Elephant Song - Smith Wilbur (книги бесплатно без онлайн txt) 📗

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.

He kept to the south side of the railway tracks, and found his way through the streets of the business area to the open-air market that he had noticed during his earlier explorations of the town.

At ten-thirty in the morning the market was crowded with vendors displaying their wares and shoppers haggling over them.  Dozens of trucks and mini-buses thronged the area around it.  They gave him cover. He parked the little blue Volkswagen amongst them, positioning her carefully.  The market was on rising ground that overlooked the railway tracks and the light industrial area beyond.

He found himself less than half a mile from the Chetti Singh warehouse and the Toyota workshops, so close that he could read the huge lettering of the company signboard on the buildings with the naked eye.  Through the nine-power lens of the Zeiss binoculars he had a fine view of the front of the warehouse and the main doors.  He could almost make out the expressions on the faces of the men working on the loading ramps.

A regular stream of trucks passed in and out of the main warehouse gates, amongst them he recognised the big pantechnicon and trailer.

However, there was no sign yet of any police activity and it was almost forty minutes since he had made his phone call to them.

Come on, people!  Get the lead out, he muttered impatiently.

As he said it he saw a shunting locomotive come puffing up the main line to the rail spur that entered the warehouse complex.

It was running in reverse, the engine-driver leaning out of his side window.

As it approached, one of the warehouse guards swung open the mesh gate on the boundary fence and the loco rolled through, slowing as it entered the open doors of the warehouse.

It passed out of Daniel's sight, but seconds later he heard the faint but characteristic clash of steel as the coupling engaged.

There was another delay and then the loco re-emerged from the warehouse, drawing three trucks behind it.  It gathered speed gradually as the heavily laden trucks gained momentum.

The goods trucks were each covered by heavy-duty canvas covers.

Daniel stared at them through the Zeiss binoculars but could make out no definite indication that the tea-chests were under those covers.

He lowered the binoculars and hammered his clenched fist against the steering-wheel of the Volkswagen and groaned aloud with frustration.