Suddenly at Singapore

by Gavin Black

  “You mean General Sorumbai?” Kang asked politely.

  “Yes. I must say you’re well informed, Inspector. But I do mean the general. I’m not saying he murdered my brother himself, of course he didn’t, just one of his bully boys. But I’m not such a fool as to imagine we’ll ever find a hired assassin. In my view the debt is paid. And the case can be closed.”

  Kang shook his head.

  “I’m afraid I can’t agree, Mr. Harris. I am quite convinced that the killer of your brother is still at large in Singapore.”

  To say I was winded then is putting it mildly. I knew by this time that Kang wouldn’t produce something like this for effect. He believed what he said, but it was absurd. It made no kind of sense at all. The people behind Jeff’s death must have had political motives. There wasn’t any other motive. I said this.

  Kang took out a packet of his foul cigarettes, glanced around as though for a no-smoking sign, and then lit up. He inhaled and let the smoke trickle out of his nostrils. Then he looked at me with an expression that suggested kindness, as though with fools one learned patience.

  “I think we can wash out the political motive,” he said. “In fact I’ve already done so.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I’ve found the gun which killed your brother.”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Harris. I have no wish to excite you when you are ill. I thought you would only be interested. Mr. Menzies here, also felt that you should know about this. We’ve been in consultation.”

  “You found the gun … how can you be sure?”

  “Oh, ballistic examination. It can be proven in any court. The gun we now have in our possession is the one used to kill your brother. I wonder if this opens up a new line of thought to you as well as to us? You see, I cannot see why a professional assassin would wish to throw away what you might call the tool of his trade. It doesn’t seem to make sense, does it, Mr. Harris? Guns are expensive in Singapore, even on the black market. But there is no need for me to tell you such things.”

  Russell still wasn’t looking at me. He was most aggressively neutral in all this, and somehow I resented his attitude. Once again Kang was leading me gently where he wanted to go.

  “Where did you find this gun, Inspector?”

  “Ah. In the Botanic Gardens.”

  “In the …? How the hell did you find it there?”

  “You may well ask. Once again we have been very lucky. You know, the police are quite often. Sometimes I wonder how we would get on without luck. One needs enormous patience and also luck. So we know that the killer went to the Botanic Gardens some, time after killing your brother and threw away his gun. Why? That is the question I ask myself. I can find no sensible answer as yet. Perhaps I must once again show great patience and wait for more luck.”

  “Why have you come here to tell me this, Inspector?”

  “I have come once again to ask for your complete support and help in my investigations.”

  “You mean you haven’t had it?”

  Inspector Kang nodded.

  “That’s what I mean, Mr. Harris.”

  I stared out at the straits, the glittering water seen through an arch, past Russell fumbling with a cigar, taking a long time to trim it. He wasn’t trying to help me now and he didn’t mean to.

  “All right, Inspector,” I said. “I’m willing to play along with you.”

  “Thank you. There is something I would like to say, Mr. Harris. It is simply this. I am at the moment attempting to track down a murderer. Any interest I have in you or in the affairs of Harris and Company is because of that. You are not the only firm in Singapore who would not welcome a complete revelation of all its activities, very far from being the only one. The fact is, however, that in this matter I am not concerned with any activities, legal or otherwise, which do not involve Singapore Island itself. Do I make myself plain?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have your own views as to who killed your brother. You perhaps evaded my police in order to do something about that personally. You as good as told me you didn’t care what I did about the matter. Do you feel that way now?”

  “No,” I said, feeling a little sick.

  “Good. The position seems to me plain. I told you earlier there were too many motives behind the death of your brother, too many reasons why he could have been murdered. All these motives could have been the reason for his death, but I don’t think they were. I think we have to look for something much simpler than trouble outside of Singapore. And that is where I want your help.”

  “But I can’t help you! I … I never thought about anything else. There isn’t any local motive, if that’s what you’re after. Certainly not that I can think of. Jeff had no personal enemies. I can’t think of anyone.”

  Inspector Kang got up. He began to walk around the room and then at the arch to the veranda he turned and stared at me.

  “Mr. Harris, whoever killed your brother threw away the gun because he did not expect to have any further need of guns. Isn’t that obvious? It was evidence that had to be got rid of when a job had been done. For a long time I felt that you were marked down for the next victim. But since the finding of the gun I don’t believe that any more. The killing was not part of some plan to wipe out Harris and Company as an effective concern. That seems to me plain. That’s why I think the motive was personal, do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand. But I can’t help you, Inspector. I really can’t. I can’t think of a thing. Unless …”

  “Yes?”

  “The Miss Feng you interviewed …?”

  “I haven’t forgotten her, Mr. Harris. Tell me, why did you go to Kuantan in the company of a Miss Kate Raine?”

  “So you know all that, do you?”

  “Naturally. I’m not a fool!”

  “If I ever suggested you were I apologise.”

  He smiled. He seemed really amused.

  “You haven’t answered my question, Mr. Harris. Why did you choose Miss Raine to get you off the island? Because she is someone with whom you are intimate?”

  “Not in that sense.”

  “In what sense, then?”

  “She was a very good friend of mine.”

  “Only a friend?”

  “Yes!”

  “And you went to Kuantan and registered together into the rest house because you were showing Malaya to a foreigner, is that it?”

  “In a sense … yes!”

  “In a sense? Mr. Harris, I suggest you’re not being frank with me. If you have any confidence which you wish kept private in this matter you can count on me to help you as far as possible. I may as well tell you that we know Miss Raine visited your brother not very many evenings before he was murdered. There is no suggestion that she knew him at all well, but she had dinner with him on this night and stayed in his flat until a quarter to eleven after it. It is also known that when your brother was murdered you were in Kuala Lumpur with Miss Raine, staying in the same hotel.”

  “That’s quite true, we were. Which makes all your investigations of Miss Raine somewhat pointless, doesn’t it?”

  “I’m not suggesting Miss Raine murdered your brother. I’m interested in her relations with you!”

  “We were friends, no more!”

  “And that’s all you will tell me?”

  “It’s all there is to tell you!”

  “Very good, Mr. Harris. You have helped me. More than you know. And now I’ll leave you. We’ve been too long, I think, with a sick man. The doctors, no doubt, will be angry. Just one thing I have to say; there is, of course, now no check or hindrance on your movements. You will not have my ‘boys’ as you call them, I believe, on your tail all the time. Unless the murderer has a supply of guns it seems unlikely that you are next on any list.”

  We heard his feet going down the passage, and then the sound of them died away. I looked at Russell.

  “You were a fat lot of help!”
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  “There are times, dear boy, when the family solicitor is wise to keep his trap shut. And this was one of them.”

  “What the hell is that little man getting at?”

  “I wish I knew, Paul, I wish I knew.”

  “He stood there laughing at me. Looking at a fool who nearly got himself killed for nothing.”

  “So you were looking for Jeff’s killer?”

  “Well, in a way, yes. I thought the normal game I was playing would take me to him, sooner or later. I remember thinking that in the plane as a prisoner. I was at least going to get near the man who had ordered Jeff’s death. And when I was with Sorumbai I was quite sure. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind at all. It seemed part of a simple plan, with my capture as the end of it.”

  “It may still be a simple plan. Just not the one you were looking for.”

  “I can’t see it, Russell. Jeff killed by someone in Singapore? There’s no way of beginning … I can’t find any threads.”

  “Well, don’t start. Leave it to Kang. He seems to be busy. Now listen, Paul, you’re not to fret about this. There’s nothing you can do, you’re pinned here for weeks and it’s not a bad place for you to be. What about Ruth?”

  “She’ll come up, of course. But stall her for as long as you can. I don’t feel I want to see anyone. And Ruth … well, it’s not easy for either of us. She mayn’t want to see me in a hurry, in fact I’ll be surprised if she does.”

  “I’ll go back to Singapore,” Russell said. “I’ll get the afternoon plane. I’ve got a feeling there’s plenty I can do down there. One of the things is keeping an eye on Harris and Company. Have I your authorisation and all that?”

  “Of course. You’re the only one who could.”

  “Fine. Well, lie there and stop worrying. Get your strength back. Read thrillers. There’s a hospital library of them, just what the patients need. The main thing is not to think or you’ll not get well soon. Leave me to do your thinking for you. Though there’s one thing I want to say now; if Kang asks a question I’ll give him a straight answer. In everything except certain aspects of the business. And I don’t think he’s going to ask questions in that direction.”

  “Kang knows more than he told us, Russell.”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m thinking. It’s the reason why I’m catching the afternoon plane.”

  They brought me the thrillers, a nice little heap of them and put them on my bedside table. I lay and thought about motives for killing Jeff, worrying that and worrying it, and for a long time nothing came, not until after they’d served my tea and there were already shadows reaching out on the water. I picked up a book and started to read, switching on my light. In the first chapter there were nine suspects of murder and every one had a motive of gain.

  Who was there gained out of Jeff’s death but me? Miss Feng certainly didn’t. I got everything, every penny, except for minor legacies. There weren’t even people who benefited indirectly, there wasn’t change in what had been before at all.

  And then something stopped in my mind, as though a sign had gone up. It wasn’t quite true that no one gained. There was a kind of indirect gain to Russell Menzies!

  The thought was sickening. I pushed it away and it came back. While Jeff was alive Russell had been the lawyer on the outside, kept guessing about a lot, and guessing cleverly. But he had no power with Harris and Company, he was there when called on and no more. Now Russell had gone away with power to run the business! De Vorwooerd was staying with him and the old man had talked. He’d known Russell for a long time because Russell had handled the legal side when we arranged for de Vorwooerd to stay in this country. Russell had also been in my office before I went off, curious about it, wondering what I was up to. If he and de Vorwooerd were in contact …?

  I closed the book and put out the light, as though I didn’t want light. Then in the darkness I remembered something else. Russell never took real exercise in Singapore, you never saw him at the swimming club, he didn’t play squash, but in the evening, just before the colour went completely and most people were having the first drink, he liked to walk in the Botanic Gardens to watch the monkeys.

  CHAPTER IX

  IT WASN’T a good night that, it was long and dark and lonely. The sedatives they gave me didn’t work. I lay searching around for something stable to hold on to and couldn’t find it; instead I had to put everything out flat in my mind and look at it and then look at it again.

  Maybe Russell wasn’t making money fast enough as a lawyer. He had a toe in the door with Harris and Company, but would a man kill for a gamble? He might, if the odds seemed good enough. Russell could have me summed up, knowing I needed someone in the office, someone to at least partially replace Jeff.

  I couldn’t see him wanting me out of the picture, though, tipping off Sorumbai’s men to get that. Without me he’d have nothing. Perhaps that was why he had been watching me, nervous about my going off from Singapore.

  The Kuantan business still pointed to Kate. I could see her sitting in that car, refusing to look at me, her voice cold when she told me she had nothing to say. I knew she had meant that. The feeling I had on this was a certainty, and nothing would change it. She was cut off from me in those moments when we drove towards the air-strip, not because there was a man with a gun beside her, but because it was something she had done. She wanted it that way, an ending.

  Who had I left to me? The feeling that there was no one was worse than the physical pain which hadn’t gone yet. I lay there wanting to put out my hand and have it taken, but there was no one to do it, no one to turn to.

  Now I envied the little man in his suburb, the little man I’d mocked in my mind, with his wife in curlers watching the toast. It wasn’t the way I’d made it in bitterness, not always, there was sometimes love, something you held to, both of you held to. I’d missed it.

  I thought about Ruth then, as alone as I was, wandering around with devices against an emptiness we had made between us and couldn’t fill in again. The guilt for what had happened was about equal, balanced out between us, the only thing positive left. She felt it and I did, too. From opposite sides of a chasm we looked at each other and were sorry.

  But for a long time I’d had Jeff when she’d had nothing. Maybe the guilt wasn’t so evenly balanced.

  “The patient’s not been sleeping, Doctor. I’ve been watching.”

  It was the night nurse, Chinese, brisk, American-trained. The young doctor came in with that bored look.

  “What’s all this? Pain?”

  “No. I guess I’ve been doing a lot of resting. I’m not tired.”

  “Still, you should rest some more. I’m giving you a shot.”

  “Doctor, how long is it going to be before I can get up?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “You mean before I can even move around in here?”

  “Look … some of those ulcers have nearly reached the bone. I wouldn’t have believed that sores from leech bites could have developed into anything quite so pretty so quickly.”

  “If you must know, they were burns.”

  “Yes, I did know. I had a talk with that Chinese inspector.”

  “Oh. Couldn’t I be moved to Singapore in an ambulance?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “There are excellent medical reasons. You suffered considerable shock and were weakened by dengue. I will not give permission to have you moved. And the police don’t want it.”

  “The police?”

  “The inspector seemed to think it would be best to keep you here. He wondered if I could insist on it. I told him I intended to do so.”

  “You mean … Kang got at you on this?”

  “No, I don’t mean that, Mr. Harris. Will you please hold out your arm?”

  The shot went in. Kang wanted me kept out of the way.

  “There’s time to give him some hot milk,” the doctor said, but his voice wasn’t as near me as it had been.

 
; The next day I felt oddly away from everything, as though I’d been forced to surrender. I just lay and looked out at the straits, not beating at things, not taking them out and holding them at all. They were there, all the heap of questions, but I didn’t search for answers.

  “Well, we’re getting on,” said the Irish nurse after she’d taken my temperature.

  Like most nurses she behaved as though the active living of her charges was a kind of imbecility from which they had been for a time delivered. She had a considerable fund of conversational pap which was given a slight piquancy by the dear old lilt. And obviously my room, as the most expensive, was a relatively agreeable place in which to linger. She did more lingering than I would have thought possible in such a life of bustle.

  I heard all about her home in County Cork and the elaborate series of accidents which had brought her to Penang. She was a good girl, but once the charm of the brogue wore off a bit I found myself waiting for the ready laugh, timing its frequency. And in a dull sort of way I began to wish there was hope of a slightly more astringent visitor.

  I got my wish. Ruth came and stood in the doorway, looking at me.

  I’ve never got over feeling slightly surprised by my wife’s appearances. Ruth had a great many clothes and she worked an ingenious system of rotation which gave the impression, like the better-dressed Royalty, that she never wore the same things twice. Even at home this was so. I’d come into a room and find her groomed for no occasion at all. She was nearly always beautiful, even in the morning.

  And now she was very beautiful indeed, wearing a Chinese print silk, warm coloured, from which her pale skin glowed. She never used a lot of make-up and that in the tropics was startling in itself.

  “Hallo, Paul.”

  The Irish nurse took one long look and then fled, closing the door behind her. I was rather sorry about that, introductions would have been something.

  “You’re surprised I’m here?”

  “A little. Did you get in touch with Russell?”

  “No. I caught the night train without seeing him.”

  Ruth didn’t come near the bed, she walked down the room pulling off her gloves, putting them on a table.