‘What about Indonesia?’
Hamnet laughed, short and harsh. ‘Oh, they’re quite clear that armed robbery and murder have taken place in their territorial waters. Equally clear is that they aren’t that fussed about it.’
‘I suppose realpolitik would argue that they have other things to deal with. The collapse of the rupiah, the IMF’s austerity measures — the people are restless.’
‘Not to say rioting in the streets,’ added Hamnet. ‘I know. They’re not concerned with the murder of a few foreign nationals on a foreign-flagged ship within their waters. Particularly since the majority of those nationals were Philippine. And as the Philippine government have as many or more problems with their economy as Indonesia, they’re far too busy to complain about the inactivity. A done deal.’
‘What about . . .?’ Bullen hesitated. ‘The US? You said there was an American aboard. Surely they will act.’
‘Yes, Richardson. He was the chief mate,’ said Hamnet. ‘There’s no doubt that the Americans are not happy. But the role of another American national in the murders — one they’ve been chasing for years — leaves them in no position to put any pressure on the Indonesians. And Richardson apparently has no surviving family in the States, so there’s no one to discomfort any senators. The result is that the whole thing has been swept under a carpet of finely woven Indonesian red tape.’
Anthony sat upright, swept his right hand through his hair, then reached for his beer. ‘That’s dreadful. I’m a long way from being an eye-for-an-eye merchant, but even so, that these people can get away scot-free is appalling.’
Hamnet nodded while reflecting that there were also advantages. The death of the fisherman was going the same way. Dubre had let it be known that the boat had been found some miles from the original incident, with the tiller tied off. At the same time he had also told Hamnet that the authorities had elected to ignore the family’s original account of the incident. It was easier to put the whole thing down to a fishing accident — with the boat on ‘autopilot’, the fisherman had slipped, been knocked unconscious, fallen overboard and drowned while his boat steamed off without him. It was a convenient enough fiction with which to close the file and forget the whole thing. Slack Indonesian justice cut both ways, and neither helped his mental state. But he could hardly tell that to Anthony.
‘So,’ said Anthony into the gathering darkness, ‘does anyone care?’
‘The Brits. Everybody else takes a statement and issues a press release while the Department of Transport decides the bloody thing needs a full inquiry to see if I can keep my master’s ticket.’
‘But surely they can’t find you at fault in an attack like this? It’s the merchant navy, not the Royal Navy.’
Hamnet smiled weakly. ‘I’ll point that out to them. And fortunately there are a lot of powerful people who want the findings to back my story. The insurance company needs to establish that it doesn’t have to pay anybody anything. For that they need the endorsement of my story by the DoT. That will then get charges for fraud brought against the owner. They know that he’ll never stand trial — the offices of the company that owned the Shawould are empty, and have been since the warning went out about the differential GPS. They’ll never find him. But that’s not the point. Once the charges have been brought, the insurance company is legally off the payment hook.’
‘So you’ve nothing to worry about, then. The powers-that-be are working for you.’
‘But if the DoT finds I’m culpable, the only conclusion is that my story’s fiction. I’ll be the next one the insurance company will try to use to wriggle out of having to pay.’
‘I don’t know anything about maritime law, Phil, but I’d have thought that was pretty unlikely.’
Hamnet let it go — Anthony was probably right. He lapsed into another uncomfortable silence, which Anthony quickly broke. ‘So that’s why we see a lot of Dubre?’
‘Yep. He’s everywhere, checking, double-checking, covering and back-tracking. On the phone three or four times a day, making sure I haven’t missed any appointments. Or keeping me up with the gossip from the port and city.’
‘Do you trust him?’
The question came from nowhere. Hamnet looked up sharply. He could see the moustache of foam from Anthony’s last mouthful of beer, grey in the gloom. But the rest of his expression was lost in shadow. With the passage of time and regular contact, Hamnet’s boiling hatred for Dubre had subsided first to a simmer and then a quiet steaming. Without Dubre’s help he wouldn’t have had a chance in the judicial labyrinth.
‘At the moment our interests are the same. If the DoT endorses my story, it paves the way for nonpayment of the insurance — and Dubre has a substantial financial incentive to that end. The value of the Shawould and its cargo must be well into tens of millions of US dollars. So I have no reason to distrust him. Why do you ask?’
The fading moustache nodded a couple of times. ‘Hmmm. It’s just that, with all the media interest, I sometimes wonder. When you see the material they have — it must have come from inside, surely?’
Hamnet stared into the now black but still noisily chirping garden. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me, although I hadn’t thought about it before. Initially a lot of the pressure for the inquiry was because of the media interest. Dubre wanted the inquiry, so it would have paid him to fuel the media frenzy. But having got what he wanted, he doesn’t have a motive for continuing to feed them.’
Anthony laughed. ‘So I can blame him for the trampling of Margaret’s prize roses?’
‘You can blame him for the sins of the earth as far as I’m concerned,’ replied Hamnet. But he was all too conscious of his part in what Margaret and Anthony had been through — the full door-stepping experience, cameramen in the bushes, flashbulbs going off through the windows. At least until Anthony had had a quiet word with some contacts in the government. ‘But it could have been worse,’ he continued. ‘In England they’re all over your roses and there’s precious little you can do about it. It’s been a lot easier in Singapore.’
And here we are again, reflected Hamnet — at the question that needed to be asked. Things had to move on — it was time. In fact he was running out of time. He knew he had been hiding from it for far too long. ‘The sublet on the flat must be almost up,’ he said.
Anthony shifted uncomfortably. ‘Ah, yes, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. Kind of putting it off, hoping that something would turn up. I’ve had a look around for someone else to take it on for a bit longer, but there’s no one. Plenty of people for six months or more, but . . .’
‘No, it’s OK. I’m ready to move back in.’
‘It’s no problem to leave it empty. Forget the rent . . .’
‘I’ve had some news on the money front,’ said Hamnet. ‘Anna had a life insurance policy I didn’t know about. It will be a while before they pay, as there’s no direct proof of her death.’ He paused, still hating to say it. ‘There’s no body. But the bank has agreed to lend against it in the meantime.’
‘You don’t want to waste that money by living on it. You’ll need it for Ben later on — schools, that kind of thing,’ replied Anthony.
‘I don’t have to. Dubre has found me a job, working in the technical department at Konsan Shipping.’
‘That’s marvellous.’ Anthony beamed.
‘The marine superintendent is in the head office back in Seoul, but his man here in Singapore is leaving. He does all the local stuff for Konsan’s boats — kind of checks them in when they arrive. I’ve dealt with all that on the other side for years. Now this guy has been promoted up to head office and he’ll be out of here in three months. They want me now, on a trial basis. They’re a little worried about me losing my master’s ticket. Hard to deal with other skippers when you’re a failed one.’
‘Surely that will be fine.’
‘I hope so.’ Hamnet swilled the last of the Pimms and ice around his glass. Unwilling to accept the Bullens’ offer to overl
ook the rent, Hamnet had suggested the flat be temporarily relet, and a visiting doctor doing a locum at another practice had taken it for a month. This had saved Hamnet a lot of money and kept his conscience clear. A few things — clothes, papers, some books and Anna’s computer — were either in the Bullens’ garage or in Susie’s bedroom. The respite had been valuable in other ways. Margaret was fantastically good with Ben, and Hamnet himself was learning fast. The helplessness that had gutted him at the border four weeks earlier hardly seemed possible. But every visible sign of progress on Ben’s part was a reminder of his twin and the squalid conditions in which he still lay.
A frightful decision would soon have to be made. Thirteen people had died as a result of his failed attempt to save Anna. While he could blame Dubre for precipitating the final act, he couldn’t deny that the chance he had taken with thirteen lives in the hope of saving one was difficult to justify. But the loss of his beautiful, intelligent, brave and loving wife was the single thing that completely dominated his life. He missed her more than he could bear, and the pain persuaded him he had done the right thing.
The thirteen dead didn’t weigh on his heart anywhere near as heavily as Anna’s absence. Indeed, if he could have wound back the clock and handed Dubre an empty envelope, he would have done so — even if that had meant another thirteen dead. That was how he felt. But he also knew that this was wrong. The conflict and the approaching decision regarding his second son were slowly tearing him apart.
Hamnet had been hiding from it, here in the Bullens’ house. While there had been no opportunity to betray another ship, no decision had had to be made. Now that respite was nearly over. He must move back into the flat and take the job to support it. And the operations department at Konsan Shipping would surely give him the opportunity to deliver what Janac wanted. The question was whether or not he was prepared to take it.
He stood, slugged back the last of the Pimms and chewed on the remaining ice cube. ‘I start on Monday,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, I promised I’d help with dinner.’
Chapter 20
It was eight o’clock in the morning when, three days later, Hamnet got a lift with Anthony Bullen to the Mass Rapid Transport railway station. The underground train carried him into the city, to Raffles Place, where he mingled with the throng of impatient commuters. He clipped across the beige marble to the spotless escalator, which glided slowly upwards, stepped out into the sunshine and hesitated. The lawned square was already bustling with people in pressed shirts and elegant skirts. The mirror-finished walls loomed in on him. This was not his world — no space, no horizon.
Konsan Shipping’s offices were only a hundred metres away, in a squat concrete building in a far corner of the square. But the ground floor and basement were a maze of shops and food halls, and it took him ten minutes to find an elevator that went somewhere other than the car park. When he had finally succeeded, it bore him swiftly to the tenth floor, where he had been told to ask for Toby. The lift doors opened, and he stepped out into the foyer. An empty room, no receptionist — just four labelled doors, a balding grey carpet and a faded picture of a container ship. He picked the door with the legend ‘Konsan Shipping Marine Division’ and knocked.
He knocked again, and this time he was fairly sure he heard a reply, so he tried the door. It opened onto a scene of typical office bustle, from among which only a couple of heads looked up. There were ten desks sited erratically round a large, open room. Each desk had a thick skin of paper, through which rose a carbuncular computer screen. There were five side doors, and every inch of space along the walls between them was taken up by ranks of filing cabinets.
‘Good morning. Can I help you?’ The voice, with its lilting Chinese accent, belonged to a fragile, tired-looking woman at a desk almost behind the door he had come through. Her smooth, unlined face was betrayed by her greying hair, pulled back into a tight, severe bun. She blinked at him through wire-rimmed glasses that magnified the dark rings under her eyes.
‘My name’s Phillip Hamnet. I’ve an appointment with Toby.’
A look of concern flickered across the woman’s face, though whether for him or about him Hamnet couldn’t tell. Then she nodded and stood. She barely reached up to his chest. ‘Just a moment,’ she said.
She walked through the nearest open door, to emerge in short order pursued by a man who almost leapt out of the office behind her. He beamed at Hamnet with a pure white smile, then shook his hand energetically and introduced himself as Toby. He was already moving back towards his office as he completed the formality.
‘This’ll be your desk for the next three months.’ He tapped a grey Formica top in passing, heaped with folders and books. ‘Joan,’ — he waved at the bespectacled woman, who had sat back down — ‘would you clear the decks here for Phil. May I call you Phil? He’s going to be understudying me until I go, then he’ll take over. Joan’s my assistant — she’ll be yours. Ask her anything. Been here forever. Knows more than I do.’ He re-entered his office ahead of Hamnet, his jet-black hair jerking with the delivery of each bullet of a sentence.
Hamnet had a brief opportunity to nod acknowledgement to Joan before following Toby into his office, where the door clicked shut after him. Behind the ruthlessly tidy desk was a window, through which Hamnet could see the harbour and some of the hundred ships or more that lay at anchor, awaiting charter or loading.
Toby was still speaking. ‘Far as possible, Phil, I think you should just follow me around for the first week — see the kind of thing that’s going on. Then while I’m in the office there’s a ton of documentation on how we do things here at Konsan.’ He lifted a pile of books off his desk, rested them across a belly that demanded much of his shirt buttons, carried them over and dumped them in Hamnet’s arms. He flashed the white smile again, his soft brown eyes twinkling at the expression on Hamnet’s face. Then he was off again, barely pausing between breathless sentences. ‘Which should give you plenty to do while I’m in here shuffling paper. You got any questions, ask Joan, and if she can’t help I’m sure I can. Then after a couple of weeks I can start off-loading some work onto you, and in three months’ time I’ll be out there with my feet up while you rush around. I got to go meet a boat half an hour ago but I thought Joan could show you round the office this morning and introduce you to people. OK?’ The question was purely rhetorical. Toby had the door back open and was ushering Hamnet out before he’d had the opportunity even to nod. With a battered leather briefcase in one hand, he completed the conversation with ‘I’m on my mobile’ in Joan’s general direction and whirled out of the office.
Hamnet watched him go with the same sinking feeling that had etched itself on his face at first sight of the reading he had to do. He dropped the books heavily onto the desk that Joan was clearing.
‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Hamnet,’ she said.
Hamnet looked through the lenses into friendly eyes and smiled in return. ‘You too. But please call me Phil.’
‘He’s quite frantic, isn’t he? I’m sure you’ll get used to it — everybody else has. Would you like a cup of coffee? Then I’ll get you settled in.’
The next three hours proceeded a little more at Hamnet’s pace. Joan introduced him to the people in the Marine Division, then took him through the other three foyer doors in turn and outlined the activities of each department. By lunchtime his head was whirling with names, titles and faces. He sorted through it all over a bowl of noodles in a sterile cafe in one of the basement food halls. Letting his brain make the connections and sort out the hierarchies. Figuring out where he would fit into the scheme of things, the people he would need, and those who, in turn, would need him. He was still preoccupied with it all when he headed back up towards the office.
‘Hello.’ The voice was close and he looked up automatically, to find that a strikingly attractive woman was apparently talking to him. Surprised, and feeling foolish, he glanced behind to check, but could see no one else that the greeting could have been dire
cted at. He turned back and took in the dark hair, tied in a loose bunch that flopped onto the shoulders of a pale yellow T-shirt, which was tucked into a short, wrap-around batik skirt. The woman’s nose wrinkled prettily as she frowned, and it was this expression that chimed with a distant memory. But she was uncertain of herself now. ‘Jasmine. On the bus to Chiang Mai?’ she said in an American accent.
Hamnet hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘Oh God, I’m sorry. Of course. I’ve just started a new job — my head’s spinning. I never really thanked you properly for your help with Ben.’
‘Not at all. I thought the other passengers might lynch you if I didn’t do something. How is he?’
‘He’s great. Really great.’
‘Good.’ She smiled with gentle relief.
The dark complexion, the slant of the eyes — there was some Asiatic blood in her, thought Hamnet. Set against this, the Arctic blue of those same eyes was startling. People bustled around them, heightening the sense of hesitation between them. Hamnet managed to fill the gap. ‘So are you in Singapore for long?’
‘I hope so. Trying to find some work, actually. But it’s hard — no work permit,’ she added conspiratorially.
Hamnet nodded. ‘They’re very strict here. I guess your boyfriend has the same problem?’
‘Lane?’ She frowned. ‘He’s gone home. He ran out of money and wasn’t really enjoying it.’
‘You weren’t together?’
‘Kind of — not really. It didn’t work out.’ Jasmine shrugged with an American frankness. ‘But I have a few dollars left and thought maybe I could pick up some casual work. Enough to get to Indonesia — Bali — then perhaps across to Australia. I’m sure I could work there easily.’
Hamnet nodded, struggling for something further to say, still a little off balance.
‘Well, nice to see you,’ said Jasmine, starting to turn away.
The Wrecking Crew (Janac's Games) Page 15