Elephant Song

He waited until the road turned left. The pull would hold him against the side of the cab, rather than throwing him clear.

He slid over the side and clutched at the wing mirror. For a moment his feet were kicking in air, then they hit the wide steel running-board andfound a hold. He was facing inwards, hanging on to the mirror and peering in through the side window of the cab.

Gomo turned a startled face towards him and shouted something. He tried to reach across to the locking handle of the door, but the full width of the passenger seat separated him from it and the truck slewed wildly and nearly left the road, for Gomo to grab the wheel again.

Daniel jerked open the side door and threw himself into the cab, sprawling half across the seat. gomo punched at-his face.

The fist caught Daniel under the left eye and stunned him for only a moment, then Daniel seized the handle of the vacuum brake control and heaved it full on.

All the gigantic wheels of the truck locked simultaneously and, in a shrieking billow of blue smoke and scorching rubber, the truck skidded and swayed down the highway. Gomo was hurled forward out of his seat.

The steering-wheel caught him in the chest and his forehead cracked against the windshield with enough force to star the glass.

Then the next wild swing of the vehicle flung him back, only semi-conscious, into his seat. Daniel reached across him and seized the steering-wheel. He held the truck straight until it came to a halt, half off the highway, with its offside wheels in the drainage ditch.

Daniel switched off the ignition and reached across gomo to open the driver's door. He grabbed gomo's shoulder and shoved him roughly out of the cab. Gomo fell the six feet to the ground and ended up on his knees.

There was a lump the size and colour of a ripe fig in the centre of his forehead where he had hit the windscreen.

Daniel jumped down and stooped to catch hold of the collar of his uniform tunic. All right. He twisted the collar like a garotte. You killed Johnny Nzou and his family. gomo's. face was swelling and turning purple black in the vague light reflected from the truck's headlamps. Please, Doctor, I don't understand. Why are you doing this?

His voice was a breathless whine as Daniel choked him. You lying bastard, you are as guilty-Gama reached under the hem of his tunic. He wore a skinning knife in a leather sheath on his belt. Daniel heard the snap of the buckle as he released the retaining strap and caught the glint of the blade as it came free of the sheath.

Daniel released his collar and jumped back as gomo slashed upwards.

He was only just quick enough, for the blade caught in a loose fold of his shirt and sliced it like a razor. He felt the sting of it as it nicked his skin and left a shallow graze. up across his lower ribs.

Gama came to his feet, holding the knife in a low underhand grip. I kill you, he warned, shaking his head to clear it, weaving the glittering blade in the typical knife-fighter's on-guard stance, aiming the point at Daniel's belly. I kill you, you white shit-eater.

He feinted and cut in a sidearm slash and Daniel jumped back as the blade hissed an inch from his stomach.

Yah! Gomo chuckled thickly. Jump, you white baboon.

Run, you little white monkey. He cut again, forcing Daniel to give ground, and then rushed at him in a furious prolonged attack that forced Daniel to scramble and dance to keep clear of the darting blade.

Gama changed the angle of his thrusts, going lower, trying to cut Daniel's thighs and cripple him, but always keeping the knife well covered so that Daniel could not grab at his wrist.

Moving backwards, Daniel pretended to stumble on the rough footing.

He dropped on one knee and put his left hand to the ground to regain his balance. Yah! Gomo thought he saw his opportunity and came in to finish it, but Daniel had snatched up a handful of gravel and now he pushed off and used his momentum to hurt the handful into gomo's face.

It was an old knife-fighter's trick, but gomo fell for it. The gravel slashed his eyes, and deflected his thrust.

Instinctively he threw up his hands to cover his face, and Daniel seized his knife-hand and wrenched it over.

They were chest to chest now, the knife held above their heads at the full stretch of their arms. Daniel snapped his head forward, butting for Gomo's face, and caught him with the top of his forehead across the bridge of his nose. Gomo gasped and reeled backwards; and Daniel brought up his right knee into Gama's crotch, catching him squarely, crushing his genitals.

This time gomo screamed and his right arm lost its force.

Daniel swung it down and slammed the knuckles of the clenched knife-hand against the steel side of the truck. The knife spun from gomo's nerveless fingers, and Daniel hooked him behind the heels with one foot, and heaved him backwards so that he tripped and went sprawling into the drainage ditch beside the highway.

Before Gomo could recover his balance and rise, Daniel had snatched up the knife and was standing over him. He placed the point of the blade under gomo's chin and pricked the soft skin of his throat so that a single droplet of blood welled out on to the silver steel like a bright cabochon ruby. Keep still, he grated, or I'll cut your gizzard out, you murdering bastard. it took a few seconds for him to recover his breath. All right.

Now get up, slowly. Gama came to his feet, clutching his injured genitals. Daniel forced him back against the side of the truck, the knife still pressed to his throat. You've got the ivory in the truck, he accused.

Let's have a look at it, my friend. No, Gomo whispered. No ivory.

I don't know what you want. You are mad, man. Where are the keys to the hold? Daniel demanded, and Gama swivelled his eyes without moving his head. in my pocket. Turn around, slowly, Daniel ordered. Face the side of the truck. gomo obeyed Daniel whipped his arm around his throat in a stranglehold from behind and shoved him forward so that his lumped forehead cracked against the steel hull. Gomo cried out with the pain.

Give me an excuse to do that again, Daniel whispered in his ear. The sound of your pig squeals is sweet music. He pressed the knife into gomo's back at the level of his kidneys, just hard enough to let him feel the point of it through the cloth of his tunic. Get the keys. He pricked him a little harder and Gomo reached into his pocket. The keys tinkled as he brought them out.

Still holding him in a strangler's grip, Daniel frog-marched him to the rear of the truck.

the lock, he snapped. Gomo fitted the key and the Open mechanism turned easily. Okay, now get the handcuffs off your belt, he ordered.

The steel manacles were regulation issue for all rangers on anti-poaching duty. Snap one link over your right wrist, Daniel told him. And give me the key. The cuffs dangling from his wrist, Gomo passed the key over his shoulder. Daniel slipped it into his pocket, then snapped the second link of the handcuffs over the steel bracing of the hull.

Now Gomo was securely chained to the bodywork of the truck and Daniel released his grip on him and turned the locking handle of the rear double doors.

He swung them open. A gust of icy air flowed out of the refrigerated interior and the smell of elephant meat was gamey and rank. The inside of the hold was in darkness, but Daniel jumped up onto the tailgate and groped for the lightswitch. The striplight on the roof flickered and then lit up the refrigerated compartment with a cold blue glow. Hunks of butchered carcass streaked and marbled with white fat hung from the rows of meat-hooks along the roof rails. There were tons of flesh, packed in so closely that Daniel could see only the first rank of carcasses. He dropped on his knees and peered into the narrow space below them. The steel floor was puddled with dripping blood, but that was all.

Daniel felt a sudden swoop of dismay in his guts. He had expected to see piles of tusks packed beneath the hanging carcasses. He scrambled to his feet and pushed his way into the compartment. The cold took his breath away, and the touch of the raw frozen flesh as he brushed against it was loathsome and disgusting, but he wriggled his way deeper into the hold, determined to find where they had concealed the ivory.

He gave up after ten minutes. There was no place where they could have hidden such a bulky cargo. He jumped down to ground level. His clothing was stained from contact with the raw meat. On hands and knees he crawled under the chassis of the truck, searching for a secret compartment.

When he crawled out again, Gomo crowed at him gleefully, No ivory, truck.

I tell you, no ivory. You break government You beat me. Plenty trouble for you now, white boy. We haven't finished yet, Daniel promised him. We haven't finished until you sing me a little song, the song about what you and the Chinaman did with the ivory. No ivory, Gomo repeated, but Daniel grabbed his shoulder and swung him around to face the side of the truck.

With one deft movement he unlocked the link of the cuffs from the bodywork, twisted both Gomo's wrists up behind his back and locked them there. Okay, brother, he muttered grimly. Let's go where we have a little light to work in. He lifted Gomo's manacled hands up between his shoulderblades and marched him to the front of the truck. He handcuffed him to the front fender between the headlights. Both Gama's hands were pinned behind his back. He was helpless. Johnny Nzou was my friend, he told Gomo softly. You raped his wife and his little daughters. You beat his son's brains out all over the wall. You shot Johnny-'No, not me. I know nothing, Gomo screamed. I kill nobody. No ivory, no kill..

Daniel went on quietly, as though Gomo had not interjected. You must believe me when I tell you that I'm going to enjoy doing this. Every time you squeal, I will think of Johnny Nzou, and I'll be glad. I know nothing. You mad. Daniel slipped the knife-blade under Gomo's belt and sliced through the leather. His khaki uniform trousers sagged down around his hips. Daniel pulled the waistband open and thrust the blade into his trouser top.

How many wives have you got, Gomo? he asked. Four?

Five? How many? He slit through the waistband and Gomo's trousers slid down around his ankles. I think your wives want you to tell me about the ivory, Gomo. They want you to tell me about Johnny Nzou and how he died.

Daniel pulled the elasticised top of Gomo's underpants down around his knees. Let's have a look at what you've got. He smiled coldly. I think your wives are going to be very unhappy, Gomo. Daniel took the front tails of Gomo's tunic and ripped them apart so violently that the buttons popped off and flew away into the darkness beyond the headlights. He pulled the separate flaps of the tunic back over Gomo's shoulders, so that he was naked from the throat to the knees. gomo's body hair covered his chest and paunch with tight black balls of wool.

His genitals were massively bunched at the base of his belly, nestled in their own flocculent pelt. Sing me a little song about the ivory and Mr.

Ning, Daniel invited, and used the flat of the blade to separate gomo's dangling penis from the bunch.

Gomo gasped and tried to shrink away from the cold metallic touch, but the radiator grill pressed against his back and he could not move.

Talk, gomo, even if it is only to say goodbye to your own matondo. You are mad, gomo gasped. I don't know what you want.

What I want, said Daniel, is to cut this off at the root.

The thick tube of flesh was draped over the flat of the blade.

It looked like the trunk of a new-born elephant, long and dark, knotted with veins and with a wrinkled and hooded tip. I want to cut this off and force you to kiss it goodbye, Gama. I didn't kill Johnny Nzou.

Gomo's voice broke. It wasn't me. What about his wife and daughters, Gomo? Did you use this big ugly rod of yours on them? No, no! You are mad. I didn't. .

Come on, Gomo. All I have to do is turn the knife a little, like this.

Daniel rolled his wrist slowly, bringing the razor edge uppermost.

gomo's organ was dangling over it, and then the thin skin split. It was just a scratch, but Gomo screamed. Stop! he bleated. I will tell you. Yes, all right, I will tell you everything I know. Stop, please stop! That's good. Daniel encouraged him. Tell me about Chetti Singh. . . He introduced the name with assurance. It was a flier, but Gomo accepted. Yes, I tell you about him, if you don't cut me. Please don't cut me. Armstrong. Another voice startled Daniel. He had not heard the Landcruiser come up. It must have arrived while he was searching the cold compartment of the truck, but now Jock stood in the peripheral shadows of the headlights.

Leave him, Armstrong. Jock's voice was rough with determination.

Get away from that man, he ordered. You keep out of this, Daniel snapped at him, but Jock stepped closer and with a start Daniel saw that he carried the AK rifle. He handled it with surprising competence and authority.

Leave him alone, Jock ordered. You've gone too far much too far.

The man is a murderer and a criminal, Daniel protested, but he was forced to step back before the menace of the AK 47.

Jock was pointing it at his belly.

You haven't any proof. There is no ivory, Jock told him. You don't have anything. He was confessing, Daniel told him angrily. If you just keep out of it-'You were torturing him, Jock answered as angrily.

You had a knife to his balls. of course, he was confessing. He has rights; you can't abuse those rights. Unchain him now; let him go!

You are a bleeding heart, Daniel turned. This is an animal-'He is a human being, Jock contradicted. And I have to stop you abusing him, or else I'm as guilty as you are. I don't want to spend the next ten years in prison.

Turn him loose. He will confess first, or I'll cut his balls out.

Daniel seized a handful of gomo's genitals and pulled. The loose skin and flesh stretched like shiny black rubber and Daniel held the knifeblade threateningly over it.

Gama screamed, and Jock lifted the AK 47 and fired. He aimed a foot over Daniel's head. The muzzle blast whipped through Daniel's thick sweatsoaked curls and sent him reeling backwards clutching his ears. I warned you, Daniel. Jock's expression was grim. Give me the keys of the handcuffs. Daniel was dazed by the blast, and Jock fired again.

The bullet ploughed into the gravel between Daniel's boots. I mean it, Danny. I swear it. I'll kill you before I let you suck me any further into this business. You saw Johnny. . . Daniel shook his head and held his ears, but the muzzle blast had temporarily stunned him. I also saw you threaten to emasculate this man. That's enough. Give me the keys or the next shot is through one of your knee-caps. Daniel saw that he meant it and reluctantly tossed him the keys. All right, now stand well back, Jock ordered. He kept the rifle pointed at Daniel's belly as he unlocked one of the cuffs from Gomo's wrist, and handed him the key.

You bloody idiot, Daniel swore with frustration. Another minute, and I would have had him. I would have found out who killed Johnny and what happened to the ivory. gomo unlocked his other wrist and swiftly pulled up his trousers and closed his tunic. Now that he was unchained and dressed, gomo recovered his bravado. He is talking shit! His voice was loud and defiant. I didn't say nothing. I don't know about Nzou. He was alive when we left Chiwewe. -'All right. You can tell all that to the police, Jock stopped Gomo. I'm taking you to Harare in the truck.

Fetch my camera and bag from the Landcruiser. They are on the front seat.

Gama hurried back to where the Landcruiser was parked. Listen, Jock.

just give me another five minutes, Daniel pleaded, but Jock waved the rifle at him. You and I are finished, Danny. First thing I'm going to do when I reach Harare is make a full report to the police. I'm going to give them chapter and verse. Gomo came back, lugging the Sony video recorder and Jock's canvas duffel bag. Yes, you tell the police you saw this mad white shit-eater cut my cock, Gomo shouted. You tell them no ivory. . Get in the truck, Jock ordered him. And start up.

When Gama obeyed he turned back to Daniel. I'm sorry, Danny.

You're on your own. You get no more help from me. I'll give evidence against you if they ask me to. I've got to cover my own arse, man. You can't help being a yellow belly, Daniel nodded But weren't you the one always sounding off about justice, what about Johnny and Mavis? What you were doing didn't have anything to do with justice, Jock raised his voice above the rumble of the truck's diesel engine.

You were playing the sheriff and the posse and the hangman, Danny.

That wasn't justice; it was vengeance. I want no part of it. You know my address. You can send the money you owe me there. So long, Danny.

Sorry it had to end this way. He climbed up to the passenger side of the cab. Don't try to stop us again. He brandished the AK 47. I know how to use this. Jock slammed the door and Gomo swung the truck back on to the highway.

Daniel was left standing in the darkness, staring after the bright red gemstones of the tail-lights until a bend in the road hid them.

His ears were still singing from the concussion of the rifle blast. He felt dizzy and nauseous. He staggered slightly as he walked back to where Jock had left the Landcruiser parked, and slumped into the driver's seat.

For a little longer his anger sustained him, anger at Cheng and his accomplices, at gomo, and most of all at Jock and his interference.

Then slowly his anger evaporated and the seriousness of his own predicament began to sink in. He had acted wildly and dangerously. He had made accusations which he could not support; he had damaged property, and he had endangered life and committed aggravated assault on a government official, if not grievous bodily harm. They could get him on half a dozen charges.

Then once again he thought of Johnny and his family, and his personal peril was of no significance.

I was so close to breaking the whole scheme, he thought bitterly.

Another few minutes with Gomo and I would have had them. I almost had them for you, Johnny.

He had to decide on his next actions, but his head was aching, and it was hard to think logically. There was no point in chasing after Gomo.

He was alerted, and he had somehow managed to get rid of the ivory.

What other courses of action were open to him? Ning Cheng Gong, of course. He was the key to the entire plot. However, the only connection to him, now that the ivory had disappeared, was Johnny's cryptic note and the footprint he had left at the murder scene.

Then there was Chetti Singh. Gomo had tacitly admitted that he knew the Sikh. What had he said when Daniel had tried him with the name?

Yes, I tell you about him, if you don't cut me. . .

There was also the band of poachers. He wondered if Isaac Mtwetwe had been able to intercept the gang on the Zambezi crossing, and take prisoners. Isaac would not have the same scruples as Jock. Johnny had also been Isaac's friend. He would know how to get information out of a captured poacher. I'll ring Mana Pools from the police post at Chirundu, he decided, and started the Landcruiser. He U-turned and headed back down the escarpment. The Chirundu bridge police station was closer than Karoi. He had to make a statement to the police and make sure that a police investigation was under way as soon as possible. The police must be warned about Johnny's note and the bloody footprints.

Daniel's head still ached. He stopped the Landcruiser for a few minutes while he found a bottle of Panadol tablets in the first-aid kit and washed down a couple of them with a mug of coffee from the vacuum flask.

While he drove on the pain abated and he started to put his thoughts into order.

It was almost four o'clock in the morning when he reached Chirundu bridge. There was a solitary corporal in the police charge office.

His arms were folded on the desk in front of him, cradling his head.

He was so soundly asleep that Daniel had to shake him vigorously, and his eyes were swollen and bloodshot when at last he raised his head, and blinked uncomprehendingly at Daniel. I want to report a murder, a multiple murder. Daniel began the long laborious process of getting the official machinery in motion.

When the corporal seemed unable to decide upon the correct procedure, Daniel sent him to call the member-in-charge from his rondavel at the back of the station house. When the sergeant came into the charge office at last, he was dressed in full uniform, including Sam Browne belt and cap, but he was still half asleep. Ring CID in Harare, Daniel urged him.

They must send a unit to Chiwewe. First you must make a statement, the sergeant insisted.

There was no typewriter in the charge office; this was a remote rural station. The sergeant took down Daniel's statement in halting childlike longhand. His lips moved as he spelled out each separate letter silently. Daniel wanted to take the ballpoint away from him and get it down himself.

Damn it, sergeant. Those dead people are lying out there.

The killers are getting away while we sit here. The sergeant went on placidly with his composition, and Daniel corrected his spelling and turned with exasperation.

However, the pace of the dictation allowed him to phrase his statement carefully. He set down the timetable of the previous day's events: the time that he had left Chiwewe and said goodbye to Johnny Nzou; the time he had found the signs of the raiding party and decided to return to the headquarters camp with a warning; and the time that he had met the refrigerator trucks on the road in company with the ambassador's Mercedes.

He described his conversation with Ambassador Ning and hesitated, wondering whether to mention the bloodstain that he had noticed on his blue slacks. it would sound like an accusation.

The hell with protocol, he decided, and described in detail the blue slacks and the training shoes with fish-scale patterned soles. They'll have to investigate now. He felt a grim satisfaction, as he went on to describe his return to Chiwewe and the carnage he had found there.

He made sure to mention the note in Johnny's hand and the fishscale pattern of the bloody footprint on the office floor without specifically relating either to the Taiwanese ambassador. Let them make their own inferences.

He had a great deal of difficulty when it came to describing his pursuit of the Mercedes and the refrigerator trucks. He had to give his motives without incriminating himself, or pointing too definitely at the suspicions he entertained towards Ning Cheng Gong. I followed the convoy to ask them if they had any knowledge of the missing ivory, he dictated.

Although I was unable to catch up with Ambassador Ning and the leading truck, I did speak to Ranger Gomo whom I met on the Karoi road and who was driving the second refrigerator truck. He denied any knowledge of these events and allowed me to inspect the contents of the truck. I found no ivory. It galled him to have to admit this, but he had to cover himself against any charges that Gomo might bring against him later. I then determined that my duty was to contact the nearest police station and report the deaths of the Chiwewe warden, his family and staff, and the burning and destruction of buildings and other property. It was well after daybreak when Daniel could at last sign the handwritten statement, and only then would the police sergeant respond to his urging to telephone CID headquarters in Harare.

This led to a protracted telephone discussion between the sergeant and a series of increasingly senior detectives in Harare as one passed him on to the other. This was the pace of Africa and Daniel gritted his teeth.

AWA, he told himself. Africa Wins Again. At last it was ordered that the sergeant should drive out to Chiwewe camp in the station Landrover while a team of detectives flew down from Harare to land at the Park's airstrip. Do you want me to come out with you to Chiwewe?

Daniel asked, when the sergeant finally relinquished the telephone and began preparations for his expedition to the camp.

The sergeant looked nonplussed by the question. He had received no instructions from CID as to what to do with the witness. You leave an address and telephone number where we can contact you if we need you, he decided, after a great deal of frowning thought.

Daniel was relieved to be turned loose. Since arriving at the Chirundu police station, he had had many hours in which to consider the situation, and make his plans to cover every contingency.

If Isaac Mtwetwe had been able to capture any of the poachers, that would still be the swiftest path to Ning Cheng Gong, but he had to talk to Isaac before he handed over his prisoners to the police. I want to use your telephone, he told the police corporal as soon as the station commander and his unit of armed constables had driven away in the green Landrover, heading for Chiwewe. Police telephone. The corporal shook his head.

Not public telephone. Daniel produced a blue ten Zim dollar note and laid it on the desk in front of him. It is only a local call, he explained, and the banknote vanished miraculously. The corporal smiled and waved him towards the telephone. Daniel had made a friend.

Isaac Mtwetwe answered the call almost immediately the Karoi telephone exchange made the connection to Mana Pools. Isaac, Daniel blurted with relief. When did you get back? I have just walked into my office this minute, Isaac told him. We got back ten minutes ago. I have one man wounded. I must get him to hospital. You made contact, then? Yes, we made contact. Like you said, Danny, a big gang, bad guys. Did you get any prisoners, Isaac? Daniel demanded eagerly.

if you managed to grab a couple of them, we're home and dry. Isaac Mtwetwe stood at the wheel of the twenty-foot assault craft and ran downriver in the night.

His rangers squatted on the deck below the gunwale and huddled into their greatcoats, for it was cold out on the water with the wind of their passage accentuating the chill of the river mist.

The outboard motor was running rough and cutting out intermittently.

Twice Isaac had to let the boat drift while he went back to work on it.

it badly needed a full overhaul, but there was never enough foreign exchange available for spares to be imported. He got her running again and pointed the bows downstream.

A thick slice of moon spiked up above the dark trees that lined the bank of the Zambezi. it gave Isaac just enough light to push the boat up to top speed. Although he knew each curve and stretch of the river intimately for the next fifty miles, right down to Tete and the Mozambique border, the shallows and rocky outcrops were too complex even for him to run in complete darkness. The glow of moonlight turned the patches of river mist to iridescent pearl dust and gave to the open water a lustre like polished black obsidian. The subdued hum of the motor and the speed of their progress gave no advance warning. They drew level with the hippopotamuses feeding in the reedbanks before the monstrous amphibians were aware of their arrival.

In panic they tobogganed down the steep and slippery paths into the river, and went through the surface in a welter of spray. The flocks of wild duck roosting in the lagoons and quiet backwaters were more alert.

The assault boat's approach sent them aloft on whistling wings, silhouetted against the rising moon.

Isaac knew exactly where he was heading. He had been a freedom fighter during the bush war and he had crossed this same river to raid the white farms and harass the security forces of Ian Smith's illegal regime. He knew all the techniques and tricks that the poachers employed. Some of them had been his comrades-in-arms in the struggle, but they were the new enemy now. He hated them as much as he had ever hated the Selous Scouts or the Rhodesian Light Infantry.

The Zambezi was almost half a mile wide along this stretch below Chirundu and Mana Pools. The raiders would need craft to cross its mighty green flood. They would get them the same way the guerrillas once had, from the local fisherfolk.

The Zambezi supports an itinerant population of fishermen who build their villages upon her banks. The villages are impermanent, for the tenor of their lives is dictated by the Zambezi's moods. When the river floods her banks and inundates the flood plains, the people must move to higher ground.

They must follow the migrations of the shoals of tilapia and tiger fish and barbeled catfish on which they live, so every few months the clusters of rude thatched huts with their fishsmoking racks and smouldering fires are abandoned and allowed to fall into decay as the tribe moves on.

It was part of Isaac's duty to monitor the movements of the fisherfolk, for their exploitation of the river had a profound effect on the river ecology. Now he smelled the smoke and the odour of drying fish on the night air, and throttled back the motor. Softly he crept in towards the northern bank. If the poachers had come from Zambia, that was where they would return.

The odour of fish was stronger and tendrils of smoke drifted out low across the water to mingle with the mist. There were four huts with shaggy thatched roofs in an angle of the bank, and four long dugout canoes drawn up on the narrow beach below them.

Isaac nosed the assault craft on to the beach and jumped ashore, leaving one of his rangers to hold the bows. An old woman crawled out of the low door of one of the huts. She wore only a skirt of lechwe antelope. skins around her waist and her breasts were empty and pendulous.

. I see you, old mother, Isaac greeted her respectfully. He always took pains to maintain good relations with the riverfolk. I see you, my son, the old woman giggled, and Isaac smelled the rank odour of cannabis on her. The Batonka people pound the weed into a paste, then mould it with fresh cow-dung into balls which they dry in the sun and smoke in clay pipes with reed mouthpieces.

The Government had granted them special dispensation to continue the tradition. It was particularly prevalent amongst the old women of the tribe. Are all your men in their huts? Isaac asked quietly. Are all the canoes on the beach? The old woman blew her nose before she replied. She blocked one nostril with her thumb and from the other shot a shaft of silver mucus into the fire. She wiped the residue from her upper lip with the palm of her hand. All my sons and their wives are asleep in the huts, and their children with them, she cackled. You saw no strange men with guns who wished you to ferry them across the river?

Isaac insisted, and the old woman shook her head and scratched herself.

We saw no strangers. I honour you, old mother, Isaac told her formally, and pressed a small paper packet of sugar into her withered paw. Stay in peace. He ran back to the assault craft. The ranger cast off and jumped aboard as soon as Isaac started the motor.

The next village was three miles further downstream. Once again Isaac went ashore. He knew the headman of this village and found him sitting alone in the smoke from the fish-drying fires to keep off the singing clouds of malarial mosquitoes.

Twenty years before, the headman-had lost one of his feet to a crocodile, but he was still one of the most intrepid boatmen on the river.

Isaac greeted him and gave him a packet of cigarettes and squatted beside him in the smoke. You sit alone, Babo. Why can't you sleep?

Are there things that trouble you? An old man has many memories to trouble him.

The headman was evasive. Like strangers with guns who demand passage in your canoes? Isaac asked. Did you give them what they wanted, Babo?

The headman shook his head. One of the children saw them crossing the flood plains and ran to warn the village. We had time to hide the canoes in the reedbeds and run away into the bush. How many men?

Isaac encouraged him.

The old man showed the fingers of both hands twice. They were hard men with guns, and faces like lions, he whispered. We were afraid.

When was this, Babo? The night before last, the headman replied. When they found no people in the village and no canoes, they were angry.

They shouted at each other and waved their guns, but in the end they went away. He pointed with his chin, eastwards down the river. But now I am afraid they will return. That is why I sit awake while the village sleeps. Are the people of Mbepura still camped at the place of the Red Birds? Isaac asked, and the headman nodded. I think that after these hard men left here, they went down to Mbepura's village.

Thank you, old father. The place of the Red Birds was named for the flocks of carmine-breasted bee-eaters which burrow their nests into the steep cutaway bank of the river at that point. Mbepura's village was on the north bank, across the river from the clay cliff of the breeding colony. Isaac approached it with the engine idling softly, allowing the flow of the Zambezi to drift him down. All his rangers were alert.

They had discarded their greatcoats and now crouched down below the gunwale with their weapons ready.

With a soft burst of the engine, Isaac pushed in closer to the bank.

Mbepura's village was another tiny group of shaggy huts near the water's edge. They seemed deserted and the drying fires below the fish-racks had been allowed to burn out. However, he saw in the gleam of the moon that the mooring poles for the canoes were still standing in the shallow muddy landing, but the canoes were missing. The fisherfolk lived by their canoes, their most precious possession.

Isaac let the assault craft drift on downstream well below the village before he gunned the motor and cut back across the flow of the Zambezi, crossing half a mile of open water to the south bank. If the gang had crossed here, then they would be coming back the same way.

Isaac checked the time, turning the luminous dial of his wristwatch to catch the moonlight. He calculated the distance from Chiwewe headquarters and divided it by the probable rate of march of the poachers, and made allowance for the fact that they were probably carrying heavy loads of plundered ivory.

He looked up at the moon. Already it was paling at the approach of dawn.

He could expect the returning raiders to get back to the Zambezi bank any time within the next two or three hours.

If I can find where they have cached the canoes, he muttered.

His guess was that they had commandeered Mbepura's entire flotilla of canoes. He recalled that on his last visit to the village there had been seven or eight of these frail craft, each of them hollowed out from a massive log of the Kigelia tree. Each of them could accommodate six or seven passengers for the journey across the great river.

The gang would probably have dragooned the men from the village to act as boatmen. The handling of the canoes required skill and experience, for the canoes were cranky and unstable, especially under a heavy load. He guessed that they would probably have left the boatmen under guard on the south bank while they marched on to Chiwewe.

If I can find the canoes, I've got them cold, Isaac decided.

He turned the assault boat in towards the south bank a little downstream from where he judged that the canoes would have crossed.

When he found the entrance to a lagoon he pressed the sharp bows into the dense stand of papyrus reeds that blocked the mouth. He cut the engine and his rangers used handfuls of the tough papyrus stems to pull themselves deeper into the reedbed while Isaac stood in the bows and sounded for bottom with a paddle.

As soon as it was shallow enough, Isaac and one of his senior rangers waded ashore, leaving the rest of the party to guard the boat. On dry land Isaac gave his ranger whispered orders, sending him down-river to search for the canoes and check the bank for signs of the passage of a large party of marauders.

When he had gone, Isaac set off in the opposite direction, upstream.

He went alone, swiftly and silently, moving like a wraith in the river mist.

He had judged it accurately. He had not gone more than half a mile upstream when he smelt smoke. It was too strong and fresh to originate from the village on the far side of the broad river, and Isaac knew that there were no habitations on this bank. This was part of the National Park.

He moved in quietly towards the source of the smoke. At this point the bank was a sheer red clay cliff into which the bee eaters burrowed their subterranean nests. However, there was a break in the cliff directly below where he crouched. it was a narrow gulley, choked with riverine bush that formed a natural landing-place from the river.

The faint glimmer of coming dawn gave Isaac just sufficient light to make out the encampment in the gulley below him. The canoes were drawn up welt out of the water so that they would be concealed from anyone searching from a boat. There were seven canoes, the entire flotilla from Mbepura's village across the river.

Nearby, the boatmen were lying around two small smoky fires. They were wrapped in karosses of animal skin and, as protection from mosquitoes, each of them had drawn the covering completely over his head, so they looked like corpses laid out in a morgue. An armed poacher sat at each fire with his AK 47 rifle across his lap, guarding the sleeping boatmen and making certain that none of them sneaked away to the beached carioes nearby. Danny figured it exactly right, Isaac told himself. They are waiting for the return of the raiding party.

He drew back from the cliff edge and silently circled inland.

Within two hundred yards he intersected a well-trodden game trail that left the river and headed directly southward in the direction of Chiwewe headquarters camp.

approximat Isaac followed it for a short distance until the game trail dipped through a shallow dry water-course. The bed of the water-course was of sugary white sand and the prints that it held were plain to decipher even in the uncertain pre-dawn light. A large party of men in Indian file had trodden deeply, but their tracks were eroded and overlaid by the tracks of both large and small game. Twenty-four hours old, Isaac estimated.

This was the route on their outward march. Almost the raiding party had take certainly they would use the same trail on their return march to rejoin the waiting canoes.

Isaac found a vantage point from which he was able to overlook a long stretch of the trail while remaining well concealed in a patch of dense Jesse bush. At his back there was a secure escape route for him down a shallow donga, the banks of which were screened with a heavy growth of rank elephant grass. He settled in to wait. The light strengthened swiftly and within minutes he could make out the full length of the game trail winding away into the mopane forest.

The sunrise chorus of birds began with the noisy duet of a pair of Heughlin robins in the donga behind him, and then the first flight of wild duck sped overhead. Their arrowhead formation was crisp and black against the tangerine and heron blue of the dawn sky.

Isaac crouched in his ambush position. There was no way that he could be certain how long the poachers might take on the return march from Chiwewe. Danny had reckoned on ten hours or so. If he were correct they would be arriving any minute now. Isaac checked his wristwatch again.

However, Danny's estimate might be wildly inaccurate. Isaac prepared himself for a long wait. During the war, they had at times lain in ambush position for days on end, once for five days when they had slept and eaten and defecated without rising from where they lay. Patience

was the hunter's and the soldier's single most important virtue.

In the distance he heard a baboon bark, that booming alarm call with which the wily ape greets the appearance of a predator.

The cry was taken up by other members of the troop, and then gradually silence returned as the danger receded or the baboons retreated deeper into the forest. Now Isaac's nerves were strung out with tension. He knew that the apes might have barked at a leopard, but they would have reacted the same way to the passing of a file of human beings.

Fifteen minutes later and much closer he heard a grey laurie cry Go away!

Go away! in a harsh screech. Another one of the sentinels of the bush was reacting to the presence of danger.

Isaac never stirred, but he blinked his eyes rapidly to clear his vision.

Minutes later, he picked out another less obtrusive sound from the subtle orchestra of the wilderness. It was the whirring chatter of a honey guide. The sound told him where to look and he spotted the small nondescript brown bird in the top branches of a mopane far ahead.

It flitted above the game trail, flicking its wings, darting from tree to tree and uttering seductive entreaties. If they were prepared to follow the bird, it would lead the honey badger or man to a hive of wild bees.

While they robbed the hive the honey guide would hover in close waiting for its share of the comb and the grubs that it contained. The bird's specially adapted digestive system was capable of breaking down the beeswax and deriving nourishment where no other creature could.

Legend maintained that if you failed to leave the bird his portion of the spoils, then the next time he would lead you to a deadly mamba or a man-eating lion.

The honey guide drew closer to where Isaac waited, and suddenly he discerned obscure movement in the forest below the fluttering bird.

Swiftly the shadowy shapes resolved into a column of men moving down the game trail. The head of the column drew level with the head of the donga where Isaac lay.

Although they were dressed in tattered and filthy clothing with an eclectic selection of hcadwear that ranged from baseball caps to faded military floppies, each of them carried an AK 47

rifle and an elephant tusk.

Some of them carried the tusk balanced upon their heads, the natural curve of the ivory drooping down fore and aft. Others carried it over the shoulder, using one hand to balance the burden while the other hand held the assault rifle. Most of them had woven a pad of bark string and soft grass to cushion the galling weight of the ivory on their scalps or collar-bones.

The agony that their loads were causing after all these hours and miles of trek was evident on their contorted faces. Yet to each of the raiders the tusk they carried represented an enormous fortune, and they would suffer permanent physical damage rather than abandon it.

The man leading the column was short and squat, with thick bow-legs and a bull neck. The mellow early light caught the glossy scar down the side of his face. Sali, Isaac hissed as he recognised him. He was the most notorious of all the Zambian poachers. Twice before their paths had crossed, and each time it had cost the lives of good men.

sed close to where Isaac lay at a swinging jog-trot, He pas carrying the thick honey-coloured tusk balanced on his head.

He alone of all his men showed no signs of distress from the long march.

Isaac counted the poachers as they passed his position. The slower and weaker ones had fallen far behind the killing pace that Sali set, so the column was strung out. It took almost seven minutes by Isaac's wristwatch for all of them to go by.

Nineteen. Isaac counted the last pair as they limped past.

Greedily they had selected tusks too heavy for their own strength and they were paying the price now.

Isaac let them go, but the moment they disappeared in the direction of the river, he rose from his ambush position and slipped away into the donga. He moved with extreme caution for he could not be certain that there were not still other members of the gang on the trail behind him.

The assault boat was where he had left it, moored in the reeds at the entrance to the lagoon. Isaac waded out alongside the boat and swung him self in over the gunwale. He noticed that the man he had sent down river had returned.

Quietly he told his men what he had found, and he watched their expressions. They were good men, all three of them, but the odds were formidable even for them, and the enemy were hard men with faces like lions, as the headman had described them. We will take them on the water, Isaac told them. And we will not wait for them to fire the first shot. They are armed, and they are carrying ivory in the Park.

That is enough. We will take them by surprise when they expect us least. Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, had issued a directive that was unequivocal. They had the right to shoot on sight.

Too many Parks men had been killed in these clashes to justify the usual niceties of a formal challenge.

The expressions of the listening rangers hardened and they hefted their weapons with renewed confidence. Isaac ordered them to work the boat out of the reeds and as soon as they reached open water he cranked the starter motor. The engine balked and fired roughly and cut out.

He cranked it again and again until the battery became sluggish.

They were drifting away swiftly down stream.

Muttering angrily, Isaac hurried back and pulled the cover off the motor.

While he worked on it he was vividly aware that upstream the gang would be loading the plundered ivory into the canoes and preparing to cross back into their own territory and safety.

He left the motor uncovered and ran forward to the controls.

This time the motor fired and ran, surged and then faded. He pumped the throttle and she surged again and then settled to a steady beat.

The engine whined shrilly as he turned across the current and ran back upstream.

The sound of the unmuted motor carried far ahead, and it must have alerted the gang. As Isaac drove the assault boat around the next bend, all the canoes were strung out across the river racing for the north shore.

The rising sun was behind Isaac's back and the broad stretch of water was lit like a theatre stage. The Zambezi was bright emerald green, the papyrus beds were crowned with gold where the sun's rays struck them. The canoes were starkly lit. Each of the frail craft carried a boatman and three passengers, together with a full load of ivory.

Their free-board was only the width of a man's hand, and they lay so low in the water that the men seemed to be crouched on the very surface.

The boatmen were paddling frantically. Their long spearshaped paddles flashed in the sunlight as they drove for the far bank. The leading canoe was already within a hundred yards of the Zambian papyrus beds.

The propeller of the Yamaha carved a lacy wake from the glossy green surface as Isaac swung the boat in a long curving trajectory to head off the leading canoe from the sanctuary of the reeds.

As the two vessels closed, Isaac made out the scarred visage of Sali . He squatted in the warped bows, turning his head awkwardly to glare back at them, unable to move without upsetting the delicate trim of the canoe.

This time we've got you, Isaac whispered, as he pushed the throttle forward to the stop, and the Yamaha shrieked.

Suddenly Sali rose to his feet and the canoe rocked wildly under him.

Water slopped in over the wooden sides and the canoe began to flood and settle. Sali shouted a threat at Isaac; a mask of fury and he lifted the AK his face was contorted into and fired a long continuous burst at the boat racing down on him.

Bullets slammed into the hull and one of the instrument gauges on the control console in front of Isaac exploded. He ducked, but held her on course to ram the canoe.

Soli flicked the empty magazine out of the rifle, and loaded another from his bandolier. He fired again. The bright brass cases sparkled in the sunlight as they were spewed from the breech. One of the rangers in the front of the assault boat cried out and clutched at his stomach as he tumbled to the deck, and at that moment the bows of the assault boat crashed into the side of the canoe at thirty knots. The brittle kigelia wood shattered, and the men in her were hurled into the river.

At the last moment before the collision, Sali threw the AK 47 aside and dived overboard. He tried to force his body deep beneath the water to escape the speeding hull. He thought he could cover the last few yards to the edge of the reedbed without surfacing and showing himself again.

However, his lungs were full of air and the buoyancy prevented him diving deeply enough. Although his head and body were angled downwards, his feet were only a few inches below the surface.

The propeller of the Yamaha was spinning at peak revolutions as it passed over his left leg. It took his foot off cleanly at the ankle and went over his calf muscles like the blade of a bread-slicing machine, shredding the meat down to the bone.

Then the assault boat was past, turning back steeply with Isaac spinning the wheel. She leaned out into the turn as he lined up the bows for the next canoe in the straggling line. He hit it without a check, steering into the fragile hull and spilling its crew into the river, driving it under and running on, swinging into the next turn like a slalom racer weaving through the poles.

The men in the third canoe saw them coming and threw themselves over the side an instant before the bows struck and then they were splashing and screaming as the swift green current carried them away.

Isaac spun the wheel back the other way, and the next canoe was dead ahead. The crew were shouting and pleading and firing wildly. The volleys of bullets kicked up fountains of spray all around the approaching assault craft in the moments before it struck and trod the shattered canoe under.

The remaining canoes had turned back and were paddling desperately for the south bank. Isaac overtook them effortlessly and smashed in the stern of the nearest vessel. He felt the engine check and shudder as the spinning propeller bit into living human flesh and then it surged forward again.

The last canoes reached the south bank and the poachers spilled out of them and tried to clamber up the sheer cliff. The red clay crumbled under their clawing fingers.

Isaac throttled back and turned the bows upstream holding the assault boat against the current. I am a Parks warden, Isaac yelled across at them. You are under arrest. Stand where you are. Do not try to escape or I will fire upon you. One of the poachers still clutched his rifle in his hand. He almost reached the top of the bank before the clay broke away under his feet and he slid down to the water's edge.

Sitting in the red mud, he threw up the rifle and aimed at the men in the assault boat.

The two unwounded rangers were kneeling at the rail, their rifles cocked and levelled. Bulala! Kill! Isaac snapped, and they opened up together, a massed volley of fire that swept the riverbank. They were hand-picked members of the anti-poaching unit, both good marksmen, and they hated the gangs that plundered the elephant herds, savaged their comrades and threatened their own lives.

They laughed as they shot the panic-stricken gang members off the bank.

They made a game of allowing them almost to reach the top of the red clay wall before bringing them flopping and kicking back into the river with a short crisp burst of fire.

Isaac made no effort to restrain them. He had a long-outstanding score to settle with these men, and a few years imprisonment was not enough punishment for their crimes. As the last of them rolled down the bank and sank slowly into the clear green water, he spun the boat and raced back across the river.

Scar-faced Sali was the leader. These others were mere brainless thugs and cannon-fodder. Sali could recruit a new regiment of them for a few dollars 4 head. Sali was the brains and the guts of the trade, and without him this day's work would count for little. Unless Isaac stopped him now, Sali would be back again next week or next month with another gang of ruffians.

He had to crush the head of the mamba or it would strike again.

He raced in close to the edge of the reeds on the north bank, to the spot at which he had rammed the first canoe. Then Isaac turned into the current and throttled back the Yamaha and allowed the current to drift them downstream, using bursts of engine to keep within a few yards of the edge of the reeds.

The two rangers stood at the port rail, and eagerly scrutinised the reedbed as they drifted by.

There was no telling how far the Zambezi current had carried the poacher before he had been able to reach the cover of the papyrus.

Isaac would make only one sweep from the boat for a mile downstream.

Then he would go ashore with his men and heat back along the north bank on foot to pick up any sign that Sali might have left as he dragged himself from the reeds on to dry land and tried to escape. Then they would follow him, for as far and as long as it took.

Strict interpretation of the tow gave Isaac no powers of arrest on the Zambian side of the river, but this was a hot pursuit of a murderer and a notorious bandit. Isaac was prepared to fight if challenged, and put a bullet through his prisoner's head if the Zambian police tried to intervene and take Sali away from him.

At that moment something caught his eye in the reedbed directly opposite the drifting assault boat. Isaac touched the throttle and held the boat stationary against the current.

A small area of reeds had been disturbed, as if something had been dragged through them, a crocodile possibly, or a large leguan lizard, except that clumps of reeds had been twisted and broken as though used as handholds. Crocodiles don't have hands, Isaac grunted, and manoeuvred the boat in closer. The disturbance must have taken place only minutes before, for under his eyes the flattened reeds were still straightening and rising into their original upright position. Then Isaac smiled thinly.

He reached over the side and snapped one of the reeds and held it to the sunlight. The smear of colour along its fibrous stem came a way wet and red on Isaac's fingers and he showed it to the ranger who stood at his shoulder. Blood, the ranger nodded.

He is hurt. The prop- before he could finish the sentence somebody screamed in the reeds ahead of them. It was a high ringing cry of utter terror that froze them all for an instant.

Isaac recovered first and nudged the throttle, forcing the bows into the dense stand of reeds. Somewhere ahead of them the human voice screamed and screamed again.

Deep in the river Sali felt the boat run over him.

His head was filled with the deafening shriek of the spinning propeller blades. The sound had no direction but assaulted his senses from every angle.

Then something struck his left leg a blow that seemed to dislocate his hip and the force of it spun him end over end in the water and disoriented him. He tried to lunge for the surface but his left leg would not respond. There was no pain, just a great heavy numbness as though the limb was encased in a block of concrete that was drawing him down into the green Zambezi depths.

He kicked out wildly with his good leg and suddenly his head broke the surface. Through streaming eyes he saw the assault boat weaving and zigzagging across the river, smashing up the flotilla of canoes and throwing their crews, splashing and screaming, into the river.

Sali welcomed the respite that this attack on the other canoes had afforded him. He knew that he had a few minutes before the boat came roaring back to find him. He turned his head.

The edge of the reedbed was close. With the strength of his fighting anger and outrage still strong upon him, he struck out for it. His leg was a dead weight, a heavy drogue anchor that hampered and slowed him, but he swam with great sweeping overhead strokes of his powerful arms and seconds later grabbed the first handful of papyrus stems.

Desperately he dragged himself into the cover of the reeds, sliding his body over the springing mattress of papyrus, the maimed leg slithering after him.

Deep in the reeds, he paused at last and rolled on to his back to look back the way that he had come. His breathing whistled in his throat as he saw the trail of blood that he had laid through the water.

He grabbed his own knee, lifted the wounded leg above the surface and stared at it in disbelief.

His foot was gone and white bone protruded from the mangled flesh.

His blood spurted and dribbled from the severed vessels so that he floated in a red-brown cloud. Tiny silver fish, excited by the smell of it, darted through the stained water, gobbling the strings and morsels of tattered meat.

Quickly Sali lowered his good leg and tried to touch bottom.

The water closed over his head, but his right foot groped unavailingly for the Zambezi's mud bed. He came to the surface again coughing and choking. He was well out of his depth, with only the thick reeds , to support him.

Far away across the river he heard the sound of gunfire, and then the high-pitched whine of the returning assault craft. It drew closer and closer, until abruptly it sank to a faint burbling sound and he heard voices. He realised that they were searching the edge of the reedbeds for him, and he shrank down lower in the water.

A cold lethargy was stealing over him as his life-blood leaked away into the river, but he forced himself to rally and began to edge away, deeper into the reeds, towards the Zambian bank of the river. He pushed gently into an opening in the reeds It was the size of a tennis court enclosed by a palisade of tall swaying papyrus. The surface was paved with the flat circular green leaves of the water-lilies and their blooms raised lovely cerulean heads to the early sunlight. Their perfume was sweet and delicate on the still air.

Suddenly Sali froze with only his head above the surface.

Something moved beneath the water-lilies. The water pushed and bulged while the blossoms nodded their heads to the weighty and stealthy movement passing beneath them.

Soli knew what it was. His thick liver-coloured lips split open and he drooled with terror. His blood drifted away on the lily-strewn waters and the thing beneath moved with greater authority and determination, homing in on the tantalizing taste of blood.

Soli was a brave man. Very few things in this world could frighten him.

However, this was a creature from another world, the secret cold world beneath the waters. His bowels evacuated uncontrollably as terror released his sphincter muscle, and this fresh odour in the water brought the creature to the surface.

A head like a log, black and gnarled and shiny with wetness, pushed through the lilies. Its beady saurian eyes were Set On protruding barklike knobs and it grinned at Sali , with ragged fangs protruding over uneven lips. The wreath of lily blossoms draped across its hideous brow gave the creature a sardonic menace.

Suddenly the great tail broke the surface, double-ridged and crested as it threshed the surface to foam, driving the long scaly body forward with astonishing speed.

Sali screamed.

Isaac stood at the control console and drove the long hull deeper into the papyrus. The tough fibrous stems wrapped around the propeller shaft and slowed the boat, bringing it to a gradual standstill.

They ran to the bows and, grabbing handfuls of papyrus, dragged themselves forward until abruptly they burst into a small patch of open water. Directly in front of the bows there was an enormous disturbance in the water. Sheets of spray were thrown into the sunlight, and splattered over their heads.

In the foam an enormous scaly body rolled and roiled, flashing its butter yellow belly, the long tail cock-scombed with sharp scales thrashing the water white.

For an instant a human arm was flung upwards. It was a gesture of entreaty, of terrified supplication. Isaac leaned over the side and seized the wrist. The skin was wet and slippery but Isaac reinforced his grip with both hands and leaned back with all his weight. He could not hold Sali and the weight of the reptile together. The wrist began to slip through his grip until one of the rangers leapt to his side and grabbed Sali's arm at the elbow.

Together, inch by inch, they dragged the man's body from the water.

like a man on the torture rack. He was stretched out between the men at one end and the dreadful reptile below the surface.

The other ranger leaned out over the gunwale and fired a burst of automatic fire into the water. The high-velocity bullets exploded on the surface as though they had hit a steel plate and had no effect except to send needles of spray into the eyes of Isaac and the ranger at the rail.

Stop id Isaac panted at him.

You'll hit one of us!

The ranger dropped the rifle and seized Sali's free arm.

Now there were three men taking sides in the gruesome tug of-war.

Slowly they dragged Sali's body from the water, until the reptile's huge scaly head was exposed.

Its fangs were buried in the front of Sali's belly. The crocodile's teeth lack shearing edges. It dismembers its prey by locking on and then rolling its entire body in the water to twist off a limb or a hunk of flesh. As they held Sali stretched over the gunwale, the creature flicked its tail and rolled. Ssali's belly was ripped open. The crocodile heaved backwards with its fangs still locked in his flesh and stripped Sali's entrails out of him.

With the release of the strain at one end, the three men were able to heave Sali's body on board. However, the crocodile still held its grip. Although his writhing form lay on the deck, Sali's entrails were stretched over the side, a glistening fleshy tangle of tubes and ribbons like some grotesque umbilical cord that linked him to his fate.

The crocodile jerked again with the full weight and strength of the long tail. The ribbon of guts snapped and Sali screamed for the last time and died on the bloody deck.

For a while there was silence in the boat broken only by the hoarse panting of the three men who had tried to rescue him.

They stared in horrified fascination at Sali's mutilated corpse until Isaac Mtwetwe whispered softly, I could not have chosen a more fitting death for you. He spoke in formal ceremonial Shana. Go not peacefully, O Sali , evil one, and may all your foul deeds accompany you on your journey. There were no prisoners, Isaac told Daniel Armstrong. Did you say none? Daniel shouted. The telephone connection was scratchy and faint, with heavy atmospheric interference from the thunderstorm raging further down the valley. None, Danny, Isaac raised his voice. Eight dead ones, but the rest of the gang were either eaten by crocs or escaped back into Zambia. What about ivory, Isaac? Did they have tusks with them?

Yes, they were all carrying ivory, but it was lost in the river when the canoes went down. Damn it to hell, Daniel muttered. It would be much more difficult now to convince the authorities that the bulk of the ivory was taken out from Chiwewe in the refrigerator trucks.

The trail to Ning Cheng Gong was growing colder with every hour that passed.

There is a police unit on its way from here to the headquarters camp at Chiwewe, he told Isaac. Yes, Danny. They are here at the moment.

I'm going to join them as soon as I have made arrangements to fly my wounded ranger out to Harare. I want to see what these bastards did to Johnny Nzou. Listen, Isaac, I, m going to follow up the only lead I've got.

on who was responsible for this business. Be careful, Danny. These people don't mess about. You could get badly hurt. Where are you headed? I'll see you around, Isaac. Daniel avoided the question. He dropped the telephone back on its cradle and went out to the Landcruiser.

He sat behind the wheel and thought about it. He realised that this was merely a respite. Pretty soon now the Zimbabwean police were going to want to talk to him again, a little more seriously than before.

There was only one place to be, and that was outside the country. In any event that was where the trail was leading him.

He drove down to the customs and immigration post and parked in the lot before the barrier. Naturally, he had his passport with him and the papers for the Landcruiser were all in order. The departure formalities took less than half an hour, which by African standards was almost record time.

Daniel drove out across the steel-girdered bridge that spanned the Zambezi and he was aware that he was not entering paradise.

Zambia was, after Uganda and Ethiopia, one of the poorest and sorriest countries on the African continent. Daniel grimaced. . A cynic might put that down to the fact that it had been independent from British colonial rule longer than most others.

There had been more time for the policies of structured chaos and ruination to take full effect.

Under private ownership the great mines of the Copper-belt had once been amongst the most profitable on the continent, rivalling even the fabulous gold mines further south. After independence, President Kenneth Kaunda had nationalised them and instituted his Anticanisation policy. This amounted to firing those skilled and experienced engineers and managers who did not have black faces, a kind of affirmative action.

Within a few short years he had miraculously transformed an annual profit of many hundreds of millions into a loss of the same magnitude.

Daniel steeled himself for his encounter with Zambian officialdom.

Can you tell me if a friend of mine passed through here last night on his way to Malawi, he asked the uniformed officer who sauntered out of the customs building to search his Landcruiser for contraband.

The man opened his mouth to protest his outrage at being asked to divulge official information but Daniel forestalled him by producing a five-dollar bill. The Zambian currency, the kwacha, named for the dawn of freedom from colonial oppression had once held value equivalent to the US dollar. Numerous subsequent devaluations had readjusted the official exchange rate to 30:1. The black-market rate was closer to 300:1. The customs officer's scruples evaporated. He was looking at a month's salary.

What is your friend's name? he asked eagerly. Mr. Chetti Singh.

He was driving a large truck with a cargo of dried fish. Wait. The officer disappeared into the station and was back within minutes. Yes.

. . he nodded. Your friend passed through after midnight. He showed no further interest in searching the Landcruiser and stamped Daniel's passport. His step was jaunty as he returned to his post.

Daniel felt a little chill of unease as he left the border post and headed northwards towards Lusaka, the territory's capital.

In Zambia, the rule of law ended at the edge of the built-up areas.

In the bush the police manned their road-blocks, but were never so foolhardy as to respond to appeals for assistance from travellers on the lonely rutted roads.

During twenty-five years of independence, the roads had fallen into an interesting state of disrepair. In some places the potholes through the eroded tarmac were almost knee deep.

Daniel kept the speed down to twenty-five miles an hour and weaved his way around the worst patches as though he were negotiating a minefield.

The countryside was lovely. He drove through magnificent open forests and glades of golden grass known as damboes.

The hills and kopjes seemed to have been built in antiquity by a giant's hand. The walls and turrets of stone were tumbled and eroded into spectacular chaos. The numerous rivers were deep and clear.

Daniel came to the first of the road-blocks.

A hundred yards from the barrier Daniel slowed down to a crawl and kept both hands on the wheel. The police were jumpy and trigger-happy.

As he stopped, a uniformed constable wearing mirrored sunglasses thrust the barrel of a sub-machinegun through the window and greeted him arrogantly. Hello, my friend. His finger was on the trigger and the muzzle was pointed at Daniel's belly. Get out! Do you smoke?

Daniel asked. As he stepped down into the road he produced a packet of Chesterfield cigarettes and thrust it into the constable's hand.

The constable withdrew the barrel of the machine pistol while he checked that the packet was unopened. Then he grinned and Daniel relaxed slightly.

At that moment another vehicle drew up behind Daniel's Landcruiser.

It was a truck owned by one of the hunting safari companies. The back was piled with camp stores and equipment, and the gunbearers and trackers sat on top of the load. .

At the driving-wheel was the professional hunter, bearded, tanned and weatherbeaten. Beside him his client seemed urbane and effete despite his new safari jacket and the zebra skin hatband around his stetson.

Daniel! The hunter leaned out of the side window. Daniel Armstrong, he shouted happily.

Then Daniel remembered him. They had met briefly three years previously while Daniel was filming the documentary on hunting safaris in Africa, Man is the Hunter. For a moment he couldn't remember the fellow's name, but they had shared a bottle of Haig at a campfire in the Luangwa valley. Daniel remembered him as a blow-hard, with a reputation more as a hard drinker than a hard hunter. He had consumed more than his fair share of the Haig, Daniel recalled. Stoffel. The name came back to him with relief. He needed an ally and a protector now. The hunters of the safari companies were a class of minor aristocracy in the deep bush.

Stoffel van der Merwe, he cried.

Stoffel climbed down from the truck, big and beefy and grinning.

Like most professional hunters in Zambia, he was an Afrikaner from South Africa. Hell, man, it's good to see you again.

He covered Daniel's hand with a hairy paw. They giving you any uphill here? Well. . .

Daniel let it hang there, and Stoffel rounded on the police constable.

Hey, Juno, this man is my friend. You treat him good, you hear me?

The constable laughed agreement. It always amazed Daniel to watch how well Afrikaners and blacks got along on a personal level once politics were left out of it; perhaps it was because they were all of them Africans and understood each other. They had been living together for almost three hundred years, Daniel smiled to himself; by this time they damned well should. You want your meat, don't you? Stoffel went on to tease the constable. You give Doctor Armstrong here a hard time and no meat for you. The hunters had their regular routes to and from the hunting concessions in the remote bush, and they knew the guards manning the road-blocks by name. Between them they had set up a regular tariff of bonsela. Hey! Stoffel turned to shout at his trackers on top of the truck. Give Juno here a leg of fat buffalo.

Look how skinny He's getting. We have to feed him up a bit. From under the tarpaulin cover they dragged out a haunch of buffalo, still in its thick black skin, dusty and buzzing with bluebottle flies. The hunters had access to unlimited supplies of game meat, legally hunted and shot by their clients. . These poor bastards are starved for protein, Stoffel explained to his client as the American sportsman came to join them. For a leg of buffalo he would sell you his wife; for two he would sell you his soul; for three he would probably sell you the whole bloody country.

And any one of those. would be a bad bargain! He roared with laughter and introduced his client to Daniel. This is Steve Conrack from California. I know you, of course, the American interjected.

Great honour to meet you, Doctor Armstrong. I always watch your stuff on TV.

just by chance I've got a copy of your book with me. I'd love an autograph for my kids back home. They're great fans of yours.

Inwardly Daniel winced at the price of fame but when the client returned from the truck with a copy of one of his earlier books, he signed the fly-leaf.

Where are you headed? Stoffel asked.

Lusaka? Let me go ahead and run interference for you, otherwise anything could happen. It could take you a week or all eternity to get there. The police guard, still grinning, lifted the barrier and saluted them as they drove through. From there onwards their progress was a royal procession, with lumps of raw meat appearing regularly from under the tarpaulin. Roses, roses all the way, and buffalo steaks strewn in our path like mad. Daniel grinned to himself and put his foot down to keep up with the safari truck. They were driving through the fertile plains that were irrigated from the Kafue River. This was an area of sugar and maize and tobacco production and the farms were owned almost entirely by white Zambians. Prior to independence, the farmers had vied with each other to beautify their properties.

From the main road the white-painted homesteads had glistened, set like pearls in the green and lovingly tended home paddocks. The fences had been meticulously maintained and sleek cattle had grazed within view of the road.

These days the dilapidated appearance of the properties was a deliberate attempt by the owners to divert envious and acquisitive eyes. If you look too good, one of them had explained to Daniel, they're going to take it away from you. He didn't have to explain who they were. The golden rule in this country is: if you've got it, for God's sake don't flaunt it. The white farmers lived as a tiny separate tribe in their own little enclave. Rather like their pioneering ancestors, they made their own soap and other commodities which were simply unobtainable from the bare shelves of the local trading stores.

They lived mostly on the products of their own lands, yet they enjoyed a reasonably good life with their golf clubs and polo clubs and theatrical societies.

They sent their children to school and university in South Africa with the small amounts of fiercely rationed foreign exchange they were granted; they kept their heads down below the parapet and took care not to draw attention to themselves.

Even the powers that presided in the government halls in Lusaka realised that without them the precarious economy would collapse completely. The maize and sugar they produced kept the rest of the population from true starvation and their tobacco crops eked out the tiny dribble of foreign exchange brought in by the ruined copper mines.

Where could we go?

Daniel's informant put the rhetorical question. If we leave here, we go in our underclothes. They won't let us take a penny or a stick with us.

We've just got to make the best of it. As the two-vehicle convoy approached the capital town of Lusaka, Daniel was given a demonstration of one of the many distressing phenomena of the new Africa, the mass movement of rural populations to the urban centres.

Daniel smelt the slum odour as they passed the outskirts of the town.

It was a miasma of smoke from the cooking-fires, the stench of pit latrines and festering garbage heaps, of sour illicit beer brewing in open drums, and human bodies without running water or rivers in which to bathe. It was the smell of disease and starvation and poverty and ignorance, the ripe new smell of Africa.

Daniel stood Stoffel and his client a drink in the bar of the Ridgeway Hotel, then excused himself and went to the reception desk to check in.

He was given a room overlooking the swimming-pool, and went to shower away the grime and exhaustion of the past twenty-four hours. Then he reached for the telephone, and called the British High Commission. He caught the telephonist there before the close of the day's business.

May I speak to Mr. Michael Hargreave, please? He held his breath.

Mike Hargreave had still been in Lusaka two years previously, but he could have been transferred anywhere in the world by now. I'm putting you through to Mr. Hargreave, the girl replied after a few moments, and Daniel let his breath out. Michael Hargreave speaking. Mike, it's Danny Armstrong. Good Lord, Danny, where are you? Here in Lusaka.

Welcome back to fairyland. How are you? Mike, can I see you? I need another favour. Why don't you come to dinner tonight? Wendy will be charmed.

Michael had one of the diplomatic residences on Nabs Hill, within walking distance of Government House. As with every other house in the street it was fortified like the Maze Prison.

The ten-foot perimeter walls were topped with rolled barbed wire and two malondo, night watchmen, guarded the gate.

Michael Hargreave quieted his pair of Rortweiler guard dogs, and greeted Daniel enthusiastically. You aren't taking chances, Mike.

Daniel gestured towards the security precautions and Michael grimaced.

On this street alone we average one break-in a night, despite the wire and dogs.

He led Daniel into the house and Wendy came to kiss him.

Wendy was a rosebud, with soft blonde hair and one of those incredible English complexions. I had forgotten that you are even more handsome in the flesh than on television. She smiled at him.

Michael Hargreave resembled an Oxford don more than a spook, but he was indeed an MI6 man. He and Daniel had first met in Rhodesia towards the end of the war. At the time Daniel had been sick and dispirited with what he had come to realize was not only a lost cause, but an unjust one.

The breaking point had come when Daniel led a column of the Selous Scouts into the neighbouring state of Mozambique. The target was a guerrilla camp. Rhodesian intelligence had told them it was a training camp for ZANLA recruits, but when they hit the cluster of huts they found mostly old men and women and children. There had been almost five hundred of these unfortunate people. They had left none of them alive.

On the return match Daniel had found himself weeping uncontrollably as he staggered along in the darkness. Years of ever-present danger and endless call-up for active service had worn his nerves thin and brittle.

Only much later Daniel realised that he had suffered a breakdown, but at that critical moment he was approached by the clandestine Alpha Group.

The war had dragged on for so many years that a small group of police and army officers had come to realize the facility of it all. Even more they had realised that they were on the side, not of the angels, but of the devil himself.

They decided that they must strive for an end to the bitter civil war, that they must force the white supremacist Smith government to accept a truce negotiated by Great Britain, and thereafter agree to a democratic and free election and the process of national reconciliation between the races. All the members of the Alpha Group were men whom Daniel admired; many were senior officers and most of them had been decorated for their courage and leadership. Daniel was drawn irresistibly to them.

Michael Hargreave had been the head of station for British intelligence in Rhodesia. They had first met once Daniel had committed himself to the Alpha Group. They had worked together closely and Daniel had played a minor role in the process that finally led to the end of those dreadful sufferings and excesses, and that culminated in the Lancaster House Agreement.

Daniel had not been in Zimbabwe when ]an Smith's white regime finally capitulated. His disloyalty had been discovered by Rhodesian intelligence. Warned of his impending arrest by other members of his group, Daniel had fled the country. Had he been captured he would certainly have faced a firing squad. He had only dared return once the country had changed its name to Zimbabwe and the new order, led by Robert Mugabe, had come to power.

When first he had met him, Daniel's relationship with Michael had been detached and professional, but mutual respect and trust had finally transformed it into genuine friendship, which had survived the years.

Michael poured him a whisky and they chatted and reminisced until Wendy called them to the dinner-table. Home cooking was a treat for Daniel, and Wendy glowed with gratification at his performance with knife and fork.

With the brandy Michael asked, So what about this favour? Two favours, actually. Runaway inflation, speak up, my lad. Could you possibly arrange to have my film tapes sent back to London in the diplomatic bag?

They are more valuable than life itself. I wouldn't trust them to the Zambian post office. That's an easy one, Michael nodded. I'll get them away in tomorrow's bag. What about the other favour? I need some information on a gentleman named Ning Cheng Gong. Are we likely to know him? Michael asked. You should. He's Taiwan's ambassador to Harare. In that case, we will certainly have a file on him. Is he friend or foe, Danny? I'm not sure, not at this stage, anyway. Don't tell me, then.

Michael sighed and pushed the brandy decanter across to Daniel. I should have a computer print-out for you before noon tomorrow. Shall I send it around to the Ridgeway? Bless you, old son. I owe you another one. And don't you forget it, Danny boy. It was an enormous relief to get rid of the tapes that Jock had shot. They represented a gruelling year's labour. and almost Daniel's entire worldly wealth. He believed so strongly in this new project that he had decided that, contrary to his usual practice, he would not seek outside financing. He had put everything he owned at risk, almost half a million dollars that he had painfully accumulated over the last ten years since he had become a fulltime out or and television producer.

So Daniel's tapes went out the following morning with the diplomatic courier on the British Airways flight and would be in London within twelve. hours. Daniel had consigned them to Castle Studios where they would be in safe keeping until he could begin the editorial work to transform it into another one of his productions. He had almost settled on a title for the series, Is Africa Dying? Rather than entrust it to a messenger, Michael Hargreave personally delivered the computer print-out on Ning Cheng Gong to Daniel at the hotel. Nice [ad you've picked on, he commented.

I haven't read it all, just enough to find out that the Ning family is not one to trifle with. Take it easy, Danny; these are big boys.

He handed over the sealed envelope. Just one condition. As soon as you have read it, I want you to burn it. Do I have your word on that?

Daniel nodded in agreement and Michael went on, I've brought along an askari from the High Commission to guard your Landcruiser for you. You daren't leave a vehicle untended on the street, not in Lusaka. Daniel took the envelope up to his hotel room and ordered a pot of tea. When it arrived he locked the door, stripped to his underpants and lay on the bed.

The print-out ran to eleven pages, all of them fascinating.

Johnny Nzou had given him only an inkling of the wealth and importance of the Ning family.

Ning Heng H'Sui was the patriarch. His holdings were so diversified and cross-pollinated with international companies and offshore holdings in Luxembourg, Geneva and Jersey that the author of the report admitted laconically at the end of this section, List of holdings probably incomplete. Going over the data more attentively, Daniel thought he perceived a subtle shift in investment emphasis dating from about the time of Ning Cheng Gong's appointment to his ambassadorial post in Africa. Although the Ning family holdings were still centred on the Pacific rim, the investments in Africa and in Africa-based companies had risen to a significant percentage of the entire portfolio.

Turning the page, he discovered that the computer had analysed this and determined that within six years the African section had increased from zero to just under twelve percent of the total. There were large holdings in South African mining conglomerates, and in African land and food production companies, and even larger holdings in forestry estates, paper pulp mills and cattle and sheep ranches, all in Africa, south of the Sahara. It didn't take any clairvoyant gift to surmise that Ning Cheng Gong had pointed the family in this direction.

On page four of the computer print-out, Daniel read that Ning Cheng Gong was married to a Chinese girl from another rich Taiwanese family.

The marriage had been arranged by the respective families. The couple had two children: a son born in 1982 and a daughter in 1983.

Cheng's interests were listed as oriental music and theatre and collecting oriental art, especially jade and ivory artefacts.

He was an acknowledged expert on ivory netsuke. He played golf and tennis and sailed. He was also an expert in the martial arts, having reached the Fourth Dan. He smoked moderately and drank alcohol socially. He did not use any type of narcotic and the only weakness which the report suggested might be used as leverage or influence was that Ning Cheng Gong regularly patronised the high-class brothels of Taipei. His special sexual tastes seemed to lean towards acting, out elaborate fantasies of an overtly sadistic nature. In 1987 one of the brothel girls had died during one of these performances. The family had obviously been able to quell any scandal, for no charges were ever brought against Cheng. Mike was right, Daniel conceded as he laid aside the print out. He is a big boy and well protected. Best take it one careful step at a time. Chetti Singh first. If I can establish a connection, that might be the key. As he dressed for dinner he kept turning the pages of the report on the dressing-table to make certain he had not overlooked any connection with Malawi or with Chetti Singh.

There was none and he went down to dinner feeling depressed and discouraged. The role he had chosen for himself as Johnny Nzou's avenger was daunting.

There. were both smoked Scotch salmon and roast sirloin of milk-fed Charollais beef on the five-page menu. However, when he ordered these the waiter shook his head regretfully. Sorry, no got.

It swiftly developed into a guessing game. Sorry, no got. The waiter looked genuinely distressed as Daniel worked his way unsuccessfully through the menu until Daniel noticed that everyone else in the dining-room was eating stringy roast chicken and rice.

Yes, got chicken and rice. The waiter beamed approval. What you want for dessert? By now Daniel had learned the trick. He checked the other tables. How about banana custard?" The waiter shook his head.

No got.

But Daniel could tell by his expression that he was getting warm.

Daniel stood up and crossed to a Nigerian businessman at the next table.

Excuse me, sir, what is that you are eating? He returned to his own table. I'll have Banana Delight, he said, and the waiter nodded happily. Yes, tonight got Banana Delight.

This little comedy restored Daniel's good humour and sense of the ridiculous. AWA, Daniel reassured him. Africa Wins Again. And the waiter looked delighted at such obvious praise and encouragement.

The next morning Daniel beaded eastwards towards Chipata and the Malawi border. There was not much point in expecting a sustaining breakfast from the hotel and anyway he was away long before the kitchens opened. He had covered almost a hundred miles before the sun rose, and he kept going most of the day, stopping only to eat beside the road.

He reached the border the following morning and crossed into Malawi with a tightening of his spirits. Not only was this tiny country even more spectacularly beautiful than the one he was leaving, but in comparison the mood of its people was contented and carefree.

Malawi was known as the Switzerland of Africa for its grand mountains and highland plateaux and its lakes and lovely rivers. Its people were famous throughout the southern continent for their intelligence and adaptability. They were sought after at every level of employment from domestic servants to miners and industrial workers. Lacking viable mineral deposits, Malawi's most valuable asset and export were her people.

Under the benevolent despotism of their octogenarian president-for-life, the special talents and strengths of the Malawian people were encouraged and fostered. The rural areas eglected and the urban migration was checked. Each were not n family was ordered by the leader to build its own home and make itself self-sufficient in food.

As cash crops they grew cotton and ground-nuts. On the large Mountainside estates they raised a superior leaf of tea.

As Daniel drove towards the capital, Lilongwe, the contrast with the country he had just left was striking. The villages he passed were clean and orderly and prosperous. The people on the roadside were sleek, well dressed and smiling. Most of the handsome women favoured a full-length skirt printed with the national colours and a portrait of Kamuzu Hastings Banda, the president. Short skirts were forbidden in Malawi by presidential decree, as was long hair on men.

Along the roadside, food and carved wooden curios were offered for sale.

It was strange to see a surplus of food in any African country.

Daniel stopped to buy eggs and oranges, mandarins, luscious red tomatoes and roasted ground-nuts, and also to exchange cheerful banter with the vendors.

After the misery and deprivation he had witnessed in the country he had so recently left, his mood was uplifted by these delightful people.

Given the circumstances to make a good life, there are few peoples on earth so friendly and charming as those of Africa. Daniel found his regard for them strengthened and renewed. If you don't like black people, then you shouldn't be living in Africa, Daniel's father had once said to him. It was a remark that had remained in his memory all these years, the validity of it growing ever more evident.

As he approached Lilongwe Daniel was struck even more forcefully by the contrast with other capitals of the continent. It was a recent capital, planned and built with architectural advice and financial help from South Africa. There was no slum stench here. Instead it was a pretty town, modern and functional.

Daniel found it good to be back again.

The Capital Hotel was surrounded by parks and lawns but conveniently situated close to the centre of the town. As soon as he was alone in his room, Daniel checked the local telephone directory which he found in the bedside drawer.

Chetti Singh was a big man in town and obviously enjoyed the sound of his own name. There was a string of numbers listed. He seemed to have his fingers in every honey pot: Chetti Singh Fisheries, Chetti Singh Supermarkets, Chetti Singh Tannery, Cheti Singh Sawmills and Lumber, Chetti Singh Garages and Toyota Agency. The list took up half the page.

Not a difficult bird to point, Daniel admitted to himself.

Now let's see if we can get him to flush for a good sporting shot.

While he shaved and showered an attentive room servant carted his travel-stained clothing off to the laundry and ironed a clean but crumpled bush jacket to starchy perfection. Good excuse.

I need to restock the tucker box, Daniel told himself as he went downstairs and asked the receptionist directions to Chetti Singh's supermarket.

Across the park. The man pointed.

With assumed nonchalance Daniel sauntered across the park.

It occurred to him that he was hardly the most inconspicuous visitor in town, with his London tailored bush jacket, silk scarf, and the spectacularly travel-dusted and battered Landcruiser with his strong-arm motif emblazoned all over it. Let's pray that Chetti Singh never got a good look at me or the truck that night. Chetti Singh's supermarket was on Main Street in a new four-storey building of modern layout, with clean tiled floors and walls. The shelves were piled with abundant wares, all reasonably priced, and the premises were thronged with customers. In Africa this was unusual.

While Daniel joined the relays of housewives wheeling their shopping trolleys down the aisles between the shelves, . he was studying the building and its staff.

Four young Asian girls sat at the cash registers guarding the exit.

They were quick and efficient. Under their graceful brown fingers the registers tinkled to the sweet music of Mammon. Chetti Singh's daughters, Daniel guessed as he noted the family resemblance. They were pretty as sunbirds, in their brightly coloured saris.

In the centre of the floor a middle-aged Asian lady sat at a tall dais from which she could keep a beady eye on every corner of the shop.

She wore her hair in an iron-grey plait and though her said was more subdued in colour, it was edged with gold thread and the diamonds on her fingers ranged from the size of peas to sparrows eggs. Mama Singh, Daniel decided. When it came to handling the cash, Asian businessmen liked to keep it close to home, which was probably one of the reasons for their universal success. He took his time selecting groceries, hoping for a glimpse of his quarry, but there was no sign of the turbaned Sikh.

At last Mama Singh left her seat on the dais and made an elephantine but dignified progress down the length of the store, until, with her long silken said sweeping the treads, she mounted a flight of stairs set so discreetly in a corner of the food hall that Daniel had not noticed them before.

She entered a door at a higher level and now Daniel noticed a mirrored window in the wall beside the elevated door. It was obviously a one-way glass. An observer in the room beyond the door would have a clear view over the supermarket floor and Daniel had no doubt that it was Chetti Singh's office.

He turned away from that inscrutable square of glass, aware that he might have been under observation for the past half hour, and that the precaution was probably too late. He made his way to one of the girls at the cash registers and while she totted up his purchases he kept his face averted from the window in the rear wall.

Chetti Singh stood at the observation window as his wife came into the office. She saw instantly that he was disturbed. He was plucking thoughtfully at his beard and his eyes were slitted. That white man.

He nodded towards the store floor below the window. Did you notice him?

Yes. She came to his side. I noticed him as he came in. I thought he might be a soldier or a policeman. What made you think that?

Chetti Singh demanded.

She made an eloquent gesture with those lovely hands that were so incongruous on a female of her bulk. They were the hands- of the young girl he had married almost thirty years ago, and the pale palms were dyed with henna. He stands tall, and walks with pride, she explained.

Like a soldier. I think I know him, Chetti Singh said. I saw him very recently, but it was at night and I cannot be absolutely certain. He picked up the telephone from his desk and dialed two digits.

Standing at the window, he watched his second daughter pick up the telephone from beside her cash register. Treasure, he spoke in Hindi.

The man at your till. Is he paying with a credit card? Yes, father.

She was the brightest of all his children, as much value to him as a second son, almost. Get his name and ask him where he is staying in town.

Chetti Singh hung up and watched the white man pay for his purchases and leave the store heavily laden. As soon as he had gone, Chetti Singh dialled again.

His name is Armstrong, his daughter told him. D. A.

Armstrong. He says that he is staying at the Capital Hotel. Good.

Let me speak to Chavve quickly. Below him his daughter swivelled her seat and called one of the uniformed security guards from the main doors.

She held out the telephone receiver to him and as he placed it to his ear Chetti Singh asked, Chawe, did you recognize the malungu who has just left? The tall one with thick curly hair. Chetti bad switched to Angoni. I saw him, the guard replied in the same language.

But I did not recognize him. Four nights ago, Chetti Singh prompted him.

On the road near Chirundu just after we had loaded the truck. The one who stopped and spoke to us. There was silence as Chawe considered the question. Chetti Singh saw him begin to pick at a nostril with his forefinger, a sign of uncertainty and embarrassment. Perhaps, Chavve said at last.

I am not sure. He removed the thick forefinger from his nose and inspected it minutely. He was a man of the Angoni, a distant relative of the royal line of Zulu. His tribe had migrated this far north two hundred years before the time of King Chaka. He was a warrior, not a man given to deep thought.

Follow him, Chetti Singh ordered. Do not let him see you.

Do you understand? I understand, Nkosi. Chawe looked relieved to be ordered into action and he left through the main doors with a spring in his step.

He returned half an hour later, hangdog and. crestfallen. As soon as he came in through the main doors Chetti Singh telephoned his daughter again. Send Chawe up to my office right away!

Chawe stood in the doorway at the head of the stairs, as big as a gorilla, and Chetti Singh demanded, Well, did you follow him as I ordered? Nkosi, it is the same man. Chawe shuffled his feet.

Despite his size and strength, he was terrified of Chetti Singh. He had seen what happened to those who displeased the master. In fact, it was Chawe himself who was usually responsible for enforcing his master's discipline. He did not look directly into his eyes as he went on. It is the man who spoke to us on the night, he said, and Chetti Singh frowned quickly. Why are you sure now, when you were uncertain before?

Chetti Singh demanded. The truck, Chawe explained. He went to his truck and put the goods he had bought from us into it. It is the same truck, with a man's arm painted on the side, Mambo. Good. Chetti Singh nodded approval. You did well. Where is the man now? He drove away in the truck. Chawe looked apologetic.

I could not follow him. I am sorry, Nkosi Kakulu. Never mind. You did well, Chetti Singh repeated. Who is on duty at the warehouse tonight? 1

am, Mambo . . . Chawe grinned suddenly, his teeth were large and even and very white, and, of course, Nandi. Yes, of course.

Chetti Singh stood up. I will come down to the warehouse this evening after business is closed. I want to make sure that Nandi is ready to do her job. I think we may have trouble tonight. I want everything prepared. Have Nandi in the small cage. I don't want any mistakes. Do you understand, Chawe? I understand, Mambo. At six o'clock, at the warehouse.

Sometimes it was as well to repeat instructions to Chawe. Nkosi.

Chawe sidled from the room, still not looking directly at his master.

After he had gone, Chetti Singh sat staring at the closed door for many minutes before he picked up the telephone again. Direct-dialling to an international exchange was always a lottery in Africa. Zimbabwe was almost a neighbouring state;

only the narrow Tete corridor of Mozambique separated them.

Nevertheless, it took him a dozen attempts and twenty frustrating minutes before he heard a ringing tone at the other end of the line and was through to the number in Harare. Good afternoon.

This is the embassy of the Republic of Taiwan. May I help you? I wish speech with the ambassador. I'm sorry. His Excellency is not available at present. May I take a message or put you through to another member of the staff, I am Chetti Singh. We are abundantly acquainted. Please hold on, sir. A minute later Cheng came on the line. You are not to telephone me at this number. We agreed. Chetti Singh told him firmly, This is urgent, absolutely it hi I cannot speak on this line. I will call you back within the hour. Give me your number there and wait for me. The private unlisted telephone on Chetti Singh's desk rang forty minutes later. This line is secure, Cheng told him as he picked it up.

But be discreet. Do you know a white chap named Armstrong? Doctor Armstrong? Yes. I know him. This is the one you met at Chiwewe, and who accosted you on the road regarding certain stains on your clothing, is it not? Yes.

Cheng's tone was non-committal. It's all right, don't worry. He knows nothing. Then why has he pitched up in Lilongwe?

Chetti Singh demanded. You still want me not to worry? There was a silence.

Lilongwe? Cheng said at last. Did he also see you that night on the Chirundu road? Yes. Chetti Singh tugged at his beard. He stopped and spoke to me. He asked if I had seen the Parks trucks. When was that?

After we had transferred the ivory to you--? Careful! Chetti Singh snapped. But yes, it was after we had parted our separate ways, never mind. My men and I were tying down the tarpaulins when this white chap in a truck pulled up-Cheng cut in, How long did you speak to him? A minute, no more than that. Then he went south towards Harare. I think he was following you, without a morsel of doubt. He caught up with Gomo and forced him off the road. Cheng's voice was sharp and agitated. He searched the Parks truck. Of course, he didn't find anything. He is suspicious, indubitably. Indubitably, Cheng agreed sarcastically. But if he spoke to you for only a minute, he cannot connect you. He doesn't even know who you are. My name and address are boldly imprinted upon my truck, Chetti-Singh said.

Cheng was silent again for a slow count of five. I did not notice.

That was imprudent, my friend. You should have covered it. It is no good closing the stable door after the bird has flown, Chetti Singh pointed out.

Where is the ? Cheng broke off. Where are the goods?

Have you shipped them? Not yet. They will go out tomorrow. Can't you get rid of them sooner? That is beyond the bounds of possibility.

You will have to deal with Armstrong then, if he becomes too curious.

Yes, said Chetti Singh. I will deal with him most firmly and resolutely. Your side? Is everything taken care of? Your Mercedes?

Yes. The two drivers? Yes. Have the authorities visited you? Yes, but, it was routine, Cheng assured him. There were no surprises. They have not mentioned your name to me. But you must not telephone me at the embassy again. Use this number only. My security people have cleared this line. He gave Chetti Singh the number and he wrote it down carefully. I will let you know about this chap. He is an absolute Nuisance, Chetti Singh went on. I hope not for too much longer. Cheng cradled the receiver and instinctively reached for one of the assembly of ivory netsuke that were arranged on his desk top.

It was an exquisite miniature carving of a young girl and an old man.

The beautiful child sat on the old man's lap staring with a daughter's adoration into his noble, lined and bearded face. Each tiny detail had been executed three hundred years ago by one of the great artists of the Tokugawa dynasty. The ivory had been polished by the touch of human fingers until it glowed like amber. Only when the group was inverted was it disclosed that beneath their flowing robes the couple were naked and that the old man's member was buried almost to the hilt between the girl's thighs.

The humour of it appealed to Cheng. It was one of his favourite pieces from all his vast collection, and he caressed it now between thumb and forefinger like a worry bead. As always, the silken feet of the ivory soothed him and encouraged him to think more clearly.

He had been expecting to hear more of Daniel Armstrong, but this had not lessened the shock of Chetti Singh's message.

The Sikh's questions aroused old doubts and for the thousandth time he went over all the precautions that he had taken.

After leaving the headquarters camp at Chiwewe he had not noticed the blood on his shoes and clothing until Daniel Armstrong had drawn his attention to it. This evidence of his guilt had preyed on his mind for the rest of that arduous journey out of the Zambezi valley. When at last they reached the main highway and found Chetti Sing waiting at the rendezvous, e had confided his worries to the Sikh and showed him the stains on his clothing.

You were not supposed to go near the scene of the killing.

That was foolish, never mind. I had to make sure the job was done, and it was just as well I did. The warden was still alive. You will have to burn that clothing. It was unlikely that there would be other traffic this late at night but they took no chances. They reversed the trucks well off the highway and transferred the ivory from the Parks trucks to Chetti Singh's pantechnicon behind a screen of trees. Even with Chetti Singh's gang of men to assist the two drivers, the removal took almost two hours. It was a huge quantity of ivory to move.

In the meantime Chetti Singh watched Cheng build a small fire. When it was burning hotly the ambassador stripped to his underwear. As he dressed again in fresh clothing from his luggage, Chetti Singh squatted beside the fire and burned all the soiled items. The rubber soles of the training shoes flared up fiercely when they caught. He used a stick to poke the charred scraps into the centre of the flames and make certain that they were reduced to fine ash. There will still be abundant traces of blood in the Mercedes, Chetti pointed out as he stood up from it. On the or, on the accelerator and brake pedals. He removed the floor mat and the rubber covers from the control pedals and burned these as well. The stink of the black smoke made his eyes run, but still he was not satisfied. We will have to get rid of that car.

He told Cheng what to do. I will arrange the rest of it. Cheng was the first to leave the rendezvous. Even before the transfer of the ivory to the Sikh's truck was complete he was on his way back to Harare.

He drove fast, as though trying to escape from his involvement with the raid. The reaction was setting in now. It was the same after one of his sexual pantomimes in the Myrtle Blossom Lady's house in Taipei.

Afterwards he felt shaky and nauseated.

He always promised himself it would never happen again.

The ambassador's residence was one of many large sprawling; colonial buildings in the avenues near the golf club. He reached it well after midnight. He went directly to his own bedroom suite. He had arranged for his wife and the children to fly back to Taiwan the previous week to stay with her family. He was alone in the residence.

He stripped once again and, even though he had not worn it at the scene, placed all his clothing in a plastic bag. He was concerned that the faintest trace of blood might linger upon it.

Then he showered. He stood under the steaming spray for almost half an hour, shampooing his hair twice and scrubbing his hands and fingernails with a stiff brush.

When he felt that he had washed away every last trace of blood or gunpowder, he dressed in fresh clothing from his dressing-room and carried the plastic bag containing his clothing; back to the Mercedes parked in the residence garage. He placed the plastic bag in the boot beside his canvas grip. He was anxious to get rid of every single item that he had taken to Chiwewe, even his binoculars and his bird-book.

He reversed the Mercedes out of the garage and parked it in the front driveway of the residence. The gates were open and he left the key in the ignition.

Although it was by now after two in the morning and it had been a day and night filled with activity and intense nervous strain Cheng could not sleep. In a brocaded silk robe he paced his bedroom restlessly, until he heard the starter of the Mercedes whirl. He switched off the bedside lamp and darted to the window overlooking the front driveway.

He was just in time to see his car, with darkened headlights, pull out of the driveway and turn into the deserted street. He sighed with relief and at last went to bed.

As he composed himself to sleep he thought how swiftly Chetti Singh had arranged it. Chetti Singh's son managed the, Harare branch of the family interests. He was almost as astute and reliable as his father.

In the morning, after breakfast, Cheng telephoned the police and reported the theft of the Mercedes. They found it twenty-four hours later, out near Hatfield on the way to the airport. It had been stripped of tires. and engine and set on fire. The fuel tank had exploded and nothing was left of the vehicle but the soot-blackened carapace. He knew that the insurance company would pay out in full, without too much delay or protest.

The following morning an anonymous caller on Cheng's unlisted line spoke without introduction or explanation. Look at page five of today's Herald, he said, then broke the connection, but the accent had been Asian, very similar to Chetti Singh's manner of speech.

Cheng found the article at the foot of the page. It was six lines under an insignificant heading, Stabbed in Drunken Brawl. Gomo Chisonda, a ranger employed by the National Parks Service, had been stabbed to death by an unknown assailant during an argument in a township beerball.

The next day the same anonymous caller told Cheng, Page seven. This time Cheng was certain that he recognised the voice of Chetti Singh's son.

The heading of the newspaper article was Railway Accident, squib read, The body of David Shiri, an off-duty and the ranger in the National Parks Service, was found on the railway line near Hartley.

The dead man had a high blood alcohol level. A spokesman for Zimbabwe Railways warned the public of the danger of using unguarded crossings.

This- is the fourth accident of the same kind on the Hartley line since the beginning of the year. As Chetti Singh had promised, there were no longer any surviving witnesses or accomplices.

Three days later, Cheng received a telephone call from the commissioner of police in person. I am very sorry indeed to disturb you, Your Excellency. I presume you have read about the murderous attack on Chiwewe Camp. I believe that you may be able to assist our enquiries into this most unfortunate incident. I understand that you were a visitor . . at the camp on that day, and that you left only hours before the attack. That is correct, Commissioner. Would you have any objection to making a statement to assist us? You know that there is no obligation for you to do so. You are fully protected by diplomatic privilege. I will cooperate in any way possible. I particularly admired and liked the warden who was murdered. I will do all I can to help you apprehend the perpetrators of this foul crime.

am most grateful to you, Your Excellency. May I send one of my senior inspectors to call upon you? The inspector was a burly Shana in plain clothes. He was accompanied by a sergeant in the smart uniform of the Zimbabwean police, and both of them were elaborately obsequious.

With profuse apologies the inspector took Cheng through a recital of his visit to Chiwewe, including his departure with the convoy of refrigerator trucks. Cheng had rehearsed all this and he went through it faultlessly. He was careful to mention his meeting with Daniel Armstrong.

When he had finished, the inspector fidgeted uncomfortably before asking, Doctor Armstrong has also made a statement, Your Excellency.

His.

account confirms everything you have told me, except that he mentioned that he noticed there were bloodstains on your clothing.

When was that?

Cheng looked puzzled.

When he encountered you and the Parks trucks, as he was returning to Chiwewe, after having seen the tracks of the raiders on the road.

Cheng's expression cleared. All yes. I had been an interested spectator of the Parks elephant culling. As you can imagine, there was much blood about during the operation, I could easily have stepped in a puddle. The inspector was sweating with embarrassment at this stage.

Do you remember what you were wearing that evening, Your Excellency?

Cheng frowned as he tried to remember. I was wearing an open-neck shirt, blue cotton slacks, and probably a pair of comfortable running shoes. That is my usual casual attire. Do you still have those items?

Yes, of course.

The shirt and slacks will have been laundered by now, and the shoes will have been cleaned. My valet is very efficient. . . He broke off and smiled as though a thought had only just occurred to him.

Inspector, do you want to see these items? You might even wish to take them away for examination. Now the police inspector's embarrassment was painful. He squirmed in his chair. We have no right to ask for that kind of cooperation, Your Excellency. However, in view of the statement made by Doctor Armstrong. If you had no objection. Of course not.

Cheng smiled reassuringly. As I told the commissioner of police, I want to cooperate in every possible way. He glanced at his wristwatch.

However, I am due at lunch with the president at State House in an hour.

Do you mind if I send the clothing down to your headquarters with a member of my staff? Both police officers sprang to their feet. I am very sorry to have inconvenienced you, Your Excellency. We appreciate your help. I am sure the commissioner of police will be writing to you to tell you that himself. Without rising from his desk, Cheng stopped the inspector at the door. There was a report in the Herald that the raiders had been apprehended, he asked. Is that correct? Were you able to recover the stolen ivory? The bandits were intercepted at the Zambezi as they tried to cross back into Zambia. Unfortunately all of them were either killed or escaped, and the ivory was destroyed by fire or lost in the river. What a pity. . . Cheng sighed. They should have been made to answer for these brutal killings. However, it has simplified your work, has it not? We are closing the file, the inspector agreed. Now that you have helped us tidy up the loose ends, the commissioner will write to convey his appreciation and that will be the end of the matter The packet of clothing that Cheng selected from his wardrobe and sent to police headquarters, although agreeing with the description he had given the inspector, had never been worn anywhere near Chiwewe or the Zambezi valley. Cheng sighed now as he thought about it.

He replaced the ivory netsuke on his desk and stared at it morosely.

But it was not the end of the matter, not now that Doctor Daniel Armstrong was nosing around, making trouble.

Could he rely on Chetti Singh once again, he wondered& It was one thing to get rid of two lowly Parks rangers, but Armstrong was game of a larger kind. He had international reputation and fame, there would be questions if he disappeared.

He touched the intercom button and spoke into the microphone on his desk in Cantonese. Lee, come in here please. He could have asked his question without ordering his secretary through, but he liked to look at her. Although she was of peasant stock from the hills, she was bright and nubile. She had done well at Taiwan University, but Cheng had not chosen her for her academic achievements.

She stood to the side of his desk, close enough for him to touch if he had wished to, in an attitude of servility and submission. Despite her modern accomplishments, she was a traditionally raised girl with the correct attitude to men, and in particular to her master. Have you confirmed the reservations with Qantas Airlines? he asked. With Armstrong sniffing around in Lilongwe, it was as well that the return to Taipei was imminent. He would never have taken the risk of the Chiwewe adventure if he had planned to stay on at the embassy. Already his wife and family had left.

He would follow at the end of the month, only eight days from now.

Yes, the reservations have been confirmed, Your Excellency, Lee whispered respectfully. To him her voice was as sweet as that of the nightingale in his father's lotus garden in the mountains. It stirred him. When are the packers coming in? he asked, and touched her. She trembled slightly under his hand and that stirred him further. They will come in first thing on Monday, my lord. She used the traditional title of respect.

Her straight black hair hung to her shoulders and shimmered with light.

Cheng ran his fingers lightly up the thigh slit of her cheongsam; her skin was as smooth as the ivory netsuke. You have warned them of the value and fragility of my art collection? he asked, and pinched her beneath the skirt. He took a nip of that ivory skin between the nails of his thumb and second finger and she winced and bit her lower lip.

Yes, my lord, she whispered, with a catch of pain in her voice. He pinched a little harder. It would leave a tiny purple star on the flawless swell of her small firm buttock, a mark that would still be there when she came to him tonight.

The power of pain made him feel elated. He forgot about Doctor Daniel Armstrong and any trouble he might be brewing.

For now, the police were off the track, and Lee Wang was lovely and compliant. He had eight days while he was separated from his wife in which to enjoy her to the full. Then he would return home, to his father's approbation.

Dan unlocked the rear door of the Landcruiser and packed the groceries and supplies that he had purchased from Chetti Singh's supermarket into his depleted tucker box. Then he went round to the cab and sat at the wheel. While he let the engine warm, he checked his notebook for the list of the Sikh's other business premises.

With help from a few obliging pedestrians he found his way into the light industrial area of the town, down near the railway line and the station.

Here it seemed that Chetti Singh owned four or five acres of industrial sites. Some of these were undeveloped and overgrown with rank bush and weed. On one of the vacant lots a large signboard declared: ANOTHER CHETTI SINGH PROJECT SITE OF PROPOSED COTTON CARDING FACTORY Development! Employment! Prosperity! Uplift mend -MALAW FOR I!

On one side of the open plot, behind a barbed-wire security fence, stood the workshops of Chetti Singh's Toyota agency.

At least a hundred new Toyota vehicles were parked in the front lot.

They were still coated with the filth of the long rail journey up from the coast on open goods trucks. Clearly they were awaiting delivery service in the main workshop building.

Through the open front doors Daniel could see a team of mechanics at work. Though the foremen appeared all to be Asians, some in Sikh turbans, most of the overalled mechanics were black. The enterprise appeared prosperous and well managed.

Daniel drove into the forecourt and left the Landcruiser parked at the reception bay. He spoke to one of the foremen in a blue dust-coat.

Under the pretext of arranging a service for the Landcruiser he managed to get a good look around the workshop and administration building. There was no obvious place where a shipment of stolen ivory could be hidden.

While he made a booking to bring the Landcruiser in the following morning at eight o'clock, he chatted casually to the workshop foreman and learned that the sawmill and the Chetti Singh Trading Company warehouse were in the next street, backing on to the vehicle workshop.

He drove away and circled the block. It was easy to pick out the sawmill, even from the far end of the street. A dozen railway trucks stood at the private railway siding, every one of them piled high with heavy logs of indigenous timber cut in the heavily forested mountains.

The shrieks of the circular saws carried clearly up the street.

As he drove past the gates he looked into the open sheds where the saws were housed. The spinning discs shone like quicksilver, and spurts of yellow sawdust flew from the rough logs as the blades bit into them. The resinous smell of freshly cut timber was pungent in the hot sunlight and mountains of raw planks were piled in the extensive yards, ready to be loaded on to the waiting railway trucks.

Daniel drove past slowly. Diagonally opposite the sawmill closed by stood the warehouse complex. It, was a high diamond-mesh fence, green plastic-coated wire on sturdy concrete poles with offset tops angled out towards the street and festooned with barbed wire.

The warehouse was in five semi-detached units; the valleys and peaks of the common roof formed a saw-tooth pattern of unpainted corrugated asbestos sheeting. The walls were also of the same corrugated asbestos.

Each of the five units had separate doors of the roller type usually seen on aircraft hangars.

This time the signboard at the gates read CHETTI SINGH TRADING COMPANY CENTRAL DEPOT AND WAREHOUSE He was certainly not shy about advertising his name, Daniel thought wryly. There was a swinging boom and a brick-built gatehouse at the entrance and Daniel noticed at least one uniformed guard at the gate. As he drew level with the last building, he saw that the tall asbestos doors had been rolled open and he was able to look down the length of the cavernous warehouse.

Suddenly he leaned forward and his pulse accelerated as he recognised the huge pantechnicon parked in the centre of the warehouse. It was the vehicle that he had last seen on the Chirundu road four nights previously. The ten-wheel trailer with the green tarpaulin cover was still hitched behind it and the red dust that coated it matched that on his own Landcruiser.

The rear doors of the trailer were open and a team of a dozen or so black labourers assisted by a forklift truck were loading a cargo of brown sacks that could have contained maize, sugar or rice.

He could not see any of the distinctive dried fish bags that had been the cargo which he had seen in the Zambezi valley.

He lowered the side window, hoping for a whiff of fish, but he smelled only dust and diesel fumes.

Then he was past. He thought about making a U-turn and another passing inspection.

Hell, I've drawn enough attention already, he told himself. Like the circus coming to town. He drove back to the Capital Hotel the way he had come left the truck in the guests car park and went up to his room.

He ran a bath, as deep and hot as he could stand it, and soaked the dust and grime of the African roads out of his pores, while his skin turned a rich puce.

As the water cooled he twiddled the tap with his toe, adding fresh steaming gouts.

At last he stood to lather his nether regions and regarded himself seriously in the dewy mirror over the washbasin. Look here, Armstrong.

The sensible thing to do is go to the police with our suspicions.

It's their job, let them get on with it.

Since when, Armstrong, he replied, did we ever do the sensible thing?

Besides, this is Africa. It will take the police three or four days to stir their butts, and Mr. Singh has had quite enough time already to get rid of any ivory he may just have lying around.

By tomorrow it will probably be too late to catch him at it. You -are trying to tell me, Armstrong, that time is of the essence?

Precisely, old chap. It couldn't be that you'd enjoy a touch of cloak and dagger, a bit of boy-scouting, a spot of amateur sleuthing? Who me? Don't be silly! You know me. Indeed I do, he agreed with a wink at his image, and subsided back into the steamy suds, which slopped over the bath rim on to the tiled floor.

The dinner was a vast improvement on his last public meal.

The fillets of bream were fresh from the lake and the wine was a delicious Hamilton-Russell Chardonnay from the Cape of Good Hope.

Reluctantly he rationed himself to half the bottle. Work to do, he muttered ruefully. and went up to the room to make his preparations.

There was no hurry. He couldn't move until after midnight. When he was ready he lay on the bed and enjoyed the sensation of excitement and anticipation. He kept looking at his wristwatch. It seemed to have stopped and he held it to his ear. The waiting was always the worst part.

Chetti Singh watched the security guards usher the last customer from the supermarket and close the double glass doors. The wall clock pointed to ten minutes past five.

The sweepers were already at work and his daughters were busy at the tills, cashing up the day's receipts. The girls were as devout as virgins ministering at the altar of some arcane religion, and his wife stood over them ISO as dignified as the high priestess. This was the high point of the daily ritual.

At last the procession left the tills and made its way across the shop floor, in strict order of precedence, his wife leading and her daughters following, the eldest first and the youngest last. They entered his office and laid the day's take on his desk in neatly banded bundles of currency notes, and canvas bags of coins, while his wife handed him the print-outs from the tills. Oh, good! Chetti Singh told them in Hindi.

The best day since Christmas Eve, I am sure. He could recite the figures over the last six months without consulting his ledgers.

He entered the take in the day-book, and while his family watched respectfully, locked the cash and credit-card vouchers into the big Chubb safe built into the back wall. I will be late home for dinner, he told his wife. I must go down to the warehouse to attend to certain matters.

Papaii, your meal will be ready when you return. She clasped her hands to her lips in a graceful gesture of respect, and her daughters imitated her example and then filed from his -office.

Chetti Singh sighed with pleasure. They were good girls but if only they had been boys. It was going to be the devil's own job finding husbands for all of them.

He drove down to the industrial area in the Cadillac. The car was not new. Dearth of foreign exchange would not permit an ordinary citizen to import such a luxurious vehicle. Chetti Singh had, as always, a system.

He contacted newly appointed.

members of the American diplomatic staff before they left Washington.

Malawi customs regulations allowed them to import a new car and sell it locally at the end of their term.

Chetti Singh paid them twice the US value of the Cadillac in Malawi kwacha on arrival. They could live in princely style on for the full three years of their tour i this amount n Mwi while still retaining use of the car and saving their official salaries.

When they left, Chetti Singh took over the vehicle, ran it for a year, until the next arrangement matured at which time he placed the Cadillac on the showroom floor of his Toyota agency with a price tag of three times its original US value. It was usually sold within the week. No profit was too small to despise; no loss was too small to abhor. it was not by accident that over the years Chetti Singh had amassed a fortune the full extent of which not even his, wife could guess at.

At the warehouse gates Chawe swung open the boom to allow him to drive the Cadillac through.

Yes? Chetti Singh asked the big Angoni. He came, Chawe replied. As you said he would. He drove by on this road at ten minutes past four.

He was in the truck with the man's arm painted on the door. He drove slowly and he was staring through the fence all the time. Chetti Singh frowned with annoyance. This chap is becoming an absolute pest. Never mind, he said aloud, and Chawe looked bemused. His English was rudimentary. Come with me, Chetti Singh ordered, and Chawe climbed into the back seat of the Cadillac. He would never be so presumptuous as to sit beside his master.

Chetti Singh drove slowly along the front of the warehouse complex.

All the call doors were already closed and locked for the night. There were no burglar alarms guarding the area; at night even the perimeter fence was unlit by floodlights.

There had been a period two or three years back during which he had suffered from repeated burglaries and break-ins.

Alarms and floodlights had done little to prevent these depredations.

In desperation he had consulted the most famous Sangorna in all the territory. This old witch-doctor lived in dread isolation up on the top of the misty Mlanje plateau attended only by his acolytes.

For a fee commensurate with his reputation, the witch-doctor descended from the mountain with his entourage and, with great fanfare and ceremony, he placed the warehouse under the protection of the most powerful and malevolent of the spirits and demons that he controlled.

Chetti Singh invited all the idlers and loafers of the town to witness the ceremony. They watched with interest and trepidation as the witch-doctor decapitated a black cockerel at each of the five doors of the warehouse and sprinkled its blood on the portals. After this, to suitable incantations, he placed the skull of a baboon on each corner-post of the perimeter fence. The spectators had been much impressed and the word spread swiftly through the townships and the beerballs that Chetti Singh was under magic protection.

For six months thereafter there were no further break-ins.

Then one of the township gangs worked up the courage to test the efficacy of the spell, and they got away with a dozen television sets and nearly forty transistor radios.

Chetti Singh sent for the witch-doctor and reminded him that his services carried a guarantee. They haggled until finally Chetti Singh agreed to buy from him at a bargain price the ultimate deterrent. Her name was Nandi.

Since Nandi's arrival there had been only a single break-in.

The burglar had died in Lilongwe hospital the following day with his scalp ripped off his skull and his bowels bulging out of the rents in his belly. Nandi had solved the problem, permanently.

Chetti Singh drove the Cadillac around the peripheral pathway inside the fence. The fence was in good order, even the baboon skulls still grinned down from the tops of the cornerposts, but the infra-red alarms were gone. Chetti Singh had sold them at a good price to a Zambian customer. After Nandi's arrival they had become redundant.

Completing the circuit of the fence, Chetti Singh parked the Cadillac at the rear of the warehouse, beside a neat shed of the same corrugated sheeting as the main building. This was obviously a later addition, tacked on as an afterthought to the rear wall of the warehouse.

As Chetti Singh stepped out of the Cadillac, his nostrils flared to the faint but rank odour that wafted from the single small window in the shed. This was set high up and was heavily barred.

He glanced at Chawe. Is she safe? She is in the small cage, as you ordered, Mambo.

Despite the assurance, Chetti Singh peered through the peephole in the door before he opened it and stepped into the shed.

The only light came from the high window and the room was in semi-darkness, made more intense by the contrast of the late sunshine outside.

The smell was stronger now, a pungent wild scent, and suddenly from the gloom there was a spitting snarl so vicious that Chetti Singh stepped back involuntarily. My goodness. he chuckled to hide his nerves. We are in absolutely foul mettle today. An animal moved behind the bars of the cage, a dark shape on silent pads and there was a gleam of yellow eyes. Nandi. Chetti Singh smiled. "'The sweet one". Nandi had been the name of King Chaka's mother.

Chetti Singh reached out to the switch beside the door and the fluorescent tube in the ceiling spluttered and then lit the shed with a cold blue light.

In the cage a female leopard shrank away against the far wall, crouching there, staring at the man with murderous eyes, her upper lip lifting in a creased and silent snarl to reveal her fangs.

She was a huge cat, over seven feet from nose to tail, one of the animals from Mlanje mountain forest, who would turn the scale at 120 pounds. A wild creature captured by the old witchdoctor in her maturity, she had once been a notorious goat and dog-killer, terrorising the villages on the slopes of the mountain. Shortly before her capture she had savagely mauled a young herdboy who had tried to defend his flock against her.

The forest cats were darker than those of the open savanna, the jet-b lack rosettes that dappled her skin were close-set, so that she was close in coloration to the melanistic panther. Her tail curled and flicked like a metronome, the gauge of her temper.

She watched the man unblinkingly. The force of her hatred was as thick as the wild animal stench in the small hot room. Are you angry?

Chetti Singh asked, and her lip lifted higher to the sound of his voice. She knew him well. Not angry enough, Chetti Singh decided, and reached for the cattle prod on the rack beside the light switch.

The cat reacted immediately. She knew the sting of the electric prod.

Her next snarl was a crackling rattle and she ran back and forth trying to escape from the torment she had come to expect. At the end nearest the main wall of the warehouse the steel mesh cage narrowed into a bottleneck just wide enough to admit the leopard's body, a low tunnel that ended against a steel sliding door in the warehouse wall.

The prod was bolted on to a long aluminium pole. Chetti Singh slipped it between the cage bars and reached out to touch the leopard.

Her movements became frantic as she tried to avoid the device, and Chetti Singh laughed at her antics as he pursued her around the cage.

He was trying to drive her into the bottle-necked tunnel.

At last she flung herself against the bars of the cage, ripping at the steel with her claws as she tried to reach him, coughing and grunting with fury, but the length of the pole kept Chetti Singh out of range.

Goodness gracious me! he said, and touched the side of her neck with the points of the prod. Blue electricity flashed and the leopard recoiled from the sting of it and bounded to the tunnel at the end of the cage.

Chawe was ready for this, and he dropped the mesh door behind her.

Now she was trapped. Her nose was against the steel hatch in the warehouse wall, while at her heels the mesh door prevented her backing away. The tunnel was so low that it almost touched her back and she could not rear up, it was so narrow that she could not turn her head to protect her heaving flanks. She was helplessly pinioned and Chetti Singh handed the prod to Chawe.

He returned to the table near the door and uncoiled the lead of a small electric soldering iron and plugged it into the wall socket.

With the plastic-covered lead trailing behind him he came back to where the leopard crouched in the tunnel. He reached through the bars and stroked her back. Her pelt was thick and silky, and she could not avoid his touch.

Her whole body seemed to swell with her fury and she snarled and tried to twist her neck to savage his hand but the bars prevented it.

Chetti Singh lifted the soldering iron and spat on the copper point to test its heat. His spittle sizzled and evaporated in a puff of steam. He grunted with satisfaction and reached through the bars once again. He grasped the leopard's tail and lifted it high, exposing her fluffy genitalia and the tight puckered black collar of her anus.

The leopard hissed with outrage and ripped at the cement floor with her claws fully extended. She knew what was coming and she tried to lower her tail and cover her delicate parts.

Help me, Chetti Singh grunted, and Chawe seized the tail.

It writhed like a serpent in his grip but he forced it upwards, allowing his master free use of both hands.

Chetti Singh inspected the delicate flesh thoughtfully. It was dimpled and cratered with healed scars, some so fresh that the cicatrice was stilt pink and glossy. He reached out gently with the hot iron, choosing the spot to burn with care, avoiding the freshly healed skin.

The cat felt the heat of the approaching iron and her body convulsed in anticipation. Just a little one, my beauty, Chetti Singh assured her.

Just enough to make you very angry if you should meet Doctor Armstrong tonight. Unmolested, leopards are not a serious threat to human beings.

Man does not form a part of their natural prey, and their instinctive fear is enough to make them avoid rather than attack him. However, once injured or wounded, or particularly when they are deliberately tormented, they are, amongst the most dangerous and vicious of all African animals.

Chetti Singh touched the glowing iron to the soft rim of the leopard's anus. There was a puff of smoke and the stink of burned skin and hair.

The leopard shrieked with pain and bit at the steel bars.

Chetti Singh inspected the injury. With practice he could inflict a burn that was exquisitely painful, but which would heal within the week and would not damage the animal's appearance nor hamper her movements when she attacked. Good! he congratulated himself. The iron had only superficially penetrated the outer skin. It was a shallow painful little wound, yet it had infuriated the golden cat.

He laid the soldering iron back on the table and picked up a bottle of disinfectant. It was raw iodine, dark yellow and pungent on the swab that he pressed against the open wound.

The sting of it would increase her fury.

The leopard shrieked and hissed and struggled wildly against the restraining bars. Her eyes were huge and yellow and froth lined her open snarling lips. That's enough. Open the hatch, Chetti Singh ordered, and the Angoni released the cat's tail. She whipped it down between her legs to protect herself.

Chawe went to the handle of the steel hatch and raised it.

With one last snarl the leopard bounded through the opening and disappeared into the warehouse beyond.

At first it had been difficult to get the cat to leave the warehouse at dawn each morning, but with free use of the electric prod and the lure of the goat's meat on which she was fed, she had at last been trained to return to her cage in the shed on command.

It was the only training she had received. All night she prowled the warehouse, tormented and murderous. At dawn she returned to the shed and crouched there in the gloom, growling softly to herself and licking her deliberately inflicted injuries, awaiting the first opportunity to avenge her humiliation and pain.

Chawe closed the hatch behind the leopard and followed his master out into the last glow of the sunset. Chetti Singh mopped his face with a white handkerchief It had been hot in the fetid little shed. You will remain in your guardhouse at the main gate, -he commanded. Do not patrol the fence or attempt to stop the white man from entering the warehouse.

If he does get in, Nandi will warn you .

They both smiled at the thought. They remembered the last intruder and his condition as they took him down to the casualty department of the general hospital. When you hear Nandi working on him, ring me from the main gate. The telephone is beside my bed. Do not enter the warehouse until I arrive. It will take fifteen or twenty minutes for me to get here. By that time Nandi may have saved us a great deal of trouble.

His wife had one of her magnificent curries prepared for his dinner.

She did not question where he had been. She was a good and dutiful wife.

After dinner he worked on his accounts for two hours. His was a complicated system of accountancy: he kept two, separate sets of books, one for the civil tax collector which reflected a fictitious profit figure, and another authentic set which was meticulously correct. From this Chetti Singh calculated the tithe that he paid to the temple. it was one thing to cheat on income tax, but a prudent man did not mess around with the gods.

Before he went to bed he unlocked the steel safe built into the back of his wardrobe and took out the double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun and a packet of SSG cartridges. He had an official police permit for the firearm, for, whenever possible and convenient, he was a law-abiding man.

His wife gave him a puzzled look, but made no comment. He did not satisfy her curiosity, but propped the weapon in the corner nearest the door, ready to hand. He switched out the lights and under the sheets made love to her with his customary dispatch. Ten minutes later he was snoring sonorously.

The telephone beside his bed rang at seven minutes past two in the morning. On the first peal Chetti Singh was awake, and before it could ring again he had the receiver to his ear. In the warehouse, Nandi is singing a pretty, song, said Chawe in Angoni. I am coming, Chetti Singh replied, and swung his legs off the bed.

There were no street lights, which makes the job a little easier, Daniel murmured as he parked the Landcruiser on one of the open plots three hundred yards from the boundary fence of Chetti Singh's central depot. He had driven the last mile at walking speed without headlights.

Now he switched off the engine and stepped out into the darkness. He stood listening for almost ten minutes before he checked his wristwatch.

It was a little after one o'clock.

He already wore navy-blue slacks and a black leather jacket.

Now he pulled a soft balaclava cap of dark wool over his head. He strapped a small nylon bag around his waist that contained the few items of equipment which he had selected from the tool-box.

Bolted to the Landcruiser's roof were two light aluminium extension ladders that he carried for laying as corduroy when negotiating soft sand or deep mud. They weighed less than seven pounds each. He carried both of them under one arm as he set out across the weed-choked wasteland towards the depot. He kept off the road, well back amongst the scrub.

The plot had been used as a rubbish dump. There were piles of garbage. A broken bottle or jagged piece of scrap iron could cut through the canvas and rubber boots he wore. He picked his way with care.

Fifty feet from the fence he laid down the ladders and crouched behind a rusty car body. He studied the depot. There were no lights burning in the warehouse, no floodlights illuminating the fence. That seemed odd.

Too good? Too easy? he asked himself, and crept closer.

The only light was in the guardhouse at the front gate. It gave him sufficient back lighting with which to examine the fence.

He saw at once that it was not electrified, and he could discover no trip-wire for an alarm system.

He moved stealthily to the corner-post at the rear of the property.

If there were an infri alarm system, the eye would be mounted here.

Something white gleamed on top of the post, but on closer inspection he realised that it was the bleached skull of a chacma baboon, and he grimaced. He felt vaguely uneasy as he went back to fetch the ladders from where he had left them beside the wrecked car.

Back at the corner of the fenced area, he settled down to watch for a guard making his rounds. After half an hour he had convinced himself that the fence was unguarded.

He moved in. The quickest and safest method of entry would have been to use the wire-cutters, but if possible he wanted to leave no trace of his visit. He extended both ladders to their full length. Then steeling himself for the squeal of a hidden alarm, he propped one of the ladders against the concrete corner-post.

He let out his breath when no alarm sounded.

Carrying the second ladder, he scaled to the top of the fence.

Balancing on the top rung, leaning backwards to avoid the offset barbed wire on the summit, he swung the spare ladder over and inwards.

He had intended lowering it carefully on the far side, but it slipped from his grip.

Although it fell on grass, which cushioned the impact, the sound was like the report of a . 357 magnum in his own ears.

He teetered on the top of the ladder, his nerves screwed tight and waited for a shouted challenge or a shot.

Nothing happened, and after a minute he breathed again. He reached into the front of his clothing under the polo-neck jersey, and brought out the roll of foam rubber which he used as a pillow when sleeping under the stars. It was an inch thick, just enough to pad the top strand of barbed wire. He spread it carefully over the top of the fence.

He took a firm grip between the spikes of the wire with his gloved hands and rolled smoothly over, dropping nine feet to the lawn on the far side.

He broke his fall with a forward somersault and crouched low, listening again, peering into the darkness.

Nothing.

Quickly he set up the second ladder against the inside of the fence, ready for a speedy retreat. The unpainted aluminium gleamed like a beacon to catch the eye of a patrolling guard. Nothing we can do about that, he told himself, and crossed to the side wall of the warehouse.

He slipped along the wall, thankful for the darkness, and reached the corner. He crouched there for a minute, listening.

Somewhere far away a dog barked, and there was the distant sound of a locomotive shunting in the railway yards. Apart from that, nothing.

He glanced round the corner, and then crept down the long back wall of the warehouse. There was no opening here, except for a single row of the skylight windows very high up under the caves of the saw-backed roof, at least thirty feet above him.

Ahead he made out a small shed in the gloom. it was attached to the rear wall of the warehouse, but its roof was much lower than that of the main building. As he approached it, he became aware of a faint but foul odour, like guano fertiliser or untanned hides.

The smell was stronger as he circled the shed, but he thought little of it. He was studying the shed. There was a downpipe in the angle where the shed's wall joined that of the main warehouse. He tested the pipe with his weight, and then went up it easily, hand over hand.

Within seconds he was lying stretched out on the roof of the shed, looking up at the row of skylights in the main wall now only ten feet above him. Two of the panels stood open.

From the bag in the small of his back he brought out a coil of nylon rope and quietly tied a Turk's head knot in one end to give it weight.

Balancing on the peak of the shed's roof he flicked the rope out and then got it swinging in an easy circle. With a snap of the wrist he shot the weighted knot upwards. It struck the jamb between the two open panels and then dropped back in a tangle around his shoulders. He tried again with the same result. At the fifth attempt the knot dropped through the open skylight, and immediately he tugged and it whipped back and made three natural turns around the jamb. He pulled back hard and the wraps held. Keeping pressure on the line he began to climb.

He used the rubber soles of his canvas boots for purchase against the unpainted asbestos wall, and went up with the agility of a monkey.

He had almost reached the windows when he felt the end of the line start to unravel. With a sickening lurch he dropped back a foot and then it held again. Daniel gathered himself and lunged upwards. A gloved hand over the bottom frame of the open skylight steadied him.

He hung thirty feet above the ground, his feet kicking and slipping against the wall and the steel frame cutting into his fingers, even through the glove. Then with another convulsive effort he flung his right hand up and got a double grip. Now with the strength of both arms he was able to draw himself up smoothly and straddle the frame of the skylight.

He took a few seconds to catch his breath and listen for any sound from the dark interior of the building, then he unzipped the bag and groped for the Maglite flashlight. Before he left the hotel room he had screwed a red plastic shade over the lens.

The shaft of light which he shot downwards was a discreet -ruby glow that was unlikely to attract attention from outside the building.

Below him the warehouse floor was piled with towers and walls of packing cases in a multitude of sizes and shapes. Oh no! he groaned aloud. He had not expected such abundance. It would take a week to examine all of them, and there were four other bays to the warehouse complex.

He flashed the torch-beam down the wall. The corrugated cladding was fixed to a framework of intricately welded angle iron. The frames formed an easy ladder for him to reach the cement floor thirty feet below. He swarmed down and switched off the flashlight.

Swiftly he changed position in the darkness. If a guard was creeping up on him he wanted to confuse the attack. He crouched between two cases, listening to the silence. He was about to move again, when he froze.

There was something, a sound so small that it was just within the range of his comprehension, he felt it with his nerve ends rather than truly heard it.

It ceased, if it had ever been.

He waited for a hundred beats of his racing heart but it did not come again. He switched on the torch and the light dispelled his unease.

He moved softly down the aisle between the masses of trade goods and bales and crates. He had seen the pantechnicon parked in the end bay.

That's the place to start, he assured himself and he sniffed the dark air for the smell of dried fish.

He stopped abruptly and switched off the torch. Once again he had sensed something, not definite enough to pin-point, not loud enough to be a sound, just a premonition that something was close by in the darkness. He held his breath and there was a whisper of movement, or of his imagination. He could not be certain, but he thought it might be the brush of stealthy footfalls perhaps, or the gentle sough of breathing.

He waited. No. It was nothing but his nerves. He moved on down the dark warehouse. There were no interior walls in the building, only pillars of angle iron supporting the roof, separating the spaces between each of the bays. He stopped again, and sniffed. There it was at last.

The smell of dried fish. He went forward more rapidly, and the smell was stronger.

They were stacked against the end wall of the furthest bay, a high pile of sacks, reaching almost to roof level. The smell was strong.

Printed on each sack were the words: Dried fish.

Product of Malawi. together with a stylised rising sun emblem with a crowing cockerel surmounting it.

Daniel groped in his bag and brought out a twelve-inch screwdriver.

He squatted before the pile of fish sacks and began to probe them, stabbing the point of the screwdriver through the weave of the jute sacks, and then working it around to feel for any hard object packed beneath a layer of dried fish. He worked quickly, five or six quick stabs to each sack as he passed, reaching up to the sacks above his head, and then scrambling up the pyramid to reach the summit.

At last he stopped and thought about it. He had presumed that the ivory would be packed inside the fish sacks, but now he reconsidered and discovered the fallacy of his original theory.

If Ning Cheng Gong had indeed transferred the ivory from the refrigerator trucks t&, Chetti Singh's pantechnicon, then there certainly would not have been the opportunity to repack it in the sacks and seal them during the few hours before Daniel had intercepted Chetti Singh on the Chirundu road. The very best they could have done was to lay the ivory on the floor of the cargo bed and pile the fish sacks over it.

Daniel clucked his tongue with annoyance at his own impetuosity. Of course, the fish sacks were too small to contain the larger tusks of the hoard, and they would make an impossibly flimsy packing in which to smuggle the ivory out of Africa to its final destination, wherever that might be. The heavy pointed tusks would surely work their way through the outer layer of fish and rupture the woven jute sacks. Damn fool.

Daniel shook his head. I had a fixed idea He flashed the shaded ruby beam of the torch about, and his nerves jumped tight. He thought he saw something big and dark move in the shadows at the extreme range of the beam, the glint of animal eyes, but when he steadied the torch and stared hard, he realised that it was his imagination again.

Getting old and windy, he rebuked himself.

He slid down the pyramid of fish sacks to the floor, then he hurried along the aisle between the mountains of goods. He examined the labelling on the packing cases as he passed. Defy Refrigerators, Koo Canned Peaches, Sunlight Soap Powder.

Each case consigned to Chetti Singh Trading Company. It was all incoming cargo. He was looking for an outgoing cargo.

Ahead of him he made out the shape of a fork-lift truck standing high on the loading ramp near the main doors. As he moved towards it he saw a large case balanced on the fork arms of the truck. Beyond it, almost blocking the ramp, was a high pile of identical cases. They were ready for loading on to the empty railway truck that stood waiting in the bay below the ramp.

Obviously, this was an outgoing cargo and he almost ran down the length of the bay. As he approached he realised that they were traditional teachests, with sturdy plywood sides and solid frames, bound with flexible steel straps.

Then he felt an electric tickle of excitement lift the hair on his arms as he read the address stencilled on the side of the nearest chest: LUCKY DRAGON INVESTMENTS 1555 CHUNGCHING S ROAD TAIPEI TAIWANSon of a gun!

Daniel grinned happily. The Chinese connection!

Lucky Dragon. Lucky for some! He crossed to the fork-lift truck and reached across to the controls. He clicked on the master switch and operated the controls. The electric motor putted and the chest rose silently.

At head-height Daniel stopped it. He slipped beneath the suspended case.

He did not want to leave any trace of his visit by interfering with the lid or sides of the case.

Working between the forked arms of the trunk, he thrust upwards into the bottom of the tea-chest with the screwdriver.

The plywood crackled as he punched out a circular opening just large enough to admit his hand. He found that the interior of the case was lined with a heavy-duty yellow plastic sheet that resisted his efforts to tear through. He paused to find the clasp-knife in his bag, and then slit out a flap of the sheeting.

There was the familiar smell of dried tea leaves, and he began to dig into the compressed black vegetable mass, spilling the tea out on to the concrete floor. Soon he had dug into the full length of the screwdriver without encountering any alien object hidden in the case.

He felt the first prickle of doubt.

There were hundreds of tea-chests piled on the ramp; any of them could contain the tusks, or none of them.

He widened the hole with a few more blows of the screwdriver, then he drove the steel point up into the mass of tea with all the strength of his doubt and frustration.

It hit something solid with a force that jarred his wrist, and he almost shouted aloud with triumph. He ripped at the edges of the hole until he could get both hands into the chest, and he dug out lumps of tea that fell on to the ramp around his feet.

Now at last he could touch the hard object buried in the tea.

It was round and smooth. Crouching under the chest he twisted his neck to look up into the aperture, slitting his eyes against the soft rain of dried tea leaves that trickled from the hole. In the beam of the torch he made out the soft creamy alabaster gleam.

With the point of the screwdriver he attacked the exposed surface of the object, stabbing and prising it, until at last a splinter lifted and he pulled it loose. It was the size of his thumb. No more doubts, he whispered, as he examined the sample and picked out the distinctive chicken-wire pattern of the ivory grain. Now I've got you, you murdering bastards. Quickly he stuffed the torn flap of plastic back into the hole to prevent any more tea spilling out on to the ramp.

Then he swept up the fallen leaves and scooped them into his pockets.

It wasn't a very effectual job of tidying up, but he hoped that the loaders would be careless enough, not to notice anything amiss when they started work again in the morning.

He went to the controls of the fork-lift and lowered the tea chest to its original place on the ramp. He flashed the beam of the torch around to make certain he had left no other evidence of his visit, and this time he saw it clearly.

A great dark shape crouched at the edge of the ramp, watching him with eyes that glowed like opals even in the muted beam of the torch.

As the light struck it the creature seemed to dissolve like a puff of smoke, almost supernatural in its uncanny stealth. Daniel recoiled instinctively against the side of the fork-lift, trying to probe the darkness with the torch.

Then suddenly there was a sound that ripped across his nerve ends like an emery wheel. It echoed through the dark cavern of the warehouse and rang against the high roof. It was a hacking cadence, like a wood-saw cutting metal, and it set his teeth on edge. He knew what it was instantly, but he found it difficult to believe what he was hearing.

Leopard! he breathed, and with a chill in his guts he realised his danger.

All the advantage was with the beast. The night was its natural environment. Darkness made it bold; darkness made it aggressive.

He pulled the red filter off the lens of the torch and now the bright white shaft of light sprang out across the warehouse. He swept it back and around, and he glimpsed the cat again. It had moved in behind him, circling in. That was the most hostile manoeuvre. The predator circles its prey before rushing in for the kill.

As the light hit it, the leopard flashed away. With one lithe bound, it disappeared behind the wall of tea-chests, and its fierce chorus of hatred echoed through the darkness once again. It's hunting me!

Whilst he was warden of Chiwewe one of his rangers had been mauled by a leopard, and Daniel had been first on the scene to rescue him. Now he recalled vividly the terrible injuries the beast had inflicted.

The other dangerous cat of Africa, the lion, does not have the instinctive knowledge of how best to attack the upright two-legged figure of a man. He will charge in and knock a victim down and then will bite and claw indiscriminately at whatever part of the man's body he can reach, often gnawing and crunching a single limb until the victim is rescued.

The leopard, on the other hand, understands the human anatomy.

Baboons form a large part of the leopard's prey, and it knows how to go directly for the head and the vulnerable guts of the primate. Its usual attack is to leap on to its victim and hook into his shoulders with the front claws, while its back legs kick like those of a domestic cat playing with a ball of wool.

The long talons, unsheathed, will disembowel a man with half a dozen swift kicks, stripping his guts out. At the same time the leopard sinks his teeth into the face or throat and with one front claw reaches over to hook the back of its victim's scalp and tear it off the skull.

Often the dome of the skull comes away with the scalp, like the top sheared off a softboiled egg, leaving the brain exposed. All this flashed through Daniel's mind as the leopard circled him, its wild savage call echoing through the open bays of the warehouse.

Still crouched beside the fork-lift, Daniel zipped his leather jacket tightly up under the chin to protect his throat and slid the nylon bag around from the small of his back to cover his stomach. Then he shifted the screwdriver to his right hand, and with his left swung the torch to cover the leopard's menacing cirCles. My God, he's a huge brute! Daniel realised, as he saw the true size of the cat. In the torchlight it was panther black.

Bushlore has it that the dark-coloured cats are the most ferocious of the breed.

It was impossible to hold the leopard in the beam of light. It was as elusive as a shadow. Daniel knew he would never make it back to where he had broken into the warehouse. It was too far to go with his back unprotected. The cat would be on him before he had covered half the distance. He flicked the torch beam away for a second, seeking another avenue of escape.

The fish sacks. He saw the pyramid piled against the near wall, reaching as high as the windows, thirty feet above the warehouse floor.

If I can just reach the skylight, he whispered.

There was a long drop down the outside wall, but he had the nylon rope to lower himself at least part of the way. Move! he told himself.

You're running out of time. it's going to rush you any moment now.

He screwed up his nerve to leave the haven of the fork-lift.

The machine covering his back was a solid comfort, while in the open he was vulnerable and puny against the speed and strength of the leopard.

The moment he left the shelter of the fork-lift, the leopard sawed again, its savage cry more vicious and eager. Get out of id Daniel yelled at it, hoping to disconcert it with the sound of a human voice.

The cat ducked sideways and disappeared behind a pile of packing cases, and Daniel made his mistake.

it was a stupid, unforgivable mistake. He, of all people, knew that you must never run from a wild beast. In particular you must never turn your back on one of the cats. Their instinct is to pursue. If you run, they must charge, just as a domestic cat cannot resist the flight of the mouse.

Daniel thought that he might just be able to reach the pyramid of fish sacks. He turned and ran, and the leopard exploded in a silent rush out of the darkness behind him. He never even heard it come. It landed with all its weight and the full momentum of its charge in the middle of his back, between his shoulder-blades.

Daniel was hurled forward. He felt its claws bite in and hold, and for a moment he thought they were hooked into his own flesh. Instead of bearing him down to the concrete floor the leopard slammed him into the pile of sacks. They cushioned the impact, but still it drove half the air from Daniel's lungs and he felt as though his ribs had collapsed.

The leopard was still mounted high on his shoulders, but as Daniel staggered under its weight he realized that its claws were hooked into the leather of his jacket and the thick woollen sweater beneath it.

Somehow Daniel managed to keep on his feet, supporting himself against the sloping wall of sacks. He could feel the cat on his back gather itself, bringing up its back legs, coiling its body like a spring, ready to lash downwards across his buttocks and the back of his thighs. It would open his flesh to the bone, slicing through blood vessels and arteries, a crippling injury from which he would probably bleed to death within minutes.

Daniel pushed off from the sacks with both arms, flipping backwards, rolling his body into a ball with his knees up under his chin. The leopard's claws tugged at the nylon belt of the bag and then kicked on downwards, but Daniel had drawn his legs up and clear. The cat's back paws with the curved claws outspread, struck at air, missing his flesh.

Now man and beast with their combined weight crashed to the concrete floor. Daniel was a big man and the leopard was underneath him. A single hissing snarl was forced from its lungs by the impact and Daniel felt its claws release their hold in the leather of his jacket. He twisted violently and reached over his shoulder with one hand, the screwdriver still clutched in the other. As he came to his knees, he seized a thick fold of skin at the scruff of the leopard's neck and, with the strength of his terror, tore the creature from his back and hurled it against the pile of packing-cases.

It rebounded at him like a rubber ball.

The torch had been knocked from his grip by the leopard's first charge.

It rolled across the concrete floor until it came up against one of the packing-cases. Its beam was angled upwards now and reflected from the pale plywood case. The reflection gave Daniel just enough light to anticipate the leopard's charge.

Its jaws were open to their full gape, and its extended front paws reached for his shoulders. As it smashed into him, chest cocked up in the instinctive disembowel to chest, its back legs ling movement and its head shot forward to sink its fangs into his face and throat. This was the classic leopard attack and Daniel countered with the screwdriver held sideways between both his hands, thrusting it like a curb bit into the leopard's open mouth.

One of the beast's front fangs broke off cleanly at the gum as it struck steel, and then Daniel. was on his back holding the leopard off his face with the screwdriver. It snarled again and a hot mist of spittle blew into his face, the stink of carrion and death filled his nostrils.

He felt one forepaw stretch out over his shoulder, reaching out to the back of his scalp to rip it off his skull. At the same time the back legs jack-knifed up, claws fully extended to tear out the front of his belly. However, the back of Daniel's head was pressed up hard against one of the fish sacks and the leopard hooked its claws, not into the thin flesh of his scalp, but into the coarse jute of the sack only an inch from his ear. Then the cat slashed down with both back legs together, but instead of unzipping his belly, the claws bit into the tough nylon belt of the bag at his stomach.

For a moment the animal's attack was stalled. It ripped at the jute sack, seeming not to realize its error, and the back legs kicked downward spasmodically, tearing the nylon with a sharp rending sound.

As it struggled, the leopard pulled back its head, trying to avoid the steel shaft that Daniel was still forcing deeply between its open jaws.

Instantly Daniel whipped the screwdriver back, releasing his grip on the sharpened end and then drove it forward again, aiming the point at one of the leopard's eyes.

His aim was wild, the point of the screwdriver shot into the cat's flaring nostril, but instead of finding the nasal channel into the brain, it deflected slightly, penetrated the gristle of the nose, and ran along the outside of the cheekbone below the dappled skin. The point emerged from beneath the leopard's ear, and the cat screamed with the shock and agony. For a moment it relaxed its attack. Daniel rolled over, and threw the leopard off him.

It seemed a miracle that up to now the leopard had not drawn blood, but as Daniel threw it backwards, the cat held on instinctively with one paw.

The claws raked down Daniel's arm, slicing through the leather and wool and reaching the muscle of his forearm. It felt like a sword cut, and the pain goaded Daniel to throw in his last desperate reserve of strength.

He kicked out with both feet together, and his heels crashed into the feline body just as it gathered itself for the next charge.

The kick drove it backwards in a snarling, snapping ball of dark fur that gleaned and rippled in the torchlight.

There was a space between the fish sacks at Daniel's back, it was just wide enough to admit his body. He flung himself backwards into the narrow cave. Now his back and flanks were protected, and the leopard could only attack from directly in front.

It thrust its head, growling and gaping into the narrow space, trying to reach him. Daniel stabbed for its eyes with the screwdriver. Again he missed, but the steel point lacerated the leopard's curling pink tongue, and it leaped backwards, hissing and spitting with pain. Go on! Get out of id he howled, more to bolster his own courage than with any hope of driving off the infuriated beast.

He drew his legs up under him and worked his way as far as he could into the narrow gap between the fish sacks.

The leopard paced back and forth across the entrance, blotting out the feeble torchlight with each pass. Once it stopped and sat on its haunches, wiping its wounded nose with one paw, like a domestic cat, and then licking its own blood from the fur.

Then it bounded forward, blocking the entrance to the narrow cave, and stretched in one forepaw to try and reach Daniel again. He stabbed at the groping limb and felt it hit and penetrate. The leopard spat explosively and pulled back. It began to patrol the entrance to his cave, pausing every few minutes to lower its head and let out one of those terrible sawing roars.

Daniel felt the blood sliming down his forearm under the sleeve and dripping from his fingers. He held the screwdriver between his knees, ready to fend off the next attack, and then, one-handed, bound his handkerchief around the torn arm to stem the bleeding. He pulled the knot tight with his teeth. The wound seemed superficial. The leather sleeve had saved him from serious injury, but the arm was already beginning to throb. Daniel knew how truly dangerous even the lightest scratch from a carnivore's teeth or claws could be, if untreated.

That was only one of his worries. The leopard had him trapped and soon it would be morning. It was a wonder that the roars of the animal had not yet attracted attention. He could expect a guard to arrive at any moment.

As he thought it, the warehouse was suddenly flooded with light. It was so brilliant that the leopard recoiled on to its haunches and blinked in confusion. Daniel heard the faint rumble as the main doors rolled open, driven by their electric motor. It was followed immediately by the sound of a motor car coming in through the opening.

The leopard snarled and slunk back towards the rear of the warehouse, carrying its head low and looking back over its shoulder.

Then, somebody shouted, Hey, Nandi! Back to your cage!

Back! Back! Daniel recognised Chetti Singh's voice.

The leopard broke into a crouching run, and disappeared from Daniel's sight.

Chetti Singh spoke again. Lock the leopard in the cage quickly! and there was the metallic clang of a cage door being slammed. Can you see the white man? Be careful, he may still be alive. Daniel shrank back as far as he could into the narrow opening between the sacks. He had no real hope of avoiding detection, and the screwdriver was not much of a weapon. There is a torch lying over there, still burning. And over there, by the fish sacks. That looks like blood.

Cautious footsteps approached. Nandi has done her work. Give me the torch.

The voices were closer.

Suddenly a pair of legs came into Daniel's view and then the man stooped and flashed the torch into the dark crack where Daniel squatted. My goodness! the same voice said in English. Here the fellow is, and he is still in excellent fettle. How do you do, Doctor Armstrong? I am delighted to make your formal acquaintance at last.

Daniel glared silently into the dazzling torch-beam and Chetti Singh went on in a jocular tone. You won't be needing that weapon, never mind. Please be good enough to hand it over.

Daniel made no move to obey and Chetti Singh chuckled. This is a shotgun of fine English construction, dear sir, made by Mr. Purcley, no less. It is loaded with bullshot cartridges.

The Malawi police are very understanding on the little matter of defending self. I beg you most humbly to entertain my request for cooperation. With resignation Daniel tossed the screwdriver at his feet, and Chetti Singh kicked it away. You may now emerge from your kennel, Doctor. Daniel crawled out, and holding his injured arm to his chest, rose to his feet.

Chetti Singh pointed the shotgun at his belly and spoke to the uniformed guard in Angoni. Chawe, check the cases. See if the malungu has opened any of them. Daniel recognised the black guard from the supermarket. He was a big dangerous-looking brute. I prefer the leopard for a sparring partner, Daniel thought wryly as he watched the Angoni stride away down the ramp towards the fork-lift.

Before he reached the machine Chawe exclaimed and went down on one knee to scoop up a handful of spilled tea that Daniel had overlooked.

Quickly he followed the trail of tea to the broached case on the fork-lift. Lift the case, Chawe! Chetti Singh ordered and Chawe climbed behind the controls of the fork-lift and raised the case high.

A trickle of black tea leaves dribbled from under it. Chawc jumped down and thrust his arm into the hole that Daniel had gouged out of the plywood. You are a jolly clever fellow. Chetti Singh shook his head at Daniel in mock admiration. Just like Sherlock Holmes, no less.

But sometimes it is not wise to be too clever, my dear sir. Looking into the Sikh's eyes, Daniel discounted the man's stilted clownish speech.

Those eyes were deadly. This was no clown. Chawe, where did the white man leave his truck? he asked without moving the aim of the shotgun from the pit of Daniel's belly. He came without lights, but I heard the truck on the south side. I think he parked in the open land there. They were speaking in Angoni believing that Daniel could not understand it, but his knowledge of Zulu and Ndebele allowed him to make sense of it.

Go! Fetch the truck, Chetti Singh ordered.

After Chawe had gone, Daniel and Chetti Singh confronted each other in silence. Daniel was looking for some sign of weakness or indecision. The Sikh was calm and contained, the shotgun steady in his hands.

My arm is badly hurt, Daniel said at last. My sincere commiseration, my dear Doctor. There is danger of infection. No. Chetti Singh smiled.

You will be dead before infection can manifest itself. You intend killing me? That is an amazingly facetious question, Doctor. What alternative do I have? You have been clever enough to discover my little secret. As I have often concluded, too much knowledge is a terminal disease. Ha, ha! If I'm going to die, why don't you satisfy my curiosity and tell me about Chiwewe? Who proposed the raid, you or Ning Cheng Gong? Alas, dear sir. I know nothing of Chiwewe or this other fellow. Besides I do not feel in a talkative frame of mind. You have nothing to lose by telling me. Who owns the Lucky Dragon Investment Company? I am afraid, Doctor, that you will have to take your curiosity to the grave with you.

They heard the Landcruiser coming and Chetti Singh stirred. That did not take Chawe long. You could not have been at many pains to conceal your vehicle. Let us go to the main door to greet him. Will you lead the way, please, Doctor, and bear in mind that Mr. Purdey's excellent firearm is only a foot from your spinal column. Still nursing his injured arm Daniel set off towards the warehouse doors. As they emerged from the aisle between the rows of packing-cases he saw a green Cadillac parked beside the empty railway truck.

Probably Chetti Singh had remained safely in the Cadillac until the leopard had returned to its cage. Daniel remembered the shed at the back of the building, and the foul animal smell that he-had noticed earlier.

He was piecing it all together, working out where the leopard was kept and how it was controlled. Even so, it was clear that neither Chetti Singh nor his henchman trusted the animal. On the contrary they had been extremely nervous when the leopard was loose.

When they reached the main doors, Chetti Singh motioned Daniel to a standstill. Then abruptly the heavy door began to roll aside, revealing Daniel's Toyota parked facing the entrance with its headlights burning.

Chawe was standing at the external control box of the electrically operated door. When the door was- fully opened, he withdrew his key-card from the lock of the control box. It was on a short key-chain and he dropped it into his hip pocket.

Everything is ready, he told Chetti Singh. You know what to do, Chetti Singh replied. I don't want any birds to fly back to settle on my roof.

Make sure you leave no sign. It must be an accident, a nice simple accident on the mountain road. You understand that? They were speaking Angoni again, secure in the belief that Daniel could not understand.

There will be an accident, Chawe agreed. And perhaps a little fire.

Chetti Singh turned his attention back to Daniel. Now, dear sir.

Kindly mount to the controls of your automobile. Chawe will tell you where to go. Please obey him most faithfully. He shoots very well with the shotgun. Obediently Daniel climbed up into the cab of the Landcruiser and, at a word from Chetti Singh, Chawe took the seat directly behind him. Once they were settled, Chetti Singh passed the shotgun to the big Angoni. It was done as quickly and as neatly as an expert loader serving his gun in a Scottish grouse butt.

Before Daniel could take any advantage, the double barrel was pressed firmly into the back of his neck, held there by Chawe.

Chetti Singh stepped back to the open window beside Daniel. Chawe's English is absolutely atrocious, never mind, he said jovially, and then switched to the lingua franca of Africa. Wena kuluma Fanika-lo, you speak like this? Yes, Daniel agreed in the same language. Good, then you and Chawe will have no difficulty understanding each other. just do as he orders, Doctor. At that range the shotgun will make a most unsightly mess of your coiffure, no doubt. Chetti Singh stepped back, and at Chawe's command Daniel reversed the Landcruiser, swung it in a Uturn and drove out through the main gates into the public road.

In the rear-view mirror he saw Chetti Singh walk back to the green Cadillac and open the driver's door. Then the angle changed and Daniel could no longer see into the warehouse.

From the back seat Chawe gave curt directions, emphasising each with a jab of the shotgun muzzle into the back of Daniel's neck. They drove through the silent and deserted streets of the sleeping town, heading east towards the lake and the mountains.

Once they were out into the country Chawe urged him to increase speed.

The road was good, and the Landcruiser buzzed along merrily. By now Daniel's wounded arm was stiff and painful. He nursed it on his lap, driving with one hand .

trying to ignore the pain.

Within an hour the gradient changed and the road began a series of hairpins as it climbed the first slopes of the mountain.

On each side the forest was denser and darker, pressing in upon the highway and the Landcruiser's speed bled off as she climbed.

The dawn came on stealthily, and beyond the shafts of the headlights Daniel saw the shapes of the forest trees emerging from the gloom.

Soon he could see their high tops defined against the dawn sky. He turned his wrist and glanced at his watch. His sleeve was stiff with dried blood, but it was light enough now to read the dial clearly.

Seven minutes past six.

He had had plenty of time to consider his predicament and to assess the man who held the gun to his head. He judged him to be a tough opponent.

There was not the least doubt that he would kill without hesitation or compunction, and he handled the shotgun with a disheartening competence.

On the other hand it was an awkward weapon to use in the confines of the Landcruiser's cab.

Daniel considered his alternatives. He quickly discarded the idea of attacking Chawe in the truck. He would have his head blown off before he could turn to face him.

He might kick open the side door and throw himself out of the cab, but that meant that he would have to reduce the Landcruiser's speed below fifty to avoid serious injury when he hit the ground. Gradually he lifted his-foot from the accelerator.

Almost immediately Chawe sensed the change in the engine beat and thrust the shotgun into the nape of his neck. Kawaleza! Go faster!

That horse wouldn't run. Daniel grimaced and obeyed. On the other hand Chawe wasn't likely to shoot him at this speed and risk the sudden loss of control and the inevitable pile-up.

He expected an order to stop or pull off the road when they reached their destination, wherever that might be. That would be the time to make his play. Daniel settled down to wait until then.

Suddenly the road was steeper, and the bends sharper. The dawn was grey.

As they came through each turn in the road, Daniel had glimpses of the valley below. It was filled with silver mist banks, through which he made out the white cascades of a mountain river, running deep in its gloomy gorge.

Another bend loomed ahead and as he braced himself to negotiate it, Chawe spoke sharply, Stop! Pull in to the edge.

Over there.

Daniel braked and pulled over, on to the verge.

They were at the top of a cliff. The edge of the road was guarded by a line of white-painted rocks. Beyond that the chasm gaped. It was a drop of two or three hundred feet to the rocky riverbed below.

Daniel pulled on the handbrake and felt his heart bounding against his rib cage. Would the shot come now? he wondered.

It would be a stupid thing to do if they wanted to make it look like an accident, but then the big Angoni did not seem to be labouring under a heavy burden of brains. Switch off the engine, he ordered.

Daniel did as he was told. Put your hands on your head, Chawe ordered, and Daniel felt a small lift of relief. He had a few seconds longer. He obeyed and waited.

He heard the click of the door latch, but the pressure of the steel muzzle against his spine never slackened. He felt the cool draught of air as Chawe swung the back door open. Do not move, he warned Daniel, and slid sideways from his seat still aiming the shotgun in through the open door. Now he was standing alongside the car. Open your door slowly. The shotgun was aimed through the side window into Daniel's face. He opened the door. Now come out. Daniel stepped down.

Still covering him with the shotgun, holding it in one hand like a horse pistol, Chawe reached out with his left hand through the open door.

Daniel saw that he had the steel jackhandle lying on the rear seat.

During the journey he must have taken it from under the front seat.

In that instant Daniel understood how Chawe planned to get rid of him.

Chawe would prod him to the edge of the precipice with the shotgun, and then a single blow to the back of the skull with the jack-handle would tumble him two hundred feet into the rocky gorge. After that the Landcruiser, with the driver's door open and probably with a burning rag stuffed into the filter of the fuel tank, would. be pushed over the cliff on top of him.

It would look like another tourist killed by negligent driving on a notorious stretch of mountain road. Nothing to excite police suspicion, or to tie the incident to Chetti Singh and a cargo of contraband ivory in Lilongwe a hundred miles from the scene.

At that moment Daniel saw his opportunity.

Chawe was reaching in through the open door, and he was just marginally off balance. Although the shotgun was still pointed at Daniel's guts, he would be slow to adjust his aim if Daniel moved quickly.

Daniel hurled himself forward, not at the man or the gun but at the door.

He crashed into it with his full weight, and it slammed shut with Chawe's arm trapped between steel edge and jamb.

Chawe screamed in agony. The sound of it did not cover the crack of breaking bone, sharp as a stick of dry kindling snapped across the knee.

His forefinger, thick as a blood sausage, slipped across the trigger, firing one of the barrels. The blast of shot missed Daniel's head by a foot, though the detonation fluttered his hair and made him wince. The recoil threw the barrel high.

Using his momentum Daniel charged him head on, seizing the shotgun with both hands, at buttstock and hot barrel.

Chawe's grip on the weapon was single-handed and weakened by the agony of broken bone trapped in the door. He fired the second barrel, but the shot flew harmlessly into the sky.

Daniel slammed the side of the breech into his face, catching him across the upper lip, crushing his nose and shearing off all his upper teeth at the gum. Chawe bellowed through a mouthful of blood and broken teeth, as he tried to pull his arm from the steel trap of the door.

Daniel had the advantage of a double-handed grip on the shotgun and used it to tear the weapon from Chawe's right hand. He lifted the shotgun high, reversed it and drove the steel butt-plate into Chawe's face, catching him in the side of the jaw with the full force of the blow.

Chawe's jawbone shattered at the hinge and his face changed shape, sagging at one side as the bone collapsed. Stunned and uncoordinated he fell backwards, held only by his trapped arm.

Daniel yanked the door handle and it flew open, releasing Chawe's arm when he was not expecting it.

Chawe reeled backwards, not in control of his legs, windmilling his arms to try and retain his balance, the shattered arm flapping uselessly below the joint of the elbow. One of the white-washed boulders at the edge of the cliff caught his heels and he jerked backwards, as though plucked on a wire, and disappeared over the precipice.

Daniel heard him scream. The sound receded swiftly as he fell and was cut off abruptly on the rocks at the bottom. The silence afterwards was profound.

Daniel found himself leaning against the Landcruiser with the shotgun still clutched to his chest, panting from those few seconds of wild exertion. It took a moment to gather himself and then he went to the edge of the cliff and looked over.

Chawe lay on his face on the rocks at the edge of the waterfall directly below, his limbs spread like a crucifix. There was no scuff mark at the brink of the precipice to mark his fall.

Daniel thought swiftly. Report the attack? Tell the police about the ivory? Hell, no! A white man had better not kill a black man in Africa, even in self-defence, even in a civilised state like Malawi.

They would crucify him.

His mind was made up by the sound of a heavy vehicle descending the mountain road in low gear. Swiftly he slipped the shotgun on to the floorboards of the Landcruiser and pulled a light tarpaulin over it.

Then he crossed to the edge of the cliff, unzipped the fly of his trousers and forced himself to urinate over the drop.

The descending truck appeared around the bend of the road above him.

It was a timber lorry piled with cut logs that were chained to the cargo bed. There were two black men in the cab, the driver and his assistant.

Daniel made a show of shaking off the drops and zipping his fly closed.

The black driver grinned and waved at him as the lorry rumbled past and Daniel waved back.

As soon as it was out of sight he ran to the Landcruiser and drove on up the mountain. Within two hundred yards he found a disused logging track that branched off the main road. . He drove through the dense secondary growth that clogged the track until he was out of sight of the road. He left the Landcruiser there and went back on foot, ready to duck into cover at the sound of another vehicle.

At the top of the cliff he checked that Chawe's body still lay on the rocks below. His instinct was to leave him there and get far away from the scene as quickly as possible. He suspected that a Malawian prison was no great improvement on any other in Africa. His arm was very painful now. He could feel the first fires of infection kindling, but he didn't want even to look at it until he had cleaned up the evidence against himself.

He skirted the top of the cliff until he found a way down. It was a game path used by hyrax and klipspringer, steep and precarious. It took him twenty minutes to reach Chawe's body.

The skin was cold as a reptile's when Daniel touched Chawe's throat.

There was no need to check for a pulse. He was dead meat. Swiftly Daniel turned out his pockets. He found that a greasy well-thumbed passbook was the only piece of identification. He wanted to get rid of that.

Apart from a filthy tattered handkerchief and some loose coins, the only other items were four SSG shotgun cartridges and the key-card for the control box of the electric door on the warehouse that Daniel had seen him operate. That might come in useful.

Satisfied that he had made it as difficult as he could for the police to identify the corpse, if they ever found it, Daniel rolled Chawe to the river edge, his broken arm flopping and catching under him, and shoved him into the racing water.

He watched the body splash as it struck, then swirl and roll as it was carried swiftly downstream and disappeared around the next bend.

He hoped that it would hang up on a snag somewhere in the inaccessible depths of the gorge long enough for the crocodiles to get a decent meal and further complicate the process of identification.

By the time he had climbed back up the cliff and reached the Landcruiser again, his arm felt as though it were on fire. Sitting at the driver's wheel, with his medical box on the passenger seat beside him, he stripped back the torn blood-caked sleeve and pulled a face at what he found beneath it. The claw wounds were not deep but already they were weeping yellow watery fluid and the flesh around them was swollen a hot crimson.

He packed the lacerations with thick yellow Betadine paste and bandaged it, then he filled a disposable syringe with a broad-spectrum antibiotic and shot it into the biceps of his own left arm.

All this took time. It was almost eight o'clock when he checked his wristwatch again. He reversed back down the logging trail and on to the main mountain road. He drove slowly past the top of the cliff, and the tracks of his tires and the imprint of his feet showed clearly in the soft earth of the verge. He considered trying to obliterate them, and thought about the driver of the timber lorry who had seen him there. I've hung around here long enough, he decided. If I'm going to stop Chetti Singh, I've got to get back to Lilongwe.

And he set off back towards the capital.

As he drew closer to the urban areas, the traffic on the road was heavier. He drove sedately, avoiding drawing attention to himself.

Many of the vehicles he passed were Landrovers or Toyotas, so his truck was not remarkable. However, he regretted the touch of vanity that had led him to display his personal logo so prominently. Never thought I'd make a fugitive from justice, he muttered, but still he knew that he could no longer parade around Lilongwe in the Landcruiser.

He drove to the airport and left the truck in the public carpark. He took his spare toilet-kit and a clean shirt from his sports grip and went to the men's washrooms in the airport building to clean up. He bundled his torn and blood-stained shirt and jersey and stuffed them into the refuse bin. Although it was still stiff and sore, he did not want to disturb the wound.

After he had shaved, he dressed in a clean shirt whose long sleeves covered his bandaged arm.

When he checked his image in the washroom mirror he was reasonably respectable-looking and he headed for the public telephone booths in the main concourse.

A South African Airways flight from Johannesburg had just landed and the concourse was crowded with tourists and their luggage. No one paid him any attention. The police emergency number was prominently displayed on the wall above the payphone. He disguised his voice by muffling it with a folded handkerchief over the mouthpiece and by speaking in Swahili. I want to report a robbery and a murder, he told the female police operator. Give me a senior officer urgently. This is Inspector Mopola.

The voice was deep and authoritative. You have information of a murder?

Listen carefully, Daniel told him, still in Swahili. I'm only going to say this once. The ivory stolen from Chiwewe National Park is here in Lilongwe. At least eight people were murdered during the robbery.

The stolen goods are hidden in tea-chests which are being stored at the warehouses of the Chetti Singh Trading Company in the light industrial area. You had better hurry. They will be moved soon. Who is this speaking, please? the inspector asked. That isn't important. just get down there fast and get that ivory, Daniel told him, and hung up.

He went to the Avis car rental counter in the airport concourse. The Avis girl gave him a sweet smile and allotted him a blue Volkswagen Golf.

I'm sorry. Without a reservation that is all we have available.

Before he left the carpark, he stopped beside his dusty old Landcruiser and surreptitiously transferred the shotgun wrapped in tarpaulin to the boot of the Volkswagen. Then he retrieved his Zeiss binoculars and slipped them into the cubbyhole. As he drove away, he checked that the Landcruiser was tucked away at the furthest end of the crowded lot where it would escape casual observation.