lucky, which trembled behind the cup of his hands.

“Then I don’t see how he could have possibly done this by himself,” Myburgh said softly, lifting off Erasmus’s vault to look into his brain. “And yet.…”

“Doc, what are you saying? That I’ve got a murder on my plate?”

Strydom shrugged. “You might have, Tromp. Only-and please don’t laugh-it looks to me more like, well, a bloody state execution.”

That was only the beginning. Kramer left the mortuary to ring Colonel Muller, and was immediately accosted by a self-satisfied Sergeant Arnot, bearing an object wrapped in a yellow silk scarf.

“Not so fast, sir! Take a look at this.”

“From the car?”

The scarf was allowed to fall away, revealing a snub-nosed Colt Cobra.38 Special with walnut grips and six loaded chambers. The metal gleamed raw where the serial number had been filed off.

“Erasmus had it inside his driving door, where he could reach it through a slit he’d made in the leather.”

“Nice work, Sarge. Label it up and I’ll take it to Ballistics.”

“And now the other hand,” said Arnot, grinning like he was running a kids’ party. “From under the seat on the passenger’s side.”

It was a second and much nastier weapon: a 9mm Browning Hi-Power automatic with external hammer, fixed sights, pearl grips, and chromed finish-also missing its serial number. The 13-shot magazine was full.

“Fantastic. Any brandy bottles?”

“Sir?”

“In the Ford, or at the site this morning?”

“None here, and no booze of any description, except for some old beer cans, down that way. Do you think this is the thirty-eight he tried to use on you?”

“Could be, if he was too scared to make contact for a new one, or too stupid to throw it away.”

“Stupid’s the word for it,” agreed Arnot, pursing his broad upper lip. “Right here he had the means to bump himself off nineteen bloody times over, with none of that fooling about in the trees. Can you explain that to me, sir?”

Kramer, who didn’t know the English word for academic , and who doubted if Cecil would recognize the Afrikaans term, which had been fairly recently introduced, settled for patting him on the shoulder.

And there was more to come. Back in the mortuary, with Colonel Muller’s stunned silence still music in his ears, Kramer was informed of further discoveries by the team of Strydom and Myburgh, whose professional circumspection was having a hell of a time with their schoolboyish excitement.

“We have reason to believe,” announced Myburgh, quite soberly, “that this isn’t the same blinking rope!”

“No?”

“Which is why, Tromp, we’d like you to have a squint at the plaited impression on the cuticle of the neck-the weal, man. You see where it’s starting to go brownish, like parchment? Your patient, Dr. Myburgh.”

“Thank you, sir. Well, when I checked the pattern there, mainly to observe the ecchymosis, I noticed there was a sort of repetition-caused, I assumed, by the deceased’s removal from the tree. Then it was suggested to me that we examine the upper points of the V mark, where the strain is lifting off the throat, and two dissimilar rope patterns were just discernible. Our conclusion was that the angle had changed marginally after the initial suspension, due in part to the two inches or so of stretch. We’d like to put all this under a microscope, of course.”

“The uncanny thing,” said Doc Strydom, as if that point needed to be made at all, “is that the second rope-or, as we see it, the first-shows identical characteristics to the officially favored variety: five-strand in three-quarter-inch thickness, covered in wash-leather. I saw more than seventy in my years, so I should know.”

“Don’t forget the bruise,” Myburgh said generously.

“Oh, that. I hope you don’t think we are unaware of the dangers of reading too much into the evidence, Tromp.”

“Fire away, man. This is crazy enough to take it.”

“Whoever did the estimate for the drop must have known that the knot of the noose, so to speak, must be placed at the angle of the left jaw-which allows for the quarter turn clockwise, snapping the head back. Put it the other side, and he just suffocates.”

“Uh huh. You found a graze running round?”

“More than that: a bruise no rope could have made on its own. I would hazard a guess and say that a metal eye had been spliced into the end-again, in the approved fashion.”

“Uh huh?”

“That’s the very point I’m making: few people know what a proper noose is like-most think of the so-called hangman’s knot the Yanks favor. They may be advanced in many respects, but as executioners they’re terrible. A standard five-foot drop, for instance! The electric-”

“What,” Kramer interrupted, “does this metal eye do, precisely?”

“It facilitates exact positioning and instantaneous, friction-free constriction, which means-ideally-as you can see here, the odontoid peg breaks the odontoid ligament and drives into the medulla, destroying the vital centers.”

“An old wives’-” began Myburgh, then thought better of it.

“Same as a bullet, only you’d have to aim hell of a straight and it’d be messy. As well as that, there’s.…”

Van Heerden and some of the car-search party came tiptoeing in, hopeful of being allowed to share in the leftovers. They stopped at the foot of the table and nodded, with varying degrees of self-confidence, at Kramer.

“Got my plan yet, Van?” he asked.

“On Sarge Arnot’s desk, Lieutenant. But your boy hadn’t pitched up when we left, so I didn’t bring him.”

“Quick thinking,” Kramer said, and turned back to the two district surgeons. “By the way, this lot found two firearms hidden in the deceased’s car.”

Strydom nudged Myburgh and half whispered, “Did you hear that? I told you this wouldn’t have escaped you in the end!”

“I’m not so sure about that, but thanks, sir.”

“Oh, Lieutenant, the sarge says he’s got something for you on that number plate of yours,” Van Heerden added, dragging his eyes from Erasmus’s paunch fat, which was as thick as four fingers.

“I’ll go and see him now. Well, gentlemen, anything more that’s new?”

Myburgh looked into the sink. “Bladder had been voided, but we knew that already from the state of his pants. Fresh hair clippings in the ears. No, I don’t think so.”

“Me neither,” concurred Strydom. “We’ll get this little lot stuffed back in and stitched up, then I will be ready to leave when you are.”

Kramer neglected to respond. Something Myburgh had just said-to do with either the pants or the hair-had sounded very wrong somehow. It was awakening obscure echoes of some previous investigation, and making him feel pretty certain that, right at the start, he’d overlooked an obvious incongruity.