The Sunday Hangman (23 page)

“Morning, sir!” said Willie, strolling in smelling of horse. “I’ve got that diagram ready like you asked for.”

That was slightly cheering; Kramer ordered him through into the office to see how it looked. Willie produced a sheet of white card—the shape belied its origin as the stiffener from inside a new shirt—and handed him a scale drawing that was remarkably good. Even the grain of the wood in the platform was there, and the lower figure—outlined in dots—had toes that pointed realistically downward.

“Not bad. But how’s the arithmetic of this? Last night you were sitting here moaning like a stuck pig.”

Willie hesitated. “Before you chucked me out, didn’t you say I could go and do it in feet and inches?”

“Uh huh. But explain this figure of twelve-eight—that’s a bloody sight less than I expected.”

“Still higher than an ordinary room, Lieutenant.”

Kramer sat down behind the desk, lit a Lucky, for breakfast, and motioned Willie to get on with it.

“Well, sir, I started by making the scaffold platform my fixed point. Then I proceeded to find the victim who had the longest drop—or, in other words, the one who took up the most room below that point in the ‘after’ position, so marked.”

“Izimu: he was the lightest, according to his P.M. report.”

“Ja, only he had a scrawny neck with no muscle tone. Although the tramp was heavier, he had shoulders like a buffalo, so Dr. Strydom reckons he took a six-foot drop. To that I added three inches for neck stretch, supposing the body was left hanging for twenty minutes for the heart to stop, plus another inch for clearance—both minimum amounts. So you could say that the bottom line of the sum is six-four.”

“From the floor up to the platform?”

“Correct, sir. Then for the ‘before’ position, or the space required above the trap door, I simply took the tallest person—the railway ganger—and added on his height of six-one.”

“Plus what?” Kramer asked.

“Three inches for the shackle attaching the rope to the adjusting chain.”

“But what if the hangman stands higher than six-four?”

“He’d have to bloody stoop, sir.”

Kramer was surprised into a short laugh. “You’re a typical example of what Doc’s expertise can do to a man, but I must say I’m impressed. Where did you learn to draw like this?”

“Ach, at the orphanage.”

“Uh huh?”

“That’s all there ever was a lot of—paper and pencils; sometimes crayons as well. A man used to bring us the old rolls from the newspaper and Matron cut them up.”

This was a guilelessness quite different from that shown by the knobbly-kneed abortion at Doringboom, and Kramer looked Willie over carefully, wondering if he had got him wrong. The scrutiny was misinterpreted.

“I—I didn’t mean to be rude just now, sir it’s just.…”

“Go on, man,” Kramer murmured.

“I appreciate we’re only trying for a minimum here, and that the gallows must be higher. It’s not that. And obviously Dr. Strydom knows a lot about the theory, only—”

“He also did the P.M. at about seventy executions.”

“Oh, I see,” mumbled Willie, becoming confused. “Then it doesn’t matter.”

But the obvious conflict in the kid intrigued Kramer. He called out for Luthuli to bring them some coffee, and invited Willie to take a chair. “You know something about the practical side? Something he’s overlooked?”

Willie cracked his knuckles. “Did you also mix with the warders when you were at police college, sir?”

“Occasionally.” Voortrekkerhoogte’s proximity to Pretoria made this inevitable.

“Then you know how they boast about the hangings. How they think it he-man stuff to watch those kaffirs getting the chop. Granted, it isn’t a sight I would want to witness. With a white or a colored it must be even worse.”

“Although they usually do them one at a time.”

“That’s true. But what I’m saying is that this expert advice here—ach, it seems somehow too posh.”

“In what way?” Kramer asked, glancing at the Telex slips.

“For instance, one Saturday night after a Rugby match, we were in the bar at the Van Riebeeck when the prison blokes started having sport with this little chap—I think his name was Kriel. He was down for his first execution on the Tuesday and the others were trying to put him off. It was no use him saying it was only a black bitch who’d smothered her ‘bambino’ to keep her job. Hell, they were the worst, these others told him; not only had you got to strap her up between the legs, but to a bloody stretcher as well. There was no other way of getting her there. Jesus, those were the buggers who really fought.”

“You’re losing me, Willie.”

“That’s how it started, you see, sir. Then they began to talk about the gory things, especially when the executioner gave too much drop. There was always blood all over, they said, which was why he’d seen sawdust near the coffin room. Yet according to these notes, such things shouldn’t happen.”

“I’m lost.”

Willie cracked another knuckle. “One warder said—it sounded true and he was drunk, so it made him cry a bit—he said that he’d seen the rope slip up and pull half this boy’s face off. The noose got stuck under his nose, which meant his neck broke okay, but all this part was scraped clean. Where was the rubber ring? Dr. Strydom says there’s a patent rubber ring that’s supposed to hold the noose tight until you can pull out the pin and push the lever.”

“If they were doing a big batch, then—”

“Not according to these notes, Lieutenant. Even with six on the trap there should be no difference. Then there’s all this velocity times mass squared over acceleration. And the elastic module of the rope they’re using.”

“Hey? It sounds more like a bloody space launching!”

“Ja, you could call it that,” Willie said, grinning. “Actually, it is part of the sums you’ve got to do if you want the drop to be right. But do you remember John Harris, the bastard who put a bomb on Jo’burg station? Their coach said they’d given him ‘an extra-long drop,’ just to make sure. They’re still talking about Harris, said he’d gone well and—”

“Gone well? Hell, I remember that expression now. Nice and quick, Luthuli.”

Kramer reached for his coffee and took a sip.

“The point is, Lieutenant, that you don’t give ‘extra-long drops’ if you’re using the correct tables—or so Dr. Strydom says. A good hangman gets the drop correct to half an inch, no blood and no mess.”

“You’re saying what?”

“I’m saying,” replied Willie, searching for the right words, “well, we’re working from an ideal here.”

“But they’ve
been
ideal hangings, my boy—that’s the point. Furthermore, I never heard stories like yours in my time. They must have seen you coming.”

Willie was someone who colored easily: he turned a stubborn red. “With respect, they weren’t even looking at us while this was going on! They could also have made up much worse stories—not so?”

Kramer had to concede that. “Uh huh.”

“And when I saw Kriel, about two weeks later, and asked him how it’d been, he said she hadn’t gone well. Or at least she had started going well, which had made them forget about the allowance they had made for the stretcher or strait jacket—I can’t exactly remember. The drop ended up too short, she wasn’t heavy enough, and so she had only strangled. Above floor level, Kriel said, so you could watch the hood as it turned slowly round and round. That was all he told me—he didn’t say anything about blood. It would have been easy for him to come up with a really gruesome story, but you could see he wasn’t in the mood.”

Willie became absorbed in this recollection and lifted up his coffee cup without looking at it. He drank in noisy gulps, his eyes on the dagga sacks.

“Come to think of it,” said Kramer, who was finding his own drink too hot, “I heard somewhere recently that the hangman was using a pick handle to finish off his botched jobs.”

“Ach, that’s nonsense!” Willie protested.

“How do you know? What means have you of finding out?”

“Because, sir, that’s really stupid to get things so wrong! These blokes said the hangman was really good with the condemneds. Some of the kaffirs like to kick their slippers off and run all the way, and he lets them. Harris was singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ and nobody minded. It isn’t he makes mistakes on purpose, only all this textbook stuff—”

“Books aren’t allowed about prison procedures. Doc is speaking from experience and his specialist’s study of the subject. Other medicos send him clippings and that.”

“Ja, I know, but—”

“Certainly not in such detail. At most, all you ever get is pure hearsay. Are we agreed on that?”

Willie nodded.

“Then where has
our
hangman obtained his technical know-how, if it wasn’t via Pretoria Central by some means or other? You answer me that!”

Kramer didn’t wait for Willie’s reply before reaching for the telephone. It had just occurred to him to begin his day with a call to the commandant of Pretoria Central; the odds of anyone local being the state hangman were terrible, but there was always the chance.

Dorothy Jele came into the yard with the hipless walk of a white woman. She wore a starched uniform, an immaculate white cap, and spotlessly white tennis shoes. Her skin was glossy with good living; her hands were not chapped. The other servants smiled up at her as if this would make their day easier.

“The master said you wished to see me,” she said in accented English. “What is your business?”

Zondi studied her broad face, noting the tightness of the small mouth. The puffy eyes gazed on him with the fixity of a slow mind imitating authority; the arms barricaded a flat chest.

“Forgive me if I bring you from your work, my sister,” Zondi said humbly in Zulu. “Already I have heard how greatly valued you are by your employers.”

“From my master?” she asked, her expression softening.

“He instructed me to treat you with great respect.”

This brought her hands down to smooth the sides of her uniform. She glanced over her shoulder at the other servants, frowned at a young housemaid who was looking their way, and took out a Yale key.

“Come with me,” she said. “I have a more suitable place than this for our business. Is it more registration?”

“A few particulars.”

They started toward the far corner of the yard.

“You are lame. I suppose that’s why you have been given this job.”

Zondi smiled.

And she nodded wisely, in the way stupid people do when well pleased with themselves.

Dorothy Jele’s room was, he felt quite certain, very different from the others in the same row. Basically, it had the same cement floor, barred window, and whitewashed brick walls, and the electric light was possibly common to them all. There was nothing purely functional or improvised about its furnishings, however—and he thought fleetingly of his own packing-case dresser and of the lines Miriam had scratched in the rammed earth underfoot to simulate wooden boards. The carpet, bed, wardrobe, dressing table, table, chairs, easy chair, curtains, pictures, mirror, cabinet radio, and china ornaments all spoke of thirty years’ unbroken and devoted service, rewarded on an exceptionally lavish scale. Not only was nothing secondhand, but every item had been so cherished that it still looked brand-new—even the radio, which dated back to the fifties, and would have been among the first enticements chosen by her employers. This newness gave the room a shoplike unreality to add to its dreamy, contradictory feel; contradictory in the sense it didn’t have the sharp, acid smell of whites that you usually associated with such arrangements. Although, on closer inspection, the passage of time was evident in one corner, in a picture frame filled with the sort of postcard-sized, full-length portraits that families had taken of themselves at a stall in the Trekkersburg beer hall. In each of these Dorothy Jele stood alone against the painted backdrop of skyscrapers and thundercloud, and in each she was several years older.

“My, this is a fine room,” Zondi exclaimed, bending to admire a two-bar electric fire. “Never have I seen one so complete and wonderful.” And that was true.

“I am pleased.”

“How fortunate you are, my sister! For most of us, there is little beauty in our lives.”

He was watching her face now, a little sickened by her delight in his words—even by the way her fingertips stroked the polished tabletop, moving in little circles on its smooth mahogany skin.

“Have you noticed the bedside lamp?”

“Hau, I have indeed!” he responded, coming to the high point of his flattery: “And are all these riches truly yours?”

“I hope so,” sighed Dorothy Jele.

The wistful reply was so unexpected that Zondi needed a moment to grasp its implications; even then, he spoke before realizing them fully.

“What? You do not know?”

She shrugged, her face clouding.

“If they have not said, why have you not asked them?”

“I—I do not like to.”

“Why?”

“They may think me greedy.”

“And so?”

“Or that I am going from them,” she mumbled, looking down at her reflection. “It is better to wait and please them by working hard every day. When I am old, then they must tell me, because it is promised I will move into a hut that—”

“Woman, is your life a deposit?”

“That is insolent! You have no right to speak to me in such a way!”

“Then how,” said Zondi appalled by what he had heard, “should I address the foolish wretch who took Mama—” But he stopped there, unable to see how anyone quite so
stupid could have been quite so cunning when it had come to framing the witch doctor for the crime she had herself committed.

Much later that morning, just as Willie and Zondi arrived back in the station commander’s office, Kramer’s call to Central Prison, Pretoria, was returned. The prison had insisted on ringing back, being understandably concerned that he should be who he said he was, and it had probably been checking on the Witklip telephone number, among other things. This did not mean, however, that the captain delegated to pass on their reply to his queries was particularly forthcoming. He sounded like a man who wouldn’t give you a cup of sand in the desert.