“Apparently?”
“I don’t know. I just had an odd feeling… You know how some buildings give you the creeps and you don’t know why? But anyway it was a dead end. The man who runs it didn’t know where Petersen was.”
“Thanks for trying.” She touched my hand and left it there. “How’s your investigation going? You didn’t come to Penang to tell me you’d failed to find Laura.”
I finished my beef-like meat and realized I’d also drunk a whole bottle of beer. Jane poured me a glass of wine.
“Beer then wine, you’ll feel fine,” she sang.
“What?”
“Just a little rhyme to remind myself which order I can drink things. Wine then beer makes you feel queer.” She removed her hand and pointed at my leg.
“Your leg is worse.”
“I got in a fight,” I said. “The following day. I was foolish, but then it gave me the time to check out the adoption centre for you.”
“The investigation?” she prompted.
“I’m no closer to finding out who the causeway body is. But I’m making progress on the drugs connection. The man I fought was part of the humanitarian aid unit—”
“The sick, lame and lazy,” Jane said.
“That seems unfair. They have a job to do.”
“It may be unfair, but from what I’ve seen it’s generally true.”
“It looks like they’re trading aid shipments for illegal alcohol. Whoever produces it is also producing amphetamines. I followed a shipment to Malacca and found another army group mixing the two, creating… Well I’m no expert on mixing drugs and bad alcohol, but it can’t be good news.”
She flashed me a naughty smile. “Oh I don’t know…”
“You’re telling me…”
She touched my hand again. “Ash! I’m pulling your leg. No, I haven’t taken drugs and alcohol. Never together anyway.” She laughed her light laugh again and I couldn’t tell whether she was joking or not.
She took another slug of wine and watched as I took a mouthful. It wasn’t too bad.
Her hand was still on mine.
I said, “You haven’t mentioned the lucky man.”
“Lucky man?”
I nodded towards the ring.
“Oh that.” She winked. “That’s to ward off unwanted attention.” She slowly and deliberately removed the ring and put it in her pocket. Then she placed her hand back over mine and I swore she raised an eyebrow.
She said, “So why are you really in Penang?”
I told her about Jeevan. I didn’t know how he fitted in but he was a lead I needed to follow.
She said, “Any other reason?”
“I wanted to see you again.”
She smiled and stood and kept hold of my hand. “Where are you staying?”
“I have a room in the OQ.”
“Good,” she said lightly. “I’ve never stayed in officer’s quarters before.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Jane sneaked out of my room in the early hours. “No false promises,” she said, kissing me hard. “No long goodbyes either.”
I’d told her that I was only staying one night, that I would confront Jeevan and return home. And she’d said that she had an early start at work.
She had dressed in the dark and then reached out for me.
I held on to her for a moment.
“It was nice,” she said.
“Nice?”
She laughed. “All right then, very nice. Maybe we’ll do it again.”
I pulled her back towards the bed and an outside light, through a gap in the curtains, lit her pretty face.
“Another time.” She pulled away and then kissed my cheek. A second later I was alone in the room.
I could have spent another hour in bed. Instead, I performed my exercise routine and stretched my injured calf. The stitches looked sound and I felt it was healing again quickly.
It was still dark when I left the barracks, and once outside I felt the full force of a south-easterly wind. I flagged down a cab and got in just as the rain started. My driver slowed and then stopped after a few hundred yards. A torrent struck the windscreen and I couldn’t see anything outside. Eventually he started again but only marginally faster than jogging pace.
I limped and splashed from the cab to the airport office and dumped my things inside. I found an office clerk, who seemed barely awake. He was surprised at my interest in flight arrivals and said there’d be nothing coming in for at least a couple of hours due to the storm.
He may have been dopey but at least he lent me an umbrella and told me where to get breakfast.
I killed a couple of hours in the canteen with a newspaper. The sky got lighter, but not much, changing from indigo to pewter. It was still raining when I returned to the office and the dopey clerk offered me a chair and cigarette. I accepted the chair.
He was interested in why I was here and not at the airport over the water. Butterworth on the mainland was the main RAF base and I would see fighters like Hornets and Tempests and bombers called Brigands. He said Penang airport mainly saw Dakotas and Austers.
I explained I was waiting for an Auster—the humanitarian aid plane. The guy nodded and shrugged. I expected him to ask me why, but he didn’t. He just checked a register and said, “It’s not called in yet. If it’s on its way, I’d say you’ve got at least another half hour to kill.”
He made me a cup of tea and talked about football as he smoked another cigarette.
The rain finally stopped completely, although the sky remained leaden. A fire crew practised an emergency drill beside the main runway, racing to a plane through the puddles and putting out imaginary flames.
Ten minutes later I saw something silver cut through the clouds like a graceful bird. I recognized it: a Dakota like the one I’d hitched a ride in. And never again.
I saw another Dakota, and then at ten fifteen an Auster appeared out of the low, dark clouds and landed heavily. It taxied, tracking back along the runway towards the office.
Nothing happened for fifteen minutes and I wondered what was going on. Finally the hatch opened and the pilot climbed out. By this time I was at the door and then walking towards him.
“Jeevan?” I called.
The pilot stopped and removed his flying cap, shook his head.
Not Jeevan. I took a closer look at the plane and realized it wasn’t the one I’d seen at Tebrau airfield. A slightly different design and it didn’t have the humanitarian aid markings or colours.
I returned to the office and waited. There were lots of staff and ground crew but no sign of the clerk I’d chatted to earlier.
At midday I returned to the canteen and ate a quick lunch. Outside once more, I stopped in surprise. There was a plane I recognized. Not an Auster. RAF colours but sleek with something oriental about its design. A Dinah. The one Squadron Leader Kennedy had shown us in the giant hangar at Tebrau.
I walked over.
“Ash?”
I turned to see Flight Lieutenant Turner approaching from the office block.
“Robin. What are you doing here?”
He pumped my hand and grinned. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“Waiting for the humanitarian aid pilot.”
“Ah.”
We continued towards the Dinah but he didn’t elaborate.
I said, “I assume you arrived in the Dinah.”
“Took a sneaky opportunity to take her out. Sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“You were expecting Jeevan but I came instead. It’s just a little job so I took the opportunity… He’s a lazy bugger and more than happy to let me do a shift.”
I wondered why we were now at the plane. Was he about to leave? He opened the hatch and I saw four boxes marked as medical supplies. He smiled awkwardly.
After a pause he said, “I assume you want to take a look. I haven’t opened them myself. I picked them up first thing from Changi and brought them straight here.”
I opened the first box. Medical supplies. Nothing unusual. Nothing extra. Nothing missing.
All four boxes were the same.
He breathed out. “For a minute there I was worried.”
“Everything’s fine.” I looked around. “So who takes delivery of these?”
“The humanitarian aid chap here. I just went to find him but he’s late. But then so am I, so maybe he’s been and gone. Have you had lunch?”
Of course I had, but I joined him in the canteen and drank tea while he ate.
“The more I think about it,” he said between mouthfuls, “the more I don’t think Jeevan is your problem. Two reasons…”
I waited for him to continue.
“One, he’s a nice, quiet chap. And two, there’s nothing he could be doing. Just a few boxes of medical supplies. There’s no big smuggling thing going on with that.”
I’d pretty much come to the same conclusion. Maybe it was all about the aid trucks and Mr X in the jungle.
When we went outside again, the sun had broken through and the dark, wet airport was transformed.
There was a covered Land Rover parked by the Dinah.
“Great. Lippy’s here.”
“Lippy?”
“Oh, his name’s actually Lipscombe but that’s a bit of a mouthful.”
A man climbed out of the Land Rover and nodded to me. It was the dopey clerk from earlier.
I said, “I thought…”
He grinned and held out a hand. “Richard,” he said. His hand was soft and limp.
“Four boxes of medical supplies for you,” Turner said.
“And I’ve just got one for you today.”
As the men loaded the four boxes into the Land Rover, I studied the crate in the back. It was a solid-looking wooden box, three feet high with less depth and width. It took the two of them to lift it out and place it on the ground.
Turner said, “Open it up, Lippy, there’s a good chap.”
Lipscombe undid a latch and lifted the lid. Inside I saw a pile of clothes and blankets.
“Would you mind emptying it, please?” I asked.
The aid worker didn’t hesitate. Leaning on the side, he tipped it up so that the items could be pulled out. He was relaxed, so there was no surprise when nothing unsuspected came out. I helped him scoop the items back in and righted the crate.
Turner and Lipscombe lifted it into the hold, where it just fit, then locked the hatch.
He offered us a limp handshake once again before driving off.
“What now?” Turner asked me.
“Back home,” I said. “Give me a lift?”
“Sure.”
Twenty minutes later we were smoothly in the air. The cabin was warm and the monotonous engine drone soon sent me to sleep. At first I dreamed about Jane Dobson and hoped we’d meet again, although I couldn’t imagine returning to Penang any time soon.
Later, as we approached Johore, I realized I was replaying my recent experiences. My mind kept returning to the airport and the exchange between Turner and the aid worker. My gut told me there was something odd. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
TWENTY-NINE
A week went by with little happening except it rained a lot and Major Vernon came to the government office where I was working. He made a big thing of praising me for the identification and arrest of the aid guy at Terendak Barracks for dealing in amphetamine-laced samsoo.
Goodwyn had confessed to supplying soldiers in the region and so Colonel Underwood at Majidi was also satisfied. Vernon had also arrested the two men who had traded with the unknown supplier—Mr X—in the jungle. They claimed that they didn’t know who Mr X was and that they just looked out for mile markers in the wrong place. Mr X’s men used them to signal where to meet.
When I asked about the body on the causeway, Vernon said he was satisfied the case was closed. The man hadn’t been identified as a missing soldier so it wasn’t a military matter anymore.
During the week Secretary Coates was preoccupied by political wrangling and complained about the SPP—the Singapore Progressive Party—taking more control. Andrew Yipp was on the outside and appeared less of a threat to colonial rule than the alleged conservative Chinese businessmen within the legislature.
I was happy at Coates being distracted but troubled by the unexplained body and Vernon’s quick dismissal. However, I settled back into daily routine.
And then two things happened on the same morning. The first was a letter from Jane. It was like the note from the hotel but this time included the photograph of a pretty girl: blonde hair, brown eyes and a golden complexion. I’d already figured it was Laura van Loon before I saw her name on the back. She looked about ten in the photo, although Jane had said she was twelve. I realized Jane was desperately trying to keeping her search alive by sending the letter and picture. Which was fine. I put the photograph in my wallet just in case.
Later that day I received a phone call from the Army Service Corps. I hadn’t updated General Gaskill and so no one got the message that I wasn’t officially interested anymore. Underwood’s drug problem was solved and Jeevan, the humanitarian aid pilot, seemed to be a red herring. Slugger Stevenson—I still couldn’t think of him as Scott—was certain the pilot was innocent. In addition, I struggled to see how he could get anything substantial in the hold of his little Auster T7.
The call came from a junior clerk who informed me about the humanitarian aid unit at Kota Tinggi. They were scheduled to make a small delivery tomorrow. Destination: a place called Batu Pahat.
I looked it up on a map. About sixty miles north of Johor Bahru, south of Malacca.
All I had been doing for a week was case reviews. Secretary Coates had asked me to read through all the police reports for the past year and provide a summary. He wanted to know if there were any patterns that the police hadn’t spotted. Could it be that there was insurgent activity that had gone down as a normal crime? The main focus was on anyone who had left-wing tendencies, anyone who might be a communist sympathizer.
Wang, Andrew Yipp’s thug, had been mentioned twice, although never arrested. In the first case he was classed as a witness to a murder, although his statement proved too general to help find the perpetrator. In the second case he provided the tip-off that a group of shopkeepers were paying for protection. I couldn’t be certain but I suspected the protection racket was being run by Yipp’s arch rival, Chen Guan Xi. I’d met the man earlier in the year, although he wasn’t officially in the country.
I found it ironic that Secretary Coates was out to get Yipp but had already banned Chen from returning to the country. I had no doubt they were both heads of illegal Chinese Secret Societies and yet we couldn’t prove Yipp was doing anything wrong. To all intents and purposes Yipp was an upstanding businessman and philanthropist who despised the communists and his rival Chen. I knew Chen’s mistake had been to openly criticize the colonial system and then visit China. Yipp had done neither.
For about a minute, I pondered the phone call regarding the humanitarian aid schedule. I looked at the pile of police reports I had yet to read and thought about the aid trucks. I still didn’t know the source of the samsoo and amphetamines—my Mr X. I figured I’d also not rest until I knew the link to the body on the causeway.
I’d had enough of this tedious work so I picked up the phone and asked to be connected to the Cathay Building and Andrew Yipp’s office.
I spoke to two people before being connected to Su Ling.
“Ash, for what do we owe the pleasure?”
There was something off in her tone. I figured someone inappropriate was within earshot.
I said, “How are you?”
“I’m fine.” She stayed with the formal tone. “Unfortunately, Mr Yipp isn’t available to take your call.”
So, this was personal rather than the need for formality. “Have I done something to offend you, Su Ling?”
The line was quiet for a moment. I heard the faint electronic clicks the wires
made and some background noise from the office.
When she spoke she said, “Mr Yipp isn’t available. Can I pass on a message?”
I told her about the aid delivery scheduled for tomorrow then added, “Are we still on for the cinema?”
“No,” she snapped, and the line went dead.
I stared at the black plastic handset before replacing it in the cradle. Maybe I deserved that. I’d been back for a week and hadn’t been in touch.
Oh well. I returned to the monotony of reading reports written with no style and in clumsy English. As I had all week, I took a lunchtime walk to find something to eat, and mid-afternoon I took tea and biscuits from the tea trolley. The day passed and I found nothing interesting. And then the phone rang.
I picked it up tentatively, expecting Su Ling, but it wasn’t. The operator said I had a call from Penang.
THIRTY
Palpable excitement came down the phone line. “Ash,” Jane said, “Something’s happened.”
“What?”
“I sent a memo out to all the hospitals in the country,” she explained. “I know I shouldn’t have but it was worth the risk. You know, they all deal with orphans and, like ours, have an adoption department.”
“OK.”
“Well, I just thought it was worth providing them with details of Laura. Just in case. You know, she must be somewhere. She was supposed to be at the adoption centre in JB, but as you discovered, there’s no trace of her there. Maybe, just maybe, she’s turned up somewhere else.”
Although her tone didn’t sound encouraging, I said, “And you’ve had a response?”
“The hospital at Kuala Lumpur. It’s not Laura but another girl. There’s another girl there.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Monalisa Cardoso. She was also from here and was transferred to JB over a year and a half ago. And yet she’s turned up in KL. A nurse said Monalisa recognized Laura’s name.”
“That does sound promising.”
“I need your help, Ash.”
I was expecting this. “You want me to go and ask her about Laura?”
Singapore Girl_An edge of your seat thriller that will have you hooked Page 13
