Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

She swallowed, to keep down the vomit that was rising in her throat, as she took in, beyond the cloud of swarming, swirling, seething insects, the parted lips and nose and open eyes of Richard Sutton.

There were flies buzzing in and out of his mouth, invading his nostrils, crawling around the rims of his eyelids.

They were feeding on him. They burrowed in his hair, lodged between his toes, were laying eggs in his ears.

She threw up.

And again.

The bulk of the flies—a cloud, a grinding, growling cloud—was gorging on Richard’s throat, picking at the blood that had sprouted where his windpipe, as she could now see, had been cut, and then congealed when his heart had surrendered.

Black blood was wrapped around his throat, on either side of his neck, like a surgical collar. Flies bustled each other out of the way in their eagerness to gorge.

Her stomach heaved again but it had nothing more to give. She retched but had only spittle to show for it.

She looked around the tent. It had been ransacked; there were papers everywhere, a table overturned, clothes pulled out of drawers, the water jug was on the floor, books appeared to have been chewed. Was that all the monkey’s doing?

She took in the smell of what she assumed was urine. That must be the monkey’s also.

The dull drone of the flies drilled through the tent, filling it with sound. The cloud was—if anything—getting bigger, and Richard’s mouth had all but disappeared. It was as if he were spewing flies.

Her eyes watered and she turned, to escape the horror, half stumbling and half falling out of the tent, chewing savagely at the fresh air, now warmed by the clear, clean sunshine.

Natalie remained for a moment on all fours, her abdomen continuing to heave, swallowing huge chunks of air, breathing out in a series of gasps, letting her stomach regain its equilibrium, the spittle she had retched drying on her chin. Then she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and clambered to her feet. She had to get away from the insistent drone of those flies, that menacing black cloud of unstoppable cannibals.

She stood, her eyes still watering as her stomach continued to swell and subside in an involuntary staccato arrhythmia. The hair at her temples was damp with sweat.

She had to raise the alarm. At the very moment she thought this, she noticed three monkeys appear through the thorn fence and just sit, watching her. As soon as she moved away from the tent, she knew, they would invade. The flies didn’t bother them.

It couldn’t be helped. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, wiped her eyes and the spittle on her chin with the sleeve of her shirt, and then half ran and half stumbled toward the Land Rovers, parked under the acacia trees. Reaching the first one, she snatched open the glove compartment, fumbled where she knew the keys were hidden. She found the ignition and switched it on.

She looked back and saw the three monkeys edging towards Richard’s tent.

She forced the plam of her hand against the steering wheel of the Land Rover and blared the horn again and again and again.

“Drink that,” said Jonas Jefferson, handing Natalie a steaming cup of coffee. “If I had any brandy I would give you that, too. You’ve had a shock.”

Natalie sat at the refectory table, where meals were usually served. Her blaring of the Land Rover horn had wakened the entire camp, as she had intended. Christopher had been the first to appear, then Russell. She had told them what she knew, what she had seen.

At first uncomprehending, and then disbelieving, they had approached Richard’s tent together, warily, until they had seen yet another monkey gambol out between the tent flaps, carrying a photo frame, which it dropped when it saw them and hurried off toward the acacia fence. Then Christopher had lost no time in entering Richard’s tent, with Russell following him.

Natalie had watched from a distance. Now that her ordeal was over, for the time being at least, shock had set in. She had begun shaking. The only dead body she had seen before this was her mother’s and that, she was now convinced, had been a mistake. She couldn’t remember her mother as she had been in life, standing behind her father at the piano as they sang together the songs of Hugo Wolf, now and then reaching across for her beloved Gitanes. Instead, the image Natalie couldn’t rid herself of was Violette Nelson’s charred limbs, the blackened crust of her skin, the faint smell of singed hair.

It was the same now with Richard Sutton. As she swallowed her coffee in great, greedy gulps, the buzzing of those flies, that seething black cloud, the sound of an electric drill feeding on the red-black chasm that was Richard’s throat, kept rising in her mind, the flies crawling in and out of his nostrils, picking at his eyelids.

A fly had entered the refectory tent and its buzzing brought her out in a sweat all over again.

The coffee helped, but not much.

Eleanor had appeared not long after Christopher and Russell. She had taken in the scene and, as Natalie was interested to observe, when the other woman came out of Richard’s tent, she looked as angry as she was shocked. She had asked Christopher and Russell to cordon off the area around Richard’s quarters and mount a guard to stop any more interference by monkeys, and then retreated to the radio-telephone to contact the police and the coroner in Nairobi.

By then the ancillary staff had begun to gather in small groups and Jonas had appeared. After he inspected the body and saw there was nothing he could do, his first thought had been for Natalie. She had refused a sedative but the coffee was more than welcome.

From where she sat she watched as Jonas took a sheet from the laundry area and carried it to Richard’s tent, no doubt to cover the body and shield it from yet more flies. Then all three men converged back on the refectory tent. Eleanor did the same.

There was by now a large jug of steaming coffee on the main table. One by one, they helped themselves, then swallowed in silence, until Eleanor murmured, “The police are on their way, plus Dr. Ndome, the coroner. It’s an hour and a half’s flight from Nairobi, as you know, so they should be here inside three.” She turned to Jonas. “You’ve covered the body?”

He nodded. “That wound … it looks like a machete was used.”

Eleanor nodded over her coffee.

Kees and Arnold Pryce appeared and were told what had happened.

Silence as they all reflected on Richard’s final moments.

Natalie finished her coffee and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “I … I may have seen the killer.”

All eyes turned to her.

“I was sitting smoking last night, like I always do. But I’d switched off the lamp, because the moon was so bright. I was winding down, listening to the animals, when I suddenly saw someone. It was Mutevu Ndekei.”

“You’re sure?” Eleanor looked fierce. She was wearing a green khaki shirt this morning, and sand-colored chinos.

“Oh yes, I think so. He was wearing those rubber boots he always wears. I could tell it was him by the way he shuffled.”

“And he was headed towards Richard’s tent?”

Natalie thought for a moment. “He was going that way, yes. I saw him move past the campfire.”

“Was he carrying anything?”

“Not that I could see. I thought he was maybe visiting a woman, or coming back from a … a meeting.”

“You’ll have to tell this to the police.” Eleanor threw the dregs of her coffee into the remains of the fire. “What with your evidence, and the fact that Mutevu’s missing, there’s no mystery about the culprit.”

“Or the motive,” breathed Christopher.

“No,” sighed Eleanor, very quietly.