“Hello, Chris? He’s charging out of my office right now.”
The Colonel listened for a second or two longer, chuckled, and then replaced the receiver with a flourish, thereby regaining Kramer’s undying loyalty and respect.
“All fixed up, Tromp,” he said blithely, flicking the rest of his tobacco juice at the wood paneling behind him. “You’ll find Doc waiting on the corner of Parade and Ladysmith Street on your way round the block. And the next time you try to cut short a briefing with me by saying you’re leaving town at one o’clock sharp, make sure that it isn’t already after bloody ten past.”
A total adjustment, it seemed, had been asking too much.
T
HE VELD ALL
around them was as parched as an old tennis ball and much the same color. Apart from some thorn scrub, there were no trees except those gathered together for a definite purpose: to shade a tin-roofed homestead, or to provide a trading store with its windbreak. The sort of God’s own country where every farmer began his day with a very deep sigh.
Wearied simply by looking at it, Kramer turned his gaze back on the road ahead. Puddles of mirage water shimmered across the asphalt, putting a wobble into the broken white line, and, a long way off, an oncoming bus glinted like a pinhead in the bright sun, before looming huge. Then the buffet and shake of their passing was over, and a distant Volkswagen entered the lists. Soon it, too, was left cross-eyed behind them, and the one-horse town of Doringboom drew that much closer. Mickey Zondi was driving as he always drove: not as though the Chevrolet were a taut extension of mind and body, but like a man who has given his bolting horse its head, being content to merely rake it in the ribs now and then, Kramer personally found the technique stimulating, yet he could tell—from the awed silence on the back seat—that their passenger thought differently.
“Do you get up this way often, Doc?”
“Er—not what you would call a lot.”
“Then it must be nice for you, hey? Especially when you can just sit back and enjoy the scenery.”
“Very nice,” said Strydom, whose narrowed eyes never left the road. “It was one of the main reasons I asked the favor.”
Not that he’d put forward any other reasons so far, the devious old bastard. He had mumbled something about a radiator and water leaks and then let it trail. However, once you had a few minutes to reflect, it was simple enough to guess his strategy: by actually traveling with the investigating officer, he felt able to gate-crash Myburgh’s morgue party, and no ethical questions asked. That young bloke had better watch himself, or he’d find a paper being poached from right under his nose.
A signpost flashed by:
DORINGBOOM
22
KM
.
“Look, sir,” murmured Zondi. “This is maybe the place.”
The road had just twitched into a straight and level section that arrowed across a bleak plain, brushing a dark smudge at about the halfway mark, before disappearing into the drifting haze of distant grass fires. And the vulture-eyed bugger was right: in no time at all, the smudge had resolved itself into three concrete picnic tables, a large refuse bin, and half a dozen flat-topped thorn trees—plus a police Land-Rover, parked with its doors left open. Two Khaki-trousered Bantu constables were crouched with a tape measure, while a white constable, in his blue tunic and shorts, made notes on a clipboard. As a roadside attraction, it was too good to be missed.
They came to a sliding halt, waited for their dust to clear, and climbed out. The white constable approached, treating them to a full measure of rustic caution. He was a scrawny lad, knobbly at knee and elbow, and heavily reinforced by the revolver sagging at his side.
“Lieutenant Kramer?”
“That’s right—and this is Dr. Strydom, senior DS.”
“Van Heerden, sir,” said the youngster, shaking hands with the civilian. “Hell, you were quick! When Sarge warned me
to get down here and finish my plan, instead of finding those sheep, I didn’t see what the panic was about.”
He had an engaging innocence that wouldn’t get him very far in the force.
“Let’s have a look, then.”
“Please, sir, it’s only in rough. If you will wait a minute, I’ll—”
“Ta,” said Kramer, jerking the clipboard from him. “I see what you mean: lots of nice sums and pretty letters, but no bloody plan begun—let alone finished. You are an idler, aren’t you?”
“Very idle, sir. Only there’s this sheep business to worry me, and the tape’s got no meters, so I’m having to convert. My boys brought the wrong one.”
“So relax,” Kramer grunted, handing the board back.
Then he went over to where the dirt met the tar, and looked to the right and to the left. You could see a considerable distance in either direction, and at night, any approaching vehicle would give at least sixty seconds’ warning before its headlights became effective.
“How about the whatsit itself?” suggested Strydom, who was showing a decided stubbornness regarding precedent.
“Doc, you think of everything.”
“Out of the officer’s way!” barked Van Heerden, bustling through a wide gap between his black assistants. “This is the tree in question, right here. And to be strictly fair, sir, if you give my plan another look, you’ll see that I have called it A.”
The tree called
A
was the second tallest of the group. It had a very hard, grayish-yellow bark, and supported an umbrella of tiny, dusty leaves, protected from long-vanished giraffes by clusters of big thorns. The trunk, which was roughly the thickness of two telephone poles, rose fairly straight, dodging a few imaginary redcoat shells near the top. There it divided into a spread of twisted spokes, with the stoutest branch going
off horizontally, away from the road. And then, because asymmetry was a quirk of all thorn trees, the neat look of the thing had been spoiled by a secondary trunk, sprouting out of the main one at head height, on the other, picnic-spot side.
“Shall I explain, Lieutenant?”
“Uh huh.”
“The deceased was dangling over this exact area where you see the red ants going in and out of their nest. His toes were almost touching, because of the stretch in the neck—it was terrible. So, as you can see, the rope went up and over that biggest branch, and down to where it was tied on the main part.”
“Just hold on,” Strydom interrupted, his head tipped back. “How could he have got it over a branch as high as that? He couldn’t have thrown it, with all the rest of the sticks in the way.”
“That was also a bloody long tow rope,” Kramer added.
“Not really, sir; usual double-length. Can I show you?”
“You’re about the right size.”
Grinning, Van Heerden went around to the far side of the tree and sprang onto a large boulder. He reached up, took a grip on the offshoot from the main trunk, and hauled himself into the air. Then he slipped his foot into the fork, swung round and stood triumphant, with his underpants showing.
“Very clever, Van. You worked that all out for yourself?”
“Didn’t have to, Lieutenant. This is where the end of the rope was tied, after he’d dropped the noose part over the branch. In line here with my face, when I’m upright, you see. Actually, it was Sergeant Arnot who said how obvious it was, when we were undoing the knot this morning.”
There he went again; no idea of tact at all.
But Doc Strydom seemed delighted, and took out his notebook to make a quick sketch.
“Don’t you see, Tromp? That must have also been how he achieved his drop. There’s nothing else he could have been standing on.”
“What about the rock?”
“You couldn’t swing off from there, man! Talk sense. The tree’s in the way, for a start. Van Heerden, will you try something for me?”
“Anything, Doctor, sir.”
“Stand on the fork with one foot only and see if you could jump out this side.”
The experiment was nearly a traumatic success.
“Excellent! And the Bible was in his left hand—yes, that would be in perfect keeping; he’d grip with his right.”
“Erasmus,” muttered Kramer, “was left-handed. One reason we didn’t spot his gun the moment—”
“Ach! Van Heerden, can you do the same the other way round the trunk?”
This was attempted and then aborted, when Van Heerden’s head engaged some minor branches.
“I’m sorry, Doctor, but a bloke can’t manage it if he isn’t standing up straight; you get too bulky, if you understand. You don’t have to grip hard though—just a touch to keep your balance.”
“See, Tromp?”
Kramer glanced around for Zondi, and picked him out in conversation with the two Doringboom Bantu constables. Then he beckoned to the young demonstrator.
“Okay, Tarzan, it’s time for walkies, so down you come. I want that sketch plan, correct in every detail, on your sergeant’s desk before I leave today. In inches as well, okay? Because all this metrication business gives me a pain in the arse.”
“What would you estimate the drop at?” Strydom said, stepping back to improve the perspective. “I’d say it was approximately two—er—six feet. Pity we didn’t ask the lad to take the tape measure up with him.”
Van Heerden laughed as he overhead this, and tapped his clipboard. “There’s no need for all that fuss, surely? You
measure from where his foot was, on the fork, and then down to a couple of inches from the ground, where his foot ended up! Five foot ten, I’ve got here.”
This time Strydom did appear somewhat put out, but Kramer, who enjoyed the triumph of common sense over rare idiocy, was forgiving. He even offered Van Heerden a Lucky Strike, while firing a sudden question.
“What car’s tracks are these?”
“Them? They must come from the ambulance—from when it was backed in under here this morning.”
“Didn’t anyone check the ground?”
“In what way, Lieutenant? It was all trampled by the umfaans and who’s going to—”
“I am, Constable Van Heerden. You have seen a cowboy film, I suppose? Where they make the bloke sit on his horse with the noose round his neck?”
“Now, now, my friend,” Strydom intervened. “You are going too far! Even if you are suggesting he stood on the top of one! How could he be made to meekly do that? We must stick to the facts.”
That could have triggered something unpleasant if Zondi hadn’t chosen to sidle up then, his brows raised deferentially for permission to speak.
“Let’s hear it, Hopalong,” said Van Heerden.
“Thank you, sir. Lieutenant, I have been talking with one of the others who interrogated the children this morning. Would you wish to do likewise?”
“Which one is it, Sergeant?” Kramer asked.
“Agrippa Ngidi, sir.”
“Hey, Fatso! Over here, man—at the double!” Van Heerden bawled. “Your boy had better interpret; this one’s useless.”
The larger of the two jogged up, stamped to attention, and Zondi had to sway out of the path of a sledge-hammer salute.
“Suh!” boomed Ngidi, who bore tribal scars on his plump cheeks.
“Carry on, Sergeant Zondi.”
As melodic Zulu became Afrikaans, Strydom stirred restlessly, but Kramer was determined to hear the man out. Ngidi had arrived with Sergeant Arnot a little before eight, and had been detailed to deal with the farm laborers’ children who’d found the body. These children came to the picnic spot early every morning, to see what food might have been thrown in the food bin, and to wait on in hope of begging scraps off motorists who paused there for breakfast. The body had frightened them badly, and only the smoke of the caravaners’ fire had lured them back. At this stage, the body hadn’t been noticed from where the tables were, being hidden by the tree, and the morning rather misty. After showing the whites what one of their kind had done to himself, the children had watched the family pack up and go. Uncertain if they were not entitled to the bacon left untouched on the stones around the fire, most of them had stayed on to see what would happen next.
“Did he ask these kids if they’d seen the dead man’s car here before?” Kramer broke in. “Or anything about any other vehicle that was familiar to them?”
The question put a worried frown on Ngidi’s face, and he whispered his reply apologetically.
“He says, Lieutenant, that his only orders were to make sure that the children had stolen nothing from the deceased’s clothing, or from the motorcar, which had been left unlocked.”
“And then?”
“He was instructed to chase these children away. His superior waited here for him to return, and that is all. They then returned to Doringboom.”
Kramer fell into a ponder.
“You can bugger off now, Fats,” Van Heerden told Ngidi. “Be sure you’re ready with the tape when I come, because the boss has still a lot to do.”
“No, first ask him where the kids live, Zondi.”
“To hell and gone,” declared Van Heerden, “and there’s not a road anywhere near that I know of. Five kilometers, at least.”
“Lieutenant,” Zondi said quietly. “Ngidi can show me the path they have made.”
“Fine. Then you see you have a proper word with them. Hitch a lift in the constable’s van afterwards, or we’ll pick you up on the way back. Okay?”
“Sir.”
“Excuse me,” Strydom butted in, “but are you sure that sending him such a—”
“The lazy bugger needs a walk,” said Kramer, making for the car.
Zondi could have chosen which path to follow without any assistance from the Doringboom bumpkin: it was so obviously a children’s path. The veld was never as flat and featureless as it looked from the road, and a path made by adults’ feet, trudging through the same dry grassland day after day, would have taken the line of least resistance. A four-gallon tin of river water, balanced on the head, was far easier to bear up a slope if the incline was climbed crookedly, and an outcrop of rocks was tedious when your feet were heavy. Arid so, whereas a path worn away by grownups would have skirted and meandered and turned, the path he was following ran straight. Dead straight, and as uncompromising as the hunger that sent small bare feet, numbed fleet by the frost, scampering down it each morning. He cursed the children for the straightness of their path. There was, of course, nothing to prevent him from finding a less strenuous route, except his pride. Over the past three months, Zondi had learned many things about pride, and in particular, how much strength it took.