THE HANGING TREE - A Book in the Jack Delaney Chronicles E-Book

Terry Hayward

• Herausgeber: Abela Publishing
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

When the Mob try to purchase a luxury, “big five” game reserve, right next to an international border in South Africa, all hell breaks loose! A kidnapping, to menace the owners of the reserve to sell, becomes the catalyst in a host of actions and re-actions leading to unexpected alliances, coupled with violence, murder and confrontations with lions, elephants and crocodiles in the wild. This action is interwined with investigations into the illegal poaching of rhinos and elephants and the smuggling of animal products out of the country. Add to this the emergence of illicit diamond buying and smuggling, the tracking of escaped prisoners, and the parry and thrust of a high stakes courtroom drama, and you have a real page-turner you won’t be able to put down. The action is high octane, keeping the story moving quickly with changing scenes as Jack Delaney follows the clues and investigates the latest exciting mystery !!!

Leseprobe

THE HANGING TREE

by

Terry Hayward

The Hanging Tree

Copyright © 2016 Terry Hayward

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner in any media, or transmitted by any means whatsoever, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, or mechanical ( including photocopy, file or video recording, internet web sites, blogs, wikis, or any other information storage and retrieval system) without the prior written permission of the publisher or author.

Published in England

By

Abela Publishing Ltd.

Sandhurst, Berkshire, England

Email: [email protected]

Website:

www.AbelaPublishing.com/TerryHayward.html

ISBN 13: 978-1-910882-65-8

First Edition, 2016

Considerate words are like honey,

Sweet to the soul and health for the flesh.

The Book of Proverbs 16: 24

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the glory of God and in gratitude to Him and with thanks to our son for all the good times my wife and I enjoyed with him being shown around the Game Reserves of Zululand.

Chapter 1.

The Honeyguide is a relatively small bird that traditionally, over many centuries, has led animals and man to a treasure store of honey. The mammal will follow the fluttering flight of the little bird, which tradition has it, will lead him to this sweet treasure. In return for this service the bird will expect its share of the spoil. If the mammal finds the stash of the sweet honey and fails to reward the little honeyguide with its share of the comb and grubs, tradition has it that the next time the bird will seek out the same mammal but that this time it will lead him to a confrontation with a mamba or lion.

Being well steeped in these African traditions, the young boy answered the twittering invitation from the little bird as he called out and assured it, “I see you, little bringer of sweetness. I will follow you and will not fail to give you your share of the honey.”

With that the little bird took off and headed in a north easterly direction, flitting from tree top to tree top, all the while twittering loudly to keep the boy’s attention and to make certain he was following until, an hour or so later, it perched on top of a very large and very old Natal Mahogany tree where it remained, all the time chattering animatedly as it hopped expectantly up and down in the topmost branches.

The boy, realizing from his ancestral ingrained expertise that they had at last arrived at the source of the sweet treat, peered cautiously into the tree looking for the hive and yet, being aware that somebody might have previously cheated the little bird of its share, he at the same time watched for the slithery presence of a reptile. The trees in KwaZulu Natal are so entangled in the vines of the strangler fig, that the boy needed to take his time to search all the branches carefully to make sure that the tangle of strangler fig roots were not in fact hiding a far more lethal body.

At last many minutes later, satisfied that he was not being set up for an attack, he removed the tiny panga he carried strapped onto his loincloth, and chipped and cut out a large piece of bark off a nearby acacia tree. When he had cut the required size he carefully wound it around into a funnel shape and then searched for a supply of fallen and dry acacia leaves. He stuffed these carefully into the bark funnel and then, hunched over it he removed two pieces of flint-stone from a tiny sack hanging from his loincloth. Carefully holding the leaf-stuffed funnel between his knees to avoid any wind disturbing it, he started to flick the flint-stones together to make sparks over the dry leaves, all the while blowing gently and carefully onto the tiny sparks.

At last he managed to get a tiny flame burning in the funnel and he gently coaxed the tiny flame as he continued to gently blow to increase the flame and get the leaves burning properly. Once he was satisfied with the amount of heat the fire was producing, he decided that it was not producing sufficient smoke so he carefully picked a few fresh leaves off the acacia tree and meticulously, almost one at a time, dropped them into the tiny flames making sure not to extinguish the little fire, yet slowly increasing the amount of smoke. Satisfied now that the fire was strong enough not to go out and that it was producing enough smoke, he carefully stuck the smoldering funnel into the loincloth and started the short climb up to the object of his desire.

As he climbed the funnel continued to smolder and he ignored the few stings inflicted by the bees on those parts of his body not protected by the smoke until he finally arrived at the entrance to the hole in the tree trunk from which the bees had been entering and exiting. Slowly he removed the funnel from his loincloth and blew more strongly on the leaves to increase the volume of smoke until, satisfied, he turned the funnel around, placed the narrow end to his lips with the wider end into the hole, and gently blew. Smoke billowed out and into the hole as he peered in to see at last the dripping combs.

Some of the smoke blew back into his eyes so he moved his head to the left to ease the discomfort to his eyes. Peering to his left and blinking to clear his eyes from the smoke induced tears, he almost fell out of the tree as he gazed, terrified, through the branches.

There he saw, not the fanged grimace of the half-expected lethal mamba, instead an apparition that scared him rigid. He saw a body, no; it was almost a skeleton, seeming to ethereally float as though hanging from a slim branch, dripping with swamp water.

With a loud screech of fear he forgot completely about the promised sweet treasure, dropped to the ground and fled for his life.

The boy ran screaming into the village and was soon surrounded by a group of village matrons, vainly trying to calm him down.

“Boy!” One old crone shouted as she grabbed his shoulder and shook him violently to try to bring him to his senses. “What has got into to you? Have you seen a ghost or have you been chased by the crocodile?”

“No, Mama,” he eventually responded as he at last managed to wrestle himself from the crone’s eagle-like grip. “It was a ghost in a tree.”

“What are you talking about, boy?” she demanded swatting him across the shoulder with her claw-like hand. “Start from the beginning and tell us what happened.”

“I followed the honeyguide to the honey tree,” he proceeded to explain as he tried unsuccessfully to dodge the swinging hand. “When I climbed into the tree it was then I saw the thing.”

“What thing?” the crone demanded at last managing to get a firm grip on the boy’s arm. “Did you try to cheat the little bird?”

“No, Mama,” he replied, trying unsuccessfully to escape from her iron grip. “It was the first time I saw that bird.”

“Well, you better not be lying to me,” she muttered, at the same time spinning him around so that he faced back in the direction he had come from. “Now show us the way”.

With that she frog-marched him off down the path in the direction from which he’d appeared, closely followed by the other women, some with tiny babies hanging precariously strapped to their backs.

“Show us the place,” she demanded as she now hung onto his loincloth and pushed her bony finger into the small of his back to speed the reluctant child on his way.

Some twenty minutes later the group arrived at the enormous tree to find the little honeyguide pop out of the hole in the tree now relatively free of the stinging insects.

“See, there is the tree”, the boy shouted, at the same time cringing away from where he had been climbing when he’d seen the body.

“Well, there’s nothing in the tree now, only the honey bird,” she crone exclaimed in a disbelieving voice as she pinched the boy’s arm tighter in her arthritic hand as she waved the other hand disparagingly at the tree.

“Of course there’s nothing there now,” responded the child cheekily, his courage slowly returning. “With all the noise you were making, it’s gone.”

She gave the boy a quick slap to the back of the head as she released him and watched him turn and run back to the village as fast as his little legs could carry him, at the same time she cried out a warning, “The fathers are going to hear about your nonsense tonight and will deal with you.”

That evening the village elders, or fathers, sat around the fire drinking their iJuba, listening to the complaint of the old crone and the other village women. They were not unduly concerned at the report and put it down to a young boy’s wild imagination but promised to discipline him.

Amongst those sitting around in the shadows, however, was one person who found the proceedings very interesting. She knew the boy was telling the truth and she knew just what it was that he’d seen. It was someone crying out for justice of their own!

Chapter 2.

“Your Honour, I appear for the defence,” I announced to the judge as I rose to my feet to begin my client’s defence. Fanie du Toit, the Deputy Attorney General had just sat down at the bar after having informed the court that he appeared for the State in their prosecution of their case against Vincent Strydom, nicknamed Vinnie.

I continued, “For the record my name is Delaney and my initials are C.J.”

“Thank you Mr. Delaney,” Judge Sarah August acknowledged as she turned to her clerk and instructed her to put the charges to the accused. These charges ranged from the main charge, one of murder, through to other charges such as being found in possession of uncut diamonds, and to poaching and attempted smuggling of both diamonds and rhino horn.

My name is Christopher John Delaney, known to my friends as Jack. I had practised law as an attorney for some twenty-five years before selling my practice to answer a calling from the Lord into the ordained ministry as a Priest in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. After a few years as the Anglican chaplain in the Westville Prison I was moved into parish ministry where I remained until my recent retirement. Because I now had a small Church pension to rely on to keep the wolf from the door, I had decided to return to the practice of law but with the proviso that I would accept only those cases that really appealed to me and aroused my interest. But more of all this later as this story proceeds.