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    Panic
    Panic
    Panic
    Ebook382 pages6 hours

    Panic

    By TONY NASH

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    About this ebook

    It is midsummer, and with the worst heatwave ever to hit the City the Big Apple is overripe, with many destructive maggots eating away at its innards. All it needs is Panic!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTONY NASH
    Release dateMar 29, 2014
    ISBN9781631737510
    Panic
    Author

    TONY NASH

    Tony Nash is the author of over thirty detective, historical and war novels. He began his career as a navigator in the Royal Air Force, later re-training at Bletchley Park to become an electronic spy, intercepting Russian and East German agent transmissions, during which time he studied many languages and achieved a BA Honours Degree from London University. Diverse occupations followed: Head of Modern Languages in a large comprehensive school, ocean yacht skipper, deep sea fisher, fly tyer, antique dealer, bespoke furniture maker, restorer and French polisher, professional deer stalker and creative writer.

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      Book preview

      Panic - TONY NASH

      Panic

      TonyNash

      ISBN 9781631737510

      Copyright Tony Nash (c) 2013

      Smashwords Edition

      Other works by this author:

      The DCI Tony Dyce thrillers:

      Murder by Proxy

      Murder on the Back Burner

      Murder on the Chess Board

      Murder on the High 'C'

      Murder on Tiptoes

      The John Hunter thrillers:

      Carve Up

      Single to Infinity

      The Most Unkindest Cut

      The Iago Factor

      A Black Magic thriller -The Devil Deals Death

      Tripled Exposure

      Unseemly Exposure

      The Makepeace Manifesto

      The Last Laugh

      The World's Worst Joke Book

      The historical family saga:

      A Handful of Dust

      A Handful of Salt

      A Handful of Courage

      Hell and High Water

      PANIC: (Oxford Dictionary) Sudden and infectious fear, due to uncontrollable and unaccountable general impulse.

      This is a work of pure fiction, and any similarity between any character in it and any real person, living or dead, is purely coincidental and unintentional. Where actual places, buildings and locations are named, they are used fictionally.

      It came in on the ocean mist, innocent as a Kremlin peace dove, drifting lonely, lazy, past the half-dozen thumping, rusty freighters in the Narrows, above the brightly-lit 'Port de Calais', her diesels muted for final approach.

      Three miles from the sleeping city it lifted, joyously, brushing skittishly past Liberty's hopeful torch, soaring high, riding the pollution particles over Governor's Island, questing, seeking out and finding at last in the billion-eyed, sweltering concrete jungle the mark inscribed on the last page of the Book of Destiny.

      July 19th 0430 Eastern Standard Time

      Sam Brady eased his body from the bed, no longer awkwardly after years of painful practice, moved quietly across the room to stand silently at the open window, grateful for the night damp cooling the still-wet perspiration on his brow, looking out at his city.

      His city? He smiled wryly - hell, he couldn't even work out himself what he was doing here. How did a quiet old provincial banker, and a cripple to boot, get himself made Mayor of all that?

      His gaze swept the darkened Hudson shoreline from the Battery to somewhere up by Grant's Tomb; not even a tenth of it - the Big Apple, still sweltering after yesterday's scorching heat and, if the weathermen were right, another record-breaker today.

      Hell - he knew damned well what kind of apple it was: he'd been thrown his first by an armament instructor two years and half a war older than himself, pin out and held two seconds already, with the totally unnecessary order, 'Chuck it!' His last had been tossed by a little yellow teenager in a gook cap as he climbed from his crashed Cobra gunship with hands raised. That time the pin had been out much longer and one of the pieces he caught was still in his right hip.

      Sure - it was that kind of apple out there - a 'pineapple' - spiked, tough to keep a hold on, with half the fuse already run. Well, he'd had plenty of practice after that first time, for sure; maybe they had the right guy for the job at that.

      The voices had come again three nights ago to torture his dreams: sing-song, raucous, insistent. Sam had tossed, body twisting in the old pain, sweat soaking the sheets and pillow, in spite of the air conditioning. Then the running water, mixed with the jabbering, water, jabbering, water...

      His own silent screams had woken him - suddenly, eyes staring mad-wide, seeking the vengeful spectres of the past on the Dekorex ceiling of the present. He felt the hundred and twenty thumping of his heart begin to slow, the steel-clenched fists slowly ease.

      Beside him Bibba had lain still, seeming oblivious. Sam thanked his God - she had enough new problems without sharing his old ones - problems he thought were over a long time ago. It would be too easy to blame the heat.

      The extreme high pressure system had drifted in from the North Atlantic six days before and come to a virtual stop with its centre over New York State, a seemingly topless mound of acrid heat that lay like a stifling, non-porous blanket on the City, sapping the energies of its citizens and producing a self-regenerating thermal wedge. The temperatures that had increased steadily from the high nineties into the low hundreds were still edging upwards.

      The pall of mist, he noticed, had formed again over the river, caused by inversion of air temperature over the water, as on every morning since the heat wave began, thinning gradually through the forenoon, lasting some days longer than others.

      His gaze shifted downtown. But for insomniacs like himself and a handful of public service employees, police and criminals, the City slept, recharging its energies for another day of bursting, bustling industry and crime. For a long time he'd regretted the closing of the Mayor's official residence, Grazie Mansion. Tonight he was glad. The view from up here on Riverside Drive was much better. And yet he felt tense inside, with a deep feeling of insecurity that was foreign to his nature, almost despair - he wasn't sure - maybe of foreboding even, of something real but intangible, something he could not put his finger on but maybe powerful enough to destroy him. Not that there wasn't enough to worry about. Six murders an hour in the city itself - so many rapes now the victims shrugged their shoulders, bought another pair of panties and braced themselves for the next time - almost everyone armed with a hand gun.

      No one could blame the police. In a force whose total...Sam thought about it for a moment...hell, he had no idea of the real numbers - only the city employees, not the Feds, the CIA guys, the narcos, the IPA, the SWAT-groups, military undercover agents and God knew who else - say twenty thousand at a conservative estimate, but less than one third on the beat. All stood up on Brooklyn Bridge they'd look one hell of a force, but against them during business hours you had upwards of twelve million citizens, a ratio of damned near fifteen hundred to one in real terms. In a peaceful country area a damned good ratio; in this latter-day jungle an impossible task.

      Julius was right to be proud of his force - they were a fine body of men, but you had rotten apples in every barrel. Hell - just look what happened in the British vice squad - running their own porno service! If it could happen there...

      Sam sighed, wished he could share the loneliness, wished Bibba could feel as he did about the City, could help him bear the kicks and frustrations. He sighed again; the wish was futile - he'd known how she felt a long time now. He turned to where she lay on the big king-size bed, took a long, possessive look at her shapely body, covered only by a light, see-through negligee, her long, naturally blond hair falling gracefully over the pillow, after thirty-three years still grateful for and not a little bewildered by his good fortune.

      At twenty she had been a raving beauty. Now, in her mid-fifties, she was still a damned handsome woman, with the firm, uplifted breasts of a woman half her age, and not an ounce of extra flesh on her well-exercised body.

      He spoke softly, 'Tell me, Bibba - what did they want with me?'

      A fleeting smile passed over her lips as if in answer to the question, and another came unbidden to his lips, 'Was that for...?'

      He broke off, wishing even before the sentence was half out that he had not thought of it. It was unworthy and unnecessary. He knew damned well Larry Puleman would have taken her from him a long time ago if she'd have gone.

      Puleman - damn! Why the hell did he have to intrude?

      Sam felt the anger rise in him as their early life flooded back: childhood - Charlottesville - school - and then that last bloody weekend hunting in the Adirondaks - a weekend whose end for him had been lost in the terrible mists of feverish delirium.

      The hot flush of rage for what he knew and yet did not know washed over him. It was a full minute before he turned again to the window, his eyes refocusing on the buildings below.

      Sure, he thought, some part of you is bad. That's why I'm here. I love you, Big City, every glittering skyscraper and every crummy booze joint. Just look at you - sprawled out, sweating, copulating, heaving with life, like a ridge backed, prehistoric monster gobbling every race and religion on Earth.

      One thing was sure: whatever had woken him, sleep was out of the question. He looked back over his shoulder at the sleeping form, considered for a long moment. Bibba would sure as hell not mind being woken - would welcome it, he knew. She was a healthy woman with a healthy woman's appetites, and it had been a long time. That was just one of the things that suffered from high public office and sheer physical tiredness. But suppose it was like the last time...

      He sighed deeply yet again and shook his head resignedly, crept to the door, lifting it slightly to stop the squeak he knew would come from the hinges, closing it just as carefully.

      Flicking on the lights he caught sight of his reflection in the window. His smooth, handsome face showed clearly the signs of fatigue and stress, with none of its usual humour. His eyes seemed dull and lack-lustre, and the corners of his mouth were drawn down. Even his hair, almost black, with a small kiss-curl over the right temple, and what he laughingly shrugged off as a trace of distinguished grey, seemed almost totally white in the harsh reflection of the glass. Enough was enough. He switched the light off and limped slowly across to the audio tuner.

      In the bedroom Bibba had opened her eyes, staring sadly at the door. She knew what he had been considering in those few moments before he left the room and wished so much that he had come to bed again so that she could try to give him some relief, and with it some for her too. Her right hand moved slowly down to her lower belly.

      Sam had tuned to the local station, leaving the volume as low as he could set it. Bibba could just make out the idiotic ravings of the early-morning disc-jockey which followed the last notes of his signature tune, 'Rhinestone Cowboy'.

      'And a good, good morning to all you nocturnal night-owls, and a rooty-toot-toot from the king of the beasts, your host with the most from coast to coast - your old pal Cowboy Laurie Dee, here on Station Doubl-ye-zee-zee-oh, in lil' ol' N.Y.C. We got two hours of the very best in country music comin' your way to git you ready for the day, and to start things off, here we go, with some good ol' high-steppin' music from way back home - Marty Hope and 'Havin' a Hoe-down', an' a one, an' a two, an' a one-two-three...

      'Damn!' She said softly, as the first tears fell and her hand began to work faster.

      ~~~oOo~~~

      One eye opened - wide.

      Hours of aching in a booze-distorted bladder had nagged him half awake, heaving seasick gentle on the soft, sweaty pillow, one pubic hair longer than the rest tickling his nostrils to the edge of a sneeze with each downward motion, but this was something new, hard and concrete, like a slug from a forty-five between the eyes.

      Drunkenly, he struggled for the origins of the idea.

      Was it maybe the fuzz klaxon he could hear from the corner of Fulton and Pearl in tear-arse pursuit of some klepto kid in a hot Caddie?

      Crap! Two-time loser, he heard goddamn sirens through a twenty-four hour day; they plagued his waking hours and haunted his drunken dreams like the wailing, vengeful ghouls of a God-fearing, middle-aged virgin who last night sinned with a hand between her thighs and 'forgive-me-Holy-Mother-of-God-I'll-light-three-candles' enjoyed it.

      His first-born, one and only original thought in forty years of pig-faced debauchery left Mama Crellucci's fat boy stunned.

      He winced. Opening the eyelid had detonated something like a small atomic bomb inside his brain.

      In the light from the flashing neons across the street he pulled the jungle into focus - bright ginger and tight up curly, tangled, twisted, tacky with sweat and half-dried semen.

      He winced again at the released suction as his sweaty ear left the warm, damp flesh of her belly, like a rubber plug yanked from a greasy sink, squinting at the face atop the dormant flesh.

      She was no kid, for sure, with gin-soaked bags under the eyes, and noises like an up-country lumber mill on overtime coming from her wide-open mouth. No oil painting either, but he'd screwed worse - a goddamn sight worse!

      His head felt as pulped as an end-of-season football. How the hell much had he drunk last night? He could just hear Momma, Jesus-rest-her-soul, telling him he goddamn ought to feel goddamn worse, 'Goddamn it, is God a-punishing you, Guiseppi! He wanta-you to drink-a the whisky, he make-a the goddamn crap come down from the sky, an' no' the rainwater - ah, you goddamn sonofabitch?'

      Crellucci permitted himself a small, painful smile: the old lady sure had had a colourful turn of speech.

      Some little guy with a ten-pound hammer started smashing a way out of his left temple. Goddamn it, why the hell had he screwed the goddamn bitch on the goddamn floor?

      Holding hard on the old-fashioned sideboard he hauled two hundred fifty pounds of shaky, pale-white flab to its feet, switched on the one-and-only fly-stained bulb, with its single overhead glass, its once pristine whiteness stained to a rich mid-brown by thirty years of nicotine smoke and insect mess, peered down at the woman dispassionately for a long minute, hawked and spat the parrot-cage gob onto her belly. She moaned softly, closed her legs, and rolled over onto her side.

      The plump buttocks were just too much. Deliberately and viciously Crellucci buried five fat toes in the soft flesh, and felt a vicious joy as it moved outwards like blow-torch-warmed jelly under the force of the blow. Grinning, he thought, 'Joe, you dirty bastard, you're a sadist.' Right now, deep down, there was a desire to control - the urge to kill, to maim, to cut and carve. It would be easy - sure - she jumped from the window!

      Naked? And from his window?

      Shit! He stabbed his toes into the rump again.

      She snorted but didn't wake.

      Crellucci turned purple, kicked again, a whole lot harder.

      The woman rolled over onto her back, complained sleepily, 'Aw, cut it out, fellah, willya?'

      A half-empty bottle of Beam stood open on the table, next to two dirty glasses. Crellucci grabbed off a three-finger hair-of-the-dog, looked up to Heaven, asked reverently, 'Forgive me, Poppa, ah?' and slopped the liquor over the prostrate body from head to navel.

      She came up spitting - long, scarlet nails out clawing for his face, 'What the fuc...?'

      He hit her hard in the mouth with the back of his open left hand, his cheap imitation ruby splitting her lip, laying the gum bare, sending a splash of saliva and blood spattering onto her sagging right breast, to roll down onto the deflated nipple, following the contours, congealing, till she looked like she'd been hit dead centre with a .357 Magnum, as she careered across the room, hit the wall near the door and slid to the floor.

      She looked more surprised than hurt, lifted a hand to her mouth, took it away, stared astonished at the smear of blood and howled, 'Jesus Christ!'

      Crellucci grabbed another long slug from the bottle, growled, 'Get out!'

      She pulled a face.

      'What about my clothes and my twenty bucks?'

      He hefted the bottle, 'You still here in thirty seconds, your fanny gets kicked right down the sidewalk!'

      She took twenty, grabbing up wisps of clothing scattered over the floor, swearing non-stop in an undertone.

      Crellucci noticed there were no panties and asked himself again where the hell he found them.

      At the door she spat and hissed at him, 'Screw you, you fat, smelly pig!'

      The bottle missed her ear by an inch.

      The woman gone, he threw on the crumpled suit, shirt and polka-dot tie strewn like a treasure trail over the floor. His guts felt empty, and the thought of coffee and doughnuts at Pete's all-night diner drove him half crazy, but he needed wheels, and it would be safer to make the grab before dawn. The eats would wait, for a while at least. Wheels were his speciality - how he lived - his one real ability. They hadn't made the jalopy he couldn't start inside sixty seconds. He walked three blocks before looking for a likely take. Just past the corner of Broad and Front he found a sapphire-blue Cadillac De Ville - this year's model, with not a scratch on the paintwork. He eyed it enviously. Guys should be locked up for leaving temptation like that lying around. The only time he got to drive Geld like that was the half-mile to Joey's underground lock-up, where they did the change job. The Caddy was no good, would be too hot, and he needed the car for several hours.

      A hundred yards down he found what he wanted - a ten-year-old Ford with battered wings and a paint-job that looked as if it had just come out of a sand-blasting mill.

      He left it on the far side of the park and walked the two blocks back to the diner.

      ~~~oOo~~~

      Homer Polanski's wide-open eyes followed the erratic progress of the male cockroach skirting the craters, seeking nourishment in the putrefaction of the spattered brown blotches on the wall over the bed.

      Observed from the doorway, Polanski could have been dead - his ugly, almost square head topped with stubble-cropped ginger hair perfectly still, breathing controlled so not even the fine hairs on his lean, naked belly moved. That was one trick he'd learnt in the gook prison camps. Tricks - oh, sure, he was a bundle of them since 'Nam: the old lady in Central Park - sixty-four, the Tribune said - and he'd raped her - God, he'd raped her. Afterwards he'd stood under the shower in the flat for two hours, the water so hot it scalded his skin, scrubbing his penis with a stiff brush until it lay limp and raw and bloody in his hand. Then the young Jewish girl downstairs. It had been too easy - a casual meeting on her way home from a violin lesson, and an invitation to walk home with her. He'd meant to rape her too, but the sight of the back of her head after the Luger had gone off in her mouth...

      For months he'd woken screaming, his hands blood red in his dreams, but she had been only the first taste, and he screamed no more.

      Now, goddamn it, he'd fallen in love with his brother-in-law.

      He slid a hand stealthily under the pillow, feeing for the friendly steel. The 'roach stopped, its antennae twitching, sensing motion and danger, ready for a dash to safety.

      His hand found the two pistols. He left the Luger, smiling - what a rude awakening for that old cow in the flat above - a .38 slug between the legs at four-thirty in the morning - it would blow her mind.

      Next to the automatic he found what he wanted - the chunky handgrip of the target air-pistol. No need to check - he always kept both weapons loaded and the safeties off.

      The 'roach was swinging its head left and right in tiny movements, still unsure. Polanski's grin stiffened as his right hand rose slowly, taking careful aim. That's right, he thought, nice and still, my beauty - don't move...now, come to Daddy!

      The finger squeezing the trigger exerted the eighth-ounce extra pressure necessary to release the pellet.

      The cockroach's body fell, still twitching, onto the long-sealed envelope on the bedside table, its head another splattered brown stain over the bed. Polanski brushed the corpse off and swore softly, noticing the spot of brown liquid by the stamp.

      ~~~oOo~~~

      Not a hundred miles from Polanski's pad, high in the penthouse of the new Multistate Building, overlooking Riverside Drive, guarded by more than a dozen paid guns, three guard-dogs, electronically-operated doors, closed-circuit TV and infrared intruder detectors, Mario Valicone, East Coast Mafia boss, smiled in his sleep, his dreams full of tiny ants, running, always running, back and forth, looking for shelter they could never find, as his steel-clad boot came down again and again and again, crushing, crushing, crushing...

      ~~~oOo~~~

      Larry Puleman, lifelong con man and now Comptroller of New York City Council, sleeping fitfully in his half-million dollar apartment overlooking the Pallisades, burrowed his good-looking features deeper in the pillow, his twisted mind disturbing his brain even in sleep.

      He had sent the girls away at two a.m. - two coloureds, a Chinese and a Mexican - four top-flight artistes in their own profession. Between them they had presented him with every variation a fornicating male could desire.

      He'd gone through the motions mechanically, his palate jaded by too many years of innovation. They had left him deflated, physically and mentally. The only thing that could really turn him on now was a woman he could not get, and there were precious few in that category.

      Since early childhood not a day of his life had passed without a human being or animal being hurt by him - his only joy the suffering of others, and among those others one stood out - one he intended to destroy utterly; one to whom he owed the most and therefore hated more than anything else in the world. That one: Sam Brady.

      ~~~oOo~~~

      Three decks down in the forward cargo hold of the 'Port de Calais' Sher Hatyaara - 'tiger assassin' - slept, on the alert, instantly ready to burst into energy. Her animal brain was unaware that a parivataka akara had taken over her body again - the twelfth time it had done so, and was driving her fury. Now and then a tiny growl rolled over her teeth as she relived in sleep the last moments before her free world fell in and small brown men surrounded her as the anaesthetic dart drew her down into blackness. Her dreams were full of vengeance, her fangs and claws powerful weapons to use against any man unwise enough to come within their reach. She was big, even for a Bengal tiger of seven summers, and eleven times she had left her protected home in the Nagarjunsagar Srisailam Reserve high in the mountains of Andra Pradesh, to kill the brown animals which walk upright, emerging stealthily from the jungle into villages at dead of night, creeping up to one lying asleep by the embers of a dying fire, breaking its neck with one rapid bite, lifting the still twitching body into the safety of the undergrowth.

      She had been clever: a small beast had to drag its victims, could be followed easily to where it slept, heavy after the feast, and weakened by over-indulgence.

      Sher Hatyaara chose smaller, sweeter prey she could carry in her jaws, leaving almost no track, as far as the rocky plateau that led up into the hills where she lived. There she had a cave; there she gorged for two days and nights, bones and flesh, leaving only the scalp, and, if a man-child, the genitals, before climbing again into the hills under cover of the dark, to hunt the more intelligent, more demanding antelope.

      Now, in place of the occasional desire for different meat, she harboured a hatred for man that filled her every pore, which would have driven her to kill and go on killing, even if she had just eaten her fill.

      She heard Randiti enter the hold quietly, stealthily. She caught his man-scent and an eager well of fury began to rise. It was he whose scent had burnt itself indelibly on her memory as she returned to consciousness after the dart had done its work.

      She stiffened, seeming to sleep, her eyes closed, her body completely still, waiting her opportunity, for somehow, deep in her primeval being she knew the time for revenge was at hand...

      Randiti was not fooled: he had been around tigers all his life. The lack of movement told him she was listening, waiting - waiting to vent an urgent, searing vengeance should he foolishly step close enough to the cage to be within range of those awful claws. And Randiti loved life.

      'Ah, you, lady tiger,' he breathed, 'who listen and do not, you would kill and eat your protector? Shame on you for an ingrate. Do you not know, o beautiful, dangerous one, that it was I, Kanja Randiti alone, who saved your skin from decorating the floor of a rich man's house?' Randiti allowed himself the white lie, 'Who spared your bloodthirsty, worthless life, that you may awe and amaze many thousands of the white-skinned in the land of USA?'

      In the Hindi of the mountains it sounded like 'WHOOSEA'. The mispronunciation was lost on both tiger and man, but Randiti's tone struck a discord through the blind hate in the tiger's brain - made her relive again that last hunt, searching for truth...

      ~~~oOo~~~

      The small band of poachers was in high spirits. They had entered the game reserve unnoticed, heading north, towards the area where they would surely find elephant.

      For two days they had eaten nothing but dry dough biscuits, knowing that to make fire would mean almost certain discovery. Now, today, Karah Jam Singh, their leader, had decided it was worth the risk. His men needed red meat to strengthen their courage, and so they had killed and eaten a succulent young antelope, and now they slept, bloated with the unaccustomed flesh, in a clearing they had made in the twenty-foot high elephant grass - the three men around the perimeter of the small space, the boy in the centre, close to the fire.

      They slept the sleep of men with easy consciences, unaware of double dangers closing in on them.

      For the boy, Kim, it was the first expedition. Karah Jam, his father, had led such parties for many years, each year visiting the Game Reserve only twice. The money earned from the ivory allowed them to live frugally through the year, buying vast quantities of the rude local beer Karah Jam loved and the small amount of staple food, which kept the huge family just alive.

      The smile on the boy's face as he slept had been with him awake - a smile of contentment at his good fortune: he had reached the age of twelve and was a man. Now, for the first time, he could go with the men, could earn a man's share of the rewards of their labour, could give just this once all of his share to his mother, to see her smile for the first time in years, to watch perhaps just a tiny amount of flesh forming under the skin covering her bones.

      Or, no, he thought, perhaps not all the money. He would keep for himself just a few rupees - for a new loincloth, to replace the foul rag he had worn since he was eight, and which had long since become the object of much amusement to the girls of his village, hiding as it did so little of his new-found manhood. He straightened proudly as he dreamt of the attention he would attract in his new silk cloth. He would buy also a big, cheap, artificial jewelled clip for the front. And soon he would be able to buy a whole herd of goats, would be able to take a wife, perhaps the over-proud, prancing Raji Karami, daughter of the trader, the richest man for a hundred miles, and beat her every day for a year to teach her submission. That would show her!

      He was still smiling when the tiger's jaws closed around his neck, splintering the vertebrae, killing him instantly.

      She had followed the party all afternoon, holding back in order not to come up too close behind them. As they made camp she watched from the edge of the grass, less than fifteen feet from the nearest human, the old wound in her flank from the attack three years ago on two men in daylight holding her back, having her wait until the night when they would sleep.

      Soundlessly she lifted the boy's body, slipping back like a shadow into the house-high grass.

      The three men slept on.

      As Sher Hatyaara passed out of the area of elephant grass into the rocky scrub of the foothills, she was unaware of the furore behind her.

      Shanti Assawandri had found the tracks of the poachers less than twelve hours after they passed into the Reserve, and was really happy now for the first time in many years.

      In all that time he had been unable to catch the poachers. Until two years ago, with the coming of Moka Alawindi, his new assistant and second cousin of the Director, he had falsified reports sent back to Headquarters regarding the number of elephants found dead - always classing them as natural deaths. His days had been filled with the good things of life, with no serious aggravations. In this district he was king, and power was good. Those things which could have been potential trouble he smoothed over in the way that such matters have been dealt with for centuries in his country: the official word was law.

      Since the coming of Alawindi his reports had been punctiliously correct and hence personally damaging. He knew the assistant had been sent to learn, in order to take over at the first serious complaint.

      The elephant poaching meant his almost certain downfall. Long nights he spent sleepless with worry. With a territory of more than three thousand five hundred and sixty-eight square kilometres and only nine rangers to police the area he was on a hiding to nothing. It was impossible to be everywhere at the same time.

      The poachers always came at different times of the year and never visited the same

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