The Pirate Ship

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘Until six weeks ago. Six weeks ago, something important happened. My husband, Richard, was called out here. I don’t know why or by whom. He arrives, sends a postcard which I get. He writes a letter which gets destroyed. He makes a call or two which get wiped off my answerphone. Sulu Queen comes in, unloads, loads, apparently as normal. You have checked that for yourself. Richard goes aboard. Somebody, and I am quite sure it was Richard, makes some notes in the ship’s network, addressed to me. For some reason they don’t reach me; they just stay in the computer’s memory until I download them onto a disk I can’t get back into. Richard stays aboard. We don’t know what Wally Gough, the registered captain, does — but we’ll start to look into that when we talk to the pilot later this evening. Somewhere in its run up towards Hong Kong, the Sulu Queen comes across some Vietnamese boat people and takes them aboard but they are all dead. Murdered, by the look of it.

  ‘Within ten days of Richard’s arrival, Anna Leung has vanished, the offices here are closed; Sulu Queen has been attacked and everyone aboard killed except for Richard. Something among the cargo may or may not have been removed. Some containers she may have been carrying later end up empty on Ping Chau Island just off the Chinese coast. But, if that is so, then someone else must have gone aboard Sulu Queen at some time, taken the containers, at the very least, and come off again, leaving no real trace. And that does present some problems because it is almost impossible to surprise a well-guarded ship and get your men up into the bridgehouse without an emergency being sounded over the radio. There has been no question, as far as I am aware, that there was anything wrong with Sulu Queen’s radio, though I’d better double-check.

  ‘Sulu Queen’s most economic cruising speed is about eight knots. So the run up from Singapore takes a week. One week after she departs, there she is, drifting without power into Hong Kong waters with everyone aboard her butchered, except for Richard. And the team who go aboard, who construct the case and who are preparing to take him to court for mass murder, are the colony’s specialists in piracy. And that is interesting too because piracy keeps cropping up here, doesn’t it? It’s there, but in the background as far as I can see. Who but pirates would go aboard and then come away again without leaving any traces? Who but pirates would want to smuggle containers off and carry them to Ping Chau? Who but pirates of some kind or another would want to fill these containers with contraband in the first place? Who but pirates with a really far-reaching, well-organised plan could move the containers off Ping Chau within days of their first discovery?’

  ‘And who but pirates,’ wondered Edgar Tan, ‘would have killed all the Vietnamese you mentioned just now?’ Late tea turned into early supper, two culinary jewels joined by the irresistible string of a Singapore Sling or two — though Edgar Tan, too well aware of the Singaporean drink-drive laws, was careful with his second one. Robin, who had eaten nothing but Chinese food for a month, and little enough of that, insisted on the Elizabethan Grill and gorged herself on rare roast beef from the silver trolley. Edgar, concerned about the possibility of physical action later, was happy with a little sole. They were finished by seven thirty and piled contentedly into the Nissan to return to the Port Authority building.

  *

  The pilot’s name was Ram Seth and he was of Indian extraction. He was a solid mahogany ball of decisive energy who bounced on his feet even when at rest. He had thin black hair which he wore slicked back with a pale-floored parting on the right. On his forehead and on his ebony crown there remained the line where his uniform cap had sat. He wore gold-rimmed half-glasses for reading, but his distance vision was perfect. ‘Now,’ he said, his accent deepening the vowel, allowing it to sit deep in his throat as it rolled over his tongue, ‘what can I tell you about the Sulu Queen? Well, as chance will have it, I can tell you quite a lot.’

  He ran his hand back over his forehead, pulling his perfect hair flat as he thought. ‘There were two captains aboard. Captain Gough and Captain Mariner. Captain Gough was in command and Captain Mariner proposed to come ashore with me in the pilot’s cutter once the ship was out in the roads. But that is not what happened at all. As we were pulling well out, Captain Gough fell violently unwell. Oh yes. It was most unexpected. And it was most upsetting for everyone. It was the advanced stage of appendicitis, I understand — what is that called?’

  ‘Peritonitis,’ suggested Robin.

  ‘Yes, even so: peritonitis. One moment he was on the bridge standing beside the helmsman Wing Chau, the next he was on his knees on the deck clutching at his side and screaming. It was most unsettling, I can tell you. I crossed to him. “Captain Gough, are you quite well?” I asked. He fell onto his side. He was grey. You understand — his face was white. He was extremely unwell. I had no alternative but to call the first officer. His name was, let me see …’

  ‘Brian Jordan,’ Robin supplied.

  ‘Even so. I called Lieutenant Jordan and he, as medical officer, diagnosed peritonitis and suggested that I must take the captain ashore at once in my cutter. But he did not have the papers to assume command, you see. So I suggested that the ship should return to Singapore at once. Then Captain Mariner showed me that he had the papers for command. He said that he would take the ship to Hong Kong and arrange for a new captain to be put aboard her there. I saw the papers. I made the regular checks. Everything was quite satisfactory. I have to tell you, however, that I did not dally over this. Time was extremely short and it seemed to me that Captain Gough was expiring even as we went through the procedures. It was, fortunately, a calm, clear night, and there was no trouble in carrying the stricken captain to my cutter and bringing him ashore. Naturally, we had radioed the China Queens office and were fortunate in being able to contact the secretary there, Miss Leung, if I remember correctly. Miss Leung was waiting at the quayside with an ambulance. It was taking my responsibility a little far, perhaps, but I rode in the ambulance with them to the Singapore General Hospital. In the ambulance I gave Miss Leung an envelope from Captain Mariner, and she assured me that she would make arrangements for all the correct procedures to be followed and notifications to be given. And that was that.’

  ‘Captain Mariner gave you an envelope?’ asked Robin at once. ‘Have you any idea what it contained?’

  ‘Not particularly. It was not a letter, I think. It seemed to me to be a hard square thing, perhaps a little more than three inches square. One can tell these things by touch, through the sides of an envelope.’

  ‘Indeed. And did this envelope have an address on it or anything like that?’

  ‘No. A name only. He had assigned it to himself, I believe.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘He had written on it “To Captain R. Mariner”. I remember particularly, you see, because it was such a strange thing to have done.’

  ‘In any case, you gave the envelope to Anna Leung and saw Captain Gough into the hospital.’

  ‘Yes. That is correct. Except that I did not actually go with him into the hospital, you understand. I felt that I had done my duty and so I went straight round the corner and got a taxi back out to the Port Authority. I do hope the poor fellow is better now. I hoped Miss Leung would inform me — she promised to do so, but she never did. And I have thought of him often during the last few days, after I heard what had become of his command …’

  *

  Tan drove slowly back along the highway towards the centre of Singapore. ‘That’s a bit of a poser,’ he said.

  ‘Why is that? It could explain what happened to poor Wally at least Peritonitis. That’s where your appendix actually bursts. It’s incredibly dangerous.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess, except for one thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hospitals and morgues were the first things I checked. It’s routine. Nobody called Walter Gough has been taken into any hospital in Singapore during the last five years at least.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The Seram Queen, inbound from Jakarta, fully laden with a range
of goods all safely stowed in her sixty-five containers, came picking her way carefully through the narrow, reef-infested Selat Durian under the last of the light, four days later, while the first gentle puffs of the south-west monsoon began to blow behind her. The monsoon was a little late this year and allowed one last great thunderstorm to welcome the cargo vessel to Singapore.

  The temperature all day had been in the high thirties and the light winds had augmented a vertiginous tumbling of the local air pressure resulting from the sweltering heat. The waters of the Singapore Strait, and the Malacca Strait flowing into it, seemed to steam, giving up their lightest, hottest, most highly-charged and least stable water molecules into the humid air. And the air, puffed listlessly hither and yon, began to rise ever more powerfully, sucking up more and more of the water vapour as it went. By mid-afternoon there was a thickening overcast as the upper air met the cooler troposphere above, but this cool air with its thickening cloud was trapped at the top of a column which kept rising ever more fiercely from below. The clouds thickened, took more and more forcefully the towering anvil shapes of thunderclouds, and hovered, as though trapped helplessly, against the southernmost point of the Malaysian Peninsula.

  The first, hesitant puffs of the monsoon swept more vapour into the swirling storm factory and very soon it became clear to even the most mediocre watchkeeper that the wind was not so much blowing north-east as being sucked north-east. And sucked ever more powerfully towards the writhing static-charged hearts of the huge, black, square-shouldered clouds towering above the jewel brightness of the city.

  It was a Friday afternoon, 13 June, and passing through four o’clock. Everyone who was able to do so left work at once and headed away through the humid oven of the afternoon, hoping to make it home before the storm broke. Rush hour started early and snarled up quickly. The MTR became crowded and people, usually placid, became fractious and impatient. The hawkers who peddled their wares in little stalls along the tourist-packed roadways of Chinatown, Little India and Bugis Street looked at the restless sky and checked the lashings of their frail premises, muttering.

  Robin and Edgar were working in her suite in the Raffles. The main entrance to the hotel was on Beach Road but Robin had been given one of the suites on the southernmost corner so that her window looked out across Bras Basah Road, past the War memorial, over the Singapore Club and the park to the marina itself. It was not a view which gave her a great deal of seascape to look at, the Raffles is no high-rise, but it gave her an excellent view of the sky. Looking up at about four thirty, she caught her breath at what she saw.

  ‘Hey, Edgar. Come and look at this.’

  On their right, the Westin Plaza Hotel stood immediately across the road but the taller Westin Stamford loomed close behind it and rose so high that the upper floors seemed hidden by the thickening haze. Away beyond the bright-windowed skyscrapers was something even more breathtaking. It was a solid cliff of cloud. Seemingly as massive as the coal face it so strongly resembled, it stood apparently only a couple of kilometres to the south and only two hundred metres up above the arch of the expressway. As they stood silent, the only sound in the room the steady rhythmic pounding of the fan, the black cloud seemed to move relentlessly closer and lower. It looked disturbingly like the jaw of a black vice closing inexorably down to crush the city. ‘I’ve seen storm clouds in my time,’ said Robin quietly, ‘but I’ve never seen anything quite like that.’

  Edgar’s narrow eyes almost disappeared. He looked down at his watch. They had made no specific plans for this evening and he was wondering whether he could get across town to his modest little high-rise flat before Armageddon began.

  Seeing the movement and correctly reading the thoughts behind it, Robin said, ‘Edgar, why don’t you call it a day and try to get home before this lot breaks.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Look at the snarl-up out on the expressway there. I’ll give it another half-hour and see. There’s some stuff here I can tidy up.’

  Fifteen minutes later they were both engrossed in the paperwork again, though every now and then one or the other of them would glance unbelievingly out of the window to where the Stygian sky seemed to be trying for a new world record in natural darkness before exploding into the storm.

  The telephone rang.

  Robin picked it up, dipping her head slightly, as she always did when answering the phone, to clear her golden curls out of the way. ‘Hello?’

  The line crackled. Her hair swung back against her knuckles and gave her a considerable static shock. She hissed. ‘Hello?’ she said again.

  ‘Hello, Captain Mariner, this is Ram Seth. I am calling from the Port Authority building. The Seram Queen has just requested pilotage into Singapore harbour. I will be going out to her in one half-hour. Would you like to come?’

  ‘Would I ever! I’m on my way at once. Meet you at the Port Authority building, main entrance in twenty-five minutes at most. Oh, and Captain Seth?’

  ‘Yes, Captain Mariner?’

  Robin glanced back over her shoulder to where Edgar Tan was sitting, apparently still absorbed in the papers before him. Her hair crackled with static electricity as she moved and the line did the same. ‘May I bring a friend?’

  *

  Edgar Tan’s forebears through several generations may have been orang laut, men of the sea, but they had passed to him their blood, not their stomachs. As soon as he stepped into the pilot’s cutter, the detective knew that he had made a mistake. The boat was powerful and quite well fitted, with a big, comfortable cabin equipped with a range of comforts, from microwave ovens to coffee-making machines. Edgar liked the look of these things but found them far beyond anything he wanted to use once they got under way. From the moment the cutter began to move, all he wanted to use was the leeward rail. And he only knew to use the leeward rail because Robin took him up and explained it to him, very quickly and very clearly.

  They had managed to reach the Port Authority building before the storm broke, though the oppressive feeling of high humidity and static electricity made everything everybody did almost impossibly stressful. There were several major accidents on the parkways and innumerable shunts on the lesser roads, each one surrounded by a tight knot of viciously ill-tempered people, so that they were lucky to make their rendezvous on time. ‘You’re late,’ snapped Seth irritably.

  Robin shrugged accommodatingly and Tan apologised. ‘Traffic,’ he explained.

  The cutter was waiting for them at the bottom of the Authority steps, ready to go. At the sight of it, Edgar froze. ‘I thought you used helicopters nowadays!’ he exclaimed.

  Seth gave him a tiny, tight grin. ‘You don’t think they’d risk a helicopter in this weather, do you?’

  The wind was gusty as they pulled away, and the lowering sky felt as heavy as an avalanche upon their shoulders, but the cataclysm had not yet begun. As they looked south-westwards through the cutter’s clearview, it seemed as though the sky was going to close down against the surface of the sea before the first bolt of lightning ignited the whole pyrotechnic process. There was the thinnest band of clear blue sky ahead of them. Under the black weight of the clouds, it was a dazzlingly blue colour — blue enough, in fact, to remind Robin of Richard’s eyes.

  Edgar Tan, who had done most things and thought he had seen all there was to see, was fascinated. He had always retired to his flat and hidden when the thunderheads began to build. Never in his wildest dreams had he thought that he would ever be out in one of Singapore’s famous deluges, let alone in a small boat rushing across the harbour and out through the roads. The sight of the sky overcame the uneasy signals emanating from his stomach and, to begin with at least, he stood up by the helmsman looking out along their course. He saw the black sky close down inexorably, seeming to squeeze more blinding brightness into the narrowing strip of sky ahead. And then, just when he thought that the horizontal line of brightness along the horizon which gave the quadrant its name could not become any brighter, a truly blinding bolt of
lightning leaped down vertically into the sea immediately ahead.

  Tan staggered back, his eyes closed, with the circle of his blind vision precisely chopped into four by the afterglow of the intersection of two lines of brightness. The helmsman called something to the pilot, a warning perhaps, then everything was lost in the holocaust which followed. As though that one bolt of lightning had been sufficient to tear the guts out of the monster above them, sheets of rain were released at once. The immeasurable forces unleashed by the falling of so much rain summoned up storm-force winds in a twinkling, and big seas came with them, pitching the little cutter wildly hither and yon. It was at this moment that Edgar Tan wished most urgently to become acquainted with the deck rail, and Robin took him outside into the driving maelstrom and made sure that whatever he did he did downwind.

  Out on the foredeck, the awesome power of the storm was enhanced by the impact of the noise it was making. The thunder seemed to be continuous. Edgar’s vision was blurred by wind, rain and spray at once but Robin was treated to a display of lightning jumping down onto the water all around them. As Edgar heaved his last few meals out over the leeward rail, the experienced captain was aware that they were badly at risk out here. If the lightning was exploding down to the sea surface so close ahead, then it was only a question of time before it began to hit the cutter. ‘We’d better get in,’ she said to Tan. ‘Let’s go below!’ She saw his face clearly in another blue-white bolt of light. ‘I’ll get you a bowl,’ she said, just as the greatest crack of thunder yet seemed to split the air, making it doubtful whether he heard her.

  Half an hour later, the pilot’s cutter pulled into the wind shadow under the lee of Seram Queen. A Jacob’s ladder was unrolled and flapped resdessly against the side. One of the cutter’s crew steadied a light on it and Seth crossed towards it, with a halo of rain exploding off his wet-weather gear. Robin looked at her briefcase and knew she would never be able to get it up the ladder. She looked down at Tan and knew he would never be able to get himself up there either. She opened the briefcase, slipped the gift-wrapped package into her pocket and then left the two pieces of excess baggage side by side.