Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

“Ha ha ha,” boomed the minister happily. “That’s what we want you to find out.”

“Me?” He glanced at the chief. Nothing.

“We’re gonna take you out of the police for a while and put you to work for us. You’re gonna be like a private detective, eh? Like Mike Hammer. You ever read this Mike Hammer?”

“No. I am afraid not, minister.”

“Very good stuff, my friend. One time this Mike Hammer chap, he’s gotta go somewhere, see, and he doesn’t wanna leave the villain alone. So what he does, he nails that villain’s hand to the floor! With a sledgehammer!” Gleefully, he slapped his massive thigh. “Ha ha ha. Very good stuff. The best. I’ll send you some of these books, okay?”

“Yes,” Andrew said. “Thank you, yes. But I do not entirely understand what you wish of me, minister.”

Nu held up a hand as big as a flounder. “Don’t you worry. Jimmy here’s gonna fill you in with all the details.” He hauled himself to his feet. “Right now I’ve gotta go and utilize the phone. Chief, you wanna come and have that drink?”

“Of course,” said the chief, and stood. “But if I might add something, minister?”

Nu waved expansively. “You bet you, chief. Absolutely.”

“Sergeant, you should understand that the decision as to whether you assist the ministry will be entirely your own. Your participation will be voluntary. Isn’t that correct, minister?”

“Absolutely. You bet you. Voluntary is absolutely correct.” Nu was beaming happily, but his glance held the chief’s, and Andrew had a sudden sense of undercurrents here, of powerful human wills brought abruptly into conflict. For an instant, the office walls contracted.

The chief’s glance never wavered.

“Well,” said Bwana Teggay into the silence. “I’ll just put Sergeant Mbutu in the picture, then, shall I?”

Minister Nu turned to him and said, “Good, Jimmy, you do that.” The walls snapped back to their original size. “Come along, chief,” he grinned. “Let’s get that drink.”

“Now,” said Bwana Teggay. “What do you know, sergeant, about Abraham Mayani?”

Andrew shrugged. “I know he operated during The Troubles as a kind of... Robin Hood figure.”

Teggay savored this for a moment, and then smiled his trim, taut smile. “Robin Hood, yes. As good a description as any. And about Robert Atlee?”

“Mayani’s friend. One of the few Wazungu who fought against the colonials.”

“Yes,” he said with the small prim nod of a schoolmaster. “The only one, actually. Up until 1953, Mayani and Atlee were both sergeants in the G.S.U.” Before Independence, the paramilitary branch of the constabulary. In the early fifties, it had grown to the size of the regular army. “They’d been raised together here in your township — Atlee’s father owned the Atlee Ginnery, and Mayani’s father was his foreman. There was talk that Atlee had been involved with Mayani’s sister, Rebecca, but no proof was ever adduced. Just another part of the myth, no doubt. According to the legends, Atlee slept with half the women in the country, African and European alike.”

Andrew nodded: he had heard the legends.

“As I’m sure you know,” Teggay continued, “those were years of turmoil. Our Great Leader was still in prison, but cells of Freedom Fighters were operating throughout the country, striking everywhere. There was even a clandestine organization within the G.S.U. itself. Mayani was an obvious candidate for this group — he was intelligent, physically strong, and extremely charismatic. He was approached, but he declined to join them. His political awareness hadn’t quite achieved ripeness, apparently.”

This said without even a glimmer of irony. Andrew felt his first prickle of unease.

“What radicalized Mayani was the murder of his father and sister. The father, Joseph, was one of the activists calling for a general strike — a politically more sophisiticated man, apparently, than his son. For weeks he was harassed by the police, both the regular branch and G.S.U. Finally, on the night of June 21, he was attacked in his house. He and his daughter were shot to death.”

Andrew nodded. “I read of this. The case never came to trial.”

Teggay smiled his small tight smile. “Hardly surprising, since the coroner’s report indicated that the weapon used was a Webley .45 automatic revolver. Which at the time, of course, was the service weapon of the constabulary.”

“Still, it was never proved that the police were responsible.”

Another smile, this time with an element in it almost of pity. “Not in a court of law, no.”

Scurry along, Andrew told himself. “It was at this time, was it not, that Mayani left the G.S.U.?”

“Yes. He applied for sympathetic leave, and the captain of his unit denied it. So Mayani simply deserted. He and Atlee both.”

“Atlee had applied for leave as well?”