A Sparrow Falls

  He slid down a racing spill of white rapids, feeling skin stripped from his hip and shoulder at the contact of harsh rock and then, at the bottom, he struck again, jammed solid between two monumental rocks. In the darkness, they stood over him like gravestones.

  He was held in their jaws, and the water tore furiously at him, as though denied of its prey, trying to pluck him away.

  There was light, just enough to make out shapes and distances, and Mark marvelled at that with a brain jellied by pounding and starved of oxygen. Then he looked up, and through streaming eyes saw that the truck was parked on the threshold of the bridge high above the gorge, its headlights struck the ironwork and the light was broken up and diffused by the rain. It cast a vague uncertain glow into the gorge.

  Added to this was a closer, more powerful light source. The smashed carapace of the Rolls-Royce lay at the foot of the cliff, half in the water, half upon the rocky ledge. It lay on its back, with all four wheels spiralling idly, but both headlights still burned fiercely, striking the uneven rock walls, providing a dramatic stage lighting.

  Mark looked around him, and saw that the current had swept him in under the cliff, and that a ledge of glistening black rock extended out over his head. He reached up with his right hand, and then cried out as his fingers touched the ledge, and bright agony flared in his wrist.

  Something was broken there, he realized, as he clung desperately to the slippery boulders, and tried to force the fingers of his right hand to open or close.

  The torrent was too strong to resist much longer, and he felt himself starting to slide, dragging over the boulders, on the point of being swept away once more. He knew that less than a hundred yards downstream, the first waterfall plunged, frothing and thundering, down the sheer side of the escarpment.

  He released his grip with the left hand, and threw himself upwards with all his strength. His fingers caught on the sharp lip of the ledge above his head, and his body swung like a pendulum, the hungry waters slashing at his knees, testing the strength of his grip, trying to drag him away, trying to break the hooked fingers, tearing the fingernails loose so that droplets of blood squeezed out from under them.

  Slowly, achingly, Mark bent the arm at the elbow, lifting his knees, drawing his feet clear of the water and its murderous drag.

  He hung another moment, gathering what was left of his strength and resolve, and then, with one last convulsive heave, he threw his right arm upwards and hooked his elbow over the ledge, and followed it immediately with his left elbow.

  Another moment of rest, and then he wriggled painfully out on the ledge and lay face down. He thought he was blind now, or that the lights had been doused, but the darkness was in his head only.

  Slowly the darkness cleared, and he lifted his head. The thunder of the river drowned out all other sound, he could not hear the scrabble of loose stone and the slide of booted feet as Dirk Courtney came down the almost vertical pathway below the bridge. It did not surprise Mark that it was him – it seemed only natural that Dirk Courtney should be here, at the scene of disaster. He was dressed in hunting breeches and calf-length boots, a thick navy pea jacket and a woollen cap pulled low over his face.

  He slid down the last ten feet of the cliff, keeping his balance, light as a dancer on his feet, and he paused on the ledge beside the shattered Rolls. Carefully he looked about him, flashing a lantern into the shadows and crevices.

  Mark flattened himself down on the rock, but he was beyond the range of the lantern beam.

  Dirk turned the beam on to the Rolls, and Mark groaned with the shock of it.

  General Sean Courtney had been thrown halfway through the windscreen, and then the full weight of the machine had rolled on to his upper torso. His head was almost severed, and the thick white beard was sodden with bright blood, that shone like rubies in the lantern light.

  Dirk Courtney stooped over him, and felt for the carotid pulse in the throat. Despite the fearful mutilation, he must have detected some flutter of stubborn life there. Dirk rolled the head sideways, and the eyes were open and startled. Dirk lifted the short thick club he carried in his right hand. It was wrapped in coarse brown hessian, but its weight and heft were obvious, by the way he handled it.

  Mark tried to cry out, but his hoarse croak was lost in the roar of waters. Dirk struck his father across the temple, above the right ear, where the wet grey curls were plastered against the skull, and Mark seemed to feel the thud of the blow in his own soul.

  Then with one exploring forefinger, Dirk pressed the temple and felt the give of mortal damage, the grating of the rough edges of shattered bone shard deep in his father’s head.

  Dirk’s features were expressionless, cold and remote, but then he did something which seemed to Mark more dreadful, more shocking than the killing blow. With a tender touch of his fingertips, he closed the eyelids over Sean Courtney’s dead staring eyes. Then he went down on one knee and kissed his father’s bloodied lips lightly, without a change of expression. It was the act of an unhinged mind. It was only at that moment that Mark realized that Dirk Courtney was insane.

  Almost immediately, Dirk’s manner changed and his hands lost the gentle touch, becoming once again businesslike and precise. He rolled the body, unbuttoned the camel-hair overcoat and searched swiftly through Sean’s clothing. Then he drew out a gold watch chain with the keys and gold hunter attached.

  He examined the keys briefly and then pushed them into his pocket. He stood and went to the rear door of the Rolls and struggled with the handle. The door burst open at last, and Ruth Courtney’s body spilled out sideways and lay at his feet. He took a handful of her thick dark hair and drew her head back. Again he swung the short thick club against her temple, and again he felt the skull like a doctor making his diagnosis, prodding to feel the soft spot of crushed bone.

  Satisfied, he lifted Ruth Courtney’s limp, childlike body in his arms and carried her to the edge of the water. He dropped her over the side, and she was gone instantly, dashed away on the dark current, down to where the plunging waterfalls would tumble her body into the Ladyburg valley, and the cruel rocks would leave no doubt in a coroner’s mind as to how she had died.

  Helpless with his injuries and exhaustion, his body battered and strained beyond its natural limits, Mark could not move, could hardly breathe as he watched Dirk Courtney stoop and grasp his father’s ankles. He dragged the General’s heavy body to the edge of the torrent, straining backwards, against the dead weight.

  Mark droped his face into his hands and found that he was weeping, great racking dry sobs that probed the injuries deep in his chest.

  When he looked up again, Sean Courtney’s body was gone, and Dirk Courtney was coming towards where he lay, cautiously following the narrow ledge, searching the darkness with the lantern beam, sweeping the dark tumbling waters, examining each foot of the ledge, looking for him — looking for Mark, knowing he had been in the Rolls. The headlights of the truck had struck full into Mark’s face in that fatal instant of collision. Dirk Courtney knew he was here – somewhere.

  Mark rolled on to his side and tried to unfasten the buttons of his coat but in his haste he had tried with the right hand, and he whimpered with the pain. With his left hand now, he ripped the buttons away and struggled out of the garment, its wet folds resisting each movement so that when he at last was free of it, Dirk Courtney was only fifty feet away, coming steadily, carefully along the ledge, the lantern in one hand, the short heavy club dangling in the other.

  Lying on the edge of the river, Mark flipped the jacket sideways, trying to make it fall on to the rocks in the torrent below, but he had no time to see if he had succeeded. Dirk Courtney was too close.

  Mark rolled in towards the foot of the cliff, stifling the cry of pain as his damaged ribs and broken wrist came in rude contact with the rock.

  In the lee of the cliff there was a dark shallow chimney, screened from the light of the headlights and lantern. Mark came to his feet. Dirk Courtney was
out of sight beyond the angle of the cliff, but the beam of his lantern jumped and swept and swung, bobbing with each pace as he came on.

  Mark turned his face to the cliff, gathered himself, and found that some of his dissipated strength was returning, and his anger was still alive, like small warm flame in his chest. He did not know if it was enough strength, or anger, to carry him through, but he began to climb, slowly, clumsily, like a maimed insect he clung to the cold wet rock and dragged himself upwards.

  He was twenty feet up when Dirk Courtney stopped on the ledge directly below him. Mark froze into stillness, the last defence of the helpless animal, but he knew that the instant Dirk lifted the beam, he was discovered. He waited for it, with the numbed resignation of the beast waiting in the abattoir chute.

  Dirk made another careful search, swinging the lantern in a full slow traverse of both sides of the river, and he was on the point of lifting the beam to play it on to the cliff where Mark hung, when something caught his attention.

  He took two hurried paces to the edge of the rocky ledge and shone the lantern downwards.

  Mark’s jacket was caught on one of the boulders, and Dirk went down on one knee to try and reach it with one outstretched arm.

  It was the respite that Mark needed. Dirk’s full attention was on the stranded jacket and the rush and roar of water covered the noise of Mark’s scrabbling feet and hands on the cliff.

  He did not look down again until he had dragged himself fifty feet higher, and then he saw that the jacket had succeeded as a decoy. Dirk Courtney was a hundred feet downstream, standing on the lip of the first steep waterfall, on the very edge of the escarpment. He had the sodden jacket in his hands and he was peering over the fearsome drop. In the lantern light, the water was black and smooth as oil, as it streamed into the abyss, turning slowly to thick white spume as it fell.

  Dirk Courtney threw the jacket out into black space and stood back from the drop. He settled down comfortably on his haunches, sheltered by the cliff from rain and wind, and quite calmly he selected a cigar, like a workman taking a break after performing satisfactorily a difficult task.

  That casual little act, the flare of a sulphur match, and the contented puff of blue tobacco smoke in the lantern light, probably saved Mark’s life. It stoked his anger to the point when it could overcome his agony and bodily exhaustion. It provided him with the will to go on, and he began to climb again.

  Sometimes during the climb, reality faded away from Mark. Once a sense of warmth and well-being began to suffuse his whole body, a wonderful feeling, floating as though on the very frontiers of sleep, but he caught himself before he fell, and deliberately punched his right hand against the rock face. He screamed with the pain of it, but with the pain came new resolve.

  But resolve faded slowly in the cold and the pain, and fantasy grew again. He believed that he was one of King Chaka’s chosen, following the old king up that terrible cliff to the summit of Chaka’s Gate, and he found himself talking gibberish in broken Zulu, and in his head he heard the deep resonant voice of the old king calling him on, giving him encouragement, and he knew if he climbed faster he might catch a glimpse of the king’s face. He lost his grip in his impatience, and slid away, gathering momentum down the incline, until he crashed into one of the stunted dwarf trees that grew from the cliff face. It broke his fall, but he screamed again at the pain of broken ribs.

  He climbed on, and then he heard Storm’s voice. It was so clear and close that he stopped, and turned his face up into the rain and darkness. She was there, floating above his head, so beautiful and pale and graceful.

  ‘Come, Mark,’ she said, and her voice echoed and rang like a silver bell in his head. ‘Come, my darling.’

  He knew then that she was alive, that she was not dying in a cold hospital bed, that she was here, come to him in his pain and exhaustion.

  ‘Storm,’ he cried, and threw himself upwards, falling forward, and lying face down in the short wet grass at the top of the cliff.

  He just wanted to lie there, for ever. He was not even sure that he had reached the top, was not sure if this was not yet another fantasy, perhaps he was dead already and this was all there was to it.

  Then slowly he was aware of the rain drops on his cheek, and the sound of the little tree frogs clinking in the rain, and the cold breath of the wind, and he realized with regret that he was still alive.

  The pain began returning then. It started in his wrist first, and began to spread, and he did not think he had the strength left to ride it.

  Then suddenly he had the image, clearly formed in his mind, of Dirk Courtney stooped over his father’s body, with the club raised in his hand to strike — and Mark’s anger came to save him again.

  Mark pushed himself to his knees and looked about him. A hundred yards away, the truck was parked on the threshold of the iron bridge, and in its headlights, he could make out the shape of a man.

  With one more huge, draining effort, Mark came to his feet, and stood swaying, gathering himself for his next lumbering step.

  Peter Botes stood in the rain, holding the heavy pistol hanging in his right hand. The rain had soaked his fine sandy hair, and it ran down his cheeks and forehead, so he kept wiping it away with his left hand.

  The rain had soaked through the shoulders of his overcoat also, and he shivered spasmodically, as much from fear as from cold.

  He was caught up in the great swirl of events over which he had no control, an encircling web from which he could see no escape, even though his lawyer’s mind twisted and turned.

  ‘Accessory to murder – before and after the fact.’ He did not want to know what was going on down there at the foot of the cliff, and yet he felt the sick fascination and dread of it.

  This was not what he had imagined when he had made the decision to go to Dirk Courtney. He had thought it would be a few words, and he could walk away, pretending it had not happened, crawling back into his wife’s warm bed and pulling the blankets over his head.

  He had not been prepared for this horror and violence, for a gun in his hand, and this ugly bloody business in the gorge.

  ‘The penalty is death,’ he thought, arid shivered again. He wanted to run, but there was no place to run now.

  ‘Oh God, why did I do it?’ he whispered aloud. ‘I wish, oh God, I wish—’ the age-old cry of the weakling, but he did not finish the wish. There was a sound behind him and he began to turn, lifting the pistol and beginning to point it with both arms at full stretch in front of him.

  A figure came towards him out of the darkness, and Peter opened his mouth to cry out.

  The figure was an apparition of blood and mud, with a distorted pale face, and it came so swiftly that the cry never reached his lips.

  Peter Botes was a man of words and ideas, a soft little man of desks and rich foods, and the man who came out of the darkness was a soldier.

  Mark knelt over him in the mud, panting and holding his ribs, waiting for the pain of movement to recede, and for his starred vision to clear.

  He looked down at the man under him. His face was pressed into the mud, and Mark took a handful of his hair and rolled the head on its narrow shoulders to prevent the man drowning; it was only then that Mark recognized him.

  ‘Peter!’ he whispered hoarsely, and felt his senses reel again, uncertain if this was another fantasy.

  He touched the unconscious man’s lips, and they were warm and soft as a girl’s.

  ‘Peter!’ he repeated stupidly, and suddenly he knew it all. It did not have to be thought out a step at a time. He understood how Dirk Courtney had known where to set his ambush. He knew that Peter was the traitor, and he knew that the decoy had been Storm and baby John, he knew it was all a lie then. He knew that Storm and her child were safe and sleeping in the tiny bedroom above the beach – and the knowledge buoyed him.

  He picked the Smith Wesson revolver out of the mud with his left hand and wiped it carefully on his shirt.

  Dirk Cour
tney paused at the head of the pathway. He was only slightly breathless from the climb, but his boots were thick with mud and raindrops dewed his shoulders, glittering in the burning headlights of the truck.

  The headlights dazzled him, and there was an area of unfathomable darkness behind them.

  ‘Peter?’ he called, and lifted one arm to shield his eyes. He saw the shadowy figure of the waiting man leaning against the cab of the truck, and he walked forward.

  ‘It’s done,’ he said. ‘You have nothing to worry about now. I have the key to the safe, it’s just the cleaning up left to do.’

  He stopped abruptly, and peered again at the waiting figure. The man had not moved.

  ‘Peter,’ his voice cracked. ‘Come on, man! Pull yourself together. There is still work to do.’

  And he started forward again, stepping out of the beam of the headlights.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked. ‘It must be getting late.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mark’s voice was thick and slurred. ‘For you, it’s very late.’ And Dirk stopped again, staring at him. The silence seemed to last for all of eternity, but it was only the instant that it took Dirk to see the revolver and the pale mud-smeared face. He knew that the bullet would come now, and he sought to delay it, just long enough.

  ‘Listen to me,’ said Dirk urgently. ‘Wait just one second.’

  He changed his grip on the lantern in his right hand, and his voice was compelling, the tone quick and persuasive, just enough to hold Mark’s finger on the trigger.

  ‘There is something you must know.’ Dirk made a disarming gesture, swinging the lantern back, and then hurling it forward in a wide arc of his long powerful arm, and, at the same instant, hurling himself forward.

  The lantern struck Mark on the shoulder, a glancing blow, just enough to deflect his gun hand as he fired.

  But he heard the bullet strike, that muffled thumping sound of soft lead expanding into living flesh, and he heard the grunt of air driven forcibly from Dirk Courtney’s lungs by the strike.

  The the man’s big hard body crashed into Mark, and as they reeled sideways, supported by the chassis of the truck, he felt one arm lock around his chest and hard fingers close over his gun hand.