'You will dispose of that…that thing,' the Kommandant ordered.

'Yes sir,' said Els thankfully. He was getting tired of Fivepence.

'Proceed to the main gate and remain there on guard until you are relieved. See that nobody enters or leaves the grounds. Anybody at all. That means Europeans as well. Do you understand?'

'Yes sir.'

'If anyone enters you are to see that they don't get out again.'

'Can I use firearms to stop them, sir?' asked Els.

Kommandant van Heerden hesitated. He didn't want a bloodbath up at the main gateway to Jacaranda Park. On the other hand the situation was clearly such a desperate one and one word to the Press would bring hordes of newspapermen up-that he was prepared to take drastic measures.

'Yes,' he said at last. 'You can shoot.' And then remembering the fuss there had been when a wounded reporter had been taken to Piemburg Hospital, he added, 'And shoot to kill, Els, shoot to kill.' Complaints from the morgue were easier to refute.

Kommandant van Heerden went back into the house and Konstabel Els started off to guard the main gate. He hadn't gone very far when the thought crossed his mind that the elephant gun would certainly ensure that nothing larger than a cockroach got out of Jacaranda Park alive. He turned back and collected the gun from the stoep and then, after adding several packets of revolver ammunition from the police car set off up the drive with a light heart.

Back in the house Kommandant van Heerden was glad to see that Miss Hazelstone was still in her stupor in the armchair. At least one problem had been solved. No word of the injections would reach Konstabel Els. The thought of what would follow should Els get wind of that diversion had been haunting the Kommandant's mind. There had been enough complaints lately from local residents about the screams that came from the cells in Piemburg Police Station without Konstabel Els practising penal injections on the prisoners. Not that Els would have been content to use novocaine. He would have graduated to nitric acid before you could say Apartheid.

With Els out of the way, the Kommandant decided on his next step. Leaving Miss Hazelstone in her chair, he made his way to the telephone which lurked in the potted jungle in the hall. He made two calls. The first was to Luitenant Verkramp at the Police Station.

In later life Luitenant Verkramp was to recall that telephone conversation with the shudder that comes from recalling the first omens of disaster. At the time he had merely wondered what the hell was wrong with his Kommandant. Van Heerden sounded as though he were on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

'Verkramp, is that you?' his voice came in a strangled whisper over the phone.

'Of course it's me. Who the hell did you think it was?' Verkramp couldn't hear the answer but it sounded as if the Kommandant was trying to swallow something very unpleasant. 'What's going on up there? Is something wrong with you?' Verkramp inquired hopefully.

'Stop asking stupid questions and listen,' the Kommandant whispered authoritatively. 'I want you to assemble every single officer in Piemburg at the police barracks.'

Luitenant Verkramp was appalled. 'I can't do that,' he said, 'the rugby match is on. There'll be a riot if-'

'There'll be a fucking riot if you don't,' the Kommandant snarled. 'That's number one. Second, all leave including sick leave is cancelled. Got that?'

Luitenant Verkramp wasn't sure what he had got. It sounded like a frantic Kommandant.

'Assemble them all at the barracks,' continued the Kommandant. 'I want every man jack of them fully armed up here as soon as possible. Bring the Saracens too, and the guard dogs, oh and bring the searchlights too. All the barbed wire we've got, and bring those rabies signs we used in the epidemic last year.'

'The rabies signs?' Luitenant Verkramp shouted. 'You want the guard dogs and the rabies signs?'

'And don't forget the bubonic plague signs. Bring them too.'

Luitenant Verkramp tried to visualize the desperate outbreak of disease that had broken out at Jacaranda Park that necessitated warning the population about both rabies and bubonic plague.

'Are you sure you're all right?' he asked. It sounded as if the Kommandant was delirious.

'Of course I am all right,' snapped the Kommandant. 'Why the hell shouldn't I be all right?'

'Well, I just thought-'

'I don't care a stuff what you thought. You're not paid to think. You're paid to obey my orders. And I'm ordering you to bring every bloody sign we've got and every bloody policeman and every bloody guard dog…' Kommandant van Heerden's catalogue continued while Verkramp desperately searched his mind for the reasons for this emergency. The Kommandant's final order trumped the lot. 'Come up here by a roundabout route. I don't want to attract any public attention.' And before the Luitenant could inquire how he thought it possible to avoid public attention with a convoy of six armoured cars, twenty-five lorries and ten searchlights, not to mention seventy guard dogs, and several dozen enormous billboards announcing the outbreak of bubonic plague and rabies, the Kommandant had put down the phone.

Kommandant van Heerden's second call was to the Commissioner of Police for Zululand. Standing among the flora and fauna of the hall, the Kommandant hesitated some time before making his second call. He could see a number of difficulties looming up ahead of him when he made his request for Emergency Powers to deal with this situation, not the least of which was the sheer disbelief that was certain to greet his considered opinion as a police officer that the daughter of the late Judge Hazelstone had not only murdered her Zulu cook but that prior to this act had been fornicating with him regularly for eight years after rendering his reproductive organs totally numb and insensitive by intramuscular injections of massive doses of novocaine. Kommandant van Heerden knew what he would do to any subordinate officer who rang him up in the middle of a hot summer afternoon to tell him that sort of cock-and-bull story. He decided to avoid going into the details of the case. He would stress the likely consequences of a murder case involving the daughter of an extremely eminent judge who had, in his time, been the country's leading exponent of capital punishment, and he would use Luitenant Verkramp's report to Pretoria on Miss Hazelstone's subversive activities to justify his need for Emergency Powers. Plucking up courage, Kommandant van Heerden picked up the telephone and made his call. He was surprised to find the Commissioner raised no objections to his request.

'Emergency Powers, van Heerden? Of course, help yourself. You know what you're doing. I leave the matter entirely in your hands. Do what you think best.'

Kommandant van Heerden put down the phone with a puzzled frown. He had never liked the Commissioner and he suspected that the feeling was reciprocated.

The Commissioner in fact nourished the ardent hope that one day Kommandant van Heerden would perpetrate an error so unforgivable that he could be summarily reduced to the ranks and it seemed to him now from the Kommandant's hysterical manner on the phone that his day of vengeance was at hand. He immediately cancelled all appointments for the next month and took his annual holiday on the south coast, leaving orders that he was not to be disturbed. He spent the next week lying in the sun in the certain knowledge that he had given van Heerden enough rope with which to hang himself.

Armed now with Emergency Powers that made him the arbiter of life and death over 70,000 Piemburgers and gave him authority to suppress newspaper stories and to arrest, detain and torture at leisure all those he disapproved of, the Kommandant was still not a happy man. The events of the day had taken their toll of him.