The Sunday Hangman by James McClure Page A

Frikkie Jonkers could do, except go off to the bar, and the swiftness of the transfer of the key ring had left Ferreira looking quite amenable himself. They went into his office, which was prettier with unpaid bills than the pillars outside, and Kramer invited him to sit down. A short, thoughtful pause followed, and then the man was about ready.
    “I detected a conflict of opinion over Tommy, Mr. Ferreira.”
    “Oh? Well, not exactly.”
    “That he perhaps had tried to bilk you? And you had grounds for suspicions of this nature?”
    “I—I wasn’t too sure.”
    “Uh huh?”
    “Just a casual check was a question of favors, really. I do Frikkie quite a few off and on, and when the occasion arises—”
    “Forget that side of it. How long did Tommy McKenzie stay here?”
    Ferreira relaxed a little, and took up a rubber band to play with. “He came just under three months ago. He’d been told by a Jo’burg specialist to rest up and find a hot spring for his leg—someone recommended us. He had this leg trouble; did Frikkie tell you? Got hammered when a land mine blew up his jeep in Biafra or Angola or some such place. I was never much interested.”
    “Did he limp all the time?” Kramer asked.
    “Most of the time,” Ferreira replied, with a faint smile just hinted. “Obviously, some days his leg was a lot better.”
    “Come on, man! You didn’t say that like you meant it.”
    “Well, I wasn’t too worried, put it that way. Frikkie said he was okay, and I’d had a mercenary here before, back in the days when the spa wasn’t developed. One of those organizers hiding from the others because the kaffirs hadn’t paid up what they’d promised.”
    “And you thought Tommy might be one himself?”
    “Sort of. The organizers never leave themselves short, and—well—I wasn’t really worried, like I say. He paid monthly in advance.”
    “So what did worry you, finally?”
    “The way he vanished, to begin with. But if you say he’s—”
    “No; please explain your side first,” Kramer interrupted. “All of a sudden he was gone?”
    “Ja, gone. Normally he never went out much, and when he did, he’d always have something to say about it. Then I looked in his room and found just a few cheap clothes and a case not worth taking. That’s when I began to wonder. He’d been putting a lot on tick in the bar recently, plus he’d been making long-distance calls from my office here, also on account.”
    “Which he’d have to settle when paying his next month in advance? Due this coming Monday?”
    “Exactly. It was nearly triple the amount before. Frikkie argued with me, said I was being too suspicious, but I said he’d left the clothes to make me—”
    “These calls—do you have the numbers?”
    “No, but it’s a farm line, so the exchange in Brandspruit—”
    “I’ll contact them. Did he get any mail?”
    “Never. Said he had no family, and that all his friends were either dead or in England and the States.”
    Kramer offered Ferreira a Lucky Strike while thinking that little lot over. It vexed him to realize that he’d never know whether Erasmus had consciously exploited the acceptable shadiness of a soldier of fortune; whatever the intention, it had been a stroke of genius. The hotel manager had been able to quash his own doubts quite happily, much encouraged, of course, by a half-witted policeman and the demands of assorted creditors. Yet this perfect plan had obviously come unstuck somewhere down the line.
    “Do you think the other mercs could have got him?” Ferreira asked, supplying their light. “From the stories he told us,they sounded a real bunch of madmen. He even admitted once shooting up a school of kaffir kids to teach them a lesson—he thought they were helping the rebels, but it was a mistake. Killed forty of them, he said. If he was holding out on his mates, they might not show much mercy. What do you think?”
    Just for an instant, Kramer almost fell for Erasmus’s cover