The Hour Before Dawn

by Sara MacDonald

  ‘Mrs Montrose, I presume. Trying to burn the building down in a random act of terrorism?’

  Fleur whipped round to see Fergus’s laughing face.

  ‘Oh, God! Thank you! Why are all those men staring? Is it such a heinous crime to burn toast here?’

  Fergus grinned. ‘Bastards! All of them! They would have come to your rescue eventually, I think. They are staring because you are very pretty and have tight denim jeans on and most officers, wives don’t travel in jeans.’

  Fleur grinned back. ‘For twenty-four hours I am pretending I am not an officer’s wife and can wear exactly what I like.’

  ‘Good for you! Ignore the pursed lips of the general’s wife as you board!’

  ‘What general’s wife?’ Fleur squeaked. ‘You’re joking?’

  ‘Yes!’

  They made more toast and sat down together, watched by the watchers. ‘You realise this is a scandal in the making before we’ve even boarded?’

  ‘What, having breakfast together!’ They stared at each other and giggled.

  Fergus was flying out to take over David’s job and one more pilot had been drafted in to help David for a big exercise in Malaya. It was why David had had to fly on home. He had taken the twins back to Ah Heng so that Fleur could rest.

  ‘I was meant to fly in two days ago. David’s furious, but I had to give my seat to a brigadier,’ Fergus said. ‘So fate has decreed we travel together, Mrs Montrose.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  Once on board she found she was sitting next to a fat major. Fergus was nowhere to be seen. Then a burly corporal flight-attendant bent to his ear and the major got up grumbling, shot Fleur a hostile look and made his way to the end of the plane. As soon as he’d left his seat, Fergus bounded up and slid into it, breathless.

  ‘You can’t sit there, Fergus! It’s that grumpy fat major’s seat.’

  ‘Not any more. I bribed the corporal to say he had made a mistake with the seating. I told him it was imperative that I sit next to you because you have been very ill and you might throw up all over the place and I was a family friend…Fat major is not amused. I was sitting next to the most enormous army sister…Hey ho, this is fun!’

  Fleur threw her head back and laughed. ‘You and David are going to be appalling together! Whoever suggested you became his second-in-command?’

  ‘I did, of course!’

  Fleur looked back on that flight home to Singapore as the moment she recovered her sense of humour. Fergus made her laugh. He could make the most ordinary story amusing. They talked and talked about everything and nothing as they headed back into the heat on the long, slow journey via Cyprus and Gan.

  Fleur changed out of her jeans at Gan and into a cooler brown skirt with small butterflies on and a cream tee shirt. Something changed in that moment. Fergus, watching her return to the waiting area, was suddenly still, mesmerised by her long, dark hair caught up in a band, by the smallness of her waist and the way she moved, but most of all by the sweet beauty of her face, guileless, it seemed to him, as she walked over to him.

  Fleur met his eyes and for a moment was stopped by what she saw in them. They simply stood staring at each other, unable to look away in front of a whole room of people. Then, confused, she sat quickly down and Fergus went away to get her a drink.

  Fleur, shaky, thought with a start: David has never, ever looked at me like that; with blatant, unabashed, open longing.

  Even buying her a drink Fergus turned as if he could not bear to take his eyes off her. Fleur was used to being admired and flirted with, but Fergus’s intensity, his air of sardonic amusement on that long, intimate journey home was seductive, made her stomach churn and desire flash through her body, horrifying her. Their naked, mutual attraction was shocking.

  When she fell asleep he covered her with a blanket, and left his arm under her head. Fleur thought they possibly learnt more about each other on that strange disembodied journey through space than at any future time. However, it wasn’t love; not then. Fergus was too honourable and she loved David.

  But David had not made love to her for four months and Fleur was young; she wanted more babies and she had begun to doubt the attraction of her own body. And here, here was someone attractive and funny who thought her unmistakably desirable.

  Fleur had been telling herself for months that David had been overworked and strung out before his UK leave. Then she had been ill. Then she told herself it was the excessive humidity that year, and was only to be expected when David had been coping with two jobs while he waited for a replacement. She told herself she was selfish…but she knew that the heat had never been a factor in their lives before.

  It would have been wonderful to pretend there wasn’t anyone else, that David was a man who did not have the same sexual appetite. But she could not pretend this, because instinctively she knew it wasn’t true. She watched how he danced, how sensuously he moved, how he touched and charmed and loved and was amused by women.

  There was nothing cold and detached about David. He had that effortless charisma and knowledge of his own popularity. How could he not? He had been his parents’ golden boy. Good at almost everything and nice with it.

  With the right person, Fleur knew instinctively he would be the most passionate lover. That person was not her, and probably never would be. But she never gave up hoping and the excitement of being with him never faltered. He would run up the stairs, calling, ‘Where is everybody? Fleury? Peapods? I’ve discovered a wonderful place for a picnic. We’ll go this weekend…’

  He would hug her and whirl her round. He would gather up the twins and cover them with noisy kisses until they yelled, ‘Stop! Stop, Daddy! Stop! Ugh!’

  At night he would fold her in his arms, scoop her to him with a small sigh of contentment.

  ‘You see,’ she said to Fergus many months later. ‘Everything else was so lovely. I thought I could live with how it was. If I didn’t ask. I really thought I could.’

  Fleur, lying under the mosquito net, remembering, jumped violently at the sound of Nikki’s blood-curdling cry.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The phone went before DS Mohktar was fully dressed. He expected it to be DI Blythe but it was Mrs Campbell.

  ‘I’m so sorry to call you so early, Detective Sergeant Mohktar. Nikki’s asking to speak to you. Something’s worrying her but she can’t seem to tell me…’

  ‘I’ll be right over, Mrs Campbell.’ James Mohktar experienced a surge of excitement. Then he felt Fleur’s hesitation over the line.

  ‘Is there something else I can help you with?’

  There was a pause. ‘My daughter seems unwell…’

  ‘You would like a doctor? Is it the baby?’

  ‘No, I don’t think it’s the baby. She’s just very listless…almost as if she’s in shock. Perhaps it’s something she’s remembered. DS Mohktar, I feel very disturbed.’

  ‘Mrs Campbell, I will now immediately call my friend, Doctor Janus. She has seen your daughter before. She is a very gentle lady,’ Mohktar said. But he knew it was not her daughter’s physical state Fleur was worrying about. ‘I will be with you in half an hour.’

  ‘Thank you so much.’

  Mohktar shaved and put on a spotless shirt, buffed his shoes and resisted the urge to rush. He had a hard knot of anticipation in the pit of his stomach and he knew instinctively this meant there was going to be something he must concentrate on, something he must be sure not to miss. Rushing would not calm his mind.

  In this instance he did not want Blythe with him, and he left a message for the inspector and made speedily for his car. He rang Dr Janus as he drove. Her clinic was on his way and she agreed to check on Miss Montrose before she opened up her surgery. She took her own car and they arrived at the small car park at the same time and walked together to the house.

  Mrs Campbell was waiting for them on the balcony. The amah brought out orange juice clinking with ice and they sat at the table outside. Dr Janus was looking at Fleur
closely. She was very pale and Mohktar said, giving her his lovely smile, ‘Please, before we talk to your daughter, will you tell us your worries?’

  Fleur turned the glass in her hands. ‘Nikki sometimes gets like this when she has had a really bad nightmare. She wakes exhausted, drained. She has had bad dreams on and off all her life…’

  ‘Since her sister died?’ Mohktar asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Fleur looked up at him. ‘My husband was always better than I was at calming her down as a child.’

  Because you showed your own fear of her dreams, Mohktar thought.

  ‘So, she had a nightmare last night?’

  ‘I heard her cry out. I woke her up. She was feverish and incoherent. I put the fan on and bathed her with cold water and she eventually became calmer as it got light.’

  ‘Could she tell you what she had dreamt?’ Dr Janus asked.

  ‘No. She just lay there shaking, her teeth chattering, but she wouldn’t speak.’

  ‘She was afraid?’ Mohktar’s voice was soft.

  Fleur nodded. ‘Yes. She was too afraid to speak about it.’ She paused. ‘It will sound…odd to you, I know, but Nikki, as a child, believed Saffie came to her at night. That she could see her and talk to her. Sometimes I think she still believes this.’

  Both Dr Janus and Mohktar stared at her. To them it did not seem odd at all. Dr Janus smiled and adjusted her sari. ‘Only the western world believes in the impossibility of this. Why should it not be so? Why is it impossible to believe that the dead are not beyond our reach?’

  Mohktar said, ‘How do we know what is a dream and what is the subconscious mind working in ways we can never understand, Mrs Campbell?’

  Fleur looked at them both. This wasn’t the reaction she had expected, at least from Mohktar who was a policeman and dealt with facts.

  There had been many days over the years when Saffie had seemed near to Fleur. In the moments between sleeping and waking on a Sunday afternoon in an empty house. Looking over a school wall at small children in tiny pleated skirts playing hopscotch on concrete. Listening to Mahler in the garden with Fergus as the sun turned the leaves of the copper beech gold, and in the tiny, visceral moment a small hand slipped into hers. Waking, waking, suddenly in the suffocating dark with your heart banging as if someone had whispered a name in your ear and the thought: Why? What reason could anyone have for killing you, darling? As if the clue, the vital clue lay in the remembering.

  Dr Janus bent for her medical bag. ‘If it is all right with you I will go and examine your daughter on my own.’

  Fleur nodded. ‘Of course. She is in the same room as before, Dr Janus.’

  When she had gone, Mohktar said, leaning towards Fleur, ‘Mrs Campbell, is it perhaps that you are worried about what Nikki might remember?’

  Fleur looked past him at the sea. ‘When Nikki was questioned all those years ago she said she got out of the window to look for Saffie. But it was a very long afternoon for a five-year-old to stay inside. We don’t know how long Nikki might have been out on the beach. I know she would have got bored. She wouldn’t have settled to anything until she knew where Saffie was and what she was doing.’

  ‘The amah said at the time that when she brought my tea in, at about five thirty, Nikki was in the bathroom and she was sure she did not go out again. At the time I believed her, but the amah went off to have a shower, so how could she be sure? The twins were so quick, they darted about like fish…what if Nikki had gone outside again and seen someone…’ Fleur hesitated.

  ‘Someone she knew?’ Mohktar finished quietly.

  Fleur’s eyes met Mohktar’s. ‘What if she had been confused by the actions of someone she knew behaving strangely?’

  ‘How did she seem when you woke up?’

  ‘Anxious, in case I was cross; desperate for me to wake up. She said Saffie had been gone a long time and something in her voice jerked me awake. I looked out of the window and saw the light was going and I pulled my clothes on and we both rushed out to look for her…’

  Mohktar watched Fleur’s hands flutter and clasp each other.

  ‘This is very hard for you, Mrs Campbell…I regret to ask these questions.’

  Fleur smiled faintly. ‘I know, DS Mohktar, but it’s your job.’

  Dr Janus floated back and sat down. ‘Mrs Campbell, the baby’s heartbeat is slightly irregular indicating a measure of distress. I’ve told your daughter she must stay in bed all day today. I want her to rest. I will come back just after midday and again this evening.’ She took a card out of her bag. ‘This is my number; you must ring immediately if you are worried. Please do not look alarmed, all the indications are that your daughter has had a fright of some kind and everything will settle down. She seems calmer, but anxious to speak to you, James. This is not the ideal time. On the other hand, she has a need to talk. Please will you go easy, lah? Stop immediately if she becomes distressed or unwell?’

  Mohktar nodded and got up from his chair. ‘I will go now.’

  Fleur got up too. ‘I’ll just go and see if Nikki needs anything before you go in.’

  Mohktar said to Fleur quietly as she passed him, ‘Trust me, Mrs Campbell. Your daughter’s welfare is my priority.’

  Fleur nodded. She did trust him.

  When she returned, Dr Janus said quietly, ‘I have known James Mohktar since childhood…’ She smiled. ‘He was always wise, even as a child. He will proceed gently.’

  She placed her hands on the table and stared at them a moment. They were small hands, the fingers thin and neat. Fleur stared at them too. She felt strange and detached, as if she was going to float away.

  ‘I must go and open my clinic.’ Dr Janus’s voice came from a long way away. ‘Even now there will be a queue waiting, squatting outside my door in the hot sun…’ She gave Fleur a searching look. ‘Mrs Campbell, I believe the best thing for you and your daughter is to go home soon. Nikki will need a hospital examination before she can fly. The longer you leave it, the more risky it becomes. I think a long stay here is unhealthy for both of you.’

  She smiled and was gone. Fleur looked out over the beach, mesmerised by two men playing with huge kites: one blue; one red. The amah came out to collect up the glasses.

  Fleur smiled. ‘Thank you.’

  She was watching herself from a distance, detached, but her voice sounded fine. She turned and went into her room and shut the door. Her head throbbed and she took two paracetamol and crawled under the mosquito net and lay on the newly made bed.

  She wanted to be home, in London, in her little safe house where she could close the door against everything; where the smell of Fergus’s whisky and cigarettes still lingered in the curtains and air of his study. Where she would sit sometimes in his swivel chair to pretend he had just popped out to walk the dog or to buy a newspaper or cigarettes. Fergus. Constant and loving as the seasons.

  He isn’t here now because all that happened took its toll on him too. He drank too much, he smoked too much…he gave too much. He died before he was sixty. And here I am, still alive.

  It seemed to Fleur to be the loneliest place on earth.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I could hear their voices outside my room and they seemed to come from a long way away. The ceiling fan stirred the mosquito net; it moved gently around me like a billowing white sail. I felt strange. I was in a sailing boat way out at sea and nothing could touch me. I hovered above myself for the next thing that would happen. Interested, but detached.

  Fleur came and lifted the mosquito net. ‘DS Mohktar is here, darling. Do you still want to speak to him?’

  I turned to her. I was no longer afloat. I could not escape the words that had to be said. ‘Yes, Mum.’

  How tired Fleur looked. How thin and aged. I knew I should get out of bed and wash my face, brush my hair, but I did not have the energy. Fleur put orange juice on the bedside table.

  ‘You must keep drinking, Nik.’

  She went to get Mohktar and I felt myself tremble. I
turned the pillow to cool my head and sat myself up, suddenly minding what Mohktar thought of me.

  He came in carrying a plate of papaya and melon cut into small pieces with a sprinkling of ginger over them.

  I smiled. ‘Ah Heng used to do that when we were children.’

  Mohktar smiled back and sat on the chair next to the bed. ‘From Ah Lin. To a Malay it is as comforting as your English toast and butter and marmalade!’

  I took a piece and he took a piece. He seemed in no hurry and I began to relax as I ate the fruit. There are some people you could believe you had known in another life and Mohktar was one of them.

  ‘Tell me about the place you grew up in?’ I said. ‘Did you have a happy childhood?’

  He hesitated, his dark eyes watching me. ‘I had a very happy childhood in a small kampong by a river. I ran wild with my brothers. There were many of us and we were poor by western standards but comfortable by our own. My father was a bank clerk and my mother, helped by all her children, raised livestock.’ He smiled. ‘It was a very ordinary, boring childhood, I’m afraid, Miss Montrose.’

  ‘What made you become a policeman?’

  ‘Perhaps to give families like mine a voice against corruption. ’

  I waited, watching his beautiful face.

  ‘Two of my brothers were killed by faulty scaffolding. They fell thousands of metres to their deaths. The builder was never prosecuted. He paid off the police and the judge. My mother was never the same again. I was in England at the time, studying. I returned with new eyes and could not go back to the old ways of acceptance of corruption.’

  ‘I could have gone into law, but you see, I like jigsaws. I like the process of discovery and solving and I am not adversarial enough for the law.’

  ‘So what were you studying?’ I asked, interested.