Indecent Exposure Read Online Free PDF Page B

he’ll believe they did,” said Verkramp, who knew something about psychology. “Anyway I’ll cook up something to explain the bugs, don’t worry.”
    Dismissing the Sergeant, he drove to the police station and sat up half the night concocting a memorandum to put on the Kommandant’s desk in the morning.
    In fact there was no need to use it. Kommandant van Heerden arrived at the police station determined to make someone pay for the damage to his property. He wasn’t quite sure which of the public utilities to blame and Mrs Roussouw’s explanation hadn’t made the matter any clearer.
    “Oh, you do look a sight,” she said when the Kommandant came down to breakfast after shaving in cold water.
    “So does my bloody house,” said the Kommandant, dabbing his cheek with a styptic pencil.
    “Language,” retorted Mrs Roussouw. Kommandant van Heerden regarded her bleakly.
    “Perhaps you’d be good enough to explain what’s been happening here,” he said. “I came home last night to find the water cut off, a large hole in my bedroom ceiling and no electricity.”
    “The Water Board man did that,” Mrs Roussouw explained. “I had to give him the kiss of life to bring him round.”
    The Kommandant shuddered at the thought.
    “And what does that explain?” he asked.
    “The hole in the ceiling, of course,” said Mrs Roussouw.
    The Kommandant tried to visualize the sequence of events that had resulted from Mrs Roussouw’s giving the Water Board man the kiss of life and his falling through the ceiling.
    “In the attic?” he asked sceptically.
    “Of course not, silly,” Mrs Roussouw said. “He was looking for a hole in the cistern when I turned the electricity on …”
    The Kommandant was too bewildered to let her continue.
    “Mrs Roussouw,” he said wearily, “am I to understand … oh never mind. I’ll phone the Water Board when I get to the station.”
    He had breakfast while Mrs Roussouw added to the confusion in his mind by explaining that the Electricity man had been responsible for the accident in the first place by leaving the current on.
    “I suppose that explains the mess in here,” said the Kommandant, looking at the rubble under the sink.
    “Oh, no that was the Gas man,” Mrs Roussouw said.
    “But we don’t use gas,” said the Kommandant.
    “I know, I told him that but he said it was a leak in the mains.”
    The Kommandant finished his breakfast and walked to the police station utterly perplexed. In spite of the fact that the patrol cars had been unable to find any evidence that his house had been watched, the Kommandant was certain he had been under surveillance. He even had an uneasy feeling that he was being followed to the police station but when he glanced over his shoulder at the corner there was no one in sight.
    Once in his office he spent an hour on the phone haranguing the managers of the Gas, Electricity and Water Boards in an attempt to get to the bottom of the affair. It took the efforts of all three managers to convince him that their men had never been authorized to enter his house, that there was absolutely nothing the matter with his electricity or his water supply, and that there hadn’t been a suspected gas leak within a mile of his house and finally that they couldn’t be held responsible for the damage done to his property. The Kommandant reserved his opinion on this last point and said he would consult his lawyer. The Manager of the Water Board told him that it wasn’t the business of the board to mend leaks in cisterns in any case and the Kommandant said it wasn’t anybody’s business to make large holes in the ceiling of his bedroom, and he certainly wasn’t going to pay for the privilege of having them made.
    Having raised his blood pressure to a dangerously high level in this exchange of courtesies, the Kommandant sent for the Duty Sergeant, who was dragged from his bed to explain his behaviour over the phone.
    “I thought it was a hoax,” he told the