Mackenzie Ford

by The Clouds Beneath the Sun (v5)

  She didn’t wait for an answer. “Anyway, he and I will carry on discussing it and we can all thrash out the details when we are back in the gorge.” She turned to Chistopher. “Are you going to wait with us?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m off to the airport. I’ve got a flying lesson this afternoon, and tomorrow and the day after that. I’ll come back to Kihara then.” He patted Natalie’s shoulder. “Well done.”

  “Christopher,” said Jack. “If you’re going out to the airport, could you fill my plane with juice? It will save time and Natalie and I need to get to the Kihara strip before dark.”

  “Sure,” said Christopher. He kissed his mother and left.

  Eleanor turned back to Sandys. “Now, Maxwell, is there anywhere near here we can find a sandwich and a glass of water?”

  “I’m ahead of you, my dear. Sandwiches and water are waiting for all of you in my office.” He turned to Natalie. “Well done, again. Enjoy your flight back to Kihara.”

  One by one they filed out of the courtroom into the corridor. As Natalie left the courtroom, Richard Sutton Senior rose from the bench he was sitting on and moved in her direction. He was alone; there was no sign of Russell.

  She kept going but he stood directly in front of her. He looked down at her, then pulled her sleeve, forcing her to stand to one side.

  He spoke softly.

  “Did you and Richard—? Were you ever—?”

  “No!” Natalie cried, but under her breath. Then, more softly still, “No. Nor, whatever he may have told you, with Russell North.” She shook her head vehemently. “No.”

  She stepped around Sutton and tried to walk on but he caught her sleeve again. “You don’t understand.”

  His voice had cracked and she stared at him. For once Richard Sutton Senior didn’t look like a self-confident corporate lawyer. He looked like a father who had lost his son.

  “For a moment there, in court, I hoped … I dared to hope … Before he came to Africa this time, Richard told me … he was a homosexual.”

  • • •

  Shouting. She was immediately awake. Shouting in the street. Not outside the hotel but some way off. Yet another political demonstration?

  As soon as Natalie had reached her hotel room, after the makeshift sandwich lunch in Maxwell Sandys’s office, and while she waited for Jack to collect her after his committee meeting, she had tried to digest Richard Sutton’s bombshell, which confirmed after all what Kees had said. And at the same time she had worked hard to divest herself of her memories of the morning’s proceedings.

  Despite Sandys’s warnings, and his attempts at reassurance, Hilary Hall had got under her skin. His insinuations about her sexual behavior had made her seem loose, easy prey, the center of a swamp of passions in Kihara, which was just so far from the truth as to be comical if it wasn’t so hurtful and damaging. And that her father should have been there to be exposed to it all …

  Not the least of her anguish arose from the fact that she had lied in court, had perjured herself. It was the first big lie she had ever told and it sat uneasily—very uneasily—with her. Part of her, she realized, was still very naive. Some people, she supposed, told lies of that magnitude every day of their lives, other people thought nothing of lying in court. But not her. It had been a lie she had to tell but it had exacted a price. It was one of the reasons she was drained and exhausted.

  And she had fallen fast asleep, dropping off immediately.

  The shouting grew louder but she couldn’t make out what was being said.

  She got up and moved to the window. Her room was at the back of the hotel and looked out on to a small square with straggly trees, and at the far side a wide avenue stretched south, towards the sun. Two blocks further on she could make out a parade, placards, people dancing, shouting, singing. She still couldn’t hear what the noise was all about. Were they celebrating the independence conference in far-off London? Had something happened that she didn’t know about?

  There was a rap on the door to her room. “Natalie! Natalie, open up!”

  She looked at her watch, twenty to three. Too early for Jack and in any case it wasn’t Jack’s voice.

  She opened the door and then stood back as Max, Eleanor, Daniel, and her father streamed in.

  “What—? What’s happened? Why aren’t you in court?”

  “The trial’s over. Tudor dismissed the charges.” Max undid his tie, a first. “He agreed with Hilary Hall, there’s no case to answer.” Sandys took his tie and stuffed it into his pocket. He shook his head. “Can you believe it? All the evidence the prosecution tendered, he said, was circumstantial. Ndekei never got a chance to mount his defense, to admit he killed Sutton; instead he’s been freed.” Sandys went to the window of her room. “That’s the shouting you can hear—he’s being carried on high through the streets, like a victorious warrior returning home.”

  Natalie stared at the others one by one. “So … so, all the preparation, all the unpleasantness, all the threats from Richard Sutton Senior, all the energy and worry and sleepless nights … have been for nothing?” She slumped on to the bed. “How could that happen?”

  Sandys wearily rubbed his hand over his face. “I don’t know. It’s a very, very strict interpretation of the law. Our evidence was circumstantial, in that, had someone wanted to impersonate Ndekei, and done so, the evidence would have been much as we presented it. But we all knew, or thought that we knew, that Ndekei would admit the killing and claim Maasai custom as his defense. And we took our eye off the ball. Ndekei, Marongo, and maybe Tshone—Hall’s Maasai assistant—tricked us to do less work, less research, than we should have done. The trial didn’t get that far. Tudor has been different lately but not that different. Today, however, I must say, he has interpreted the law strictly but, I am afraid, not incorrectly.”

  Natalie felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. She was breathing heavily, and sweating. She leaned over and took a glass of water by the side of the bed. She looked at Max. “After I left the court, Richard Sutton came up to me and asked if I’d really had sex with his son. He hoped I had, he said, because Richard Junior had confessed to being a homosexual.”

  Max stared back at her. “So maybe there was more to the murder than tribal custom …” He shook his head. “We’ll never know.”

  Natalie rubbed her eyes with her hands. “What happens now? How has Marongo reacted?”

  “We don’t know,” replied Eleanor, also taking a glass of water from the side of Natalie’s bed. “It’s too early, though I don’t expect he’ll wait long until he begins to make political capital out of this.” She turned to Natalie’s father. “Why don’t you go and pack, Owen, and check out of the hotel? Be ready to fly to the gorge this afternoon. Christopher’s staying on in Nairobi, so there’ll be room in Jack’s plane for you.”

  Owen nodded and made to leave the room. As he went through the doorway, however, he almost collided with Jack.

  “I heard what happened,” he said, coming over to Natalie. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Shocked but fine.” She nodded and gave him a weak smile.

  “A change of plan, Jack,” said Eleanor briskly. “We’re all flying back to the gorge this afternoon, now. Owen Nelson will take Christopher’s place.”

  “Two changes of plan,” said Jack. “I’ve got to go back to this committee meeting. The news out of London is more interesting than we thought, but complicated. They started with education and science, so this committee I’m on has to consider the Kenya response to the British proposals. It may even affect us in paleontology—I’ll give you the details in the gorge when I know more. But it means I have to stay.” He turned. “Max, can you take my place and fly my mother and the others to the gorge? The trial’s ended early, so you can’t have a lot planned. You can fly yourself back tomorrow.”

  Max looked flustered. “Well, yes, I suppose I can. It’s important to get Natalie out of Nairobi. The demonstrators might turn on the hotel if they fi
nd out where she is.”

  “Good, that’s settled then.” Jack handed Max some keys. “All the instruments are working fine, Christopher has a lesson at the airport and will have filled the tanks.” He turned to Natalie. “Max flies higher than me, don’t forget, so your father won’t get much of a view this time. But you’ll get to the gorge quicker.”

  “How long will your committee last?” Eleanor finished her water. “Perhaps we should wait?”

  “No, no.” Jack shook his head. “It could go on for hours—the conference in London has turned a touch acrimonious, there are a lot of demonstrations, and we have a lot to get through. You need to get to Kihara well before dark—go with Max.”

  He ushered them out of Natalie’s room. “You’ll all have to check out, and that will take time, so get moving. Max, is your car handy?”

  “Right outside. We can stop off at my house on the way to the airport, and I can pick up one or two bits and pieces.”

  Natalie was emptying the one drawer in her room, where she had placed some underwear. She looked at Jack as he came back in. “Shall I stay here with you? In Nairobi, I mean?”

  He shook his head.

  “Don’t you want me to stay?” She smiled and touched his cheek with her fingers.

  “You heard what Max said, it’s best for you to leave. And there would be no point, anyway—the committee might go on and on, late. And the British proposals are interesting, a real chance for us all to have an effect on the future.” He kissed her cheek. “You and I will have all the time in the world in the gorge, now the ordeal is over. At least we will until Marongo does his worst.”

  He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “In any case, I want you to have a clear head tonight, so you can make up your mind, one way or the other, about the big question I asked you the other day. Now is the time to bite the bullet, Dr. Nelson. Has Marongo and his brand of politics put you off Africa forever, or …?” He smiled. “Or …?” He raised his own hand. “Don’t tell me now. Tell me tomorrow.” He turned to the door, but swiveled back. “You must get to the airport as soon as possible, but I’ll have time tomorrow morning to buy some whiskey. You must need it after what you’ve been through.”

  He went out the door and she heard him run down the stairs to the lobby.

  13

  FIRE

  Natalie stared down at the landscape hundreds of feet below. The plane was at four thousand feet and still climbing. The ugly outskirts of Nairobi were just beginning to give way to farmland and areas of bush.

  Max was still talking over the radio, she presumed to air-traffic control, and she could see why. A large commercial jet was off to their left, on final approach to the airport they had just taken off from. Max, she had been reassured to note, was every bit as punctilious as Jack in making his preflight checks and had been commendably businesslike in taxiing out to the main runway—massive by Kihara standards—and lifting the Comanche into the air. As they had sped along the runway, she had caught sight of Christopher. He was running out of the departures building and waving energetically. She had waved back.

  Eleanor was up front with Max, her father was alone in the second row with some bags, and she was in the back with Daniel. There were more bags behind them.

  She looked down again. There was more open bush now, dried riverbeds, clumps of acacia trees. She saw a line of elephants and a series of low hills, the edge of a lake. Beyond that, they passed two other dried riverbeds and, on a plain with savannah grass, there was a herd of zebra, running at full tilt.

  They must have been close to five thousand feet now. She realized why Max flew so high but she preferred Jack’s habit of flying lower. The zebra seemed very far away.

  She tapped Daniel’s knee and pointed down. “Why are those zebra running? Is it a form of play, or are they running away from something?”

  He smiled. “No, it’s definitely not play. They are probably running away from wild dogs. Wild dogs seem to have a taste for zebra flesh—if they can smell zebra nearby they will ignore impala or hartebeest and seek out the zebra. It’s always an interesting contest. Zebra fight back more than most animals—they kick, oh how they kick, and they bite too.”

  Natalie looked down. She couldn’t see any dogs. “You don’t think of wild dogs as being part of the African scene, not like lions and elephants and leopards.”

  “Maybe not,” said Daniel. “They are not very noble-looking animals, I agree, but they can’t be ignored. They can hunt in packs of as many as a hundred and they kill eighty percent of the time—twice as much as lions. Weight for weight, their biting force is the strongest of any carnivore and they work in teams—one dog will grab the animal’s lip, a second the tail, and then the others will start to eat whatever it is while it is still alive.” He smiled grimly. “Apart from elephants in a bad mood, they are the only animals who will attack a vehicle. I’ve known them bite the tires of a Land Rover—”

  He broke off as the plane lurched.

  Natalie, looking down, felt the plane judder and looked across to Daniel.

  The plane juddered again and sank, as if it were a boat that had slid down a wave.

  Natalie’s heart was thumping in her chest, she gripped her seat tightly, she began to sweat.

  The plane juddered again and the starboard engine stopped.

  Max was talking—shouting—on the radio, frantically maneuvering the controls but above the noise of the port engine, Natalie couldn’t hear what he was staying.

  The plane stabilized but Max lost height anyway.

  Then the plane juddered again, and again. The port engine stopped.

  The Comanche immediately began to sink. Max tried to restart the engines, but each time one or the other coughed into action and, before the propeller could complete a full turn, died.

  No one else spoke as the plane began to lose height rapidly.

  Natalie reached forward and gripped her father’s shoulder. He put his hand on her arm.

  Max fought with the aircraft controls to keep the nose pointing forward and down, using what height they had, and speed, to glide the plane as well as he could.

  The Comanche was picking up velocity, bucking in the air. The angle of descent was deepening and the noise of the wind going by was rising to a whistle.

  Natalie was rigid with fear. Her knuckles were drained of blood, it hurt to swallow, it hurt to breathe.

  Ahead of them was a patch of savannah, with trees beyond.

  The plane lost more height. Its noise was no longer a whistle but a scream. Everyone looked forward as Max wrestled with the controls. He tried again to restart the engines. He failed.

  There was a jolting and Natalie realized they must have lost part of the undercarriage, sheered off in the wind generated by their descent. They were now no more than two hundred feet above the landscape. Max tried one more time to start the engines. They coughed and died.

  The angle of descent deepened still more. They had been gliding, now they were falling. Max fought to keep the attitude of the plane upright. One of the dead propellers on the starboard engine buckled under the pressure of air, snapped off, and slapped against the side windows next to where Owen Nelson was sitting. Then it was gone.

  Her father. His first time in Kenya.

  Oil streamed across the wing where the propeller had broken away. It was flecked on the Comanche’s windows.

  At about fifty feet Max hauled back on the control stick. The flaps at the trailing edge of the wings lifted and the nose of the aircraft rose, so that it was the aircraft’s wheels and belly that slammed into the ground first.

  The sound of metal on rock—the screech of twisted, mangled, deformed, distended metal on stone—made a hammering noise, a booming, as if the massive gates of hell were clanging closed, a final, deadly, dead bolt, as the aircraft bounced into the air again and began to turn over.

  Natalie’s seat belt cut into her right thigh, her left thigh, and her stomach all in rapid succession. The heads of
the people in front of her jerked one way, then the other, then back again. At the same time a tide of pain exploded up Natalie’s spine, spread round her lower back like a hot ring.

  She heard a loud crack, snapping bone, and Eleanor’s head fell to one side, nodding insanely.

  The fuselage rose into the air but then the port wing scraped the ground—and sent the plane in the opposite direction, causing it to drop, diagonally, on to some rocks, baking in the sun. Another hammering of metal on stone, another screeching, another mangling, yet more shards of twisted aircraft pieces. The Comanche broke almost in two and skidded down the rocks, showering sparks, turning and rolling, keening and growling, pummeled out of shape and thudding to a stop against a line of trees, when Natalie hit her head—hard—against the already misshapen metal skin of the plane, and passed out.

  • • •

  The first thing she heard, however long afterwards, when she regained consciousness, was a cracking and a dripping sound. In the baking sun, and following the crash, the metal of the aircraft was giving off mysterious cracks and snaps like those the Land Rovers’ engines gave off after they had been in use. Only much louder. She couldn’t see where the dripping sound was coming from.

  She was aware of the hot ring around her middle. She passed her hands over herself. No blood but she was very tender all round her hips and stomach.

  Looking around her again, she still couldn’t see much. Only Daniel, unconscious or dead, almost on top of her, but held in place by his seat belt. Those in the front half of the plane—Eleanor, Max, her dear father—were out of sight, where the plane had broken and jackknifed on hitting the rocks. She pushed Daniel. He didn’t respond.