The Leopard Hunts in Darkness Read online

  So she let it pass, and the days telescoped into each other, filled for both of them with love and work – work on the photographic book, on the new novel, on collating her field research material for the Wildlife Trust, on the final preparations for the opening of Zambezi Waters, and on the daily running and embellishing of King’s Lynn.

  With each week that passed, her will to resist the spell that Craig and King’s Lynn were weaving about her weakened, the exigencies of her previous life faded, until one day she caught herself referring to the house on the hill as ‘home’ and was only slightly shocked at herself.

  A week later a registered letter was forwarded from her address in Harare. It was a formal application form for the renewal of her research grant from the Wildlife Trust. Instead of filling it in and returning it immediately, she slipped it into her camera bag.

  ‘I’ll do it tomorrow,’ she promised herself, but deep in herself realized she had reached a crossroads in her life. The prospect of flying about Africa alone with her only possessions a change of clothes and a camera, sleeping where she lay down and bathing when she could, was no longer as attractive as it had always been to her.

  That night at dinner she looked around the huge almost bare dining-room, the new curtains its only glory, and touched the refectory table of Rhodesian teak that, under her guidance, Joseph’s relative had fashioned and she anticipated the patina of use and care it would soon acquire. Then she looked past the burning candles to the man who sat opposite her and she was afraid and strangely elated. She knew she had made the decision.

  They took their coffee onto the veranda and listened to the cicadas’ whining in the jacaranda trees, and the squeak of the flying bats hunting below a yellow moon.

  She snuggled against his shoulder and said, ‘Craig, darling, it’s time to tell you. I do love you – so very dearly.’

  Craig wanted to rush into Bulawayo and take the magistrate’s court by storm, but she restrained him laughingly.

  ‘My God, you crazy man, it isn’t like buying a pound of cheese. You can’t just up and get married, just like that.’

  ‘Why not? Lots of people do.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said firmly. ‘I want it to be done properly.’ She did some counting on her fingers and pencilling on the calendar at the back of her notebook, and then decided, ‘February 16th.’

  ‘That’s four months away,’ Craig groaned, but his protests were ridden down ruthlessly.

  Joseph, on the other hand, was in full accord with Sally-Anne’s plans for a formal wedding.

  ‘You get married on Kingi Lingi, Nkosikazi.’

  It was a statement rather than a question, and Sally-Anne’s Sindebele was now good enough to recognize that she had been promoted from ‘little mistress’ to ‘great lady’.

  ‘How many people?’ Joseph demanded. ‘Two hundred, three hundred?’

  ‘I doubt we can raise that many,’ Sally-Anne demurred.

  ‘When Nkosana Roly get married Kingi Lingi, we have four hundred, even Nkosi Smithy he come!’

  ‘Joseph,’ she scolded him, ‘you really are a frightful old snob, you know!’

  For Craig the pervading unhappiness that he had felt at Tungata’s sentence slowly dissipated, swamped by all the excitement and activity at King’s Lynn. In a few months he had all but put it from his mind, only at odd and unexpected moments his memory of his one-time friend barbed him. To the rest of the world, Tungata Zebiwe might have never existed. After the extravagant coverage by press and television of his trial, it seemed that a curtain of silence was drawn over him like a shroud.

  Then abruptly, once again the name Tungata Zebiwe was blazed from every television screen and bannered on every front page across the entire continent.

  Craig and Sally-Anne sat in front of the television set, appalled and disbelieving, as they listened to the first reports. When they ended, and the programme changed to a weather report, Craig stood up and crossed to the set. He switched it off and came back to her side, moving like a man who was still in deep shock from some terrible accident.

  The two of them sat in silence in the darkened room, until Sally-Anne reached for his hand. She squeezed it hard, but her shudder was involuntary, it racked her whole body.

  ‘Those poor little girls – they were babies. Can you imagine their terror?’

  ‘I knew the Goodwins. They were fine people. They always treated their black people well,’ Craig muttered.

  ‘This proves – as nothing else possibly could – that they were right to lock him away like a dangerous animal.’ Her horror was beginning to turn to anger.

  ‘I can’t see what they could possibly hope to gain by this—’ Craig was still shaking his head incredulously, and Sally-Anne burst out.

  ‘The whole country, the whole world must see them for what they are. Bloodthirsty, inhuman—’ her voice cracked and became a sob. ‘Those babies – oh Christ in heaven, I hate him. I wish him dead.’

  ‘They used his name – that doesn’t mean Tungata ordered it, condoned it, or even knew about it.’ Craig tried to sound convincing.

  ‘I hate him,’ she whispered. ‘I hate him for it.’

  ‘It’s madness. All they can possibly achieve is to bring Shona troops sweeping through Matabeleland like the wrath of all the gods.’

  ‘The little one was only five years old.’ In her outrage and sorrow, Sally-Anne was repeating herself.

  ‘Nigel Goodwin was a good man – I knew him quite well, we were in the same special police unit during the war, I liked him.’ Craig went to the drinks table and poured two whiskies. ‘Please God, don’t let it all start again. All the awfulness and cruelty and horror – please God, spare us that.’

  Although Nigel Goodwin was almost forty years of age, he had one of those beefy pink faces unaffected by the African sun that made him look like a lad. His wife, Helen, was a thin, dark-haired girl, her plainness alleviated by her patent good nature and her sparkly, toffee-brown eyes.

  The two girls were weekly boarders at the convent in Bulawayo. At eight years, Alice Goodwin had ginger hair and gingery freckles and, like her father, she was plump and pink. Stephanie, the baby, was five, really too young for boarding-school. However, because she had an elder sister at the convent, the Reverend Mother made an exception in her case. She was the pretty one, small and dark and chirpy as a little bird with her mother’s bright eyes.

  Each Friday morning, Nigel and Helen Goodwin drove in seventy-eight miles from the ranch to town. At one o’clock they picked up the girls from the convent, had lunch at the Selbourne Hotel, sharing a bottle of wine, and then spent the afternoon shopping. Helen restocked her groceries, chose material to make into dresses for herself and the girls, and then, while the girls went to watch a matinee at the local cinema, had her hair washed, cut and set, the one extravagance of her simple existence.

  Nigel was on the committee of the Matabele Farmers’ Union, and spent an hour or two at the Union’s offices in leisurely discussion with the secretary and those other members who were in town for the day. Then he strolled down the wide sun-scorched streets, his slouch hat pushed back on his head, hands in pockets, puffing happily on a black briar, greeting friends and acquaintances both white and black, stopping every few yards for a word or a chat.

  When he arrived back where he had left the Toyota truck outside the Farmers’ Co-operative, his Matabele headman, Josiah, and two labourers were waiting for him. They loaded the purchases of fencing and tools and spare parts and cattle medicines and other odds and ends into the truck, and as they finished, Helen and the girls arrived for the journey homes.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss,’ Nigel accosted his wife, ‘have you seen Mrs Goodwin anywhere?’ It was his little weekly joke, and Helen giggled delightedly and preened her new hairdo.

  For the girls he had a bag of liquorice allsorts. His wife protested, ‘Sweets are so bad for their teeth, dear,’ and Nigel winked at the girls and agreed, ‘I know, but just this once won’t kill them.�
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  Stephanie, because she was the baby, rode in the truck cab between her parents, while Alice went in the back with Josiah and the other Matabele.

  ‘Wrap up, dear, it will be dark before we get home,’ Helen cautioned her.

  The first sixty-two miles were on the main road, and then they turned off on the farm track, and Josiah jumped down to open the wire gate and let them through.

  ‘Home again,’ said Nigel contentedly, as he drove onto his own land. He always said that and Helen smiled and reached across to lay her hand on his leg.

  ‘It’s nice to be home, dear,’ she agreed.

  The abrupt African night fell over them, and Nigel switched on the headlights. They picked up the eyes of the cattle in little bright points of light, fat contented beasts, the smell of their dung sharp and ammoniacal on the cool night air.

  ‘Getting dry,’ Nigel grunted. ‘Need some rain.’

  ‘Yes, dear.’ Helen picked little Stephanie onto her lap, and the child cuddled sleepily against her shoulder.

  ‘There we are,’ Nigel murmured. ‘Cooky has lit the lamps.’

  He had been promising himself an electric generator for the last ten years, but there was always something else more important, so they were still on gas and paraffin. The lights of the homestead flickered a welcome at them between the stems of the acacia trees.

  Nigel parked the truck beside the back veranda and cut the engine and headlights. Helen climbed down carrying Stephanie. The child was asleep now with her thumb in her mouth, and her skinny bare legs dangling.

  Nigel went to the back of the truck and lifted Alice down.

  ‘Longile, Josiah, you can go off now. We will unload the truck tomorrow morning,’ he told his men. ‘Sleep well!’

  Holding Alice’s hand, he followed his wife to the veranda, but before they reached it the dazzling beam of a powerful flashlight struck them and the family stopped in a small compact group.

  ‘Who is it?’ Nigel demanded irritably, shielding his eyes from the beam with one hand, still holding Alice’s hand with the other.

  His eyes adjusted and he could see beyond the flashlight, and suddenly he felt sick with fear for his wife and his babies. There were three black men, dressed in blue denim jeans and jackets. Each of them carried an AK 47 rifle. The rifles were pointed at the family group. Nigel glanced behind him quickly. There were other strangers, he was not sure how many. They had come out of the night, and under their guns Josiah and his two labourers were huddled fearfully.

  Nigel thought of the steel gun safe in his office at the end of the veranda. Then he remembered that it was empty. At the end of the war, one of the first acts of the new black government had been to force the white farmers to hand in all their weapons. It didn’t really matter, he realized. He could never have reached the safe, anyway.

  ‘Who are they, Daddy?’ Alice asked, her voice was small with fear. Of course she knew. She was old enough to remember the war days.

  ‘Be brave, my darlings,’ Nigel said to all of them, and Helen drew closer to his bulk, still holding baby Stephanie in her arms.

  The muzzle of a rifle was thrust into Nigel’s back. His hands were pulled behind him, and his wrists bound together. They used galvanized wire. It cut into his flesh. Then they took Stephanie from her mother’s arms, and set her down. Her legs were unsteady from sleep and she blinked like an owlet in the flashlight beam, still sucking her thumb. They wired Helen’s hands behind her back. She whimpered once as the wire cut in and then bit down on her lip. Two of them took the wire to the children.

  ‘They are babies,’ Nigel said in Sindebele. ‘Please do not tie them, please do not hurt them.’

  ‘Be silent, white jackal,’ one of them replied in the same language and went down on one knee behind Stephanie.

  ‘It’s sore, Daddy,’ she began to cry. ‘He’s hurting me. Make him stop.’

  ‘You must be brave,’ Nigel repeated, stupidly and inadequately, hating himself. ‘You’re a big girl now.’

  The other man went to Alice.

  ‘I won’t cry,’ she promised. ‘I’ll be brave, Daddy.’

  ‘That’s my own sweet girl,’ he said, and the man tied her.

  ‘Walk!’ commanded the one with the flashlight, who was clearly the leader of the group, and with the barrel of his automatic rifle prodded the children up the back steps onto the kitchen veranda.

  Stephanie tripped and sprawled. With her hands tied behind her she could not regain her feet. She wriggled helplessly.

  ‘You bastards,’ whispered Nigel. ‘Oh, you filthy bastards.’

  One of them took a handful of the child’s hair and lifted her to her feet. She stumbled, weeping hysterically, to where her sister stood against the veranda wall.

  ‘Don’t be a baby, Stephy,’ Alice told her. ‘It’s just a game.’ But her voice quavered with her own terror, and her eyes in the lamplight were huge and brimming with tears.

  They lined up Nigel and Helen beside the girls, and the flashlight played back and forth into each face in turn, blinding them so they could not see what was happening out in the yard.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Nigel asked. ‘The war is over – we have done you no harm.’

  There was no reply at all, just a beam of brilliant light moving across their pale faces, and the sound of Stephanie weeping, a racking piteous sobbing. Then there was the murmur of other voices in the darkness, many subdued frightened voices, women and children and men.

  ‘They have brought our people to watch,’ said Helen softly. ‘It’s just like the war days. It’s going to be an execution.’ She spoke so the girls could not hear her. Nigel could think of nothing to say. He knew she was right.

  ‘I wish I had told you how much I love you, more often,’ he said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she whispered. ‘I knew all along.’

  They could make out a throng of Matabele from the farm village now, a dark mass of them beyond the glaring torch, and then the voice of the leader was raised in Sindebele.

  ‘These are the white jackals that feed upon the land of the Matabele. These are the white offal that are in league with the Mashona killers, the eaters-of-dirt in Harare, the sworn enemies of the children of Lobengula—’

  The orator was working himself up into the killing frenzy. Already Nigel could see that the other men guarding them were beginning to sway and hum, losing themselves in that berserker passion where no reason exists. The Matabele had a name for it, ‘the divine madness’. When old Mzilikazi had been king, one million human beings had died from this divine madness.

  ‘These white lickers of Mashona faces are the traitors who delivered Tungata Zebiwe, the father of our people, to the death camps of the Mashona,’ screamed the leader.

  ‘I embrace you, my darlings,’ Nigel Goodwin whispered.

  Helen had never heard him say anything so tender before, and it was that, not fear, that made her begin to weep. She tried to force back the tears, but they ran down and dripped from her chin.

  ‘What must we do with them?’ howled the leader.

  ‘Kill them!’ cried one of his own men, but the massed farm Matabele were silent in the darkness.

  ‘What must we do with them?’ the question was repeated.

  This time the leader leapt down from the veranda and shouted it into the faces of the farm people, still they were silent.

  ‘What must we do with them?’ Again the question, and this time the sound of blows, the rubbery slap of a rifle-barrel against black flesh.

  ‘What must we do with them?’ The same question for the fourth time.

  ‘Kill them!’ An uncertain terrified response, and more blows.

  ‘Kill them!’ The cry was taken up.

  ‘Kill them!’

  ‘Abantwana kamina!’ A woman’s voice, Nigel recognized it as that of fat old Martha, the girls’ nanny. ‘My babies,’ she cried, but then her voice was lost in the rising chorus. ‘Kill them! Kill them!’ as the divine madness spr
ead.

  Two men, both denim-clad, stepped into the torch light. They seized Nigel by his arms and turned him to face the wall, before forcing him to his knees.

  The leader handed the flashlight to one of his men and he took the pistol from the belt of his jeans, and pulled back the slide forcing a round into the chamber. The breech made a sharp snapping rattle. He put the muzzle of the pistol to the back of Nigel’s head and fired a single shot. Nigel was thrown forward onto his face. The contents of his skull were dashed against the white wall, and then began to run down it in a jelly-like stream to the floor.

  His feet were still kicking and dancing as they forced Helen down to her knees facing the wall beside her husband’s corpse.

  ‘Mummy!’ screamed Alice as the next pistol bullet tore out through her mother’s forehead and her skull collapsed inwards. Alice’s pathetic little show of courage was over. Her legs gave way, and she crumpled to the veranda floor. With a soft spluttery sound her bowels voided involuntarily.

  The leader stepped up to her. Her forehead was almost touching the floor. Her gingery curls had parted, exposing the back of her neck. The leader extended his right arm full length, and touched the muzzle of the pistol to the tender white skin at the nape. His arm jerked to the recoil and the shot was muffled to a jarring thud. Blue tendrils of gunsmoke spiralled upwards in the beam of the flashlight.

  Little Stephanie was the only one who struggled, until the leader clubbed her with the barrel of the pistol. Even then she wriggled and kicked, lying on the veranda floor in the spreading puddle of her sister’s blood. The leader placed his foot between her shoulder blades to hold her still for the shot. The bullet came out through Stephanie’s temple just in front of her right ear, and it gouged a hole not much larger than a thimble in the concrete of the veranda floor. The hole filled swiftly with the child’s blood.

  The leader stooped and dipped his forefinger into the cup of dark blood, and with it wrote on the white veranda wall in large erratic letters, ‘TUNGATA ZEBIWE LIVES.’