COLONEL HANS MULLER, divisional commandant of the CID, leaned his elbows on his enormous desk and made a tent of his fingers. For a while he stared at the darker patch of cream wall where an official portrait of Balthazar John Vorster had hung for many years, and then he explored the ceiling for some sign of his small friend, a lizard that seemed also to have passed into retirement. Gradually, his craggy face assumed a degree of composure, and he collapsed the tent to place his hands a business-like foot apart on his blotter.
“What it all boils down to,” he said, “is that we’ve got a madman on the loose.”
“A killer on the loose, ja,” agreed Kramer.
“You must admit he was crazy to return the body like that to the Digby-Smiths’.”
“Not necessarily, Colonel; there could have been method in his madness.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know, but I’d prefer to keep my options open on his mental state. Bringing the body back does achieve one thing, so far as he’s concerned: we haven’t the slightest idea where Hookham was murdered.”
“True.” Colonel Muller flipped open the docket on his desk. “While you were out this morning, I had another look at the statement you took from Bradshaw. The description it gives of his assailant is very woolly, Lieutenant, very subjective. All it says here is, ‘There was this massive bloke, built like a brick shit-house.’ Am I right in thinking you weren’t taking him too seriously at the time? I usually expect my officers to do better than that. I’m also grateful when the wording of a description can be used on a ‘wanted’ bulletin without causing grave offence to the general public.”
Kramer shrugged. “Okay, so I didn’t go into it too deeply, sir, but as we both agreed—”
“You didn’t go into it at all, Tromp! Let’s be honest about this. What we want is a little more precision. What we want is the best possible description of this suspect! Remember, he’s out there somewhere at this very minute, and—who knows?—he could be lining up his next victim!”
“That would depend—” began Kramer.
“Please, Tromp, no half-baked theories at this stage. If you find a pattern that links Bradshaw and Hookham together, well and good, but until such time, we must view this killer as some sort of maniac working at random. In my opinion, every living soul in Trekkersburg is at risk.”
“You could equally say—”
“And our only means of diminishing that risk is to provide ourselves with a clear picture of the enemy. That is your priority.”
Kramer gave up trying to finish a sentence, and reached over for the telephone. “You want me to see Bradshaw again, sir?”
“Who else? The housemaid’s the only other eye-witness so far, but she was too far away.”
“Right, then I’ll try and get him before he goes back to the river.”
“What river?” Colonel Muller raised a quizzical brow.
Kramer paused in his dialing only long enough to tap the topmost newspaper cutting in the docket, which Colonel Muller then read while they waited for a reply.
“After discharging himself from the hospital yesterday,” wrote the Gazette’s Crime Reporter, “Mr. Bradshaw said that he might take himself away for a few days to his fishing cottage. ‘It’s all been a bit of a shock to the system,’ he told me, ‘but it’s nothing that a day or two with a trout rod can’t cure! I just hope my arm will be up to it.’ It is believed that his son, Mr. Darren Bradshaw, will continue to run the family business until his father is properly recovered again. Mr. Bradshaw Jr. is a student at the Kritzinger Business Studies College in Johannesburg, and an Old Boy of Trekkersburg High.”
True to form, the telephone in the fishing cottage rang and rang. “I must have missed him,” said Kramer, “or perhaps he’s taken some sandwiches out with him.”
“Hey? No answer? I’m not sure I like that, Tromp!”
“Ach, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, Colonel. If you knew the—”
“But I mean, what the hell’s the Gazette publishing this sort of thing for? This is what I’m always saying about newspapers! Honestly, they are our number one cause of crime in this country! If our friend was determined to get him, then all he had to do was—”
“It doesn’t give the whereabouts of the fishing cottage, Colonel,” Kramer pointed out.
“Would that be so difficult to discover? Don’t be damned silly, man! God, if I’d only seen this before, I’d have—”
Kramer killed the call and dialed another number.
“Who are you ringing now?” asked Colonel Muller.
“Bradshaw’s house. It’s possible that he’s come home already.”
An engaged tone.
“Why haven’t you been keeping a proper check on his movements, Lieutenant?”
“Didn’t see the need, Colonel. In fact, not until—”
“But this is ridiculous, man! No answer?”
“Are they?” Colonel Muller snatched up the other telephone. “What’s the number of the Bradshaw house?”
Kramer told him, and listened to the brief exchange that followed with the chief switchboard operator at the General Post Office.
“Lieutenant,” said Colonel Muller, a minute or so later, “I’ve got some news for you: nobody is talking on that line. Either the receiver’s off the hook, or.…” And he bunched his fists dramatically.
“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” Kramer replied, getting up off his corner of the desk, “but if you like, I’ll go down and take a look.”
Zondi nosed the Chevrolet into another small backwater down in the oldest quarter of the city, and Kramer pointed to a street-sign half-engulfed by an unruly hedge. “Kitchener Row,” he said, relieved they had found it at long last. “Now what we want is Number Forty-two. It’s amazing he’d want to live in a dump like this—he’s certainly got the money to be somewhere much posher.” All his previous dealings with Bradshaw had taken place at either the shop in Ballard’s Arcade or in the hospital.
“Forty-two will be on that side,” said Zondi.
Kramer scanned the line of dreary orange-brick dwellings that stood so close together that some were almost touching. He had always had a strong antipathy for turn-of-the-century, jerry-built architecture, with its pointed cornices, pretentious Doric columns along the verandahs and steeply pitched tin roofs, and regarded them as the stuff of which bad dreams were made. He’d once had a witchlike aunt who’d lived in one, steeped in her memories and general incontinence, and given to pinching the pink cheeks of any young guest before offering them a biscuit.
“This shouldn’t take long, Mickey,” said Kramer, patting his pockets to make sure he had his notebook, and discovering he was still carrying the length of cord about. “Here, play with this while I’m inside, and see if you can make out what it’s from. Doc Strydom thinks this frayed section half-way along is significant.”
“Why are the ends cut off, boss?”
“To make it shorter, of course! Hell, sometimes I think it must be true what they say about you kaffirs.…”
Zondi laughed and settled back behind the wheel with the cord. “Some kind of pulley?” he murmured, becoming immediately engrossed.
No. 42 Kitchener Row was a very small, unremarkable house that nobody would look at twice unless he was trying to find its front door. Kramer found it behind a faded canvas roller blind and knocked twice. When this failed to bring a response, he tried to find a doorbell, couldn’t see one anywhere, and knocked again. There wasn’t a sound from inside.
He left the verandah and took a narrow footpath running between the left-hand side of the house and a high brick wall that cut off the neighbors. At the far end of the path was a wooden gate with a latch in it. He slipped the latch and stepped into a garden that took him quite by surprise; it wasn’t only far bigger than he’d imagined, but landscaped and filled with every tropic-bright bloom he had ever seen. Clearly such a garden could not have been put together in a decade or two, but must have been created by the original owners of the drab little house—all except for the swimming pool beyond the mulberry trees. As he advanced towards the pool, having caught a glimpse of movement there, the high wall all around enveloped him in a sense of total privacy that he coveted.
He coveted even more the stunning if diminutive female form in a bikini who stood with her back towards him at the near end of the pool, adjusting her yellow bathing cap. The legs were long and slender, the buttocks were firmly rounded, the waist was small, the shoulders wide, and from what he could see of the left breast, its perky promise was worth fighting and dying for. It was all he could do to keep walking, and not to throw himself forward, taking her—in every sense of the word—completely by surprise. What a wild, truly magnificent encounter that would be, there among the birds and the bees and the flowers, two strangers locked in lusty celebration of Nature’s Way, panting and.…
“Miss?”
She turned and said, “Why, hello, Lieutenant Kramer! How nice to see you again!”
This second surprise stopped him in his tracks. He recognized the plain, weak-eyed, rather blotchy face under the yellow bathing cap instantly, but simply couldn’t reconcile the rest of Mrs. Archie Bradshaw with the dowdy, dull little figure he had last seen beside her husband’s hospital bed.
“Very nice!” echoed Archie Bradshaw. “You’re always welcome, Lieutenant! Can I offer you something cold to drink?”
Kramer twisted round. Bradshaw was seated with his arm in a sling under one of the mulberry trees. Leisure clothes did little to make him appear less overbearing; although of average height, there was a bulk and a belligerence about the man that filled the eye. His jaw was heavy, his forehead sloped back sharply, and beneath his door-knob of a nose was a gray mustache of short bristles as abrasive as his manner. But it was with fresh insight that Kramer now regarded the antique dealer, seeing him not only in matters of business—but of the heart and home too—as a singularly successful snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.
“Er, I had a couple of lagers not long ago, thanks,” he said. “It’s just that we rang you a few—”
“Have you met Darren?” asked Mrs. Bradshaw, proudly.
Kramer nodded to the head that had just surfaced in the pool and was treading water with its foreshortened body. “Hullo, Darren—how goes it?”
“This is the detective in charge of your father’s case,” explained Mrs. Bradshaw.
Bradshaw Junior, a belligerent-looking young man of about twenty with weak eyes, said, “Really?” And swam away under water.
“Well, um, wouldn’t you two like to go up to the house?” suggested Mrs. Bradshaw, in the awkward way of an embarrassed parent. “I’m sure you’d both be more comfortable there!”
Kramer noticed the antique dealer wincing at every other step as they crossed the patch of lawn leading to the back verandah. “Still giving you trouble, hey, Mr. Bradshaw?”
“Damn right it is! Partly my own fault though, thinking I could go after trout in this condition. Hooked a three-pounder, had to use the net, and bloody nearly passed out—rush of black blood to the head, y’know what I mean. Really started playing up yesterday and finally last night I got the hell in, sent for young Darren to come up and collect me.” He stopped and turned. “Darren? Don’t forget we open at two sharp—right on the dot!”
“Haven’t forgotten,” came back a bored drawl from the pool.
The back door led into an enclosed verandah off which was the kitchen and a room Bradshaw described as his study. There was nothing whatsoever to study in it, unless one counted the piles of invoices and auctioneers’ catalogues scattered about, and there were no antiques either, compounding the impression the dealer was just that, with no finer feelings for the aesthetic side of his trade. The telephone was off the hook.
“Cranks,” said Bradshaw, noticing Kramer’s glance. “We’ve had the bastards pestering us for days—they even come to the front door, so we’ve had the bell taken away. Best of the bunch was this funny man who said he’d read about it in the paper, and he’d brought along his Scotch terrier called ‘Jock the Giantkiller!’ ”
“Uh huh, you always get them. So you got back last night?”
“Early hours of this morning, to be exact. Darren came up about ten, ten-thirty, and we had a couple of beers and chewed the fat for a while. Sure about that drink?”
“Perfectly,” said Kramer.
“Then sit yourself somewhere,” invited Bradshaw, lowering himself gingerly into a leather armchair. “Has something come up?”
“Ja, you could say that. It’s just the body of a man was found shot in town this morning.”
“Shot dead, you mean?”
“Stone dead. Three shots, a skull fracture, and his wrists had been tied together with such force they’d been broken. He’d been shot by the same gun as you were.”
The heavy jaw went slack for an instant, and the antique dealer swallowed hard. “The same gun? Where? Did you get him?”
“We haven’t a clue where. The body was left in the boot of a car.”
“But—but it was the same gun? You’re sure about that?”
“Uh huh.”
“And the wrists were broken?”
Kramer nodded. “That’s right. Like you say, this must be one hell of a big bastard we’re looking for. The victim was a visitor from overseas staying with—”
Bradshaw started to laugh, checked himself but couldn’t get the ugly grin off his face.
“Sir?”
“Ach, I know it’s rough this poor bugger’s copped it, Lieutenant, don’t get me wrong! But you don’t know how relieved I—”
“Well, how would you put it? To have this proof that I’ve not been going out of my bloody mind after all! Christ, how long has it been? Six days? For six bloody days I’ve had this mental picture of the bastard, towering up above me against the sodding skyline, and I’ve known bloody well that nobody’s believed me, including yourself. And now you—”
“Correction, I’ve never been so far as—”
“Don’t give me any bull, Lieutenant! It was there in your face at the hospital! I knew it’d be, right from the start. I said to myself: Archie, who the hell’s going to believe you? Keep this ‘tall tale’ to yourself, man! Why do you think I didn’t tell the wife when I got home? Why didn’t I tell the quack when he was called? Those clever-dick buggers at the hospital? And then, when I did come out with the truth, Jesus! I tell you, I’ve been regretting it ever since, what with you lot, the Press and all the cranks ringing up. But the worst part has been not believing myself any longer; the doubts. Did I really see a bloke that size? Then what exactly did he look like? Did he say anything? What sort of clothes? What height? What weight? Can’t you see for yourself what a bloody obsession it’s become?”
Bradshaw gestured agitatedly towards his desk. Kramer went over and found a scatter of sketches in black crayon; each was very much like another, and depicted a hulking shape holding a revolver in both hands.
“You drew these, Mr. Bradshaw?”
“The wife did—y’know, to my instructions. I can’t use my hand properly yet, and, besides, I’ve never been any good at art.” He extended a limp forefinger from his sling. “There, that one on top is the best of the bunch so far, but still isn’t right.”
“Why’s it all shaded in?”
“Because,” replied Bradshaw, with a sigh to indicate his patience was being sorely tried, “because as I’ve said umpteen bloody times already, he was against the sun, silhouetted against the sun, and I had only about a split-second before I saw the flash of his gun going off.”
“He’s got it in both hands, hey? You never said anything about that before.”
“What’s that? Oh, that came out when we were getting the outline right, not that I see it’s of any special—”
“But it is significant,” Kramer cut in. “That style of taking aim is quite recent really, so we can guess that this man was either in a young age bracket or had been taking instruction. Would you hold a gun like that, for instance?”
Bradshaw shook his head, and blustered, “Well, you know what they say about old dogs! It just hadn’t occurred to me—”
“You said you’d been going over heights and weights, sir. Have you got anything there for me?”
“Er, I’d say not an inch under six-four. I’m five-ten and—”
“Weight?”
“You’ve got the picture there, so your guess is as good as mine.”
“Two-eighty pounds?”
“I’d have said two-seventy. Shall we split the difference? As to clothing, all I’m sure of is that he wasn’t wearing a jacket. Probably a short-sleeved sports shirt, dark trousers, dark shoes. Just a chance his hair was brown, but that might have been the way the sun was catching it.”
Kramer watched Bradshaw clumsily load his pipe from an ostrich-skin tobacco pouch, and noted how agitated he was just beneath the surface; obviously a hardcase of his type hated to be enfeebled in this fashion. Then Kramer took another look at the topmost sketch.
“This bloke’s hair is very short,” he said to Bradshaw. “And the ears, they’re very flat.”
“The wife’s theory is that he could have been wearing a nylon stocking over his head, which would certainly explain that.”
“Or he could have been a coon. As you say, we mustn’t forget this was a silhouette you saw, and—”
“No,” said Bradshaw. “He was not a coon.”
“How can you be so certain, sir? There’s nothing in this outline that contradicts the—”
“I’m sure, damnit! Now tell me about this poor sod who got shot.”
Perhaps it was typical of Bradshaw, thought Kramer, to have delayed this question for so long—or until he’d had time to think about someone other than himself for a moment. “Ach, the bloke who got shot was a visitor from overseas, like I said earlier, who was staying with the Digby-Smiths. Do you know them?”
“Only as occasional customers—their taste is putrid. But just a second, you can’t mean.…” Bradshaw took the pipe from his mouth. “You can’t mean Bonzo Hookham?”
The pit of Kramer’s stomach cringed, but somehow he’d been expecting this and the thud never came. “Edward Bonzo Hookham, DFC and bar,” he said, quoting Jonty.
“I don’t believe it!”
“Why not, sir?”
“Why not? Well … God, I don’t know why not! You can’t have got it wrong? He isn’t strictly a visitor from overseas, y’know, he was born and brought up in—”
“No mistake,” said Kramer. “So you and Mr. Hookham—”
Bradshaw rose and made his way painfully to the door. “Myra!” he bawled across the lawn. “Myra! Come here, woman. You won’t believe what’s happened now!” Then he turned to Kramer and said, “He was at our flying club social last week, the guest of honor. Naturally, as we’d both been in the RAF, the pair of us spent—”
“Oh no, nothing like that. I was flying Spits, Hurricanes, while Bonzo—as you might have guessed from his size—was in Bomber Command. Not much elbow space in a bloody Lancaster! So they used to snap up all the little blokes, and the—” Mrs. Bradshaw arrived, dripping, in the verandah doorway. “Listen to this, Myra. The crazy bastard has shot someone else now—Bonzo Hookham!”
“Who, Archie?”
“For Christ’s sake, that Bomber Command chappie we met at the flying club the other night. Short, drank brandy—”
“No!” she gasped. “Not that nice man! But he was utterly charming, so why would anyone—”
“Let’s get one thing straight first,” interrupted Kramer, taking out his notebook. “Are you saying that, although you both served in the English air force, you’d never come across him before? Or have I maybe—?”
“Never,” said Archie Bradshaw, “more’s the pity. But there were one helluva lot of us, y’know.”