The Leopard Hunts In Darkness Part 29

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 s.h.i.+rt 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 injured overboard with the steel edge catching him in his ribs again.

Tungata swerved a second time, running his wheels over the verge, and Craig saw the bank rus.h.i.+ng 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 likea 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, wideshouldered figure. Tungata was clearly stunned, staggering in a half-circle, clutching his injured throat. At the sight of him Craig went hers&k 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- Crai crawled to him and reached for his unprotected throat with both hands. He felt the ropes of muscle framing the sharp hard Jump of the thyroid cartilage and he drove his thumbs deeply into it, and, at the feet 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 likea pack of hounds at the kill. In his arms I ikea child waking from sleep, Sally Anne stiffed and mumbled softly.

She was alive, still alive and he whispered to her, "My darling, oh my darling, I love you so!" 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 a.s.signed to the Tungata Zebiwe case, visited her. Mr. Khori was a distinguished-looking Shana 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-Arme 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 Shana 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 er*ire 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 Verb keep a man of his stature in gaol for seven months," the prosecutor explaine "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 airworthiness'. There were no facilities for this in Zimbabwe, and j they had to arrange for a fellow pilot to fly the machine down to Johannesburg for her. "I will feel likea 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, dorA 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 n.o.body 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.

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 a.s.ses, sors and the attorneys charged with the defence wore long black robes, while the judpe 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 pa.s.sages 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 man dressed in ZAFU colours rear of the court a black wa cried hysterically "Bayete, Nkosi Nkulu!" and gave the clenched-fist salute.

r out The guards seized her immediately and hustled he through the doors. Tungata Zebiwe stood in the dock and watched impa.s.sively, by his sheer presence belittling every other person in the room. Even the judge, Mr. justice Domashawa, a tall, emaciated Mashona, with a delicately bridged atypical Egyptian nose and small, bright, birdlike eyes, although vested in all the authority of his scarlet robes, seemed ordinary in comparison. However, Mr. Justice Domashawa had a formidable reputation, and the prosecutor had rejoiced in his selection when he told Craig and SallyAxme of it.

"Oh, he is indeed persona grato and now it is very much in grentio legis, we will see justice done, never fear." While the country had still been Rhodesia, the British jury system had been abandoned. "The judge would reach a verdict with the a.s.sistance of the two black-robed a.s.sessors who sat with him on the bench. Both these a.s.sessors were Shana: one was an expert on wildlife conservation, and the other a senior magistrate. The judge could call upon but the final verdict their expert advice if he so wished would be his alone.

Now he settled his robes around him, the way an ostrich shakes out its feathers as it settles on the nest, and he fixed Tungata Zebiwe with his bright dark eyes while the clerk the charge sheet in English.

of the court read out There were eight main charges- dealing in and exporting the products of scheduled wild animals, abducting and holding a hostage, a.s.sault with a deadly weapon, a.s.sault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, attempted murder, violently resisting arrest, theft of a motor vehicle, and erty. There were also twelve malicious damage to state prop lesser charges.

By G.o.d," Craig whispered to Sally-Anne, "they are throwing the bricks from the walls at him."

"And the tiles off the floor," she agreed. "Good for them, I'd love to see the b.a.s.t.a.r.d swing."

"Sorry, my dear, none of them are capital charges." And yet all through the prosecution's opening address, Craig was overcome by a sense of almost Grecian tragedy, in which an heroic figure was surrounded and brought low by lesser, meaner men.