“He tipped off de Bruin?”
“Hell, how did you—”
“Guessed, just this instant. The house this afternoon, the way the bugger’s been taking it. Last night was it?”
“After you’d gone, sir,” said Willie, getting his thumb caught in the Land-Rover’s key ring. “Bloody hell—stupid, isn’t it? Ja, he said he hadn’t meant to, but you’d given him a—”
“What did he say to de Bruin?”
“He swears he only asked a few questions of a general nature, but hanging did come into one of them. This seemed to catch de Bruin’s ear and—well—it’s a bit of a muddle what came after that. The point is that de Bruin must have had warning. I thought I’d better tell you right away in case you were having trouble.”
“What’s Ferreira doing now?”
“He’s running the party. He wants to say he’s very sorry and will make sure nothing else goes wrong. He couldn’t help himself. I’m just on my way back there, so if there’s a message, I can take it for you. Yee-aaagh, that’s better.”
Kramer patted him on the shoulder. “A bloody fine job, Willie! I’m going to make special mention of this in my report. But there’s a question I should ask.”
“Fire away, Lieutenant!”
“With all the drawing you did last night, how much sleep did you get? We’ve an early start at daybreak looking for the evidence in this case; it really would be a help if one of us could be right on the ball in the morning. I can’t tell you what to do with your off-duty hours, but.…”
Acute disappointment showed first in Willie’s face, then he made some adjustment and shrugged. “Say no more, sir! Boshoff is on his way. Will you be wanting these in the meantime?”
“Ta,” said Kramer, taking the Land-Rover keys. “There could be a Bantu incident, I suppose. See you at sunup, Willie. Don’t worry; this is being noted as well.”
Willie grinned, waved, and set off across the road toward the Haagner household. He walked with his hands in his pockets and whistled off-key. Very briefly, Kramer was ashamed of treating him like a wad of gum that had lost its flavor, and then admitted how much less bother it would be with him safely tucked away. The mean-minded part of himself that did these things was always right.
“Hau, sir, look at this we have found,” Mamabola said, hurrying over from de Bruin’s truck. “Wrapped in newspaper under the front seat. Still very clean.”
It was a loosely wrapped parcel of what felt like books. Kramer took the parcel, gave them orders to continue the search, and walked back into the light cast from the verandah. He paused and checked the date on the paper: it had been sold that morning. Gingerly, he uncovered the contents; as he’d thought, three books. The top one was black and as thick as a hymnal. There was no title on its outside, so he flipped two pages:
A New Handbook on Hanging.
Under which he read:
Being a short Introduction to the fine Art of Execution, containing much useful Information on Neck-breaking, Throttling, Strangling, Asphyxiation, Decapitation, and Electrocution; Data and Wrinkles on Hangmanship; with the late Mr. Hangman Berry’s Method and his pioneering List of Drops; to which is added an Account of the Great Nuremberg Hangings, a Ready Reckoner for Hangmen; and many other items of interest by CHARLES DUFF of Gray’s Inn, Barrister-at-Law.
Next page: Published in 1954 by Andrew Melrose, Ltd., of London, New York, Toronto, Melbourne, Sydney, Cape Town. Next page:
DEDICATED RESPECTFULLY
to
THE HANGMEN OF ENGLAND
and to similar
CONSTITUTIONAL BULWARKS
everywhere
Preface.
Then a wave of realization reared up out of the sea of alien print, curled over, and crashed down on him. “Jesus, the buggers who taught us,” he said.
19
ZONDI AND KRAMER were reading in the storeroom. The 25-watt bulb in the ceiling gave a poor light, but neither of them remarked on the fact. They had said nothing at all for a very long time.
“Listen to this, boss,” murmured Zondi, making himself more comfortable on the mattress. “It is a section specially marked, and it goes: ‘The jury system had been abolished two years before, a victim of its own inadequacy. The jury box had become a relic, now occupied by fashionable women spectators who had cajoled me into giving them a good place. Juries have proved to be a time-wasting luxury and their decisions were often shamefully biased.’ Why should this interest him also?”
Kramer, who’d had eyes for nothing but the astonishing Handbook, looked up from a detailed description of the scaffold. “Which one says that?”
“The Vontsteen Case, by the lawyer who was the judge’s—”
“Christ, give me that.”
He ruffled through its pages, found underlined a press report on the new block at Central, and then, near the beginning, the very piece which the Widow Fourie had read out to him over the telephone. The sentence about the bandage and gushing blood had been deleted, and See AP 184 was written in the margin.
“Ah! AP 184?” inquired Zondi, rather smugly. “That is a cross-reference to this one, Executioner: Pierrepoint, which is by Boss Albert Pierrepoint, for many years England’s master hangman. He is answering questions under oath at a royal inquiry, and his words are: ‘I’ve never seen any blood.’ He was truly a great man, this, and very kind.”
“Anything else marked in it?”
“Many, many things. His father called the work a ‘highly skilled mystery.’ It is impossible to hang more than two at once properly. There was ‘no movement on the body,’ he says, in the many hundreds of people—”
“It looks new,” interrupted Kramer, reaching out. “When was it published?”
The date given was 1974—a little late in the scheme of things.
“And yours, boss?”
“You mean is it any use? Certainly! Gets a bit jokey at times, like you’d expect from those eccentric bastards, but the facts are all there. Here, look at this thing at the back.”
There was a table of thirteen columns of figures; all you had to do was pick the one giving the weight of the prisoner, and read off the appropriate drop—which you then modified according to build, helped by such information as that a scrofulous neck (one having TB of the lymphatic glands) was apt to tear easily.
“Hau, that is mad to print so much!” Zondi exclaimed, taking the book from him. “What kind of people are these?”
“Read it and see if you can find out,” said Kramer, getting up off the ammunition box.
“Lieutenant?”
“I want to make a quick call and then get back to de Bruin. Easier he tells us the rest than we try to work it out. Makes the mind bloody boggle, doesn’t it?”
Feeling very detached, Kramer went out into the charge office and found there a man bleeding from a superficial spear wound. The three Bantu constables were grouped around him.
“This man reports a fight at a beer party, sir,” Mamabola said, coming to attention. “Big one?”
“Thirty to forty persons involved.”
“How far away? Any firearms?”
“Five kilometers—no firearms.”
“You want any issued?”
Mamabola glanced at Luthuli, who was testing the weight of his knobkerrie in the palm of his left hand. “No, thank you, sir. Goodluck says that could make the people all turn on us. It would be better with just the club.”
“Off you go, then,” Kramer said, tossing over the Land-Rover keys. “Take the walkie-talkie in case there are more than that by now, and you can’t put a lid on it. Sergeant Zondi will be listening this end.”
Luthuli, the veteran of such affairs, gave a casual order and they trooped out, taking the injured man with them. After making a scribbled entry in the Occurrence Book, Kramer put through his call to Trekkersburg.
“It’s Tromp, Doc,” he said. “What’s news?”
“Ach, you wouldn’t believe it, man!” Strydom said. “This television bu
siness is no joke. You remember how they used to say it would turn everyone antisocial? Not a bloody hope! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many cups of coffee made in a whole year before, and it hasn’t been even a week yet. And yours? Anything come up yet?”
“Ever heard,” said Kramer, turning the book over to read the title, “of Albert Pierrepoint?”
“Now, there was an expert!” enthused Strydom. “A man after my own heart! You should read what he says about the Americans and their standard five-foot drop and four-coil cowboy knot. Twenty-six minutes one poor bugger had to strangle. His own lowest time was nine seconds from entering the cell to the snap of the rope. The only annoying thing is that he never goes far enough into the detail.”
“You’ve read his book, then?”
“Ja, I got it from the library some time ago. As a matter of fact, I noticed it was out only yesterday, when I was getting a note on the machine hanging to you on the Telex. That piece from the paper, remember? What were your own reactions to that?”
Kramer’s detachment detached itself. “That wasn’t a cutting sent to you?” he growled. “You might have—”
“In 1926?” Strydom laughed. “What kind of teenager do you think I was? It comes from a collection called By the Neck.”
“You didn’t consider, though, that the existence of these books might be relevant?” Kramer said, dismissing his oversight.
“Hey?” There was a pause. “Ach, never. The examples they give are inadequate. Er—have you found someone who has read them?”
“Uh huh. And another book, too, by a barrister called Duff.”
“Duff’s Handbook? Man, isn’t that a hoot?”
“It’s meant to be funny?”
“Of course! My favorite part is where he suggests that there should be an exam for—”
“Funny? A lot of bloody nonsense?”
“What would be the point of that?” Strydom said in some bemusement. “If the facts he gives weren’t accurate, then his whole—”
“Almighty God, Doc!”
“—sarcasm would be for nothing.”
Kramer found himself actually speechless. He tried to articulate a home truth, but the sound wouldn’t come.
“Ohhhh, I see what’s got your Tampax in a knot,” Strydom said with a chuckle. “You’ve found somebody with Duff and you think it might be him? Before you make a fool of yourself, Trompie, let me tell you something you must have overlooked.”
“Ja?”
“That’s a bloody abolitionists’ book, man!”
Kramer gave Zondi the walkie-talkie set and a curt instruction, and went back into the station commander’s office. He slammed the Pierrepoint autobiography down on the desk in front of de Bruin. The fanner turned white.
“Jesus, you silly bugger,” Kramer said cheerfully, sitting down in the chair behind the desk and putting his feet up. “Look what I’ve found in your truck! You shouldn’t have worried these books were banned, because they’re not.”
De Bruin swallowed, and tried to hide his confusion behind a weak smile.
“They’re not?”
“To make sure, I’ve only this minute checked with the man in Trekkersburg. A total misunderstanding all round, although I will make a full apology for my part in it.”
“Well, naturally I wouldn’t.…”
“Good! And I mustn’t forget to return your keys.”
Kramer slid them to the midpoint of the desk. His strategy was crude, but, very roughly, it came down to this: the complete innocent would be only too glad to grab them and get the hell out; the sinner, for want of a better word, would suspect a trick. De Bruin squashed his hat onto the back of his head, and tucked his thumbs behind his braces—as if half of him wanted to go and the other half to stay. Very curious.
The keys remained untouched.
“Is that all, Lieutenant?”
“Definitely.”
“I’m still lost to know quite why my remarks caused this reaction.”
“Prisons Act, Number Eight of 1959.”
“But that—” de Bruin began, as though he knew equally well that the act merely made it an offense to publish false information about prisons.
“Ja?”
“Doesn’t mean a lot to a layman.”
“Ah!” said Kramer. “Then take my advice and don’t concern yourself with such dreary matters. Haven’t you got a party waiting? Hell, I’ve kept you long enough!”
“Trying to get rid of me?” de Bruin joked without much conviction.
Kramer thought he caught a whiff of what was going on then: the man seemed to be acting compulsively, to be forcing himself, not only to prolong the converstion, but to take it into deeper waters as well. More than one self-confession had come his way with this sort of preamble.
“Not before you’ve had your compensation!” he said, bringing his feet down. “Now, I know Frikkie keeps a bottle of the same in here somewhere.”
“Well, I won’t say no,” chuckled de Bruin, sitting again.
Fortunately Luthuli had seen to it that the two tumblers were clean, and the brandies were poured in a trice. That was another thing: for a churchgoer, de Bruin was being fairly intemperate, and his strained look had never left him.
“Cheers,” Kramer said.
“All the best.”
The brandy became a momentary preoccupation.
“So you must be an abolitionist, Mr. de Bruin? It explains why you’re so chock-full of information.”
“In a way, I suppose I am. I’ve got an interest, certainly.”
“Uh huh.”
“I—er—knew someone involved once.”
“You don’t say?”
“A youngster.”
“In this district?”
“On the coast. Durban, as a matter of fact. Or, more exactly, I knew his mother—lodged with her during the war, while I was working at the post office. Tragic. It was terrible what it did to her.”
“Uh huh?”
De Bruin stalled, sipping at his drink. His eyes had changed: the hardness had gone—now they were wary and expectant. Kramer, who had been under the impression he’d been holding the rod, realized abruptly that he was, in fact, the tin fish. The man was trying for a rise out of him.
“Of course, Mr. de Bruin, in my job you can’t afford to consider that side of it too much. It’s true as well that the people we get to know best are the victims, and we see how little mercy went into their big step into the hereafter.”
“I can appreciate that, Lieutenant,” replied de Bruin, relaxing before his eyes.
The transformation was striking; in a couple of blinks, the farmer was all Ferreira had described him as being: an easygoing-looking man, with a kindly mouth and the air of a peacemaker. De Bruin downed the rest of his drink, stood up, and held out his hand. “Must be getting back, as you said. At least you know where to come now if you’re wanting to speak to the local expert on hanging, hey?”
“Is that what Piet Ferreira told you?” Kramer asked softly.
The hand trembled.
“Is that why you hid those books in your car?”
“You’ve—you’ve only just said there was no law against having them!” de Bruin blustered.
“True. But there are other laws concerning what you do with them, sir.”
“Do with them? I’d lent them to somebody.”
“In Witklip?”
“Brandspruit. I picked them up last night—”
“And wrapped them in this morning’s newspaper?”
Kramer wasn’t sure at all what was going on, but knew that he’d turned the game in his favor, and that—very soon—he’d have all the answers.
“It’s no good.” De Bruin sighed wearily, letting the hand drop and his shoulders slump. “I’m not cut out for this sort of thing.”
“You lie very badly.”
“I didn’t exactly come prepared, Lieutenant.”
“I can see that. I can also see that you’re a man who isn’t accus
tomed to trying to pervert the course of justice.”
“I’m not trying to do that! God forbid!”
“This time, a full explanation?”
De Bruin nodded, returning once again to his chair.
A cockroach scuttled behind the dagga sacks. The night closed in tight, squeezing all that mattered into that small circle of yellow light. The horse clip-clopped in its stable.
“Where do I begin?” de Bruin began, “I’m in such a muddle—I didn’t sleep for worrying over which course would be right to take.”
Kramer gave him another double tot. It went ignored.
“Yesterday evening I called to see Piet Ferreira to finalize tonight’s arrangements—I’m chairman of the party committee. He took me into his office and behaved so strangely, asking the most peculiar questions, that I tackled him—pretty hard, I’m afraid. One way or another, I found out that you were in Witklip looking for a man who knew about hanging, and that you’d decided it must be me.”
“Just keep talking,” Kramer encouraged him, leaning back with his fingers laced behind his head.
“Probably things would have worked out very differently if he hadn’t also told me who you worked for. I really don’t know. But as soon as Piet said Security, I realized someone might be caused a lot of unnecessary distress.”
As soon as de Bruin said that, Kramer’s stomach fell through a trap on a very long drop.
“Because,” the farmer went on, “whatever his other failings, nobody on earth could accuse Gysbert Swanepoel of any form of disloyalty to his country. I was going to say just ‘a friend,’ but I have to trust you, and give you the reasons behind the foolish things I’ve done today. At first, when I got home and talked things over with the wife, we decided to let you get on with it. Gysbert has never spoken about his obsession to anyone else, and there seemed little chance of him becoming involved. Then Piet rang me and said there would be a search of my farm—he still sounded very scared of me, which neither of us could understand—and that started me worrying. There was always the chance, you see, that you’d try other farms if you found nothing on mine. Lettie—my wife—suggested Piet’s story sounded too incredible to be true, so we compromised. Did you go to my place today, by the way?”
The Sunday Hangman Page 22
