ZONDI WAS STILL fiddling with the cord when Kramer returned to the car about half an hour later. He had the thing looped over part of the steering wheel and was working it gently up and down, as though trying to trigger off some association.
“Progress, Mickey?”
“A little progress, boss. With much respect, I think the Lieutenant talks a lot of nonsense sometimes.”
“Oh ja?”
Zondi held the severed ends of the cord together. “You say this rope was cut to make it shorter.”
“Uh huh.”
“But this rope isn’t short, boss! It’s a very long rope just to tie a man’s hands together.”
Kramer thought about that for a moment. “How do you know he hadn’t intended to connect the hands to the feet or something?”
“You mean with Boss Hookham standing up?”
“I mean—”
“And another thing,” Zondi went on, “is it not strange that the rope on either side of the worn section is almost precisely the same length?”
“Is it? Perhaps—”
“I tell you, Lieutenant, the answer is very simple, and somewhere a bell is ringing.”
“Ding-dong,” said Kramer, impatiently. “Just concentrate on getting me back to the office, hey? And on the way I’ll tell you what real progress sounds like!”
Zondi draped the cord around his neck like a tailor’s tape measure and drove off. In under a mile, Kramer had covered the main points of what he’d just learned in Bradshaw’s study.
“Well, Mickey, what do you think of that, hey?”
“Hmmm.”
“Why the ‘hmmm’? There’s a link there! The start of a pattern.”
“That both were in the RAF?”
“Uh huh, all that.”
Zondi gave him a sideways glance. “How many people were at this party, boss?”
“Bradshaw estimates around two hundred,” replied Kramer, putting on his sunglasses, “if you count wives and girlfriends. These socials aren’t formal affairs, you understand. The flying club just advertises in shop windows and the small ads, and anybody who’s interested turns up. Generally, it’s the same crowd each time: Sunday pilots, kids from the parachute club, a sprinkling of ex-SAAF and RAF officers, plus—”
“So there were more men from the RAF?”
“He’s given me the names of six, and is going to check with the club secretary in case there were more.”
“But surely,” said Zondi, throttling back with a slight frown, “this isn’t a very big link, boss? And what is a ‘guest of honor?’ ”
“Ach, that isn’t to be taken too seriously—they hadn’t planned it or anything. Hookham just turned up, and because he was from overseas, they tried to make something special out of the occasion. I suppose basically it meant he was taken round, introduced to everyone, and somebody made a stupid speech.”
The Chevrolet picked up speed again. “So Boss Hookham and Boss Bradshaw are both ex-RAF and they were both at this party. From what you say, Boss Hookham’s link with the other six men is just the same.”
“Ja, but none of them’s been shot, hey? I tell you it’s a start, Mickey! You can’t expect all the pieces to fall in your lap.”
Zondi sucked his teeth. “And what do they share in other matters? Boss Bradshaw was also born in this place?”
“Trekkersburg? No, he’s from Jo’burg originally. His wife explained they’d come down after the war, looking for somewhere there wasn’t too much competition. Being so English around here, it’s a good place to pick up old bits of furniture and suchlike in house sales, and Bradshaw supplies other antique shops all over.”
“But his wife, could she give you more of a link?”
Kramer shrugged. “She did her best when I explained about patterns, but no, not really. She said they’d started to talk about fishing and so she’d buggered off quite soon after, leaving the two of them at it. I’ll tell you one thing, old son, she’s wasted on that bastard.”
“In what way, Lieutenant?”
“The only way,” Kramer sighed, winking lecherously, and they both laughed. “But what’s really happened is that now I’m seeing this whole business in a different light. When it was just Bradshaw involved, and we hadn’t any idea of the motive, there was always a slight chance of some criminal element behind the shooting. As you said yourself, Bradshaw could have been up to some tricks he wasn’t going to tell us about. But you add Hookham to the mixture and all that gets ruled out.”
“You mean Meerkat Marais and—”
“Of course! It isn’t their scene! How could a man like Hookham—respectable background, a virtual stranger to the city—be mixed up with them? Okay, I’ve still got to find out about him properly, but I can tell you now that—”
“What I am thinking about is the killer, boss, and the gun,” said Zondi, turning a crocodile of schoolgirls into kangaroos on a pedestrian crossing. “Those bullets are very old.”
“Well, as the Lieutenant knows, most of the guns in the hands of people such as Meerkat are guns stolen from—”
“Ja, ja, ja,” agreed Kramer, “I know what you’re going to say: are guns stolen from the tops of wardrobes where they’ve been lying for years, collecting up the dust. Right?”
Zondi nodded.
“I’ve been going over that myself, and I’ll admit—when we still suspected a possible criminal involvement—that Meerkat’s type seemed the most likely source for such a weapon. But since hearing just how old those bullets were, the idea has begun to make real nonsense. Firstly, we have to imagine a killer who is willing to use old ammunition, risking the chance of misfires and so on, when fresh ammunition is always easy to get hold of. Secondly, we have to imagine Meerkat, for instance, selling a gun cheap because its ammunition doesn’t look too good. Would he do that? Never! He’d put in some new cartridges himself. And thirdly, if you like, we have to imagine that criminal link-up with Hookham, which is just plain impossible.”
“I see your reasoning, boss—” began Zondi.
“Now what if this man has no criminal connections? He wants a gun: the only gun to which he has access is the one on top of the wardrobe in, say, his uncle’s house, and he takes it. He doesn’t know a lot about guns, and the first time he fires only one shot and thinks that’ll do it. But no, Bradshaw lives to tell the tale, so next time he adds two more rounds just to make sure.”
Zondi pouted, silently conceding the sound logic behind all this. He braked and swung into the police vehicle yard.
“Happy now?” asked Kramer, as they came to a halt. “Not that you bloody look it, hey?”
“My problem, boss,” said Zondi, “is maybe that I did not speak with Boss Bradshaw myself, because I cannot see how you can be so sure there is a link between these two men—I mean a stronger link than you have told me about already—that gives us the start of a pattern.”
“It’s a feeling in my bones, man!”
“Ah,” murmured Zondi who, as the officially more primitive of them, had curiously little faith in such things. “Hmmmm.”
Niggled, Kramer made a quick estimate of the length of the mystery cord in relation to Zondi’s own modest stature as they climbed from the car. “You can’t bluff me that wouldn’t be long enough to tie your feet as well,” he grunted. “Go on, try it.”
Zondi slipped the cord from his shoulders and dangled the loop just above the tarmac.
“You’re bloody cheating, kaffir! Extend both your arms down properly!”
With a grin, Zondi obeyed and the loop lay on the tarmac with plenty of slack to spare. “You win, Lieutenant.”
“Always,” said Kramer, turning away to hide a smile. “Now get that damned thing to Forensic right away—there’s been enough buggering around with it.”
Kramer had gone several yards before he realized that Zondi was not following his usual pace behind in public. He looked round and saw him still standing beside the car, holding the ends of the cord, and staring at the worn section which rested on the rough surface of the yard.
“Zondi?”
“Hau, so simple.… We had it upside down.”
“What’s simple?” demanded Kramer.
“This, boss!”
And with a sweep of the cord over his head, Zondi came skipping across the gap between them.
Forensic were not to be outshone, however. Within a remarkably short time, they had not only confirmed that the length of cord was indeed a skipping rope, minus its telltale wooden handles, but they’d used the unusual weave of the fibers to identify the brand. It was a Master Skip, large size, with Xtra-Zip thanks to two sets of ball-bearings, and its price was so exorbitant that only flashy gymnasiums, the energetic rich or total idiots ever bought one.
“Ja, but we must try and be more exact than that,” said Colonel Muller, turning from Kramer to Gait from Forensic. “I hope you asked them at this sports shop to go through their invoices?”
Gait blinked behind his finger-smeared spectacle lenses. “Oh, I made a special point of it, Colonel,” he replied, and dropped his voice even further to add, “they’re Trekkersburg’s sole stockists.…”
He always spoke a little as though he were giving away dark secrets, and wrote everything in a very thin hand. Kramer ran an amused eye over the razor cut on his throat, the mud on his shoes, the dried bloodspots on his soiled shirt, and watched him pick another almost invisible thread from the cuff of his lab coat.
“And?” prompted Colonel Muller, tapping his pencil.
“And they’d only sold three of them in six months, sir, and were thinking of putting the rest on their next sale at half-price. One of the Master Skips went to the Aquarius Fitness Center in Stanley Street, and the other two were cash sales. A young woman bought one of them for her boyfriend.”
“No name? Her description then?”
“She had freckles—that’s all they could agree on.”
“And the other rope?”
“A blank, but they’ll do their best to remember, sir.”
Colonel Muller made a note on his blotter. “And now, Gait, what can you tell us about the things in the car?”
“Including Hookham’s personal effects,” added Kramer.
Gait stopped poking about in the ash-tray and took a minute scrap of paper from his pocket. “This isn’t a list of results,” he stressed, “but just a rough breakdown of what we’ve got to work on. The deceased was carrying hardly anything: ten rand in notes, thirty cents in loose change, a pen, a pen-torch, his British passport, British driving license, and what looks like a letter from a grandchild in England. We also have a quantity of soil samples for analysis, some pieces of vegetation, an intriguing variety of maggot, and—”
“Got the documents with you?” interrupted Kramer.
“Fingerprints still has them,” explained Gait, turning his scrap of paper over. “Let me see.… Ja, the passport is brand new, the driving license has no endorsements, and the letter was from someone signing himself ‘Timmy,’ who talks about his seventh birthday. Nothing much for you there, I’m afraid.”
“Ah! But who was it addressed to?” asked Colonel Muller.
“To ‘Gramps,’ Colonel.”
“No, man! I mean was it still in its envelope?”
“Er, yes of course.… It was addressed to Mr. E. J. Hookham, care of 52 Armstrong Avenue, Morninghill, Trekkersburg, Natal.”
“I thought so!” called Colonel Muller, smugly. “Now we have established how the killer knew where to return the car!”
Gait looked faintly surprised. “Or he could have taken the address from the cover of the Rover’s servicing booklet in the glove compartment,” he said. “There was never anything very complicated about that. The real puzzle is why did he return the vehicle? Was it to gain those ten or twelve hours before anyone could realize there was something seriously wrong? Was that why he stuck a match in the boot lock, hoping to cause a further delay?”
“Giving himself time to cover his tracks, hey?” said Colonel Muller.
“And, as I’ve pointed out before,” Kramer remarked, “by bringing the car back to Square One, we have been left with no idea of where this murder took place.”
“Excellent,” murmured Gait appreciatively, moistening his thin lips. “There’s definitely cunning at work in all this.”
“Could the soil samples help us here?” asked Colonel Muller.
“Could do, sir. Without microscopic examination though—”
“Then I won’t keep you from your invaluable work any longer, hey, Gait?” cut in Colonel Muller, using his smoothy’s voice. “And don’t worry, I’ll be telling your boss what a good job you’ve done on this so far!”
“It was the nearest sports shop to here,” Gait whispered modestly. “Couldn’t have been easier.”
Kramer felt a light touch on his shoulder, and saw Gait wander from the room with a long blonde hair, scrutinizing it thoughtfully.
“So we’ve got another little lead, Tromp!”
“Sir?”
“The Master Skip, man!”
“Ignoring the possibility it was bought in some other place—Cape Town, Durban, Jo’burg or Magaliesbergfonteinpoort West—ja, I suppose that’s true.”
“No, no!” replied Colonel Muller, snapping his pencil point. “Forget that side of it! What this particular Master Skip suggests to me is evidence of a quick improvisation. Nobody would deliberately spoil a nice, expensive skipping rope like that except in a dire emergency, when they had no other piece of rope at hand. In other words, it wouldn’t be something you’d plan to do, would it? I can see him grabbing up the Master Skip, cutting off the handles in case they give him away—or maybe he did that afterwards—and then quickly binding Hookham up with it. Where are those handles, hey? Did he throw them out? Did he hide them? Did he remember to do anything with them? Or are they still lying somewhere?”
“Good point,” said Kramer.
“Find those handles and we have found our man!” Colonel Muller went on, getting a little carried away. “Is it too late to get this in tonight’s paper?”
“The final edition is already on its way up in the van from Durb’s, Colonel.”
“Ach, well, it can go with the rest of the stuff in the Gazette tomorrow morning. Let me see, we’re putting in the new description of the suspect, repeating the appeal to find this gun, and—er, what was the other thing? I must write this down.”
“We’re also asking if anybody heard four shots last night,” Kramer reminded him. “No police station in the whole divisional area had any reports of gunfire from the public, they tell me. The trouble is that people just don’t notice bangs if they think they know the reason: it’s the cops, they say to the kids, or it’s a backfire—or, out in the country, it’s poachers on their neighbors’ land again. Somebody killing a snake.”
“Four shots in a row might produce something though, Tromp. And talking of shots, how is that list of licensed thirty-two owners coming along? The one Records gave you on Monday?”
“It proved useless, sir—that’s why I had Meerkat Marais in today.”
“Useless?”
“Uniform and me have already been through it, and apart from five—who didn’t even know their guns were gone till we approached them—the rest were negative. Neither does it cover more than this area, arms illegally held, war souvenirs and so on, and—”
“Okay, man, okay, I’ve got the picture. I must say I’m glad to hear you’re delegating for once! This isn’t a case for a one-man band, and as you know, my main criticism of you is that you work entirely on your own too often.”
Kramer nearly said something then didn’t.
“Well, Lieutenant, what comes next?” asked Colonel Muller, rising from behind his desk. “If you’re wanting to get going with the Digby-Smiths, I don’t mind doing some of the delegating myself. I’ll send some men out to do the house-to-house enquiries in and around Armstrong Avenue, just in case someone else was up at one o’clock and saw how the killer made his escape from there.”
“Thanks, sir.”
“And what about an armed guard for Bradshaw?” Kramer hesitated.
“Ach, don’t tell me you hadn’t thought of that! If there is this pattern you feel so sure about, and Bradshaw is a part of it, then surely he is in danger of being attacked once again?”
“As a matter of fact,” said Kramer, “Mrs. Bradshaw did ask about police protection, but I.…”
Colonel Muller wagged a stern finger. “Up to your old tricks, hey? You’re half-hoping this bastard will have another go at him, only this time he’ll leave a better set of clues behind?”
“Perhaps if it could be a discreet guard, sir, over on the other side of the road maybe, then—”
“No, Tromp, you can’t have your cake and eat it, man! Now you’ve finally talked me into believing you may have a hunch in this matter, and that you have found the start of some pattern, however nebulous, then you must accept the consequences of that.”
“Okay, sir.”
“And there’s one other thing I want to warn you about.”
“Sir?”
“I don’t want you to do anything but chase this pattern, hey? We’ve got the rope and those bullets and what Forensic is going to be able to tell us, which means—”
“They’ll all take time, Colonel,” Kramer pointed out. “If I can crack this fast another way, then it’s possible I’ll stop someone else being done in—this pattern could include more than two people, you know.”
Colonel Muller sighed. “Ja,” he said, “I know.”
Once Zondi had been brought up to date with what had been said in the divisional commandant’s office, Kramer itched to begin the investigation afresh. He rang Trekkersburg General Hospital, and was informed that Mrs. Digby-Smith had long since been treated and discharged. Pleased to have saved himself a wasted journey, and the loss of time that would have involved, he then dialed the Digby-Smiths’ home number to warn of his imminent arrival. His face fell when the cook answered and said that her mistress was upstairs in bed with the curtains drawn, while her master had gone out in his car with the two dogs, giving her no idea of his destination. Nobody had told her to postpone dinner, however, so she was expecting him back by no later than half past six.
“Six-thirty? Then tell your boss I’ll be there on the dot,” said Kramer, and turned to Zondi as he replaced the receiver. Funny bloke! He’s gone waltzing off somewhere and left his old woman alone in that state. How’s the time?”
“Just after five, boss.”
“Five? Jesus, what am I going to do in the meanwhile? I thought it was much later.”
Zondi shrugged. “Perhaps the Lieutenant could take a look at the Aquarius gym.”
“And see if they’ve still got their Master Skip? Hell, you’re as bad as the Colonel, man.”
“What if theirs has been stolen?” asked Zondi.
“Fat chance!”
“What if they can tell you who owns such a thing?”
“That’s enough, I’ll go,” said Kramer, picking up his jacket. “And you? Are you coming?”
Zondi waved the hacksaw blade used in the murder at Mama Bhengu’s whorehouse. “I think there are some enquiries I must make in Peacevale, boss.”
“Oh ja? Well, if you want a lift later on, I’ll pick you up at the usual place, usual time, unless I get sidetracked.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant.”
Left alone at his small, plain table and stool in the corner, Zondi gazed at the wall for some time, nagged by the gravest of doubts. It worried him that the Lieutenant had become suddenly so single-minded about the case, instead of leaving his options open, and he couldn’t help thinking of the times when just such an approach had repaid stubbornness with disaster. Then he stood up, checked his gun, and went on his way too.