African Sky E-Book

Tony Park

• Herausgeber: Ingwe Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

An epic wartime adventure in the heart of Africa.

Rhodesia, 1943: Paul Bryant hasn’t been able to get back in an aircraft since a fatal bombing mission over Germany. Instead, the Squadron Leader is flying a desk at a pilot training school in Africa when one of his trainees is reported missing.

Pip Lovejoy, a volunteer policewoman, is also trying to suppress painful memories. When Felicity Langham, a high profile WAAF from the air base, is found raped and murdered, Pip and Bryant’s paths cross.

Suspicion immediately falls on the local black community, but Pip’s investigations unearth a link between the Squadron Leader, the controversial heiress Catherine De Beers and the dead woman, which throws the case in a new, disturbing direction.

What Pip thinks is a singular crime of passion soon escalates into a crisis that could change the course of the war.

African Sky is the first instalment in Tony Park’s acclaimed Story of Zimbabwe series.

Leseprobe

AFRICAN SKY

TONY PARK

INGWE PUBLISHING

CONTENTS

Biography

Also by Tony Park

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

BIOGRAPHY

Tony Park was born in 1964 and grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney. He has worked as a newspaper reporter, a press secretary, a PR consultant and a freelance writer. He also served 34 years in the Australian Army Reserve, including six months in Afghanistan in 2002. Tony and his wife, Nicola, divide their time equally between Australia and southern Africa. He is the author of nineteen other African novels.

www.tonypark.net

ALSO BY TONY PARK

Far Horizon

Zambezi

Safari

Silent Predator

Ivory

The Delta

African Dawn

Dark Heart

The Prey

The Hunter

An Empty Coast

Red Earth

The Cull

Captive

Scent of Fear

Ghosts of the Past

Last Survivor

Blood Trail

Part of the Pride, with Kevin Richardson

War Dogs, with Shane Bryant

The Grey Man, with John Curtis

Bush Vet, with Dr Clay Wilson

Courage Under Fire, with Daniel Keighran VC

No One Left Behind, with Keith Payne VC

Bwana, There’s a Body in the Bath, with Peter Whitehead

For Nicola

First published 2006 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited

This edition published 2020 by Ingwe Publishing

Copyright © Tony Park 2006

www.ingwepublishing.com

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

African Sky

EPUB: 9781922389152

POD: 9781922389169

The characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover design by Paris Giannakis

Publishing services provided by Critical Mass

1

He knew he was about to die. He cried as much from frustration and anger at himself, as he did from the terror.

He heard the strange clicking noises of their language, a sound like a child learns to make early in life with its tongue and the roof of its mouth. He glanced over his shoulder. The two bushmen trailed him, about a hundred yards away. Small in stature, but more deadly than any big man he had ever tangled with. One held his tiny bow and arrow up at him and laughed at the way the white man ran, then stumbled.

The dry white salt stuck to his hands, stung his knees in the abrasions where he had fallen before. He was naked, except for his air-force-issue underpants. The skin on his back, face and arms was burned pink. He screwed up his eyes at the blinding whiteness of the saltpan. Earth merged with sky, the horizon lost in a shimmering heat haze that made his head spin when he looked at it.

He cried in the knowledge that he would die in this lifeless, blanched place. He bellowed, like the dying animal he was, a primeval cry of anguish at his stupidity. A desperate, futile plea for clemency.

He had no idea where his aircraft, his Harvard, was. In a matter of minutes he had gone from being an untouchable, privileged god of the skies to a hunted animal in the unforgiving white sands. His fear, born of the stories of his father and uncle, the only two to have survived the carnage of the first war’s trenches from a family of six brothers, was to be trapped on the ground, pursued by an enemy who wanted to kill him. In the air, as a would-be fighter pilot, he felt himself more than a match for any German or Japanese airman. He was a good pilot, a damned good flyer. The instructors were spare in their praise, but he’d seen it in the small smiles and the odd wink after each phase of his training.

All that was for nothing now. He was on the ground, out of his element, a hunted animal.

They followed him, not even bothering to hush their voices as they would if they were stalking the wary gemsbok or the fleet-footed impala. He was just a man. Not agile enough to outrun the hunters, not smart enough to outwit them.

The hunters walked with the easy, loping stride of men who must cover long distances on foot while expending minimal energy. Each wore a skimpy kaross made from the pelt of the black-backed jackal. They laughed as they chatted. Rarely, if ever, had either had to kill such a worthless prey.

‘He runs like a child,’ one said.

‘There is no challenge in this deed,’ the other added.

‘The decision has been made. It was not ours to make.’

‘Will we suffer for this hunt?’ the second asked, his laughing checked.

‘If anyone ever finds his body there will be nothing to point towards us.’

They were from another age. The two hunters, from the San people, known as bushmen to the whites who dismissed them as primitives, lived the same way as their fathers and grandfathers and those for generations before them had lived. Their bodies were slight, all muscle, without a trace of the fat that comes with an easy life. The hunters worked for every mouthful of food, every drop of water in the red-gold sands of the Kalahari Desert and the white-hot plains of the Makgadikgadi saltpans, places where other human beings died in a matter of days or hours. The noise above them, however, was from another world. They looked up in amazement, still unused to seeing one of the flying machines so close to the ground.

The pilot turned his blistered red face to the sun and held a salt-crusted hand to his eyes to shield them from the painful glare.

‘Here! I’m down here!’ His voice was tiny, lost in the emptiness. He hoped the man in the air could see his waving arms.

The Harvard was flying low, no more than seven or eight hundred feet, but the pilot pushed it into a shallow dive, until the spinning propeller was barely twenty feet off the shimmering saltpan.

The two San ducked instinctively, as though the flying machine would take off their heads. They turned and raised their bows and pointed them at the man they were stalking. He had stopped, to wave at the aircraft.

He looked again at the near-naked hunters, saw the bows and started to run again, all the while flailing his arms above his head to show the Harvard pilot he lived. He felt the beat of the engine in his chest. He had no idea where the aircraft had come from, but his tears now were of gratitude for his great fortune. He might yet live after all.

The shadow of the single-engine trainer raced across the flat surface, momentarily eclipsing the tiny dark figures.

The running man looked up and back at the Harvard, fervently hoping to see the undercarriage being lowered. He hoped the pilot behind the controls knew the saltpan would make a perfect landing strip for his rescue. The wheels, however, remained up. He stumbled again, tripped and fell. He rolled onto his back as the aircraft overflew him. He saw the letters painted on the side of the aircraft.

‘No!’ he bellowed. ‘No, no, no!’

2

From a thousand feet, where the martial eagle rode the hot current that rose from the baking white concrete and the shimmering black Tarmac, Africa looked scarred as never before.

In fifty years the white man had carved roads and railway lines through the Rhodesian bush, and built his towns and dug his mines, but, in truth, the British pioneers who had migrated north from the Cape had barely scratched the hide of the beast that succoured them. Until the war started, that was.

The great dry western lands, with their golden grasses and stunted acacias, were cattle country and had been for the best part of a century, since the Zulu impis migrated north, sweeping all other tribes before them. The sons and grandsons of the conquerors had become the Matabele – as feared and respected as their forefathers. They had fought the whites, in the same way the Zulu had defied the Europeans, and there were still a few gnarled and grizzled grey-hairs who remembered the rebellion of 1897. They had spilt the blood of Cecil John Rhodes’ men and their women, before their families had suffered the inevitable consequences of making war with the set­t­lers. Rhodes had given his name to the lands of the Matabele and those of their enemies, the Shona, to the east.

There was peace now between the Shona and the Matabele, and the blacks and the whites, but from the sky the soil of Matabeleland showed as a spear wound, fresh and red with the telltale signs of a new conflict.

The eagle let the air spill from beneath its spread wings and it dropped out of the path of the machine. It had learned how to avoid them – had to, if it wanted to survive. They were everywhere, belching their hot exhaust and assaulting the peace of the sky with the roar of their rotary engines. The metal bird’s nest was below. When not flying, they hid in the rows of tin sheds and sat side by side in a most unnatural way on the concrete runways and taxiways that stood out like pathetic little Band-Aids on the freshly opened dirt wounds in the skin of Matabeleland.

In the distance was the town, Bulawayo. It had been the site of the vanquished Matabele king Lobengula’s kraal. Gubulawayo, as the king had called it, meant place of death – where he had slain his foes. The killing was over, long dead with Lobengula, but more white men than ever before had come to this part of Africa to learn the way of the warrior and the eagle. To learn to kill. Some died in the process.

The eagle spied a duiker. The tiny grey antelope, no bigger than a small dog, darted from its hiding place in the meagre shade of a thorn bush, which had just been crushed beneath the steel tracks of a bulldozer. The bird of prey tucked in its wings and dived with a speed and accuracy that the pilot of the orbiting aircraft could never hope or dare to match.

Squadron Leader Paul Bryant watched the eagle streak towards the earth, but a cloud of dust stirred up by the dozer obscured his view of the kill. He loved watching the birds. Envied them. He turned away from the window at the sound of the man clearing his throat, then reluctantly sat down behind his desk. ‘Yes, Wilson?’

‘Seems another stupid bastard’s bought it, sir,’ the young pilot officer said. He was a native Rhodesian, with cheeks reddened by the last vestiges of acne.

‘Who?’ Bryant asked.

‘Um, Smith, I think. No, sorry, Smythe. That’s it. One of the Poms. Londoner, I believe. Short fellow. Second solo on a Harvard. The ops officer asked me to tell you, sir. Said you’d want to start the investigation. He was due back late yesterday afternoon but never arrived. There’s been no word.’

Bryant closed his eyes for a moment and tried to place the missing pilot’s face. It was hard – hundreds had passed through the flight training school since he’d arrived, but he made a point of meeting them all. He saw him now, and nodded to himself. He was mildly annoyed that the pilot officer, Wilson, had called the lost trainee a stupid bastard. The boy who’d delivered the news barely had his wings and hadn’t flown an operational sortie. Hadn’t earned the right to call anyone stupid. ‘Shit. Two crashes in two weeks. That’s a record even for this pilots’ course. First the Canadian . . . ’

‘Cavendish, sir.’

‘Right, Cavendish.’ Bryant ran a hand down his face. ‘Now this bloke.’

‘We’ll mount a search, sir?’ Wilson looked down his nose at his superior officer.

Bryant reached into the desk’s top drawer and grabbed a mint. He popped it in his mouth, bit hard into it. He knew some of the men called him a coward behind his back, but he had nothing to hide or prove to this boy. Boy? The pilot officer was only five years younger than he, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three, but the gap between them was like that between father and son. ‘A-Flight will be following the same flight plan as the missing man today. They might see the wreckage. A bit of low-level won’t do them any harm. Trouble is, he . . .  Smythe might have been off course.’

‘Shame for the silly bugger to come halfway around the world to Africa, only to die before he got to run onto the game.’

Bryant fixed him with a stare. His voice was calm, almost conversational. ‘It’s not a fucking game, Wilson. You don’t “run on”. We don’t know if Smythe is even dead.’ Anyway, Bryant thought to himself, if the pilot were a goner, it was better it happened to him here, in Africa, rather than him biding his time at some rain-soaked strip in England watching the bodies of his mates being hosed out of their kites after a mission.

Bryant closed his eyes to shake the memory and broke the contact with the junior officer. He’d let the door to his memory creak open and wished he hadn’t. He didn’t want their pity, these over-keen, wide-eyed pups who hadn’t yet been there. He didn’t want them mocking him. Didn’t want to be the headcase crying in his cups in the mess.

‘Yes, sir,’ Wilson said, but he made no move to leave Bryant’s office.

‘Well? What is it, Wilson?’

‘Um, just wondering, sir . . . ’

‘What?’ Bryant looked up from a mountain of irrelevant, yawn-inducing paperwork. It was getting warmer. September. The skies were still clear outside, no rain yet; not for another month, he reckoned. Good African flying weather.

‘It’s just that, well, I got my posting this morning, and I wanted to know what it’s like, over there. What it’s really like.’

Bryant saw the smile breaking at the corners of Pilot Officer Wilson’s mouth. He closed his eyes again. Poor bastard. He was excited about it, too. ‘Where?’

‘OTU 10, in Buckinghamshire.’

The acronym stood for operational training unit, and this one was based near the village of Westcott. Bryant knew the place. Nestled in a patchwork of rolling green hills. Quaint country pubs, thatched cottages and pink-cheeked East End girls having the time of their lives ploughing fields for the land army during the day and flirting with pilots from the colonies at nights. Funerals under leaden skies. Marathon drinking sessions after each mission. The wailing klaxons and the trilling bells on the crash wagons.

He’d done his time in an OTU, converting to Wellingtons, and, before his second tour, in a heavy conversion unit, learning to handle four-engine Halifaxes – bloody death traps – and eventually his beloved Lancaster. He forced a smile for Wilson’s sake. He’d been a carbon copy of the young pilot – keen, cocky, and overconfident, hungry for everything this new life had to offer and worried the war would be over before he got to England. He’d wanted to get his training over and get out of Rhodesia as soon as possible before his first operational tour, but now he’d be happy if he never saw England again. Despite the drudgery of his office job, Africa was suiting Paul Bryant just fine.

‘It’s what you wanted,’ Bryant said.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Be careful of wanting something too much, Clive.’

‘What do you mean, sir?’

‘It’s not like here, mate,’ Bryant said, opening the drawer again, taking out his packet of Woodbines. ‘Smoke?’

‘No thanks, sir, I don’t.’

Bryant shrugged. ‘Want to take a seat?’

‘If you’ve got time, sir,’ the younger man said.

Bryant inhaled deeply, looked out the window at the dry, yellow grass. An African labourer, sweating under the midday sun, scythed away with a bemba, a piece of iron bar bent like a crooked finger at one end and honed to a razor’s edge. His arm moved in a long, wide arc. He made the back-breaking chore look effortless.

Bryant wondered how much he should say. ‘You’ll probably go straight to Wimpeys – Wellingtons. You know why they put you in Wellingtons, Wilson?’

‘I imagine to get us used to a twin-engine kite before they let us graduate to one of the four-engine big boys, like a Halifax or a Lancaster.’

Bryant smiled. ‘Yes, that’s right. Gives you a chance to get used to working with a crew.’ The real reason the OTU’s used Wellingtons these days was that they were old, near the end of their operational lives, and it didn’t matter so much if they were shot down or collided with another aircraft on the way into or out of Germany.

‘But we’ll be flying proper missions?’ Wilson said, enthusiasm shining in his blue eyes.

‘Yes, you will. And you’ll be sharing the sky with other squadrons, operational squadrons full of men near the end of their tours. It can get crowded up there.’

‘Sir?’

‘One of the Lancasters in my old squadron was involved in a midair collision with a Wimpey from an OTU. The other kite was hundreds of miles off course. The pilot of the Lancaster had trained here in Rhodesia, when I did my elementary flight training. Jimmy Roberts was his name. On his last sortie, would have been going home afterwards. The Wimpey ploughed into Jimmy’s fuselage, just aft of the mid-upper turret. Cut the Lanc in half. They all died. Thirteen men, from both aircraft. Try to be careful where you fly, Clive.’

Wilson nodded. ‘The losses, sir. Are they as bad as some of the blokes reckon?’

Bryant shrugged. ‘Numbers don’t mean much, Clive,’ he said. He dragged on the cigarette again. ‘Live life.’

‘Sir?’

He tried hard to think of something positive to say. Too late. The door had been opened wide. He took a deep breath and coughed. ‘Live life, Wilson. Enjoy it while you can. Get rat-arsed tonight and hit the town. When you get to England, live every day like it’s your last.’

‘You make it sound like I won’t be coming back, sir.’

Bryant smiled, and stubbed out his cigarette. He looked hard at the boy. He reckoned he could tell, during his tour, who’d make it and who would die. He’d been right more often than wrong. He was certain about Wilson. The boy had the look, the attitude, the cocky smirk, the swagger. He even wore his peaked air force cap at that rakish angle he thought made him already look like a veteran. ‘You’ll be fine, Clive,’ he lied.

‘Well, um, thanks, sir. I’d best be off. I’d like to talk more, if you have the time. Maybe over a beer or ten tonight?’

‘I’ll try to be there.’ He searched the younger man’s eyes to see if he were taking the mickey out of him. Bryant knew he drank too much, and he suspected the rest of the base was also aware of the fact.

‘Thanks again, sir, for . . . for your words.’

‘You’re a good pilot. Do your job, look after your crew, and you’ll all get home in one piece.’

‘I hope so, sir. See you tonight,’ Wilson said as he left, and shut the door.

He gave the young pilot officer a month in England. No more. Probably wouldn’t even make it out of the OTU alive.

Bryant checked his watch. It was five minutes to eleven. Fuck it, he thought. Searches ran themselves once the operations room was alerted. He slid open the second drawer of his desk. He lifted the single sheet of blank paper that covered the Santy’s gin bottle. Rarely did he take a nip before eleven. His hand shook as it closed around the smooth glass neck. He told himself it was the talk about Roberts and the severed Lancaster.

He started to lift the bottle, felt the saliva fill his mouth. The telephone rang. He put the bottle down and closed the drawer again. ‘Adjutant, Squadron Leader Bryant,’ he said.

‘Flight Sergeant Henderson on the front gate, sir. I’ve two police officers here, sir.’

‘God. Which pub have the trainees destroyed this time?’ Usually the drunken brawls, property damage and car accidents happened on the final night of a course, not five days before graduation. While they were learning to fly, the student pilots tended to control their behaviour, lest they get kicked out of flight school and wind up as wireless air gunners, where they could look forward to freezing their balls off in front turrets or short lives as tail gunners.

‘They won’t say what it’s about, sir. Should I send them through with an escort?’

That would have been the normal procedure. Bryant could probably have had a quick drink while he waited for the coppers to arrive. No, that wouldn’t do. ‘Don’t worry, Flight. I’ll walk down and pick them up.’ The walk would keep him away from the bottle. He wasn’t so desperate that he didn’t realise he was developing a problem. That had to be a good sign, he told himself.

‘Very good, sir.’

Bryant hung up. He took his peaked cap off the hook on the wall and opened the metal locker in the corner of his office. There was a small mirror on the inside of the door. His eyes were bloodshot. He adjusted his hat and gave himself what he hoped was a winning smile. ‘Cheer up, you’re alive,’ he said to himself. The smile fell from his face and he shut the locker.

His office door opened onto the orderly room. Corporal Richards, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the base’s daily paperwork war, looked up from his typewriter.

‘Back soon. I’m going to the gate to pick up some coppers. I’d call my lawyer now if I were you, Richards.’

‘Very good, sir,’ the younger man smiled. ‘Should I burn the pictures of you and the goat, sir?’

‘Get back to work or I’ll have you horse-whipped.’

Outside it was another perfect Rhodesian flying day. It wasn’t hard to see why they had picked this country to train pilots. It was the same with Australia. The empire needed airmen at an ever-increasing rate to make up for the losses over Europe and, to train flyers, you needed open spaces, empty skies and, preferably, a lack of enemy fighters.

Two students in RAF tropical uniforms, khaki tunics and shorts hemmed above sunburned knees, saluted him as they passed. The trainees marched, their arms swinging to breast-pocket height. Bryant walked casually. He couldn’t remember the last time he had marched anywhere. He took the cigarette packet from his shirt pocket and lit one on the move. Oh yes, he thought, the last time he marched would have been at a funeral. He couldn’t remember whose. Slow march, carrying the coffin. Bryant checked his watch and hoped the police wouldn’t delay his lunch. Lunchtime was a highlight of his dreary, desk-bound day. A couple of bottles of Lion beer in the mess. Too many of his memories – all of them, it sometimes seemed – were linked to the death of someone or other.

He scanned the sky. An Oxford was on final approach to the main runway, its waggling wings betraying the trainee’s nerves and inexperience. There was no sign of the eagle and he wondered if it had caught its prey. A ruddy dust plume from the dozer marked the site of the new taxiway. The twin-engine trainer bounced once then slewed down the runway. At least that one had landed safely.

‘Cheer up, you’re alive,’ he told himself again.

‘Squadron Leader Bryant,’ a deep voice called behind him.

Bryant knew who it was and smiled at the man’s formality. He turned and grinned. ‘Is it worth me telling you again, Kenneth, that you can call me by my first name? You’re not in the air force, man.’

Kenneth Ngwenya gave a small, pained smile. He lowered his voice. ‘And I could tell you, again, that in a country where black men have to get off the footpath when they see a white coming towards them, for me to call you by your first name when there are others nearby would be bad for me and worse for you.’

‘All right then, all right, get off the bloody pavement.’

Ngwenya laughed. ‘Sawubona, Paul,’

‘And I see you, too, my friend.’

‘Your Ndebele is getting better. Perhaps it’s time you graduated beyond hello and goodbye.’

‘You’re like every schoolteacher I ever met, Kenneth.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, a prick.’ Bryant cut their laughter short with a glance at his watch. ‘Where have you been all week? I’ve missed you pestering me for building materials and medicines.’

‘The only reason I pester you is because you never say no. And the children appreciate it. I’ve been visiting my father; he has not been well.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that. I hope he gets better soon. I’d love to stay and chat, Kenneth, but I’ve got the police waiting for me at the front gate.’

‘Ah, I hope you enjoy your time in gaol. Is it about the woman who was killed last night?’

Bryant studied Kenneth’s face. The man was as tall as he was, about six feet, with bright, alert eyes magnified by small rimless glasses that looked completely at odds with his powerful body. Ngwenya always seemed constrained by the dark suit, starched white shirt and black tie that he wore every day, no matter what the weather. Bryant had written, in one of his infrequent letters to his father in Australia, that Kenneth had the brain of a university professor and the body of a rugby player, even though Africans were barred from playing the game.

‘What woman?’

Ngwenya’s face was devoid of mirth. ‘I am sorry to bring the news. I thought you would have heard by now. She was from here, Paul. White. One of the air force women. Some of the askaris’ wives were talking about it this morning. It will be bad for us.’

Bryant swallowed hard. ‘Us?’

‘She was found in the township, Paul. Mzilikazi.’

‘Who was it? Do you have her name?’

‘No, sorry. I am worried about this.’

‘So am I, mate. I have to go, Kenneth.’

‘Of course. I’d like to see you, later, though, about some more building materials for the school. It’s why I was looking for you.’

‘I’ll try to make time. Come look for me.’ He clapped the African on one arm and nodded to him, then turned back to the guardroom. Bryant knew that Kenneth Ngwenya was a man driven by much more than his job as the sole teacher at the base’s African school. He was committed – more than any teacher Bryant had ever met – to the education of his children, who were mostly the offspring of the askaris, Rhodesian Africans overseen by white officers and noncommissioned officers, and the labour brought in to construct the sprawling air base. But Ngwenya had confided to Bryant that he was also a member of the Southern Rhodesian African National Congress, a political group committed to improving the lot of the colony’s black population, and other, loftier goals that went far beyond the bounds of reality, such as the right to vote and majority rule.

Byrant felt his heart beating faster as he approached the guardroom and the boom gate at the main entrance to the base. He wiped his hands on the side of his uniform trousers to dry them. At least he would have time to compose himself before he met the police.

‘Stand fast!’ Flight Sergeant Henderson barked as Bryant approached the gatehouse. Henderson ground his left boot into the pavement and snapped out a parade-ground salute. Two black African air askaris dressed in khaki uniforms, ankle boots, puttees and fezes also came stiffly to attention. The askaris provided base security.

Bryant returned the courtesy with a casual brush of the peak of his cap. He thought he read a flash of contempt at his sloppy drill in the flight sergeant’s slate grey eyes. He didn’t care.

‘Morning, sah!’ Henderson boomed.

‘Morning, Henderson. As you were, men,’ Bryant drawled.

The flight sergeant relaxed his ramrod-straight body ever so slightly. ‘Thank you, sir. A Sergeant Hayes and a Constable Lovejoy, a female, are waiting for you in the guardhouse, sir.’

‘Thanks. Leave them with me.’

‘Begging your pardon, sir?’

‘Yes, what is it?’ Bryant asked Henderson.

‘That African, sir. Ngwenya. The schoolteacher.’

‘What about him?’

‘Well, he’s a civilian, sir. Shouldn’t be wandering about the base willy-nilly. I can have a word with him if you like, sir. Tell him to stop bothering you.’

Bryant looked at the smile and wondered if Henderson were actually being sincere, or if he were being baited. ‘Mister Ngwenya is welcome on the base anytime, Flight. Perhaps you’d like to volunteer for one of the work parties doing some construction work at the school?’

‘Very busy man, I am, sir.’

Bryant opened the door of the guardroom. Henderson would keep. If the man had been operational, on a squadron serving as a wireless air gunner or a bomb aimer instead of a glorified gate guard, he would have seen plenty of black faces serving at the same rank as him. The Royal Air Force was happy enough to have Jamaicans and Nigerians flying and dying alongside Englishmen, even if Flight Sergeant Henderson had a problem with an educated Rhodesian walking around the base.

Bryant didn’t consider himself a bleeding heart, but he did pride himself on judging a man by the way he acted, not by the colour of his skin. He’d grown up in Dubbo in the far west of New South Wales, the son of a sheep shearer who roamed the plains from farm to farm. His mother had died during his birth and Bryant had been raised by an Aboriginal nanny and his father’s sister and her husband. His childhood friend had been the nanny’s boy, Alf. The pair had grown up as close as brothers. By the time his uncle, a wizened blacksmith his aunt said had been angry at the world since a horse had smashed his jaw, had sat him down at the age of ten and tried to tell him he should spend less time with Alf and more time with boys his own colour, it was too late. His uncle had knocked him to the ground when Paul had tried to object – confirmation, if it were needed, that the world consisted of only two types of people. Good blokes and bastards.

3

Pip Lovejoy loved her job. Unlike her other life on the dairy farm, being a policewoman was interesting, exciting, rewarding, and comparatively safe. But it could also be tiring. She’d been up all night. She put a hand over her mouth to conceal a yawn as she peered out the window of the Kumalo air base guardhouse, and thought back over the preceding hours.

‘It’s a murder. Grab your hat and jacket and put down that sandwich, Philippa. I don’t want you throwing up when we get to the body. Sometimes they stink so much you swear you’ll never get the stench off you,’ Sergeant Hayes had said as he burst into the criminal investigation division office at Stops Camp, Bulawayo’s main police station, a little after three that morning.

Sergeant Harold Hayes didn’t like her – Pip was sure of it. Certainly he made it abundantly clear he hated the fact that women had been enlisted into the British South Africa Police in the newly created Southern Rhodesian Women’s Auxiliary Police Service to cover for the large number of young white men who had volunteered for service in the air force and army. Hayes was old enough to have served in the first war, but had joined the police instead. Pip thought her presence at Stops Camp, and the fact that many more women were joining the SRWAPS as the war dragged on, were constant reminders to Hayes of his lack of war service. He was arrogant and foul-mouthed and he hated blacks and women. But he couldn’t stop her from loving the job.

‘A murder?’ she’d repeated, wide-eyed. Up until now the closest she’d come to death as a volunteer policewoman had been keeping onlookers away from a fatal car crash, and typing up scene-of-crime reports for the Criminal Investigation Division detectives. ‘What about CID?’

‘Suicide down at Esigodini, and a drunk driver’s wrapped himself and his family around a tree. We’re it, Lovejoy, and even though I’ve got to take you with me, I’m not letting them take this case away from me!’

Pip had ignored the insult – she, too, was excited about getting a murder case. She wolfed down the last of her boiled egg sandwich, put on her grey cap and jacket, and brushed the breadcrumbs from her uniform shirt and navy blue tie. The tie matched the cuffs and epaulettes of her uniform. She was a messy eater, always had been, but she made sure she looked her best when she was in public in her uniform.

‘No, you don’t have time to do your bloody lipstick, Lovejoy!’ Hayes had barked at her as she glanced in the mirror behind the door.

She had pulled a face at his back and followed him outside to the car park. It was warm out. The rains would arrive in a month or so and the days were getting hotter, the nights balmier.

‘Where are we going, Sergeant?’ Pip had asked, unable to mask her excitement, as they climbed into the Dodge.

‘You’ll find out soon enough, young lady. Nowhere you’ve ever been before in your protected little upbringing, I’ll wager.’

She’d let the condescension wash over her. The fat red-necked pig knew nothing of her life. At twenty-two years of age she did not consider herself young and neither had she been shielded from much during her life. Pip Lovejoy’s parents had been farmers, and not very lucky ones at that. Her father had had an incredible knack for planting the wrong crops at the wrong time. He’d gone into cattle when the price of beef plummeted. Her mother was smart, smarter than her father, but too deferential to the old man to give advice. As things got worse, her father’s drinking and gambling increased. Her mother had started to argue with her father, growing bolder as the old man slid deeper into a hole of his own digging. One day, Pip woke to find her with a purple bruise on one side of her face and a cut cheek. Shortly after, her father had wagered away the last savings they’d had and blown his brains out with a shotgun. That was when Pip was fourteen, at the height of the Depression. Her mother had started growing vegetables in the backyard of the rented property they’d moved to, in Fort Victoria, in the eastern part of the country, and managed to eke out a paltry living for herself, Pip and Pip’s two younger sisters.

Pip was the smartest of the three girls and had won a scholarship to a good boarding school in Salisbury. She’d excelled and loved her time there. Surrounded by the wealthy daughters of Rhodesia’s elite, she had been able to forget the traumas and privations of home. She’d won another scholarship, to university, where she had been accepted to study law.

‘Keep a watch out, Lovejoy,’ Hayes had said to her, breaking her train of thought as they drove through the darkened streets.

It was just as well. One, she certainly needed to be alert when they were out after dark, and two, she didn’t need to rekindle any more memories of her time at varsity. ‘Yes, Sarge.’

‘It’s sergeant, Lovejoy, not sarge. We’re not in some second-rate American film.’

She stared out into the gloom of the resting town and felt her excitement mount as Hayes drove along the Sixth Avenue extension, out of downtown Bulawayo. It seemed they were heading into Mzilikazi, one of the African townships on the outskirts of the city. Hayes had been right about one thing – although she’d been born in Africa, she’d spent most of her life on farms or in school dorms, so she’d never really had a close look inside one of the chaotic, crowded communities in which much of Rhodesia’s black population lived. It was one of the things she loved, though, discovering new places and seeing people through new eyes as a policewoman. She’d only lived on this side of the country, on the dairy farm, since her wedding a little over two years ago, so she didn’t know Bulawayo or the region as well as her bellicose partner did.

The wide tree-lined stately streets of downtown Bulawayo narrowed to dusty dirt hemmed in by older, rundown masonry buildings, which, as the car lurched on, its wheels dipping in and out of potholes, turned to structures of tin, then asbestos sheet and then a mishmash of every building material available in the colony.

Even at this late hour there was light. Weak yellow beams from blackened paraffin lamps slicing out through cracks in shanty walls. And music. How incongruous, Pip thought, that a place that reeked of decay and human waste, and must look even worse in daylight, seemed to pulse with a chirpy, lively brand of music. Or was it so surprising? Was the lot of the people who lived here so bad that music was their only happiness? She hadn’t ever given much thought to the plight of the blacks who worked on her farm. They always seemed genuinely happy to see her when they greeted her in the morning, when she had a mombe slaughtered for a special occasion, when they herded the milk cows past the house to the dairy. Who were the Africans who lived in the township of Mzilikazi? What were their lives like inside those crumbling asbestos homes with their bare earthen floors?

Unconsciously she started tapping her foot on the firewall of the police car, picking up the lilting rhythm of the penny whistle and the guitar. It reminded her a little of American jazz, or swing, perhaps a mix of both. Kwela, she had a feeling it was called. Township music. Black music. She had picked up enough Ndebele to know the word meant ‘to lift’ or ‘to raise’. Maybe it raised their hopes, their hearts. Whatever its name, this was not the sort of music Charlie, her husband, would ever play at the farm on the gramophone – he preferred classical pieces. His choices reminded her of funerals. Pip strummed her fingers on the side of the police car’s door, out of sight of Hayes. She liked the rhythm and decided she would seek out some jazz records on her next shopping trip in town. She’d been reading the local newspaper, the Bulawayo Chronicle, during the night shift, and it was full of news about the fighting in Italy, and the Italian government’s surrender. However, the Germans and Japs were still very much in the war, so there was no risk of Charlie coming home any time soon. She’d have plenty of time to destroy the records before his return.

Hayes stared across at her and even in the gloomy car she could see his disapproval. She stopped tapping her foot and strumming her fingers. She had a job to do.

People ducked down alleyways and closed doors at the sight of the police vehicle as it cruised along. It was getting less and less like the white part of town the deeper they pushed into Mzilikazi. The township was named after the warrior king of the local Matabele people, who had been defeated by the whites after an uprising at the end of the last century, but there was nothing proud or regal about where the blacks lived now.

Ahead she saw a crowd of fifty to a hundred people, mostly males, all Africans, thronging the entrance to a narrow alleyway.

‘This’ll be the spot,’ Hayes said. ‘Bloody Kaffirs can’t resist congregating at the scene of a crime. One of them will have done it, Lovejoy, mark my words. Take note of their faces. Get the names of the ones closest to the body, the ones gawking at her.’

She swallowed the saliva that had suddenly filled her mouth, and wiped moist palms on her uniform skirt. Hayes had told her nothing of the victim. Now, at least, Pip knew the dead person was a woman. She wondered about the circumstances. The music was louder now, so they were probably near a shebeen. The bar was trading illegally, if it was open this late. He stopped the car.

Hayes smiled. ‘Come on, Lovejoy. Let’s get it done. Try not to faint on me. Remember, right or wrong, you’re a member of the British South Africa Police, so try to act like one.’

‘Yes, Sergeant.’ She stepped out of the car, into a puddle. It hadn’t rained for months. She shivered and recoiled at the smell of raw alcohol, vomit, cooking-fire smoke. She looked straight ahead and strode after Hayes. There were African women hovering on the fringe of the cluster of men. Garish floral-printed frocks. Empty eyes. She knew prostitutes were as much a part of a shebeen as the dark native beer, but she’d never seen one; at least, not that she knew of.

‘Step aside,’ Hayes ordered, and used his shoulder to push between two young African men in suits who blocked the footpath.

Pip slowed and watched the way the two men reacted to Hayes. The first touched his head, ducked to one side and began an apology that Hayes ignored. The second’s eyes lingered resentfully on the policeman’s broad back. The man was well-dressed, better than most in the crowd, in a dark blue suit, a wide tie of a matching hue, a white shirt and a black fedora. He picked his teeth with a toothpick. Pip felt the man had a learned or innate dislike of the police; that he knew his rights and resented the simple, yet arrogant act of being physically brushed aside, like an annoying branch of a tree on a walk in the bush. He looked like a spiv to her.

‘What’s your name?’ Pip asked him, her voice little more than a croak at first. His eye line was about a foot above hers when he turned. The man smirked. She took a breath and bellowed: ‘I said, what’s your bloody name, man!’

He took a step back, the smile gone from his face as he removed the toothpick. ‘Innocent. Innocent Nkomo, madam.’

‘How long have you been here, Innocent?’ Pip asked more softly, craning her head back and fishing in her tunic pocket for her notebook and pencil.

‘For one hour, madam. Since they find her.’

The penny whistle played on in another building down a street littered with broken beer bottles. An old man sat with his back against a tin wall. A dog sniffed him. Life carried on, even at a murder scene. ‘What were you doing in the neighbourhood?’

‘Drinking, madam. And dancing,’ he said. She couldn’t smell beer on his breath, though, and he seemed perfectly lucid. The whites of his eyes were clear and bright, not the hazy yellow that reflected a heavy night on the native beer. She wondered if he’d been up to something he didn’t want her to know about.

‘Was the victim in the pub, where you were drinking and dancing?’

The African smiled again and shook his head. ‘She was not from around here.’

‘Lovejoy!’ Hayes barked.

Pip was annoyed that the man had smirked at her while she was interviewing him, and wondered what she had said to cause him to do so. ‘Don’t leave. I’ll be back soon. I’ve got your name, Nkomo,’ she said with as much menace as she could muster. Pip elbowed her way through the crowd of thirty or forty onlookers. Most were men, but here and there a woman with heavy make-up in a bright dress also barred her way. At only a shade over five foot three, she was aware that most of the Africans on the street towered over her.

‘Here, Sarge, er, Sergeant,’ she said to Hayes’ back.

The policeman turned and, as he did so, his sombre face was lit up by a blast of white light. ‘The forensic photographer’s here already, getting some shots of the body in situ. Take a look. She’s about your age.’

Pip manoeuvred around Hayes’ bulky body. She knew a few African women of her age, but none of them, not the young mothers on the farm, or the few shopgirls she encountered in town, would be out at night in an area like this.

‘Oh my God,’ Pip hissed, then drew her hand to her mouth. ‘She’s . . . ’

‘White. Surprised, Lovejoy?’

‘Um . . . ’

‘Nothing surprises me after twenty-seven years in this job,’ Hayes said. ‘Control yourself, woman. Get a bloody grip. Well, go on, examine the body before the bloody coroner comes and carts her away.’

Pip was shocked. The woman was about her age, maybe a year or two older, and most definitely Caucasian. A sheet covered most of her prone body – the police photographer had left her face visible, though, to take his last close-up shot. Pip swallowed hard. There was a smell about the body she found hard to place. Maybe faeces. The girl’s skin was a strange purplish colour, but there didn’t appear to be any decomposition.

‘Check her fingers, her joints, for signs of rigor mortis,’ Hayes said.

She looked up, praying it was one of his tasteless jokes, but he stood impassively above her, arms folded. She took hold of the end of the white sheet and slowly drew it back. She caught her breath. ‘She’s virtually naked.’

Hayes bent forward at the waist, more interested now. ‘Let me see.’

A shiver passed down Pip’s back as she felt his breath on her neck. Creep. She did as ordered and lowered the sheet further.

Pip caught the smell again. She turned her face away, closed her eyes and almost gagged as she swallowed the rising bile. I will not lose control in front of him, she thought. I can do this. She opened her eyes and coughed to clear her throat.

‘Get those bloody people back and out of sight!’ Hayes bellowed at a young African policeman. The officer spread his arms wide and forced the onlookers back a few paces. ‘Shield the view with your body, Lovejoy. We don’t want these bloody perverts starting a riot so’s they can get a look at a dead murungu,’ he added, using the common African term for a white person.

‘Her hands are tied, Sarge.’ Pip wiped a bead of perspiration from her upper lip. She was glad she was kneeling, as she was sure her legs would have failed her if she stood.

‘Let’s have a look. What’s that, silk?’

‘Stocking, by the look of it. Her wrists have been bound with it. Her face looks familiar to me,’ Pip said.

‘You know her?’

‘Not sure, Sarge. Hard to say when she’s all dolled up like this.’ Pip noted the heavy make-up, the ruby lipstick. ‘It’s almost like, well, like she was trying to look like a tart.’

‘Watch your language, Lovejoy, and keep your voice down, for God’s sake. Don’t speak ill of the dead, either.’

Pip looked at him. Sweat was beading his forehead and he only glanced at the body for a second or two at a time. She noticed the way he stared at the woman’s ample breasts and then averted his gaze, his cheeks reddened. She wondered if he had investigated many murders. As well as taking on women to fill the roles of men serving in the war, the BSAP had also promoted some male officers well beyond their capability to cover shortfalls in the senior ranks.

‘We should check to see if she has been . . . if she has been assaulted . . . in a sexual way. See to it, Lovejoy.’

‘You were told to get that bloody crowd back, man!’ Pip shouted to the same constable Hayes had badgered. Unchecked, the young officer had allowed the crowd to close in on them again. ‘Now, damn it!’

Perhaps surprised by the anger in the small woman’s voice, the constable redoubled his efforts and, aided by a second officer, the onlookers were forced back to the corner of a burned-out shop. Pip had seen the charred remains of the hovel and wondered if it wouldn’t be better for every house in the township to be made of life-saving asbestos. There probably wasn’t even running water to fight a fire in this place.

Pip lifted the sheet. The woman wore no brassiere or pants, but had on a pair of stockings and a suspender belt. Pip took a breath to steady herself and looked closer at the body. Her pubic hair had been shaved off. Odd, thought Pip. There were dark bruises on her inner thighs, small blotches, like fingerprints. ‘This really should be done by a doctor, don’t you think, Sarge?’

Hayes coughed. ‘Well, what about it? Do you think she was . . . abused?’

‘I don’t know. What do you class as abuse? She’s tied up and she’s dead in a laneway behind a shebeen.’

‘Don’t give me lip, Lovejoy. You’re of the fair sex, but you’re still only an auxiliary constable. I can see the bleeding obvious, can’t I?’

‘Sorry, Sarge,’ Pip said, without feeling. She shuddered as she took the dead girl’s cold right hand in hers and tried moving one of her fingers. The fingernail was painted a garish red. ‘Her fingers are a bit stiff, but still pliable. The joints haven’t seized up yet. I think that means she’s been dead for between two and four hours. I remember reading that muscles reach their stiffest between six and twelve. What do you think?’

‘Hmm, sounds about right to me.’

Pip realised that neither of them had much of a clue about murder investigations. The woman was on her back. Pip eased a hand under her and gently rolled her halfway over. ‘Bruising around her neck too.’

‘Bloody Kaffirs.’

‘You’re sure an African did this?’ Pip asked.

‘Look at the neighbourhood. Don’t see too many whites around here at any hour of the day.’

‘Yes, of course, Sarge. But surely it’s too obvious a place to leave a body. Why would an African killer dump her here in a laneway where she was bound to be discovered so quickly? Looks to me like someone was trying to make a statement, or maybe the murderer wanted it to look like an African did the deed.’

Hayes shook his head. ‘Mark my words, it’s the black peril. There’s no controlling the African once the drink gets to him.’

Pip held her tongue. The black peril was the common name given to the whites’ fear of black men sexually assaulting their women but, from what she knew, cases of this nature were actually very rare. However, there were laws against African men consorting with European women, even if it were consensual. In Pip’s opinion the government would be better off enforcing the laws of assault against white men who hurt their wives, a crime not spoken of in the ordered society in which she lived.

‘We’ll talk to some of the bystanders. Find out if they saw anything unusual in the last few hours,’ Hayes said.

Pip laid the woman back down in her original pos­ition and drew the sheet back up to her chin. She looked at the face again. The woman’s hair was blonde, but cut short, in a bob. It was a fashion more suited to the twenties than the forties. Pip, like most women her age, had let her hair grow, although it was tied up in a bun now under the back of her police-issue hat. The hairstyle did remind her of something, though. ‘I do think I’ve seen her somewhere before.’

‘She could have been a film star with a face and a . . . well, a face like that,’ Hayes said.

It was true, the girl had a beautiful face, even in death, and a body to match. ‘It is like she’s famous, like I’ve seen her in a magazine or . . . Wait, that’s it. I’ve seen her in the newspaper, in the Chronicle!’

‘So, who is she? She’s obviously not carrying identification.’

‘She’s in the air force. She packs parachutes for the trainee pilots. She actually jumps out of aeroplanes to show how they work. She’s stationed at the air base at Kumalo.’

‘Ah, yes. Well done, Lovejoy. I read the same story. It’s “Flying Felicity” we’ve got dead here in this shit hole.’

* * *

Pip and Hayes stood up from their uncomfortable metal chairs in the guardroom as the squadron leader walked in. She’d been staring up at a dozen photo­graphs on the wall opposite her. Young, smiling men in air force khaki sitting and standing in front of mili­tary aircraft, shoulder to shoulder. She wondered where all the newly graduated pilots were now, and how many of them were still alive.

‘Welcome to Number Twenty-One Service Flying Training School, Kumalo. I’m Squadron Leader Paul Bryant.’ He shook hands with Hayes and nodded to Pip.

‘Thank you for taking the time to meet with us, Squadron Leader,’ Pip said. Rumpled was the word which first came to mind when she looked at him. His cap looked like someone had sat on it, and the wisps of hair that protruded out from under it needed trimming. The flight sergeant who had met them at the gate had so much starch in his uniform that Pip reckoned the fabric would snap if he bent over too far, but the squadron leader’s uniform clearly hadn’t seen an iron for a couple of days. Nevertheless, she thought the casual way he presented himself conveyed an air of relaxed, understated authority, as if he didn’t need spit and polish to prove he was a military man. She didn’t know what the medal ribbons below the embroidered pilot’s wings on his chest were for, but she guessed by their number that he had already seen active service in the war, perhaps distinguishing himself in some way.

Hayes cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps we could talk in private somewhere, Squadron Leader. Your office? What we have to discuss is quite a sensitive matter.’

‘Of course, follow me,’ Bryant said.

Pip stepped out her stride to keep pace with the men, and moved up beside Bryant as they walked along the footpath. They passed new-looking red-brick buildings with tin roofs, offices and barracks surrounded by manicured lawns edged with white-painted rocks. She wondered if news of the purpose of their visit would have preceded them. Bryant had avoided asking them any questions so far and his brisk, formal civility seemed contrived, as if he were nervously waiting for them to drop the bombshell about Felicity Langham.

‘You’re Australian,’ she said to him.

‘Not much gets past you coppers, does it? There are quite a few of us over here, instructors and trainees. There are also British, Canadians, South Africans, local Rhodesians, of course, and a smattering of trainees from other far-flung parts of the British Empire. We’ve even got a few Greeks from the Royal Hellenic Air Force.’

‘I’ve met a few pilots and trainees in town, but never been onto one of the bases,’ Pip said, eager to put the man at ease before they got down to business. Bulawayo was teeming with men in uniform these days.

‘Well, I’ll give you the gen – the information – on the Empire Air Training Scheme while we walk.’ A twin-engine aircraft passed low overhead, on a final approach to landing. ‘That’s an Airspeed Oxford. The blokes learning to fly those will go on to bombers. The single-engine kites – aircraft – you’ll see around here are American-designed AT-6 Harvards. The pilots on those will fly fighters, if they survive their training.’

‘Survive?’ Hayes interjected.

‘Sergeant, here at Kumalo air base we’ve got a sewage farm at one end of the runway and a cemetery at the other. As some of the instructors like to say, and pardon my crudity, Constable, you’ve got a better than even chance of ending up in one of those places before your course is over.’

Hayes smiled and Pip grimaced. The man was adjutant of the camp. She’d expected something a bit more inspiring from him when addressing a couple of first-time visitors to the base. ‘You were saying, Squadron Leader, about the air training scheme?’

‘Call me Paul, if you like. The aim of the Empire Air Training Scheme is to produce about twenty thousand pilots and thirty thousand air gunners and observers a year, for service overseas.’

‘Gosh,’ Pip said, ‘that’s an awful lot of people.’

‘You wouldn’t know it from the newspapers and the cinemas, but we’re losing an awful lot of people in this war,’ Bryant said, deadpan.

Pip felt her cheeks colour. All she knew of the war was what she read in the newspapers and saw on the newsreels at the cinema. She was smart enough, though, to realise that the government censors made sure the reports put a brave face on things.

‘Anyway,’ Bryant continued, ‘there are bases like Kumalo also operating in Australia and Canada. Here in Southern Rhodesia we’ve got airfields operational around Bulawayo, at Gwelo, and at Cranborne, Norton and Belvedere near Salisbury, to name just a few. Over here the scheme is implemented for the Royal Air Force by the Rhodesian Air Training Group. It goes by other names in Canada and Australia, but the aim is the same. As well as pilot training there are other schools where aircrew are trained as gunners, wireless operators and bomb aimers. All up, there are about seventeen thousand people serving in the training group, including five thousand Africans who work as askaris – providing base security – and in general duties roles, such as the cooks, cleaners, groundsmen and maintenance staff.’

‘Seems a lot of effort, shipping people from as far away as England and Australia to do their training here,’ Hayes said.

‘I’ll agree with you about shipping Australians here, Sergeant,’ Bryant conceded. ‘We could train our blokes just as easily back home. It’s all about politics and the spirit of the Empire, I suppose. Above my level, anyway. But this is a good place to train Royal Air Force pilots and aircrew from Britain. For a start, you’ve got no shortage of sunshine and clear skies, and there are no German bombers to interrupt the training program.’

‘It must take quite a while, to get a pilot fully qualified,’ Pip said.

‘Twenty-eight weeks for a pilot, twenty-one for a gunner or bomb aimer. This has been a big year for us and the pressure is always on to train more and more people. We’ve got our biggest ever wings parade – pilot graduation – coming up in a few days’ time.’

‘How many people?’ Hayes asked.

‘A lot,’ Bryant replied. ‘We don’t like to talk about exact numbers. Loose lips and all that. I’m sure you understand. If the Germans could find a way to sabotage the training here in Rhodesia or inflict mass casualties on the pilot trainees, the RAF might simply run out of aircrew to man its bombers.’

‘Of course, but you said before, Southern Rhodesia was picked as a base because it’s safe,’ Hayes countered.

‘From what I read in the intelligence reports and the newspapers, there are more than a few people down in South Africa who wouldn’t mind seeing Germany win this war,’ Bryant said.

‘You’re talking about the Ossewa Brandwag?’

Bryant nodded. He’d read with interest the reports of the far right-wing movement, whose name, translated into English, meant the ox-wagon sentinels. The Ossewa Brandwag – OB, for short – were self-styled guardians of the ideals espoused by the original voortrekkers, the Cape Dutch Afrikaner pioneers who had set off into the wilderness of what was now South Africa to carve out a white homeland.

The OB had evolved in the years following the Boer War, a manifestation of lingering Afrikaner resentment at the British victory and their ongoing rule of South Africa. They were anti-British, anti-Jewish, and anti-black. The party’s paramilitary wing – the stormjaers –