Echo of an Angry God

by Beverley Harper

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’ he asked abruptly, ignoring the criticism.

  ‘Nothing. Getting an early night. I’m driving to Lilongwe tomorrow. I only came to Blantyre to see where my father started his time in Malawi.’

  ‘Can’t have you dining alone. I feel it’s my duty to take you to dinner.’

  ‘Duty?’ she asked in a steely voice.

  He grinned at her. ‘Pleasure?’

  ‘How do you know it will be a pleasure?’

  ‘I’m having grave misgivings.’ Again the twinkle.

  Lana grinned suddenly. ‘I’m not that bad, Mr Gilbey. Socially I come up quite well and the only thing I bite is my food.’

  ‘Tim.’

  ‘Lana.’

  ‘What time?’

  She rose. ‘How about six-thirty?’

  He rose with her and put out his hand. ‘Fine. Do you like Chinese?’

  ‘Love it.’ She took his offered handshake. It was firm but not excessive. ‘I warn you, I know you’re hiding something.’ She studied him carefully. ‘I keep asking myself what the Commercial Attache is doing in Blantyre when the business capital is Lilongwe.’

  ‘Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other. Effectively, I should divide my time between the two. The chap who usually comes to Blantyre couldn’t make it this month. It suited me to come here. I’m new in Malawi and it gives me a chance to meet people.’ He spoke lightly.

  Lana was still scrutinising his face. ‘I also keep asking why the Commercial Attache was given to me as a contact? Rather odd wouldn’t you say?’

  He grinned wryly. All he said was, ‘Nope.’

  She nodded. ‘Have it your way.’ She left it, knowing he would say no more.

  He walked her to the door. ‘Tonight’s informal.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘I rather thought you would be.’

  It was a compliment but she was still annoyed that he obviously knew more than he was saying. ‘I’m not letting this thing drop. Take it or leave it.’

  He scratched his head. ‘I’ll take it.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Could be quite an evening.’

  ‘Why?’ She looked at him quizzically.

  ‘I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy.’

  ‘What kind of guy is that?’

  ‘Oh, you know.’ He shrugged. ‘Wine, roses, good listener, just your average lovable, huggable kind of guy.’

  Lana laughed. Despite herself, she was beginning to like Tim Gilbey.

  As soon as he was alone, Tim went to his briefcase and dialled the combination lock. He pulled out the false bottom and extracted a slim manila file marked ‘Devereaux’. At his desk he paged through the scribbled notes Martin Flower had written some fifteen years earlier. He knew what they said, almost by heart.

  Four days earlier Tim had been contacted by Bernard Pickstone who had spoken at some length in brusque tones, leaving Tim in no doubt that the safety of Lana Devereaux was, in Bernard’s opinion, the sole responsibility of the British High Commission. Dismayed, because the last thing Tim needed was some hysterical female on a sentimental journey, as soon as he finished speaking to Bernard Pickstone he had telephoned London and spoken to his boss.

  ‘Sorry, Tim, I had to give him a name. I didn’t expect him to ring you though.’

  ‘His stepdaughter is coming here. Her father . . .’

  ‘I know. He told me as well. I do remember her father actually. John Devereaux went missing in my time.’

  ‘Anything you can tell me?’ Tim asked.

  ‘There’s a file, should still be there. Have a look for it. I wrote some notes at the time and bunged the police report in it too.’

  ‘What should I tell the daughter?’

  Martin Flower went silent, thinking. ‘Nothing,’ he said finally.

  ‘That’s a bit unfair,’ Tim protested.

  ‘You’re not there for that. Devereaux was a civilian thing. I had my suspicions at the time but nothing was ever proved. Steer her off, Tim.’

  ‘I could suggest she try the police?’

  Martin laughed mirthlessly. ‘She can try, no harm in that.’

  Tim felt sympathy for the family. ‘Pickstone said that Devereaux had an assistant whose body washed up in Tanzania. I’ve been asked to locate his son. Pickstone thought he could be in Karonga but I’ve actually found him in Lilongwe.’

  Again Martin was silent. ‘Okay, Tim, give her the son’s address,’ he said finally. ‘What harm can that do?’

  ‘We weren’t involved were we?’

  ‘No,’ Martin said emphatically. ‘It had nothing to do with us. I’m not hiding anything, Tim. The whole Devereaux incident was certainly suspect but the police had other things on their minds. There was a tobacco farmer involved, I’m sure of it. Karl someone. Look in the file. I snooped a bit but . . . you know how it is.’

  ‘Could the daughter be in danger?’

  ‘Definitely. As I said, best to steer her off it.’ He changed the subject abruptly. ‘And how is the other matter progressing? I know you’ve only been there two weeks. What’s happening?’

  ‘Hang on.’ Tim had risen and closed his office door. He returned to the telephone. ‘Getting to Likoma isn’t easy. It will raise questions. There’s absolutely nothing there to justify a visit.’

  ‘I know but you must get over there quickly. I was going to contact you. Our friend Frederick Hamilton has booked a flight to Lilongwe via Nairobi for Saturday week.’

  Tim sat up straighter in his chair. ‘What’s he up to? Why come back now? Do you think he’s found another buyer for the documents?’

  ‘Jesus, Tim, don’t even suggest that.’

  ‘Well, what would you do? He’s after money and it’s been over a month since he first approached us. The Argentineans would love to get their hands on those pieces of paper.’

  ‘I know,’ Martin said gloomily. ‘So would Spain. Hamilton’s no fool. If the documents are there and he’s read them as he claims . . .’ He stopped. ‘If he gets to Malawi, Tim, you might have to . . . ah . . .’

  ‘Forget it,’ Tim said sharply.

  ‘It will be an order,’ Martin said, just as sharply.

  Tim changed the subject. ‘Does anyone other than the old man know why I’m really here?’

  ‘Have some respect! The High Commissioner is hardly an old man.’ Martin understood why Tim had asked the question. ‘Do your best, Tim. No-one else knows why you’re there. Try not to blow your cover unless it’s absolutely necessary but you may have to go missing for a couple of days.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Tim said drily. ‘I’ll do what I can. Do you think Hamilton’s planning to retrieve the documents?’

  ‘That’s my guess. He came to see me last week. I stalled of course, said these things take time to arrange, but if he’s returning to Malawi maybe he’s getting suspicious. We can’t afford to let him remove them, Tim. They could go anywhere. You’ve got to find them before he gets there, otherwise –’

  ‘I’ve got eight days then,’ Tim cut him off.

  ‘Do whatever you have to. I mean it, Tim. He cannot be allowed –’

  ‘If they’re on Likoma I’ll find them,’ Tim cut him off again. He knew the alternative and it didn’t sit well with him. He sometimes wondered, if the order came, whether or not he could bring himself to obey it.

  ‘I’m certain they’re there. Hamilton isn’t a criminal, just a greedy little man. He’s hidden them on the island, you can bet on it. Probably buried them somewhere.’ Martin let him off the hook, knowing Tim’s reluctance only too well. Martin sympathised but, as Parker-Brown had said to him many years before, ‘Every job has its down side’.

  As soon as the conversation was over, Tim went looking for the file. He found it without trouble, a fact which surprised him, considering its age. The contents had been scant.

  *

  That was four days ago. What made him bring the file on this trip to Blantyre was the imminent arrival of Devereaux’s daug
hter. Having read it, Tim was in two minds whether to disobey Martin’s order to steer her off. He could imagine only too well the frustration of John Devereaux’s family and, in the back of his mind, he was tempted to hand the few facts he had over to the daughter. Now that he had met Lana he was uncertain what to do. He liked her. He was attracted to her. He wanted to help her. But he did not want to place her in danger. From what he’d seen of Lana, she was more than capable of bulldozing her way into trouble.

  He sat looking down at the file, thinking it a poor epitaph for a man like John Devereaux. A foolscap page torn from Martin’s notepad stating that John Devereaux had registered with the High Commission on 5 March 1983 and asked about a colleague called Robin Cunningham who was missing. Martin had simply recorded the enquiry, its date and time and, for some reason, the name of a now retired French Intelligence Officer, Jean-Claude Bourquin.

  The second sheet was a photostat of a report sent to the FCO in London which stated that Cunningham had drowned. Martin had pencilled in the words ‘his assistant too?’ at the bottom of the page. The next note, dated May 24th, recorded that a Sarah Fotheringham of Karonga had reported Devereaux missing. At the bottom, Martin had squiggled a large question mark and the name Karl Henning which was circled several times. A copy of the coroner’s report, dated 15 June, which had attributed the death of John Devereaux’s assistant, a Mr Jonah Kadamanja, to drowning, was pinned to it with the word ‘BULLSHIT’ scrawled across the top in Martin’s handwriting. The police report was succinct and lacking any detail. They had used words like ‘exhaustive investigations’ and ‘mysterious disappearance’ but the report was dated 6 June, just two weeks after Devereaux went missing. Martin had refrained from comment, or written comment anyway.

  A faded and yellowing newspaper clipping showed Karl Henning and Minister Dick Matenje in deep conversation at, what appeared to be, a cocktail party. There was no covering editorial. Henning was clearly making a point, his right hand raised, forefinger just inches from the Minister’s chest. Matenje had a politely determined look about him, as if Henning was annoying him but he was too well mannered to say so. Looking at the photograph Tim had the feeling that the two men knew each other well.

  The last paper in the file was a chronological sequence of events and, reading through them, Tim could see why Martin had the idea that the tobacco farmer was, in some way, implicated. Henning had been in Blantyre at the same time as Cunningham and had stayed at the same hotel. He had been absent from his farm for four days, coinciding with the disappearance of Cunningham. From somewhere Martin had learned that Henning had reputedly gone sailing during that time. Henning had also been in Blantyre when Devereaux arrived. Once again, he had apparently gone sailing, this time coinciding with Devereaux’s disappearance. For a tobacco farmer, Henning appeared to take a surprising number of days away from his farm, including numerous overseas trips, mainly to the Far East. His bank records, which Martin had somehow obtained, did not reflect the travel expenditure so the man obviously had money outside Malawi, or someone else was financing his globe-trotting.

  Martin must have been tempted to give the Exchange Control authorities a tip-off. Their telephone number and a man’s name had been scrawled on the page, then crossed through. Tim didn’t blame him for not doing it. Getting involved in criminal cases brought unwelcome attention to someone in a position which required that they keep out of the limelight. Martin had, however, come up with the fact that Henning had a bank account in Hong Kong and another in Geneva.

  Henning was not an employee manager, as were a lot of men who ran the large tobacco estates. He owned his farm outright, having purchased it in 1964. The farm appeared to be Henning’s only source of income, subject to the pressures of inflation, foreign exchange fluctuations and demand from the world tobacco market, not to mention the unpredictability of the weather. While he was hardly on the bones of his arse, finances would be fairly tight. There had to be something else, something generating undeclared hard currency outside Malawi. It had to be substantial, otherwise the risks were too great. Why did he continue to visit places like Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok and Singapore? Not to sell tobacco, that’s for sure. Farmers sold their tobacco at auction and the on-selling was left to brokers.

  Tim folded the file and put it back into his briefcase. He was greatly troubled. There was nothing in the file to directly implicate Karl Henning – just a few coincidences. Tim’s own enquiries about Henning had revealed that the man was regarded highly by those who knew him, ran a well-managed farm and no scandal had ever been attached to his name. He had been married but the union had ended in what appeared to be an amicable divorce ten years ago. Mrs Henning had left Malawi and not returned. There had been no children.

  On the surface it appeared that Karl Henning was a man to whom coincidence attached itself. Sitting next to Lana Devereaux on the plane was a case in point. He could never have engineered that himself. And yet, Tim could not shake off the feeling that Henning would bear watching.

  There was no point in worrying Lana with vague suspicions which could very well prove groundless. She was on a difficult enough visit as it was. Henning had admitted meeting her father. Had he done that because he had nothing to hide, or to entice Lana into his company for sinister reasons of his own?

  And who was impersonating Tim? What possible motive could someone have for doing that?

  Certainly the intention had been to frighten Lana Devereaux but why use Tim’s name?

  Tim didn’t like it but there was nothing much he could do for Lana. He had to get to Likoma ahead of Frederick Hamilton and try to locate the documents – if they existed. Lana had already shown she could take care of herself. ‘Jesus!’ he thought, disgusted. ‘It’s all very well for Martin to tell me not to get involved. What if she’s in danger? Shouldn’t she be warned? Damn the woman. Why did she have to come here?’ He shook his head, irritated with Lana Devereaux, himself and his job. ‘A hell of a choice,’ he muttered to an indifferent Queen Elizabeth on the wall. ‘A woman’s life or a government’s downfall.’ He glared at the photograph. ‘I suppose you’d put duty first.’ He had never been in this situation before, where his personal feelings got in the way of his professional life. He’d spoken to others who had found themselves in the same dilemma. Some had given in to their own conscience, others hadn’t. Some regretted their choice, some didn’t. There was no easy answer.

  Lana spent the rest of the morning exploring Blantyre and its sister town, Limbe. Then, on impulse, she took the road to Mulanje, some eighty kilometres south-east, towards the Mozambique border. The strip road was in terrible condition. Parts had been ripped up in readiness for upgrading and were rutted and stony. Other sections were full of potholes, their partially tarred surface losing the battle against weeds and makeshift maintenance. Driving was made extremely hazardous by the continuous stream of pedestrian traffic, some wheeling laden bicycles, others pushing carts, no-one interested in moving off the road for the occasional car, bus or truck. Goats played a kind of Russian roulette game with the traffic, miraculously escaping injury. Chickens were seldom so lucky. Lana passed several pathetically naked dead birds lying in the midst of what appeared to be the end result of a pillow fight, causing her to wonder why their feathers deserted their bodies in times of crisis.

  The road took her through attractive rolling country for about twenty-five kilometres, with fields of sweet corn and, what she assumed to be, tobacco. Then abruptly it became another world, the endless slopes of tea estates, undulating away into the distance with occasional glimpses of sprawling white homes set amid a sea of rolling green. She tried to imagine the life of a tea planter here. The term, in her opinion anyway, was as colonial as District Commissioner or White Hunter. She envisaged portly men in Panama hats and wispy women in flowing floral, their every wish accommodated by a swarm of white clothed servants. Her vision was shattered somewhat by the sight of a khaki clad young man amid the plants, laughing heartily at something a Mal
awian next to him was saying. ‘Oh well,’ she thought, ‘some of them must be rotund.’

  Everything was a lush green, industrious, orderly and distinctly different to any form of agriculture she’d seen before, Malawi seemed to be a country struggling yet determined to survive. The people had a peaceful look about them, gentle and happy. Children were plump, if rather shabbily dressed, and she remembered that the country was usually self-sufficient in terms of food production.

  Just before the small village of Thyolo she began to look out for ‘Mwalawanthunzi’, a rock which was supposed to possess magical powers. The brochure had said that if appropriate offerings are made, clouds will form overhead to provide a hot traveller with shade. People passing would tap the rock with a pebble for good luck. She found it on a bend in the road and stopped to read the plaque, experiencing a flash of annoyance that someone, in their wisdom, had found it necessary to cement the magic ‘rock of shade’ into place and wondered, not for the first time, why the colonial powers of yesteryear had felt morally obliged to imprint authority over everything they touched. Before setting off again she picked up a pebble and tapped the rock. ‘I need all the good luck I can get,’ she murmured to the inanimate piece of granite.

  Thyolo was one long main street lined with square built shops, many in dire need of repair. It might have been uninteresting but for a distinctly Portuguese influence. It had an air of departed affluence but its bustling streets, filled with market stalls, people and vehicles, showed that while wealth may have fled, energy was there in abundance.

  Beyond Thyolo the condition of the road improved considerably. Mulanje was visible way before she reached it. The highest peak in Central Africa sat, craggy and huge, as if it had been gently lowered into a sea of undulating green. As she got closer, the mountain seemed to stay the same distance away, almost as though it were retreating from her. Suddenly however, it was right there beside her and Lana could see the vivid yellow plastic coats of plantation workers. The road took her around the base of the mountain through ancient forests nestling in deep shade below 3000 metres of Ice Age bauxite. The scene had a brooding, stormy appearance, the air intoxicating and heavy.