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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