Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (106 page)

Chetti Singh reached out to the switch beside the door and the fluorescent tube in the ceiling spluttered and then lit the shed with a cold blue light. In the cage a female leopard shrank away against the far wall, crouching there, staring at the man with murderous eyes, her upper lip lifting in a creased and silent snarl to reveal her fangs.

She was a huge cat, over seven feet from nose to tail, one of the animals from Mlanje mountain forest, who would turn the scale at 120 pounds. A wild creature captured by the old witchdoctor in her maturity, she had once been a notorious goat and dog-killer, terrorising the villages on the slopes of the mountain. Shortly before her capture she had savagely mauled a young herdboy who had tried to defend his flock against her.

The forest cats were darker than those of the open savanna, the jet-black rosettes that dappled her skin were close-set, so that she was close in coloration to the melanistic panther. Her tail curled and flicked like a metronome, the gauge of her temper. She watched the man unblinkingly. The force of her hatred was as thick as the wild animal stench in the small hot room.

“Are you angry?” Chetti Singh asked, and her lip lifted higher to the sound of his voice. She knew him well. Not angry enough, Chetti Singh decided, and reached for the cattle prod on the rack beside the light switch.

The cat reacted immediately. She knew the sting of the electric prod.

Her next snarl was a crackling rattle and she ran back and forth trying to escape from the torment she had come to expect. At the end nearest the main wall of the warehouse the steel mesh cage narrowed into a bottleneck just wide enough to admit the leopard’s body, a low tunnel that ended against a steel sliding door in the warehouse wall.

The prod was bolted on to a long aluminium pole. Chetti Singh slipped it between the cage bars and reached out to touch the leopard. Her movements became frantic as she tried to avoid the device, and Chetti Singh laughed at her antics as he pursued her around the cage. He was trying to drive her into the bottle-necked tunnel.

At last she flung herself against the bars of the cage, ripping at the steel with her claws as she tried to reach him, coughing and grunting with fury, but the length of the pole kept Chetti Singh out of range.

“Goodness gracious me!” he said, and touched the side of her neck with the points of the prod. Blue electricity flashed and the leopard recoiled from the sting of it and bounded to the tunnel at the end of the cage. Chawe was ready for this, and he dropped the mesh door behind her.

Now she was trapped. Her nose was against the steel hatch in the warehouse wall, while at her heels the mesh door prevented her backing away. The tunnel was so low that it almost touched her back and she could not rear up, it was so narrow that she could not turn her head to protect her heaving flanks. She was helplessly pinioned and Chetti Singh handed the prod to Chawe.

He returned to the table near the door and uncoiled the lead of a small electric soldering iron and plugged it into the wall socket.

With the plastic-covered lead trailing behind him he came back to where the leopard crouched in the tunnel. He reached through the bars and stroked her back. Her pelt was thick and silky, and she could not avoid his touch. Her whole body seemed to swell with her fury and she snarled and tried to twist her neck to savage his hand but the bars prevented it.

Chetti Singh lifted the soldering iron and spat on the copper point to test its heat. His spittle sizzled and evaporated in a puff of steam. He grunted with satisfaction and reached through the bars once again. He grasped the leopard’s tail and lifted it high, exposing her fluffy genitalia and the tight puckered black collar of her anus.

The leopard hissed with outrage and ripped at the cement floor with her claws fully extended. She knew what was coming and she tried to lower her tail and cover her delicate parts. Help me, Chetti Singh grunted, and Chawe seized the tail. It writhed like a serpent in his grip but he forced it upwards, allowing his master free use of both hands.

Chetti Singh inspected the delicate flesh thoughtfully. It was dimpled and cratered with healed scars, some so fresh that the cicatrice was stilt pink and glossy. He reached out gently with the hot iron, choosing the spot to burn with care, avoiding the freshly healed skin.

The cat felt the heat of the approaching iron and her body convulsed in anticipation. “Just a little one, my beauty,” Chetti Singh assured her. “Just enough to make you very angry if you should meet Doctor Armstrong tonight.”

Unmolested, leopards are not a serious threat to human beings. Man does not form a part of their natural prey, and their instinctive fear is enough to make them avoid rather than attack him. However, once injured or wounded, or particularly when they are deliberately tormented, they are, amongst the most dangerous and vicious of all African animals.

Chetti Singh touched the glowing iron to the soft rim of the leopard’s anus. There was a puff of smoke and the stink of burned skin and hair. The leopard shrieked with pain and bit at the steel bars.

Chetti Singh inspected the injury. With practice he could inflict a burn that was exquisitely painful, but which would heal within the week and would not damage the animal’s appearance nor hamper her movements when she attacked. Good! he congratulated himself. The iron had only superficially penetrated the outer skin. It was a shallow painful little wound, yet it had infuriated the golden cat.

He laid the soldering iron back on the table and picked up a bottle of disinfectant. It was raw iodine, dark yellow and pungent on the swab that he pressed against the open wound. The sting of it would increase her fury.

The leopard shrieked and hissed and struggled wildly against the restraining bars. Her eyes were huge and yellow and froth lined her open snarling lips. “That’s enough. Open the hatch,” Chetti Singh ordered, and the Angoni released the cat’s tail. She whipped it down between her legs to protect herself.

Chawe went to the handle of the steel hatch and raised it. With one last snarl the leopard bounded through the opening and disappeared into the warehouse beyond.

At first it had been difficult to get the cat to leave the warehouse at dawn each morning, but with free use of the electric prod and the lure of the goat’s meat on which she was fed, she had at last been trained to return to her cage in the shed on command.

It was the only training she had received. All night she prowled the warehouse, tormented and murderous. At dawn she returned to the shed and crouched there in the gloom, growling softly to herself and licking her deliberately inflicted injuries, awaiting the first opportunity to avenge her humiliation and pain.

Chawe closed the hatch behind the leopard and followed his master out into the last glow of the sunset. Chetti Singh mopped his face with a white handkerchief It had been hot in the fetid little shed. “You will remain in your guardhouse at the main gate,” he commanded. Do not patrol the fence or attempt to stop the white man from entering the warehouse. If he does get in, Nandi will warn you.”

They both smiled at the thought. They remembered the last intruder and his condition as they took him down to the casualty department of the general hospital. When you hear Nandi working on him, ring me from the main gate. The telephone is beside my bed. Do not enter the warehouse until I arrive. It will take fifteen or twenty minutes for me to get here. By that time Nandi may have saved us a great deal of trouble.

His wife had one of her magnificent curries prepared for his dinner. She did not question where he had been. She was a good and dutiful wife.

After dinner he worked on his accounts for two hours. His was a complicated system of accountancy: he kept two, separate sets of books, one for the civil tax collector which reflected a fictitious profit figure, and another authentic set which was meticulously correct. From this Chetti Singh calculated the tithe that he paid to the temple. it was one thing to cheat on income tax, but a prudent man did not mess around with the gods.

Before he went to bed he unlocked the steel safe built into the back of his wardrobe and took out the double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun and a packet of SSG cartridges. He had an official police permit for the firearm, for, whenever possible and convenient, he was a law-abiding man.

His wife gave him a puzzled look, but made no comment. He did not satisfy her curiosity, but propped the weapon in the corner nearest the door, ready to hand. He switched out the lights and under the sheets made love to her with his customary dispatch. Ten minutes later he was snoring sonorously.

The telephone beside his bed rang at seven minutes past two in the morning. On the first peal Chetti Singh was awake, and before it could ring again he had the receiver to his ear.

“In the warehouse, Nandi is singing a pretty, song,” said Chawe in Angoni.

“I am coming,” Chetti Singh replied, and swung his legs off the bed.

Chapter 12

There were no street lights, which makes the job a little easier, Daniel murmured as he parked the Landcruiser on one of the open plots three hundred yards from the boundary fence of Chetti Singh’s central depot. He had driven the last mile at walking speed without headlights.

Now he switched off the engine and stepped out into the darkness. He stood listening for almost ten minutes before he checked his wristwatch. It was a little after one o’clock.

He already wore navy-blue slacks and a black leather jacket. Now he pulled a soft balaclava cap of dark wool over his head. He strapped a small nylon bag around his waist that contained the few items of equipment which he had selected from the tool-box.

Bolted to the Landcruiser’s roof were two light aluminium extension ladders that he carried for laying as corduroy when negotiating soft sand or deep mud. They weighed less than seven pounds each. He carried both of them under one arm as he set out across the weed-choked wasteland towards the depot. He kept off the road, well back amongst the scrub.

The plot had been used as a rubbish dump. There were piles of garbage. A broken bottle or jagged piece of scrap iron could cut through the canvas and rubber boots he wore. He picked his way with care.

Fifty feet from the fence he laid down the ladders and crouched behind a rusty car body. He studied the depot. There were no lights burning in the warehouse, no floodlights illuminating the fence. That seemed odd.

“Too good? Too easy?” he asked himself, and crept closer. The only light was in the guardhouse at the front gate. It gave him sufficient back lighting with which to examine the fence. He saw at once that it was not electrified, and he could discover no trip-wire for an alarm system.

He moved stealthily to the corner-post at the rear of the property. If there were an infri alarm system, the eye would be mounted here.

Something white gleamed on top of the post, but on closer inspection he realised that it was the bleached skull of a chacma baboon, and he grimaced. He felt vaguely uneasy as he went back to fetch the ladders from where he had left them beside the wrecked car.

Back at the corner of the fenced area, he settled down to watch for a guard making his rounds. After half an hour he had convinced himself that the fence was unguarded.

He moved in. The quickest and safest method of entry would have been to use the wire-cutters, but if possible he wanted to leave no trace of his visit. He extended both ladders to their full length. Then steeling himself for the squeal of a hidden alarm, he propped one of the ladders against the concrete corner-post.

He let out his breath when no alarm sounded.

Carrying the second ladder, he scaled to the top of the fence. Balancing on the top rung, leaning backwards to avoid the offset barbed wire on the summit, he swung the spare ladder over and inwards.

He had intended lowering it carefully on the far side, but it slipped from his grip. Although it fell on grass, which cushioned the impact, the sound was like the report of a .357 magnum in his own ears. He teetered on the top of the ladder, his nerves screwed tight and waited for a shouted challenge or a shot.

Nothing happened, and after a minute he breathed again. He reached into the front of his clothing under the polo-neck jersey, and brought out the roll of foam rubber which he used as a pillow when sleeping under the stars. It was an inch thick, just enough to pad the top strand of barbed wire. He spread it carefully over the top of the fence.

He took a firm grip between the spikes of the wire with his gloved hands and rolled smoothly over, dropping nine feet to the lawn on the far side.

He broke his fall with a forward somersault and crouched low, listening again, peering into the darkness. Nothing.

Quickly he set up the second ladder against the inside of the fence, ready for a speedy retreat. The unpainted aluminium gleamed like a beacon to catch the eye of a patrolling guard. Nothing we can do about that, he told himself, and crossed to the side wall of the warehouse.

He slipped along the wall, thankful for the darkness, and reached the corner. He crouched there for a minute, listening. Somewhere far away a dog barked, and there was the distant sound of a locomotive shunting in the railway yards. Apart from that, nothing.

He glanced round the corner, and then crept down the long back wall of the warehouse. There was no opening here, except for a single row of the skylight windows very high up under the caves of the saw-backed roof, at least thirty feet above him.

Ahead he made out a small shed in the gloom. it was attached to the rear wall of the warehouse, but its roof was much lower than that of the main building. As he approached it, he became aware of a faint but foul odour, like guano fertiliser or untanned hides.

The smell was stronger as he circled the shed, but he thought little of it. He was studying the shed. There was a downpipe in the angle where the shed’s wall joined that of the main warehouse. He tested the pipe with his weight, and then went up it easily, hand over hand.

Within seconds he was lying stretched out on the roof of the shed, looking up at the row of skylights in the main wall now only ten feet above him. Two of the panels stood open.