African Sky

by Tony Park

  ‘Now I’m confused. Catherine De Beers’ aircraft?’

  ‘No, one of our trainees crashed his Harvard on her property a week ago – on her private airstrip.’

  ‘An unlucky coincidence. What was one of your training aircraft doing trying to land at her place?’

  A bloody good question. The pilot was one of our Canadians. He claimed he had engine trouble, spotted the strip from the air and tried to put the kite down. He said one of his wheels must have gone into a hole dug by an ant bear or some other creature. It’s been a bad couple of weeks for us. Catherine’s crash has put a hold on the parachuting displays; the Canadian is facing disciplinary action; and this morning, as well as learning about Felicity, I received a report that another of our Harvards has failed to return from a navigation exercise.’

  ‘Sounds like a dangerous business,’ Pip said. She wondered if it were unusual to lose two military aircraft in the space of a couple of weeks. If so, the losses must be horrendous.

  ‘I’ll show you our cemetery some time, if you like.’ He looked away from her, far out across the runway, where a twin-engine aircraft had just raised puffs of bluish smoke as its wheels bounced and burned the concrete.

  ‘I’m going to recommend to Sergeant Hayes that we talk to Mrs De Beers as part of our investigation,’ Pip said, wondering if the talk of cemeteries and aircraft losses had triggered some awful memory for the Australian. Another machine circled and flew low over their heads. Pip could feel the vibrations of its engine in her body and, after it had passed, could smell its oily exhaust. This was a foreign world to her, though for many women of her age it was a workplace – probably the first job any of them had ever held.

  ‘Why Catherine? Don’t you think Felicity’s death could have just been a random attack? You seem to be starting with those closest to her.’

  ‘I’ll tell you the truth, Mr Bryant. I need to know how Felicity Langham ended up half-naked, tied up and dead in the wrong part of Bulawayo. If her death was the result of some sexual misadventure, it could very well have involved someone who was extremely close to her – intimately so – and that’s why I’m looking at everyone who knew her, in any sense of the word.’

  ‘Tied up?’ Bryant asked.

  Damn, Pip swore to herself. She’d given away information to someone she was questioning, without intending to. You’re not a trained detective, Pip, she admonished herself. You’ve got to play this carefully. She had to regain control. ‘Why did you lie to me, Squadron Leader?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  ‘You told me you knew Felicity Langham through some social events, where the staff from the base got together after hours on an all-ranks basis.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve been told you’re not exactly the most sociable officer on base, that you actually avoid such gatherings.’

  ‘I think I’m the best person to recall how I met someone.’

  A weak, vague response, Pip thought. She reckoned he was lying. ‘When was the last all-ranks function you attended, Squadron Leader? I’ll need a date, please.’

  ‘I fail to see what difference it makes how I got to know LACW Langham.’

  She noticed he looked away from her, unable to meet her gaze. ‘I thought it was “Flick”? How many times have you gone around to the parachute hangar in the last week expressly looking for Felicity Langham?’

  Before Bryant could answer there was thud of boots on the pavement behind them. Pip turned and saw a young uniformed officer running towards them, holding his hat on with one hand. He called out to Bryant to stop.

  They waited for him to catch up. ‘Excuse me,’ Bryant said to Pip. ‘What is it, Wilson?’

  The young Rhodesian jogged to them and, still panting from the effort, said: ‘They’ve found him.’

  ‘Who?’ Bryant asked. ‘Take a breath.’

  ‘Smythe. The Pommie, the one who went missing in the Harvard.’

  ‘Dead or alive?’

  ‘Dead, I’m afraid, sir. Murdered by natives, across the border in Bechuanaland, on the saltpans.’

  ‘Bloody hell’ Bryant quickly explained to Pip that Smythe was the pilot of the aircraft that had gone missing on a navigation exercise, but was clearly way off course. The saltpans were in the neighbouring country and started more than a hundred and twenty miles west of Bulawayo.

  If she had it right, Bryant was now dealing with three aircraft mishaps which had occurred on his watch – this latest one, the Canadian who had crashed his Harvard at Catherine De Beers’ ranch, and the widow’s damaged Tiger Moth, which, even though it was a civilian aircraft, had formed part of the Kumalo parachuting displays. Pip cursed silently. She’d been very close to finding something out about Bryant and Langham before the officer had interrupted them, though she could only guess what that something was.

  The man scattered the last shovel full of salty white sand onto the distorted, leathery face of the bushman hunter. The other one was already buried.

  He tied the spade to the top of his saddlebags and wiped his hands on his horse’s flank. ‘Steady, it’s all right.’ The horse was still spooked by the sound of the two shots that had echoed across the plains. ‘There, there, don’t worry, my boy.’

  He spat on the ground. The bushmen had done as he had paid them to and had died as he had planned. They were good at what they did, like obedient, well-trained dogs, he thought. Unlike dogs, though, they could talk, probably would if the police caught them. Death was the only solution. Their passing meant nothing. There would be many others, come the change in power. In the new world, people like him would take their rightful place again. The enemies of the state, and those natives who did not fulfil a useful role, would be banished or removed, permanently. He had seen the light, abroad. It was time to illuminate the darkness in this corner of Africa.

  He was tall and straight-backed. His fair features were protected by a broad-brimmed bush hat and he wore round sunglasses with metal rims to protect his blue eyes from the glare. He was no stranger to the saltpans of Bechuanaland and the deserts of the Kalahari, but he had been away from the African sun for too long. Snowy northern winters had leached the bronze from his skin.

  He had hunted here, on the wide-open flats, with his father as a boy. He’d heard the stories of his people around the campfire, as the lions called to each other in the night. ‘One day, my boy,’ his father had said in their language, not English, ‘we will take back our country from the rooineks. We will have vengeance for your mother and the countless other thousands of innocents who were slaughtered by the British. You will play your part, mark my words.’

  Indeed he would. His father would have been proud of him. He was a soldier now, in a war against his people’s enemies. He wore no uniform, though he had in Spain and Crete. He had studied and he had learned, about his chosen profession and, more importantly, about the vision for the new world order. It would work in Africa, as it was working in Europe. But it needed men of iron will to make it happen. Men who could endure hardship, and kill when necessary to protect an ideal.

  He saw the vultures circling. Maybe they would find the body of the Englishman, maybe not. It didn’t matter. He mounted his horse and headed east. Even riding, it would be two more days’ travelling, at least, before he crossed the border. He eyed the Mauser rifle in the holster on the beast’s flank. It was loaded and ready. Before he met his enemies there would be other dangers on this journey – lion, leopard, elephant wary of men who still hunted them for their ivory, black rhino who had a similar dislike of humans. He wasn’t scared of the bush, but he was always wary and respectful of it. The other horse, tethered to his own mount, trailed behind. Strapped to its sides was the cargo, so precious, so important to his dream. He had nursed it halfway around the world.

  The aircraft was long gone, much to his relief. He figured he would be off the pan and in amongst the mopani forests along the border of Bechuanaland and Southern Rhodesia by nightfall. If more aircraft came, to
search for the Englishman, he would be hidden from view from the air. He relished the quiet emptiness of the saltpan and he rode on, towards the finalisation of his mission.

  5

  Bryant hated hospitals. The familiar odour of urine barely disguised by disinfectant sent a shiver up his back. He remembered the pain and the nightmares after the crash. He suppressed the memories as he followed Hayes and Lovejoy down a long corridor and turned left, following the sign to the morgue.

  His mother had died because there was no doctor or hospital within fifty miles of the property on which his parents had lived. Rhodesia had surprised him in terms of the facilities that were available, even in this remote corner of Africa. The air training scheme had spurred development in some areas but, by and large, there was a pretty good level of services for both the blacks and the whites. Sometimes, if he squinted a little, to blur his vision, and let the heat and dust wash over his skin, and the buzz of the flies fill his ears, he could almost be back in Australia.

  It wasn’t even as though he saw that many black faces around Bulawayo – at least, not in the town centre. The men on his troopship on the first trip over, had joked that they would be confronted by spear-wielding Zulus and bare-breasted African maidens, but he’d seen virtually nothing of traditional African culture or customs. What he’d learned of it had come from Kenneth Ngwenya. In town the shopkeepers and office workers and, here at the hospital, the doctors and nurses were all of British stock. Most of the African civilians he saw were uniformed messengers, maids, cleaners or, like the chap he could see through a window in the corner of the hospital grounds dressed in patched overalls, gardeners. He was watering a flowerbed in a corner of the hospital’s front yard, desperately trying to coax some colour from the ruddy earth. The man reminded Bryant he was, in fact, a long way from home.

  It was an odd place, he thought. Rhodesia. So very British in some ways, but, like Australia, a world away from Britain. Rhodesia was still a colony, whereas Australia had become a nation under federation. Odd, he mused, that a country whose population had descended from convicts now occupied a higher place in the pecking order than this one, whose white stock came from business people and gentleman farmers. Even the name came from a trader – Cecil John Rhodes. Rhodesia had its own parliament and, since 1923, a prime minister; and while the people were fiercely loyal to Britain – about a fifth of the colony’s twenty-five thousand whites were in uniform – he reckoned there would come a day soon when they wanted to set themselves up as a nation, as Australia had.

  He’d felt confined in England, as though everywhere he’d looked there were people. No wide open spaces, like in Australia or Africa. The cold and the rain had been anathema to him. Even without the losses and the casualties, the weather had been enough to sap the blokes’ morale. But even here, in this town of perfumed jacarandas, clear skies and sunny weather, he couldn’t escape death. It was waiting for him.

  ‘I hate these places,’ Bryant said.

  ‘I don’t imagine anyone particularly enjoys a visit to a morgue,’ Pip replied.

  ‘No, hospitals, I mean. Sometimes it’s harder confronting people who’ve been burned or maimed. I could have sent Wilson here, you know.’

  ‘You would have had to come here anyway,’ Hayes said, ‘because we need someone to formally identify Miss Langham’s body.’

  Bryant was surprised, and a little uneasy at the prospect. ‘I thought I was coming here to identify Flight Sergeant Smythe.’ In truth, he wondered if he could identify the lost pilot. He barely remembered the man’s face. To assist him he had brought the trainee flyer’s personnel file, which included a small black and white portrait photograph. He most certainly did not want to see Flick’s body.

  ‘Miss Langham is an only child. Her mother is dead and her father is serving overseas. We’re still trying to contact him. In the meantime, we need someone who knew her well enough to confirm her identity.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said, steeling himself. He’d lost count of the number of dead men he’d seen in the last two years, but a woman, and a woman he knew, might be different.

  Pilot Officer Wilson’s news of the discovery of Smythe’s body on the saltpans west of Bulawayo, in Bechuanaland, had interrupted Pip Lovejoy’s uncomfortable line of questioning, but Bryant knew he would have to face her again. He wondered what questions they would spring on him here, in the morgue, where they could probably tell he was less than fully composed.

  Hayes knocked on a door and it was opened by a stooped, elderly white man with horn-rimmed glasses perched on the tip of his nose. ‘Afternoon, Sergeant, Miss,’ the man said.

  ‘This is Doctor Lewis Strachan, our resident professor of pathology, who conducts postmortems for police investigations,’ Hayes said, then introduced Bryant to the doctor.

  ‘Welcome, if that’s the right word,’ the doctor said with a thin smile. ‘Squadron Leader, I know this is a difficult task, but it’s a necessary one. I’ve not commenced the full postmortem on either deceased person, although I have conducted cursory examinations of both. I have to warn you that the young man’s corpse has been attacked somewhat, presumably by vultures.’

  ‘I understand,’ Bryant said. ‘If you don’t mind, perhaps we could get on with it.’

  The doctor nodded. In front of them were two tables with bodies covered by white sheets. He pulled down the first.

  Bryant had told himself he would show no emotion, but he drew a sharp breath when he saw Flick’s ghostly white face. He really hadn’t been prepared to see her like this. She was still beautiful, of course, and somehow, in death, looked more innocent than in life. But gone was the mischievous sparkle in her eyes; the insincere smile that she put on when talking to the Wingco; no tongue-poking behind Susannah Beattie’s back. She had been no angel, of that he was sure, but he hoped she was somewhere peaceful now. ‘It’s her,’ he said. He bit his lip at the sight of the angry ligature marks on the soft skin of her neck.

  ‘For the record, this is Felicity Langham?’ Hayes asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Pip ignored Hayes, the doctor and the body. She looked across the table straight into Bryant’s eyes. If he didn’t love the dead woman, he had at least been with her, she thought. Those were not the eyes of a detached superior officer gazing on the body of an airwoman under his command. Bryant was reliving memories – of quite what, she could not know. If she’d had her way, she would have studied him for as long as he wanted to gaze at her and remember.

  Instead, Hayes cut the moment short. ‘Well, that’s that then. On to the next, if you please, Doctor.’

  Apart from being quietly appalled at Hayes’ lack of sympathy, she was furious that he had given Bryant a chance to recompose himself and get back to business. She assumed his reaction to the viewing of the pilot’s body would be markedly different.

  Bryant opened the folder he was carrying. She noticed he didn’t flinch as the doctor pulled back the sheet and revealed the gory mess that was Smythe’s face. The eyes were gone, only empty sockets encrusted with dried black blood remained. The cheeks, too, had been torn in places by the scavengers’ hooked beaks.

  ‘Says in the file he’s got a “distinguishing mark”, a large brown birthmark on his back, on the upper right shoulderblade. Can you roll him over, Doc?’ Bryant said.

  ‘Of course,’ the doctor replied.

  Pip gagged and turned away. There had been a lingering smell of rotting meat in the room when they entered, and she could handle that, but the pulling back of the starched sheet and the movement of the body had intensified the smell incredibly. Apart from Felicity Langham, she had seen only one dead body so far in her six months as an auxiliary policewoman: a man who had been killed in a car crash. It had been a bloody affair but, as a farmer’s wife, she was used to the sight of gore. The smell of this corpse, however, was unlike anything she had ever encountered. As the doctor moved the body, an audible whoosh of bodily gas escaped.

  Pip felt the blood drain from
her face. She clamped a hand over her mouth and nose to shut out the vile odours and hold back her bile, and mentally cursed her weakness when she noticed Hayes grinning at her.

  ‘Try breathing through your mouth,’ Bryant said to her. ‘He’s our man, Doc. Sergeant James Gerald Smythe, Royal Air Force, aged nineteen.’

  ‘Thank you, Squadron Leader,’ Hayes said, taking the details down in his notebook. ‘Anything you can tell us at this stage, Doctor Strachan?’

  Pip swallowed hard and glanced over at Bryant. She had been right about him, although it was cold comfort after the way she had very nearly embarrassed herself in front of the three men. She had wanted desperately to throw up, but managed to suppress it. Bryant was back to what she now regarded as his usual hard-bitten, melancholy demeanour. He was all business when it came to identifying the body of yet another one of his pilots. Hayes, again, was showing his stupidity by getting the doctor talking in front of someone who was proving to be of more interest by the hour in the investigation of Felicity Langham’s death.

  ‘Starting with the woman, Miss Langham, as we now know her, died of strangulation.’

  ‘What did the killer use? Bare hands?’ Hayes asked.

  ‘There are ligature marks, as though something was wrapped around her neck – possibly a silk stocking, like those used to bind her hands and ankles. But judging by the bruising as well, I’d say the killer used his hands at some point.’

  Pip watched Bryant closely, but said nothing.

  The doctor spoke again. ‘Another thing, and I presume it’s all right to discuss this in front of the Squadron Leader, is that it appears Miss Langham had been sexually assaulted.’

  Pip thought it was most certainly not all right to mention these details in front of Bryant. She looked at Hayes, expecting him to wrap things up, but he said, ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I discovered a certain amount of bruising around the genitalia and inner thighs. It also appears from other contusions on her body that she had been held tight, perhaps pinioned, by the wrists and ankles. It could very well be that she was assaulted, but that the man, or men, involved used, um . . . protection.’