African Sky (33 page)

‘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.'

P
ip 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 centre 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?

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.'