Black Horn by A. J. Quinnell Read Free Book Online Page A

on top of her head. Her thin lips were bright crimson. There were
only six other diners at an advanced stage of their meals. The bartender came
round from behind the bar and greeted Creasy in a strange manner. The two men
put their left hands behind the other's neck and kissed each other briefly but
hard on the cheek, close to their mouths. Then Creasy turned and introduced him
to Gloria. She was then introduced to Nicole and her young sister, Lucette.
Creasy gestured to Ruby to push the wheelchair across the room. Michael stood
up and introduced Gloria to Blondie.
    For the
next half an hour, Gloria was uncharacteristically subdued. She sat across the
table from Blondie, who was obviously in her element, half-grande dame and
half-coquette. Lucette served the food, and it wasn't long before Gloria could
see that there was something between her and Michael. Every time she leaned
across the table to place a plate or retrieve something, her arm managed to
touch his.
    At
first, the conversation was mostly between Blondie and Maxie, as they discussed
old friends and acquaintances. Ruby sat on Gloria's right and didn't utter a
word, but she hardly took her eyes from Blondie's face.
    Suddenly,
Blondie was talking to Gloria in her heavily-accented English. "Creasy
told me about your daughter. I'm very sorry. I also lost a daughter once. Of
course, the pain never goes away, but I can tell you that the passing of time
makes the pain easier to bear."
    "How
old was your daughter?" Gloria asked.
    "She
died the day after her sixth birthday."
    "Any
other children?"
    "No.
I can't understand why, but after that I did not want any more...and the times
were not good. It was just after the war and those days in Italy were hard
days... have you always been rich, Mrs Manners?"
    Creasy
was watching Gloria. He saw her shake her head as she said, "No. I know
what it's like to be poor."
    Creasy
saw the faintest smile cross her lips.
    She
said, "To quote Eartha Kitt: 'I've been rich, and I've been poor...
and being rich is better'."
    Blondie
gave a deep chuckle. The other customers had left and now Maxie and Nicole
joined them at the table, while Lucette cleared away the plates. Then the young
girl brought espressos and a bottle of cognac and abruptly the mood changed.
    "So
what do we have?" Maxie asked Creasy.
    "We
have a murder. As you know, it was Gloria's only daughter and only child. It
happened by the Zambezi... in an area near to the Cheti. You know it
well."
    "I
know it very well. That was my area of operation for more than half a year in
nineteen seventy-eight."
    Creasy
turned to Gloria and explained. "As I told you on the plane, Maxie was
more or less a founder member of the Selous Scouts. I was attached to them for
a while in 'seventy-seven, but I operated on the other side of the
country, near the Mozambique border. I need to tell you a bit more about the
Selous Scouts. They were a very elite unit of the Rhodesian Army and named
after the famous nineteenth-century explorer, tracker and hunter. The idea was
to turn captured terrorists, or what are now known as freedom fighters, who
were infiltrating across the Zambezi from Zambia on the North-West border and
across from Mozambique in the East and then send them out in the bush with some
of our own troops, who were pretending to be terrorists, using Chinese or
captured weapons. Obviously, there were only a few white Selous Scouts."
He smiled across the table at Maxie and went on, "But if you drink in bars
from Harare to Cape Town, enough whites will tell you that they were Selous
Scouts to tilt the whole of Africa. In fact, there were never more than a
hundred whites in the unit. They also raided terrorist headquarters and training
camps in Zambia and Mozambique with great success. They were probably the best
trackers in the world, and could live off the land with only their bare hands
for any length of time. The point is, Mrs Manners, that with the end of the war
and the coming of