The Leopard Hunts in Darkness (24 page)

Craig knew he could not follow him. The low-slung Mercedes would tear her guts out on the bank. He raced past it, and then hit the brakes as the road-block loomed up and filled his windshield.
The Mercedes broadsided to a dead stop in a storm of its own dust and Craig threw his weight on the door and tumbled out into the road.

He caught his balance and scrambled up the right-hand bank. The Land-Rover was twenty yards away, engine roaring in low gear, crashing and bouncing over the broken ground, mowing down the dense
yellow grass whose stems were thick as a man’s little finger and taller than his head, weaving between the forest trees, its speed reduced by the terrain to that of a running man. Craig saw
that Tungata would succeed in detouring around the road-block, and he ran to head off the Land-Rover. Anger and fear for Sally-Anne seemed to guide his feet, he stumbled only once on the rough
footing.

Tungata Zebiwe saw him coming and lifted the rifle one-handed, aiming over the bonnet of the jolting, roaring Land-Rover, but Sally-Anne threw herself across the weapon, clinging to it with both
arms, her weight forcing the barrel down and Tungata could not take his other hand from the wheel as it kicked and whipped in his grip. They were past the road-block now, and Craig was losing
ground to them; realizing with a slide in his chest that he could not catch them, he floundered along behind the roaring vehicle.

Sally-Anne and Tungata were struggling confusedly together, until the big black man tore his arm free and, using the hand as a blade, chopped her brutally under the ear. She slumped face forward
onto the dashboard, and Tungata swung the wheel over. The vehicle swerved, giving Craig a few precious yards’ advantage, and then it seemed to hover for an instant on the high bank beyond the
road-block before it leapt over the edge and dropped into the roadway with a clangour of metal and spinning tyres.

Craig used the last of his reserves of strength and determination and raced forward to reach the place on the bank an instant after it had disappeared.

Ten feet below him, the Land-Rover was miraculously still the right way up, and Tungata, badly shaken, his mouth bleeding from impact with the steering-wheel, was struggling for control.

Craig did not hesitate. He launched himself out over the bank, and the drop sucked his breath away. The Land-Rover was accelerating away, and he dropped half over the tail-gate. He felt his ribs
crunch on metal, his breath whistled in his throat as it was driven from his lungs, and his vision starred for an instant – but he found a grip on the radio set and hung on blindly.

He felt the Land-Rover surging forward under him, and heard Sally-Anne whimpering with pain and terror. The sound steeled him, his vision cleared. He was hanging over the back of the tail-gate,
his feet dangling and dragging.

Behind him the army truck was swinging out of the road-block, engine thundering and headlights glaring in pursuit, while just ahead the main-road T-junction was coming up with a rush as the
Land-Rover built up to her top speed again.

Craig braced himself for the turn, but even so when it came his upper arms were almost torn from their shoulder sockets, as Tungata took the left fork on two wheels. Now he was heading north. Of
course, the Zambian border was only a hundred miles ahead. The road went down into the great escarpment, and there was no human settlement in that tsetse-fly-infested, heat-baked wilderness before
the border post and the bridge over the Zambezi at Chirundu. With a hostage it was just possible he could reach it. If Craig gave up, he could reach it – or get himself and Sally-Anne killed
in the attempt.

By inches Craig dragged himself back into the Land-Rover. Sally-Anne was crumpled down in the seat, her head lolling from side to side with each jerk and sway of the vehicle, and Tungata was
tall and heavy-shouldered beside her, his white shirt gleaming in the reflected glare of the headlights.

Craig released his grip with one hand and made a grab for the back of the seat to pull himself on board. Instantly the Land-Rover swerved violently and in that same instant he saw the glint of
Tungata’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. He had been watching Craig, waiting to catch him off-balance and throw him.

The centrifugal force rolled Craig over and out over the side of the vehicle. He had a hold with his left hand only, and the muscles and tendons crackled with the strain as his full weight was
thrown on it. He gasped with the agony as it tore up his arm into his chest, but he held on, hanging overboard with the steel edge catching him in his injured ribs again.

Tungata swerved a second time, running his wheels over the verge, and Craig saw the bank rushing at him in the headlights. Tungata was attempting to wipe him off the Land-Rover on the bank,
trying to shred him to pieces between shaly rock and sharp metal. Craig screamed involuntarily with the effort as he jack-knifed his knees up and over. There was a rushing din of metal and stone as
the Land-Rover brushed the bank. Something struck his leg a blow that jarred him to his hip and he heard the straps part as his leg was torn away. If it had been flesh and bone he would have been
fatally maimed. Instead, as the Land-Rover swung back onto the road he used the momentum to roll across the back seat and whip his free arm around Tungata’s neck from behind.

It was a strangle-hold and as he threw all his strength into it, he felt the give of Tungata’s larynx in the crook of his elbow, and the loaded feel of the vertebrae, like the tension of a
dry twig on the point of snapping. He wanted to kill him, he wanted to tear his head off his body, but he could not anchor himself to apply those last few ounces of pressure.

Tungata lifted both hands off the wheel, tearing at Craig’s wrist and elbow, making a glottal, cawing sound, and the untended steering-wheel spun wildly. The Land-Rover charged off the
road, plunged over the unprotected verge onto the steep rocky slope, and with a rending screech of metal crashed end over end.

Craig’s grip was torn open and he was flung clear. He hit hard earth, cartwheeled, and lay for a second, his ears humming and his body crushed and helpless until he rallied and pulled
himself to his knees.

The Land-Rover lay on its back. The headlights still blazed, and thirty paces down the slope, full in their beam, lay Sally-Anne. She looked like a little girl asleep. Her eyes closed and he
mouth relaxed, the lips very red against her pallor, but from her hairline a thin dark serpent of blood crawled down across her pale brow.

He started to crawl towards her, when another figure rose out of the intervening darkness, a great, dark, wide-shouldered figure. Tungata was clearly stunned, staggering in a half-circle,
clutching his injured throat. At the sight of him Craig went berserk with grief and rage.

He hurled himself at Tungata and they came together, chest to chest. Long ago, as friends, they had often wrestled, but Craig had forgotten the sheer bull strength of the man. His muscles were
hard and resilient and black as the cured rubber of a transcontinental truck tyre, and, one-legged, Craig was unbalanced. Dazed as he was, Tungata heaved him off his foot.

As he went down, Craig kept his grip and despite his own strength, Tungata could not break it. They went down together, and Craig used his stump, driving up with the hard rubbery pad at the end
of it, using the swing of it and Tungata’s own falling weight to slog into Tungata’s lower body.

Tungata grunted and the strength went out of him. Craig rolled out from under him, reared back onto his shoulders, and used all his body to launch himself forward again to hit with the stump. It
sounded like an axe swung double-handed against a tree trunk, and it caught Tungata in the middle of his chest, right over the heart.

Tungata dropped over backwards and lay still. Craig crawled to him and reached for his unprotected throat with both hands. He felt the ropes of muscle framing the sharp hard lump of the thyroid
cartilage and he drove his thumbs deeply into it, and, at the feel of ebbing life under his hands, his rage fell away – he found he could not kill him. He opened his hands and drew away,
shaking and gasping.

He left Tungata lying crumpled on the rocky earth and crawled to where Sally-Anne lay. He picked her up and sat with her in his lap, cradling her head against his shoulder, desolated by the
slack and lifeless feel of her body. With one hand he wiped away the trickle of blood before it reached her eyes.

Above them on the road the following truck pulled up with a metallic squeal of brakes and armed men came swarming down the slope, baying like a pack of hounds at the kill. In his arms like a
child waking from sleep, Sally-Anne stirred and mumbled softly.

She was alive, still alive – and he whispered to her, ‘My darling, oh my darling, I love you so!’

F
our of Sally-Anne’s ribs were cracked, her right ankle was badly sprained, and there was serious bruising and swelling on her neck from the
blow she had received. However, the cut in her scalp was superficial and the X-rays showed no damage to the skull. Nevertheless, she was held for observation in the private ward that Peter
Fungabera had secured for her in the overcrowded public hospital.

It was here that Abel Khori, the public prosecutor assigned to the Tungata Zebiwe case, visited her. Mr Khori was a distinguished-looking Shona who had been called to the London bar and still
affected the dress of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, together with a penchant for learned, if irrelevant, Latin phrases.

‘I am visiting you to clarify in my own mind certain points in the statement that you have already made to the police. For it would be highly improper of me to influence in any way the
evidence that you will give,’ Khori explained.

He showed Craig and Sally-Anne the reports of spontaneous Matabele demonstrations for Tungata’s release, which had been swiftly broken up by the police and units of the Third Brigade, and
which the Shona editor of the
Herald
had relegated to the middle pages.

‘We must always bear in mind that this man is
ipso jure
accused of a criminal act, and he should not be allowed to become a tribal martyr. You see the dangers. The sooner we can
have the entire business settled
mutatis mutandis
, the better for everybody.’

Craig and Sally-Anne were at first astonished and then made uneasy at the despatch with which Tungata Zebiwe was to be brought to trial. Despite the fact that the rolls were filled for seven
months ahead, his case was given a date in the Supreme Court ten days hence.

‘We cannot
nudis verbis
keep a man of his stature in gaol for seven months,’ the prosecutor explained, ‘and to grant him bail and allow him liberty to inflame his
followers would be suicidal folly.’

Apart from the trial, there were other lesser matters to occupy both Craig and Sally-Anne. Her Cessna was due for its thousand-hour check and ‘certificate of air-worthiness’. There
were no facilities for this in Zimbabwe, and they had to arrange for a fellow pilot to fly the machine down to Johannesburg for her. ‘I will feel like a bird with its wings clipped,’
she complained.

‘I know the feeling,’ Craig grinned ruefully, and banged his crutch on the floor.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Craig.’

‘No, don’t be. Somehow I no longer mind talking about my missing pin. Not with you, anyway.’

‘When will it be back?’

‘Morgan Oxford sent it out in the diplomatic bag and Henry Pickering has promised to chase up the technicians at Hopkins Orthopaedic – I should have it back for the trial.’

The trial. Everything seemed to come back to the trial, even the running of King’s Lynn and the final preparations for the opening of the lodges at Zambezi Waters could not seduce Craig
away from Sally-Anne’s bedside and the preparations for the trial. He was fortunate to have Hans Groenewald at King’s Lynn and Peter Younghusband, the young Kenyan manager and guide
whom Sally-Anne had chosen, had arrived to take over the daily running of Zambezi Waters. Though he spoke to these two every day on either telephone or radio, Craig stayed on in Harare close to
Sally-Anne.

Craig’s leg arrived back the day before Sally-Anne’s discharge from hospital. He pulled up his trouser-cuff to show it to her.

‘Straightened, panel-beaten, lubricated and thoroughly reconditioned,’ he boasted. ‘How’s your head?’

‘The same as your leg,’ she laughed. ‘Although the doctors have warned me off bouncing on it again for at least the next few weeks.’

She was using a cane for her ankle, and her chest was still strapped when he carried her bag down to the Land-Rover the following morning.

‘Ribs hurting?’ He saw her wince as she climbed into the vehicle.

‘As long as nobody squeezes them, I’ll pull through.’

‘No squeezing. Is that a rule?’ he asked.

‘I guess—’ she paused and regarded him for a moment before she lowered her eyes and murmured demurely, ‘but then rules are for fools, and for the guidance of wise
men.’

And Craig was considerably heartened.

N
umber Two Court of the Mashonaland division of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Zimbabwe still retained all the trappings of British
justice.

The elevated bench with the coat of arms of Zimbabwe above the judge’s seat dominated the courtroom; the tiers of oaken benches faced it, and the witness box and the dock were set on
either hand. The prosecutors, the assessors and the attorneys charged with the defence wore long black robes, while the judge was splendid in scarlet. Only the colour of the faces had changed,
their blackness accentuated by the tight snowy curls of their wigs and the starched white swallow-tail collars.

The courtroom was packed, and when the standing room at the back was filled, the ushers closed the doors, leaving the crowd overflowing into the passages beyond. The crowds were orderly and
grave, almost all of them Matabele who had made the long bus journey across the country from Matabeleland, many of them wearing the rosettes of the
ZAPU
party. Only when the accused was led
into the dock was there a stir and murmur, and at the rear of the court a black woman dressed in
ZAPU
colours cried hysterically ‘Bayete, Nkosi Nkulu!’ and gave the clenched-fist
salute.