African Sky (25 page)

‘Right-o. Here goes nothing,' he said to himself as he depressed the inertia starting pedal on the floor between the rudder controls.

The starter whined and the engine caught, coughing white smoke from the exhaust. He switched the magnetos to ‘both'. The smell, the noise, the vibrations were almost too much and, for a brief instant, he thought he might lose courage, panic and shut it all down. He licked his lips and wiped his hands on his shirt. Outside the cockpit he saw the erk grinning up at him. He forced a smile and gave a thumbs-up. He reopened the oil cooler shutter and released the brakes. The Harvard lurched forward.

Bryant turned on his radio and requested clearance for take-off as he taxied, S-turning away from the hangar. His heart was racing and his mouth was dry as he stopped at the end of the runway and reapplied the brakes. He ran the engine up to seventeen-hundred RPM and the whole airframe shook in protest. He checked its running in coarse and fine pitch a couple of times, then took it back up to two thousand RPM. Gyroscope, compass, altimeter and temperature gauges were all fine. The WAAF in the tower radioed his clearance. There were no excuses for not doing this.

He'd been so used to the lumbering Lancaster that the Harvard felt like a racing car by comparison as he released the brakes. At thirty-five knots he sensed the tail coming up, and at seventy he was off the ground.

‘You beauty!' he said aloud. Off the ground, gear up at a hundred knots, he felt the past two years slip away from him, along with the paperwork and square-bashing bullshit of Kumalo, and the heat and dust of sleepy Bulawayo. He was back in Africa flying for the first time all over again.

He banked to the west and saw the orderly grid of Bulawayo's wide streets stretched out below him. He resisted the urge to buzz the police camp – but only just. He might feel like a nineteen year old after his night with Pip Lovejoy, but he was still the base adjutant. Carrying out some silly prank to impress a girl would undermine his authority the next time he chastised a trainee for doing the same thing.

Following the main road west, towards Plumtree, he soon picked out Pip's farmhouse. Lala Panzi's cattle showed as tiny black dots against the parched, golden grasslands. He slid open the cockpit canopy and revelled in the sun's warmth and the sky's breath.

Near the border he saw more spots on the landscape and decided to investigate. He pushed the Harvard into a dive and dropped to eight hundred feet over the open veldt. They were wildebeest, a herd of sixty at least, and they started to panic and run at the sound of his engine. He followed them for a while but, not wanting to torment the poor confused creatures, climbed back up to three thousand. From the sky,
Africa was breathtaking. A boundless wilderness, teeming with the most extraordinary creatures in the universe, dotted here and there with farms and mines promising wealth and peaceful prosperity. Here in Rhodesia, it was very easy to forget there was a war on.

There was another side to Africa, of course, and his mission reminded him of that. Coming from Australia he was not stupid enough to think he could easily understand the relationship between Africa's blacks and whites. It was true a small minority of whites held absolute power over a much larger number of black Africans, but there was nothing he'd seen or heard in his time on the continent that would indicate a willingness or burning need for bushmen living in the remote corners of the interior to kill a stranded white man – in this case, Smythe.

Had the Englishman provoked them in some way? Had the bushmen sought to save the downed pilot? Had the pale-skinned Englishman, his brain half fried by the sun, perceived them as a threat rather than saviours and tried to fight them?

The dried grasses and stunted acacias gave way to drier ground now, hard, flat, waterless terrain which eventually became the vast saltpan. The glare from the midmorning sun was almost blinding, and Bryant pulled a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and put them on. He checked the map strapped to a board on his right thigh, and the compass on his instrument panel, and saw that he was on course. He took the Harvard down lower and searched for the small kopje the hunters had referred to. He soon saw it, as plain and incongruous as an angry pimple on otherwise alabaster skin, and steered towards it. Smythe had been found a half mile due west of the rocks.

He saw the faint shadows of tyre marks on the salt. The hunters and the pilots who had searched for Smythe's kite were right – they were easily visible. He decided to take a look at the pattern of the tyre tracks from higher up, and circled in order to gain altitude.

From three thousand feet he could see the long line of twin ruts heading in from the east, and a nearly parallel set of tyre marks going back the same way. However, now that he could take in a wider view,
he saw another set of treads, some distance away from the others but not connected. Odd, he thought. Perhaps the marks were made by another vehicle some time before. However, from what he'd been told of the surface of the saltpan, the other vehicle could have been through two days or twenty years ago.

The more he looked at the other set of tyre marks, the more confused he became. There was something else wrong with them. The only way he would be able to check what type of vehicle made those marks – and possibly how old they were – was to take a closer look at them. On foot. He reckoned that if the saltpan could take the weight of the hunters' truck laden with food and dead beasts, then it could take his Harvard. He circled around again and pushed the Harvard into a dive.

‘Constable Lovejoy,' Sergeant Hayes said stiffly, ‘on behalf of everyone here, we'd like to express our deepest sympathy at the loss of your husband, and offer these flowers as a token of our . . .'

Pip waited, straight-faced, as Hayes fought to find the right word.

‘Err . . . regret,' he said finally, and handed her a bouquet of lilies.

He couldn't even pay his condolences in a sensitive manner. She wanted so much to tell him that she despised him almost as much as she had her husband, but it didn't seem the right moment. ‘Thank you, Sarge,' she said instead.

Hayes grimaced at the abbreviation of his rank, but held his tongue. ‘We didn't expect you back so soon.'

What did they think of her, she wondered? What did it matter? ‘I felt the best thing for me to do would be to immerse myself in my work, help me forget my grief, if you know what I mean.'

‘Of course,' Hayes said.

He meant no such thing. They all thought Charlie was a good man. Always the first to buy a round at the pub, and a good rugger and cricket player. They probably thought she was a snooty cow, incapable of grieving for her own husband. Better that than hanging around here taking men's jobs from them.

Hayes cleared his throat. ‘I've been talking to our man Nkomo.'

‘What did he say?'

‘Reckons the last man to buy fuel from him that night was a foreigner.'

‘Any more?' she asked.

‘I think it may be an Australian we're looking for. Or maybe a New Zealander. Who says “mate” quite a lot?'

‘Australians, I suppose. They're very casual.'

‘Well, that's what Nkomo recalled, that the man had called him “mate”. He thought it quite odd, and I must say I agree. Fancy someone calling a Kaffir “mate”?'

She found Hayes' tone, and his guffaw after he'd spoken, offensive. ‘Well, I believe there are quite a few Australians and New Zealanders here at the moment,' she said.

‘The logbook from yesterday said one popped by the station, and that he was given your home address,' Hayes said. ‘Bryant.'

The implicit accusation caught Pip completely off guard. She felt her cheeks start to redden and looked down, pretending to adjust a button. ‘I asked that Squadron Leader Bryant be given my address. I've been helping with his investigation into a missing aircraft.'

‘Hmmm,' Hayes said, rubbing his chin. ‘Didn't know we were in the missing-aircraft business, Lovejoy.'

‘No, Sarge. Just helping him get in touch with the police across the border, that's all.'

She saw the raised eyebrows, the suspicion in his eyes. She wondered if he had guessed what had gone on between her and Paul. She felt a moment's shame and hoped her cheeks weren't betraying her.

The CID office phone saved her from further probing.

‘Yes,' said Hayes into the mouthpiece. He listened to the caller then said: All right. I'll send her out. You've got a visitor, Philippa. Mrs Catherine De Beers.'

‘I thought she'd left town,' Pip said.

‘She's at the charge desk, waiting for you.'

Pip excused herself and walked down the corridor to the front office, where the long wooden counter was located. Catherine De Beers stood
at one end, as far as she could from two uniformed male police officers who held a handcuffed skinny young African man between them.

‘Eyes forward,' one of the officers barked, and clipped the prisoner on the back of the head with an open palm.

Pip shook her head and noticed that both the officers were sneaking glances at Catherine themselves. She seemed to be a born head-turner, Pip thought, but today she literally outshone everyone in the drab police camp. She wore a yellow sleeveless summer dress with bold white polka dots, a wide-brimmed white hat and matching gloves that came halfway up her forearms, and yellow open-toed high heels. She ignored the men in the room and her stern look brightened a little when she saw Pip.

‘Catherine, what a surprise. I thought you'd be well and truly on your way to Salisbury.'

‘Hello, Philippa. I should have called, I know. I'm on my way, but I didn't want to leave this side of the country without seeing you again.'

‘Really? Come through,' said Pip, lifting a hinged section of the counter, ‘and we'll find somewhere private'.

Catherine's high heels clicked on the polished concrete floor. As they passed various offices, Pip was aware of more men craning their necks, and it wasn't for a glimpse of her in her police uniform. Pip smelled perfume as well. Catherine would be the talk of the station for the rest of the morning.

‘We've got an interview room free. Sorry, it's not very salubrious, but it's private. Can I organise some tea for you?'

‘No, thanks. I can't stay long.'

‘Very well. Take a seat and tell me what's on your mind.'

‘It's hard to know where to start. It's all a bit . . . delicate.'

Pip looked at the glamorous widow. She'd gathered from their brief meetings that the woman had a flair for the dramatic. This could go on all morning. ‘You can speak freely, Catherine, and anything you say in here is in the strictest confidence.'

‘I see. It's about Squadron Leader Bryant . . . Paul.'

Pip stayed silent and hoped her face didn't betray a single emotion. ‘Yes?'

‘Yes. Look, I know this is terribly forward of me, but you're a smart woman, Pip, I can tell.'

Get on with it, Pip said to herself.

Catherine continued: ‘Paul and I have been very close recently. Very good friends.'

‘I could see that. I'm sure he's disappointed you're leaving.'

‘I don't know about that. One thing I do know, however, is the way Paul looks at a girl when he's, well, interested in her. I saw him looking at you that way at the funeral on Saturday, Pip.'

Pip leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. ‘I'm sure you're mistaken, Catherine.' She suddenly felt terribly guilty, as though she were being accused of taking another woman's man away. But that was silly, she told herself. Catherine was leaving, with no thought for Paul's feelings at all.

‘No, no. I've been there, I've seen it and please let me point out that if he
is
interested in pursuing something more than a professional relationship with you, I don't mind a single bit.'

Pip didn't know quite how to take that. The woman seemed to be giving her
permission
to see Paul. Quite bizarre. ‘Look, I hate to sound rude, Catherine, but I've got a busy day ahead of me and . . .'

‘Quite. I don't want to waste your time. Came here to help you, if you've got five minutes,' she said, sounding miffed.

‘Sorry, please go on.'

‘Say for argument's sake Paul
is
interested in you, and you feel the same way, all I'm saying is that you should be very careful.'

‘Careful?'

‘I would have ended my relationship with Paul whether I were leaving town or not. In fact, I'm sure he's part of the reason I
am
leaving.'

‘It's probably none of my business, but why is that? Why don't you want to see him any more?'

Catherine put her gloved hands on the metal table and leaned forward, to emphasise her words, and said: ‘Oh, it
is
your business, Pip. I'm doing this as one woman to another, trying to stop you from making a mistake. Paul comes across initially as very vulnerable, very
caring, like a lost little boy who needs someone to take care of him. But once he's wooed you with that brooding, tortured hero routine, a different man appears.'

Pip swallowed hard. Unfortunately, she knew only too well how men could change their colours. ‘What do you mean, different?'

‘It's especially bad when he's had too much to drink.'

Oh, dear God, Pip thought. Paul had held off the booze yesterday, even though she had started early.

Catherine said: ‘He gets violent.'

Pip fidgeted with her hands, under the table where Catherine couldn't see them. She felt perspiration starting to form under her arms. It was a familiar feeling that swept over her, but one she hadn't experienced since Charlie went off to war. Fear. ‘Does he . . . did he . . . hit you?'

‘Remember the comment you made about my wrists the other day when you said goodbye at my place?'

‘Yes.'