by Tony Park
Pip thanked the maid for her cup of tea and said, ‘Patience, does Mrs De Beers own a motor car?’
‘Yes, madam.’
‘Does she drive to Bulawayo often?’
The maid gave a little laugh. ‘Oh, no. The madam flies to Bulawayo often.’
‘Yes, I know that, but since her aeroplane crashed, has she taken the car to Bulawayo?’
‘No, madam.’
‘Where does she drive to?’
‘Sometimes to Victoria Falls, madam, to shop or visit.’
‘I see,’ said Pip. ‘Did you know Miss Felicity Langham, Patience?’
Patience looked about the room.
‘It’s all right,’ Pip said, sensing the older woman’s uncertainty. ‘I mightn’t look like it, but I’m a policewoman.’
The maid nodded. ‘Miss Felicity stayed sometimes.’
‘She and Mrs De Beers were good friends.’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And Squadron Leader Bryant?’
‘Is right behind you,’ Bryant said. He smiled.
Patience seized her chance to escape and disappeared into the kitchen.
‘The questions can wait,’ he said. ‘Catherine will talk to you in a little while. She’s not taking it well. Don’t pay too much attention to her amateur dramatics. She bungs it on a bit around strangers, but she really has been hit hard today.’
‘I understand,’ Pip said. She resented the way he was taking over the house, like he owned it, but held her tongue.
‘Come with me and I’ll show you what happens when you let a Canadian teenager play with an expensive aircraft.’
They climbed back into his car and the waiting mechanics and askaris extinguished their cigarettes and reboarded the two lorries. Isilwane Ranch’s private airstrip was only about a half mile from the main house, but even on that short drive Bryant and Pip were treated to a mini-safari.
‘They’re roan antelope,’ she said to him as a herd of twenty tan-coloured beasts with black and white faces and curved horns crossed the road, halting the convoy. The horse-sized antelopes trotted through waist-high golden grass, barely giving the humans a second glance.
‘Never seen anything like them,’ he said.
‘That’s lion spoor,’ she said, sticking her head out of the passenger side window and inspecting a set of big pug marks in the dust.
‘Glad we’ve got the blokes with the guns with us.’
She laughed. ‘What happened to the big, brave bomber pilot?’
He ignored the jest as they motored down the road. ‘What are they? More deer?’
‘We don’t have deer here. They’re waterbuck. You can tell them by the white mark on their bottoms. It looks like they’ve sat on a toilet seat that someone’s painted as a practical joke.’
‘An old RAF prank. If there is a God, I’d hate to think he’s a Pommie pilot officer.’ They passed the shaggy grey animals and drove across a stone ford laid in a dry riverbed. Airstrip’s up ahead.’
‘You know your way around this place,’ she said.
‘I’ve been up a here a few times in the past, but never really taken the time to look at the game,’ he said, glancing away from her, out the driver’s side window. ‘It took a few meetings and a lot of paperwork to allow Catherine and Felicity to stage their parachuting display.’
‘Forgive me for asking, but how did you know the way to Catherine’s bedroom?’
‘She gave me the grand tour when I first visited. What are you insinuating, Constable?’
‘Oh, nothing. Look, there’re some zebra grazing on the airstrip.’
Bryant drove along the grass strip, which had been cropped short by herds of zebra, wildebeest and impala. ‘Catherine told me that one time she had to buzz the field four times, at low level, to scare off a pride of hungry lions who had killed a zebra in the middle of it.’
‘This is wild country, that’s for sure,’ Pip said.
‘There’s our broken bird,’ Bryant said, pointing to the crashed Harvard trainer.
‘Doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere. What went wrong?’ Pip asked as they got out of the car and walked towards the forlorn-looking aircraft. The sight of twisted metal and the cracked Perspex canopy made her shudder.
‘The pilot, though I use the term loosely as he’s probably never going to fly again, claims he had engine trouble and tried to make a forced landing here on the De Beers’ strip. When he touched down, he said, the landing gear wheel went into a hole, possibly made by an ant bear, and snapped off.’
The lorries stopped behind them and the airmen and askaris all climbed out and headed towards the wreckage.
‘I’d say the second part of the story is feasible, about hitting the hole, but I’ll stake my wings that a test run of this engine would show nothing wrong with it.’
‘Well, you’ve just lost another Harvard somewhere out on the saltpans in Bechuanaland. Perhaps when you find that one there’ll turn out to be some engine fault that’s common to all your aircraft. Why not give the pilot the benefit of the doubt until then?’ Pip asked.
‘We won’t know what happened to Smythe’s kite until we find it. But this guy, Cavendish, was supposed to be on a gunnery exercise on the day he crashed here.’
‘And?’
‘And the gunnery and bombing range at Miasi is about a hundred and fifty-odd miles from here as the crow flies.’
‘So, you think he landed here deliberately? Why? To see Catherine, perhaps?’
‘The thought had crossed my mind, but she reckons she never suggested Cavendish pay her a visit.’
‘You’re not convinced?’ she prodded. She could see a hardness in his eyes. She wondered if it were jealousy. Had the young Canadian been making a play for a woman that Bryant had either a relationship with or designs on?
‘Catherine was a regular visitor to the mess and got to know many of the trainee pilots. She’s a flyer, as you know, and seemed absolutely fascinated by our aircraft, particularly the Harvards, which are the closest thing we have in Rhodesia to a fighter plane.’
‘A poor man’s Spitfire?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. She’s asked me countless times if she could fly one. Of course, I told her no.’
‘So maybe she convinced Cavendish to give her a whirl?’ Pip suggested.
‘That’s what I thought. He claims he never spoke to her, about landing his Harvard or taking her up. He’s sticking to his story that he had to make a forced landing. And, as I said before, Catherine also denies he was coming to Isilwane to see her.’
Bryant surveyed the crash site. ‘It looks like the Harvard went into a violent left-hand turn when the wheel went into the hole, assuming that part of the story’s true. You can see the gouges in the grass where the propeller blades dug in and then bent around the cowling.’
Pip nodded, following his movements as he pointed out the evidence and made his deductions. It was the same as police work, and not unlike her murder investigation. They had a body – in this case, an aeroplane – some evidence of the crime, though in both cases there was a lack of obvious motive.
‘The kite probably dug in, nose first,’ he continued, ‘and the force cracked the Perspex canopy. Then she slammed down on her tail again.’ He put a hand on the warm metal skin and looked under the tail planes. ‘The tail wheel’s sheared off as well. Left-hand wingtip dug into the earth when the landing gear wheel snapped off.’ He walked back to the front of the aircraft and looked in and around the engine cowling. ‘No sign of oil or fuel leaks, or spray on the cockpit. OK, Flight,’ he called to the senior mechanic, ‘get the wings off her and start getting her ready for transport.’
‘Yes, sir. Right, you lazy bastards, let’s get cracking.’
Bryant walked along the airstrip, retracing the aircraft’s final landing. Pip followed. ‘Here’s what’s left of the landing gear,’ he said.
She stood behind him, hands on hips. ‘Looks like an ant bear hole to me. At least there was nothing he could do
about that.’
‘He could have stuck to his bloody flight plan,’ Bryant shook his head. ‘These stupid kids. As well as refusing to believe the odds against them on operations, they go and do their best to kill themselves here, with moronic stunts like this.’
‘He could be telling the truth.’
‘It’s always engine trouble, or a broken compass. They can’t even come up with original excuses for their bloody joy-flights.’
‘Don’t tell me you stuck to the book during training. Weren’t you tempted to do a few unauthorised loop-the-loops or visit some pretty girl and show off your new aeroplane?’ Pip asked with a smile.
Bryant turned away from her.
‘Aha. A crack in the rigid facade, I see,’ she persisted. He looked at her and smiled. She realised it was the first time she had seen such a smile cross his furrowed face. It was as though a different person had been uncovered, albeit briefly. In that instant, with his sheepish grin and the light catching his eyes, he also looked several years closer to his true age and, to her surprise, rather attractive.
‘To tell you the truth, it was one of these stupid pranks that landed me in Bomber Command.’
‘Come on, out with it. Or do I have to take you down to the police camp and put the thumbscrews on you?’
‘You’re right, Constable. Fair cop. A girl was involved.’
‘I knew it! Was she pretty?’
‘Very.’
‘Good. You wouldn’t have wanted to risk your career for any plain old farmer’s daughter.’
‘She wasn’t on a farm. She lived in Salisbury. I was based near there, at Norton. I buzzed her house – flew over it at low level.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought that was a hanging offence.’
‘Five times.’
‘Oh dear,’ she said, holding a hand to her mouth to hide her grin.
‘And it turned out, there was an air commodore living four houses up. He had plenty of time to take down the registration letters on the side of my Harvard.’
‘You’re lucky you didn’t end up spending the war cleaning toilets.’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ he shrugged. ‘The air commodore wanted me grounded, for good. Instead, the senior instructor told me I was too irresponsible to be put in charge of a fighter. I was switched to Oxfords and ended up flying bombers.’
‘What happened to her?’
He shrugged. ‘I offered to write, but she broke it off before I left.’
She suddenly felt sorry for him. ‘That must have been hard.’
‘She was smarter than me. I think she knew more than my friends and I did back then, about what it would be like in England. Wartime’s not good for lasting relationships.’
She didn’t want him to become maudlin. ‘I don’t suppose once you got overseas you could very well buzz attractive English girls in a Lancaster?’
‘You’d be surprised!’ He laughed out loud. A short, sharp burst of mirth that sounded so strange coming from him that she wondered if he’d laughed in a year.
‘Don’t you miss it? Flying, I mean,’ she asked as they walked back to the main wreckage, side by side.
‘I don’t care if I never fly again,’ he said quietly, almost to himself.
She looked up at him and saw the old face again, creased, sombre, tired. She said nothing. That face was not attractive, not within a decade of its true age. The war, his experiences, had robbed him of his youth, his humour and, as far as she could see, his reason to live. His passion, if it could be called that, now seemed to be doing everything he could to ensure that the young men who passed through Kumalo would at least get through their training alive. ‘What’s happening with your investigation of the other crashed Harvard?’
He shrugged again. ‘I called the police post at the Bechuanaland border and they said they’d send out a recce party to investigate the spot where Smythe’s body was found and have a look for his kite. We’ve diverted a couple of training flights over the saltpans to look for wreckage as well.’
‘It’s a big area to search,’ she said.
‘True, but we’ve got a fix on where Smythe’s body was found. He can’t have walked too far in a day, so that narrows the search area.’
They stopped at the wrecked aircraft again and Bryant said to the flight sergeant mechanic: ‘How’s it going?’
The big man’s overalls were blotched with dark patches of sweat. Two younger mechanics stood by as he strained to undo a nut at the root of a partially severed wing. Clearly, he was a man who believed that when it came to some jobs he was the only one who could do the task properly. ‘Bloody thing’s twisted. It’ll take longer than I thought to shift it.’
‘Did you get the ammo out of the guns?’ Bryant asked.
‘Yes, sir. Fooking thing! Oh, sorry, ma’am,’ he added when he noticed Pip. His tone betrayed his impatience with the stubborn wing and the implication that he might forget something.
‘All right, Flight,’ Bryant said. ‘Don’t burst a valve. We’ll get out of your way.’
‘Yes, sir. Get that bloody ammo stowed in the Dodge,’ the man barked at a pimply-faced airman.
‘We’ll be up at the house when you’re finished,’ Bryant said.
‘Very good, sir. Ma’am.’
Bryant and Pip started to walk back to the car, when the Flight Sergeant said, ‘Oh, one thing, sir?’
‘Yes,’ Bryant said.
The mechanic wiped the back of a meaty pink forearm across his sweating brow. ‘You asked about the ammo, and for us to keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s not a full load. Not nearly enough, and the guns are clean.’
Bryant walked over to where the Harvard’s two .303 inch Browning machine guns were lying in the grass. One of the guns had come from the right wing, the other from a mounting on the top right-hand side of the aircraft’s nose. He stuck his little finger inside the end of one of the barrels and rubbed it around. When he pulled it out it was clean, save for a smudge of oil. ‘You’re right. No cordite residue. They haven’t been fired. But that tallies with what the pilot said. He reported engine trouble before attempting the gunnery exercise.’
‘Long way from the gunnery range, sir,’ the senior mechanic said.
‘Yes, well, that’s all part of the investigation. Now what about the ammo?’
‘Like I said, sir, it’s light. There’s only fifty rounds with each of those guns.’
‘I’d have thought he would have had a lot more than that on board,’ Pip said.
‘Aye, a lot more, ma’am,’ the flight sergeant replied.
Bryant searched his memory, back to the brief time he’d spent flying Harvards, before being relegated to bomber training. ‘That’s six hundred rounds missing – three hundred per gun. I’ll make a note of it in the report and check with the pilot.’
‘No shortage of .303 rifles up here on a hunting estate, I’d wager.’
‘Leave that line of questioning to me, Flight. Well done for noticing the loss – if that’s what it is. The armourer could have been daydreaming on the job, I suppose.’
The flight sergeant frowned. ‘I’ll find out who was on that day and have a word, sir.’
Bryant and Pip left the men and got into the Humber. ‘That’s a bit of a worry, about the ammunition,’ she said.
‘Yeah. But this is an air force investigation. Remember our deal – I won’t cut in on your business if you leave me to mine.’
He was still part of her business, though, she reminded herself. The stroll around the crash site had been interesting, and it was nice to see the broken officer smile, if only once or twice, but she still had a very serious job to do. ‘Well, whichever way you look at it, we’ve both got some questions for Catherine De Beers.’
Dust hung in the air as the dry season drew to an end, the tiny particles rising from the baked earth and parched grass and trees. Before the life-giving rains came there was always the risk, for
plant and animal alike, that the water would come too late or too little.
It was the time of the predator. Lions called to each other at dusk, regrouping for the hunt; hyenas cackled in anticipation, beggars waiting for the scraps from the feast. Hungry herbivores used the cover of night to risk a sip from shrinking waterholes and drying rivers, while the leopard waited silently, unseen, in ambush.
And the sun, as if to mark this time of killing, came and went each morning and night in the form of a blood-red disc burning malevolently through the hanging dust.
‘I still can’t get over these sunsets.’ Bryant said.
‘I was born in Africa, and I never will. I love hearing the lions at dusk.’
‘An odd lullaby,’ he said.
‘It’s odd, but I find it comforting. My father, when we had the farm, used to say that if you can hear them then you know where they are, so they’re not sitting outside the back door, waiting for you to take a pee in the middle of the night.’
He smiled. ‘Braai smells good,’ he said, using the abbreviation of braaivleis – cooked meat – the Afrikaner terms for a barbecue, which had carried north across the border from South Africa into Rhodesia.
I’m still not happy about spending the night, Paul,’ she said. ‘There’ll be hell to pay when I get back to work tomorrow. I hope Catherine makes an appearance soon.’
When they’d returned from the crash site in the afternoon, Bryant had knocked gently on the bedroom door and opened it. What he saw shocked him. Catherine was sitting naked on the floor, her knees drawn up to her breasts, a half-empty bottle of gin clutched in her right hand. Her eyes were puffy and red and her cheeks streaked with dried tears. She sobbed as he lifted her to the bed.
‘I told Cook to spit-roast an impala,’ she mumbled, as if in a daze.
‘It’s all right, Catherine. Get some sleep. We can talk later.’