African Sky

by Tony Park

The main bedroom was down the hallway on the right. She entered. Apparently, neither Catherine De Beers nor any of her servants had returned to the house to tidy up or remove anything. Pip breathed a sigh of relief. Now that they had a new suspect she had come back to the house to find something to incriminate him, some forensic evidence that he had been in the house that night – something he had denied during interview.

  Again the niggling doubt that she was rushing to conclusions bothered her. Was it right to go looking for evidence to support a theory?

  She walked to the bed and took hold of the corner of the top sheet, which lay half on the bed. It felt limp, almost oily, in her hand, not crisp and starched like fresh linen. She sniffed the air. Stale in here, too, but there was a lingering odour as well. Perfume, mixed with perspiration. Bending over, she found the cloying scent was coming from the sheets. She pulled the sheet back further, wondering exactly what she should be looking for.

  Hairs, she thought with a mild sense of revulsion. Charlie left them everywhere. In the bed, on the bathroom floor, on the soap. Pip switched on the overhead light then dropped to her knees beside the bed. She lowered her face to the dank sheet and blinked to refocus on the short distance. At first she saw nothing, but slowly, as her eyes adjusted to the light and the scale on which she was searching, she started to see things.

  ‘Aha,’ she said. Gently, with her fingernail, she prodded an eyelash. If a person was in a room, anywhere, they most likely left some tiny piece of evidence of their presence. It was no different from following animal spoor in the bush, really. She picked up the lash and held it to the light. A woman’s – curled and unnaturally black with mascara. A piece of Felicity Langham.

  She thought about Felicity – about her body, to be exact. She was hairless – shaved – where a woman should have had hair. Pip’s eyes roved up and down the bottom sheet, moving in a series of longitudinal sweeps, up and down, gradually tracking right to left. ‘No hairs,’ she said aloud. Not male, or female. No evidence that Bryant had been in the bed. She stood and chewed on her lower lip as she thought.

  Felicity had been sexually assaulted, according to the doctor who had examined her. She knew, from her own illicit experience, that Bryant favoured using air-force-issue condoms when making love. Hence, there would be no evidence of that type. However, if he had assaulted her he must have left something of himself somewhere in the house.

  She dropped to her knees again and lowered her face to the floor so she could peer under the bed. Nothing. Just dust. She raised herself and found she was next to a bedside chest of drawers. She opened the bottom drawer. Fashion magazines and a box of tissues. The middle drawer yielded something quite odd. A collection of wigs.

  Pip sat on the bed and opened the drawer fully. She drew out three wigs, disentangling the intertwined hairs as she did so. The colours were red, jet black and blonde. She fingered the black wig and tried to think why a beautiful young woman would bother with fake hair. ‘Disguise?’ she mused aloud. ‘Or fun?’ Was one of Felicity’s unusual sexual practices pretending to be someone else? She replaced the wigs in the drawer.

  The top drawer, she could see immediately, contained a collection of undergarments – knickers, bras, stockings, suspender belts. Felicity had been found with her wrists bound with a silk stocking. Was there an odd stocking in this drawer which might somehow be shown to match the one on her body? Worth a look. Pip reached in and grabbed a handful of silk. Her fingers brushed something hard. She peered into the drawer and carefully moved a few lacy garments. ‘Oh, my goodness!’ she gasped.

  Inside, though she dared not touch it, was a penis. Well, a pretty damned good replica of one – a large black one, at that. Pip felt her cheeks colour. She nudged it with a fingertip. It rolled easily. Not stone, perhaps wood. Ebony, she guessed.

  She’d wondered, when she’d learned of the existence of a relationship between Catherine and Felicity that was more than platonic, exactly what it was that they did in bed together. She was getting an inkling. The thing lay there, staring at her, mocking her professional resolve.

  She sorted and counted the stockings again. As she’d suspected, there was an odd number. Not that that proved anything, of course. She would have to gain access to the one that had been used to bind Felicity’s hands, and then get an expert in hosiery to compare it with all of the others in front of her now. If the killer had selected the silk to render Felicity helpless, then he would have presumably opened this drawer. His fingerprints would be there.

  Pip left the stockings on the bed and wandered out of the bedroom. She made her way into the bathroom. The toilet seat was down, she noticed. She opened a mirrored bathroom cabinet door and surveyed the contents. Make-up, mascara, lipsticks, soap, cotton wool, talcum powder.

  It was hot and stuffy in the house, with no windows open save for the one she had broken. She returned to the bedroom, sat on the bed and removed her police-issue hat. She wiped the perspiration from her forehead and ran her hand through her damp fair hair. When she examined her hand she found a single strand, which had caught on a chipped fingernail. She left plenty of evidence everywhere she went, and she wondered why the killer had not. She held the fine golden strand in front of her eyes for a few moments, concentrating on it. Suddenly it hit her, like a jolt of electricity running through her body. ‘Blonde!’

  She leaned over and flung open the second drawer in the bureau and pulled out the blonde wig she’d noticed earlier. She turned it over, so that she could see inside it.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she whispered.

  ‘Look at this picture!’ Pip ordered.

  ‘I am tired of looking at pictures, of answering questions that go around and around in circles,’ Innocent Nkomo said wearily.

  ‘You’ll bloody well look at whatever I tell you to!’ Pip said. The male constable standing in the corner of the room couldn’t hold back a smirk. Pip shot him a look. The man held his tongue.

  ‘I have identified the man you wanted me to identify,’ Innocent said.

  ‘The man I wanted you to identify?’ As she parroted the man’s words she realised the truth of it. She had gone to Innocent last time with the pictures from the newspaper, blinded by Catherine’s words, with her mind already made up. Perhaps she was about to make the same mistake, but the man in the cell was still her best hope of sorting this whole messy affair out. She hated the idea of confirming that Paul was just as evil as Charlie – or worse – so much that she longed now for him to be truly innocent. She’d learned that there had been a call from Gwaai River while she was gone, something about an African seeing an aircraft crash and a pilot parachute out safely. Her heart had leaped, and she had whispered a prayer in the hallway before entering the interview room. ‘Please, God, let him be alive, whether he’s guilty or innocent.’

  Something indefinable – a deeply felt instinct – now told her that if Paul Bryant had survived, he must be innocent. Her doubts had forced her to search Felicity’s house, and they might just save a man she couldn’t stop thinking about from hanging.

  Her relief – if that was the right word – that Paul could be alive was tempered by the fact that Hayes had threatened, by phone, to have her relieved of duty for being absent when the call from Constable Pembroke had come through. She’d heard no more about how the search was progressing.

  ‘Look at these pictures, Innocent. Your life might depend on it.’

  ‘I have been told that so many times I am beginning to think that you people will never let me go free,’ he said. ‘Who do you want me to identify now?’

  If she had been a male constable she might very well have administered him a backhanded slap across the face. Instead she smiled and said: ‘Innocent, I don’t want any particular person identified. I just want you to look at these three pictures of different women and tell me if any of them was the second-to-last customer you sold illegal petrol to on the night of Miss Langham’s murder.’

  Innocent sighed and shook his head. He looked do
wn at the pictures spread on his cell bed. ‘I told you, the woman I sold fuel to had fair hair. These women all have dark hair.’

  ‘Yes, I remember,’ she said. ‘I want you to imagine all of these women with fair hair.’

  He looked up at her, puzzled.

  ‘Just look at their faces, Innocent,’ she persisted. As with the photos of the men from which Innocent had identified Paul Bryant, Pip had gathered a random selection of attractive-looking women from the pages of the Bulawayo Chronicle. She had dug out the dusty, closed file on the accidental killing of Hugo De Beers and, as she’d hoped, found a photo of Catherine De Beers in the story. The caption read: ‘Mrs De Beers – grieving widow witnessed her husband’s accidental death’. ‘Take your time,’ she added.

  Innocent scratched his chin and pored over the pictures. ‘Her clothes were fine,’ he said out aloud.

  ‘What? You remember what she was wearing?’

  ‘Not what she was wearing, just that she struck me as being well dressed. I notice these things in a woman.’

  Pip nodded, willing him to get on with it.

  ‘I can’t be sure,’ he said at last.

  Pip sighed.

  ‘Tell me which one, and I will say it is her,’ Nkomo said, looking up into her eyes, holding her gaze.

  Pip was tempted, but she knew that to lead him to pick the woman she had in mind would be circumventing justice, and the law. ‘No, Innocent. It doesn’t work that way. Take another look. Please.’

  He studied the images again. ‘There is something about this one that looks familiar, though it is hard with the dark hair.’ He crooked a finger around the halo of curls, obscuring the woman’s hairdo, then leaned closer over the bed. ‘I am not sure, but of the three, this one, I think, is the one.’

  Pip looked over his shoulder and saw the picture. The grieving widow.

  ‘Bloody Bryant,’ Wing Commander Rogers said.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Pilot Officer Clive Wilson. He quickened his step to stay abreast of the Wingco, who walked very fast for an old man. They were making a last-minute inspection of the route the official guests would take to the parade ground, which had been marked out on the Tarmac in front of Kumalo’s main hangar complex.

  ‘You’re acting adjutant of the base until further notice, Wilson,’ Rogers said. ‘Keep up, for God’s sake, man.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Wilson said. He had mixed emotions about the temporary promotion from instructor to adjutant. It would mean no time for flying, which he regretted, and paperwork by the ton, which he loathed. However, the adjutant was the one person, apart from the Wingco, who really wielded power on the base. He hoped, though, that the new role wouldn’t delay his posting to England.

  ‘The best thing for Bryant now, Wilson, is for him to be dead.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘If he was killed in the prang we can at least give him a hero’s burial. Better for him and his family and the air force for him to go out that way, rather than being arrested and tried for rape and murder.’

  ‘I see, sir.’

  ‘Leaves in the gutter there, Wilson, make a note.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Wilson pulled out his notebook and wrote. The Wingco shook his head, tutted and pointed at the stray jacaranda blossoms that marred the uniform black of the Tarmac road from the gatehouse towards the hangars.

  They strode briskly towards the hangar, with Wilson furiously scribbling reminders about uneven lawn edges, a stray cigarette butt, and the exterior wall of the airmen’s mess, which was in need of a new coat of whitewash. The paint wouldn’t even have time to dry before the brass arrived, Wilson thought.

  ‘This place should be shining for Field Marshal Smuts and Mister Huggins, Wilson. At the moment it looks like the municipal rubbish dump!’ Rogers fumed, pointing out a dustbin with its lid sitting slightly askew. When they walked between two huge hangars, both men held up hands to shield their eyes from the glare of the morning sun on the concrete runway.

  ‘Aircraft, Wilson.’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘I don’t see any aircraft!’

  ‘Um, they’re off searching for Squadron Leader Bryant, sir.’

  ‘The prime minister’s office specifically said they wanted to see aircraft. There’s a film crew following Sir Godfrey from Salisbury to capture all this for a newsreel. I want aircraft, Wilson, and lots of them!’

  ‘Yes, sir. Um, should I call off the search for Squadron Leader Bryant?’

  Rogers stopped and stared at Wilson as though he had spoken to him in Swahili. He said, slowly and loudly as if he were trying to convey a message to a foreigner: Aircraft, Wilson. Lots of them. Wingtip to wingtip. For the cameras. Would you like me to write it down for you?’

  ‘Um, no, sir. I mean, yes, sir. Lots of aircraft.’

  Rogers checked his watch. Zero-nine-hundred. Three hours to show-time. ‘Well, don’t just stand about, Wilson. You’ve got painting, edging, litter collection and aircraft to organise.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  *

  Hendrick Reitz waited in the shade of the aircraft hangar at Isilwane Ranch. There was nothing else he could do.

  He sat with his back against the timber wall, two long metal cylinders lying on either side of him like sentinels. But it was he who was guarding them, not the other way around. His Mauser rifle lay across his thighs. He watched a small herd of impala graze at the far end of the grass airstrip. Here was peace, he thought. A forgotten, wild corner of Rhodesia where the war and the killing could have been a million miles away. That would all change in a few short hours, but for now he let the tranquil scene and the sound of the bush birds and insects wash over him.

  Reitz was not nervous, or afraid – except of failure. His last mission to Africa had almost gone horribly wrong, and he was determined to make a good fist of this one. It was essential for him to do well, particularly if he were to live out his dream and play a part in the new Afrikaner administration of southern Africa, after Germany won the war.

  In the distance he heard the sound of an aero engine. It was getting closer. Reitz stood, the Mauser carried in the crook of his arm, and moved to the edge of the hangar wall. He did not want to be visible from the air, so he stayed in the deep shade and raised a hand to shield his eyes from the morning sun.

  A single-engine aircraft. It flew overhead and circled. He recognised the type. A Harvard trainer, same as the one that had landed yesterday. The pilot put the aircraft into a shallow dive and circled again as the aeroplane lost height. It flew away from him, then turned back in a tight, banking manoeuvre.

  Reitz fought the urge to step out into the open. The aircraft came in low, flashing across the granite kopje from which he had first observed the ranch on his trek in. The pilot nudged the stick forward, dropping the nose. By the time the Harvard was over the airstrip it was low enough for its propeller wash to flatten the grass. Its shadow raced ahead of it. Despite the low altitude the pilot waggled the wings a little. A herd of impala scattered in a dozen different directions, leaping into the air after every few steps to escape some imagined predator. The strip was left clear for landing. The horses reared and whinnied at the engine’s growl and the smell of burned fuel.

  Reitz followed the Harvard’s track with his eyes and smiled when he saw the pilot slide open the cockpit.

  18

  ‘He’s alive, but he’s off his rocker,’ Constable Roger Pembroke said.

  ‘Trouble from the start, and a smart-arse attitude as well. I knew it was him all along,’ Harold Hayes said.

  The two policemen rode in the open back of a police bakkie, a Chevrolet utility pick-up truck. Hayes had been on his way north, towards Gwaai River, when Shirley had radioed him from Bulawayo, saying that Bryant had been captured but wounded in the process. They’d arrived soon after the shooting. It mattered not to Harold Hayes whether the Australian bastard lived or died, not after what he’d done to that poor girl.

  Bryant let out a groan. ‘You say he’s been tal
king?’ Hayes said to Pembroke. The bakkie was travelling at speed, and Hayes had to speak up to be heard over the rushing of the wind. Still, it was cool in the back, a nice way to travel on a hot morning.

  ‘He was mumbling something about Greece, or someone called Reece. Keeps coming to and then passing out.’

  ‘Not surprising, since you very nearly put a bullet through his brain.’ Hayes lifted the bloodied gauze pad on the side of Bryant’s bandaged head and inspected the wound for a second time. ‘He’ll live, though.’ The bullet from Pembroke’s rifle had creased the pilot’s skull, carving a narrow channel through the skin on the right temple but, miraculously, had not fractured bone. The wound had bled profusely and Bryant’s face, neck and the collar of his shirt were dark with sticky dried blood. Hayes absently waved a hand over the prisoner to shoo away some buzzing flies.

  ‘I had to put the handcuffs on him as he was quite angry when he first woke up,’ Pembroke explained.

  ‘You did the right thing, Roger. He knows the game’s up and that he’ll probably swing for what he did. He’ll be desperate to escape. You weren’t to know his pistol wasn’t loaded. He was probably going to try to bluff you into handing over your rifle and then kill you with your own weapon and steal your horse.’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Pembroke. ‘How d’you know this chap’s the killer? I read in the paper that you’d arrested an African for the murder.’

  Hayes nodded, as though this were a very wise question. ‘Well, you see, Roger, just because the man we arrested was African, and had possession of certain intimate items belonging to the dead woman, didn’t mean that we . . . that I should stop the investigation right then and there.’

  Pembroke nodded as Hayes continued his story. He looked down at the battered pilot. When the sergeant had concluded with how he had gotten Innocent Nkomo to identify Bryant from a newspaper cutting, the younger policeman said, ‘Looks like he’s been in the wars, doesn’t it?’

  Hayes gingerly lifted the flyer’s torn shirt away from the bloodied skin. ‘Animal of some sort, or perhaps he did it parachuting. Nasty gouges. Might need stitching. Waste of good medical supplies, if you ask me.’