Chapter 12

The failure of her rapid fire down the corridor to silence for an instant the roar of the machine guns and the screams and snarls that were part and parcel of all Konstabel Els' encounters with the Dobermann forced Miss Hazelstone to the realization that her plans were not running true to form. As repeated volleys of shot smashed through her Louis Quinze barricades and riddled with new authenticity several pieces of mock-Jacobean furniture and an irreplaceable eighteenth-century escritoire previously inlaid with ivory, the din of battle on the landing increased. Above her head a fountain of tiles hurtled up into the air under the impact of the machine-gun bullets and crashed back on the roof like enormous hailstones. Miss Hazelstone gave up her attempt to peer through the fog of plaster and went back into the bedroom.

It was immediately apparent to her that here too something had gone astray. The room was pitch dark and some large object was completely obscuring the view of the Park she had previously enjoyed from the window. She switched on the light and stood gazing at the underside of the bed on which but a few minutes before she had sat encouraging Kommandant van Heerden to be a man. Looking at the enormous bed she realized for the first time what a tremendously powerful man the Kommandant was. It had taken ten men to manhandle that bed up the stairs and along the corridor, and now one man had lifted it by himself and had carried it to the window where he was evidently standing on the sill holding it at arm's length, a feat of strength she would never have believed possible. As she looked and wondered, a muffled yell came through the mattress.

'Let me down,' the Kommandant was shouting. 'Let me down. Let me down. That bloody woman will be the death of me.' Miss Hazelstone smiled to herself. 'Just as you say,' she murmured and aimed the scatter gun at the bedsprings. As she pulled the trigger she noted how appropriate it was that the Kommandant should meet his Maker strapped in a rubber nightdress to a mattress labelled Everrest and as the bed-springs twanged and the feathers flew, Miss Hazelstone turned and went out into the corridor with a sob.

It was in all likelihood the sound of that sob that led to the death of her beloved Toby. The Dobermann which had until then felt secure in the hold it had fastened on Konstabel Els' face relaxed for one fatal second. It raised its head and pricked its ears for the last faithful time and in that second, Els, half asphyxiated by the dog's persistent hold on his nose, seized his opportunity and clamped his jaws on the dog's throat. With one hand he clasped the dog to him and with the other grabbed the dog's scrotum and squeezed. Squeezed was hardly adequate to describe the immense pressure he exerted.

Unable, thanks to Els' grip on its windpipe, to protest this infringement of the Queensberry rules, the dog hurled itself sideways and scrabbled furiously with all four feet in an attempt to free itself. Dragging the limpet-like Els with it, it accelerated from a standing start, hurtled towards the top of the stairs and a second later the two maddened animals were airborne several feet above the great staircase. As they avalanched into the hall, the portraits of Sir Theophilus and Judge Hazelstone gazed grimly down on the sordid spectacle. Only the wild boar, itself strapped to an unrelenting iron frame, can have appreciated what its modern counterpart was suffering.

Three minutes later Konstabel Els, lying on the marble floor of the hall, knew that he had won. The Dobermann lay still in death and Els relaxed his grip on its throat and rose unsteadily to his feet. Around him the heads of stuffed wart-hogs and buffaloes were his only audience in the moment of triumph. Dragging the dog by the tail Konstabel Els went out into the Park to look for the vulture. It had looked at him ravenously enough, and he thought it might like a change of diet. He had some difficulty in finding it, and when he did, even Konstabel Els could see that it had not died of hunger.

The shots that had indirectly led to the death of Toby had come very near to causing the death of Kommandant van Heerden. Near but rather too high, for the Kommandant had had the good fortune to be hanging by his wrists from what was now the bottom of the bed. He had chewed through the hood and was staring down at Sergeant de Kock who had from the look of him just emerged from a nasty accident in a turkey abattoir. It didn't seem a likely explanation of the Sergeant's condition but after his recent experience of perversion the Kommandant wouldn't have been at all surprised to learn that the Sergeant had been acting out some depraved obsession connected with his name.

He was just speculating on the matter when his thoughts were drowned by the roar of a gun just above his head and a cloud of feathers suddenly obscured his view of the garden. 'Chicken,' he yelled as the Sergeant disappeared round the corner of the house, and he was still screaming abuse some minutes later when the Sergeant followed by several Konstabels reappeared. It seemed that his voice issuing through the hole he had managed to chew in the rubber hood carried less than its normal quota of authority. The little group of policemen gathered below him seemed more amused by his orders than likely to obey them.

'Let me down,' yelled the Kommandant. 'Let me down.' Against this background of ignored instructions, Sergeant de Kock was explaining the nastier facts of life to the young konstabels.

'What you see before you,' he said portentously, 'is a transvestite.'

'What's that mean, Sergeant,' inquired a konstabel.

'It means a man who likes dressing up in women's clothes. This transvestite is also a pervert.'

'Let me down, you sod,' yelled the Kommandant.

'It's a pervert,' continued the Sergeant, 'because it is a homosexual and it's a pervert twice over because it's a rubber fetishist.'

'I'll have you stripped of your stripes if you don't get me down.'

'What's a rubber fetishist, Sergeant?'

'It's someone who dresses up in rubber nighties and hangs out of other people's bedroom windows soliciting people below,' continued the Sergeant plucking feathers and lights off his uniform. 'It's also a product of the permissive society and as you all know South Africa is not a permissive society. What this swine is doing is against the law here, and what I suggest is that we shove a bullet or two up his arse and give him the thrill to end all thrills.'

The suggestion was greeted with nods of approval from the konstabels and a crescendo of screams from the hooded dangling figure. Only one naive konstabel objected.

'But wouldn't that be murder, Sergeant?' he inquired.

Sergeant de Kock looked at him sternly. 'Are you telling me,' he asked, 'that you think that blokes should be allowed to run around the country dressed in women's nighties?'

'No, Sergeant. It's against the law.'

'That's what I just said, so we'd be doing our duty if we put a bullet in him.'

'Couldn't we just arrest him?' the konstabel asked.

'This is your commanding officer, and I order you to let me down.'

'It's guilty of another crime now, Sergeant,' said another konstabel. 'It's impersonating a police officer.'

'You young konstabels know the procedure or you bloody well ought to,' continued the Sergeant. 'In the case of a criminal apprehended in the commission of a crime, what do you do?'

'Arrest him,' chorused the konstabels.

'And if you can't arrest him? If he tries to escape?'

'You give him a warning.'

'And what if he doesn't stop trying to escape?'

'You shoot him. Sergeant.'

'Right,' said the Sergeant. 'Now are you trying to tell me that that bastard isn't a criminal caught in the commission of a crime, and that he isn't trying to escape?'