Then he handed Kramer a file which contained inquest papers relating to the discovery of a body at the foot of a krantz.
The only shock Kramer experienced was that of having been preempted. “Who the hell thought of looking for this?” he said softly. “Did Mickey get in touch with you?”
Strydom shook his head.
“How well do those particulars match the ones on that form thing of yours?” the Colonel asked.
Kramer had no need to read Mrs. Roberts’s appeal again-it was part of him. “The date is almost spot on, sir; the hair coloring and length is the same as Ringo’s, allowing for sun-bleaching; five-foot nine is the right height. Does it say here one blue eye was found? That would be correct as well.”
“No; better disregard that for now,” Strydom said cautiously. “Eyes have been known to regress to blue after death.”
“Where’s the list of clothing, Doc?”
“That investigating officer will be getting his arse kicked,” the Colonel growled, making a note. “It’d rotted off, but he should have recorded buttons, zips, footwear. No fingerprints of course, as you can see from the picture.”
Then Kramer felt the shock pass and his natural distrust of the fortuitous take its place. “These four common factors don’t actually count for much, not when you see them against a fair percentage of the white male population, do they? How about these five extractions and two temporary fillings? I’ve got nothing on the teeth, but you must have sent round the dental chart.”
“No takers,” Strydom disclosed. “The fillings were on the crude side, like you’d get on a ship or any army camp-not done by a dentist, I’m pretty sure of it.”
“Ringo was never on a ship or in the army,” the Colonel added. “How do you feel about it now, Tromp?”
“Inconclusive. But what made you look at this suicide in the first place? I can see it’s one of Doc’s, only-”
They told him.
Then added the three other inquest files to make a chronologically arranged row across the Colonel’s desk, while Strydom provided a thumbnail sketch of each one as it was laid down.
“Have you gone mad?”
“I hoped you’d say that, Tromp. Those were my exact words when Chris first came rushing in here. It shows there was no ill will on my part, hey?”
Kramer sat down, stunned and unable to control the seethe of implications filling his head.
“Chris?” prompted the Colonel.
Strydom did a very old-fashioned thing and mopped his brow. “Perhaps I should explain a little. You see, most DS’s are busy family doctors with no special interest in forensic work per se, and they don’t-um-come into contact with each-”
“I meant the facts, man! That’s what Tromp wants to hear about,” Muller said.
“It’s a fact that Natal’s bigger than a lot of tin-pot countries,” Strydom dared defensively. “Instead of blaming us, you might see that in dotting them around, his executions are-”
“Murders are,” snapped Colonel Muller.
“Query murders,” corrected Kramer, recognizing an urgent need in himself to treat the situation as routinely as possible. “Tollie’s is the only one we’re sure of.” Having said that, a calm settled on him, just as it might on a drunk who decides that the only important thing in his whirling world is to soberly select the right key for the right keyhole.
His quiet observation seemed to steady the others as well-God knew what wild imaginings they’d been through before his arrival.
Colonel Muller cleared his throat. “The period, gentlemen, would appear to be one of five years, with one hanging occurring each year. But not, you will notice, in any particular month or season, so the timing may be more random than it seems.”
“How many years were looked through in all?” Kramer asked, lighting up a Lucky.
“Alfred and me did another five before that.”
“And?”
“Three fracture dislocations, none of them arousing suspicion of any kind. One involving a fall on a ladder.”
“Uh huh. And how many of these are really borderline?”
Strydom mopped again. He was beginning to look like a man who’d cast his bread upon the waters and had forgotten to let go.
“If you’re having a few doubts now,” the Colonel said slightly sarcastically, “then which of these cases, not counting Tollie’s, are you quite certain of?”
“The railway foreman couldn’t have died under the given circumstances in the manner indicated.”
“And the others? What order of certainty would you place them in?” Kramer asked, noting this down.
“On the scanty information I have?”
“Whichever way you like.”
“The witch doctor I’m 80 percent sure of; the tramp, about 65. Make the krantz case 50.”
“Fifty-fifty? Why’s that?”
“Well, there were more variables involved in that one.”
“Like yourself, for instance?”
That got its laugh and the tension eased, placing the discussion on a more objective level. Kramer made the routine check for a pattern.
“No real pattern,” he said, “although it could be significant that there’s only one black, that there’s three unknown persons out of five, and that the other two had police records.”
“The hangman is more likely white, then,” Strydom suggested, with a logic that wasn’t altogether sound if you thought about how certain blacks felt.
“I don’t think we should waste time on surmising until we’ve more information,” the Colonel said firmly. “Nor do we need to worry about anything under 100 percent-again, on the same basis.”
“Or what about treating them as separate cases, each on its own merits?” Kramer put forward, aware that his conflicts arose from trying to relate such disparate individuals. “If, by some bloody miracle, they start linking up, then we’ll rethink our approach.”
“I like it, Tromp. Two murder inquiries and three suspicious deaths?”
“That’s right, sir. Zondi can take the witch doctor and Marais can see what he can get out of the other two.”
“But,” said Strydom.
“Ja, Chris?” Muller replied.
“What about the hangman and his-”
“Look, man! I told you how many times? That’s a dangerous fixation you’ve got, and I don’t like the words you use. They only confuse the issue, which is bad enough as it is.”
Strydom reddened. “Would you like a second opinion, Hans? I could take these down to Gordon in Durban.”
“God in heaven! Nobody must hear about this until at least I’ve had time to talk to the brigadier. Of course I trust your judgment, Chris; it’s just you must leave the investigation side to us, hey?”
Kramer went over to the door, wary of what more talk might do to the brittle simplicity of his present outlook.
“I’ll get the sergeants going,” he said, “and seeing as the Erasmus case has reached a blank wall, I might as well have a crack at railwayman Rossouw.”
“Fine,” replied Colonel Muller. “Is it okay for us to share your biscuit?”
Zondi took the photograph of the unidentified umthakathi down to the street of the witch doctors in the lower part of town.
Several of them there had wholesale departments, stocked with everything from bulk packets of aphrodisiacs to entire desiccated baboons, and also supplied the fur trappings a black man was no longer permitted to hunt for himself. He went from store to store, from fancy glass counter to self-service emporium, from holes in the wall to sinister back rooms, and from one end of the street to the other.
None of the fat cats he questioned had any recollection of the face cupped in his hand, nor were they much interested. Yet the effort involved wasn’t entirely wasted: the dead man, they said, sniffing, was plainly an ignorant old peasant. Anyone with a smattering of the art would have secured his release with a handful of the right seeds-not that they sold them personally, of course. This confirmed in Zondi’s mind what had seemed a rather strange paradox.