He laughed and kissed her full on the lips. ‘Cook me some breakfast and then I’ll go into town instead.’
She pulled away and frowned at him. ‘What for?’
‘Business.’
She didn’t ask further, though her eyebrows lifted and he could feel her disapproval. She turned to the stove. ‘Eggs?’
‘Thanks.’
She was one of the few women he had come across who knew how to keep her mouth shut.
‘I’ll finish the sawing while you’re in town,’ she said cracking eggs into a bowl.
‘No need. I’ll be OK to carry on with it tomorrow.’
She shrugged one fleshy shoulder inside her loose tunic and he knew she’d do the sawing, whatever he said. As she threw a frying pan on the stove, he came up behind her and kissed her neck. Her skin was the skin of a woman who has spent too long in the tropics but he loved to feel it, as soft and pliant as the skin on a peach. Even after nearly twenty-five years of marriage to this woman, he still wanted to touch her.
‘Anything you want in town?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Salt.’
Salt in the tropics was as essential as air. ‘I’ll bring some back.’
She turned to face him, a furrow creasing her brow. ‘Watch yourself, Madoc. In town.’
He nodded. That was enough.
Kitty would be fifty in December, six years older than he was. She may have pigeon-grey hair and wrinkles like lace around her eyes; she may have lost two back teeth and have a wonky knee sometimes. But she had a will of iron. She’d patched up his wounds and dragged him out of jail more than once. She’d drunk champagne from a golden goblet with him and she’d eaten bitter tree bark when there was nothing else. Either way, she’d stuck with him.
He’d watch himself all right. He still had a casino to build for her.
*
His boat chugged upriver, and the water moved like a brown shadow beneath him. Grey mist had swallowed it and was twining fingers up into the trees, stealing every landmark that would tell him where he was. It was just a shallow native boat, long and thin, with an ancient outboard engine hitched on the back, but it always got him where he wanted to go and was good when he needed to duck unseen into narrow inlets or hide out in the mangrove swamps.
The morning had hardly started. He always rose early, beginning work on the building when it was scarcely light. The day was at its coolest then. But he hadn’t been thinking about windows or door frames; his mind had been sneaking off elsewhere. Bloody fool. That’s why the saw slipped.
Business in town. In Tampang, seven miles downriver. Something kicked into life in his gut at the prospect. Christ, no. Behave, Madoc. Just get the job done and get your hide back home. The trouble was that he was never satisfied, not with his life, not with Morgan’s Bar. He craved more. Always more. He shook his head, hunching lower in the boat, and his eye was caught by a movement in the water. A snake as thick as his wrist was swimming past. Madoc was tempted to lean down and snatch it from the murky waters, to take it home as a meal for tonight, but at the last second he came to his senses. He withdrew his hand and set the boat leaping forward, the old engine complaining at the sudden burst of speed. Kitty knew him too well. Watch yourself, Madoc. She knew all about the lure of danger. How it bewitched him.
Tampang was less of a town than a gob of spit in the mud of the jungle. This used to be tin country. Not any more though. The tin was exhausted long ago, and the miners had moved on. Most had been shipped in from China, and a handful of them stayed behind. Chinese labour is made of stern stuff. It didn’t take them long to knock the raw huddle of metal shacks into a proper community, to build solid houses. Some worked smallholdings of rubber trees, others traded in rice and coffee beans or spices, papayas and pineapples. Men flocked in to find work, and it quickly expanded into what some called a town. Madoc still called it a gob of spit in the jungle.
Most of the houses were wooden but a pretty little Buddhist temple with gold latticework and a set of bronze bells sat right in the middle of town. Its monks in their saffron robes gave a splash of colour to the main street. A mosque, side by side with a stiff-necked Methodist chapel, added to the mix.
A noisy market of native stalls offered him everything from a mynah bird in a cage and a hat of lizard skin to a scratched gramophone record of Noël Coward’s ‘Mad About The Boy’. He brushed aside the shouts of the hawkers and crossed the street to the only hotel in town: the Ritz. He laughed at the name every time he pushed open its shabby doors.
‘A bath,’ he requested.
The slender Malay girl who showed him to one of the private bathrooms slid her eyes sideways at him as she placed a towel in his hand and asked, ‘Will that be all?’
‘That’s all,’ he said firmly, shooed her out with a smack on the bottom and locked the door after her.
The tiny bathroom was filling up with steam, and when he’d stripped off his clothes he stared at his blurred image in the mirror on the wall. Not something he liked to do as he grew older because it was too much like looking at his father. Average height, passable-looking, but always on the wiry side. He regarded himself as a greyhound, fast and nimble, but also as Mr Average. Easily forgotten in a crowd. That suited him just fine.
With a sigh of pleasure he sank down into the bubbles, lit himself a cigar and with his bandaged hand balanced safely on the edge of the bath, he contemplated the options open to him.
The sun had beaten back the mist by the time Madoc emerged, and the street had the look of a sleepy child, soft and lazy. He headed for the barber shop and settled into a chair.
‘Selamat datang.’ The Malayan barber greeted him with a bow. ‘Welcome.’
Madoc knew that the man was a chatterbox, but he didn’t mind that. It’s surprising what you can pick up in these places. The young Indian male assistant wrapped a warm, damp towel around his jaw and when their eyes met for an instant, the Indian male raised an eyebrow. Madoc responded with the faintest of nods.
‘Aiyee, trouble everywhere,’ the barber moaned as he set to work with a cut-throat razor and a flourish of his wrist. ‘Wild elephant trample my wife’s maize field last night. And last week, her brother’s boat seized by pirates from Sumatra.’ He spat on his nice clean floor. ‘They’re the curse of the sea.’
Madoc chuckled. ‘I don’t think it’s the elephants and the pirates you need to be worrying about right now. Even they will retreat if the Japs come.’
‘Japs no come,’ the man said with a wide smile. ‘We British.’
‘Let’s hope you’re right.’
‘I right. You see.’
The chatter droned on until the job was done and the barber vanished behind a bamboo curtain to fetch a prized photograph of his new grandson in Penang. As soon as the curtain swung shut, the Indian assistant whipped up his apron and pulled a gun from his waistband. Madoc tabbed it at once: a Tokarev TT-33, a Russian service pistol. Good condition.
He didn’t ask where it had come from, just slid it into the deep pocket of his jacket and slapped five dollars into the Indian’s waiting palm. The transaction was conducted in silence and took less than a minute, so that when the barber bustled back, his customer was sitting up, bracing himself to admire the photograph and be patted with the obligatory aftershave. Christ, it stank.
‘Madoc, you stink like a brothel!’
Madoc laughed. He was seated at a table in a bar, drinking with its Scottish owner. Andrew Tarrow was a tight-fisted bastard, but knew where to find the right kind of girls and sold a good brandy. He was one of the white men who had gone native, adopting a waist sarong and living with a succession of Malayan girls, all with sleek black hair and narrow hips. ‘Interchangeable,’ Kitty claimed. ‘He doesn’t even notice when one leaves and another arrives.’ But Madoc knew that wasn’t true. Each time he saw this craggy Scot fall in love all over again with one of the black-eyed lovelies, he warned him. But it was always the same. They took him for all they could get and moved on. It w
as why Tarrow still laboured day and night behind his bar to make a living when he should have had enough tucked away under his mattress to retire by now. He wasn’t the only one. Malaya was littered with men like him.
The bar was dim, the shutters closed to keep out the heat. Flies droned, heavy-winged, too soporific to evade Tarrow’s jabs with the fly-swat that never left his hand.
‘Have you found me the two I ordered?’ Madoc asked, getting down to business.
‘Yes. I’ve got four for you to choose from. Arriving next week.’
‘How much?’
Tarrow gave him a slow, patient smile. ‘Wait till you see them. Then we’ll negotiate.’
‘Good ones?’
‘Mmm.’
Madoc slapped twenty dollars on the table. ‘A down payment.’
They vanished into Tarrow’s pocket before a fly could even think of landing on them. Madoc was investing in two more girls for upstairs in Morgan’s Bar. Trade was good, with all the military personnel moving around the country. He finished his brandy but before he could leave, Tarrow cleared his throat. Madoc eyed the nervous set of his mouth.
‘What is it, Andrew?’
‘It’s Bull Chan.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s in town.’
‘So?’
‘He’s looking for you.’
Madoc felt a shiver in his bowels. He rose to his feet. ‘Thanks for the warning.’
‘What are we going to do, Madoc, you and I?’
‘About Bull Chan?’
‘No.’ Tarrow shook his head and the gesture was a sad one. ‘If the bloody Japanese come. They’ll massacre us all, every last one of us, like they did in China.’
‘Not,’ Madoc said quietly, ‘if you’ve taken out insurance.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘It means that I’m not willing to lose everything I’ve put together for Kitty and me.’
‘How do you plan on stopping the bastards from burning your place to the ground?’
Madoc kicked his chair back from the table. ‘I’m protecting it. The only way I know how.’
*
No hanging around this time; out of Tampang fast. Madoc bought a block of salt for Kitty but skirted the main street, sticking to the back alleyways heading down towards the river bank. He moved quickly down the wooden steps to the jetty, where he’d left his boat tucked under one of the piers. The sooner he started up the engine, the better. His hand was throbbing and he knew it was the nerve endings dancing to the pulse of fear in his throat. Four more steps. The sun kicked up off the sluggish surface of the river in a warning flash. Somewhere a tock-tock bird was calling its alarm.
The blow, when it came, lifted him off his feet and carried him down the last steps. The ground smacked him in the face but he’d learned over the years to keep moving. He rolled with the momentum, springing onto one knee, only to get a mouthful of boot. Something snapped. He tasted blood. Fought to focus.
‘Madoc!’
The voice was harsh. Rough as a death rattle. Madoc knew it at once. Its owner was the man he’d been avoiding: Bull Chan. He was short and squat with a thick neck and a massive chest and was the headman of the local Chinese triad. Madoc had crossed him before and only just lived to tell the tale. Chan was standing on the bottom step, a gun in his hand. The stupid part of Madoc’s brain noticed it was a German Mauser HSc, a semi-automatic, but the other part, the smart part, saw that it was pointing straight at his chest.
He forced himself to his feet. On each side of him stood a Chinese thug, both panting to use the metal bars clutched in their fists. Madoc was breathing hard. The back of his head felt as if it had been split open like a coconut, but he forced a smile of sorts onto his face.
‘Well, Bull Chan, what a pleasure. I heard that you’d moved down to KL. That you’d taken over Han Tu’s patch.’ He picked up his pack of salt lying on the grass, and turned to leave. ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just off.’
‘Madoc!’
A metal bar slapped down on his shoulder. Christ! One side of his face went numb.
‘Get your bloody thugs off me, Chan!’
‘This is my river, Madoc.’
‘Sure it is.’
‘So stay off it.’
‘What do you mean, Bull? I’m clean. Just a few opium runs up the coast now and then. Just to keep my hand in. Nothing much. Never on your territory, Bull.’
The small black eyes felt like wasp stings on his face. Madoc was lying, and they both knew it. Bull Chan raised the muzzle of the Mauser an inch so that its beetle-black nose was aimed at a spot on Madoc’s forehead.
‘You have shit for brains, Madoc. A sewer rat that eats its own tail.
‘You’ve got me wrong, Bull.’
‘I know you been gun-running.’
‘Not me.’
‘German Karabiner rifles. Upriver.’
‘No.’
‘Your mouth is a dog’s arse, full of shit.’
‘Listen, Bull, you’ve been fed wrong …’ He reached for the Tokarev pistol in his waistband.
Bull Chan’s boot lashed out. It slammed into Madoc’s groin. Pain raced up through his body and exploded in his brain. He crumpled to his knees. Cold fear, like the touch of a dead hand, gripped his gut, and he swung the gun blindly at his attacker.
‘Madoc, you dead meat.’
The metal bars fell. Kitty, I didn’t watch myself.
10
Never.
Maya stared down at the narrow gangplank in front of her feet, and at the oily water of Palur harbour swirling beneath it, licking up at the jetty posts with long tongues of spume. As though seeking to get at her.
Never in this lifetime.
The wind had picked up from the west, stirring the waves. It was rocking the boats, and jerking the gangplank up and down, back and forth. Jumping like old Mama Telok’s false teeth. There was the whine of rigging, the creak of timber.
I’d rather die.
‘Come on, Maya. Hurry up.’
The white lady bounded off the gangplank and onto the yacht with a carton of canned meat under one arm and four bags of sugar under the other. As if it was easy. Once on deck, she disappeared. Maya backed off two paces, still clutching the jar of sweet sticks to her chest. The wooden planks of the jetty were firm and stable under her feet. Some distance behind her on the quayside, the Hadleys’ car was parked and the chauffeur was unloading the goods from the boot.
‘Maya!’ The white lady’s voice called from inside the yacht. ‘I want you to help put away the …’
Maya stopped listening. She could vanish back into the crowds on the wharf, away from these swaying, shifting water-homes that the sea could devour in one mouthful. She tightened her grip on the sweet sticks.
‘Going on board?’
The question startled her. She spun around. The broad figure of a white man was standing right behind her, too close for comfort. Instead of the usual European uniform of shirt and shorts, he was dressed in loose black trousers like the Chinese wear, an open-necked tunic over them. Her eyes were level with his chest, and she could see dark, wiry hairs twisting up from beneath the tunic. She was always fascinated by the way white men had hairs springing from their bodies in strange places, but when she lifted her eyes to this white man’s face, she forgot about his hair and knew she had to be careful. This man had a cool grey gaze that would sneak into her mind if she didn’t keep the shutters down tight.
‘Going on board?’ he asked again, and she sensed he was laughing at her.
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t let me stop you.’
He had blocked off her escape route.
‘Yes,’ she said again, her cheeks rigid as she turned to face the gangplank.
It swayed alarmingly. The water below slapped at the boat. She nudged the edge of the plank with her foot, and froze. Abruptly, a pair of strong hands lifted her under her armpits from behind, marched her out onto the plank and deposite
d her in the middle of it. She stood where he’d put her, too frightened to scream.
‘It won’t bite you,’ the man laughed. ‘Get aboard.’
He gave her a little prod in the small of her back and the momentum forced her legs into movement, so that she scampered forward and clambered onto the deck in a rush, almost dropping her jar. Her heart hammered in her throat as the boat rocked beneath her feet.
‘So is this your first time on a boat?’ He laughed easily, still standing in the middle of the wretched plank, but he seemed scarcely aware of the way it bucked beneath him. His body was totally balanced and at home on it, more at home than he was on land.
She glared at him. ‘What you want?’
Her ferocity seemed to amuse him further. ‘Would you please inform Mrs Hadley that I’m here?’
‘What name?’
But at that moment Mem Hadley emerged from deep inside the boat’s belly and saw the man standing on her gangplank. Maya noticed a flash of annoyance cross her face before she adjusted it to a bright smile.
‘Good day, Mr Fitzpayne. What brings you down here?’
‘I was looking at a boat for someone,’ he gestured along the quay, ‘and saw you unloading your car. I came across to offer a hand.’
‘How kind of you.’
But her words were stiff and her smile was uninviting. She advanced towards the gangplank to return to the car, forcing the intruder to retreat.
‘Maya,’ she said as she stepped off the boat, ‘take the sweet jar down into the galley and put it in one of the lockers, please.’
Galley? Lockers? What new language was this? Maya made for the opening from which the white lady had risen in the hope of finding this galley. She felt the boat lurch under her and her stomach churned, but she hurried down the steps in front of her, anything rather than risk the gangplank again. She dropped down into the bowels of the boat. Varnished wood and brass instantly wrapped themselves around her, glossy and gleaming, and she stared open-mouthed. She had expected something rough. Slatted benches to sit on, and some kind of table, probably metal, so that the beetles couldn’t eat it. A few tea chests to contain things. That’s what she’d seen on the decks of fishing boats and sampans, and that’s what she had expected here. Not this, not this luxury. Infinitely better than most people’s homes.
The White Pearl Page 10
