African Sky (29 page)

‘No,' she said, then switched off the ignition and got out of the car.

‘Now, what's this all about?' Henderson asked as Lovejoy and Hayes entered the guardroom and removed their hats. ‘And when's that black bastard going to swing for killing Langham?'

Pip pursed her lips. Henderson sat in a reclining wooden office chair behind a metal desk. He leaned back and put his hands behind his head.

‘Do you mind if we sit?' Pip asked.

‘Suit yourself,' said Henderson. ‘We're a bit short on tea and biscuits, though.'

She ignored his sarcasm. ‘I need to see your record of people coming and going at Kumalo for the night of Miss Langham's death and the morning after.'

‘Not as easy as it sounds,' Henderson said. ‘We only record vehicle movements, not personnel, and then we only take note of vehicles coming onto the base. When people leave, even by vehicle, is their business. We're more concerned with making sure the wrong people don't get on base. Anyway, what's it matter? You've got a suspect. Been charged, too.'

‘Our investigations are continuing,' Pip said flatly. ‘Now, if you'd be kind enough to fetch your register . . .'

‘You think the Kaffir had an accomplice? Not one of our lads?'

‘The register, please, Flight Sergeant.'

Henderson frowned. ‘Sixpence!' he roared.

Hobnailed boots clattered on concrete and a uniformed askari trotted into the room and snapped to attention. ‘Sergeant!'

‘Fetch the vehicle register for last week, Sixpence,' Henderson ordered.

‘Do you check vehicles coming onto the base – search them, I mean?' Pip asked while they waited for the man to return with the log.

‘Not if we know the person driving, if he's got a valid ID.'

‘What do you know about the trade in black market petrol?' Hayes asked Henderson, speaking for the first time.

‘Cripes. Is that what this is about? You think Langham was mixed up with the black market?'

‘Just a question,' Hayes said.

‘I know it goes on, same here as in England, I'd expect. I know, too, that the powers that be keep a close check on the fuel that's used on this base. No air force petrol ends up on the street on the black market – and that's a fact. Old Bryant would hang, draw and quarter anyone who tried.'

‘But that doesn't stop airmen . . . officers, from purchasing fuel outside?' Pip probed.

Henderson thought about the question, and his answer. ‘Some of the staff have got private vehicles over here. Cars, motorcycles. They've got to get fuel somewhere. Big country you've got here. Can't get far on the fuel ration.'

‘But you don't check vehicles coming onto the base for illegal fuel?' Hayes asked.

‘No,' Henderson said, shaking his head. ‘Why should I? That's your job, I would have thought. Ah, here we are. Good man, Sixpence.' Henderson took the ledger from the askari and dismissed him. He flicked through the pages, looking for the date in question.

Pip looked at the page Henderson was studying, although it was upside down from where she sat. She saw that as well as lists of vehicles and personnel entering the base, there were notes taken of messages phoned through, and actions taken. ‘You get telephone calls here after hours?'

Henderson nodded as he read. ‘Yes. The main telephone switchboard is only manned from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon. At other times the telephone rings here in the guardroom. Don't know that you'll find much of interest. Quiet night, by the look of it. Perhaps we should wait until the adjutant gets back before I hand over official air force documents.'

‘He's still flying?' Pip asked.

‘Haven't seen him land.'

‘I could get a court order, a search warrant,' Pip said.

Henderson eyed her coldly. He looked again at the entries. ‘Nothing untoward that I can see.' He shrugged and slid the book across the desk.

Pip ran her fingers down the inked entries for the night Felicity died. There were various deliveries noted, and the midnight bus that brought airmen home from a night on the town. She felt a shiver down her back. ‘What's this? Telephone message for Squadron Leader Bryant, received 22:25 hours?'

‘What it says. Someone called at 10:25 at night for him,' Henderson said casually.

‘How do we find out what that message was?' Pip asked.

‘Why do you want to know about the adjutant's phone messages?'

‘As I said, Flight Sergeant Henderson,' Pip's voice lacked any trace of courtesy, ‘I can come back with a search warrant.'

A slow smile of understanding dawned on Henderson's face. ‘Well, I suppose I could get whoever was on duty that night to join us.'

‘That would be greatly appreciated,' Sergeant Hayes said.

‘Who's the duty NCO listed at the top of that page?' Henderson asked Pip.

She checked and said, ‘Corporal Evans.'

‘Ah yes, one of the armourers. Sixpence!' The African trotted back into the room and snapped to attention. ‘Be so good as to dash across to the armoury and find Corporal Evans, please.'

‘Sah!' the askari said, and doubled outside.

Pip studied the remaining entries. Her heart beat faster. ‘It says here that Squadron Leader Bryant entered the base at 07:45 hours on the morning that we found Miss Langham's body.' Bryant had told her that he'd been drinking in his room the night Felicity was killed and had fallen asleep after reading a book. He'd said nothing about leaving the base for any reason.

‘You're very interested in the adjutant all of a sudden, aren't you?' Henderson said.

‘What time does the adjutant start work?' Pip asked.

‘Same as most of them, eight in the morning. Odd, though.'

‘What's odd?' said Pip.

‘It's him and Langham, isn't it? Were they an item?'

‘That's really none of your business, Flight Sergeant,' Pip said.

‘You want me to cooperate with you, waste half my day, but you won't tell me, not even as one police professional to another, what you're up to.'

‘The details of civilian police investigations are always kept private,' she said.

‘Then you'd better go fetch your search warrant. I've got work to do in the meantime,' Henderson said, and pushed back his chair as though he were about to stand.

Bastard, thought Pip. The man just wanted some titillating gossip that he could spread around the base. Getting a warrant would be a pain, but she would have the satisfaction of seeing Henderson having to kowtow to the power of the law. All the same, she wished there were some way she could make him change his mind. She, too, pushed her chair back, happy to call Henderson's bluff.

Hayes stayed seated. ‘I suppose the air force frowns on fraternisation between the ranks,' he said.

Pip looked at him, surprised. Henderson stayed seated. ‘Right you are. Not on for officers to be getting too close to their subordinates. Bad for discipline. Undermines morale, it does.'

‘Mightn't look good on a service record. Might affect promotion,' Hayes said.

Henderson smiled. ‘If we're talking about who I think we are, then that wouldn't be much of a threat to him. He's reached his terminal rank, as we say. Not the most distinguished of service records.'

‘Nothing to lose by lording it over a pretty WAAF then, I suppose. Probably talked up his part in the war to ease the way, so to speak.' Henderson chuckled. ‘If he did, it would have been lies. Word is the bloke ran out on one of his mates. Left him to burn in a crippled kite.'

Pip frowned. She hated the way this was heading. Still, lying might still prove to be one of the Australian's greatest talents. It was unethical and morally reprehensible, the way Hayes was feeding Henderson titbits
of innuendo to get him talking. But, she realised, it was working. She kept silent.

‘She was a pretty girl, Felicity Langham,' Hayes said.

‘You're right again there,' Henderson said. ‘But tell me, on the quiet, are you having second thoughts about the Kaffir you arrested?'

‘Well,' Hayes said, scratching his chin, ‘as my colleague Constable Lovejoy here pointed out, it would be improper to go into details, but, as one professional to another, I'm sure you'd agree we're duty-bound to continue our investigations if, say, a suspect turns out to have a pretty strong alibi.'

‘Ah,' said Henderson.

Pip thought the man was about to salivate.

‘Raped, I heard,' Henderson said.

‘No great secret,' Hayes said.

‘Dealt with a nasty rape case myself a year back, on a base in England, at Biggin Hill. Pilot officer and a WAAF NCO. Turned out they'd been seeing each other, in the Biblical sense, and had broken up. He'd gone after her and hurt her. Often, they say, the perpetrator knows the victim.'

‘Often,' Hayes confirmed.

‘So what was odd,' Pip interjected, ‘about Squadron Leader Bryant arriving fifteen minutes early for work on the morning after Miss Langham was killed?'

The two men exchanged a brief glance, as though they resented her interrupting their veiled conversation. Henderson looked at Hayes and raised his eyebrows. Hayes nodded, as though telling his new confidant that it was all right to answer the question, that he would reveal more details if they liked his response. Pip held her tongue.

‘Well,' Henderson said, pausing, smiling, ‘thing is, Mr Bryant lives on base.'

‘So he'd spent the night out on the town, or, perhaps, with someone?' Hayes said.

‘It would seem so,' Henderson said, leaning back in his chair and making a steeple with his two fingers.

‘But you've no way of knowing what time he left the base?' Pip asked.

Henderson shrugged. ‘Duty NCO might know.' He craned his neck and looked out the window behind him. Sixpence, the African askari, and a white man in blue overalls were marching down the sidewalk side by side.

‘Flight,' the corporal said by way of greeting to Henderson as Sixpence presented him to the door. He was in his early twenties, with fair tousled hair. His face and bare arms were sunburned and his overalls dark under the armpits with sweat. He looked at the police officers and said in a thick Welsh accent, ‘Whatever it was, I didn't do it.'

Pip smiled. ‘We just want to ask you a few questions.'

‘Go ahead, Taffy,' Henderson ordered. ‘Grab a pew from next door and join us.'

Evans returned and dragged a metal chair into the room. He placed it closer to Henderson's side of the desk than where the police sat, as if seeking protection from the senior airman.

‘They won't bite, Evans,' Henderson said.

‘We'd like to ask you some questions about a night and morning during which you were the duty NCO, Corporal Evans. Do you remember the night Felicity Langham was found dead?'

‘Yes, miss. I hope they hang the bastard who did that. Sorry, miss.'

‘No need. I hear a lot worse at the police camp,' she said, smiling again to put him at ease. ‘I've got the log here, which includes entries you made. Would you like to see it?'

He shook his head. ‘Got a good memory, I have. Especially of that night.'

‘You took a phone message for Squadron Leader Bryant, at 10:25 that night. Do you remember it?'

He frowned as he concentrated. ‘Ah yes, from a woman, it was.' The corners of his mouth turned up. ‘Not the only bloke who's had a call from some local girl in the middle of the night, like. But, all the same, I remember being surprised that the adj was getting called by a woman.'

‘Surprised?'

‘No disrespect, but he doesn't strike me as the kind who gets out much, who has much of a social life.' He glanced at Henderson, who nodded and smiled in agreement.

‘Who was the woman who called?'

‘Now that, I'm afraid, I don't know. I was busy at the gate at the time, checking a truck full of aircraft parts that had come up from South Africa, as I recall.'

Pip checked the ledger and saw the note. The lorry had arrived two minutes before the call was taken. ‘So how did you answer the phone as well?'

‘I got one of the askaris to answer it. He called out the window to me, while I was at the truck, see, and said it was a woman looking for the squadron leader. I was busy so I told him to take her name and phone number and we'd pass it on.'

Pip tried to hide her annoyance. ‘Can we talk to that askari?'

‘It was Wilfred, Sarge,' Evans said to Henderson.

‘Bad luck there,' Henderson said. ‘His mother died last week. I've sent him on leave halfway across the country to Gwelo. He'll be gone two weeks at least.'

‘Could ask the squadron leader himself, I suppose,' Evans suggested.

‘He's not here at the moment. Off flying around,' Henderson said.

‘How are messages usually passed on?' Pip asked.

‘I do remember that Wilfred said the woman sounded very agitated, like, and so I told him to take it to the officers' mess and leave it there for him. They might have woken him to tell him. I'm not sure. Wouldn't have a clue who the steward was on duty that night, though.'

Another brick wall. Pip looked at Henderson.

‘We could check,' said the flight sergeant, ‘but it'll take some time.'

‘Corporal Richards in the orderly room might remember,' Evans suggested. ‘I told Wilfred to make a copy of the message and drop it off at the orderly room the next morning, as well.'

‘That's very thorough of you, Corporal,' Pip said.

‘Got my arse kicked, beg your pardon, got told off good and proper once
when a message didn't get through to the wing commander, so I always try to cover myself these days, when it comes to senior officers, like.'

Pip nodded. So, Paul may or may not have got a message that night from an unknown woman.

‘I'll call Richards,' Henderson said, reading Pip's mind as he picked up the telephone.