Singapore Sling Shot (31 page)

“Daniel?” Sami whispered. He wanted his old friend back. He wanted him at his side when Lu went down. But here he was, a fugitive, albeit a sick one, hiding on a tiny island. He hoped that those hunting Daniel weren't armed. If they were, there could be a killing, and the chances are it wouldn't be Daniel Swann who was killed. Not initially anyway.

These men are not very skilled in the jungle. I think I can slip past them easily. They are calling for this Mr Crewe. I don't know who he is. Do they think I am him?

They have gone past me. It was easy to hide from them. I just lay on the roof of the house while they searched through it. Now they are in the jungle behind me. I have another place to hide when they come back. They will come back. I know this somehow. I think I will go and catch some fish while they search the jungle. They have the remains of my pig and now they know where I was living I can't stay there anymore.

There are more men coming along the road. I can see them. They are marching. These men are dressed as soldiers, but they are not carrying guns. That is good. If they have guns, they might get killed. This is something else I know. I think I am good at killing people. It is just a feeling that I have. I know I know things, many things, but I don't know how I know them.

The boat is still on the bank of the river. I will take it and go and catch fish. They won't look for me out on the water. They think I am in the jungle.

The boat isn't big. It has oars and I am rowing out into the mouth of the river. There are rafts all around out here. Fish farms, I think. The cellular phone is ringing again.

“Daniel?”

“I am Daniel.”

“I am your friend, Sami. We are best friends. You have had a terrible accident and your memory has been damaged. You must let me help you.”

“I am busy, Mr Sami. I have to catch fish.”

I switched the cellular phone off. I don't remember a lot about these phones, if I ever knew anything at all, but they run on batteries and batteries don't last forever. How do I know that?

I can see some of the men on one of the fish rafts looking my way. Perhaps it was not a good idea to come out this far to fish? I row back to the mouth of the stream. There is a current pushing me deeper into the stream. The current is called the tide. I know this. The tide will carry me along while I fish.

And there are fish in the water. Many of them! I can see them all around me. The net rolled into the front of the boat is very big. Too big. But there is a smaller net, one with a handle.

I sit in the boat as the tide pushes me along. The small net is now in the water. A fish, a long skinny fish swims past. It is very close to the boat. I lift the net and I have the fish. I do this again and again and again until I have four of the long green and silver fish flapping in the bottom of the boat. I know these fish but I can't remember what they are called. That doesn't matter. I do know they can be eaten. I have eaten them before, I think. I will eat these.

The stream has become small and the bottom of the boat is touching the mud. I will get out now, take my fish and go to that other place to sleep. This is a place where the men in the uniforms will not find me. It is a place I found when I was here before.

“Where the hell is he?” Colonel Arthur Soon, co-ordinator of the Singapore Search and Rescue Division, was standing looking at a large-scale satellite map of Pulau Ubin.

“We've searched virtually the whole island, Colonel. He's vanished. They found the boat and some footprints, but that's it. Have we got a photograph yet?”

“Negative. The doctor said he had asked Mr Somsak for one. Maybe you can follow that up, Louis?”

“I'll do that, sir.” Major Louis Yap left the office of his superior and went into his own. The fugitive from the hospital, a man suffering serious head injuries, was making them all appear to be fools. If the man really was so mentally damaged as the reports suggested, just how was he managing to stay hidden?

“I have to give them a photograph.” Sami Somsak had just received a call from a major of the SSRD. It had been shunted through a Bangkok switchboard and back to him.

They wanted a photograph of David Crewe. The problem Sami faced was obvious. Any photograph of David Crewe was also a photograph of Ed Davidson and Daniel Swann and any one of the half a dozen aliases that his friend had used in Singapore in the past few years. It would be posted on all the media channels. What to do?

Then he had an idea and made a phone call. He would provide the searchers with a photograph of David Crewe, but it wouldn't be Daniel. It would be of someone who looked vaguely like him. It would be of a man with a full head of hair. Not a man with a shaven head. Perhaps, just perhaps, they would get away with it. Just about all the people who would know the photo wasn't David Crewe, or indeed Daniel Swann, were dead.

When he completed the call, Sami made another, but the phone he was calling was switched off.

It was evening. Anyone watching the little old man shuffling down Nassim Hill Road would have taken pity on him. There was an air of dejection about him. It clung to his body like a blanket.

High above the street Thomas Lu was standing at the railing of his wide terrace. He was wearing a dressing gown and held a tumbler of whisky in his good hand. Soon he would get into the spa bath and a young man he had never met before would join him. He was very much looking forward to meeting this fresh new boy from the agency.

From Lu's vantage point twenty levels above the street, the small figure walking down the road below was tiny, but even from where he was standing, Lu could see and feel the dejection drifting up towards him like a scent on the wind.

“Go home and die, old man. Your time is done!” Lu smiled and turned towards the spa. It was time to meet his lover of the evening.

40

They have all gone for the night. I am almost alone in the jungle. The place I have come to sleep is a small cave. It has been used as a place to sleep by others. There is a bedframe and a fire pit, but I will not use fire tonight. They would probably smell it if there were people on watch. The fish is fresh. I have a sharp knife. I took it from the boat when I caught my fish.

I clean the fish and slice off the meat. It is sweet. I have picked more fruit. I eat all the fish, every scrap. I am hungry. Now it is time for me to sleep.

Earlier, I took clothes from a house. Some were hanging on nails. They were the dry ones. Other clothes were lying tangled on the floor, wet and rotting. I am now wearing a shirt and a pair of rubber boots that fit. I left my shoes in the first house when the people in uniform came. Now I am warm, and I am tired. My head doesn't hurt as much as it did. Soon I will have to take out the metal things that are fixed to my scalp.

I lie on the bedframe. It is comfortable enough. I can hear the night creatures. There is the sound of insects and there are rustlings in the leaves. A pig squeals in the distance. I will catch more pigs when the searchers have gone.

My eyes are wet. I am crying, but I don't know why. Was I sad before I hurt my head? How did I hurt my head? I lie in my little cave in the jungle, crying. Is Sami really my best friend? Should I ask him why I am crying?

But then I go to sleep. Sleep comes easily to me.

“He's skilled in jungle craft. He must be.”

“Either that or he is just lucky.” Major Louis Yap stood staring down at the A4-sized photograph that had arrived from Sami Somsak. The photograph showed a fair-haired man with a moustache. He was thirty-five or forty years old. His hair was medium length. The face was soft. The man looked as if he could have a weight problem. This did not look like the face of a jungle specialist.

“He's deranged enough to fear us. Have the searchers not call out his name. Tell them to remain as quiet as they can. They might have more luck.”

“Yes, Colonel, and we are putting another one hundred people on the island. We must find him soon.”

“One would think so, Louis. One would think so.” The Colonel came to his subordinate's side and stood staring at the photograph, trying to see beyond the bland image. “Where are you, Mr Crewe?”

I wake suddenly. I can hear movement in the jungle outside the cave. There are people out there, but they are not calling out as they did before. They are trying to move silently, but they are not succeeding.

It is morning. Late morning, I think. I have slept for a long time. My headache is almost gone. Am I getting better?

I crawl to the front of the cave and stay in the shadows. A pair of boots attached to legs in jungle camouflage trousers walk past. They have not seen the cave entrance because I cut bushes and pushed them into the holes I made in the earth. To them it looks as if there is nothing behind the bushes but the steep bluff that rises above it. How did I know to do this? There are just so many things I know. If only I could remember why I know.

There is another figure further away down the slope. I can see that he is not carrying a gun. Instead, he has a bush knife. He is slashing at the bushes as he moves forward.

I wait for some time until the sounds pass on into the jungle and then I leave the cave. I could stay here all day, but I want to walk in the jungle and enjoy its smells and its sounds. I want to pick fruit. I want to feel myself alive.

It is easy to see where the searchers have been. There are scuffs in the leaf mulch on the jungle floor. There are broken and cut branches. They are clumsy. Very clumsy!

There is a road below me. A narrow road. Parked on it is a utility truck. There is no one around. I squat and wait in the undergrowth to see if this is a trap, but it isn't. There is no one here. On the tray at the back of the truck, there are two large plastic containers. This must be food and water for the people in the jungle.

I drop down to the road and go to the truck. Yes, the first container is filled with plastic water bottles. I take two. They are cold. In the second container, there is food. There are packets of cooked rice, sauces and fruit. I take some of each and fill my pockets. It is good of the people searching for me to provide me with food. Why are they searching for me? Have I done something bad? Do they want to punish me?

I move on down the road a little, and as I hear another vehicle approaching, I moved back into the jungle. A utility loaded with more people in uniform goes past.

“Why are they searching for me?” I ask the question aloud, and the sound of my own voice startles me. I think this is the first I have spoken aloud since I spoke to Sami Somsak on the telephone.

“Sami Somsak?” I repeat the name aloud. “I know Sami Somsak!” I have a picture of the man in my mind. Yes, I know him, and yes, he is my friend. My good friend. My very good friend.

I sit and drink some water. The fog in my head is slowly clearing. I see other faces, and with some of them come their names. There is the beautiful lady, Simone. Something happened to her. Something bad. I can't remember what it is. Not yet!

I eat some rice and drink more water. Sylvia! I was married to her. Am I married to her now? Simone? Am I married to her? The fog around her is thick. I can see her face and I have her name, but that is all. Jo Ankar! This name arrives out of nowhere. I can see his face. He is Thai, a handsome man with silver flecks in his short hair. He is a friend, a good friend and he is dead.

The realisation that Jo is dead unlocks the confusion in my brain. Suddenly everything pours back. Simone. She is dead. Jo is dead. So are many others. I remember the coffin and then the angel bending down to kiss me. Then nothing until I woke up in the hospital when I lay there hearing the doctor and the nurse talking about me, and me being unable to answer them.

“Dead,” I whisper. “All dead.” Now I start crying uncontrollably. These are silent tears, but my whole body is shaking as the images of my dead pass behind my eyes. This is my waking nightmare. The tears flow like a river. They burn a course down my cheeks. There is salt in my mouth. I am back in the land of the living again, and I'm not sure that I want to be here. So I cry on. I'm sad. It goes so deep, right to the very core of me. It aches. I am sad for me. Sad for everyone who is dead. Sad for everyone who is alive. Sad for the world!

After a while, I stopped crying. The tears had purged me. The front of my shirt was soaking. There was a breeze from the ocean. The shirt was cold against my chest. I wondered just how many tears a human being has in them.

I took the cellphone from my pocket, turned it on and tapped out the number printed on an adhesive strip and stuck to the side of the phone. My call was answered immediately.

“Daniel?”

“Yeah, Sami. I'm back!”

“Thank God. Are you okay?”

“I will be. I'll go and be found.”

“They'll take you back to the hospital, but it sounds as if you're okay.”

“I'll go back. There's some annoying metalwork on my head I want removed.”

“Can you remember everything?”

“Most of it, I think. The bomb. The angel kissing me.”

“Some kiss. It damn near killed you.”

“Lu had Simone killed to get us together in the cemetery. I want to kill him very badly, Sami.”

“Soon, Daniel. I have a plan.” Sami's voice was soft. “Go and get yourself found, Daniel, and then we will take care of Mr Lu. I'll see you at the hospital in a couple of hours. And thank you, old friend.”

“For what?”

“For saving my life again.”

“That's what we do, Sami.” We both signed off and I stood and retraced my steps to the utility. It was unlocked. I climbed into the passenger seat and drank some more water. It was twenty minutes before someone came. Then they all came.

41

I was back in Singapore General for the night and this time I didn't mind. The search and rescue crew flew me back by helicopter. They were delighted to find me in one piece. There was good PR in it all for them and I didn't begrudge them that. Sami arrived a few minutes after I'd showered and been tucked up in my bed in the same room I'd escaped from. They didn't put a guard on the door.