African Sky (4 page)

Hayes was dismissive. A few Afrikaner lunatics who want to refight the Boer War. Hardly representative of the whole community, and no
real military threat – certainly not this side of the border, as they've no support in Rhodesia.'

‘My office is in here, at the end of the orderly room.' Bryant said as they entered the brick building. Above the door's lintel was a casting of the RAF's flying eagle, beneath the Rhodesian lion, and the date, 1940, when the airfield had been commissioned. The orderly room was sparsely furnished, the walls painted a drab grey.

An airman stood to attention and Bryant motioned for him to resume his seat behind his typewriter. He led them into his office and sat down behind his desk, inviting them to sit on the two spare bare metal chairs.

Pip Lovejoy stayed standing, studying a panoramic black and white photo on the wall. It showed a large number of men sitting on the wings of a twin-engine bomber. ‘You served in bomber command?'

‘Yeah, I'm somewhere in that mob. You'd hardly recognise me, though. That was early in my first tour. Full of mustard and no grey hair. The kite's a Wellington. I went on to Lancasters on my second tour.'

‘You must have quite a few stories to tell.'

‘Look, Constable . . . Lovejoy, was it? I don't want to be rude, but I'm sure you didn't come here to talk about the Empire Air Training Scheme or my military career.'

‘Of course. Quite right,' Hayes said, clearing his voice again. ‘Constable Lovejoy will take notes during our discussions, if that's all right with you.'

‘I hope I'm not going to be charged with anything. Whatever it was, I didn't do it,' Bryant said, hands up, smiling.

‘It's a serious matter, Squadron Leader. One of the women serving here at Kumalo has been killed in, shall we say, suspicious circumstances.'

Bryant sat up straight in his chair. ‘What? You mean murdered? Who . . . ?'

‘A Rhodesian member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Service. One of your WAAFs, I believe you call them. Leading Aircraftswoman Felicity Langham, aged twenty-four.'

He closed his eyes. ‘Oh, dear God. She is . . . was, well liked around
here . . . It's a terrible loss to the base.' Bryant took his cigarettes from his pocket. He offered the pack to Hayes and the woman, but both waved him off. He lit his and inhaled.

‘Well liked?' Pip asked, looking up from her notebook. ‘What does that mean, exactly?'

Hayes shot her an annoyed glance and said, ‘I was about to ask the same question.'

‘Are you all right, Squadron Leader? You look very pale.'

‘Fine,' Bryant coughed. He licked his lips, his mouth suddenly parched from the smoke. ‘Um, we've had losses – deaths – here before, but never a woman. Flick was one of our parachute packers. They're mostly local girls. She also gave the trainees their initial instruction on how to use a chute if they got into trouble. She had a unique way of starting her lessons, and that made her a hit with the boys.'

‘What do you mean, unique?' Hayes asked.

‘She used to arrive at her lesson by jumping out of a Tiger Moth.'

‘Yes, I read about that in the newspaper,' Pip said.

Hayes ignored her. ‘She jumped out of a perfectly good aeroplane, one with no damage? I thought those things, parachutes, were only to be used in emergencies.'

‘Flick, LACW Langham, had a rather different idea of excitement from most people. She jumped out of aeroplanes whenever she could, not just when giving her lessons. Parachuting's come a long way since the first war. Both sides are making widespread use of airborne forces and Flick reckoned one day people would pay to do it for fun.'

‘Ludicrous,' Hayes said.

‘I'm with you there,' Bryant agreed. ‘I almost had to do it once, to save my life, but the prospect scared me shitless. Pardon the language, Constable.'

‘No problem,' Pip said. ‘Just then you referred to Miss Langham as “Flick”. Were you two close?'

‘What do you mean by that?' He tugged at the collar of his shirt. It felt hot inside the office, and he wanted to throw open the window, but he forced himself to sit still.

‘You tell me.'

Hayes intervened. ‘Constable, we're getting off our original tack and . . .'

‘No, it's all right,' Bryant said. ‘She was one of our instructors, and a damned good one. The permanent staff here socialise together sometimes and I knew her, as a casual acquaintance, as well as through her instructional duties. We'd chatted a few times, over drinks.'

‘But she was a leading aircraftswoman – one stripe, if I'm not mistaken,' Pip said.

‘Yes, she is – was – what we call a noncommissioned officer. And it's a single propeller in the air force, not a stripe.'

‘But you're a commissioned officer, and a relatively senior one, I gather. I would have thought fraternisation between the ranks was not on,' Pip said.

Bryant noticed her eyes were following his cigarette hand. He realised he was smoking very fast. Perhaps she was looking for signs he was nervous. He put the cigarette on the lip of the ashtray on his desk, carefully, so the tremor wouldn't be so noticeable. ‘We didn't
fraternise
in terms of a relationship, if that's what you're hinting at, Constable. We have separate messes, on base, for officers, NCOs and trainees to drink at, but, sometimes, such as at the end of the course, a mob of us will go into town for a few drinks at one of the pubs. It's an all-ranks affair then. We don't stand too much on ceremony. We might be training people for the Royal Air Force, but it's certainly not all spit and polish over here.'

‘We understand, Squadron Leader,' Hayes interjected. ‘Did Miss Langham live on the base?'

‘I'm really not sure. I'd have to check. I think she had a flat or a house in town. I'll get her file for you when we're done here,' Bryant said. He was relieved that the male officer had taken over the questioning.

‘How would you describe her character?' Hayes asked.

‘Good worker. Excellent instructor, if somewhat unorthodox. She seemed to enjoy life in uniform.' He looked across at the woman police constable and noticed she averted her eyes. Women, in his limited experience, usually fitted well into service life. They faced prejudice
and sometimes outright abuse and intimidation from some of the men but, despite this, or maybe because of it, they often outshone men in similar ranks and positions. He'd seen it in England too. Women were filling jobs that they'd never dreamed of doing before the war.

‘What do you know about her personal life?'

‘Not much at all, Sergeant. As I said, we weren't what you would call close.' Bryant suddenly felt hot and he rubbed his finger around his collar. He saw the policewoman was still watching his every gesture, and that made him feel even less comfortable. He felt the sweat running down each side of his ribcage from his armpits and hoped it didn't show.

‘Come now, Squadron Leader, we're all adults here. She was an attractive young woman surrounded by hundreds of men, most of them far from home. She must have enjoyed more than her fair share of attention,' Hayes said.

‘That's none of my business. Tell me, how exactly did Miss Langham die?' Bryant asked.

‘Her body was found in a part of Bulawayo which is, shall we say unsavoury,' Hayes said. ‘She was partially clad. Her body may have been dumped there, or she may have died there.'

‘Was she assaulted?' Bryant asked. He wondered if his face betrayed his emotions.

‘To tell you the truth, we don't know yet,' Pip interrupted.

‘Do you think one of the men here on base might be responsible?' Bryant inquired, stubbing out his cigarette.

‘It's too early to come to any conclusions,' Hayes said. ‘In fact, Miss Langham was found in an area frequented mostly by Africans. There's a possibility she was abducted by someone and things went wrong.'

A bloody understatement if he'd ever heard one, Bryant thought. ‘Poor Flick. Either way, whether it's a black man or a white man who's responsible, this could get nasty once word gets out.'

‘Did she have many female friends that you knew of? Other WAAFs, perhaps?' Pip asked.

‘I'd have to check that for you,' Bryant said, scratching his neck. ‘I can ask around and get back to you, if you like.'

‘What are your movements over the next few days?' Hayes asked.

‘I've got to drive up to an area north of Wankie Game Reserve. One of our Canadian trainees, a chap called Cavendish, crashed his Harvard up there last week and I've got to conduct an investigation before the wreck is recovered. I'm leaving tomorrow morning. I'll possibly be away overnight. You can leave messages here for me with the orderly room corporal' God knows where Smythe's Harvard would turn up, let alone if the Englishman were still alive.

‘Sarge, we could save time by splitting up. I could stay here and talk to some of the other airwomen, if that's all right with you, Squadron Leader,' Pip said.

‘No worries here. You might as well start in the parachute hangar where Felicity worked,' Bryant said.

‘We'll have a word outside, WPC Lovejoy. Squadron Leader Bryant, I think we're finished here for the moment, but we'll be back in touch in the next day or so, no doubt.'

‘Anything I can do to help, just let me know,' Bryant said.

Bryant opened the door to his office and the orderly room NCO was standing just outside. ‘Well, don't let me keep you, officers. Corporal Richards here can show you back to the gate if you're both leaving now, or I can take WPC Lovejoy to the parachute hangar, if you like,' he said to Hayes.

‘Just give us a moment to confer, Squadron Leader.'

Hayes nodded and walked out of the orderly room.

The two police officers moved outside and Bryant heard raised voices. ‘What were you doing hovering outside my door, Richards?' Bryant shot the pimple-faced young Londoner a withering look.

‘I was just about to knock, sir. I just got a message for you, from the guardhouse. It was a phone call late last night, but the dozy buggers only just got around to calling it through.'

Richards handed him a sheet of message paper. ‘Thanks,' Bryant said. He read it, then swallowed hard to maintain his composure. ‘Were you listening in on that conversation, Richards?'

‘No, sir, of course not.'

‘If I catch you eavesdropping I'll have you posted to fucking Greenland. Do I make myself clear?'

Richards smiled sheepishly and said, ‘Yes, sir. Can I ask, sir, are the coppers here about Felicity Langham's murder?'

‘Who said anything about that?' Bryant replied.

‘Word's getting around camp. A couple of the blacks in the kitchen were talking about it and some of the lads overheard, at breakfast.'

‘Her body was found this morning. I don't know about murder, though. Do me a favour and let me know what the boys are saying about the news, will you?'

‘If it's Kaffirs that raped her, sir, there'll be bleedin' hell to pay.'

One thing Bryant did not like about his young assistant was his attitude to Africans. It wasn't uncommon, of course, to hear people using derogatory terms for Africans, but in Bryant's book that didn't make it right. There had been a couple of black West Indian gunners in his old squadron, and a Sikh pilot from India. They'd all been good at their jobs, which was the only thing that mattered to him when he was on operations. A loud-mouthed Scot had made a point of taunting one of the Jamaicans in the mess, calling him a nigger. The man had laughed off the insult, but his crewmates had sorted out the troublemaker and afterwards the Scot had gone absent without leave and never been seen again.

‘Keep your bloody opinions to yourself, Richards. And you know what I think about name-calling, so stow it. What I asked is for you to keep me informed about what people are saying. We don't want a riot on our hands.'

‘Yes, sir.'

The orderly room door opened again and WPC Pip Lovejoy stepped in. ‘I'm back,' she said.

‘So I see. What about your sergeant? Sounded like a spirited discussion you were having with him.'

She failed to stop a little smile crossing her face. ‘Some issues about who does what. He's going to check with the medical examiner.'

Bryant imagined it wasn't the first time the pretty young policewoman
and her senior had clashed. ‘Richards, escort Sergeant Hayes back to the front gate.'

‘Yes, sir.' Richards put his forage cap on and excused himself, leaving Pip and Bryant alone.

I
nside the cavernous metal-roofed hangar were a dozen long rows of trestle tables, laid end to end. On four of the rows were parachutes, in various states of being packed. The young women chatted as they methodically gathered in suspension lines and folded billowing panels of white silk.

Pip looked around her. She reckoned you could tell a great deal about someone from their home or workplace, by the things that were lying around, or objects that were missing. Glenn Miller's ‘American Patrol' blared from a Bakelite radio on a table just inside the hangar door. The table was littered with dirty teacups, sugar, powdered milk and a scarred enamel teapot. An ashtray was overflowing with cigarette butts. She imagined it was forbidden to smoke over the precious silk of the parachute canopies.

Bryant turned the radio down then strode ahead, towards the working women. Pip lingered by the entry for the moment. The tin wall behind the tea table was plastered with newspaper cuttings, photographs, torn pages from magazines. There were pictures of men in uniform – perhaps boyfriends or husbands – film stars and aeroplanes. There were articles from the
Bulawayo Chronicle
about the women's work at the base, and about visits by various dignitaries. She
saw photos of half-a-dozen women in overalls and baggy khaki uniforms, but recognised none of them.

‘Morning, sir,' called a red-haired woman from the head of one of the trestle-table rows.

‘Morning, Susannah,' Bryant said.

Pip caught up with him. The woman he'd called Susannah was much taller than she was, with fair skin, green eyes and freckles. She was about Pip's age and wore overalls with the sleeves rolled up high above the bicep. Pip thought her arms looked very toned, almost muscled, from the constant work of packing and folding parachutes.

‘Constable Lovejoy, this is Corporal Susannah Beattie. She's the NCO in charge of today's shift of parachute packers. Susannah, Miss Lovejoy . . .'

The woman's grip was firm, like a man's. ‘It's missus, actually, but constable's just fine.'

‘Sorry,
Constable
Lovejoy wants to ask you and the other girls a few questions about Felicity Langham. I'm afraid it's not good news.'

‘The rumour's true then?' She spoke with a trace of a Scottish accent.

Pip saw the woman look back at the other girls, who had stopped working to listen in to the conversation. ‘I'm sorry, but Miss Langham has passed away,' Pip said. ‘Squadron Leader, I wonder if you wouldn't mind giving us a bit of time by ourselves?'

‘Of course,' Bryant said.

She sensed his reluctance to leave – he obviously wanted to listen in on the interview. He finally turned and walked outside the hangar and lit another cigarette. Pip led the red-haired corporal towards the tea table.

‘Do you mind if I call you Susannah?' Pip asked, now that they were alone.

‘Of course not. You're Pip, aren't you? Charlie Lovejoy's wife?'

Pip was taken aback. She'd got used to the fact that people were often a little nervous or off-balance when she asked them questions in her capacity as a volunteer policewoman. Now the shoe was suddenly on the other foot. She hadn't come out to the air force base to talk about her husband.

‘That's right. You know him?'

‘He went to school with my brother. Our Johnny practically worshipped the ground Charlie walked on. Top rugby player, head boy. And, if you don't mind me saying, very handsome. I remember hearing he got married. He's overseas, isn't he?'

Pip was uncomfortable talking about Charlie with this woman, though everything she had said was true. He was popular, successful and as good-looking as any of the male film stars on the wall behind them. ‘Yes. He's in the army. He was in North Africa with the Long Range Desert Group. He's somewhere in Italy now,' Pip said. She pointed at the photographs on the wall and asked: ‘Does one of these belong to you?'

Susannah pointed out a picture of a man – little more than a boy really – with fair tousled hair, in RAF battledress with sergeant's chevrons on the sleeves. ‘That's my boyfriend. He's RAF, a wireless air gunner. Dean Geary. He's in England.'

Pip looked at the young man's face, and at the others, all of a similar age, all smiling and keen. She wondered if it would ever end, the ceaseless flow of men from and through Rhodesia, if women would ever go back to being housewives.

‘Now, what happened to Flick?'

Pip was annoyed that she had let herself lose track, and that it had been the other woman who had brought her back to the job at hand. She noticed that Susannah and the dead woman's other coworkers showed little if any emotion at the news about Felicity Langham. ‘Her body was found in town last night, in an alleyway. Partially clothed.'

Susannah frowned and sipped her tea.

‘Excuse me, but you don't seem overly sad at the loss of a comrade.'

‘If it's false sorrow you want, Pip, I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place. Flick worked with us, but she was never one of us. It wasn't for lack of trying on our part, either, I might add. Me and the other girls went out of our way to make her part of the team, but Felicity Langham was only interested in one person in this life – Felicity Langham. She came from a good family, with plenty of money
and thought she was above us. The stupid thing is that we've got farm girls and millionaires' daughters working side by side on the rigging floor here. She could have fitted in if she'd wanted to.'

Pip cast her eyes over the press cuttings and photographs behind the tea table. The first thing she'd noticed was the absence of anything to do with Felicity Langham, even though she knew the woman had appeared in the
Bulawayo Chronicle
on more than one occasion. She'd assumed there would have been some evidence of the parachute hangar's star performer. Susannah's words simply confirmed what Pip had initially deduced. ‘What can you tell me about her personal life?'

‘She liked a good time, did Flick. She was popular with the men, but never had a steady boyfriend, if you know what I mean. They weren't all from the base, either, from what I gathered.'

‘What do you know about the men Felicity saw from town? Pip asked.

‘One of the lasses here went to school with Flick, before her parents sent her to finishing school in England. She reckons Felicity always had a thing for the wrong kind of men. Low-lifes, petty criminals. The kind of man who would treat her mean.'

‘Are there any women on base who might have had cause to wish Miss Langham harm?'

Susannah raised her eyebrows. ‘Forgive me, Pip, but maybe you should have been taking notes. Just about every woman on base would have wanted to scratch her eyes out at some time or another. But no, to answer your question, no one here would have wanted her dead. Out of the way, out of the newspapers and out of the limelight, sure, but not dead.'

‘Squadron Leader Bryant mentioned that the instructors and the other permanent staff sometimes get together on an all-ranks basis, for a drink. He said that's how he got to know Felicity.'

Susannah drained her tea and turned to put her tin mug down on a table. ‘Hmm,' she said, pursing her lips, ‘did he now?'

‘From what you told me, Felicity didn't sound like the type to socialise with the other service people here.'

‘Not with the girls, if you know what I mean. I personally don't recall ever seeing her at one of our nights out, but then again I can't recall seeing Squadron Leader Bryant out on the tiles, either.'

‘You're saying he couldn't have got to know her at these social gatherings?' Pip asked. She had her police notebook out now and was jotting down salient points.

‘I'm saying it's not my place to comment on what the second most senior man on this base may have told you. He knew Felicity, that's for sure, but where he got to know her, I haven't a clue.'

Pip pondered Susannah's emphasis on the words ‘that's for sure'. ‘Have you ever seen the two of them together, Felicity and Mr Bryant, I mean?'

Susannah said: ‘You have to understand that Felicity was the type who would play up to men, especially men of senior rank, if she thought it would get her what she wanted.'

‘What did she want, do you think?'

‘I'd heard she fancied herself an actress, that she wanted to be in the films one day. Her parachuting stunts for the courses got her picture in the newspapers. Probably would have only been a matter of time before she ended up on a newsreel. Having the support of the base adjutant meant she could continue putting on her little two-woman shows for the troops.'

‘So she would sometimes meet with Squadron Leader Bryant?'

‘Aye, he came around here a couple of times in the last week or so, for a chat about something or other. But listen, Pip, don't get the wrong idea about Bryant. He might look like he just got thrown out of the pub at closing time, but he's a good man. Doesn't treat us like dirt, like some of the men, and seems to appreciate the work we women do. I'm not suggesting that there was anything going on between him and Flick, rather that it's not surprising that she was trying to keep in his favour.'

‘I understand,' Pip said. ‘Sorry,' she added, going back over her notes. ‘You just said something about a “two-woman show”?'

Susannah explained that when Felicity did her parachute jumps it
was always out of a civilian aircraft, a privately-owned Tiger Moth. Bryant, she said, was a stickler for the rules regarding aircraft flights. He wouldn't let Felicity jump out of an air force aircraft for her demonstrations, so she had to organise a civilian aeroplane.

‘The pilot was one of Flick's snooty well-to-do set, a woman called Catherine De Beers. Lives in a big country house in the middle of nowhere on the border of Wankie Game Reserve. Not one of the De Beers diamond family, but almost as rich, from what I hear.'

Pip wrote the name of the woman in her notebook. She'd heard of the family and had, in fact, met the woman's late husband. Hugo De Beers, a South African by birth, had been a professional hunter, a big name in the safari business up in Kenya and Tanganyika before the war. He'd also travelled the length and breadth of Rhodesia, hunting problem animals that threatened crops or humans. He'd shot a rogue lion on Pip's family's farm several years earlier. Trophy hunting hadn't caught on in Rhodesia, unlike other parts of Africa, although the area where Hugo De Beers had lived, on the border of the game reserve, would have been a good place for safaris – had Hugo lived to pursue that option. Pip looked up in the metal rafters of the hangar, where a couple of cape doves roosted and cooed, and tried to recall when De Beers had died. It must have been a year or two ago – killed in a shooting accident on his own property.

Pip could shoot, but she couldn't see the attraction of hunting for sport. She'd killed a couple of cobras around the garden with a double-barrelled shotgun, earning the ululating praise of her servants and their children, and she'd dispatched a rabid dog that had strayed into the staff compound. Charlie was different. Their home was decorated with his trophies – the skins of a lion, leopard and cheetah, and the mounted heads of various buck and a big old male buffalo that he'd shot either on or near their farm. The dead creatures gave her the creeps.

Susannah brought Pip back to the present. Anyway, Catherine would fly low and buzz the assembled students, climb to two thousand feet, and then ‘Flying Felicity' would jump out and do her show for the
boys. Afterwards, it would be drinks in the mess for Catherine and the officers.'

Pip's mind turned away from parachuting and back to Felicity's friend the pilot. Old Hugo De Beers must have been near sixty when he'd died. ‘How old is Catherine De Beers, would you say?'

‘All of about twenty-four, I'd guess. Quite a bit younger than her late husband.' Susannah raised an eyebrow as she sipped her tea. ‘Look, I'm happy to help some more if you need it, Pip, but we've got a new course starting soon and a load of parachutes to pack. They have a pack life and even if they're not used we have to undo and rerig them.'

‘No, that's fine, Susannah. You've been a big help. I shan't need to talk to the other girls, unless you think they might have anything different to say.'

‘No, I doubt it.'

Pip said her goodbyes and walked out of the cool, gloomy hangar, back into the sunshine.

Paul Bryant stared out across the runway, but paid no attention to the three Airspeed Oxfords practising touch-and-go landings.

The walk to the parachute hangar had resurrected his memories of Flick Langham. He closed his eyes and let the sun's rays warm his face and bare arms. He had come here looking for her three days earlier. Susannah Beattie and some of the other girls had been chatting as their hands roamed expertly over billowing silk, folding the panels in a precise order, then stuffing the canopies into their canvas containers. Next came the suspension lines, gathered and folded and stowed. It must have been mind-numbing work, Paul thought, but the WAAFs always seemed to have something cheery to gossip about.

He'd asked for Flick, but been told by Susannah Beattie, in an annoyed tone of voice, that the woman was on a break. Bryant had already gotten the impression Flick spent the bare minimum of time actually packing parachutes.

He'd walked through the big cool building, parting a curtain of
ghostly, suspended white canopies, and found his way to the back door. Flick was sitting on a stool outside, the back of her head resting against the corrugated-iron wall. A half-drunk cup of tea and a fashion magazine were beside her on the concrete footpath. Her eyes were closed.

‘Hello, Paul,' she said.

‘How did you know it was me?'

‘I can smell you,' she said, opening her lids to reveal Mediterranean blue eyes. ‘It's a nice smell. Tobacco, shaving soap, booze. A man's smell.'