“What had he done?”
“The allegation was murder. He had just been brought up in the regional court to be sent for trial. Gysbert wanted to go rushing down there, then he decided this would be taking too much on himself. Finally, what he did was to offer to pay for the best defense in Natal, and I loaned him the money-all paid back now. But things went wrong and the boy was sent up to Pretoria. An appeal was useless, and there was nothing left but prayer. I used to go over to Swartboom three or four times a week with my Bible. That’s when his obsession began: he told me he had to know what kind of death the boy would suffer, whether it would be merciful and quick. He dwelled on this so much he started taking trips to bars which prison warders frequented-or rather, he’d do this when delivering his venison to order. We get a call, you see, if they’re going to have a special menu or whatever, and we shoot-”
“Please, carry on with this business of the bars,” Kramer asked him, wondering if the wall was thin enough for Mickey to hear all this.
“That was a terrible mistake. He must have heard stories like young Willie was telling, because one night I went over and found him beaten up badly. He’d attacked some man. If you don’t mind, I’m not going into the details.”
“I get the point, Mr. de Bruin.”
“I don’t know whose idea it was to try and find out from books-perhaps it was his. His very first one was a Benjamin Bennett-you know the Cape crime reporter? — and he gave a very good account which set Gysbert’s mind at ease. The day they hanged the boy, he spent the whole time by himself in the veld. We had him home that night, and he told us he had seen it happen, just like in a vision. It had been quick and clean; the boy had walked to the gallows singing ‘Ave Maria.’ He was at peace with himself for months after that. Then he came across, in some secondhand bookshop in Durban, the smallest of those books you found in my truck. Night after night I sat and argued with him, while he chewed over the shocking things that were in it. He withdrew into himself and there wasn’t anything I could do. That Bennett book was an old one, you see, and by then Gysbert knew all the figures. He said he had begun to believe what a prison warder had told him, and blamed this on the 600 percent increase in hangings between 1947 and 1970. Suddenly, he went very silent on the subject, which worried me. I tried to get some account to contradict what he’d heard, but-huh! — we come back to the Prisons Act. It was almost becoming an obsession with me, because all the time poor little Suzanne was suffering; weeks would pass and he’d hardly notice her. She so craved affection. Then Lettie had a letter back from a bookshop we’d written to months before, offering us the book you have on this desk here. We bought it on spec and it was one of the best things we ever did. Let me show you.”
De Bruin took up the book and turned to the preface, holding his finger against a paragraph he wanted Kramer to read:
“I operated, on behalf of the State, what I am convinced was the most humane and the most dignified method of meting out death to a delinquent-however justified or unjustified the allotment of death may be-and on behalf of humanity I trained other nations to adopt the British system of execution.”
“Got that.”
“And now, on page seventy-nine it should be-yes, just listen: ‘Travel today seems to imply only long journeys-to South Africa or the Mediterranean or the Riv-something-and I have made all these trips in my time.’ ”
“Which doesn’t necessarily mean-” Kramer began automatically, then stopped.
“Perhaps not, but the arguments are strongly in favor of it being the case, and Gysbert is able to take great comfort from the words of this man. They give him the authority to reject anything he finds unacceptable.”
Kramer was staring at the master hangman’s blurb on the back of the book, which De Bruin was still holding:
Capital punishment, in my view, achieved nothing but revenge.
Suddenly, he’d had enough of books and of stories that didn’t quite match in all their details. There was some irony in knowing that Swanepoel was guilty, without having any real evidence to prove it, but the final solution seemed only a hair’s-breadth away now. He stood up.
“Do you believe me? Do you see what I’m trying to get across?” asked de Bruin.
“I believe what you’ve allowed yourself to believe, Mr. de Bruin. You have certainly told me most of the truth.”
“What is that supposed to mean, damn you!” de Bruin exploded. “I’ve put all my cards on the table; now what about yours? Have I your assurance that, having heard the full story, you will not pursue any pointless inquiries in that direction?”
The temptation was too much for Kramer-and the truth would emerge soon enough; he palmed his small batch of photographs, just as that oaf had done back in the bar on Tuesday morning, and then dealt them out, one at a time, face upward on the desktop.
“Those are my cards,” he said, and went to call Willie to action stations.
But Mr. and Mrs. Haagner, just returned from the barbecue, having been the last to leave, said they’d only that minute looked in on his room and he hadn’t been there. Although, as a giggly Mrs. Haagner conceded, he might have been outside making a weewee. Kramer went to Willie’s room and found a small magazine propped up at the foot of the bed to show off an old-fashioned nude to advantage. He took the magazine and brushed passed the Haagners, not saying good night. He checked to see if the Chev was there, and it was. He broke into a run and went round to the yard, yanking open the stable door and finding the stall vacated. He heard a telephone ringing. He saw, through the barred window of the station commander’s office, de Bruin answer it. He sprinted to the window and heard the man groan.
“Quick! Who is it?”
An eternity later, Karl de Bruin clattered the receiver into its cradle, and stumbled over to hold onto the bars in a state of near-collapse.
“Suzanne. Pa came home, found her door unlocked. She said must’ve been servant girl. Hit her, wouldn’t believe her. She said policeman had been there. Hit her. Swore it. Hit her, went looking. Found Willie. Hit Willie. Hit her. Only got to phone now, bleeding. Willie gone. Game truck. Said he was going to-going to … Willie.”
“Ambulance!” Kramer shouted over his shoulder.
As he raced to the front, the Chev’s lights came on and it roared toward him, slewing round, the passenger door swinging open.
“Let’s go, boss,” said Zondi.
20
Like a skull on a dunghill, the great white stone shone in the moonlight, becoming smaller every minute behind them. The Chev howled and slithered and clawed its way up to the pass. No dust showed in its headlights.
“Ten-minute start,” said Kramer.
“Five, more like.”
“Never make it.”
“Before?”
“The fork down the other side.”
Bracing himself against the movement of the car, Kramer lit two cigarettes and stuck one of them in Zondi’s mouth. Then he flicked on the map-reading light and held the magazine beneath it.
“Dear God,” he murmured. “This is so old she could be his bloody mother.”
“Sorry, boss?”
“Sick.”
“Not your fault, Lieutenant,” grunted Zondi, missing the point and a sheer drop simultaneously. “You must take it easy, or you will do a foolish thing. What is the procedure when we overtake this vehicle?”