Riotous Assembly

by Tom Sharpe

  By the time they had arrived at the events of the previous day, the Bishop, who had eaten nothing for thirty-six hours, and who had been standing with his hands above his head for six, was prepared to admit to murdering the entire South African Police force, if doing so would allow him to sit down for five minutes.

  ‘I shot them with a multi-barrelled rocket launcher supplied by the Chinese consul in Dar-es-Salaam,’ he repeated slowly while Verkramp copied the admission down.

  ‘Good,’ said the Luitenant finally, ‘that seems pretty conclusive.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Now if you don’t mind I would like time to think about my future,’ the Bishop said.

  ‘I think you can safely leave that to us,’ said the Luitenant. ‘There’s just one more matter I want to get straightened out. Why did you shoot your sister’s cook?’

  ‘I discovered he was a CIA agent,’ said the Bishop, who by this time knew the lines along which Verkramp’s mind was working. He had long since discovered that there was no point in arguing with the man, and since Verkramp’s imagination had evidently been nurtured on spy-thrillers, this seemed the sort of explanation he would swallow.

  ‘Oh, was he?’ said Verkramp, and made a mental note to investigate the cooks of Piemburg to discover how many more were in the pay of the Americans.

  By the time Verkramp had finished with him, the Bishop had decided that his only hope of escaping execution on the scaffold reserved for him by his grandfather lay in concocting a confession so absurd that it would either be thrown out of court by the judge, or allow him to plead insanity. ‘I may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,’ he said to himself when Els came to take over the interrogation and wondered what new crimes he could add to the list he had already agreed to. Konstabel Els was glad to suggest some.

  ‘I hear you want us to go around marrying Kaffirs,’ Els began. He knew he was supposed to be questioning a Communist and the only thing he knew about Communists was that they wanted white people to marry blacks.

  ‘I can’t remember having advocated it in public,’ the Bishop said cautiously.

  ‘I don’t suppose you would in public,’ said Els, whose own advocacy of sexual intercourse with blacks had always been undertaken in strictest privacy. ‘You’d get arrested for it.’

  The Bishop was puzzled. ‘For what?’ he asked.

  ‘For advocating a black woman in public. What about in private?’

  ‘It’s true I have given the matter some thought.’

  ‘Come on, admit it. You haven’t just thought about it. You have done it too.’

  The Bishop couldn’t see much harm in admitting it. ‘Well, once or twice I have raised the matter. I’ve brought it up at meetings of the parish council.’

  ‘At meetings, eh?’ said Els. ‘Sort of group gropes?’

  ‘I suppose you could put it that way,’ said the Bishop who had never heard the expression before.

  Els leered at him. ‘I suppose you put it other ways too?’

  ‘I put it to them straight, man to man,’ said the Bishop, wondering what all this had to do with murdering policemen.

  Konstabel Els had difficulty imagining how you could put it man to man and call it straight at the same time.

  ‘I didn’t beat about the bush.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d have to with men,’ Els agreed.

  ‘Oh, there were women present too.’ said the Bishop. ‘It’s the sort of question where a woman’s viewpoint often helps.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘Funnily enough, I found the women more receptive to the idea than the men.’

  ‘I should think you would.’

  ‘Of course, it’s not something most people will accept at one go. I put it to them gradually, but on the whole they could see there was something to be said for it.’

  ‘Hell,’ said Els, ‘you must have had some parties.’

  ‘I hope I’m not boring you,’ the Bishop said hopefully.

  ‘I’m never bored by sex,’ said Els.

  ‘Do you mind if I take a seat?’ the Bishop said on the spur of the moment, taking advantage of Els’ evident interest.

  ‘Help yourself.’ Els couldn’t get enough of the Bishop’s tales of group gropes and similar perversions.

  ‘Now then,’ said the Bishop, when he was seated, ‘where was I?’

  ‘You were saying how the women liked it in the tail,’ said Els.

  ‘Was I really?’ said the Bishop. ‘How extraordinary. I had no idea.’

  As the night wore on, Konstabel Els sat rapt in admiration for the prisoner. Here, at last, was a man after his own heart, a man for whom there was no shame, no remorse, no regret, only a dedication to lust unequalled in Els’ experience.

  The difficulty for the Bishop was that his imagination was hardly adequate for the task Els set it. Faced with such rapacious curiosity, he stuck to his calling and Els listened fascinated to descriptions of midnight orgies involving chasubles and albs. Among the other invaluable pieces of information that the Konstabel picked up there were three facts which were particularly damning. The Bishop, he learned, wore a frock, possessed a rubric and owned a biretta.

  ‘What the hell is a rubric?’ Kommandant van Heerden asked him in the morning when he read the Bishop’s signed confession.

  ‘Short for rubber prick,’ said Els. ‘He uses it for genuflexion.’

  ‘Does he really?’ said the Kommandant and read the astonishing document through for the second time. If half of what the Bishop had confessed to was true, thought van Heerden, the sod should have been hanged years ago.

  15

  While the case against Jonathan Hazelstone was being prepared, Kommandant van Heerden wrestled with the problem posed by the continuing disappearance of the prisoner’s sister. In spite of the most intensive manhunt Miss Hazelstone continued to elude the police. Kommandant van Heerden increased the reward offered but still no information worth the telling was telephoned into the Piemburg police station. The only consolation the Kommandant could find was that Miss Hazelstone had not added to his problems by communicating with her lawyer or with newspapers outside his province.

  ‘She’s a cunning old devil,’ he told Luitenant Verkramp, and was alarmed to note in himself a return of the admiration he had previously felt for her.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about the old bag, she’ll probably turn up at the trial,’ Verkramp answered optimistically. His fall had not, the Kommandant noted, deprived the Luitenant of his capacity to say things calculated to upset his commanding officer.

  ‘If you’re so bloody clever, where do you suggest we start looking for her?’ the Kommandant growled.

  ‘Probably sitting in Jacaranda House laughing to herself,’ and Verkramp took himself off to compile a list of black cooks known to favour Chicken Maryland.

  ‘Sarcastic bastard,’ muttered the Kommandant. ‘One of these days somebody will fix him properly.’

  It was in fact Konstabel Els whose initiative led to the capture of Miss Hazelstone. Ever since his battle with the Dobermann, Els had been regretting his decision to leave the body lying on the lawn of Jacaranda House.

  ‘I should have had it stuffed. It would look nice in the hall,’ he said to the Kommandant during an idle moment.

  ‘I should have thought it had been stuffed enough already,’ the Kommandant had replied. ‘Besides, whoever heard of having a dog stuffed.’

  ‘There are lots of stuffed lions and wart-hogs and things in the hall of Jacaranda House. Why shouldn’t I have a stuffed dog in my hall?’

  ‘You’re getting ideas above your station,’ the Kommandant said. Els had gone off to ask the warder in Bottom about getting dogs stuffed. The old man seemed to know about things like that.

  ‘You want to take it to a taxidermist,’ the warder told him. ‘There’s one in the museum but I’d ask for a quote first. Stuffing’s a costly business.’

  ‘I don’t mind spending a bit of money on it,’ Els sa
id and together they went to ask the Bishop about the dog.

  ‘I believe it had a pedigree,’ the Bishop told them.

  ‘What’s a pedigree?’ Els asked.

  ‘A family tree,’ said the Bishop, wondering if killing the dog was going to be added to the list of crimes he was supposed to have committed.

  ‘Fussy sort of dog, having a family tree,’ Els said to the warder. ‘You’d think it would pee against lamp-posts like any other dogs.’

  ‘Spoilt if you ask me,’ said the warder. ‘Sounds more like a lapdog than a real Dobermann. I’m not surprised you could kill it so easily. Probably died of fright.’

  ‘It bloody well didn’t. It fought like mad. Fiercest dog I ever saw,’ said Els, annoyed.

  ‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ said the warder and Els promptly made up his mind to fetch the Dobermann to get rid of the slur on his honour.

  ‘Permission to visit Jacaranda House,’ he said to the Kommandant, later that day.

  ‘Permission to do what?’ the Kommandant asked incredulously.

  ‘To go up to Jacaranda House. I want to get that dog’s body.’

  ‘You must be out of your mind, Els,’ said the Kommandant. ‘I should have thought you’d had enough of that bloody place by now.’

  ‘It’s not a bad place,’ said Els whose own memories of the Park were quite different from those of the Kommandant.

  ‘It’s a bloody awful place, and you’ve done enough harm up there already,’ said the Kommandant. ‘You keep your nose out of it, do you hear me?’ and Els had vented his anger by bullying some black convicts in the prison yard.

  That evening Kommandant van Heerden decided to make a spot check on the road blocks around Piemburg. He was beginning to suspect that his enforced absence from the outside world was having a bad effect on the morale of his men, and since he thought it improbable that Miss Hazelstone would be out and about at eleven o’clock at night, and wouldn’t be able to see him in the police car if she were, he decided to make his rounds when it seemed most likely his men would be asleep on the job.

  ‘Drive slowly,’ he told Els when he was seated in the back of the car. ‘I just want to have a look around.’ For an hour men on duty at street corners and at the road blocks were harassed by van Heerden’s questions.

  ‘How do you know she didn’t come through here disguised as a coon?’ he asked the sergeant on duty on the Vlockfontein road who had been complaining about the numbers of cars he had had to search.

  ‘We’ve checked them all, sir,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Checked them? How have you checked them?’

  ‘We give them the skin test, sir.’

  ‘The skin test? Never heard of it.’

  ‘We use a bit of sandpaper, sir. Rub their skin with it and if the black comes off they’re white. If it doesn’t they’re not.’

  Kommandant van Heerden was impressed. ‘Shows initiative, Sergeant,’ he said and they drove on.

  It was shortly after this and as they were driving up Town Hill to inspect the road block there that Konstabel Els noticed that the Kommandant had fallen asleep.

  ‘It’s only the old man making his rounds,’ Els told the konstabel on duty, and was about to turn round and return to the prison when he realized that they were quite close to Jacaranda Park. He looked over his shoulder and regarded the sleeping figure in the back of the car.

  ‘Permission to go up to Jacaranda House, sir,’ he said softly. In the back the Kommandant was snoring loudly. ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Els with a smile and the car moved off past the road block and up the hill to Jacaranda House. On either side of the road the headlights illuminated the billboards which stood like advertisements for macabre holiday resorts: Bubonic Plague, some sinister beach, and Rabies, a game reserve. Unaware of his destination, Kommandant van Heerden slept noisily in the back as the car passed through the gate of Jacaranda House, and with a crunch of tyres on gravel, moved slowly down the long drive.

  Els parked the car in front of the house and stepped quietly out into the night to collect his trophy. It was dark and clouds obscured the moon, and he had some difficulty finding the Dobermann’s corpse.

  ‘That’s funny,’ he said to himself, as he searched the lawn. ‘I could have sworn I left the bugger here,’ and continued to look for the beast.

  In the back of the car Kommandant van Heerden snored more loudly than ever. He slipped sideways across the seat and bumped his head on the window. The next moment he was wide awake and staring out into the darkness.

  ‘Els,’ he said loudly, ‘what have you stopped for and why are the headlights off?’ From the driver’s seat there came no comforting reply and as Kommandant van Heerden sat terrified in the back of the car and wondered where the hell Els had got to, the cloud slipped gently from the moon, and the Kommandant saw before him the front door of Jacaranda House. With a whimper the Kommandant crouched down in the cushions and cursed his own foolishness for leaving the prison. Above him the façade of the great house loomed threateningly, its unlighted windows dark with menace. Moaning with terror, the Kommandant opened the door and stepped on to the forecourt. A moment later he was in the driver’s seat and searching for the keys. They had gone.

  ‘I might have known the swine would do something like this,’ the Kommandant gibbered, and promising himself that more than the Dobermann would get himself stuffed, waited for Els to return. As the minutes passed and Els continued his search for the elusive Toby, the Kommandant’s terror grew.

  ‘I can’t sit here all night,’ he thought. ‘I’ll have to go and find him.’ He climbed out and moving stealthily stole into the garden. Around him bushes assumed strange and terrifying shapes and the moon which had proved so illuminating but a few minutes before discovered a convenient cloud to hide behind. In the darkness and not daring to shout, Kommandant van Heerden stumbled on a flowerbed and fell flat on his face. ‘Dog roses,’ he thought bitterly, clutching his face, and as he clambered to his feet, Kommandant van Heerden’s ears and eyes caught sight and sound of two things that sent his heart racing in his breast. The car’s engine had started on the forecourt. Els had found the Dobermann and was departing. As the car’s headlights swung round floodlighting the front of Jacaranda House, the Kommandant stood rigid in the flowerbed staring into the night sky at something far more sinister than the house itself. A faint plume of smoke was issuing slowly but steadily from one of the chimneys of the deserted mansion. Kommandant van Heerden was not alone.

  Clutching his heart, the Kommandant fell back among the roses and passed out. When he came round from what he chose to call his first heart attack, it was to hear a voice he had hoped never to hear again.

  ‘Nights of wine and roses, Kommandant?’ it inquired, and as the Kommandant stared up he saw outlined against the drifting clouds the elegant figure of Miss Hazelstone. She was dressed as he had seen her first, and not, he thanked heaven, in the dreadful salmon-pink suit.

  ‘You’re not going to lie there all night, I hope,’ Miss Hazelstone continued. ‘Come into the house and I’ll make you some coffee.’

  ‘Don’t want any coffee,’ the Kommandant mumbled, disengaging himself from the rose bushes.

  ‘You may not want it, but that’s what you obviously need to sober you up. I’m not having drunken policemen stumbling about my garden ruining the flowerbeds at this time of night,’ and bowing to that authority he could never resist, Kommandant van Heerden found himself once more in the drawing-room of Jacaranda House. The room was in darkness except for the lamp on a film projector which stood on a small table. ‘I was just running through some old films I took, before I burn them,’ Miss Hazelstone said, and the Kommandant understood the faint plume of smoke he had seen issuing from the chimney. ‘I shan’t be able to see them in prison, and besides I think it’s better to forget the past, don’t you, Kommandant?’

  The Kommandant had to agree. The past was something he would have paid a fortune to forget. Unfortunately, it was all
too present in his mind’s eye. Trapped between his own terror and a sense of deference made all the more persuasive by the erratic beating of his heart, the Kommandant allowed himself to be seated in a low chair from which he expected never to rise, while Miss Hazelstone turned on a reading lamp.

  ‘There’s some coffee left over from supper,’ Miss Hazelstone said. ‘I’ll have to heat it up, I’m afraid. In the normal way I would have some fresh made, but I’m rather short of home help at the moment.’

  ‘I don’t need any coffee,’ the Kommandant said, and regretted his words immediately. He might have had a chance to escape if Miss Hazelstone had gone to the kitchen. Instead she looked at him doubtfully and sat down opposite him in the wing-backed armchair.

  ‘Just as you like,’ she said. ‘You don’t look unusually drunk. Just rather pale.’

  ‘I’m not drunk. It’s my heart,’ said the Kommandant.

  ‘In that case, coffee is the worst thing for you. It’s a stimulant, you know. You should try to avoid any form of stimulation.’

  ‘I know that,’ said the Kommandant.

  There was a pause, broken finally by Miss Hazelstone.

  ‘I suppose you’ve finally come to arrest me,’ she said. The Kommandant couldn’t think of anything he would like to do more, but he didn’t seem to have the energy. Mesmerized by the house and the air of gentle melancholy he found so fascinating in the old woman, he sat in his chair listening to his palpitations.

  ‘I suppose Jonathan has confessed already,’ Miss Hazelstone said by way of polite conversation. The Kommandant nodded.

  ‘Such a waste,’ Miss Hazelstone continued. ‘The poor boy suffers from such a sense of guilt. I can’t imagine why. I suspect it’s because he had such a blameless childhood. Guilt is so often a substitute for good honest-to-goodness evil. You must find that in your profession, Kommandant.’