Murder on Safari (17 page)

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“Listen, Geydi,” he said. “You are telling lies, and if you lie to the police you will be sent to prison. I have witnesses, and if you lie any more I shall arrest you.”

Geydi made no reply, but stared over his

inquisitor’s head. Silence prevailed for several minutes. The sun, high in the sky, beat down

heavily on the canvas, and the tent was hot and stuffy. At last a small column approached in single file, Kimotho in the lead, and halted outside the tent. Vachell called upon each man in turn to tell his story. The two trackers did so without hesitation, but the wood-boy kept glancing at Geydi,

and required a good deal of prompting. The facts, however, were as Kimotho had stated.

When they had finished, Vachell fixed his eyes on the Somali’s face, and said: “You hear what these men say. What do you answer? Why did you summon these Timburu warriors, and why did

you pay them money?”

Geydi turned his head slowly, and gazed with

dark soft eyes at the faces of the trackers.

“Perhaps these men saw spirits,” he said, still almost inaudible. “They are savages. I talked to no Timburu warriors.”

“So they lie, huh? And perhaps this wood-boy

lies too? Perhaps he saw a ghost driving bwana Lordi’s car? But then I have proof here that you cannot deny. Do you not know that when a car

travels it leaves the number of miles written on a clock? Are you so ignorant that you do not know 169

this? The car that you took added twenty-nine miles to its clock yesterday. Now tell me where you went.”

Geydi turned his head again, and looked Vachell full in the face. It was a look of insolence and contempt.

“I know, of course that the miles are written. I am bwana Lordi’s driver. He has told me that

when I want to drive his cars, I can drive them wherever I like. Enough. Yesterday I did so. That is bwana Lordi’s affair, not yours.”

Vachell felt a strong desire to punch the Somali on the nose. He resisted it, and said: “Why did you say nothing of this before?”

Geydi shrugged his shoulders again. “You did

not ask.”

“Did you tell bwana Lordi?”

“No.”

“Where did you go?”

“Along the road.”

“Did you leave the road at all?”

“No.”

“What time did you leave camp?”

“Perhaps ten o’clock. Perhaps later.”

“How long were you away?”

“Perhaps an hour. Perhaps longer.”

Vachell leant forward and pointed his finger at the Somali’s chest. “Then how was it,” he said, “that you did not meet bwana Rutley driving his car back to camp?”

Geydi shrugged his shoulders again, apparently 170

indifferent to the obvious discrepancy. He

mumbled, “I did not see him,” and stared

dreamily at his feet. He’s so damned sure of

himself, Vachell thought, that he won’t even

bother to invent a decent lie.

“All right,” he said. “You refuse to speak. But here, in this camp, I am the police and, I shall make you. And understand this: you uttered

threats against this wood-boy, telling him not to speak. He has spoken, and now he is under the protection of the police. If anything evil befalls him, you shall be severly punished. Enough. You can go.”

Geydi moved his head to look at the wood-boy, his face a mask of contempt. “I do not touch

hyenas,” he said. He turned without another word and walked towards his quarters, arrogance in his stride. Vachell watched him go in silence. There seemed to be no way to make him open up. The

next attempt must be directed towards the

Somali’s master.

A few minutes later he found Chris Davis

standing hatless in the sun beside the kitchen, being talked to by the one-eyed Swahili cook. The fat native looked thoroughly disgruntled, “And another thing,” he was saying as Vachell came up, “what sort of food are all of us to eat? Where is the meat? There are animals walking about

everywhere, and many guns, and yet meat is lacking.

It is a very bad affair.”

“All right,” Chris said. “I will shoot you meat 171

to-day.”

The cook said “Good,” without much

enthusiasm.

“There’ll be a sit down strike if I don’t,” Chris added, turning to Vachell. “Paula can look after Cara while I’m away.”

“Okay,” Vachell said. “I want the answer to

another question. About elephants. Are they as scared when they get a native’s wind as they are when they smell a white man?”

Chris frowned and looked thoughtful. “That

depends,” she said. “In districts where natives hunt ivory with poisoned arrows they’re every bit as nervous. But up here, where the local natives never hunt them, that isn’t so. I’ve seen elephant feeding peacefully within a hundred yards of

native cattle, with the herds wandering about and the elephants paying no attention at all. But as soon as they get a whiff of a white man, they’re off like a shot out of a gun,”

“That fits in,” Vachell said. “You remember

those elephants we flew over yesterday? Well, do you recollect just where they were when we first saw them?”

“I think so, more or less. I think I could find the place.”

“That’s swell. Now, will you do a job for me?”

“I’d love to.”

“Swell again. Here it is. Take a car, check time and speedometer, and drive just as fast as you can to the place where we first saw the elephants from 172

the plane. If you can hit it right on the nose, so much the better, but if you can’t, use your judgement and pick a place about the same distance

from here. Check time and mileage again, and

come back to tell me. Do you get it?”

Chris nodded. “That sounds easy, though not

very good for the car. May I ask what this is all about?”

“I’ll tell you later.” Vachell said. “Right now it’s just a smart idea, and it may develop into a flop. Watch out for pig-holes, and don’t dispute the right-of-way with any rhinos.”

Chris smiled, and he observed how laughter put lightness and buoyancy into her face and created a dimple on one side. Her hair shone brightly in the sun, and he was reminded again of granulated

honey.

“I’ll be all right,” she said. “This camp seems to be the danger zone. For God’s sake don’t let

anything else happen. Remember those emascu

lated cartridges. There might be another attempt.

… .You willbe careful, won’t you?”

Vachell grinned broadly, and felt as though a warm, exhilarating wave was rippling through his body from scalp to toes. “You bet I will,” he said.

“Good luck.” He watched her walk towards her

tent, slim and upright in khaki slacks and a white silk shirt, with a green-and-while scarf knotted round her neck. There were darned few girls, he thought, with as much guts… .

“There is another matter,” the cook’s voice said I 173

behind him. “It is about the rice. That boy of yours Ч “

“Oh, to hell with the rice.” Vachell said.

174

Chris Davis took two rifles, one light and one heavy, and the tracker Konyek, because he knew the country well. It was 11.30 when she started.

The sun was fierce and biting, and she could feel by the heaviness in the air that rain was close at hand. Flies stuck to her arms as if their feet had been dipped in glue.

It was rough going, and she was sorry for Lord Baradale’s car. The country to the south-west was flat and fairly open, but there was plenty of bush to dodge, and big rocks, half concealed by grass, that would burst the crank-case to bits or tear the batteries out by the roots if they weren’t properly avoided. The car jolted along, much of the time in second, lurching like a tired camel, and sometimes emitting a harsh groan as the chassis slammed down on the back springs.

Progress was noisy, and, Chris felt, likely to disturb the most phlegmatic elephant. She kept one eye on the grass in front of the wheels and one 175

on the surrounding bush, in case of rhinos. They came upon a herd of startled giraffe, who cocked their foolish heads, perched on stiff necks like sparrows on a flagpole, at the interlopers, and on a party of oryx beisa, who cantered along for some distance by the side of the car under the impression that they were running away. Konyek sat in

the passenger’s seat with the heavy rifle across his knee. He clung to the side with one hand and

stared fixedly ahead, saying nothing. He was an unsophisticated native, and not very used to cars.

All veldt country looked alike from the ground, and the hills to the left were the only landmarks.

Dry, bush-flanked watercourses scarred their sides with deep cuts, each one a dark streak

running from the forrest which clothed the top of the range to merge into the plain below. In places bare rock jutted out of the hillsides and provided fixed points on which bearings could be taken.

Chris was glad to have something to do. It gave her mind defences against the grim thoughts that had been crowding in on it for the last twenty-four hours — thoughts of vulture-pecked remains

nailed down in a gin-case coffin; of Cara

Baradale’s hysteria and fear; of Gordon Catchpole’s selfassured vitality trampled into bloody

olblivion; of the havoc being played with Danny’s career. And, above and behind all this, the black dread of what was still to be revealed; the

paralysing fear that the truth would strike

suddenly like a snake from the branches of a tree, 176

and then… .

She thought of Vachell, and of how much he

really knew. More than he’d say, of course. She couldn’t make him out at all. He didn’t look like a detective, somehow. Detectives were either

patient, plodding, polite men in bowlers from Scotland Yard, or else tough, lean, abruptmannered G-men with two-dimensional guns flat

in the pockets of their perfectly tailored clothes, and soft hats tipped over one eye. It was true that Vachell had a felt hat, and tipped it over his eyes sometimes, or else on the back of his head, and that he was lean and wiry, but there the

resemblance ended. He had a slow deliberate

manner of speech that she found puzzling; it was hard to know when he was serious and when he

was pulling someone’s leg. You couldn’t tell how much he knew. He never got ruffled, and he

didn’t jump at conclusions. He might be clever. .

. . The front wheels hit a hidden stump, and the car bounced into the air like a high-spirited baby.

It came down with a loud protest from the springs, and an echoing squawk from Konyek. Chris fixed her attention again on the driving, and tried to put everything else out of her mind.

Some time later Konyek gripped her arm and

pointed to something over on the right. She

slipped the clutch, braked the car, and followed his gaze. There was a dry, rocky watercourse just below them, and beyond it the bush-speckled

plain rolled on a horizon that wavered in the heat 177

haze. About five hundred yards away a patch of thick bush and scrubby acacias marked the site of an underground pool. Chris saw a flicker of grey against the dark background, and focused her

field-glasses on the spot. No doubt about it: elephant. They’d been lucky. She took rough

bearings on the hills to the left, the sun, and the line of the Kiboko river. No doubt about that either: she had struck the right spot, and the elephants had returned to the same place to shelter in the heat of the day after drinking at the river.

She checked mileage and time, and jotted them down in a notebook: 14.2 miles, 46 minutes, going as fast as a car could safely travel.

She watched the elephants for a little through the glasses. There was a small herd, with at least one big bull and several half-grown calves. They were drowsing lazily in the shade, flapping their big ears and from time to time plucking the

branch of a tree with their waving trunks. They were upwind, fortunately, and had not heard the car.

“There is one with big tusks,” Konyek

remarked. “It would be good to shoot it, because then you could sell the tusks for very many shillings.”

“No,” Chris said. “I do not wish to shoot; and the tusks would belong to bwana Lordi.”

“This bwana Lordi, he is very rich,” Konyek

said thoughtfully. “The cattle that he owns must be numerous as zebra on the plain. Why, then, 178

does he hunt elephants for their tusks? And these Timburu warriors, they are very poor. They sell the horns of rhinos in order to buy wives. Why does the Government forbid them to kill rhinos, but allow bwana Lordi, who is already rich, to kill elephants?”

“Because bwana Lordi pays many shillings to

the Government for a licence,” Chris replied.

“The Timburu pay nothing and have no licence, and they kill many rhinos so that soon there will be none left alive.”

“Rhinos are bad,” Konyek persisted. “Sometimes they get angry and kill men. Would it not be

a good thing if all rhinos were killed? What use have they?”

Chris felt incapable of launching into an explanation of the principles of game preservation. She

started the engine, and drove off towards the hills to the east.

“Do the rhinos then belong to the Government?”

the tracker persisted.

“Yes.”

“But how can they, when they pay no taxes?”

“We are going to shoot meat,” Chris said

firmly. “Search with your eyes for buck.”

They had gone about two miles when Konyek

touched her arm and pointed to the left. This time it wasn’t elephant, but one or two vultures

wheeling idly in the blue sky. Chris shivered a little. Vultures, since yesterday, had aquired a new unpleasantness. These, most likely, were just 179

len. They came to a patch of more open country as they drew closer to the hills, and in a stretch of fairly bush-free veldt a herd of eland swam into view, their legs invisible in the heat haze. Chris stopped the car and made a long, hot detour on foot, followed by a careful stalk upwind through scattered bush. She dropped a young bull with an easy shot at eighty yards, and Konyek cut it up and loaded it into the car. The meat problem, at any rate, was temporarily solved.