Indecent Exposure (30 page)

“It all seems rather circumstantial, sir,” said Sergeant Breitenbach doubtfully. “I mean is there any hard evidence?”

“Yes,” said the Kommandant emphatically and rummaging in his pocket produced a small object. “Have any of you seen one of these?” he asked. It was clear that everyone in the room had seen a police detonator. “Good,” continued the Kommandant. “Well, this was found in the stables at White Ladies.”

“By Konstabel Els?” Sergeant Breitenbach inquired.

“By me,” said the Kommandant, and made a mental note to send Els ahead with a police van filled to the roof with gelignite, fuses, detonators and contraceptives to ensure that enough hard evidence to satisfy Sergeant Breitenbach was there when the rest of the force arrived. In the meantime he explained the layout of the house and garden and ordered a full force of Saracen armoured cars, two hundred policemen armed with Sterling machine guns, German guard dogs and Dobermann Pinschers to be deployed.

“Remember we are dealing with professional killers,” he said finally. “These fellows aren’t amateurs.”

By the time Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon emerged suitably washed, set and permed from the hairdressers she was just in time to see the convoy led by five Saracen armoured cars grinding through the main street. She stood for a moment gazing at the policemen crowding the lorries and admiration for the Kommandant’s obvious efficiency swelled in her breast. As the last lorry containing German guard dogs disappeared round the corner she turned and walked back to the police station to tell him once again how much she had missed him, an opinion confirmed by the Sergeant at the Duty desk.

“But where has he gone?” she asked plaintively.

“Sorry, ma’am,” said the Sergeant, “I’m not allowed to tell you.”

“But isn’t there any way I can find out?”

“Well if you follow that convoy, I daresay you’ll find him,” said the Sergeant and Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon went out into the street disappointed and rather hungry. To console herself she went into Lorna’s Causerie in Dirk’s Arcade and had a pot of tea and some cup cakes.

I’ll try again later, she thought. He can’t have gone far. But when an hour later she went round to the police station again it was to learn that the Kommandant wouldn’t be returning until the following day.

“How extraordinary, you’d think he would have told me,” she said exuding an aura of middle-class charm that had subdued stronger men than the Duty Sergeant.

“This mustn’t go any further,” he told her confidingly, “but they’ve gone up to Weezen.”

“On manoeuvres?” asked Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon hopefully.

“To get those saboteurs,” said the Sergeant.

“In Weezen?”

“That’s right,” the Sergeant said, “but don’t tell anyone I told you.”

Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon said she certainly wouldn’t and went out into the street astonished by this new turn of events. She was half-way back to the Rolls when the full realization of what she had done dawned on her.

“Oh my God,” she wailed and ran the rest of the way to the Rolls only to find that she’d left the keys somewhere. She searched her bag but the keys weren’t there. In a state of utter distraction she ran back to the hairdresser’s and came out five minutes later empty-handed. As she stood in the street despairingly a taxi drew up.

Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon jumped in. “To Weezen and fast,” she said. The driver turned round and shook his head.

“That’s seventy miles,” he said. “Can’t do it.”

“I’ll pay you double fare,” Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon said frantically and opened her bag. “That’ll pay you for the return journey.”

“All right,” said the driver.

“For God’s sake hurry,” she told him, “it’s a matter of life and death.”

The taxi moved off and was soon bucketing over the corrugations on the road into the mountains. Far ahead forked lightning on the horizon heralded the approach of a storm.

As the lightning flickered around him and the hailstones rattled on the roof of his van Konstabel Els switched on the windshield wipers and peered into the gloom. Driving with his usual disregard for other traffic on the road, his own life and that of anyone living within half a mile of the van should it explode. Els was looking forward to the evening’s entertainment. It would compensate him for the tone of voice Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon had used to address him in the past. “I’ll Harbinger him,” Els thought with relish. By the time he reached Weezen night had fallen. Els drove on and turned up the drive to White Ladies. With a show of bravado occasioned by his knowledge of the drinking habits of the household he drove the van into the yard at the back of the house and switched off the engine. A black face peered into the van. It was Fox.

“Harbinger,” he said. “You’ve come back.”

“Yes,” said Els, “I’ve come back.”

Konstabel Els climbed out of the van and went round to the back and opened the doors. Then he turned back and called, “Fox, you kaffir, come here.” But there was no answer. Responding to the same instinct for self-preservation which marked his namesake he was off across the garden and into the trees and putting as much ground as he could between him and the man in the uniform of the South African Police whom he knew by the name of Harbinger. Fox knew death when he saw it.

Inside the house Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon and his guests were less discerning.

“Wonder what’s happened to Daphne,” the Colonel thought as he dressed for the party. “Typical of her to be late tonight.” He peered into the mirror, and was mollified. A frock of pale pink georgette, with long bell-shaped sleeves and a black velvet girdle knotted at one side, fitted him seemingly like a glove. A large Leghorn hat, its black velvet streamers fastened beneath his chin, heavily weighted with a full-blown rose over one eye, threatened to hide his rebellious mop of hair. White silk stockings and a pair of ordinary pumps completed his attire. A miniature apron, bearing the stencilled legend “An English Rose” upon its muslin, left no doubt about his identity.

“Berry to the life,” he murmured and consulted Jonah & Co. Chapter XI to see if there was anything he had left out. Then picking up his bead bag he went downstairs where the others had gathered waiting for revels to begin.

“I’m an Incroyable,” Major Bloxham told La Marquise who had come as Sycamore Tight.

“Absolutely, darling,” she shrieked shrilly.

Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon’s entrance as Berry as An English Rose was greeted with rapturous applause. The Colonel waited for the laughter to die down before addressing his guests.

“As you all know,” he said, “every year we celebrate our annual meeting with a final re-enactment of one of the great episodes in the life of Berry & Co. Tonight it is Chapter XI of Jonah & Co, Berry Puts Off His Manhood. I’m glad to see there has been such a good turn-out this year.”

After a few more words about the necessity of keeping the flag flying in foreign parts which La Marquise took as a compliment, the Colonel told Major Bloxham to switch the record player on and presently was dancing a Tango with him.

“These step-ins of Daphne’s are damned tight,” he said as they went into a reverse turn.

“So’s La Marquise,” said the Major.

In the darkness outside the window Konstabel Els watched the proceedings with interest. “I always wondered why he was so keen on roses,” he thought, eyeing the Colonel with new appreciation.

He went back to the van and began to carry the evidence of the Colonel’s attempt to overthrow the government of South Africa into the harness room. By the time he had packed several hundred pounds of gelignite on to shelves that had previously held nothing more incriminating than saddle soap he had begun to regret letting Fox escape. Finally when the last carton of Durex Fetherlites had been safely installed, Els lit a cigarette and sat back in the darkness to consider what other measures to take.

“Party seems to be going with a bang,” he heard the fat man tell Major Bloxham from the terrace where the two men were urinating intermittently on to a bed of begonias. Els took the hint and stubbed his cigarette out but the remark had given him a new idea. He crept out of the harness room and presently was carrying buckets of kerosene from the fuel store across the yard and pouring them into the Colonel’s wine cellar where they splashed unnoticed over the Australian burgundy. To add to the inflammatory mixture Els then fetched several bundles of gelignite and tossed them into the cellar. Finally, to prevent anyone leaving the house without giving some indication where they had gone, he poured a solution of aniseed on the doormats before climbing into the van and driving down to the main gate to wait for the police convoy. When there was no sign of it after ten minutes, Els decided to go back and see how the party was getting on.

“Got to kill time,” he muttered as he strolled up through the orchard. Ahead of him White Ladies, brilliantly illuminated for the occasion, exuded an atmosphere of discreet abandon. The Tango had been replaced by the Black Bottom and the Colonel was sitting this one out with La Marquise while Major Bloxham and the fat man were debating what to put into a cocktail called a Monkey Gland. With a fine disregard for the Colonel’s herbaceous border Els groped his way round the house and found a window which gave him an excellent view of the proceedings and he was studying An English Rose with an appreciative eye when La Marquise looked up and spotted him.

In the second armoured car Kommandant van Heerden was having second thoughts about giving Els three hundred pounds of gelignite to plant. He was the only person to know the layout and besides I’d have heard it if it had gone off, he thought and consoled himself with the realization that it might not be such a bad thing if Els did bungle the part he had been given to play. No arrests, no trouble with confessions and no Els, and he once again wondered if he had been wise to listen to Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon. All in all, he decided, he had very little choice in the matter. If she was foolish enough to let her husband know that he had been cuckolded and the Colonel threatened to shoot a member of the South African Police and a senior member at that, he had only himself to blame for what followed. The Kommandant couldn’t remember if Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon had actually said that her husband had threatened to shoot him but in any case the suspicion that he might was enough. More to the point was the appeal the Colonel would make to the Bureau of State Security. If there was one sort of suspect
BOSS
really liked after Jewish millionaires whose parents had emigrated from Petrograd, it was Englishmen of the old school with links with the Anglican Church. The Colonel’s outspoken contempt for Afrikaners would silence any suspicion that he might be entirely innocent while his wartime experience in the underground and his training in explosives made him precisely the sort of man
BOSS
had been looking for over the years. The Kommandant remembered the Union Jack flying in front of White Ladies. In the eyes of
BOSS
that alone would damn the Colonel and his Club as traitors.

Finally, to salve what little remained of his conscience, the Kommandant recalled the fate of his grandfather who had been shot after the Battle of Paardeburg by the British.

Tit for tat, he thought and ordered the driver to stop at the police station in Weezen. There he insisted on seeing the Sergeant in charge.

“Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon a communist?” asked the Sergeant who finally made his appearance in a pair of pyjamas. “There must be some mistake.”

“Our information is that he’s a saboteur trained by British intelligence,” said the Kommandant. “Have you checked his wartime career in your security reports?”

“What sec …” the Sergeant began before realizing his mistake. “No.”

“I always keep a file copy in case Security HQ lose the one I send them,” said the Kommandant. “Amazing how many times they have mislaid things I’ve sent them.” He looked round the police station approvingly. “Like the way things are done here, Sergeant. About time you had some promotion. The main thing is to keep copies of your security reports.”

He went outside and the Sergeant was amazed at the size of the task force required to arrest Colonel Heathcote-Kilkoon. As if to provide final proof that the Colonel was indeed the Communist saboteur trained by British intelligence, a sudden burst of firing came from the direction of White Ladies. Kommandant van Heerden dived into the Saracen and the Sergeant returned to his office and sat down at his typewriter to draft a report on the Colonel. It was much easier than he had expected, thanks to the forgetfulness of the Kommandant, who had left a specimen of his own report on the desk.

As the convoy moved off again the Sergeant typed out his suspicions. They were dated six months earlier.

“Better late than never,” he thought as he typed.

His view of things was shared by Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon’s taxi driver.

“There’s ice on the road,” he told her when she asked him to step on it.

“Nonsense,” said Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, “it’s a hot night.”

“There’s been a hailstorm, lady and if it isn’t ice it’s a thin coating of mud and as slippery as hell,” and to prove his point put the car into a slight skid on the next corner.

“You don’t want to end up over a cliff,” he went on, righting the car, “that wouldn’t do you no good at all.”

In the back seat Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon couldn’t imagine that anything was going to do her much good. What had started out with less than the emotional force involved in her monthly choice of hairstyle had turned into a paroxysm of uncertainty. Melodramatic mock confessions were one thing. They added spice to the boredom of existence. But armoured cars and convoys of policemen armed with rifles and accompanied by snarling guard dogs were something else again. “One can have too much of a good thing,” she thought recalling the logistics of her lover’s concern. They argued a quite disproportionate devotion, not to mention a terrifying lack of sense of humour.

“I was only joking,” she murmured and was not consoled by the taxi driver’s next remark.

“Looks like the army’s been through here,” he said as the car slewed through the mud churned up by the convoy. “Shouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t tanks.”