Greed

Greed (Rhino horn and the perfect crime)

by R. Eric Swanepoel

They say that the music of the 90s was greatly influenced by the music
of the 60s. Certainly the resemblance between Oasis and the Beatles
cannot be denied. If the former were musically inferior they made up
for it by being superior manipulators of the media, but I digress...
Important to this story is the fact that original 60s music, as well as
its 90s offspring, was being played extensively in the run-up to the
millennium. Crucial is that Damon Jones-Forsyth was reclining on his
rumpled bed in his pit-like room at Mount Jolly Halls of Residence
listening to Scotnoise Radio when "Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep" roused
him from the desultory draining of yet another can of McEwan's. He
jumped up, sending the brimming ashtray - strategically positioned on
the floor within a lazy armstretch of the bed - flying. (To be honest,
the ashtray's location had not been that carefully calculated. The
entire floor of the cupboard-like cubicle was within easy reach. Mount
Jolly architecture was based, notoriously, on a Swedish prison design,
the only modification being the squeezing of six bedrooms into the
floor area originally intended for four...) Anyway, the displaced
receptacle shed its cargo as it bounced off the walls like an ice
hockey puck. Not stopping to contemplate the result of his
carelessness, Damon rushed into his neighbour's room.

Damon's only compensation for failing to get into the superior
Smythe-Fortescue complex and being assigned to Mount Jolly (despite his
double-barrelled name he had not been to a private school and so was
low down on the list) had been his flatmate, Simon. Simon was a
soulmate with whom he had undergone many male-bonding sessions, or, in
other words, someone in whose company he had consumed large quantities
of beer in the Students Union while ogling young women they did not
have the courage to approach until too oiled to impress. Lately their
bar-room chat had focussed more on wealth and how to acquire it than
directly on the fair sex. They reasoned, after all, that the former
would attract the latter, so for the time being they ought to
concentrate on the former: money! It was becoming clear that zoology,
per se, was not about to make them millionaires. With only a year or so
to go before obtaining their honours degrees, unemployment was more
than likely imminent. So how were they to become rich?

For some time they had been aware of the value of rhino horn,
particularly prized in North Yemen where it is carved into dagger
handles, traditional symbols of virility. (The myth persists that the
main market is impotent Chinamen. It is true that some horn is ground
and used for this purpose, and it is also used as a febrifuge. It does
bring fever down, though not half as well as aspirin.) In Yemen it
fetched 10,000 dollars a kilogramme, and the six horns in the zoology
museum would amount to several kilogrammes... so how to steal them?
These valuable masses of keratin were in full view of the many museum
visitors during the day, and at night the museum was locked (as was,
indeed, the whole building). There were strict rules about who was
allowed an after-hours pass. They would have to have a damn good reason
to work late, and then an extra good one to work in the museum. After
all, everything there could equally well be studied during the day. And
then, even assuming they managed to gain access after-hours, the
absence of the horns would be noticed immediately and they would be the
obvious suspects! This last problem was the one they solved first. They
would remove the horns, hollow them out with the help of Damon's
brother's woodworking equipment, and put them back. No-one would know
they were just empty shells. That part was easy! What they had not
solved was how to get into the museum. And then "Chirpy chirpy cheep
cheep" came to the rescue.

'Eureka, eureka!' Damon might have shouted. In fact it was, 'Shit,
Simon, I've got it!'

So it was that they found themselves in the museum during ordinary
visiting hours, surreptitiously removing matchboxes from their pockets,
and, under the cover of their handkerchiefs, opening them and shaking
them a little. The cricket population of the zoology department
mysteriously exploded.

There had always been a small resident population of these Orthopterans
in the square concrete monstrosity known as the zoo building, alma
mater of many eminent biologists. In fact many of those privileged to
work late in the hallowed institution grew to love the sounds of
arthropod stridulation issuing from the airvents in the ceilings. (Just
as commuters on the Parisian M?tro became habituated to the chirps of
subterranean crickets. When the consequences of a ban on smoking,
resulting in a dearth of cigarette-butt cricket food, were added to the
effects of a M?tro workers' strike and the consequent shutdown of the
heating, the Parisian breed was almost wiped out. The cricket-lovers of
Paris were up in arms... but that's another story.) For some
unaccountable reason, it seemed that the zoology museum was the
epicentre of this plague of nocturnal Insecta.

The time for honours students to choose their research projects came
around. Damon and Simon evinced strong interest in investigating the
zoology museum cricket phenomenon. Of course, as the object of their
study was nocturnal they would have to be given permission to work at
night, alone.

Trying not to let the porter see their nervousness, they were let into
the museum at last. They forced themselves to appear to be looking for
crickets until the porter had closed the door behind them...

'The perfect crime...' said Dr. Gourmet, puffing a large Partagas
cigar. He gestured to a bikini-clad waitress for another bottle of
champagne, and wondered whether he should bother going back to Inverdon
to continue the pretence of being a dedicated curator of the zoology
museum. Life in Mystique was rather agreeable. Sun, sand... My, the way
her body moved!

'Yes,' said Professor Kreutzfeld, when he had swallowed his mouthful of
caviar, '...the perfect crime is the simplest. Take the rhino horns
away and put up a notice saying they've been removed for safe-keeping.
No-one will ever check... You know I seem to remember hearing that
Bollinger '37 is rather special. Shall we order some?'