by Peter Tonkin
Perhaps Twelvetoes Ho has got a secret plan which has allowed him to manipulate us all the way along the line. God knows, he could still be manipulating us even now. Maybe Anna Leung was involved way over her head. Perhaps we can imagine that she and Walter Gough are somewhere together — either in a safe haven with the money or the cocaine — or at the bottom of Singapore harbour.
‘No, we have to keep plugging on with the facts that Richard is genuinely amnesiac — that he isn’t putting it on. And we have to keep clear in the jury’s mind that even the prosecution are half convinced that someone else did in fact come aboard …’
‘It was clever of you to get Commander Lee to admit that. I don’t think he even realised what he had said …’
‘Thanks darling. The bottom line is this, however: if we don’t find some way of undermining the case the prosecution have made, then Richard could be in bad trouble.’
‘We were right to push for a quick trial,’ murmured Andrew. ‘I’d hate to be in this position a fortnight from now.’
‘Certainly. There’s no appeal from an execution.’
‘Don’t,’ said Lata. ‘It’s too horrible even to think about.’
‘Even so, we need to push hard. Let’s pray Tom can come up with something when he goes through things with Richard now.’
‘Either that or a call from Robin. How long has it been now?’
‘More than a day. We haven’t talked to Robin directly since we passed on the information about Anna Leung and the containers. What was that? Wednesday noon. And it’s Friday now. God, how time flies. It’s not unusual for Captain Sin to break off radio contact as he goes through the Paracels, according to Mr Shaw, but I must say I’m a bit worried. Lata, would you and Mr Thong pop down and see if you can get any further information from the Heritage Mariner Office, please? But take care, Lata. I think Mr Shaw is weakening towards you in a big way.’
‘Very funny, Maggie.’ Lata rose and crossed to the door. Thong followed her and paused at her shoulder as she turned to look at her friend and colleague. ‘See you in court, Maggie,’ she said. It was an old battle cry — their version of Geronimo.
Maggie looked up and favoured her with a glowing grin. Against her better nature, a little like a sulky child, Lata smiled back. And it was a smile which lingered after she left the office. Maggie’s happiness was so contagious that Lata could resist it no longer; they were friends again.
Gerry bustled off immediately behind them. Balfour Stephenson had not stopped serving the wider community just because one partner had been subsumed so completely into this case.
As Gerry’s footsteps echoed off down the corridor, Andrew wound his arm around Maggie’s shoulder and turned her head into the crook of his elbow. On every occasion they had found themselves alone during the last few days they had made love. ‘Anything I can do to relax you, darling?’ he asked suggestively.
Her smile of answer was tinged for the first time with regret instead of sensuousness. ‘Yes, love,’ she answered, picking up the papers from the top of his desk and dusting off a grain or two of egg fried rice. ‘You can go through this opening with me.’
Commander Lee and Dr Chu had allowed Tom Fowler to have some time alone with the accused, and this time Tom had thought to bring a chart with him. It lay spread on the table between the men now, and the psychologist was guiding the ship’s master along the route of the Sulu Queen’s last voyage. But to the Londoner’s untutored ear, the names of the hazards still sounded nothing like the gibberish of the word-association exercise a few days ago.
‘So, you came out of Singapore and through past this thing here called Horsburgh.’
‘It’s a lighthouse. The Horsburgh lighthouse … Richard’s words were unthinking at first but coloured by growing wonder on the repetition as he realised that he had remembered something without help, drugs, hypnosis or appreciable effort. And what he remembered was correct — deep in his bones he was certain of that.
‘Right, out past the lighthouse into the Singapore Strait,’ persisted Tom as though he had noticed nothing. ‘What’s this thing here?’
‘Wreck. Swing south a little, towards Heluputan.’ Richard’s eyes were half-closed now as though he hardly needed to consult the blue, white and sand-coloured paper.
‘Yes, I see that,’ said Tom, his voice low. ‘Then what?’
‘Beware of floating islands.’ Richard’s eyes were closed now. This was information not displayed on the chart.
‘Isn’t that a kind of pudding?’ asked the psychologist, sidetracked by surprise.
The master mariner opened his bright eyes and looked down on him from an ineffable, unamused height. ‘They can be big. Fifteen metres long, five metres high. Trees, animals, you name it. Make a nasty mess of you. They come south out of the Mekong. You have to sail almost due north into the flood of them as they come south out of the Mekong.’
The repetition made the psychologist prick up his ears but he still had no idea how close he was to pushing things through the barrier in Richard’s memory. ‘So, you go north, through the outwash of the Mekong, depending on the season, past this place called Krakatoa …’ Now that sounded familiar, Tom thought. Why did that sound so familiar?
‘Kar Katoaka,’ corrected Richard gently. ‘Yes, that’s right. “Kar” is short for “karang” or reef. It’s shallow water but we keep well clear and swing round here towards Pulau Jemaja, with the Pulau Mangkai light at its north-western point. Once past that, we sail on up due north past the Udang oilfield. There are two platforms, a storage tanker and a radio station, but it’s nearly thirty kilometres south-east of us. We’ve nothing to worry about until we come up towards the Charlotte Bank and Scawfell. We run north-west past Alexandra, south-east of the Julia Shoal and the Catwicks, keeping an eye out for mines south of Dao Phu Qui.’
‘More hidden dangers from Vietnam, eh?’ asked Tom.
Richard flinched. The psychologist began to realise how close they were to making some kind of breakthrough. But he did not fully understand how, or why.
‘After that,’ he persisted, ‘it looks to me like plain sailing until the Paracel Islands.’
‘Clear, up to the Paracels,’ agreed Richard, his voice dreamy. He sounded to Tom as though he was on Pentothal and under deep hypnosis, but he was not and they had only been talking for a few minutes.
‘Then, once you come through the Paracels, once you come up past these — what do you call them? Lights. Once you come past these lights at Woody Island and North Reef, then you’re set fair for Hong Kong. Nothing more to worry about. Not even your nightmares from Vietnam can get at you up here.’
The observation was inspired and its effect cataclysmic. Richard rose, his face dead white, his wide eyes staring across the table at Tom.
‘Tell her!’ breathed the terrified man. ‘You have to tell her.’ His face twisted in a mixture of rage and fear. ‘Get through and tell her at once.’ His tone of voice took on a terrible earnestness; a depth of concern which made Tom, for the first time, genuinely fear for Richard’s sanity. ‘You have to warn her about the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese! Don’t you understand? They’re not all dead. Oh God! They’re not all dead.’
*
Less than an hour later, at 13:30 local time, Lata Patel found herself sitting beside John Shaw in the Heritage Mariner office on the fourth floor of the Jardine Matheson building as the young Chinese punched in Seram Queen’ s call sign on the company radio frequency. They were alone together now, for Mr Thong had gone back to court. ‘They checked in at nine thirty, a little later than usual,’ he was saying to her. His dark eyes were fixed on her face but he was having trouble stopping himself from examining her breasts. ‘They did not report any trouble at that time. It was a standard “fair weather, calm voyage” report. Seram Queen is well clear of the Paracels now, and behind schedule because of some trouble with the engine yesterday. They reported that last evening. It is a bit of a nuisance, but nothing unusual. Nothing to worry abou
t apparently. They will proceed a little above maximum economic speed to try and catch up but we have moved her booking at Kwai Chung to allow for a slightly later ETA. It has all been routine.’ John Shaw surrendered to his lower instincts and dropped his gaze. Her white blouse was tight and the space between the buttons gaped slightly, revealing a web of white lace.
‘I expected an update this morning,’ he continued, his voice quieter, more seductive, in spite of the bland words. ‘But they will probably save it for later. They are due to call back at sixteen hundred and I’ll reconfirm then. Those are her call times, nine in the morning and four o’clock in the afternoon Hong Kong time. But Captain Sin doesn’t approve of detailed reports. If there is anything wrong, he usually waits until he can report in detail in person at the next port of call. It is to do with his face as captain. Do you understand about face, Miss Patel? I sometimes think Captain Sin would have to be going down with all hands before he authorised anything more than a standard progress report.’
Lata seemed not to have heard John Shaw’s brief lecture on the captain’s sense of personal pride; and thankfully she had not noted the direction of his hot gaze. Instead of answering him directly, she said, in worried tones, Tom Fowler was quite specific. We have to warn them about some Vietnamese people. Beyond that, things aren’t quite so clear. Does it normally take this long to get through?’
‘No, not usually. I mean, it is lunchtime out there the same as it is here, but there should still be a watch officer on the bridge even if the radio officer is eating.’
‘Whose watch should it be?’
‘The first officer’s.’
‘That’s Robin. I can’t imagine her skipping out on her duty.’
‘No, there’s no question of that,’ said John quickly, abruptly concerned that he might appear to be accusing Robin Mariner, for whom he still harboured some indulgently lustful thoughts. He stopped examining Lata’s bosom and raised his eyes, frowning with concern, ‘And anyway, Mrs Mariner has been putting in a regular midday call to keep up with the progress of the captain’s trial and to pass on her thoughts, but she has not been in contact for a couple of days now. Still, you must know all that. Let’s try this again …’
John Shaw went through the simple routine again. Then, ‘Vietnamese, you say?’ he asked, to cover his increasing embarrassment and loss of face at failing in such an easy task before the attractive young woman.
‘That’s right. Tom Fowler says Captain Mariner is well on the mend but he still doesn’t make absolute sense, especially when he feels that something is particularly vital.’
‘This sort of thing happens to us all,’ said John Shaw. ‘I am often forgetful of names. And the more I try to remember who someone is, the less chance I have of getting it right.’ An admission of a small, common social failing covered his much larger failing with the radio, and helped him save face.
‘I’m just the same,’ said Lata, frowning into the dumb instrument as John Shaw completed the call sequence, again with no success. ‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there?’
‘Something is not working properly, that is certain. It may be that this radio is broken. Or the radio on Seram Queen has developed a fault in the same way that the engines did yesterday. But I do not believe there’s anything actually wrong. They have emergency equipment. If there was anything actually wrong, they would contact us via the open distress channel available to the lifeboat radios, of which she has four. She is an old ship, but she still has a supply of open-channel emergency beacons. There are many ways for them to alert us if there is anything badly wrong.’
‘But in the meantime we can’t actually warn them about these Vietnamese.’
‘Well, no. But I bet they will be on again as usual at sixteen hundred hours.’
‘Unless Captain Mariner’s mysterious Vietnamese have struck in the meantime.’
‘Is that a joke?’ John asked with an air of innocent enquiry, as though trying to comprehend a cross-cultural experiment in communication. He turned towards her again and let his gaze settle downwards one last time.
‘No,’ said Lata, suddenly cold with foreboding. ‘No, I don’t believe it is.’
*
They had come for Robin twelve hours before this conversation took place. She was more than one hour late for her midnight watch, but they had let her sleep on for reasons of their own. The last of the natives had departed, bowlegged and laden, soon after midnight, and the thoroughly sated crew had begun to sort out their ship once again. The chief engineer found the strength to restart the engines and give the ship some steerage way. Third Officer Sam Yung took up his watch late, and stared dreamily ahead, his eyes scarcely focused, his mind full of libidinous memories and his back and private parts full of a thoroughly satisfied ache. He had no idea at that stage that the parts in question were also full of a painful and embarrassing social disease.
Down in his cabin, Captain Sin, who found his satisfaction in different ways, was carefully counting the money which he had earned in the little personal enterprise which the orgy on the foredeck had been designed, so successfully, to disguise. The Captain had no clear understanding of the very much larger contraband cargo carried by his ship; the secret, extra containers were carefully hidden and were accessible from on board only through the use of the deck gantries. The lading officer knew that all was not quite right, but even he — still lying comatose with fever in Singapore — had done little other than to look the other way when he realised that the computers at the automatic container ports loaded or unloaded a couple of extra boxes, apparently by accident. Their existence was concealed in his records just as they were hidden at the heart of the cargo on the deck. Only the unfortunate Brian Jordan, ever a man with an eye to the main chance, had looked deeper than that.
And so, on the bridge, Sam Yung stood, almost as comatose as the distant, hospitalised Chin Lau, at the shoulder of the steersman as Seram Queen gathered way into the small hours, with the Woody Island light swinging through the visible quadrant away to port, on his left.
Sam had just enough intellectual energy to ensure that their course kept them well clear of the Dido bank low on the starboard. And then he collapsed back into the watch-keeper’s chair and fell asleep as the ship surged up out of the island chain and, apparently, out of danger at last.
In the ship’s surgery, Robin slept deeply, under the influence of shock, exhaustion and painkilling drugs. In spite of all her foreboding, she had little to fear from Captain Sin and his crew. Even Chief Steward Fat Chow was less fearsome than he seemed. They were rogues, perhaps; and they were none of them above taking advantage of easy money and easy virtue; but they were not murderous — or desperate enough to dream of attacking her, or even of harassing her in any particular way. They fantasised about her — or Sam Yung certainly did — but that was all. She was, after all, the wife of the man who owned the company. And if he was mad and she was eccentric — both true as far as the crew of the Seram Queen could see — nevertheless, if any harm came to her then they would all be out of a job in very short order. This job was a very cushy number, with automatic loading and unloading in most of the major ports, the chance of a little profit from personal enterprise, and a regular orgy on the Paracels every time they came through. The risky plan of knocking her out with a lifeboat had been no more than an attempt to make sure she knew nothing about their dealings with the islanders that Thursday night. And, as far as any of them knew, it had all worked perfectly well. There would be a little more treatment, a lot of apologies and a sad farewell in Hong Kong. Mrs Mariner would leave the ship none the wiser, leaving everyone richer, more satisfied and secure in their jobs.
It never occurred to them that what had happened to their sister ship would happen to them as well. The two crews, although they worked for the same company, were not close. No friendships had been formed; no professional links forged. The deaths of their colleagues, the disappearance of the captain and the accusation of his stand-in all s
eemed distant events, irrelevant to their placid existence. Even the disappearance of Anna Leung touched them not at all now that their jobs and their pay seemed to be set fair to continue.
No one aboard was aware that it was Seram, not Sulu, which was carrying two containers full of crack cocaine belonging to the White Powder Triad of Hong Kong and destined for a specific market in the People’s Republic of China, as the less legal business concerns in the colony tried to go one better than Charles Lee and his friends in gaining influence after the colony was handed back. It was well understood by the leaders of the White Powder Triad that such a cargo would attract attention, which was why they had let it be known that the cargo was on the first of the ships. This ploy had led to the wrong ship being attacked but, like the authorities in Hong Kong, the Triad had no precise idea who had actually carried out the attack. If Captain Mariner had killed everyone himself, that was all very well by them. Unlike the police, the Triad knew that the missing cargo was not a fortune in drugs; but if the Triad knew what had actually been in the crates later discovered on Ping Chau Island, then they were not about to act on their knowledge. They were saving themselves up to deal with the next offloading of a China Queens ship at the container port of Kwai Chung. And so, while she was at sea, they had no real way of protecting the second ship or the priceless cargo she carried. Since no one, except the men involved, knew exactly who it was that had come aboard the first ship six weeks earlier and, failing to find what they sought, had carried out an orgy of frustrated revenge, no one, not even the White Powder Triad, knew for certain whether or not these men would return and try again. No one knew for certain but, as Twelvetoes Ho had observed, Richard Mariner knew more than most, if only he could remember what he knew.
