Indecent Exposure (26 page)

“Something to help you not to answer any questions, my darling,” said the doctor and popped the lump of sugar into his mouth. Verkramp chewed it up and lay back.

Ten minutes later the Kommandant who was trying to keep his temper at the long wait by reading a magazine about motor cars was horrified by the sound of screams coming from the corridor. It sounded as though one of the patients was enduring the torments of hell.

Dr von Blimenstein came into the room. “He’s ready to see you now,” she said, “but I want to warn you that he’s to be handled gently. This is one of his good days and we don’t want to upset him do we?”

“No,” said the Kommandant trying to make himself heard above the demented shrieks. The doctor unlocked a door and the Kommandant peered very nervously inside. What he saw sent him hurriedly back into the corridor.

“No need to be alarmed,” said the doctor and pushed him, into the room. “Just put your questions to him gently and don’t excite him.” She locked the door behind him and the Kommandant found himself alone in a small room with a screaming scurrying creature that had when the Kommandant could catch a glimpse of its face some of the features of Luitenant Verkramp. The thin nose, the fierce eyes and the angular shape were those of the Kommandant’s second-in-command but there the resemblance ended. Verkramp didn’t scream like that, in fact the Kommandant couldn’t think what did. Verkramp didn’t slobber like that, Verkramp didn’t scurry sideways like that, and above all Verkramp didn’t cling to the window bars like that.

As the Kommandant pressed himself terrified into a corner by the door he knew that he had made a wasted trip. Whatever else the day had taught him, one thing was quite sure: Luitenant Verkramp’s insanity was unquestionable.

“Ugh, ugh, snow man balloon fill up baboon,” shrieked Verkramp and hurled himself from the window bars and disappeared under the bed still shrieking only to reappear precipitously scrabbling for the Kommandant’s legs. The Kommandant kicked him off and Verkramp shot across the room and up the window bars. “Let me out of here,” yelled the Kommandant and found himself beating on the door with a dementia that almost equalled that of Verkramp. An eye regarded him bleakly through the spy hole in the door.

“You’re quite sure you’ve asked him all the questions you want to?” Dr von Blimenstein asked.

“Yes, yes,” shouted the Kommandant desperately.

“And there’s no question of Balthazar being held responsible for what has happened?”

“Responsible?” screamed the Kommandant. “Of course he’s not responsible.” It seemed a totally unnecessary question to ask.

Dr von Blimenstein unlocked the door and the Kommandant staggered into the corridor. Behind him Verkramp was still gibbering from the window, his eyes alight with an intensity the Kommandant had no doubt was a sign of incurable insanity.

“One of his good days,” said the doctor, locking the door and leading the way back to her office.

“What did you say was the matter with him?” the Kommandant asked wondering what Verkramp’s bad days were like.

“Mild depression brought on by overwork.”

“Good heavens,” said the Kommandant, “I wouldn’t have thought that was mild.”

“Ah but then you’ve had no experience of mental illness,” said the doctor. “You judge these things from a lay position.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said the Kommandant. “Do you think he’ll ever recover?”

“Positive,” said the doctor. “He’ll be as right as rain in a few days time.”

Kommandant van Heerden deferred to her professional opinion and with a politeness that sprang from the conviction that she had a hopeless case on her hands thanked her for her help.

“If there’s anything I can do at any time,” she told him, “don’t hesitate to call on me.”

With a silent prayer that he would never have to, the Kommandant left the hospital. In his room Luitenant Verkramp continued his trip. It was the first time he’d taken
LSD
.

If Kommandant van Heerden’s visit to Fort Rapier Mental Hospital had given him a new and terrible insight into the irrational depths of the human psyche, his next appointment did nothing to remove the impression that everyone in Piemburg had changed for the worse in his absence. Certainly the thirty-six men who stumbled from their cells to receive the Kommandant’s profound apologies and expressions of regret were no longer the upstanding and prominent public figures of a fortnight before. The Mayor, whom the Kommandant had decided to see first, couldn’t reciprocate the process. His eyes were swollen and black as a result, the Security Sergeant told the Kommandant, of the suspect’s having banged himself against the door knob of his cell. Since the cells weren’t equipped with door knobs it didn’t seem a likely explanation. The rest of the Mayor wasn’t in much better shape. He had been kept standing for eight days with a bag over his head and hadn’t been allowed to perform his private functions let alone his public ones in the manner to which his office entitled him. As a result he was distinctly soiled and suffering from the delusion that he was presiding at a Mayoral banquet.

“This has been a most unfortunate incident,” the Kommandant began, holding a handkerchief to his nose.

“I’m privileged to be here today in this august assembly.” mumbled the Mayor.

“I would like to proffer my …” said the Kommandant.

“Most sincere congratulations on …” the Mayor interrupted.

“For this unwarranted action,” said the Kommandant.

“It is not all of us who have the honour…”

“In keeping you under lock and key.”

“Serve the public to the best…”

“Won’t happen again.”

“Look forward to …”

“Oh bugger me,” said the Kommandant who had lost track of the conversation. In the end, after being helped by three warders to sign a statement he couldn’t even see, let alone read, to say that he had no complaints to make about the way he had been treated and thanking the police for their protection, the Mayor was carried out to a waiting ambulance and allowed to go home.

Several of the other detainees were less amenable to reason and one or two harboured the illusion that the Kommandant was merely a new and more sinister interrogator.

“I know what you want me to say,” the manager of Barclays Bank declared when he saw the Kommandant. “All right I’ll admit it. I am a member of the Anglican Church and a Communist.”

The Kommandant looked at the manager in some confusion. The manager’s face was badly bruised and his ankles terribly swollen from standing so long.

“Are you really?” said the Kommandant doubtfully.

“No,” said the manager encouraged by this dubious note. “I’m not. I hardly ever go to Church. Only when my wife insists and she’s a Baptist.”

“I see,” said the Kommandant, “but you are a Communist.”

“Oh my God,” wailed the manager, “would I be a bank manager if I was a Communist?”

The Kommandant pushed the form indemnifying the police across the desk. “I don’t give a stuff what you are so long as you sign this form,” he said irritably. “If you refuse I’m going to charge you with sabotage.”

“Sabotage,” croaked the manager in terror, “but I haven’t committed sabotage.”

“By your own admission you’ve peed in the Hluwe Dam and that constitutes sabotage in terms of the General Laws Amendment Act of 1962.”

“Peeing in a dam?”

“Polluting the public water supply. Carries the death penalty.” The manager signed the form and was helped out.

By the time the Kommandant had dealt to his own satisfaction with the detainees, it was already late at night and he was still faced with the intractable problem of the wave of bombings. True there had been no explosions since the ostriches had destroyed themselves and so many public buildings but public confidence would only be restored when the saboteurs were caught. The Kommandant left the prison and told Els to drive him back to the police station.

As he mounted the steps and passed the Duty desk where a konstabel was soliciting a man who had come in to complain that his car had been stolen, the Kommandant realized the enormity of the task before him. With a demoralized force of policemen he had to defend the city against saboteurs so well organized that they used police high-explosive for their bombings and who, apart from one dead man in the toilet of the Majestic Cinema, were wholly unidentifiable. It was a task that would have defeated a lesser man and Kommandant van Heerden had no illusions. He was a lesser man.

He ordered a mixed grill from a Greek café and sent for Sergeant Breitenbach.

“These secret agents that Verkramp was always talking about,” he said, “do you know anything about them?”

“I think you’ll find he lost touch with them,” said the Sergeant.

“Not the only thing he’s lost touch with, I can tell you,” said the Kommandant with feeling. Verkramp’s terrible antics were still fresh in his memory. “Does anyone else know who they are?”

“No, sir.”

“There must be records,” said the Kommandant.

“Burnt, sir.”

“Burnt? Who burnt them?”

“Verkramp did when he went mad, sir.”

“What, the whole bloody lot?”

Sergeant Breitenbach nodded. “He had a file called Operation Red Rout. I never saw what was in it but I know he burnt it the night the ostriches went off. They affected him badly, sir, those ostriches. He was a changed man after one exploded in the street out there.”

“Yes, well, that doesn’t help us very much,” said the Kommandant, as he finished his mixed grill and wiped his mouth. “You know,” he continued leaning back in his chair, “there’s been something puzzling me for a long time and that is, why did the Communists bug my house? Verkramp seemed to think they wanted to get something on me. Didn’t seem likely. I don’t do anything.”

“No sir,” said the Sergeant. He looked round the room rather nervously. “Do you think Luitenant Verkramp will ever recover, sir?” he asked.

Kommandant van Heerden had no doubts on that score.

“Not a celluloid rat’s chance in hell,” he said cheerfully. Sergeant Breitenbach looked relieved.

“In that case, I think you ought to know that those microphones weren’t placed there by Communists, sir.” He paused to allow the implications of the remark to sink in.

“You mean …” said the Kommandant turning an alarming colour.

“Verkramp, sir,” said the Sergeant hurriedly.

“You mean that bastard bugged my house?” yelled the Kommandant. Sergeant Breitenbach nodded dumbly, and waited for the Kommandant’s outburst to exhaust itself.

“He said he had orders from
BOSS
to do it, sir,” he said when the Kommandant calmed down a little.

“BOSS?” said the Kommandant. “Orders from
BOSS
.” A new note of alarm in his voice.

“That’s what he said, sir. I don’t think he did though,” Sergeant Breitenbach told him.

“I see,” said the Kommandant trying to think why the Bureau of State Security should be so interested in his private life. The idea was not reassuring. People who interested
BOSS
frequently fell out of tenth-storey windows in Security Headquarters in Johannesburg.

“I think it was all part of his insanity, sir,” the Sergeant continued, “part of his purity campaign.”

The Kommandant looked at him weakly.

“Dear God,” he said. “Are you trying to tell me that all Verkramp’s talk about Communist agents was simply an excuse to find out if I was having an affair?”

“Yes, sir,” said Sergeant Breitenbach desperately determined not to say whom the Kommandant was thought to be having an affair with.

“Well all I can say is that Verkramp’s lucky to be in an insane asylum. If he weren’t I’d have the bastard reduced to the ranks.”

“Yes sir,” said the Sergeant. “No explosions tonight.” He was anxious to change the topic of conversation away from the Kommandant’s private life. Kommandant van Heerden looked out through his glassless windows and sighed.

“None last night. None the night before. None since Verkramp went into the loony bin. Odd that, isn’t it?” he said

“Very odd sir.”

“All the attacks coincided with Verkramp’s being in charge,” continued the Kommandant. “All the high-explosive came from the police armoury. Very odd indeed.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked the Sergeant.

Kommandant van Heerden looked at him intently.

“I’m not thinking about what I’m thinking and I’d advise you to do the same,” he said. “It doesn’t bear thinking about.” He relapsed into silence and considered the appalling prospect revealed by Sergeant Breitenbach’s information. If there had been no Communist agents involved in the bugging of his house … He stopped himself following that train of thought. And what was BOSS’S interest in the business? Again it seemed a dangerous line to follow.

“Well, all I know is that we’ve got to produce those saboteurs in court and have them convicted or my job isn’t going to be safe. There’s going to be a public outcry about this and someone’s got to stand on the scaffold.” He got up wearily. “I’m going to bed,” he said, “I’ve had enough for one day.”

“Just one more thing, sir, that I think you ought to consider,” said the Sergeant. “I’ve been doing some calculations about the bombings.” He put a piece of paper in front of the Kommandant. “If you look here you’ll see that there were twelve explosions on each of the nights in question. Right?” Kommandant van Heerden nodded. “The day before you left on holiday, Luitenant Verkramp ordered twelve new keys cut for the police armoury.” He paused and the Kommandant sat down again and held his head.

“Go on,” he said finally. “Let’s get it over.”

“Well, sir,” continued the Sergeant, “I’ve been checking the men who picked up the messages from the secret agents and it begins to look as if there were twelve agents too.”

“Are you trying to tell me that Verkramp organized these attacks himself?” the Kommandant asked and knew that it was an unnecessary question. It was obvious what Sergeant Breitenbach thought.

“It begins to look like it, sir,” he said.

“But what the hell for? It doesn’t make fucking sense,” shouted the Kommandant frantically.