The Blood of an Englishman by James McClure Read Free Book Online Page A

nurse was many times prettier than you!”
    Van Rensburg, whose crewcut and everything else about him seemed calculated to underline his strident masculinity, went very red, then purple, and finally a sort of muddy brown. He muttered something about having an idle kaffir to kick, and withdrew.
    “Er-hum,” said Prinsloo, clearing his throat again. “Do you want me to take a snap of this as well, Doc?”
    “No, but you can get out of my light if you like.”
    “Sorry, Doc! Hell, that was interesting about skin, hey?”
    Kramer groaned inwardly. Here they came: Strydom’s endless supply of pertinent anecdotes based on the case histories he so avidly consumed—while all that mattered right then was the size of the bullet used on Hookham. The difference between an entrance wound made by a .32 and one made by a .38 was, of course, impossible to judge with the naked eye, especially as caliber ratings were such nonsense anyway. A .38 Special was, in fact, a .35, which was how he came to have Specials in the .357 Ruger magnum under his left arm.
    “Let me tell you,” said Strydom, pausing with the scalpel poised in his hand, “about a case reported by a Dr. LeMoyne Snyder in America. This bloke was sent along to him with this swollen scrotum—know what that is?” Prinsloo nodded andpointed to one in a glass jar on a nearby shelf. “Ja, but just a normal one in other respects, not piebald. Anyway, Snyder feels this hard lump inside, and so he gives him a shot of Novocain and makes a little slit the same as this.…” The incision opened in Hookham’s back like a bloodshot eye with a lead-gray cornea. “And what popped out? A thirty-eight slug! Hold on a sec, Tromp, let me finish, hey? Well, finally the bloke explained what had happened. It seems that ten days previously he’d tried to shoot himself by putting his gun to his breastbone and pulling the trigger.”
    “Yirra!” said Prinsloo.
    “And the next thing he knew, he was coming round on the floor of his place. All he had was this small puncture mark, a bit of pain, and that was it. At first he looked all over for the bullet, thinking it had sort of ricocheted, then he gave up and just decided that the Almighty had stepped in and stopped his suicide plan—which was probably true enough. He didn’t personally connect the swelling in his scrotum at all, you see, and that didn’t start up for nearly a week. What had transpired, however, was that the bullet had been deflected downwards between the skin and bone, it had missed going into the peritoneum—the bag around your guts—and it had stopped in his left testicle.”
    “He—he was all right after?” Prinsloo asked.
    “Perfect!”
    “Now there’s a thing! And could the bullet have finished up in his left foot just as easily, Doc?”
    Strydom blinked. “Why?” he said, bewildered.
    “Well, because it’s a fantastic true-life story to tell my class at Sunday School, only I—”
    Prinsloo caught Kramer’s glare in the nick of time and shut up. Strydom hastily bent over the body again, stretched the skin around the incision and gave a pleased grunt, nipping up a spent bullet between thumb and forefinger. He dropped it into Kramer’s waiting hand.
    “A thirty-two, I think, Tromp? Popped out as neat as a pea from a pod!”
    “A
soft-nosed
thirty-two,” murmured Kramer, feeling another dull thud in the pit of his stomach, “just like the one they dug out of Archie Bradshaw.…” He tossed the slug and the original bullet from his top pocket at Prinsloo. “Get those to your kids out there and tell them they’re to be delivered to Ballistics, pronto! I want a full report by lunch-time.” Then he turned back to Strydom. “Nice going, Doc—now let’s see what else you can find for me.”
    Zondi drove into the posh suburb of Morninghill in the Lieutenant’s Chevrolet which he had slyly removed from the mortuary yard some fifteen minutes earlier, synchronizing his departure with that of a