A Promise of Diamonds

A Promise of Diamonds

A Patrick Dawlish Mystery

John Creasey writing as Gordon Ashe

CHAPTER I

THE VIGIL

It was hot, so hot that the sun burned and dried everything out of the pale earth.

It was hot, so hot that the sun made a shimmering haze of silvery light which blinded man and beast, deluding them with promises of coolness and of water which were not there. In the town there were eleven houses, not really enough to be a town, but what else would one call it? Not a village, because there was no central place, no cluster of houses about a church; not even a road, only a track made by a few wheeled vehicles and fewer caterpillar tractors which had long since been driven off or had rotted away. The eleven houses were all within sight of one another; perhaps that created a unit large and cohesive enough to be called a town.

The place had a name: Kangarmie.

No one knew where the name had come from, and no one here now cared. The fact that no one cared revealed itself in the signpost on the ‘road’ near the first house. It said: ‘K … rmie’; the rest of the letters had faded, sun-rotted, but for some odd reason the five remained, faint grey on a background that had once been white but was now parched-looking board like the dried skin of a mamba. Near it was a metal one which had withstood the heat better. It said: ‘HELL’, in big black letters on a faded yellow background. That was a great joke among the inhabitants of Kangarmie. A drunken truck driver had hit the metal, bending it and denting his cabin. He had so damaged the paint that the ‘S’ which should have been at the front of ‘hell’ was missing.

‘Hell,’ the inhabitants would say when in the right mood. ‘Short for Kangarmie.’

It was difficult for outsiders to understand why the town still existed. True, it still sold petrol and provided a bath and food for travellers, but few passed through since the mine had closed down. Over in the derelict compound, where the mud huts stood the test of time as well if not better than the wood of the white houses, there were indications that over a hundred years ago Bantu mineworkers had once lived, laughing, eating, fighting, dancing, saving money to take home to the kraal. Beyond the compound, on the side of the hill, was a skeleton of what had once been the mine’s superstructure, stark lengths of rusty iron which had taken on a kind of pattern, as if a drunken artist had tried to paint what wasn’t there. The shaft of the mine was hidden, of course; in fact, the opening was boarded up to make sure that no one tried to go down into the bowels of the earth to find an illusory fortune. There had been gold, but the vein had been worked out in eleven short years and forgotten by most for twenty.

Yet Kangarmie still existed, its inhabitants showing a stubborn loyalty.

The few who did drive across this southern tip of the Kalahari Desert were grateful, for one could sleep as well as eat and drink and bath; but there were better routes across the desert, roads which led from somewhere to somewhere, not nowhere to nowhere. Occasionally an adventurous youngster came, following a road which should no longer have appeared on the map but which had never been taken off. Occasionally a safari passed this way, heading for Bushman country further north. Sometimes an expedition seeking the flora or the fauna, the flowers or the beasts, came and pitched camp and descended upon the café-cum-bottle-store-cum-garage. This, the biggest building in Kangarmie, was owned by Jacob Parkin and run by his wife, two sons, and one daughter-in-law. Parkin himself was always out in the desert or in the far-off hills, prospecting; sometimes he was away six months at a time.

Everyone in the other houses had some kind of reason for staying even though the reason made little sense to people who did not know the strange fascination that the desert could exert. There were the Ellises, the Longfellows, the du Toits, the Browns, the Forrests ….

Della Forrest had the best reason of any. She was waiting for her husband to come back. She had waited for a long time, for over two years.

The house she lived in was no more worthy of the name ‘house’ than Kangarmie was worthy of the name ‘town’. It had two rooms, bedroom and living room, and a built-on kitchen. There was no piped water in Kangarmie; there never had been. There was practically no rain, either, so it was no hardship to go outside.

The unusual thing about Della Forrest’s house was its spick-and-span appearance inside. Nothing could exist in that burning sun and look newly painted outside, and ‘Promise’ was no exception, but inside it put everyone else in the town to shame—or it would have, had there been any sense of pride in any other housewife there.

‘She must be mad,’ the neighbours would say, ‘Keeping it ready for him to come home. He’ll never come back.’

There were times when Della herself wondered if she was a little mad. This afternoon was one of the occasions.

She stood by the window, where the Venetian blinds were down and the slats made bars of fierce light and bars of dark shadow across her pale face. It was a nice face, not beautiful, but certainly not plain. She had fine hazel-coloured eyes and long lashes, a short nose, and rather full lips.

When she laughed, which wasn’t often these days, her whole face lit up.

She was half frowning as she looked towards the hill, the skeleton of rusted steel, and the distance beyond. Even after all these months it was impossible for her to stand here without recalling the day when Nigel had left. She had stood at this very spot, watching the Land-Rover as it careered along the sandy track towards the hill. Her last glimpse had been of its silhouette, black against the sky, black as the steelwork was now. Suddenly it had appeared to topple over the edge and vanish. At the time and to this day she believed Nigel had waved, had imagined his right hand and arm outside of the truck, but she wasn’t actually sure. Even now she reminded herself that she knew Nigel very well. The moment after he had kissed her and turned away his thoughts had been on where he was going, not on her. Oh, he loved her, but not with the kind of love she had for him; she was not everything that mattered in his life. There was always the thing he wanted on the other side of the hill, tomorrow’s promise. When they had first met he had been an apprentice diamond-cutter at one of the mines, but the indoor life had palled on him, and the lure of prospecting had been too strong. He had been so sure he was right to leave his job. Day after day these memories passed through Della’s mind, but they were seldom so oppressive as they were today. There was no special reason; it wasn’t an anniversary, not even the same day of the week as he had left; it was Thursday, and he had left on a Monday.

‘Give me two months, sweet, and I’ll be back with a fortune in diamonds. That’s a promise!’

Promise, promise, promise! At times she felt that she hated the word.

Della half turned—and then thought she saw a movement, a black speck, on the brow of the hill. Her heart leaped and began to beat sickeningly, but it was only a bird—a vulture, probably after some dead creature of the desert. She turned away from the window and stepped towards the door which led to the kitchen.

It opened.

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, taken in fright. Then she saw the man beyond. ‘Jeff, you scared me.’

‘I was hoping I would,’ the man said. ‘Someone has to scare away the ghosts.’

‘Jeff, please.’

He was a short, stocky man in the middle forties, twice her age. He had clear, rather deep-set blue eyes, a short nose, thin, fine fair hair. He wore a well-used bush jacket and shorts which were too long for him and made him look a little broad.

‘Della,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to make yourself realise that he’s never coming back.’

She did not answer.

‘If you go on like this, you’ll drive yourself crazy.’ Jeff Mason went on. He had a hard, rather metallic voice. ‘You’ll do what everyone says you’ll do.’

‘Oh,’ Della said quietly. ‘And what does everyone say I’ll do?’

‘Della—’

‘Tell me what they say.’

‘Della, you know—’

‘I’ll know when you tell me,’ Della said.

‘You know as well as I do that everyone says you’ll waste the whole of your life if you go on brooding like this.’ Jeff took a step towards her, one arm outstretched. ‘Give it up, Della. You’ve waited much longer than most women would. You’re too young and to lovely to waste yourself on a memory.’

‘I’m too young and too lovely to waste myself on a middle-aged widower who can’t think beyond me wanting to go to bed with him.’

She meant it to hurt; she meant it to stop Jeff Mason from his ceaseless attempts to break down her resistance. She saw the colour ebb from his cheeks and the way the glow faded out of his eyes. She had hurt him all right. But he did not turn away, although his arm dropped to his side.

‘One day you may need me,’ he said. ‘Then you may believe the truth—that I love you.’

She didn’t speak. It was no use relenting, for that would encourage him more cruelly than she had wounded him.

‘All I want is you to start living again,’ Jeff went on. ‘Whether you choose me or another man isn’t important. The essential thing is for you to stop living for a ghost.’

He stood there long enough for the words to sink in, then swung around on his heel. The door between the two rooms swung to behind him, swayed, creaked, and fell silent. His footsteps sounded on the wooden floor of the stoep, then on the sandy gravel outside. She could hear the crunch, crunch, crunch. Suddenly she thought, ‘I didn’t hear him come in.’

She was puzzled, wondering how long he had been in the house. He knew it well. He had been a good friend of Nigel’s. And no one in Kangarmie locked their doors by day, although a few did by night.

She recalled the hurt which had shown so starkly in his eyes but did not dwell on it. She had tried for so long to be gentle with him; hardness might make him realise that he had no hope. She turned to look out of the window again.

Her heart seemed to turn over, for someone was there, on the hill—near the very spot where Nigel had vanished. She began to breathe very heavily and felt as if she were unable to move.

A man was coming down the hill.

She saw him sway and stagger as if he could not keep his balance. He was tall and his figure was dark against the sandy grey of the hillside. She turned quickly, snatching a pair of binoculars from a table nearby. When she put them to her eyes her vision was blurred. She twisted the wheel for focus. Tiny shrubs showed up. Rocks showed vividly. A little outcrop appeared very dark.

The man came into her line of vision.

He was staggering. She could not see his face because he wore a big wide-brimmed hat, and the brim was low over his eyes, but she saw the old bush jacket he was wearing, the torn and tattered shorts.

Nigel?

It couldn’t be, but it must be!

She thought desperately. ‘Oh God, make it Nigel!’

She rushed towards the door and for the first time for months wished Jeff Mason were at hand. He could take her up the hill. She hadn’t a car and couldn’t walk fast enough.

What was the matter with her? Of course she could walk!

She snatched a broad-brimmed linen hat from a peg in the living room and hurried out. The binoculars were heavy in her right hand, knocking against her leg. Dust spurted from her footsteps. She was in the grip of a kind of panic, realised it, but could do nothing about it. It was like a nightmare. She was conscious of fear of waking to something more hideous, to the fear that she was wrong again.

She had run like this four times before. Each time she had been wrong. Three times there had been no one up there, only desert driftwood stirred by the wind. Once it had been an old man who lived like a ghoul in the ruins of the compound. Each time when she had run she had prayed that it was Nigel, although prayer had not come easily to her since she had been a child.

This time, oh God, it must be Nigel.

She saw old Mrs. Cratton on her stoep, swinging a ceaseless to and fro in her big rocking chair. Mrs. Cratton was only twenty yards away. She was knitting some interminable garment.

‘Come here, gel!’ she called.

Della ran on.

Cranky, querulous, half-dead Granny Cratton, who lived here because she had no other place to go, thought Della crazily.

She felt mad. For a few minutes a nearer rise in the land hid the hill from her, and she could not see whether there remained any hope that she was right. She was gasping for breath and for the first time became fully aware of the deadly heat. It burned from the sky and it burned from the sand of the earth. It dried her body and it dried her mouth and lips. The sand was thicker here, and running was more difficult; her feet kept on slipping, slithering. As she neared the top of the rising land, she fell and hurt her knee. She cried out involuntarily but staggered back to her feet, the binoculars banging her bruised knee, and ran on. The moment she could see the hill again she stopped to stare, straining her eyes desperately. She thought the man was still there. She thought—why couldn’t she see more clearly?

The binoculars were a dead weight on the end of the strap; she had forgotten that she had them with her and could not understand why