Suddenly at Singapore (14 page)

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!”

“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.

I
T 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.

“I should ask how you are, Paul.”

“I’m all right.”

“I had a long talk with the doctor downstairs.”

“I hope he made it good?”

“He made it horrible.”

She turned then, her hands in to her sides, tight against her body.

“Paul, it’s been one of my nightmares, something like this.”

It was as though she hadn’t meant to show feeling, but had come here determined to control it and now couldn’t.

“Ruth, I’m miserably sorry about the whole business.”

“Is that because you were found out?”

“No! I’m glad I was found out.”

“I don’t understand what you mean?”

“It’s perfectly simple. I thought I had something with Kate. But I found I don’t.”

“You can’t blame me for being a little puzzled. When did you discover this, and why?”

I told her what had happened, and what I was sure was behind it. Ruth sat down and stared at me.

“You mean you think Kate betrayed you?”

“There wasn’t anyone else who could have given that tip-off about Kuantan. I told Kate we were going there, but not another soul.”

“You could have been followed.”

“No. Kang’s policemen weren’t able to follow us and no one else could have done either, not the way we got clear. There wasn’t anyone tailing us, I know that, and the one stop we made was at Gemas. From there we could have been going to K.L. or anywhere in Malaya. That tip-off must have come from Kate.”

“Then why did she come to me?”

“I think that was smart. She had to come to someone. As a respectable citizen she couldn’t cover up the story of what happened to me. For one thing she couldn’t be sure I was dead.”

“Oh, Paul! You sound as though you hated her now.”

“Maybe I do.”

For a long time Ruth didn’t speak. She wasn’t looking at me any more, but at a piece of wall just above my bed, as though she was trying to sort out a lot of things and not finding it easy. But she looked calmer, as though some of the tension had gone.

Then she got up and went to the arch out on to the veranda, standing with one hand touching it, looking at the water. I knew what I was doing and had from the moment she came in to me, I was trying to claim my wife again. And what I had said showed her that. Ruth was standing there wondering if we could build again from a wreckage we had both made. I had to let her take her time about that, thinking it over.

“Paul, supposing you found out later that Kate hadn’t tipped those people off? That she was innocent.”

“I’d be sorry for everything I’ve built up against her.”

“I see. You’d be sorry. That wouldn’t be enough to make you want to rush to her and … and …?”

“No!”

Ruth swung around.

“How can you be so sure?”

“I’ve had plenty of time lying here. I’ve been thinking. Part of it was that you were my wife. It may be old-fashioned of me, but I know now that’s something I’ll never get away from. I was trying to get away from it with Kate. I’m glad it didn’t come off.”

Ruth’s hand went out to touch the curve of the arch.

“I’ve been so jealous of her. And you, too. Having something I didn’t, any more, between you. It’s a mean kind of jealousy, isn’t it? Small and mean. But I had it. And that’s really why I came up here. I wanted to find out what you were feeling. It wasn’t to help you, or anything, it was just a kind of curiosity.”

“I’m glad you came. How long are you staying?”

“I meant to stay all the time you’re here, even though you didn’t like it.”

“I’m glad.”

She came over to me then, almost running.

“Paul, you said that like you meant it.”

“I do.”

She stood there biting her lower lip.

“Oh, honey. What have I done?”

“You haven’t done anything, Ruth.”

“Don’t put it like that. It’s too true. Never, never. I’m … not sure I can manage. Even if you want me to. Even if you really want it, Paul.”

“We’ve got to start managing it together again.”