by JRL Anderson
The man did not seem pleased to see Miss Sutherland. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he asked roughly.
She sat down on the edge of the trench, exhausted and panting. For a minute or so she couldn’t find enough breath to speak, then she said, ‘Please don’t be angry, Robert. I’ve come to warn you.’
‘Warn me of what?’
‘A strange man has turned up at the Mission. He calls himself Professor Ramsden and says he used to know Eustace, but Eustace always wrote to me about any other botanist he met, and I’ve never heard of any Ramsden. He says that Eustace lectured a couple of times at his college, but I don’t believe it. I’m sure Eustace would have told me, and as it was in London he’d almost certainly have invited me to meet him there. I’m very suspicious of Professor Ramsden.’
‘What is he doing at the Mission?’
‘He says he’s on a tour doing agricultural research for the Government, but if so it seems extraordinary that Father Simpson wasn’t told anything about him in advance. It looks horribly as if he is after us in some way.’
‘Well, he’s too late.’ He pointed to a cardboard cartridge box. ‘Look!’
Miss Sutherland picked up the box, and gasped, ‘So it’s all true!’
‘I found all those this morning, and there are some beautiful big stones among them. And there are plenty more where those came from. I’ve made one of the biggest diamond strikes in history.’
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.
‘Fill all my bags with diamonds, cover up the digging, and get out. Maybe I can come back for some more some time, but one load will be enough to make me a millionaire several times over. I was going to walk to the Mission and go out from there, but from what you say I think I’d better go down to Boscombe’s old place, get a canoe – there are always some tied up there – and go down river to the frontier.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Go back to the Mission, and go home to England at leisure.’
‘But Robert, I can’t. I’m too tired to go back all that way, and there’ll be a fearful fuss when they find that I’m missing tonight. And I’m not happy about going back to England. I left rather mysteriously, and I’m sure there’ll be a lot more police questioning. Can’t I stay with you? With the money from all those diamonds there’s no need for either of us ever to go back to England. Remember all the things we promised ourselves we’d do one day.’
‘You can’t come with me. I know how to get across the frontier on my own, and I’m not going to have you tagging along. You must go back to the Mission. Tell them that you went for a walk and got lost.’
‘Oh, Robert, I can’t.’
‘Then you can bloody well stay here.’ Without another word he swung the heavy spade he was holding and brought it crashing down on Miss Sutherland’s head. There was nothing we could do – she must have been killed instantly, for her skull was shattered. The man threw her body into one end of the trench he had been digging and shovelled earth on it. Then he threw stones on top of the earth. Satisfied that the body was covered he moved to the other end of the trench, took his pickaxe and began working away again.
The sergeant had his hand on his revolver. I felt a mixture of nausea and anger, nausea for the moment uppermost, and I had a struggle to prevent myself from actually being sick. Suddenly the man gave a little shout, knelt down, and worked with his fingers round the point of the pick. Then he stood up and opened his hand. ‘What a beauty!’ he said aloud. He moved his hand a little, and the light caught it with a flash almost as of fire. The diamond was rough, of course, and I expect the pick must have chipped one edge to reveal such dazzling brightness. The man put the diamond in his box, and returned to his digging.
It was time to end our paralysis of inaction. We couldn’t talk where we were, because although we were screened from sight by the rock, we could easily have been heard. I signed to Sergeant Taskalu to go back the way we had come. When we were out of the chine and on the ridge again we were safely out of sight and sound. We knew where the man was, and his digging would certainly keep him absorbed for a while longer.
‘If we work our way round the crater he’ll have his back to us,’ I said. ‘We must keep a bit apart from each other, then you shout and I’ll rush him. With any luck I can get him down, and you can weigh in at the right moment. I can’t give you orders in your country, but I’d strongly suggest that you don’t hesitate to use your pistol, though it would be better to avoid killing him if possible. After what happened today I suppose you’ll want to try him for murder in Mpuga.’
The sergeant looked worried. ‘Of course he will be tried for murder, and with the two of us as witnesses he has no possible defence,’ he said. ‘But he talked of crossing the frontier with his load of diamonds. I really ought to see where he makes for, and if he has any partners. Diamond smuggling is big business. Our Government will certainly take charge of things here, but when diamond working starts in earnest, freelances will be out prospecting for themselves all over the place. In country like this they will be hard to control, and they may have catastrophic effects on the forest people. I must know how this man proposes to cross the frontier, and if he already has allies on our side of it.’
*
I could see his point of view all too clearly. The diamond strike was going to be of enormous importance to Mpuga, and the Government needed all the knowledge it could get. That was the sergeant’s job. My own concern was more limited. I wanted to see the man I believed to be Robert Purbeck brought to justice for what I was now convinced had been three murders. I wanted to tackle him on the spot, tie his hands behind his back, and deliver him as quickly as possible to the Mpugan police. ‘If we tackle him as I suggested, and take him, as I think we can, he can be questioned and cross-questioned in police custody,’ I said.
‘He can, but he can lie. If I see where he is actually going he will not be able to deceive us.’
‘Where do you suppose he will try to cross the frontier?’
‘I have been wondering about that. As far as the Otaro Falls – that’s about ten miles below the river-crossing where he expects to find a canoe – the whole of the Ga river is in Mpuga. Below the falls the river is the boundary, the left bank being Mpugan territory, the right bank forming the frontier. If he can land on the right bank there, he’s out of Mpugan jurisdiction. But it’s not easy to get to, because of the falls. There’s a biggish village on the Mpugan side of the falls, where boats going up or downstream unload for cargoes to be carried round the falls to be reloaded into fresh boats. That’s the traditional work of the villagers – all the river trade in these parts is in Mpugan hands. The other side of the falls, across the river, is in a stretch of appalling country, very broken by ravines, with dense bush and dangerous bogs in the ravines. Without a guide I think it would be very difficult to get across the frontier on that side of the river, though I suppose it could be done by going miles inland. He’s got to get round the falls and find another boat to go on downstream. I want to follow him to the village by Otaro Falls, to see what he does there. If he’s got any sort of accomplice, I want to know who it is. There’s a police post at Otaro Falls, and he can be held there.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I can follow the man all right. I’d like you to go back to the Mission, use the R/T link there to call up the police post at Otaro Falls and ask them to have men waiting for me.’
‘I don’t like it. As things are we’re two to one. If we split up, we become one to one – and you’ve seen how ruthless and determined he can be. He’s got a cartridge box, so he’s certainly got either a pistol or a rifle, probably both. I don’t doubt your tracking abilities, but you could fall, or meet some accident, and then we’d lose him altogether. If you are sure that you want to follow him rather than tackle him now, I think we must stick together. When we get to the river-crossing, I can keep an eye on him if necessary, while you go across to the settlement to get your mother�
��s people on our side. They know the forest and the river. You may need help before you get to Otaro Falls, and if you do the forest people are likely to be of more practical use than the police.’
The sergeant thought over this. Then he nodded. ‘You’re probably right, sir,’ he said. His return to calling me ‘sir’ after the total equality of our relationship was, perhaps, an unconscious acknowledgement that I was older, and capable of giving advice. There was nothing subservient about it – indeed, as a Mpugan police officer his authority was far superior to mine. ‘We’d better go back to where we can see him,’ he added.
We took post again behind our rock on the lip of the crater. The man was working busily at his trench, breaking new ground with his pick, then digging into the earth with his pointed spade. Every now and then he would stop and put spadefuls of earth through a wire-mesh sieve. Two or three times more we heard his little shout of satisfaction as he took a stone from the sieve and threw it in his cartridge box.
XI
Pursuit
I WONDERED HOW long he would stay in his trench. Night falls swiftly near the equator, and there wasn’t more than an hour of daylight left. Would he attempt the trip to Boscombe’s old place in the dark? It was beginning to look probable – presumably he had walked it several times, and knew the way well enough. Keeping track of him in the dark, not getting too close and not letting him get too far ahead, would be a problem, though, for us.
There was nothing we could do about it. I still itched to rush him there and then, but having agreed to let Sergeant Taskalu follow his own plan, I couldn’t go back on it.
The man worked on until within about twenty minutes of the short twilight of Central Africa. Then he hurriedly filled in the trench, scattering stones on the earth as he had over Miss Sutherland’s grave. Next he hid his pick, spade and sieve in a hole near a big rock, covering them with stones, too. Then he put his cardboard box into a duffel bag, slung the bag over his shoulder and walked off. We waited until he was nearly out of sight, then followed. We repeated the tactics of the final stage of following Miss Sutherland, the sergeant taking the lead, and I just keeping him in sight.
The going was rough, but not difficult, and as long as there was a scrap of daylight left we could see at least the shape of our quarry. As real darkness came the sergeant had to close up, and we did our utmost to move quietly. Once I knocked a stone that I couldn’t see, and it bounded off down the hillside. We all stopped, the sergeant and I going flat on our faces. The man in front looked round, walked back a few paces, and listened intently. There was no other sound, and after a moment he seemed satisfied that the noise had been natural, and went on.
The sergeant’s skill as a tracker would have been near-unbelievable if I hadn’t experienced it. He seemed able to see in the dark, and perhaps to some extent he could, having a natural gift to react to slight stimuli on the retina that most of us can’t notice. If I say that he moved like a cat I am being almost unfair to him, for I have heard many cats in gardens make more noise. At times he could have been only a few yards behind the man we were following, but he gave away no inkling of his presence. I dropped back to a safer distance, knowing that if necessary I could probably get to the river crossing on my own, and that the sergeant would be waiting for me.
As we lost height the bush returned, and in a way things became easier, for the bush path was narrow, and the dense jungle walls made it physically impossible to leave the path. But it was harder to move in total silence, for in the bush the darkness was pitch-black, and it was impossible to see a twig or liana that was about to scrape your face. How the sergeant managed I don’t know, but he did. I dropped back even farther hoping to stay out of sound’s reach, and confident that the path would ultimately get me where I needed to go.
Fortunately the man we were following was not concerned to move without sound, and until I dropped back to be out of earshot I could hear him knock against a branch from time to time. The path was not easy, but the man must have cleared it sufficiently to make it passable for himself, and it was not too bad.
The fantastic nature of our pursuit struck me. A murder in an English village had brought me to this African bush to hunt a man who I had just seen commit another brutal murder. And the man was carrying a million or two pounds worth of diamonds as nonchalantly as one might carry a kitbag holding no more than a spare pair of socks and a couple of old shirts.
What damnable things those diamonds were – or rather, what damnable things men did for possession of them. This little lot in front of us had already cost three lives – Gita Boscombe, Eustace Quenenden and Hilda Sutherland. There was no doubt about the murder of Hilda Sutherland, and little doubt in my own mind that the same man had killed the other two, though there had not yet been a chance to question him. Would we ever know the whole story? And what was the particular part played by Miss Sutherland? Her brief conversation before she was killed indicated that I’d been right in my guess that she’d been more closely in touch with Quenenden than she had admitted to the police, but what was her link with the man I believed to be Robert Purbeck? Obviously she was deeply involved with him, but in what context, and why? Had she learned from Father Simpson where he’d dug the clay he sent to Quenenden, and told Purbeck, or had he found out this for himself? How had Miss Sutherland known the way from the Mission to the clay?
My mind was spinning with questions when I was brought up short by walking into an arm stretched across the path. It belonged to Sergeant Taskalu. ‘It’s all right for the moment,’ he whispered. ‘He’s gone off to the left – there’s a building of some sort.’ A moment later a light appeared suddenly, a hurricane lamp, probably, though as it broke the darkness it shone as brightly as a flood lamp. As my eyes got used to it I could see that it didn’t really penetrate the darkness far. It showed the frame of a window or door opening, but I couldn’t tell which because it was much overgrown.
Asking me to wait where I was the sergeant slipped off to investigate. He was back in about five minutes, took my hand and led me a couple of hundred yards farther along the path. ‘He can’t hear us now,’ he said. ‘You were right –he’s camping out in some part of the old building. It’s very tumbledown, but it’s shelter of a sort, and he’s made himself quite comfortable. It looks as though he’s been there for some time.’
‘That would fit in.’ I said. ‘My own feeling is that he knew all about adamantifera – the flowers you call seslili –when he came here, but he didn’t know precisely where the diamond-bearing strata was. He probably knew roughly, and relied on his geological training to find it. I think he found it in the end through Miss Sutherland, the woman he murdered, and that she got the place from Father Simpson, at the Mission. I’m sure Father Simpson knows nothing about diamonds, but he must have told her where he got the clay soil that he sent to Quenenden in England.’
‘Maybe we shall find out later. At the moment it doesn’t matter. He’s cooking himself a meal, and looks as if he’ll stay where he is for a bit. We are almost at the river-crossing now, and if I can find a canoe I’ll go across to the village to collect some help. I’ll also try to get some food, and bring it back to you. We both need food. Can you keep watch on the man while I’m away?’
‘Of course. But I’ll come down to the river with you first. I’m not only starving, I’m devilish thirsty. That drink we had at the stream during the afternoon seems about a century ago.’
‘We’ll get on, then. The crossing-place, with an old plank quay where they tie up boats, should be just along this path.’
It was. Cupping my hands again I had a delicious drink before thinking of anything else. The sergeant was more self-disciplined. He must have been as thirsty as I was, but before allowing himself to drink he had a look round for boats. There seemed to be only two, a small single-seat canoe, and a bigger one that would carry about four people. Having established that there was a boat available, he gave himself a drink and said that he would take the small canoe to go
across. I watched him go, and then walked back towards the ruins of the old plantation house.
The light was still in the window. I’d left the hard work of tracking to the sergeant – now I had to do it myself. Moving with extreme caution, making sure that each foot did not touch the ground until I was sure there was no twig under it to snap, I crept towards the lighted window. As I got near I could see that it wasn’t a window, but a doorway, though there seemed no sign of a door, which long since must have rusted from its hinges. The man had found an old iron bedstead on which to spread his sleeping bag – and he’d made himself comfortable with a mattress of dry reeds. He was sitting on the bed, eating from a tin pan in which he had cooked something on a small camping stove. He was just at the end of his meal, for I saw him put down the pan and take a bottle from a haversack. Whether it was whisky, rum or brandy I don’t know, but he took several long swigs straight from the bottle. Fortified in a way that I envied, he got his duffel bag and took out a handful of diamonds. He let them trickle through his fingers back into the bag. I had an almost overpowering instinct to rush him then – I still had the panga that the sergeant had given me stuck in my belt, and I reckoned that I could get in a panga blow before he could reach for a gun. But it wouldn’t do. I was on duty, committed to Sergeant Taskalu and the Mpugan police, and although I had strong misgivings about the sergeant’s plan I had to do my best to help him with it.
Having gloated for a while over his diamonds, the man looked at his watch. Whatever his own plans were, the time was obviously not yet. He put the bag of diamonds inside the sleeping bag, lay down to one side of it and closed his eyes.
Confident that he’d stay put for a time I went back to the river crossing. I hadn’t been there long when Sergeant Taskalu’s canoe glided into the bank. I told him that the man seemed safely asleep and he nodded. He tied up the canoe where it had been before, and handed me a basket. It was full of food – flat pancakes baked on a hot stone with flour ground from a root gathered in the forest and tasting like the best sort of potato cake, some legs of cold roast chicken, and masses of bananas. I’d met the root-pancakes hot at lunch at the Mission, and found them just as good cold. The sergeant had not waited to eat before coming back to me, and we both tucked in. Lord, how we needed that meal! There was nothing left in the basket when we’d finished, and the sergeant carefully hid it in the bush with the debris from our meal.’