The Sunday Hangman (16 page)

“I bet,” said Kramer.

“Being the sweet boy he is, I still had to talk to him for rather a long time—and so did Sergeant Prins and some other kind men—before he’d stop his nonsense about telling tales on Tony. It made me feel a little awful, and I had to keep reminding myself of what those dreadful people were trying to do. What it came down to, of course, was that we simply hadn’t any choice in the matter.”

“Uh huh.”

“And then, as you know,” Mrs. Roberts said, sighing almost contentedly, “it all happened just as Sergeant Prins had told us it would, but my Peterkins was quite safe. Oh, you should have heard some of the things that Mr. Colgate accused him of! It was wicked. I had a good mind to write to his wife and tell her
what I thought about her husband and how they’d made their money. All that swank and posh! The late Mr. Roberts may have been only a—”

“Are you sure,” Kramer cut in, circling an estimated R16,000 on his memo pad, “that Mr. Colgate wasn’t appearing
pro deo
? For nothing, in other words? He does do that sometimes.”

“No, he wasn’t,” she said firmly.

“And how would you—”

“Our own lawyer told me. In fact, he said he believed there was something
very mysterious
about the money—and I’ll leave you to decide what to make of that!”

Kramer changed the receiver over to his other ear, and took the cigarette Zondi was offering him.

“They couldn’t have sold some property, Mrs. Roberts?”

“What property? They were renting, the same as us. Mind you, they always found enough for all those trips up to Pretoria, but they didn’t think to save anything for later. Typical! The funeral was a disgrace.”

“Oh, ja? You went?”

“Hardly! Mrs. Kleint did—she’s ever so religious—and she swears she’s never seen anything cheaper or plainer. Isn’t that awful? You’d have thought they would care more about what they did with their own flesh and blood. I know my Peterkins won’t even dream of skimping on my arrangements, bless him, when the time comes!”

“You’re damn right, lady,” said Kramer, then found an excuse to ring off. “Jesus.…”

Zondi shifted uncomfortably under his blank stare.

“I’ve just learned something, old son.”

“Boss?”

“It’s the ones with the empty eyes who do the bloody sucking, not the other way round.”

Then Kramer listlessly repeated what else he’d learned, before wandering off along the balcony to the lavatories, fully
intending to stay there until the world was a better place. But he was recalled almost immediately by the promise of some comic relief.

“Witklip on the line,” said Zondi, handing him the receiver.

“Get the dictation set on,” Kramer whispered, and waited until he was plugged in. “Hello, Frikkie? What is it, man?”

“Sorry to trouble you, Lieutenant, but you did say if I had any information I should—”

“Hold it! I’ll put this on scramble.”

Kramer clattered a pencil in his mouthpiece, gave the dial a slight twist, and saw, out of the corner of his eye, Zondi gag himself.

“All clear. You can speak freely now, my friend.”

“Well, sir”—Jonkers began faltering—“I don’t know if this means anything to you, but I think I know why Tommy chose to come here.”

“Uh huh?”

“I’ve heard, shall we say, that he once had a friend who stayed here with a rich uncle. A long time ago, but it’d made an impression—such an impression that Tommy had always wanted to see it for himself. I think that’s right. He also used to boast he was a really bad boy when he was younger. Errol Flynn the Second, he described himself as. Not in the criminal sense of bad; just a bit wild—five or six girls chasing him all the time. Is that what you want?”

“What do you mean, you’ve ‘heard, shall we say’? What’s your source?”

“Well—er—”

“Security must—”

“Yirra, I’m not arguing, hey?” said Jonkers hastily, lapsing into a long, sweaty pause which ended in compulsive fluency. “He apparently made this statement to one of the farmers at the hotel bar, Lieutenant. Everyone was talking away about
him last night, wondering where he was, and fortunately I caught the words, but owing to a coon waiter getting in the way, I’m sorry to say my view was obscured. I thought it best, in the light of the warning you gave us, not to draw too much attention by asking for the person’s name who made this report, and I’m sure you’ll feel I acted correctly under the circumstances.”

What a bloody dreadful prevaricator he was. Even Erasmus, with his pathological need to lie his arse off, would never have tried that level of crap on a grown man, let alone a Witklip mealie strangler. At the very least, he would have required a half-witted woman and a degree of cozy intimacy before letting loose that little lot—two things that, everyone seemed to agree, Witklip had denied him. Then Kramer had a sudden, diabolical inspiration.

“On another matter entirely, Frikkie,” he said matily, “your lady wife does haircuts—am I right?”

If pink sound were a possibility, that was all that came down the line for nearly half a minute.

Kramer did his chuckle. “No need to fear the Commies when we’re around, hey? Tell her I might be calling soon for one of her creations. And, Frikkie, thanks for the other stuff, man; it has cleared up one small point very nicely. Bye now.”

He replaced the receiver, opened the Erasmus docket, and put a tick beside the note about hair clippings being found in the deceased’s ears. Then he looked up to see that Zondi had missed the joke.

“Can’t you see? He chucks in all this bulldust about Errol Flynn and that, which is some gossip his wife told him, hoping to make himself sound like a big agent, and gets caught up in his own—I give up. The only thing that makes you kaffirs laugh is a Rhodesian.”

“I think, boss,” Zondi said solemnly, “that Sergeant Jonkers accidentally told us more than he realized.”

“And that isn’t funny? I lay you ten rand Mrs. Jonkers hasn’t been to a barbecue for twelve weeks either—never mind what that randy bastard organized with her during the rest of the time. Where’s my jacket?”

Zondi helped him into it, allowing himself a small, pinched smile at Kramer’s expense.

“Okay, Mickey,” Kramer challenged, “you tell me what makes kaffirs laugh, then.”

“I will tell you two words to which we are sensitive.”

“Watch it! Kill the light; I’ll do the door.”

Together, and rather slowly, they started along the balcony to the staircase leading down to the hall and the street.

“Those two words,” said Zondi, stopping on the top step, “were ‘rich uncle.’ ”

“That was the Tollie Twist that he always—Christ!”

“Whoa, boss! There are many rich men in this country, and that case is only fifty-fifty—Boss?”

“Come on, man! It’s not midnight yet,” Kramer called back from the hall, and went out into the dark, clutching at a straw he hoped to make bricks with.

Kramer found the eminent Mr. Cecil Colgate robed in his less than judicial dressing gown. “I confess that I do prefer,” Colgate rumbled, “to have my failures decently forgotten, and to rest—particularly at this hour of the night—upon my laurels.”

Kramer made his appreciative smile double as an apology.

“I certainly won’t offer you coffee, Lieutenant, as you obviously don’t get enough sleep—but I dare say a brandy would do?”

“Very kind of you, sir.”

While his host poured the drinks, Kramer took a polite look at the photograph hanging above the study fireplace, and was surprised to see a rugby team with several nonwhite players among it.

“I was a Dark Blue,” Colgate murmured modestly.

“Uh huh?”

“But you’ve intrigued me, old chap, so let’s not become sidetracked. Here, sit.”

They sat down in a pair of leather-upholstered armchairs and stretched out their feet to the dusty fire logs. The brandy was as smooth as spit: sheer perfection.

“Cheers,” said Kramer, belatedly remembering his manners.

“Your health! We were discussing the Vasari case, and you’d just sailed rather close to the wind by implying I’d profited by ill-gotten gains. Criminal slander.”

“Hell, I’d done that, sir?” replied Kramer, knowing the sly twister of old. “So okay; let me sail all the way and ask you for the truth of the matter.”

“Can’t do it.”

“But I thought we’d agreed that if I didn’t—”

“You see, if you wanted to know
exactly
where that money came from, then I’ll say again I can’t oblige. Can’t, not won’t.”

“Sir?”

“But I can tell you something of the background—which I insisted on knowing before I accepted the brief.”

When Colgate’s chin trebled and his hooded eyes closed to slits beneath the white mustaches he had for eyebrows, there was never any need for anyone to beg him to continue. Kramer merely cocked an ear.

“Dear me, yes; that brief. As it happened, I’d already turned it down flat, being a trifle chary of the situation, when Mrs. Vasari came alone and unbidden to my chambers to have me repent my decision. By Jove, what a scene that was! I’d never set eyes on the good woman before, of course—had just had a few words with young Willerby, her solicitor, over a game of pills at the club. Didn’t care for the sound of it at all; extremely dubious.”

“In what way, Mr. Colgate?”

“Willerby said he’d had a telephone call from an anonymous well-wisher offering to meet, on Vasari’s behalf, the fees of—as he put it—the best at the bar. One does get this sort of thing now and again, especially when a young defendant is involved, and these cranks can be a terrible bore. Willerby tried to knock it on the head by quoting my usual remuneration, and then had to do a spot of humoring when, to his disgust, this individual asked for a week or so in which to arrange payment.”

“This ‘well-wisher’ stayed anonymous?”

“Oh, absolutely! Willerby was only too happy with the notion that no names would embrace no pack drill, and he was responsible enough to make no mention of this to the family. But the next go-off was that Mr. Vasari received an anonymous call at his place of business a week later. On this occasion, the well-wisher merely gave my name and stated that the money would arrive shortly. And so, by God, it did! Willerby’s secretary found it in a brown paper parcel, left lying on her desk and marked very clearly. He had the family in that morning, as you can imagine, and asked them if they had any way of accounting for this munificent gift. After the first spot of excitement, Mr. Vasari could only suggest with fervor that it was all thanks to the Virgin Mary.”

Kramer gave an amused snort. “And the scene in your office?”

Colgate fetched over the brandy bottle to replenish their glasses. “She came walloping in, was fended off by my clerk, then by a junior—and ended up chucking the money about. Better than a grand opera! I had to have her into my room, if only to place the money in the safe, and despite my maidenly protestations, she insisted on pleading her case.”

“Uh huh? I mean, yes?”

“Say when. Here’s where I break my professional confidences, I’m afraid.”

“When.”

“Bit of background first,” Colgate said, sitting back and warming the brandy between his huge pink hands. “In ’42, Signor Vasari was interned by Smuts, having left Italy four years previously because of an intense dislike of fascism. Often wondered if he was aware that the illustrious Field Marshal, architect of the UN and all that, had once had a native village bombed for not paying its dog tax—but that’s by the by. Off he went with the other Italian chappies, and the little woman was left to fend for herself. Not a bright prospect, when your English is still wonky and your Afrikaans is
non est
, so she did the only sensible thing: she took in lodgers. Plenty of youngsters were after digs in Durban at the time, having been seconded from the back veld to take over jobs left behind by men in the armed forces, and she experienced no difficulty in soon establishing herself. They got used to spaghetti and she learned to speak Afrikaans; dreadfully lonely, many of those youngsters were, of course, and quite unable to feel at ease among the lower sophisticates of the post office sorting room. On one occasion, when she was sitting in the parlor alone with one of them, she burst into tears over hearing that her home town had been razed by the Yanks—they were listening to the nine o’clock news—and was mortified when her guest, while attempting to comfort her, burst into tears himself. But I seem to be wandering rather from the point, except it is pertinent to understand she had a true
mamma mia’s
heart. Those young men all loved her, as I heard subsequently from other sources. Now I shall attempt to remove your glazed look by corning to the nub of the matter: Signora Vasari was unmistakably Italian, a comely wench with dark eyes and a gorgeous accent, and this—”

“Nub?” Kramer said, in his most Afrikaans accent.

Colgate toasted him with his glass. “Oh, very well, you unromantic son of the earth, I’ll come to it. An Italian POW
escaped from the camp at Hay Paddock just before the end of the war and sought sanctuary with her; he’d been in some scrape with a homosexual guard or other—I’m afraid that’s a bit vague now. Rather stupidly, although one can understand her compassion, she took him in. The police were round like a shot, but were so taken with her Afrikaans that their search was most perfunctory. Her lodgers were beginning to drift back to the country again by now, and she managed to keep this chap hidden for several months without detection. On the eve of the internees’ being released, she supplied him with clothing and a little money, and he was able to slip away. Just how he managed after that, she hadn’t any idea—quite a number of POW’s stayed on, so he may have just swapped identities—but years later he popped up again in a letter. He’d done very well for himself and wanted to repay her.”

“Two and two makes four,” Kramer said, placing his glass on the mantel shelf, “but why the anonymous voice? I don’t follow that, hey?”

“Then you weren’t listening, as I thought!” Colgate snapped irritably. “Why did Vasari leave Italy? What sort of man had his wife been harboring?”

“He felt that strong about fascists? This bloke mightn’t—”