I said, “Marquess of Queensbury rules.”
He laughed again. “You’ve got to be—?”
I kicked him between the legs. Hard.
He buckled and howled. The explosive, surprise attack gave me a second. I could have followed through and taken out a couple of his lieutenants before they realized what was going on. But I didn’t.
I stepped back and crouched. When I stood again, I was holding my gun—a Beretta I wore on my left ankle. I didn’t aim it at them. I didn’t need to. They started easing backwards. Two of the lieutenants pulled their leader to his feet.
“Consider yourselves lucky,” I said. “You pick the wrong man and you’ll end up dead.”
Hard-eyes spat.
“Now go back into town”—with the gun, I pointed down the road towards the city—“and have some fun. But if you ever threaten me again, I won’t hesitate to use this.” I aimed the Berretta at Hard-eyes. “Now scoot!”
I crossed over to where they had been waiting for me and walked down Kitchener. I heard nothing behind me and I didn’t turn around until I reached Beach Road. Thankfully they had taken my advice.
There was a fresh breeze blowing off the South China Sea. I walked half the way towards my apartment and stopped. I stood by the sea wall and looked out at the inky blackness, peppered with flickering lights. There were many cargo ships out there moored up for the night.
I loved Singapore: the juxtaposition of jungle and first world city, its energy, its vitality and the exotic. The only thing I lacked was the intellectual challenge.
There was more traffic on Beach Road than on the route I’d walked, but I also liked the fact that I could stand there and feel as though I was the only person in the world. I used to enjoy standing on the bridges over Singapore River and breathing in the spice and rubber smells and thinking. Daydreaming or relaxing or internalizing. Call it what you will, but it was as though you could escape the hustle and bustle at any time.
And then a voice beside me brought me back to the present.
“Rain is coming.”
It was the guy in the suit.
“Rain is always coming,” I said. “But then it’s always warm and the rain is refreshing.”
He said, “Hear me out and then decide.”
“About your job? I don’t work for the government anymore.”
“Neither do I.”
I looked at him. “What are you then?”
“I’d rather my job didn’t define me. My name is Edward Symes.”
“And you don’t work for the government.”
“No. I work for Lloyds.”
“The bank?”
“The insurer.”
“You’re a long way from London.”
He inclined his head. “We have an office in KL.”
I said nothing and he looked out to sea.
“Maybe we should relocate to Singapore,” he said.
I looked at him. “What’s the job?”
For the first time, his impassive face showed a hint of a smile. He’d been teasing me, waiting for me to take the bait. “Do you know Perak—the region?”
“I’ve driven through it.”
“Very industrial. Tin mines, smelting works, big power station and rubber plantations.”
“Tin mines and rubber plantations all over Malaya.”
“Eighty percent of the country is still jungle. The Perak region is the most industrial.”
“OK. How does that involve Lloyds of London?”
“Insurance claims.”
I knew about the insurance situation. The British government called the Malayan war an Emergency. Wars invalidate insurance so the classification protected businesses. Many of those business owners were of course British.
I said, “Are you an assessor?”
“I’m an actuary, but we have assessors out in the field. In fact, that’s the job.”
“I’m not going to assess an insurance claim for you.”
“Hear me out first.”
I looked at him.
He said, “A rubber plantation had its payroll stolen. The owner was lucky. He was driving back from the bank when he was attacked.”
“That’s lucky?”
“To be alive. The claim is for the lost cash.”
“Sounds straightforward.”
“That’s what we thought. Our assessor went in and never came back.”
“What happened?”
“Murdered.”
“Sounds like a job for the police.”
“It should be but they’ve got nowhere. So we have a problem. Not only do we have a claim that needs assessing but we have a colleague whose murder needs to be solved.”
“And you’re speaking to me because…?”
“Because once an investigator, always an investigator.”
He was right about that at least.
THREE
Two days later, I stepped off the passenger train at Kuala Lumpur and waited an hour until a freight train came by. It didn’t stop but was travelling slow enough that I could run alongside and jump onto a truck. I wasn’t the only one taking the free ride north. The train of twenty empty wooden trucks must have had over a hundred men clinging to the sides. I was the only white man and figured they were looking for or travelling to work.
Each time we passed through a station, some men jumped off and some jumped on. We didn’t stop though until we came into a town called Kampar. The train took a branch line, I assumed to some industrial site, and I got off.
I stood on the concrete platform. There was a green wooden hut, probably for railway staff, and a covered area, presumably for passengers when it rained. To the east was a hill; maybe it was a mountain. I found height difficult to gauge since everything was covered in trees, but it was below the clouds so I figured just a hill. The mountains were probably further east.
The west was also jungle but flatter and I knew there was a river and lakes out there. The trees were less dense and to the west and north I could see signs of industry. Odd grey buildings jutted above the canopy and thin lines of smoke reached up in the still air like stilts holding up the clouds.
Kampar, like most small towns and villages, was a ribbon development. It ran north–south along Route One, the main road from Singapore to Thailand.
I walked out onto the road. Most of the traffic was travelling through. I saw heavy trucks, light trucks, civilian cars and an occasional army truck. But most of all I saw bicycles. Hundreds of them.
The buildings were all two-storey except for one. It was the colour of cooked salmon and it stood out. It needed to. It was a hotel. If you needed to stay in Kampar then this was the only option. And based on how quiet it was, I guessed there weren’t many people who wanted to stay in Kampar.
I paid for a room, dropped off my things and found the bathroom—the one shared by all twenty bedrooms. It had an old chipped tub but the water was hot and clean.
I freshened up but left the two days of facial hair. I also re-dressed in my travelling clothes. They were grimy from the train ride and smelled of coal dust. Perfect. The last thing I wanted was to look clean and respectable. I was going for an edge of roughness because I was about to play a role.
Edward Symes the actuary had asked me to find out what had happened to his man. He also wanted a view on the legitimacy of the insurance claim. He said Lloyds could have sent someone else in. Officially. But they were worried. They’d lost one man and didn’t want to lose another.
“But you don’t mind risking my life,” I’d said.
“You’re different,” he’d said. “You do this type of thing. And we want you undercover.”
It made sense. He also said that they’d pay me no matter what. Whether I discovered what was going on or not.
“We just need to investigate,” he’d explained with a shrug. “You know, compliance with policy.”
I found the bar he’d told me about. There was a jumble of bicycles outside and a similar jumble of men
inside. I’d visited a zoo once and the noise here was worse than feeding time in the monkey house. Everyone was talking over everyone else and it was accompanied by the clatter of beer glasses and cutlery. The zoo analogy didn’t end there, because, beneath the odour of beer, there was a smell akin to elephant dung. And yet this was clearly the most popular place in town.
As it was dinnertime, I suspected most of these men had finished their shifts for the day and were here to blow off steam.
I ordered a Tiger Beer, a glass of water and a sandwich and found a spare table at the rear. I sat with my back to the wall and had a good view of the entire room as well as the entrance.
The bar was a real melting pot of nationalities. The one thing they all had in common was that they looked like workers. There was no one in a suit. No one looked superior to anyone else, except perhaps me. Even in my dirty state, I knew I didn’t look like a labourer.
I could imagine this bar set in the American Wild West if there had been Malays and Chinese and Thais and only a handful of whites. And there were no cowboy hats or a piano. Apart from that it was exactly how I pictured it.
I left the beer in front of me and drank the water with my sandwich. It was Spam. It didn’t taste like any specific meat but was allegedly nutritious. If I was going to be here for the two weeks Symes would pay me for, I prayed that I’d find something better to eat.
After half an hour I took out a pack of playing cards and began to shuffle. Within minutes I had three new friends at the table all wanting to play a variant of poker called five-card stud.
We wagered small and they played well. The guy to my right was a Malay. He had quick eyes and a quicker hand. I knew he was cheating but the money I was losing amounted to pennies so I turned a blind eye.
There were other games going on in the bar, but ours eventually encouraged the largest crowd. Occasionally one of our table would drop out and his seat would be immediately filled. The Malay with the quick eyes kept on playing, kept subtly cheating just enough to matter, not too often to stand out. And his pot grew to a couple of pounds.
At eight o’clock I noticed a policeman enter the bar. He stood in the doorway as if to say, “Look, I’m here, so carry on behaving yourself.” He wasn’t tall but had a natural air of authority about him.
Two men at our table glanced at the cop. The Malay guy slipped a card from the bottom of the deck.
I yelled, “Cheat!” and punched him in the mouth.
The table went over. My full glass of beer emptied over the man to my left. The money went into the air. It was as if a starter’s pistol had been fired. The crowd around the table dived for the cash. The man to my right took a swing at me and missed. The cheating Malay guy lifted his chair as though to throw it at me. But he was too obvious and slow and I hit him again.
And then the money seemed to be forgotten and we were in a full-scale bar brawl.
FOUR
I spent the night in the Kampar police cell.
“Why me?” I said to the arresting police officer when he closed the cell door.
“Because you were fighting.”
I shook my head. “No, I mean, why just me. I wasn’t the only one in that fight.”
He took a long breath and pursed his lips. Maybe he delayed because he was wondering about whether to tell the truth or not. Then maybe he decided what the hell. “You’re the outsider,” he said.
“And that makes me guilty?”
“That makes you the problem.”
He left me there to stew overnight. The air didn’t move and had a strange metallic tang. There was a desk clerk but he ignored me when I called out for water.
I curled up on the small bench and tried to sleep. I’d been dismissive of the grubby salmon-pink hotel but suspected the bed would have been a hundred times more comfortable than this bench. And at least I could have a drink of water.
It was still dark when the arresting officer returned. I heard cockerels crowing for a sunrise that was probably two hours distant.
He handed me a cup of lukewarm tea through the bars.
“Sleep off the beer?” he asked. “How’s the hangover.”
“I didn’t drink any alcohol,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, not really listening. He had a ledger and a pen. “So a few questions, if you will.”
I waited.
“Name.”
“Ash Burton.” It was the name I’d agreed with Symes, just in case anyone had heard of my real name and past.
The officer wrote it in the book. He was a lefty like me, although he held his pen more awkwardly, like he was writing upside down.
“Occupation?”
“Travelling through.”
“None then.”
“Right.”
“Address?”
I gave him the address of the hotel.
He wrote it down with a smile. “I know, just travelling through.”
“Right.”
“Moving on today?” I could see him wondering if I was going to continue to be a problem.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I kind of like it here.”
He said nothing for a while. Took my empty cup.
When he spoke again it was less of an interrogation and more conversational. “Ex-army?”
“Yes.”
“Thought so.”
I said, “What’s that funny smell?”
“Joss sticks,” he said. “It’s supposed to make it smell better in here. You’d like it much less without them.”
“That’s thoughtful.”
“It’s not for your benefit. It’s for the staff.”
I smiled. I was beginning to warm to this little guy.
He said, “Are you looking for work?”
“Maybe.” I showed him my palms. “As long as it’s not labouring.”
He unlocked the cell door and swung it open like I’d passed the test and was free to go. He said, “I may have something for you. Where will you be later?”
“In the bar.”
“No you won’t. You’ll wait at the hotel.”
“Fine,” I said.
“If he’s interested, the general will find you there.”
“And if he’s not?”
“I’d appreciate it if you leave town tomorrow.”
I caught up on sleep for most of the morning. When the man came through the hotel door, I guessed at once who it was. The policeman had called him “The General”. He wore army fatigues with a jungle pattern and had a rifle slung over one shoulder.
He strode towards me like he ran the hotel, maybe ran the whole town. He was tall and charismatic with a shock of steel-grey hair, big moustache and tanned skin. Before he opened his mouth I guessed eastern European.
“Maxim,” he said, looking down at me in my comfortable chair. “You must be Burton.”
I stood and thought of offering a hand but decided against. He looked the sort that would ignore the gesture.
He appraised me with intelligent brown eyes under bushy eyebrows. It was like he was sighting a rifle. Like he was a hidden sniper and I was his target.
“Rank? Unit?”
I said, “Sergeant,” and gave him a squad I’d dealt with in the Middle East.
“Seen action?”
I’d joined up a few months before the end of the Second World War. I was still in officer training at Sandhurst when the H-bomb was dropped. But he’d figure from my age and status that I must have been called up earlier. Conscription at the age of eighteen.
“No,” I said. “It’s been the biggest frustration. Everywhere I was deployed, it was too late.”
He nodded and I could see he was ready to hear the story.
“That’s why I left. You can’t choose where you go unless you’re a free man. The Middle East was too dull.”
“There’s the SAS. You should have tried them.”
“I didn’t get the chance.”
“Korea?”
“Malaya seemed a better option.”
I grinned and he nodded again. “I don’t fancy fighting a whole army.”
“I have an opening for a good man,” he said.
“I’m not a labourer.”
“No. I’m looking for a soldier.” He pointed to a circular badge on his left arm. “Perak Protection.”
“I’ve not heard of them.”
“Private. Small. I have eight men.” He shrugged. “Seven men and one vacancy.”
“One of your men left?”
“Died.” He grinned. “No point in pretending to take the risk. If you don’t risk death then you are just playing at soldiering. Are you just playing, Burton?”
“No, sir,” I said.
“You have a gun?”
“Of course. I acquired a Browning revolver.” I didn’t mention my hidden Beretta.
“Where is it?”
“Safe. In my room.”
“Follow me,” he said, did a one-eighty turn and marched through the back of the hotel. He led me outside and kept walking until he reached a wall of trees. He took an envelope from an inside pocket and tacked it to the nearest tree, chest height. Then he paced thirty yards back and stopped.
“Much of a shot?”
“I’m all right, though I wouldn’t class myself as a sharpshooter.”
He swung the rifle off his shoulder and handed it to me. “Used one of these before?”
It was a Springfield M1903. Bolt action. Old but reliable. A model that had seen action for almost fifty years.
“Seen them but never fired one,” I said, feeling its weight.
He handed me a single bullet.
“You hit the target, you’ve got the job,” he said.
I pulled back the bolt and loaded the bullet and took up my stance.
“Left-handed,” he said.
“Is that a problem?”
“Not at all.” He chuckled. “Unless you can’t hit the paper.”
I lined up the sights. Without a wind, this should be straightforward, but then the sights could be off. With an unknown gun, I might take three shots to work out the compensation. But I only had one bullet and this guy wasn’t going to hear any excuses.
I calmed my heart, held my breath and fired.
My bullet clipped the bottom right-hand corner of the paper.
Singapore Girl_An edge of your seat thriller that will have you hooked Page 30
