Tom Sharpe - Riotous Assembly

The Kommandant shook his head. The case was too important to have Els botching it up with his dreadful methods.

'It's kind of you to offer,' he said, 'but I think we'll leave it to Luitenant Verkramp.'

'There's gratitude for you,' thought Els, as he went off to fetch Verkramp from the hospital.

He found the Luitenant lying on his stomach taking nourishment through a straw. Verkramp's back, it appeared, made it impossible to eat in any other position.

'Well?' he asked grumpily when Konstabel Els reported to him. 'What do you want?'

'Came to see how you were,' Els said tactfully.

'You can see how I am,' Verkramp answered, regarding Els' dirty boots with disapproval. 'I have been seriously wounded.'

'I can see that,' Els said, grateful that the Luitenant couldn't study his face. He regretted having peered down into the moat now. 'Got you in the back, did he?'

'Came at me from behind,' said the Luitenant who didn't like the imputation that he had been trying to escape.

'Nasty. Very nasty. Well, you'll be glad to know we've got the bastard. The Kommandant wants you to start interrogating him straight away.'

Verkramp choked on his straw. 'He wants what?' he shouted at the Konstabel's boots.

'He says you're to come straight away.'

'Well, he can say what he likes, but I'm not budging. Besides,' he added, 'the doctors wouldn't let me.'

'Would you like to tell him yourself?' asked Els. 'He won't believe me.'

In the end a telephone was brought to the Luitenant's bedside and the Kommandant had a word with him. It was rather more than one word and in the end Luitenant Verkramp was persuaded to report for duty. Short of facing a court martial for cowardice, desertion in the face of the enemy, and incompetence in that he allowed twenty-one policemen under his command to be slaughtered, there didn't seem much he could do to remain in hospital. Verkramp was in a very ugly mood and not altogether clearheaded when he arrived at the prison to question Jonathan Hazelstone.

It was hardly less ugly than the mood Kommandant van Heerden was in. After a momentary spasm of optimism that the case was as good as closed now that the prisoner was in Bottom, the Kommandant had succumbed to a state of extreme pessimism on learning that Miss Hazelstone was still at large. Since leaving the Park she had not been seen. The police Land Rover had been found abandoned but of Miss Hazelstone there was no trace, and while the Kommandant felt pretty sure she wouldn't break into the prison to renew their acquaintance, he had no doubt that what she might do outside was just as likely to jeopardize his future.

For one thing he couldn't afford to allow her to run about the country telling all and sundry that she had had him trussed to a bed in a rubber nightdress and that he hadn't been man enough to take an injection. He was just consoling himself with the thought that Miss Hazelstone's circle of friends was pretty exclusive, when he remembered that among other assets like gold mines, the Hazelstone family owned the local newspaper, whose editor had never shown any great regard for the police. Kommandant van Heerden had no desire whatsoever to provide copy for the _Natal Chronicle_ and the thought of headlines like: 'The Tiny Prick. Kommandant in Rubber Nightie says No to Needle', made his blood run cold.

He gave orders that road blocks be set up on all roads leading out of Piemburg and that the homes of all Miss Hazelstone's friends were to be raided. Every hotel and guesthouse in the town was to be checked and plain-clothes men were to mingle with the crowds in the shops. Finally, the Kommandant ordered that notices be put up announcing a large reward for information leading to the capture of Miss Hazelstone, but just to make sure that Miss Hazelstone's confessions did not reach the public, he plucked up courage and left the safety of the prison to pay a personal call on the editor of the _Natal Chronicle._

'I'm acting under Emergency Powers,' he told the man, 'and I am ordering you to publish nothing Miss Hazelstone may submit. In fact, if anything is submitted by her you're to forward it to me unread,' and the editor had gone off to cancel Miss Hazelstone's current contributions to the women's page which was called, 'How to Convert a Zulu Kraal into a Country Cottage'. He read it through to see if there was anything subversive in it, but apart from the recommendation to use latex for loose covers, he couldn't find anything unusual in it. In any case he had his hands full trying to find out how many victims there were in the bubonic plague and rabies epidemics that had apparently hit the community. As far as he had been able to ascertain, the only people exhibiting symptoms of rabies were the Piemburg police.

Throughout the night and the following day the search for Miss Hazelstone continued. Hundreds of plain-clothes men scoured the town or hung about indecisively in shops making life difficult for store detectives on the lookout for shoplifters. A number of elderly ladies suddenly found themselves in handcuffs and being driven at high speed in police cars to Fort Rapier Mental Hospital, where several had to be admitted with nervous breakdowns as a result of the experience.

On the roads out of Piemburg queues of cars and lorries waited for hours while policemen ransacked each vehicle. There were particularly tiresome delays on the Durban road where trucks carrying offal from the abattoir to the Jojo Dog and Servant Meat Cannery had to be searched. Since Kommandant van Heerden had impressed upon his men the need to search every square inch of every vehicle no matter how unlikely a hiding-place it seemed to be and since the Jojo trucks contained twenty-five tons of pig brains, ox guts and the inedible and doubtless nutritious entrails of every conceivable diseased animal that contributed its share to the liver and love Jojo promised the dogs and servants, the men at the Durban road search-point had to go to considerable trouble to make absolutely sure that Miss Hazelstone was not hiding in the disgusting mess that greeted them every time they stopped one of the lorries. The occupants of the cars piling up behind were astonished to see policemen clad only in bathing-trunks and with facemasks and schnorkels clambering aboard the Jojo lorries and diving into piles of semi-liquid meat so enormous that even the late and unlamented vulture would have been put off its feed. The policemen who finally emerged from their prolonged and fruitless search were hardly a sight to reassure the citizens of Piemburg that the police were looking after their interests, and faced with the prospect of so thorough a search a good many motorists decided to cancel the trips they were making and go quietly home. Those that stayed had the upholstery of their cars irremediably stained by the half-naked and bloodsoaked cops who climbed in and poked under seats and inside glove compartments for the elusive Miss Hazelstone.

In the meantime the homes of Miss Hazelstone's friends were being searched with equal thoroughness, and a good many people, who had boasted of an acquaintanceship with her which they had never enjoyed, found that Miss Hazelstone's friendship carried with it some awesome consequences, not the least of which was the knowledge that they were suspected of harbouring a wanted criminal.

In spite of all these drastic measures, Miss Hazelstone remained at large and cheerfully unaware that she was the object of such a meticulous manhunt.

After driving the police Land Rover through the gates of Jacaranda Park she had followed the main road to town, had parked the car in the main street, and had walked into the Police Station to give herself up.

'I'm Miss Hazelstone of Jacaranda Park, and I've come here to be arrested,' she said to the elderly Konstabel on duty at the desk, who was in fact one of the post-operative cases Kommandant van Heerden had insisted return to duty. Missing his gall bladder and the lower portion of his intestines, he had not lost his wits as well, and he had been in the police long enough to have got used to the queer customers who came in regularly to make false confessions. He looked the old gentleman in the salmon-pink suit up and down for a minute before replying.