African Sky

by Tony Park

  Reitz convinced Canaris that there was enough support in Africa for someone from outside – a man such as himself – to return and deliver a hammer blow against the British and their South African allies, which would hurt their war effort and inspire other Afrikaners to take up arms.

  Which was why he was back.

  11

  Pip straightened her police uniform cap and squared her shoulders. They stood at the tall, imposing mahogany door of a sprawling whitewashed house in Hillside, between decorative pillars fronting a long, shady verandah. Cape doves cooed in the trees overhanging the home and a big sandy-coloured Rhodesian Ridgeback snuffled curiously at the hem of Pip’s skirt. The home and its stonewalled garden provided a tranquil oasis in the midst of the dusty outer suburb. The house spoke of money – a different Africa from the one Pip had grown up in. She swatted the dog gently on the nose.

  ‘I don’t have to tell you that this could go bad for both of us if you’re wrong,’ Hayes grumbled, his words very nearly puncturing what little resolve she had mustered.

  She wiped her sweaty palms on her skirt. She noticed Hayes used a finger to wipe beads of sweat from his top lip. She knocked.

  An elderly African male in a cropped red jacket and black trousers opened the door. ‘Sir, madam. May I help you?’

  ‘We’re here to see . . .’ Hayes coughed, as if he would choke on the words, ‘Mr Justice Green.’

  ‘Whom may I say is calling, please?’ the grey-haired African asked, eyebrows slightly raised.

  ‘Sergeant Hayes and WPC Lovejoy. Bulawayo Police.’

  ‘Very good, sir. Please wait here.’ The man closed the door.

  ‘Bloody hell, who does he think he is?’ Hayes fumed.

  ‘I suppose he’s smart enough to know the judge wouldn’t want to front a couple of uniformed coppers without some notice,’ Pip said.

  ‘The law is the law, Lovejoy. No one, not even a judge, is above it,’ Hayes said.

  Pip thought that Hayes, as usual, was blustering to cover his own inadequacies or, in this case, fear. She felt her heart beat faster. She was terrified. She checked her watch. They had been waiting five minutes since the butler disappeared. The door swung open again.

  ‘Mr Justice Green will see you now. This way, please, sir, madam.’

  The butler’s shoes clicked on the terracotta tiled hallway floor as the police officers followed him into the cool, dim interior of the home. Pip noticed the oil paintings on the wall were mostly of idyllic pastoral scenes. England, by the looks of them, although she had never been there herself. They passed an ornate carved wooden sideboard stacked with fine hand-painted china. The servant knocked on a door halfway down the corridor and a voice said, ‘Come.’

  ‘Good morning,’ Justice Cecil Green said, standing from a dark leather chair set behind an antique roll-top desk.

  Pip looked around as she greeted the judge and shook his cold, bony hand. The walls of what appeared to be the judge’s study were covered with books – legal texts, by the look of it. His desk was clear, which made her wonder what he had been doing there, and why he couldn’t have met them at the door. Perhaps, she thought, he wanted them off-balance and had deliberately kept them waiting in order to give him time to compose himself in a place where he felt master of his surroundings.

  ‘I’d ask what I can do to help you, officers but, to be quite frank, my first question is why you didn’t see fit to telephone me first. What’s this all about? Not bad news, I hope?’

  Pip had asked around the police camp and found out that Justice Green was a widower, with no children, so they were hardly likely to be calling to tell him about the death of a close relative.

  ‘No, your Honour,’ Hayes began, eyes downcast, struggling to find a way to broach the subject. ‘I’m sorry for the unannounced visit, and to impinge, as it were, on your valuable time. I know that you’re a very busy man and . . . it’s just that . . .’

  ‘What, Sergeant? I do hope this is not about a case I’m hearing at the moment. You know that would be most improper. Now, please, how can I be of assistance to you?’

  ‘Well, sir, you see, we’ve come into possession of some information which would seem to, well, that is, there’s an allegation that—’

  ‘An allegation?’ the judge spat, as if offended by the word. ‘I do hope you haven’t come here to accuse me of something.’ He finished the sentence with a hearty laugh.

  Pip looked into his grey eyes and saw a flash of fear. She’d thought the laugh was too loud, forced. It echoed off the walls of the office and only silence remained. The judge, she noticed, was looking at Hayes, as if daring him to ask his question, and had pointedly ignored her since limply shaking her hand. She realised that Hayes, never at a loss for words when it came to bullying an inferior, had gone to water. If she didn’t say something fast, the judge would have his manservant usher them out in no time flat.

  ‘How much petrol’s in your Daimler, your Honour?’ Pip blurted.

  He was tall, bald and thin, and stooped from a working lifetime of poring over evidence and transcripts. He stared down at her, shoulders hunched and neck extended, looking, Pip thought, like one of the ugly Marabou storks that hung around the town garbage dump. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘How much petrol’s in your car?’ she asked again. ‘Simple question.’ She glanced across at Hayes, whose normally ruddy face had drained of colour. He looked away from her. She was on her own.

  ‘Why on earth would you want to know that?’

  ‘Why on earth wouldn’t you want to tell us?’ Pip retorted. Hayes, she saw from the corner of her eye, was mouthing something to her. ‘Enough’ she thought he was trying to say. The man was a coward – the realisation made Pip feel even more determined to press on.

  The judge looked at her, eyes narrowed, and said: ‘I could give you twenty legal reasons why I don’t have to tell you anything, right here and now. What’s this about, Constable.’

  She hated the mocking tone in his voice as if he, like so many men in the police and elsewhere, didn’t think she had the right to wear the uniform. ‘Your Honour, perhaps you’d like to call an advocate. Do judges have lawyers?’

  ‘I don’t mind telling you, I do not like your tone, young lady, and I do not like you barging in here, asking meaningless questions. Sergeant?’ He looked angrily at Hayes.

  Hayes, still dumbstruck, shrugged and looked pointedly back at Pip.

  ‘Why on earth would I need the services of a lawyer?’ the judge demanded.

  ‘How much petrol’s in your car, your Honour?’ Pip asked again.

  The judge ran a hand over his bald pate. ‘Sergeant, I demand that you explain right now what this is all about. Or am I to suffer this woman’s riddles all morning? If I do make a call to anyone in the next few minutes, believe me when I say that it will be to the chief constable.’

  Hayes coughed. ‘Well, sir, it’s like this . . . we, that is, Constable Lovejoy has some information, and –’

  ‘I could arrest you, your Honour,’ Pip said, interrupting Hayes.

  ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ said the judge.

  Now, Pip thought, he looked more like a bird of prey than a scavenger. Those eyes frightened her. She knew he could end her police career – if that’s what it was – with a single call. ‘I’m investigating a case of black market petrol dealing. I could arrest you, on suspicion of buying petrol illegally, take you to the station, and then get one of your colleagues to sign a search warrant so I can measure how much fuel you’ve got in your car and garage, and see how that tallies against your ration coupons. We’ll get statements from court clerks, garage attendants, your servants and enough other people to ascertain how often you drive, and how far. After that, it’s just some fairly simple mathematics to see if you can do the number of miles I know you travel, with the amount of fuel you should be able to buy legally.’

  ‘Enough!’

  ‘Mr Justice Green, you are under –’

  ‘Wait
, wait!’ said the judge, holding up a hand. ‘Before you do anything rash, my dear –’

  ‘Constable, your Honour.’

  ‘Very well, Constable, perhaps you wouldn’t mind by starting with a little background information as to why you might possibly even start to believe that I might be guilty of this petty crime.’

  ‘Buying and selling fuel on the black market when there are people fighting and dying in a war doesn’t seem too petty to me, your Honour. I would have thought you’d agree.’

  The judge coughed. ‘All right, out with it. Charge me – and we’ll see how much luck you have getting someone to sign a search warrant – or ask me what you came here to ask me.’

  Pip swallowed hard. She had bluffed her way this far but she knew, and the judge had just told her in so many words, that even if she took the game to the next level, he could – and would – defeat her. However, the fact that he wanted to talk indicated he probably did have something to hide.

  ‘We didn’t come here to charge you with buying petrol on the black market, your Honour,’ she confessed.

  ‘Very wise,’ the judge said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘We arrested a man for the murder of Felicity Langham yesterday . . .’

  ‘So I heard. A Mr Nkomo, I believe. What of it, and what’s that got to do with me? You’ve not come to charge me with conspiracy to murder as well, I hope!’

  ‘No, sir. But the accused, Mr Nkomo, says he has an alibi – a series of alibis, in fact – during the hours when she was most probably murdered.’

  ‘It’s not my position, as a member of the judiciary, to comment on or be privy to details of a case before it reaches court, but I have heard, through sources, that the man in question was caught in possession of certain items belonging to Miss Langham. Is that not correct?’

  ‘It is, your Honour, but the man’s alibi still needs to be checked.’ She thought for a moment about how best to ask the next question, then said: ‘Innocent says he was with you between the hours of midnight and one in the morning on the night in question. Is that true, sir?’

  The judge scratched his chin, as if either trying to remember or deciding whether or not to answer the question. ‘You’re taking the word of a common criminal, against a judge, that I was somehow, for some reason, consorting with him in the middle of the night. I must say, this is quite absurd.’

  ‘I’m merely asking you a question. Were you or were you not with this man at that time?’ Pip persisted.

  ‘What’s the window of time in which you think the young woman was killed?’

  ‘That’s not information we need to share with you, sir,’ Pip said.

  The judge bridled. ‘I presume, young lady, you wouldn’t have had the gumption to confront me like this if you didn’t think the time this man allegedly met with me fell into that window?’

  Pip gave a little smile. ‘You’re a very perceptive man, your Honour.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, sir, I think the man’s guilty,’ Hayes chirped up, as though he now thought it was safe to enter the conversation. ‘There are three hours in which we think the killing took place.’

  Pip shot him a dark look. The last thing she needed was for the obsequious toad to give the judge an easy out.

  The judge stayed silent a few seconds, staring at Hayes. Eventually he said: ‘Sergeant, I’ve made it clear that I resent the impertinent way in which you and Constable Lovejoy have intruded into my home, and I resent the allegations of impropriety you are inferring.’

  ‘Yes, sir, my apologies, sir. This wasn’t my idea, by the way.’

  Pip closed her eyes in frustration. She had blown it. They would never hear the end of it, and Hayes would make what little time she had left in the police service a misery.

  ‘However,’ the judge continued, now looking down at Pip, ‘Constable Lovejoy, I can confirm, and will do so, if required, under oath, that Mr Innocent Nkomo was in my presence, in the garage of this property, from the hours of midnight to one in the morning on the night Miss Langham’s body was found.’

  Hayes was wide-eyed with surprise.

  ‘Beyond that, Constable, I will say nothing more.’

  ‘I don’t need you to, your Honour.’

  ‘I know you don’t.’ The judge gave the merest hint of a smile, then turned to Hayes and said: ‘Sergeant, if it was not your idea to confront me, then, in my humble opinion, it should have been. Murder – particularly a killing of this nature – is a very serious offence indeed. Constable Lovejoy has shown great conviction by confronting me to confirm Mr Nkomo’s whereabouts. I’d have thought the police could do with a few more like her. Now, if you’ve no further questions, I’ll bid good-day to you both.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, one more question, your Honour,’ Pip said.

  ‘As much as I admire your zeal, Constable, I’d have thought I made it clear I’ve nothing more to say.’

  ‘I understand, sir, but I need to ask you if you have ever passed on Innocent Nkomo’s telephone number to anyone else.’

  The judge answered immediately. ‘No, I have not, and I will not tell you how I got in contact with him in the first place. Now, I have things to attend to.’

  They thanked him and walked outside. Pip resisted the urge to say anything to Hayes as she walked down the judge’s driveway in front of him.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Hayes said. ‘What do we do now?’

  Pip turned and saw the sergeant really didn’t have a clue. At that moment she felt sorry for him, and shared his same sense of emptiness. This was a murder investigation, she reminded herself, it was not a competition between her and Hayes to see who was the smartest – or the bravest.

  ‘Well, it seems Innocent Nkomo has a rock-solid alibi not only from midnight to three – when the doc thinks Felicity was murdered – but also for a good three hours beforehand. With travelling time between his various appointments it seems impossible for him to have picked up Felicity somewhere and raped and murdered her.’

  The judge was the fourth person they had spoken to. They’d saved the most difficult interview until last. Innocent Nkomo had a diverse client base, all of whom, apart from buying illegal petrol on the black market, seemed pillars of the white community. His other customers had included a seventy-five-year-old retired headmistress, a bank manager and a doctor. All had shown the same nervousness as the judge about incriminating themselves, and the same red-faced shame at being caught out, but Pip had managed to convince them all that she was not interested so much in what they were doing, as whether or not they were doing it with Innocent Nkomo.

  They had all confessed to being with him. She thought it a credit to them. Even though they had engaged in criminal activity, none of them would lie if it meant the death of an innocent man – even one not so innocent as, well, Innocent.

  ‘I can’t see the judge, the headmistress, the banker or the doctor as being involved in Felicity’s death. They all live in far-flung parts of town, and there’s nothing to connect her to any of them,’ Pip said as they got back into their car.

  ‘So that means if Nkomo’s telling the truth, and someone planted Felicity Langham’s stuff in the boot of his car, it must have been one of the two mystery clients we can’t account for.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Pip said. ‘So we’re almost back to square one.’

  Innocent Nkomo had told them that in addition to his regular customers, the only people who had been anywhere near his car on the morning after Felicity had been murdered were two new, unannounced customers. They were both white – one male and one female. He had given a rough description of both of them, and told the police where he had met them, but it wasn’t much to go on.

  As Hayes skirted the southern part of Bulwayo, Pip reviewed the notes she had taken during Nkomo’s interrogation, and the man’s own statement. ‘So, we’re looking for a blonde woman aged in her mid-twenties to early thirties, and a dark-haired man in his early thirties. He said he’d stopped to see what the fuss was about in Mzilikazi, when we fo
und him at the crime scene, after picking up some more cans of fuel for his next delivery. Nkomo met the woman in town, at five in the morning in a lane near the Empire Club. He sold our mystery man four gallons behind the Catholic Church at seven o’clock. Nkomo said both customers telephoned him at home, asking if he had some timber for sale.’ It was a primitive code, but told the black marketeer that the new clients had both been referred to him by someone who had used his services before.

  ‘We’ll get some officers to ask around both neighbourhoods to see if there were any witnesses to the meetings. Might get better descriptions, or maybe someone will have recognised the customers,’ Hayes said as he turned right onto the Salisbury Road.

  A church early on a weekday morning and a lane behind a closed club? Not much chance there’d be too many people walking past. Nkomo’s not dumb – that’s why he does his work either at night, at his regular customers’ homes, or in places where no one’s milling about. A black man selling stuff out of the back of a car in the neighbourhoods where his customers live would draw too much attention during the day.’

  ‘What choice have we got?’ Hayes asked.

  She was stumped. ‘We’ve got to concentrate on the mystery man.’

  ‘I agree with you there,’ Hayes said.

  ‘Yes. We should get out the photo files of men with prior convictions for sexual assault and show them to Nkomo. He might recognise one of them as his mystery customer.’

  ‘It’s a long shot,’ Hayes said. ‘And we’ve still got Nkomo’s full list of clients to go through. There might be a cross-match somewhere.’

  Pip nodded. Nkomo, at their instruction, had been left in his cell to write down the names of all of his petrol clients. The man had admitted to them that he sold to dozens of people, and that he did not know them all by name.

  ‘If we resurrect your theory that Felicity was killed by someone who knew her, we could have another look at the men she’s been with.’