African Sky

by Tony Park

  ‘Pip’s out, Roger. I’ll pass on a message to her and Sergeant Hayes as soon as they’re back. What’s the location?’

  Roger silently cursed. In his eagerness to tell someone the news he realised he hadn’t gathered enough facts yet. ‘Hold on,’ he said, covering the mouthpiece with one hand. ‘How far away is the pilot? Where did he go down?’ he asked Last.

  The African looked back over his shoulder and pointed south. ‘A long way, boss.’

  ‘Blast,’ Roger said aloud. He spoke into the telephone again. ‘Shirley, the bloke can’t give an exact location, but he’s taking me there now. Get someone in a car to head north. I’ll leave a cairn of stones with a note under it when we leave the main road.’

  He hung up, then unlocked the gun rack behind his desk and took out a Lee-Enfield rifle. ‘This man might be dangerous, Last,’ he said in answer to the African’s inquiring look as he pushed five rounds into the magazine and dropped a second clip into his uniform pocket. ‘Let’s go.’

  Pembroke saddled his police horse and tethered the reins of a second beast to his saddle. When the policeman asked him, Last said he could not ride, so Roger helped him up behind him, onto his horse’s rump.

  ‘Hold on, Last,’ he said as he dug his spurs in.

  Bryant knew he should have waited where his parachute had snagged in the trees and kept the signal fire going to alert searching aircraft to his presence. Twice since he had set off at daybreak he had heard the drone of single- and twin-engine aircraft overhead but had been unable to signal them due to the density of the bush he was walking through.

  In time, if he had stayed put, he was sure the rescuers would have found him. However, he had precious little time, if the pieces of the puzzle swimming in his head were to come together in the way he feared they would.

  He knew he had landed west of the main north-south road, so if he headed east he would find it eventually. He had no compass, another oversight he chided himself about, but took his bearings from the rising sun. He knew that he had to find someone – anyone – as soon as possible. He would make another signal fire as soon as he hit the road.

  He walked as quickly as his injuries would allow. The bleeding from the gashes to his arm and back had stopped, but the pain in his muscles intensified with every step he took. He shook his head to ward off encroaching exhaustion. The sporadic, mournful rasping of the female leopard pining for her dead mate, and his wounds, which made it impossible to get comfortable, meant his sleep had been confined to a few brief dozes by the fire. After the scare with the cats the previous evening, he ensured he scanned the bush ahead and on either side of him. On three occasions he startled small buck – impala and steenbok, he thought – and the first he’d been aware of them was the flash of their tawny bodies in the bush. His eyes were adjusting to the foreign surroundings, though, and he paused when he saw a flicker of movement.

  It was an elephant, perhaps a hundred yards away. No more. He marvelled that the huge grey beast could have remained hidden from him at such a close range. However, he was proud that he had spotted the give-away swish of its tail before the animal had noticed him. He felt a soft breeze on his face. He was downwind of the beast, and that had, no doubt, helped him get so close. Slowly he dropped to a crouch and watched it. The sun was riding high now. Bryant checked his watch. It was nearly eight o’clock. It would be harder for him to keep his bearings once the sun reached its zenith. The elephant was standing at the base of a large tree, in the shade. His big ears flapped back and forth like punkah fans. Bryant vaguely recalled reading somewhere that this was how elephants cooled themselves – something about their blood passing through a network of veins in the ears. The flapping cooled the blood, which cooled the elephant. Clever, though the animal was just plain frightening this close and on foot. Bryant slowly unbuttoned the flap of the holster on his belt and withdrew the pistol. He was out of ammunition but if the animal charged him for some reason, perhaps the sight of a man waving a hand gun might cause it to have second thoughts. Bryant looked down at the Webley revolver, then back up at the elephant. He shook his head. No chance.

  Another movement caught his eye. Another set of ears, but much smaller. The tiny calf emerged from a thicket and passed the bigger elephant. It was so tiny it could have walked under the bigger one’s belly. It trotted from bush to bush with the energy that only a youngster could have in such heat. Bryant noticed that its little trunk seemed to have a life of its own, swishing from side to side, and up and down. The baby elephant stopped and sniffed a branch on the ground. The mopani sapling had been stripped clean of its bark, the honey-coloured core of wood all that remained of the mother elephant’s latest snack. The youngster nudged it with the tip of his trunk, then gingerly lifted it. He turned back to his mother, proudly holding the new toy aloft, but it fell from his grasp before he could show her.

  Bryant smiled. He’d assumed elephants would be born knowing how to use an essential bit of kit like a trunk, but now he realised baby elephants, like baby humans, had a great deal to learn from their elders.

  The baby elephant snuffled away from the protection of its mother, looking for new things to pick up. Head down, trunk leading, it started moving towards Bryant. Beyond the baby he could now see even more animals. Every second, it seemed, he noticed another swish of a tail or the flap of giant ears. He had very nearly walked into a herd of perhaps twenty or thirty. There were more young elephants as well. A breeding herd. ‘Shit,’ he whispered as the inquisitive baby moved closer and closer. Bryant looked over his shoulder. At least there were no animals behind him. He started to move, backing slowly away from the advancing infant.

  He was a flyer, not a bushman. He didn’t see the dead branch behind him. It snapped with a crack that might as well have been a gunshot for the effect it had.

  The baby elephant squealed, a noise like that emitted from a toy horn on New Year’s Eve. Its mother answered, but with a trumpet blast that Bryant felt in his guts. From others in the herd came deep, ominous rumblings, a noise like approaching thunder.

  Bryant swore. The mother elephant saw him and started towards him. She had her trunk curled between her tusks and her ears back. It looked like she meant business. He turned and ran, his arms and legs pumping as he tried to gain some speed. He still held the Webley revolver in his right hand. He waved it high over his head, but when he risked a glance over his right shoulder he saw the big cow was gaining on him.

  Ahead of him was a dry riverbed. Without slowing he leaped off the edge of the embankment and landed three feet below in thick sand. Instead of crossing to the other side he turned hard left. The river snaked around to the left again, and he followed its course. The elephant came to an abrupt halt at the edge of the watercourse. A cloud of dust rose around her and she bellowed, long and loud. Bryant kept running through the sand, not risking a peek this time.

  ‘Something’s spooked those jumbos,’ Constable Roger Pembroke said. He swivelled in his saddle to face the African behind him. ‘You’re sure this is the place?’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ Last said.

  ‘Well, let’s get off and start looking,’ Roger said.

  Nearby, an elephant bellowed again. ‘She is not happy, boss.’

  ‘How do you know it’s a female?’

  ‘Are you married, boss?’

  ‘No.’

  Last smiled and climbed awkwardly down off the horse.

  Bryant noticed the bush on either side of the dry riverbed was starting to thin out ahead. He slowed and allowed himself to catch his breath and look over his shoulder. The elephant that had been chasing him had given up. He heard a rumbling to his left. ‘Fuck,’ he whispered.

  The bull elephant had been happily scratching his itchy rump against the leadwood tree he usually used for this purpose when he’d heard the matriarch’s cries to her baby. The source of the discontent had just come into view. One of the two-legged creatures. He took a few steps towards the human, raised his trunk and flapped his
ears wide. That usually did the trick. For good measure he released a mighty blast from the end of his trunk.

  Bryant had had enough of elephants to last him a lifetime. He resumed his sprint, charging down the gully. To his surprise, he nearly ran smack into a man-made stone drainage culvert. He looked up and saw the road. ‘Thank Christ,’ he said. While a road wouldn’t protect him from a charging pachyderm or a hungry carnivore, at least it meant he was on his way back to civilisation. The watercourse had brought him back on his easterly track and he had found the main north-south road. He turned right, towards Bulawayo, and started off at a steady jog.

  Roger Pembroke slid the .303 from the leather holster on the right side of his horse’s flank. Elephant worried him. Always had since the death of his brother when they were both still teenagers. Gored and trampled, and Roger had witnessed the lot. He slid back the bolt and chambered a round. A Lee-Enfield might not stop an elephant dead in its tracks, but a round through an ear was sometimes enough to scare one of the giant beasts off.

  Roger patted the horse, which had shifted from side to side after the African’s ungainly dismount. ‘There, there, girl,’ he said. As he grabbed the saddle’s pommel he saw a man round the bend in the road ahead of him, running along one of the tar strips.

  ‘Hey!’ the man called.

  Roger took in his appearance. Right height, right build, wearing air force uniform. He looked dirty and his shirt was ripped and bloodied. He was carrying something in his right hand. A pistol!

  ‘Drop the gun!’ Roger called out. He brought his rifle to bear.

  Bryant lifted his arm to wave at the mounted policeman. Never in his entire life had he been so pleased to see a copper. The man had called something to him. ‘What?’ Bryant replied. The blood was still pounding in his ears from his narrow escape from the elephants, which for all he knew might still be on his tail. With his rescue at hand he felt every one of his wounds start to throb in pain, as if his body were telling him it was safe to hurt now.

  For some reason the copper was now raising his rifle. Instinctively, he started to raise his hands in a gesture of surrender. Perhaps the man thought he was a spy or something. ‘I’m Bryant, Royal Australian Air Force!’

  ‘Stand still!’ the policeman yelled.

  Bryant heard the sound of twigs breaking in the bush beside him. The bloody elephants were still on his trail. ‘I can’t stop now!’

  ‘Stand still, Bryant! You are under arrest!’

  Arrest? Had he heard right, was the policeman mad? He looked at the mounted copper, the dismounted African, then into the bush to their left. It was the direction Bryant had originally been travelling. He saw the first great shapes in the trees by the roadside. ‘Look out on your left!’ he called to the men. As he did so, he unconsciously raised the empty pistol in order to point.

  The oldest trick in the book, as they would have said in an American film. Roger wasn’t going to be fooled. It wasn’t the pilot’s words that scared him, but his highly charged state and the way he was bringing the pistol up. ‘Stop!’ he bellowed.

  The first of the elephants broke through the trees at a canter. The police horse reared up in fright.

  Roger had been aiming at the centre mass of the approaching murder suspect, just as he’d been taught. Best chance of a hit if one aimed at the torso. It was the horse’s sudden movement that caused him to jerk his finger accidentally.

  The shot spooked the elephant, and the twenty or more animals turned as one and retraced their steps back into the safety of the bush.

  Last walked up to the man lying in the roadway. There was blood on his face, his hair and the black Tarmac. The man was motionless. Last looked back at the young policeman, whose face was even whiter than before, and said: ‘Ah, but I think this man is dead, boss.’

  17

  Pip started work early at the police camp. She’d had a rotten night’s sleep.

  She looked up at the slowly rotating fan above her head. The once white blades were yellowed, the edges encrusted with a fine layer of black filth thanks to years of tobacco smoke. Dirty and smelly, just like the rest of the camp. What was it, then, that attracted her to this life so much? Certainly not the surroundings, or the male-dominated banter that centred on women and blacks, for all the wrong reasons.

  Truth. Perhaps that was it. And justice. It sounded trite, when she said it to herself, but that was all she had been looking for, all her life. She wanted truth – in a relationship, and justice. She’d been with two men so far and had neither truth nor justice from either of them.

  The harder she thought about it, though, the less able she was to connect Paul Bryant with the crimes he would soon be accused of. Perhaps they would never know the truth about him if he had been killed in the aeroplane crash.

  Paul Bryant, a killer? Again, she found she was less and less able to convince herself that her deduction had been correct. Perhaps it was just her emotions interfering. Only yesterday she had made passionate love to this man – the first time in her life sex had been anything other than a painful duty. She had abandoned her body to him and been rewarded. Had he captured part of her mind as well?

  But Bryant would hang if he were still alive. And if he went down, it would be the result of her investigations, her deductions.

  She didn’t know how to feel about Paul right now. She couldn’t be pleased that he might be dead, nor could she grieve for him while a cloud hung over his name. She had been devastated to make the connection between him and Innocent Nkomo, and horrified by Catherine’s description of him as a violent man, but it just didn’t seem to fit with what little she knew of him. She also felt responsible for his decision to fly to Bechuanaland and this brought back a wave of sadness, mixed with anger and frustration that she might never know the truth about a man she had started to care about, that justice might never be served over the death of Felicity Langham.

  She had too much time to think. That was the problem. Hayes and four of the spare male officers had taken a car north, to Gwaai River, where they planned on setting up a police forward command post to liaise with the air force ground search team.

  Pip opened the investigation file in front of her. She knew the facts of the case, as they stood, inside out, but there was always the chance she had overlooked some detail. She found the report from the constables who had interviewed Felicity’s neighbours. The address of Flick’s hillside home was at the top of the page.

  From the outset of the investigation she and Hayes had both assumed that Felicity had been abducted, or waylaid by her killer during a night out on the town. The subsequent arrest of Innocent Nkomo had only reinforced their initial deduction. Now that they were on the trail of Bryant, someone who knew the victim intimately – the type of suspect Pip had initially favoured in any case – she now believed that Felicity was probably killed in her own home. The evidence of the message summoning Bryant to the house added substance to this theory.

  Someone else could sit in the office and answer the telephone. She pushed back her chair, knocking it over in her rush to stand, and grabbed her hat. She stuffed the notebook and pencil into a pocket of her tunic and strode out the door, into the corridor.

  ‘Oi, where are you off to?’ Shirley asked after her, disentangling a telephonist’s headset from her hairdo. ‘You’re supposed to wait here, aren’t you?’

  ‘Got to check something,’ Pip called over her shoulder. ‘Back soon.’

  Hayes had taken the duty car, a bakkie, so Pip helped herself to a police bicycle. She rammed her hat down hard on her head and straddled the bike. Two male constables walking up the driveway of the police camp called something, but she was already peddling too fast to hear.

  She dodged around a Studebaker that was pulling over in Tenth Avenue and then took the right turn into Main Street so fast that the bike was leaning hard over. She rang the bell on the handlebars and an African street cleaner leaped out of her way as she swung left into Twelfth. Once clear of the city cent
re she raced through the flat dry countryside until she reached the outer suburb of Hillside, where Bulawayo’s wealthier citizens escaped the bustle of the commercial centre. This was a community of peaceful whitewashed bungalows and small farms. An oasis of civility in the African bush. How many of Felicity Langham’s neighbours, she wondered, had any inkling of what had gone on behind those virginal white walls? Pip pulled on squeaky brakes and dismounted the bicycle before it came to a halt. She leaned the bike against a white-painted picket fence and strode up the stone pathway to the front door.

  It was locked. She hadn’t thought to inquire as to what had happened to the key. Catherine De Beers owned the house. Pip suffered a moment’s hesitation. She was here on official police business, but without a warrant. She looked furtively up and down the quiet avenue, but saw no movement amidst the flowering jacarandas. She walked around to the back of the bungalow. ‘Damn,’ she said. The rear door was locked as well. She looked around the back porch and saw a stout-handled broom. She picked it up and rapped hard on the glass of the kitchen window. The pane shattered with the second blow and, careful not to cut either her uniform or arm, she reached in and turned the window’s handle. Pip was glad no one was around to witness her undignified scramble through the window and up onto the kitchen bench. Once inside she straightened her skirt and replaced her hat.

  The house smelled musty, and of something faintly rotten – perhaps perishable food still stored somewhere in the kitchen. She moved to the adjacent lounge room and paused to get her bearings. A chill ran down her back as her stout police-issue shoes clicked noisily on the polished floorboards.

  As she walked through the empty house she wondered what had happened on Felicity’s last night. What words were spoken? At what point did everything go horribly wrong?