South by Java Head

by Alistair MacLean

  Night, when it came at last, brought relief, but relief only of a very limited nature. The burning heat of the sun was gone, but the air was still very hot and stifling and oppressive, and the pitiful ration of water each had received just as the sun had gone down had only whetted their appetite for more, made their raging thirsts all the more painful and intolerable. For two or three hours after sunset people shifted restlessly in their seats in the lifeboat, and some even tried to talk with others, but the talk didn’t last very long: their throats were too parched, their blistered mouths too sore, and always, at the back of everybody’s mind must have been the hopeless thought that, unless some miracle occurred, for some of them tonight’s would have been the last sunset they would ever see. But nature was merciful, their minds and bodies were exhausted by hunger and thirst and by the day-long energy-sapping power of the sun, and by and by nearly all of them dropped off into a restless muttering sleep.

  Nicolson and McKinnon went to sleep too. They hadn’t intended to, it had been their purpose to share the night watches, but exhaustion had dug its fingers as deeply into them as any, and they dozed off from time to time, heads nodding on their chests, then waking with a start. Once, waking out of a short sleep, Nicolson thought he heard someone moving around the boat, and called out softly. There was no reply, and when he called out again and was again answered with silence, he reached under his seat and brought out his torch. The battery was almost gone now, but the feeble yellow beam was enough to show him that all was quiet, that nobody was out of his or her place, every black and shapeless shadow lying sprawled lifelessly across thwarts and bottomboards almost exactly where it had been when the sun had gone down. Not long afterwards, just as he was dozing off again, he could have sworn he heard a splash reaching down through his deep-drugged mists of sleep, and again he reached for his torch. But again there was no one there, no one moving around, no one even moving at all. He counted all the huddled shadows, and the number was right: nineteen, excluding himself.

  He stayed awake for the remainder of the night, consciously fighting against an almost overpowering tiredness, against leaden eyelids and a woolly, fuzzy mind, ignoring the demands of a parched throat and dry, swollen tongue that seemed to fill all his mouth that he should let go, let his quivering eyelids fall and bring a few hours’ blessed oblivion. But something far back in his mind kept telling him that he mustn’t let go, that the lifeboat and the lives of twenty people were in his hands, and when these urgings were not enough he thought of the little boy asleep less than two feet away, and then he was wide awake again. And so a night that was the epitome of all the sleepless nights he had ever known dragged endlessly by, and after a long, long time the first faint streaks of grey began to lighten the eastern horizon.

  Minutes passed, and he was beginning to see the mast clearly silhouetted against the greying sky, then the line of the gunwale of the boat, then the separate and distinct forms of the people lying about the boat. He looked first at the boy. He was still sleeping peacefully in the sternsheets beside him, wrapped in a blanket, his face only a white blur in the darkness, his head lying pillowed in the crook of Gudrun Drachmann’s arm. She herself was still sitting on the lower cross seat, twisted round at an uncomfortable angle, her head on the sternsheets. Bending down more closely, Nicolson could see that her head wasn’t resting squarely on the seat but against it, the edge of the wood cutting cruelly into her right cheek. Carefully he raised her head, eased a doubled corner of the blanket over the edge of the seat and then, moved by some strange impulse, gently moved back the wave of blue-black hair that had fallen forward over her face, concealing the long, ragged scar. For a moment he let his hand rest there, lightly, then he saw the sheen of her eyes in the gloom and knew that she had not been asleep. He felt no embarrassment, no guilt, just smiled down at her without speaking: she must have seen the gleam of his teeth against his darkly-tanned face, for she smiled in return, rubbed the scarred cheek softly, twice, against his hand then slowly straightened, careful not to disturb the sleeping boy.

  The boat was settling deeper in the water, the level inside already two or three inches above the floorboards, and Nicolson knew it was time and past time to bale it out. But baling was a noisy business, and it seemed pointless to wake people from the forgetfulness of sleep to the iron realities of another day when the boat could go at least another hour without being emptied: true, many people were up to their ankles in water, and one of two actually sitting in it, but these were only tiny discomforts compared to what they would have to suffer before the sun went down again.

  And then, suddenly, he saw something that drove away all thought of inaction, all thought of sleep. Quickly he shook McKinnon awake—he had to, for McKinnon had been leaning against him and would have fallen had Nicolson risen without warning—rose, stepped over the after thwart and dropped down on his knees on the next lower cross seat. Jenkins, the seaman who had been so dreadfully burnt, was lying in a most peculiar position, half-crouched, half-kneeling, his bloodied wrists still tied to the thwart, his head jammed against the tank leading. Nicolson stooped and shook him by the shoulder: the seaman fell further over on his side, but made no other movement. Again Nicolson shook him, more urgently this time, calling his name, but Jenkins would never be shaken awake nor hear his name again. By accident or design—probably by design, and in spite of the ropes that bound him—he had slipped off the thwart some time during the night and drowned in a few inches of bilge-water.

  Nicolson straightened his back and looked at McKinnon, and the bo’sun nodded, understanding at once. It wouldn’t do the lifeboat’s morale any good at all if the survivors woke and found a dead man in their midst, and that they should slip him quietly over the side without even a shred of a burial service seemed a small price to pay for preserving the already fading reason of more than one who might lose it entirely if he opened his eyes only to find already in their midst what he knew must eventually come to all.

  But Jenkins was heavier than he looked, and his body was awkwardly jammed between the thwarts. By the time McKinnon had cut free the securing ropes with his jack-knife and helped Nicolson drag him to a side bench, at least half the people in the lifeboat were awake, watching them struggle with the body, knowing that Jenkins was dead, yet looking on with eyes lack-lustre and strangely uncomprehending. But no one spoke; it seemed as if they might get Jenkins over the side without any hysterical outbursts or demonstrations, when a sudden high-pitched cry from for'ard, a cry that was almost a scream, made even the most tired and lethargic jerk their heads round and stare up towards the bows of the boat. Both Nicolson and McKinnon, startled, dropped the body and swung round: in the hushed stillness of the tropical dawn, the cry had seemed unnaturally loud.

  The cry had come from the young soldier, Sinclair, but he wasn’t looking at Jenkins, or anywhere in that direction. He was on his knees on the floorboards, rocking gently to and fro, staring down at somebody lying stretched on his back. Even as Nicolson watched, he flung himself to one side and pillowed his head on his forearms and the gunwale, moaning softly to himself.

  In three seconds Nicolson was by his side, gazing down at the man in the bottom of the boat. Not all of his body was lying on the boards—the backs of his knees were hooked over a thwart, the legs pointing incongruously skywards, as if he had fallen backwards from the seat on which he had been sitting: the back of his head rested in a couple of inches of water. It was Ahmed the priest, Farnholme’s strange and taciturn friend, and he was quite dead.

  Nicolson stooped over the priest, quickly thrust his hand inside the man’s black robe to feel for the heart and as quickly withdrew. The flesh was cold and clammy: the man had been dead for hours.

  Unconsciously, almost, Nicolson shook his head in bewilderment, glanced up at McKinnon and saw his own expression reflected there. He looked down again, bent over the body to lift up the head and the shoulders, and it was then that the shock came. He couldn’t shift the body more than a couple of
inches. Again he tried and again he failed. At his signal, McKinnon lifted one side of the body while Nicolson knelt down till his face was almost in the water, and then he saw why he had failed. The jack-knife between the shoulder-blades was buried clear up to the hilt, and the handle was caught between the planks of the bottom-boards.

  ELEVEN

  Nicolson rose slowly to his feet and drew his forearm across his forehead. It was already hot for the time of the day, but not that hot. His right arm hung loosely by his side, the butt of the Colt gripped tightly in his hand. He had no recollection of pulling it out of his belt. He gestured at the fallen priest.

  “This man is dead.” His quiet voice carried easily in the hushed silence. “He has a knife in his back. Someone in this boat murdered him.”

  “Dead! You said he was dead? A knife in his back?” Farnholme’s face wasn’t pleasant as he pushed for'ard and knelt at the priest’s side. He was on his feet in a moment, his mouth a thin white line in the darkness of his face. “He’s dead all right. Give me that gun, Nicolson. I know who did it.”

  “Leave that gun alone!” Nicolson held him off with a stiff arm, then went on: “Sorry, Brigadier. As long as the captain’s unwell I am in charge of this boat. I can’t let you take the law into your own hands. Who did it?”

  “Siran, of course!” Farnholme was back on balance again, but there was no masking the cold rage in his eyes. “Look at the damn murdering hound, sitting there smirking.”

  “‘The smiler with the knife beneath the cloak’.” It was Willoughby who spoke. His voice was weak and husky, but he was quiet and composed enough: the night’s sleep seemed to have done him some good.

  “It’s not under anyone’s cloak,” Nicolson said matter-of-factly. “It’s sticking in Ahmed’s back—and it’s because of my damn criminal care- lessness that it is,” he added in the bitterness of sudden recollection and understanding. “I forgot that there was a boat jack-knife as well as two hatchets in number two lifeboat … Why Siran, Brigadier?”

  “Good God, man, of course it’s Siran!” Farnholme pointed down at the priest.”We’re looking for a cold-blooded murderer, aren’t we? Who else, but Siran?”

  Nicolson looked at him. “And what else, Brigadier?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what else’?”

  “You know very well. I wouldn’t shed any more tears than you if we had to shoot him, but let’s have some little shred of evidence first.”

  “What more evidence do you want? Ahmed was facing aft, wasn’t he? And he was stabbed in the back. So somebody in the front of the boat did it—and there were only three people farther for'ard than Ahmed. Siran and his two killers.”

  “Our friend is overwrought.” It was Siran who spoke, his voice as smooth and expressionless as his face. “Too many days in an open boat in tropical seas can do terrible things to a man.”

  Farnholme clenched his fists and started for'ard, but Nicolson and McKinnon caught him by the arms.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Nicolson said roughly. “Violence won’t help matters, and we can’t have fighting in a small boat like this.” He released his grip on Farnholme’s arm, and looked thoughtfully at the man in the bows. “You may be right, Brigadier. I did hear someone moving about the boat, up for'ard, last night, and I did hear something like a thud. Later on I heard a splash. But I checked where the priest had been sitting.”

  “His bag is gone, Nicolson. I wonder if you can guess where?”

  “I saw his bag,” Nicolson said quietly. “Canvas, and very light. It wouldn’t sink.”

  “I’m afraid it would, sir.” McKinnon nodded towards the bows. “The grapnel’s gone.”

  “Weighted to the bottom, eh, Bo’sun? That would sink it all right.”

  “Well, there you are then,” Farnholme said impatiently. “They killed him, took his bag and flung it over the side. You looked both times you heard a noise and both times you saw Ahmed sitting up. Somebody must have been holding him up—probably by the handle of the knife stuck in his back. Whoever was holding him must have been sitting behind him—in the bows of the boat. And there were only these three damned murderers sitting there.” Farnholme was breathing heavily, his fists still white-knuckled, and his eyes not leaving Siran’s face.

  “It sounds as if you were right,” Nicolson admitted. “How about the rest of it?”

  “How about the rest of what?”

  “You know quite well. They didn’t kill him just for the exercise. What was their reason?”

  “How the devil should I know why they killed him?”

  Nicolson sighed. “Look Brigadier, we’re not all morons. Of course you know. You suspected Siran immediately. You expected Ahmed’s bag to be missing. And Ahmed was your friend.”

  Just for a moment something flickered far back in Farnholme’s eyes, a faint shadow of expression that seemed to be reflected in the sudden tense tightening of Siran’s mouth, almost as if the two men were exchanging a guarded look, maybe of understanding, maybe of anything. But the sun was not yet up, and Nicolson couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t imagining the exchange of glances, and, besides, any idea or suspicion of collusion between the two was preposterous. Give Farnholme a gun and Siran would be only a memory.

  “I suppose you have a right to know.” Farnholme appeared to be holding himself tightly under control but his mind was racing furiously, fabricating a story that would bear examination. “It won’t do any harm, not now, not any more.” He looked away from Siran and stared down at the dead man at his feet, and his expression and tone softened. “Ahmed was my friend, you say. He was, but a very new friend, and only then because he desperately needed a friend. His name is Jan Bekker, a countryman of Van Effen’s here. Lived in Borneo—Dutch Borneo—near Samarinda, for many years. Representative of a big Amsterdam firm and supervisor of a whole string of river rubber plantations. And a lot more besides.”

  He paused, and Nicolson prompted him: “Meaning?”

  “I’m not quite certain. He was some kind of agent for the Dutch Government. All I know is that some weeks ago he broke up and exposed a well-organised Japanese Fifth Column in Eastern Borneo. Dozens of them arrested and shot out of hand—and he also managed to get hold of their complete list of every Japanese agent and fifth-columnist in India, Burma, Malaya and the East Indies.

  “He carried it in his bag, and it would have been worth a fortune to the allies. The Japs knew he had it, and they’ve put a fantastic price on his head—dead or alive—and offered a similar reward for the return or destruction of the lists. He told me all this himself. Somehow or other Siran knew of all this, and that’s what he’s been after. He’s earned his money, but I swear before God he’ll never live to collect.”

  “And that’s why Bekker or whatever his name is was disguised?”

  “It was my idea,” Farnholme said heavily. “I thought I was being very, very clever. Muslim priests are as good as any other priests in the world: a renegade, whisky-drinking priest is an object of contempt and everybody shuns him. I tried as best I could to be the kind of dissolute drinking companion a man like that would have. We weren’t clever enough. I don’t think we could have been anyway. The alarm call was out for Bekker the length and breadth of the Indies.”

  “He was a very lucky man to have got even this far,” Nicolson acknowledged. “That’s why the Japs have been at such pains to get us?”

  “Heavens above, man, surely it’s all obvious enough now!” Farnholme shook his head impatiently, then looked again at Siran: there was no anger in his eyes now, only cold, implacable purpose. “I’d sooner have a king cobra loose in this boat than that murderous swine there. I don’t want you to have any blood on your hands, Nicolson. Give me your gun.”

  “How very convenient,” Siran murmured. Whatever he lacked, Nicolson thought, it wasn’t courage. “Congratulations, Farnholme. I salute you.”

  Nicolson looked at him curiously, then at Farnholme. “What’s he talking about?”

  “How th
e devil should I know,” Farnholme answered impatiently. “We’re wasting time, Nicolson. Give me that gun!”

  “No.”

  “For God’s sake, why not? Don’t be a fool, man. There’s not one of our lives worth a snuff of a candle as long as this man’s at large in the boat.”

  “Very likely,” Nicolson agreed. “But suspicion, no matter how strong, is not proof. Even Siran is entitled to a trial.”

  “In the name of heaven!” Farnholme was completely exasperated. “Don’t you know that there’s a time and place for these quaint old Anglo-Saxon notions about fair play and justice. This is neither the time nor the place. This is a matter of survival.”