The Blood of an Englishman (28 page)

“But I thought it was Hookham who got the shakes?” said Strydom.

“Only according to Digby-Smith’s evidence, Doc. Mrs. Digby-Smith saw a reaction in her brother-in-law, and De Klerk ascribed that to the likelihood Hookham had half-guessed who’d done the deed.”

“You know something, Tromp? This makes better sense than anything I’ve heard so far!”

“It lacks one or—”

“No, no; you carry on, and I’ll see if I can guess.” Kramer lit a fresh cigarette off his first and wished he’d thought to bring a cigar along. “Okay, so De Klerk puts himself in Digby-Smith’s shoes and imagines what a hell of a time he had until the Sunday papers gave Bradshaw’s description of a ‘giant.’ Digby-Smith is quite tall, but he doesn’t look too well-built, and so he must have thought Bradshaw had failed to recognize him entirely.”

“Phew!” said Strydom.

“Ja, but what happened that night, Doc? Hookham starts to act strangely and suddenly wants to go home. He behaves like a man who finds himself in a nasty situation; he isn’t sure of his facts, but just wants to have nothing more to do with it. Digby-Smith begins to feel certain that Hookham suspects him, and takes a look in his diary. Hookham has stopped adding comments. Why? Because he can no longer trust his thoughts to paper? Digby-Smith encourages him to leave. Then comes Tuesday night, when Hookham visited Mrs Westford, and said he’d go on a final ‘sortie’ that would decide whether he stayed on or not. Was this a confrontation with Digby-Smith? More than likely, and Digby-Smith decided the time had come to rid himself of this terrible danger. He’d never liked the man anyway.”

“Good, good, good,” approved Strydom, peeling away the scalp to give Van Rensburg something to do. “But this time he tied up the victim, so as to have a sitting target and to get his shots in from closer?”

“Uh huh. Not only that, but De Klerk found that Digby-Smith had a small workshop for his hobby of ship-modeling, and deduced he’d used it to make a silencer. By now, he said, Digby-Smith could afford to take no chances, and had to be extra careful with everything he did. Not knowing where to find Hookham when he went off at night, he’d simply hidden in the back of the green Rover until, reaching an isolated spot, he’d made Hookham stop by pushing the gun in his ear. After killing him, satisfied he had suspected him of Bradshaw’s shooting, Digby-Smith had brought the car back home for three or more reasons: firstly, it would complicate the investigation; secondly, it would pay his wife back for years of the ‘blue-eyed boy’; and thirdly, how else was he to return from to-hell-and-gone without transport?”

Strydom looked up from the throat. “Ah! But what about the schoolgirl? She doesn’t fit into this!”

“You’ve got it in one, Doc.”

“Hey?”

Kramer shrugged. “De Klerk actually gives me the credit for her role in all this, because of my obsession about the RAF. By another of life’s coincidences—like Digby-Smith’s mistake of sending Hookham to the social, which I’m sure was genuine—he had decided around that time to hire some bleepers from Robert du Plooi, thinking they’d be useful for keeping in touch with the office while out visiting sites. De Klerk discovered that Du Plooi had told him of my interest in what’d been said at the social, and Digby-Smith had seen how dangerous this could be, by way of providing a possible motive et cetera.”

“That also makes excellent sense,” remarked Strydom, “but you still haven’t—”

“Digby-Smith realized he’d have to destroy this link-up of mine. De Klerk had told Colonel Muller he was being tortured by hearing Mrs. Baksteen saying over and over, why had anyone wanted to kill her little girl? And suddenly, instead of feeling
bad about it, he’d felt marvelous. The answer to Mrs. Baksteen’s question was simple: nobody had tried to kill Classina—they’d just tried to make it look that way! Digby-Smith broke
two
links in this fashion: the incidental RAF link, much more important one, which made what Bradshaw and Hookham had in common—a man who hated them both.”

“Ah!”

“When he pulled the trigger out at Six Valleys, bang went any chance of the suspicion coming back to him. De Klerk was sure he could find out where the skipping rope came from, the stocking and everything else, once he’d seen that look of guilt in Digby-Smith’s eyes.”

“All very plausible,” applauded Strydom, removing the hyoid bone, which was fractured. “Especially the part about the schoolgirl.”

“I agree,” said Kramer, “but what De Klerk should have done first was to ask the servants a question or two.”

“Their coons? Why?”

“Because they were able to provide Digby-Smith with a cast-iron alibi every time there was a shooting, nevermind what Mrs. Digby-Smith had to say after De Klerk visited them.”

“Yirra!” exclaimed Van Rensburg, smiling his evil smile. “What a clanger to drop, hey? So he never got round to giants?”

“Oh, for heaven’s—” Strydom got out.

“He did in the end,” said Kramer, smiling again. “He rang Colonel Muller at his house at two in the morning, and said it was so simple he could kick himself. He was reminded he’d been put back into Housebreaking, and that the case was being stamped ‘unsolved,’ but insisted on having his say. The silencer was the key, he told Colonel Muller, and pointed out that Digby-Smith was easily rich enough to buy expensive skipping ropes
and
to hire a Jo’burg hitman to do his dirty work for him. A real pro, who not only used a proper silencer, but had a build like a giant, which explained the fractured wrists
that he’d not been able to fit into everything before. Clearly a foreigner with a funny accent, and Digby-Smith had taken the precaution of telling me that—”

“Oh no, I can’t take any more!” laughed Strydom. “Poor old Fransie, hey? That’s always the trouble with these loony cases: there
is
no shape to the thing, just a lot of bits and pieces, and the imagination runs riot trying to fit them together. By the way, did Galt ever find out what that pink stuff inside the stocking was?”

“Some kind of complexion cream,” said Kramer.

“Ladies’ complexion cream?”

“Ja, but people also use it for sunburn, apparently. I don’t think they’ll be reopening the docket to look for a six-foot-four lady wrestler with paranoid schizophrenia.”

“God forbid!” said Strydom, taking up one of his knives. “Isn’t it about time you got sawing, Sergeant?”

“Even a wrestler couldn’t do it,” mumbled Van Rensburg. “Not even
two
wrestlers trying their—”

“There’s a thought!” said Strydom. “Would you mind, Tromp?”

“Be my guest,” said Kramer.

But try as they would, Nxumalo and Josiah could not synchronize their separate tugs into one simultaneous, bone-shattering explosion of force, and a great deal of time was wasted on several other improvisations. Kramer suggested what was missing was the sort of surge of adrenalin that gave housewives the strength to carry washing-machines out of blazing kitchens, then lost all interest when his offer of inducing such a surge in Van Rensburg was rejected.

“But I’ve proved something at least,” said Strydom. “It could be achieved only by one person, coordinating his movements with a single impulse from the brain. Have you ever considered the idea that the ‘giant’ might be a real giant? Much, much
bigger
than Bradshaw described him?”

“From a circus or something you mean?” asked Kramer, keeping a straight face.

“Why not? You could try the shoe shops, see if anyone around takes a specially big size. In tending to belittle Bradshaw’s evidence, you could have made the mistake of literally belittling the suspect.”

“Hmmmm.” Another snail had made its appearance, and was crawling across the face of the electric wall clock. “Doc, I must be off—got someone to pick up.”

“Hey? But what about this nose? It’s only five-past five.”

“You know my philosophy: tomorrow’s always another day.”

“That’s
your
philosophy?” asked Strydom, in surprise.

“Uh huh.”

And Kramer was gone, leaving Strydom to put down his knife, blink a couple of times, and turn to Van Rensburg. “That’s a bit of luck,” he said. “Just put those others back in the fridge for me to see tomorrow, and then you and I can get on with my little experiment. It’s getting to the interesting stage, isn’t it?”

Zondi did not wait to hear Banjo Nyembezi remanded in custody for trial on a charge of murder. He slipped out of the preliminary examination at the Regional Magistrates’ Court at a quarter past five and headed for the main street, intent on buying his children a present before closing time. They had all received excellent end-of-term reports, which made him a proud if apprehensive parent: doing well at school was one thing, finding them an outlet for their talents afterwards was quite another.

He dived into the biggest bookshop in the center of Trekkersburg and searched hurriedly through the textbook section. His chief difficulty lay in deciding which book—he could afford no more than one—would be of some assistance to them all, and he had already bought him their Zulu, Afrikaans and
English dictionaries, as well as a couple of comprehensive works on mathematics and Zulu history. Finally he hit upon an atlas that was going cheap because its cover was slightly torn, and took it to the pay desk, delighted by his luck.

“Are you quite sure you want such a big book?” asked the kindly faced shop assistant with plastic teeth that whistled. “It is rather expensive, you know, and all it’s got in it are maps.”

“Please, madam.”

“You made certain by looking inside it?”

“Hau, me not look inside, madam. My boss say to buy him atlas cheap, and that is all.”

“Oh, that’s fine then, isn’t it? Ten rand, please.…”

Zondi smiled his thanks for her concern as he handed over the carefully hoarded notes; it wasn’t a very honest way of going about things, but often it was much simpler.

“Carry it nicely now!” she said.

“Yes, madam. Thank you, madam.”

Halfway back to Boomplaas Street, he could no longer resist temptation, and sat down on the grass outside a public building to unwrap his purchase. He removed the brown paper without tearing it, and raised the atlas to his nose for a good, long sniff. There was nothing like the smell of a brand-new book for making him feel as fortunate as any man. Then he began turning the pages, relishing the sound of them parting for the first time, and worked his way through small maps of the world until he reached the first proper section, which was on the British Isles. With very little trouble, he found Hookham’s village near Southampton, and felt reassured that this must be a very fine atlas indeed. France began the section on Western Europe, and again he paused, intrigued to discover the Picardy across which Hookham and his fellow prisoners of war had escaped from Germany. The distances involved were all far less great than he had imagined, and he traced his finger this way and that, guessing at the probable escape route through
the more thinly populated areas. He was just passing north of Amiens when there came an unwelcome interruption.

“Pssst!”

It was none other than Jiji Govender, working as a street cleaner. Zondi was in no mood for any more of the Indian’s groveling gratitude, and shooed him away with his free hand.

“But I have tiding of great importances,” whined Jiji. “You hear me telling of mysterious gentleman with request to buy thirty-two size volovolo?”

“I remember.”

“The same has been seen this very day, Sergeant—I am hearing this from brother street cleaner working that side.”

“What side?”

“The side where abodes a man whose name I can only say and tremble: Mr. Meerkatty Marais.”

“Meerkat?” Zondi lost his place in the atlas. “Go on, Jiji. What is the name of this gentleman?”

“At luncheon I am partaking of this informations,” confided Jiji, crouching beside Zondi. “No word of the gent’s name is undisclosed, but Sammy Panjut, who working that side, he say he observing same personage diverge into flat of Meerkatty.”

“How long was he in there?”

“Much shouting, and Sammy says gent not seen again. He came away to cater for the needs of the belly—we have timing off from one to two o’clockies.”

“So this gent could have left while Sammy was away having his lunch with you and the other street cleaners?”

Jiji nodded, and plucked a trophy from his left nostril, studying it intently.

“If Sammy didn’t know the gent’s name, what did he say he looked like?” asked Zondi.

“Just a white gent, that’s the lot, Sergeant,” said Jiji, adding the trophy to his main collection on his broom handle. “I must
treading like fairy for Sammy not know I work as undercover intelligent man.”

“So you didn’t ask for more details?”

Jiji shook his head but stayed smiling. “Is it not a great favoring I perform for you, Sergeant?”

“I’m not sure,” replied Zondi.

It was such a long time since he’d last thought about the shootings case, and so many other more interesting things had happened since then, that he needed a moment to get back into the required frame of mind. The likelihood of there being some connection between the shootings and Jiji’s mysterious gent seemed more than tenuous, while to suggest that Meerkat Marais had been involved was a total non-starter. Why was that? Because the Lieutenant had given Meerkat a good grilling the day Hookham’s body had been found, and not once had the man shown any of the tiny telltale signs that indicated he was lying when he denied having supplied the weapon. In fact, the Lieutenant had been so sure that Meerkat was in the clear that they hadn’t bothered to search his place or keep an eye on him. Some time factor or other had come into it as well, with the offer of good money for a .32 revolver having been made after Bradshaw had already been gunned down. And yet here was Jiji Govender with a piece of half-baked information that seemed to suggest that it could all be reconciled somehow. Perhaps the dates were wrong, but what about Meerkat’s patent innocence? As he couldn’t have faked it that well, thought Zondi, then the only explanation was that Meerkat had played an unwitting part in all this. He might not have liked that, which would in turn explain the shouting.