Echo of an Angry God

by Beverley Harper

  She appeared set to challenge him and Parker-Brown was disconcerted. ‘I’m sure I won’t, my dear, but I’m afraid I still have to look.’

  The girl opened her mouth to argue but Karen Devereaux stood suddenly and said coldly, ‘Very well, follow me.’

  As he shut himself in the study he heard the child’s voice outside. ‘I don’t care. I’m waiting here,’ and her mother’s reply, ‘Very well, darling, I’ll phone Uncle Bernard.’

  Uncomfortably aware that on the other side of the solid oak door waited a mutinous but grieving little girl, Terence searched John’s study thoroughly, finding nothing more noteworthy than a collection of old ceramic toothpaste jars in a glass cabinet and a letter, written in French, from someone who was obviously a relative inviting the Devereaux to a family reunion next month in Paris. In a locked drawer in the desk – which Parker-Brown expertly picked – he found a folder and scanned the contents. A letter written to PAGET from Minister Matenje, introducing himself and authorising a preliminary survey seeking to establish the presence of oil in Malawi; a response from PAGET to the effect that, in their opinion, such a survey would be a waste of money; and a second letter from Matenje asking what progress had been made. The correspondence was interesting only because Matenje had insisted the survey be conducted without Banda’s knowledge. Parker-Brown photographed all three letters to give Taylor something to do.

  Searching other people’s belongings was nothing new to Terence. Putting everything meticulously back in its place was. The need to do so irritated him but he knew he could never face those large serious eyes if he didn’t.

  She was waiting for him, sitting on the floor and leaning back against an antique grandfather clock. Her eyes told him she did not like him poking around her father’s belongings. ‘What were you looking for?’ she demanded.

  The absence of Devereaux’s body annoyed Terence. He did not like messy mysteries. He realised, however, that it could work to his advantage in this situation. ‘Anything that can help us find your father . . .’ He left it unspoken: dead or alive.

  ‘He’s not dead,’ she stated flatly. ‘I would be able to feel it if he were.’

  Something akin to sympathy finally squeezed at Parker-Brown’s hardened heart. Death is especially hard on the young, particularly so when there is no proof. He was no policeman, had no experience of mysterious disappearances, no knowledge of the criminal mind. John Devereaux was, he believed, an honest, upright and thoroughly nice man. He was also, in Terence Parker-Brown’s opinion, as dead as a dodo. ‘Could you call your mummy please?’ he said lamely. ‘God,’ he thought, ‘what a shitty job this is.’

  ‘Haven’t we met before?’

  Lana came back to the present with a jolt. The man beside her had said something. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  He smiled and she noticed how it changed his hard, craggy features – softened them somehow. ‘I asked if we’d met before.’ He shrugged apologetically for having disturbed her. ‘You look very familiar somehow.’

  His accent was South African through a throat made gravelly by smoking. He looked to be in his mid-fifties, thickset, iron grey hair and faded blue eyes. He had one of those moustaches which reminded Lana of a scrubbing brush. His face was a contradiction, craggy, weather-beaten and hard, but there was an element of open boyishness too. His eyes showed humour and intelligence but ruthlessness – or was it competence – lurked at the back. They watched her now, waiting for a response to his question. ‘I don’t think so,’ she replied.

  The man gave a wry smile and Lana turned back to the window. She knew the effect she had on men. Her grandfather’s prediction, that she would break hearts, had not been far out. Tall and slim, intelligent and practical, she bore her beauty with an unassuming acceptance that was in itself endearing. She made no effort to enhance the bounty with which she had been born. Not because none was needed, which it wasn’t, but because she couldn’t be bothered. Her dark curly hair was cropped very short, but tendrils still crept enchantingly around her face. Pale alabaster skin which had never experienced the trauma of teenage acne stretched taut over high cheekbones and an aquiline nose. Winged dark brows over eyes the colour of lapis lazuli and framed by thick black lashes. A mouth ready to smile and, when it did, the smile reached her eyes and glowed there long after it had left her mouth. Jawline sculptured by a maestro and a slender neck added elegance to a face already rich in beauty.

  Dismissing the man beside her from her thoughts, her mind drifted again.

  Events over the weeks after that dreadful day came to her in fragments. There were whole chunks of memory wiped clean. She supposed there was nothing much to remember. Grief and rage overtook her and life was a blur of trying not to cry or lose hope, forcing herself to eat and sleep, spending hour after hour high in her favourite tree staring up the lane, willing her father’s car to turn into view, even though she knew it was in the garage at the side of the house. She and her mother each put on a brave face for the sake of the other, as well as for all the well-meaning friends who visited them.

  Every morning she would sigh and think, ‘What an awful dream,’ only to be confronted by an inescapable reality, and the grief would come back as strongly as before.

  She had returned to school, at her own request, after three days. It was preferable to the mental isolation of staying at home. Her friends offered sympathy and macabre interest. Her teacher pussyfooted around her, determined to make allowances, until Lana snappily told her she needn’t bother, her father wasn’t dead, and could she please have extra homework so she could catch up. Shocked, the teacher complied.

  The house was full of horribly formal flower arrangements and horribly formal people, both of which Lana banned from her bedroom. Her grandparents came and went, one grief-stricken pair from France – her French grand-pere flamboyantly expressing cri de coeur for all to see, while her English grandmother tried to keep a stiff upper lip and failed. Her mother’s parents came from South Africa, but, shocked as they were, they were more concerned for their daughter’s grief than anything else. Uncle Bernard was there often, the only one willing to mention her father by name for which Lana was profoundly grateful since everyone else avoided mentioning him at all – almost as though he’d never existed. Aside from Uncle Bernard, Lana wished all the other visitors would go to hell. The thought both pleased and shocked her.

  Sometimes she felt she was the adult and all the rest were children.

  Finally they all left and Lana and her mother began the long climb back. Bernard Pickstone came to see them again in June, three weeks after Parker-Brown’s visit, a sober expression on his usually cheerful face. ‘Come over here, Lala,’ he was the only person Lana permitted to call her anything but Lana, ‘I have something to tell you and your mother.’ He patted the sofa beside him.

  Lana adored her Uncle Bernard – although he was not her real uncle – because he spoke to her as her parents did: like an adult. She sat next to him and leaned against the comforting bulk of his side as he put his arm around her.

  ‘You remember I told you that I’d sent someone out to Malawi to see if they could find your father?’

  Lana nodded. Karen Devereaux leaned towards him. ‘You’ve heard from him?’

  Bernard pulled a wry face. ‘He’s back in London. I’m sorry, Karen, he’s not much wiser than when he left.’ Bernard handed Karen three sheets of paper. ‘Here’s his report, my dear.’

  Lana waited impatiently for her mother to go through the pages, searching for any sign of hope in her mother’s face. It seemed to take an age for her to read and Lana was fidgeting with anxiety by the time her mother lifted her eyes. ‘You can read this if you like, darling. It doesn’t tell us much. No-one seems to know anything.’

  Bernard tightened his arm around Lana. ‘You see, little one, since the attempted coup, the local people have been frightened. Even if they knew anything about your father the chances are they would be scared to say so. No-one wants President Banda to think
they’re not loyal. Frankly,’ Bernard looked over to Karen, ‘I believe the government is telling the truth. Anyone who knew anything about the survey is dead.’ He looked horrified by his own words. ‘I mean of course, Minister Matenje and his followers.’

  Karen rose and paced the room. ‘I know what you meant, Bernard.’ She spun to face him. ‘What about the British High Commission out there? What do they think?’

  Bernard looked disgusted. ‘Misadventure,’ he spat out.

  Karen’s mouth went tight. ‘Misadventure!’ She could not believe she heard him correctly. ‘This report . . .’ she slapped her hand against the three sheets of paper, ‘. . . says Robin Cunningham was washed up near Karonga. His assistant was pulled from the water by local fishermen near Nkhata Bay. That’s 160 kilometres south, Bernard.’ She stared at him, too angry to be cautious with words for her daughter’s sake. ‘Both men’s wrists showed signs that, at some stage prior to drowning, they had been bound with rope. For God’s sake, Bernard, what went on out there?’

  Bernard went to say something but Karen gave him no time to respond.

  ‘John’s assistant . . .’ she consulted the report, ‘Kadamanja. He was found dead on a deserted beach on the Tanzanian side of the lake, fifty kilometres east of Karonga. He had clearly been hit by something or somebody; his skull was fractured.’ Karen paced again, rattling the report in her right hand. ‘The coroner blames rocks. Rocks, Bernard!’ She was back in front of him again. ‘I can just accept that rocks might fracture a skull if the boat ran aground in rough weather. I can’t accept the rope burns were caused by rocks. What does this coroner think we are – idiots?’

  Bernard knew her anger was not directed at him. He held out his free arm and Karen came to him and curled against his other side. ‘They were all alive when they went into the water,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Oh God, Bernard, why?’

  ‘I’m sorry to be so persistent but I’m convinced we’ve met somewhere before.’

  Lana turned to her fellow passenger, ready to be curt. She had no interest in being chatted up by him.

  ‘My apologies. I tend to get talkative on aeroplanes. Relieves the boredom.’ He smiled disarmingly. ‘You’re English aren’t you?’

  He was regarding her with nothing more than friendly interest. She relented. ‘Yes I’m English. My mother is South African though.’

  ‘Ah!’ He nodded. ‘Perhaps it’s your mother I have met.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Lana didn’t think so. Her looks were her father’s.

  ‘Have you been to Malawi before?’

  She shook her head. ‘First time.’

  ‘What brings you to The Warm Heart of Africa?’ He wore a quizzical look, as though he were still trying to place her.

  ‘Just a holiday,’ Lana said evasively.

  ‘Do you have friends there?’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just naturally nosy.’

  Lana relaxed slightly. He seemed harmless enough. ‘No, I don’t have friends there. I’ve always wanted to visit Malawi. My mother told me about it years ago. I believe it’s very beautiful.’

  ‘Beautiful?’ He frowned, as though this were a new thought. ‘I suppose it is. Hard to say really. I’ve lived there thirty years. I find Europe beautiful.’ He picked up his newspaper, smiled at her and began to read it.

  Seven years after John Devereaux’s disappearance – Lana could never accept that he had gone – he was declared officially dead. It seemed such a final act. Legally alive one minute, legally dead the next. Up until then she had held on to the hope that one wonderful day he would come swinging into the house as if he’d never left. She always referred to him as though he were still alive – ‘When Daddy gets back; Daddy will; Daddy is’, peppered her conversations. Grief counsellors had explained to a worried Karen that it was a normal denial for a child who had no body, no coffin, no burial to assist in the acceptance process.

  Seven years later, all that abruptly changed. A piece of paper, an official declaration, a rubber stamp, and John Devereaux was no more. Lana was shocked by the impersonal nature of it all but in truth, she had to admit it helped. She was finally able to say ‘Daddy was’, without the dreadful thought that she was, in some way, being disloyal. It was like the final piece in a seven-year-old jigsaw had finally been found, slotted into place and the puzzle was no longer a challenge, it had become a complete picture.

  She was nineteen years old, in her first year of university and, despite finally acknowledging that her father was dead, she was still consumed by a burning need to know what happened to him and inwardly vowed, ‘One day I will know the truth.’ The determination to know what happened in Malawi never went away. No-one, not even her mother, guessed at the strength of this tenacious, single-minded pledge to herself.

  Life, so it seemed, picked Lana up and took her with it. She lost her virginity one freezing winter’s evening to a fellow student with brooding eyes and warm, gentle hands. They had been to the pub and, halfway through the evening she had looked over at his sensitive face and seen the longing in his eyes. She was ready, her body told her that, waiting for the right time and man. ‘Yes,’ she thought, hugging the knowledge to herself, scared by the power of yes or no in her mind over the need in those dark eyes. On the way to his college, huddled together for warmth, her decision translated to him – she had no idea how – and what had been an arm offering warmth became a possessive arm secure in what was to come. They made love in his room, on a bed which squeaked its protest and informed anyone passing in the corridor what was happening behind the closed door. The student wanted her to move in with him. Lana declined and the relationship went sour. All she felt was a profound sense of relief which she could not explain. She put it down to youth.

  In the back of her mind though, she knew she would never be ready for commitment to a relationship until she had lost the excess baggage she always carried with her of her father’s disappearance.

  To keep fit more than anything else, she worked her way up to a black belt in defensive karate. The instructor spent the first six weeks trying to get into her pants. When he finally realised that he would never get inside her flat, let alone her pants, he went out of his way to make training as difficult as he could for her. Challenged, Lana gritted her teeth, worked harder than anyone and rose through the ranks, earning grudging respect from the other students. When the day finally came that she was able to fling the instructor flat on the mat, she stood over him and, without any undue breathlessness, said calmly, and with no trace of sarcasm, ‘Thank you. Without your help I could never have done that.’ She walked from the gym with her head held high and never went back. She wondered occasionally why, after putting herself through all that training, she simply dropped it. She put it down to experience.

  She also knew that a woman travelling on her own in Africa was likely to be a lot safer if she possessed a black belt in karate than if she didn’t!

  She learned – much to the discomfort of anyone who lived within a one mile radius – to play the bagpipes. When pressed by her mother as to why, she would grin and answer, ‘To bother people.’ The truth was that the sound of the bagpipes always stirred something ancient within her, although with a South African mother and a half-French father, she had absolutely no idea from where it came. She put it down to one of nature’s aberrations.

  And one of nature’s aberrations it had stayed. Whichever way she looked at it, she could not think of a single benefit – in Malawi terms – other than developing healthy lungs which she thought might come in handy at some stage.

  She developed a passion for Indian food and nearly drove her mother mad whenever she came home for weekends by insisting on cooking up something spicy. Karen, a quiche and salad disciple from way back, had no taste for her daughter’s heavy hand with the olive oil bottle and fresh chillis. Leftovers were given to Portia once Lana had returned to London, until that unfortunate animal developed an ulcer and spent her remaining days on a diet of porridge and milk.
Lana put that down to Portia’s age since her mother lacked the courage to confess.

  In short, Lana Devereaux was perfectly well-adjusted, happy, ambitious, intelligent, slightly quirky and beautiful. She was also consumed by a need to know what went wrong in Malawi and was perfectly well aware that qualifications and skills acquired were all very well but really, all she was doing was filling in her time until she was ready to go there.

  She was not delaying. Lana knew that maturity was a prerequisite for her proposed journey. She had no idea what the trip might achieve, if, in fact, it achieved anything at all. She had to be prepared for disappointment as well as grief. So, in her own patient and determined way, she waited for the moment to arrive when she would know it was time to go.

  She graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree, majoring in Applied Geology. Bernard offered her a job at PAGET which she readily accepted. One day, nearly six months later, Lana fell in love with a Fat Boy. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Black and gleaming chrome, its winged Harley Davidson shield proclaiming its pedigree, as soon as she saw it Lana knew she had to have it. The practicalities never entered into the equation. Britain’s weather or how to ride a motorbike wearing a tight skirt were not even considered. Lana grimly ignored the former and took to wearing skirts split up the front. Weaving through London’s traffic, shapely legs exposed, she caused more than one near miss as drivers craned their necks to see better. Lana didn’t care. She was in love. And like any woman in love, she was blind to the negatives.

  Her mother, having raised her eyebrows slightly, steadfastly ignored the machine. Portia, who was going deaf, on her first introduction to the Fat Boy, fled under a rhododendron bush and refused to come out. That was okay. Lana was, by now, living away from home and the disapproval of her family was something she could live with.

  She had been working for PAGET for almost a year when her mother telephoned and invited her down to Sevenoaks for the weekend. Mystified, Lana said she’d come. She spent many weekends at home but always at her own suggestion. Her mother never nagged her to come home for which she was grateful. Arriving on Friday evening, Lana was not surprised to find Bernard Pickstone there. Always a close friend of the family, for the past few years he had been spending more and more time at the house.