Finding the kill was a relatively smooth affair. The old man had followed up the pugmarks with commendable efficiency, but by the time they reached the hideous remains of Mike Kirby’s body, the tiger had eaten his fill and moved on. At this point, Harry insisted on saying a few prayers over the body, a gesture that Bob found quite pointless and merely a waste of valuable time. Next, Harry organized the two accompanying Malays into setting up the machan, and if he had been difficult before, now he was absolutely unbearable in his attention to detail. For one thing, he would not allow the Malays to gather wood and camouflaging from anywhere nearer than half a mile away; also, the exact positioning of the platform seemed of great importance to him and he was continually ordering the builders to shift it an inch or so to the left or right. Meanwhile Bob paced restlessly up and down, cursing bitterly beneath his breath. When at long last, the machan was erected to Harry’s complete satisfaction, it was nearly dusk and the Malays scrambled off in the direction of their kampong, casting nervous glances over their shoulders as they went.
It was with a sigh of relief that Bob clambered up into position, but once Harry was beside him, the older man issued a terse order.
“Don’t forget now, not a sound, nor a movement if you can possibly help it. If you have anything to communicate, use hand-signals.” Since then, the old man had not spoken so much as a word. Three hours had crept leadenly by with not the slightest interruption by any creature larger than the inevitable mosquitos of which there seemed to be thousands tonight. Bob felt as if he were being eaten alive and had begun to realize that shorts and bare arms was not the best outfit for night hunting, but he had been in such a hurry earlier on, it had simply not occurred to him to call home and pick up something more substantial. Now the maddening itch of tiny jaws on every bit of exposed flesh was making him wriggle on the hard wooden seat like an agitated monkey. He kept slipping out a hand to slyly scratch a particularly irritating area, but each time he did so, he received an indignant glare from his companion. At last, Harry was motivated to fumble in his haversack and pass a small bottle over to Bob. The Australian lifted the cap and sniffed at it exploratively.
“Strewth!” he gasped. “What’s this?”
“Sssh!” hissed Harry. “Insect repellent. Put it on and shut up.”
So that was the smell that had been puzzling Bob all night; the old man must have plastered himself with the stuff. This explained why he had taken so long getting ready and also why he was able to keep so still. Bob was hardly surprised that the stuff was so effective, it smelt so bad it was liable to repell anything that came within range. Still, anything was better than the misery he was currently being subjected to. He began to daub the vile stuff discreetly over his arms and legs.
Harry watched the operation in silent disdain. For his part, he could scarcely credit a grown man coming out into the jungle in dress that was better suited to a day at the beach, and the fellow was such an infernal fidget, it was a wonder that he had ever taken up hunting in the first place. There was much more to the business than simply being a good shot, but perhaps nobody had ever pointed this out to him.
Harry looked away, across the moonlit clearing below him. Through the tiny slit he had allowed himself in the covering foliage, he could see quite clearly the half-eaten corpse of his former friend. It was somehow hard to accept that this mangled hunk of naked flesh was Mike Kirby, the man with whom Harry had passed many a happy hour over the years. It made Harry feel cheap and degraded to sit up like this, using Mike as the bait in a trap; indeed, the first impulse upon finding the body had been to give it a decent burial. But the necessity of killing the tiger before it struck again had outweighed the demands of decency and a simple prayer service had had to suffice. Mike had no real family, at least that was a blessing. A lifelong bachelor, his parents long since dead, there would be nobody to mourn him. Harry wondered glumly if it would be like that for him too. With the Tremaynes gone to England, there would only be old Pawn … perhaps Ché… and Marion, he supposed. He might never see her again after tomorrow, but he knew that she would feel something when she heard of his death. He felt abruptly annoyed that he should be forced to spend the last night of her stay sitting up a tree in the middle of the jungle with a boorish Australian at his side. Life could be very unjust sometimes.
He started violently as a brilliant light flared up from just beside him.
“What the—” He stared at Bob in disbelief. The confounded man had just lit a cigarette.
“Sorry, Mr. Sullivan, but I was gasping.”
“You!” Harry gave a formless exclamation of disgust. “Gaahhh! Don’t you realize, you must have alerted every bloody animal for miles around!”
“Hey, calm down a bit, Mr. Sullivan. It was only for a moment!”
“Good God, man, it’s quite plain to me why you’ve never managed to kill this bloody tiger, if that’s any sample of your bushcraft. Well, I’ve had enough of this fiasco; I’m going home!”
“Hold on, you can’t give up that easily.”
“Oh, can’t I? Well, we’ll just see about that.…”
“Look, I’ll put the cigarette out, how about that?”
“You oaf! After the noise we’ve been making, do you honestly think the t—”
Harry broke off in mid-sentence as an abrupt flash of light and a loud detonation ripped through the bushes, several hundred yards to their left. Mingled with the noise was another sound, a deep shattering of raw animal power that faded abruptly as the echoes of the crash subsided.
“What the fuck was that?” yelled Bob, the cigarette dropping from his twitching fingers. “Some kind of shot, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but I thought I heard—”
“Come on, let’s find out!” Flicking on the torch on his gun barrel, Bob was thrashing down the tree, kicking the flimsy camouflage to bits.
“Just a minute!” snapped Harry angrily. “Don’t go blundering off into the dark, you fool!” He snapped on his own torch and followed the Australian at a slightly more dignified pace, his gun held ready to fire at anything that might come lunging out of the darkness. He could hear the man’s voice yelling recklessly back through the trees and just occasionally he caught a glimpse of Bob’s lanky body flailing through the bushes, his bare legs shockingly white in the torchlight.
“Over this way, Mr. Sullivan. I think it came from … owww!”
“Beresford!” Harry leapt forward. “What’s wrong? Beresford?”
“Aww shit, I’m alright … just tripped over a branch!” And he was off again, moving off to the left. “It’s close now, I can smell cordite…”
“Beresford, will you please calm down and be cautious?” shouted Harry desperately. “I’m sure I heard the tiger just now.”
“Yeah, me too, me too … that’s why … Jesus!”
“What is it? What’ve you found?”
At last, Harry caught up with his reckless companion. The Australian was examining a gun, that was jammed into the low fork of a tree. In the glow of the torch, Harry could see that it was an ancient rusted 12-bore shotgun. The barrel was still smoking, and it was pointed along a well-worn cattle trail. A length of cord was attached to the trigger, and this led off into the darkness further along the trail.
“An old-fashioned tiger trap,” muttered Harry. “One of the locals must have got fed up waiting for you to finish off the man-eater.”
“Looks like it. These things are illegal, aren’t they?”
“Very.”
“The thing is … did it work?” There was a strong hint of dread in Bob’s voice. It was clear to Harry in that instant, that the Australian hoped the cat had escaped. He obviously believed that he was destined to shoot the tiger, he and nobody else. His expression was fearful as he shone his torch in the direction of the length of cord.
“My God!” His face drained of colour. “What the hell is that?”
Now Harry added his own torch beam to the glow of light. Lying face up on the groun
d was a man, a naked man. Hardly believing their eyes, the two hunters approached the body. There was no face. The blast of the shotgun had dashed that away, leaving a mask of red pulp and a rapidly spreading pool of crimson oozing out on either side. But Bob could tell very easily who it was. The totally bald head and a pair of elaborate carved bone earrings were instantly recognizable.
“Good Christ, it’s the bomoh! The bomoh from Kampong Machis.…”
Harry nodded dumbly.
“But hell, Mr. Sullivan, what was he doing out here … in the dark?”
Harry stepped forward and pushed the toe of his boot against something that lay beside the body. It was the freshly killed body of a mouse deer. There were deep red wounds sunk into its twisted neck.
“He must have been carrying this,” muttered Harry. He turned and glanced back at the gun barrel. “On his hands and knees,” he added.
“What?” Bob stared at him. “What do you mean?”
Harry pointed. “That gun is no more than three feet off the ground, wouldn’t you say? If he’d been standing upright, the blast would have hit him in the legs … so, he must have been moving along on his hands and knees.”
“Jesus— Are … are you saying…?”
“I’m not saying anything, Mr. Beresford. But it does look rather strange, doesn’t it? And we both heard a tiger roar when the gun went off.”
Bob shook his head slowly from side to side, comprehending but not wanting to accept so outrageous an idea. “No!” he said firmly. “That’s impossible. That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.”
Harry shrugged.
“I wouldn’t know about that. All I know is that a man’s been killed and we’d better head back to Kampong Wau and report an accident. But I’ll tell you something. The locals are going to have enough gossip to keep them going for months, once the news of this gets out. Come on, we’d better get going. I’m afraid that our hunting’s over for tonight.” Harry had insisted that the Land Rover should be left parked at the kampong.
Bob stood his ground for a few moments, gazing from the corpse to the shotgun and back again, over and over, and at the same time, repeating the word “impossible” to himself in a voice that was slow and toneless. He was glad he was not the policeman who would have the task of finding a suitable explanation for the mystery. Besides, Mr. Sullivan had been right about one thing: They had both heard a tiger roar. There was no disputing that.
Bob turned and hurried after the bobbing glow of Harry’s torch.
“What are you going to say?” he demanded.
“Nothing much. I’ll let them work it out for themselves. I’m damned if I can think of anything.”
Bob frowned.
“Well, there’s one thing for sure. After tonight, I’m giving up on the machan, it’s a waste of time. The next kill happens, I’m going after that striped bastard on foot.”
“Don’t be a damned fool,” replied Harry scornfully. “You do that and you’re liable to wind up as dead as Mike Kirby. He was a more experienced man than you, my friend, and look how it ended up for him.”
Bob shrugged. “I don’t care. Somebody’s got to stop that cat before it causes any more damage, and with Mike gone, it’s going to have to be me.”
Harry smiled wryly.
“Tell me something,” he murmured. “What would you do if that damned tiger dropped down dead from old age before you got a chance to put a bullet in him?”
“He won’t do that,” retorted Bob sullenly. But he fell silent and did not speak again through the long gloomy trek back to Kampong Machis.
CHAPTER 28
MARION’S FEW belongings were packed into the blue Volkswagen, the sun was well up on the eastern horizon, and it was clearly time for her to go. She walked slowly along the driveway with Harry strolling awkwardly beside her. They had both been dreading this moment.
“It’s another beautiful morning,” observed Marion lamely.
Harry nodded.
“I wish you didn’t have to go quite so soon,” he murmured. “Things will seem quiet here without you.”
“That could be a blessing,” she said.
“No, I don’t think so.”
She squeezed his arm affectionately.
“Oh, come along you old sourpuss! You’ve got an expression on your face like a mourner at an English funeral. We’ll see each other again.…”
“Will we?” He sounded unconvinced.
“Here…” She took a plain brown envelope from her pocket and handed it to him. He gazed at it blankly.
“What’s this?” he enquired.
“My address and phone number in K.L. Anytime you care to look me up, that’s where I’ll be. There’ll always be a place for you to stay, Harry.…” She gazed at him suspiciously. “Not that I believe for one moment that you’ll actually make the effort to get out there and see me.”
“I haven’t been up to K.L. in years,” muttered Harry.
“All the more reason why you should get off your backside and come along! And of course, when work permits me to get up here and see you, I’ll be more than glad to return the favour. Remember, you’ve got a lot more free time than me.”
“You’ll be due for retirement soon, won’t you?”
She chuckled, shook her head. “When my newspaper decides they want to be rid of me, they’ll have a fight on their hands,” she told him. “As far as I’m concerned, the only person who is qualified to judge when my usefulness is past is myself. Incidentally, thanks for the story about the bomoh and the gun-trap. It’s just about the most fantastic thing I’ve ever heard.…”
“Will you use it?”
“Maybe as a piece of fiction. I can’t see it working any other way, can you?” She glanced at her wristwatch. “I really must go now, if I’m going to submit this copy on time.”
He nodded, reached out his hand to bid her a formal farewell, but she brushed his hand aside and moved forward, to brush her lips against the roughness of his suntanned cheek.
“Till next we meet,” she whispered. “Remember now. Come and visit.” And she stepped back to the Volkswagen, opened the door, and climbed in. She slammed the door shut, wound the window down, and gave him a brief wave. “Good-bye Harry. Thanks for everything!” Then the car was accelerating away along the street, kicking up a thin haze of dust from the sunbaked surface of the road. Harry stood, staring glumly after it, shielding the glare from his eyes with the palm of one hand. The car rounded the curve of the road and Marion waved briefly, before vanishing from sight. After a few moments, the distinctive rumble of the Volkswagen’s engine faded into distance.
Harry sighed, gazed at the brown envelope in his hand. He crumpled it into one of his pockets and turning, he went in through the gateway and along the drive, his face expressionless. Somewhere, off in the treetops at the end of the garden, a brain-fever bird was singing its maddening phrase over and over, the shrillness of its call an insolent intrusion into the otherwise silent morning. Harry climbed the steps to the verandah and went on through, into the shade of the house.
It had never seemed so big and empty before.
* * *
“THAT’S THE most fantastic story I’ve ever heard,” announced Melissa. “I think somebody was putting you on.”
Bob shook his head. “A pretty drastic practical joke though,” he observed. “The bomoh is dead sure enough, and the local police are on the lookout for whoever set that gun-trap. I guess the charge will be manslaughter. Still, it’s like Mr. Sullivan said. If he’d been walking upright, the shot wouldn’t have—”
“Let’s not talk about it anymore, Bob. Makes me feel queasy.” She raised her glass of gin fizz. “Let’s get drunk,” she suggested recklessly.
“I already am!” he confessed. He glanced around the deserted confines of the Mess. Besides Melissa and himself, there were two other people drinking at the far end of the bar, who even now, seemed on the point of leaving. “Jesus, why did we come here?” he murmured. “It’s dea
d. Why don’t we go into Kuala Trengganu? There’s a few nightclubs there, we could do it in style.”
Melissa shook her head.
“I’ve got a better idea. We could get a few cans of drink and then we could just ride out somewhere. The beach would be a nice idea. Might be a bit cooler.”
Bob’s face lit up at the notion.
“Yeah … sounds great to me.” He glanced at his watch. “You have to be home any particular time?”
She shook her head.
“Not me. I’m a big girl now.” Melissa looked directly into Bob’s eyes for a minute and then glanced quickly away.
“Right,” he murmured. “That’s what we’ll do then. Cheers!” He raised his own glass and they both drank. “I’ll go and get Trimani to organize us some booze. Don’t go away now!” And he was gone, hurrying off in the direction of the bar.
Melissa smiled triumphantly. She’d hooked him this time, sure enough. She could almost visualize the frustrated look of defeat on Victoria Lumly’s face as the silver medallion was submitted for inspection. The whole thing would be doubly satisfying since the wretched monster so obviously believed she was in the clear now. Melissa would demand payment right there and then, on the spot. It would all be so very, very rewarding! With a grin, Melissa drained the last of her gin.
A peculiar warmth was spreading through her, and she felt pleasantly woozy. Even the grim, deserted surroundings of the Mess looked agreeable to her right now. She stared up at the snarling tiger’s head above the door and she roared at it herself, curving her fingers into mock claws. The tiger seemed to momentarily register surprise and she stifled a giggle with her hand.
“Bloody silly tiger,” she murmured. “If you’d changed back into a man in time, Uncle Harry would be a convicted murderer by now.” The idea seemed incredibly funny all of a sudden, and a vivid impression of Uncle Harry, dressed in a convict’s suit, glumly sewing mailbags, made her giggle even more helplessly than before. A hand squeezed her shoulder. It was Bob, with a paper bag full of drink tucked under his arm.
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