Corrigan's Run

by Colin Falconer

  Heydrich smiled and pushed another large blue note into the middle of the table.

  Corrigan looked down at the pile of coins beside him. His eyes were glazed from the alcohol. ‘I thought this was supposed to be a friendly game. You know I can't match that.’

  ‘You don't have to use money. What about the girl?’

  ‘Sanei?’

  ‘The islanders buy and sell them all the time. Don't tell me you've grown fond of her?’

  ‘Take the money, I'll not use someone as a stake in a card game.’

  Heydrich looked disappointed. ‘I was wrong about you, Corrigan. I always said you had no morals. All right then, I'll take a marker.’

  He pulled a pen and a piece of paper out of his jacket and passed it over to Corrigan, who scrawled the amount and his signature on the bottom. Heydrich examined it carefully, and then, without taking his eyes from Corrigan's face, he laid his cards down one at a time.

  ‘Three aces and two kings,’ he said slowly. ‘Full house.’

  Heydrich scooped the pile of banknotes towards him. Corrigan just sat there. Sam Doo wondered if the big man was too drunk to realize what simple logic should have told him straight away; Heydrich's full house made five aces in the pack.

  But then Corrigan grabbed Heydrich by the shirt. One of the buttons ripped off and Sam Doo heard the click as it bounced on the wooden floor.

  ‘You fat German slug.’

  Heydrich's face flushed. ‘Get your hands off me, you English Pig-

  Sam Doo decided to leave. When he reached the end of the bar he heard a wet, slapping noise. He turned around and saw Heydrich tumble backwards off his chair, blood spurting from his nose.

  Chapter 11

  The next morning Manning sat in his office, finishing off his paperwork and preparing himself for one of his more stressful duties. He opened the court record book to a fresh page and laid his pen neatly on the right-hand side of the thick ledger.

  He sighed and leaned back in his chair.

  He gazed out of the window, and marveled once again at the vista. He never tired of it.

  The harbor was dotted with emerald islands, the water flecked with white water driven by the north-west monsoon. Below him was the police barracks, the Catholic Mission and the tiny hospital annexe. The houses of the village were mostly hidden by palm trees and the sweep of the bay.

  A white orchid was in full bloom on the other side of the garden under the flame tree. A black and white hornbill settled heavily onto the branches, disturbing a small flock of white cockatoos who took to the air, screeching their complaint. An enormous butterfly flew across the lawn, and landed on the sill; it was fully eight or nine inches across, its wings a breath-taking combination of electric blue and yellow.

  Manning sighed with something like content.

  Suddenly the door flew open and Sergeant Lavella burst into the room. He stamped his feet to attention, and the flimsy bamboo flooring shuddered in protest. The poles, Manning knew, were ant-ridden; one day Lavella would bring the whole lot down on top of them.

  Lavella was an extraordinary individual. Many of the islanders had a good physique but Lavella was exceptional. He wasn't tall, but the muscles on his shoulders, chest and back rippled in thick bands. Of indeterminate age, he had a busby of grizzled black hair, a squat nose, wrinkled face and a gap-toothed smile. Those teeth that remained lolled in his head like old tombstones.

  Like most native constables he wore just a simple lava-lava with a leather belt and buckle. His most treasured possession was the Lee-Enfield bolt action rifle that he carried on his shoulder as he patrolled the island, marching with the fierce pride of a Coldstream Guard in Whitehall.

  Unfortunately, Lavella rarely remembered to clean the gun. Manning doubted whether the damned thing would work if it was ever required; perhaps, knowing Sergeant Lavella's lack of self-control, that could be a good thing.

  Lavella stood there rigid, waiting. Reluctantly, Manning forced his thoughts back to the matter in hand; the altercation the previous afternoon at Sam Doo's Drinking Palace in the Chinatown. It had taken Lavella and four of his men to drag Corrigan and Heydrich out of the bar to the prison, still spitting curses at each other.

  Manning rubbed his eyes wearily.

  ‘You want for lookim prisoners now kiap?’ Lavella said.

  Manning sighed. ‘Yes. Me lookim now Sergeant.’

  Lavella disappeared and a few moments later two of his men came in with Corrigan and Heydrich.

  ‘Hello, Manning,’ Corrigan greeted him cheerfully.

  Manning frowned. Corrigan and Heydrich stood there, dirty and unshaven, like a couple of truant schoolboys fiddling with their shorts. Corrigan looked genuinely embarrassed.

  ‘What is it this time?’ Manning said, ‘Drunkenness or fighting?’

  ‘Both,’ Corrigan grinned.

  Manning leaned back in his chair. Corrigan’s shirt was ripped and smeared with bloodstains, but with that devil-may-care smile of his and his dark blue eyes twinkling, it was hard to summon up the appropriate degree of wrath. Even so, Manning felt a prickle of impatience for a man who could waste his life in such a way.

  Heydrich was a different matter. He was short and gross with an odd, misshapen face; it was as if the two halves didn't quite match. The effect had been aggravated by the close attention he had received from one of Corrigan's fists. One eye was a swollen purple lump, his lip was cracked and one of his lower teeth was missing.

  ‘All right,’ Manning said to Sergeant Lavella, ‘read out the charges.’

  Sergeant Lavella drew himself up to his full height to recite the previous night's events: ‘Longa sundown me fella police we go longa Sam Doo, bigfella crashim inside, me fella police all go in. Dis fella black hair he have dis feller white hair on table right up close and he smackim head this way.’ And Lavella demonstrated with his fist in his palm. ‘White hair he yell, like this, 'Aaagh! Aagh!' Me fella police we go bang bang on dis feller black hair, we fright for he killim white hair finis. More police he come, we all go bang bang dis feller, he yell, he punchim all, very bad. Very bad.’

  Lavella finished his short pantomime and Manning shifted his attention back to Corrigan. ‘Do you have anything to say for yourself?’

  ‘I guess what he says is right. I'm a bit hazy. I had a bit to drink.’

  Manning tried to look stern. ‘You're telling me drink is to blame for this unsavory episode?’

  Corrigan straightened, jutting out his jaw. ‘It weren't the booze. This little ass insulted me.’

  Heydrich could hold his tongue no longer. ‘Lies! He attacked me! There are witnesses! He is crazy!’

  ‘Crazy? You little slug ...’

  ‘Shut up! Both of you!’ Lavella's hand went to the gun in his holster. Manning chastened him with a stare. The last thing he needed was a gun battle in his office.

  Heydrich moved out of the range of Corrigan's fists.

  ‘Suppose you tell me your version of the incident.’ Manning said to Corrigan.

  ‘We were playing cards. We'd both had a bit to drink. He started raving on about Hitler and we got into an argument. He called me an English pig so I let him have it.’

  ‘Because he called you a pig?’

  ‘I didn't mind that. But I'll not have anyone calling me English.’

  Manning pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘What did Mister Heydrich say about Hitler, Corrigan?’

  ‘He said he was some sort of superman and he was going to walk all over Europe. That's when I said balls and he called me an English Pig-’

  ‘Lies! He's making it up! We are playing cards and he attacks me because I am winning! He's out of his mind - he should be locked away!’

  A fine spray of spittle glittered like diamond chips on Manning's desk. He examined them with distaste. As an Austrian national he had watched Heydrich's behaviour very closely. But now with the Japanese on the doorstep he wondered if it might not be wise to have Heydrich interned in Australia for the duratio
n.

  Manning looked at Lavella. ‘Any witnesses?’

  Lavella nodded and went outside. Over the next half an hour five of Sam Doo's customers swore they saw Corrigan throw the first punch. Sam Doo, the proprietor, was vehement in claiming damages, although Manning couldn't be sure that much of the havoc hadn't been wrought by Lavella and his policemen. But there was little doubt about Corrigan's guilt.

  Manning rested an elbow on the desk and looked at the big man with the forbearance of a teacher with a wayward pupil. ‘What am I going to do with you, Patrick?’ As Deputy Commissioner for the Western Pacific, Manning had sweeping powers. He performed the function of magistrate, chief of police, head gaoler, coroner, treasurer and customs officer. On Santa Maria his word was law and his prestige somewhere approximating that of God. He could put Corrigan in jail for three months if he wanted to.

  Of course, Corrigan could appeal to the Commissioner in Fiji but by the time the ruling was overturned the three months would be up.

  ‘The case is clear,’ Heydrich said, interrupting Manning's deliberations. ‘It is your duty to punish this man!’

  This was the wrong approach.

  Ian McLaren Manning was not the sort of man who liked to have his duty pointed out to him, and this was the second occasion in as many months that someone on the island had had the temerity to propose it. More importantly, he did not approve of Germans, and Heydrich's claim to Austrian nationality seemed to him no more than semantics.

  Manning's father had been killed on the Somme.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said icily.

  ‘He has broken the law. You must put him in prison.’

  Manning sucked his teeth thoughtfully. Corrigan was undoubtedly a drinker and a gambler and a womanizer, but there was a certain charming roguishness about him that Manning admired in spite of himself.

  ‘Case dismissed,’Manning said.

  Corrigan threw back his head and guffawed.

  ‘But you can't,’ Heydrich spluttered. ‘He is a criminal. Where is the justice?’

  Manning waved his hand lazily in Heydrich's direction. ‘Get rid of them,’ he said to Sergeant Lavella.

  ‘I will report this to your superiors!’ Heydrich shouted as Lavella pushed him outside. ‘This is an outrage!’

  The door slammed shut behind them.

  Manning smiled. It was not often that a job allowed one to dispense justice without due regard to the facts. It was compensation for being a big fish in a tiny pond.

  Just then he heard a meaty thud on the veranda and more shouts from outside. Manning ran to the door. Heydrich lay at the foot of the bungalow steps, a froth of red bubbles pouring from his nose.

  ‘Bloody krauts,’ Corrigan said, standing over him, ‘think they own the bloody place.’

  Sergeant Lavella had his revolver out. Manning grabbed it and threw it in the bushes. Grabbing Corrigan by the arm he pulled him across the compound towards the prison building.

  ‘Seven days,’ he said, pulling Corrigan meekly along behind him, ‘and you really are a damned idiot.’

  Chapter 12

  When war had broken out in 1939 Ian Manning had applied to join the Armed Forces, but because of his age and his bronchial condition, he had been rejected. But shortly afterwards he had been approached by the Royal Navy and given the rank of captain as part of a new unit called The Coastwatchers.

  As part of a network established around the British Protectorates in the Pacific, his job would be to work behind Japanese lines, monitoring enemy movements along the coast, should the island be invaded. When he had been first given the appointment he had thought it was a sop to his pride. They might as well have put him in the Home Guard.

  Now he sat in his office overlooking White Bone Bay, holding a radio message loosely in his right hand. It had arrived almost a week ago and he had re-read it scores of times.

  Singapore was about to fall. He was ordered to evacuate all Europeans from the settlement immediately. They were to be taken aboard the Levers Brothers' ketch Melinda to Tulagi and then on to Sydney.

  The speed of the Japanese advance had taken everyone by surprise. On Christmas Day their forces had marched into Hong Kong. On 3 January they took Manila. On the 23rd New Britain had fallen.

  By the first of February they were at the gates of Singapore itself, the impregnable fortress of Asia, the symbol of colonial supremacy in the Far East.

  Astonishment had quickly been replaced by fear as traders, planters and officials rushed to get away from the tide of the Japanese advance. Rumours of Japanese atrocities filtering through from Malaya had caused a ripple of panic through the white population.

  Now the Melinda lay at anchor at the end of the jetty, surrounded by a bobbing mêlée of smaller craft that had hurried from settlements all around the island to meet her. Piles of luggage littered the pier. Groups of curious and bewildered natives had come to witness the spectacle.

  Tempers were frayed. There had been arguments about how much luggage could be taken on board and fights had broken out. A planter had had his nose broken by a missionary and the captain of the ketch had been assaulted by the wife of an engineer.

  Ian Manning had been brought up to believe that self-control was the greatest human virtue and that an Englishman should behave like one regardless of any circumstance. So that morning's events had been a salutary experience.

  He had washed his hands of the entire affair and left the pier, leaving the panicked settlers to the chaos they themselves had created. He had his own problems to take care of. He had retreated to his office; the screams and curses still carried to him on the sea breeze.

  Tomorrow all the Europeans would be gone. Well, almost all; Father Goode and his niece had resisted all his entreaties to reconsider. Corrigan too, had remained recalcitrant, but for different reasons. He wasn’t staying out of principle, he just didn't give a damn about anything, least of all the war.

  And then there was Heydrich, skulking on his plantation at Marakon. Manning wished that he had had him interned when he had the chance.

  For all the others it was an ending. But for Manning, the war had just begun.

  *****

  He had chosen three possible camp sites and he had caches of stores secreted away in caves in the hills and mountains to the north. The coming months stretched ahead, uncharted, with unseen reefs of danger and loneliness. He felt an oily tingle of fear and excitement.

  He took several photographs out of his desk drawer. They were yellowed with age; his mother, two brothers in Chelmsford, a sister in Southampton. He carefully tore them up and threw them in the wastepaper basket.

  The code books and all his files would have to be burned of course. But the biggest problem would be the radio. It was a type 3B transmitter, receiver and loudspeaker and that would be coming with him. It ran on a car battery, and was powered by a small motor engine, all in all nearly seventy pounds in weight. Somehow it would have to be transported up to the hills.

  He was lost in the details of the logistical problems when he heard the distant drone of an engine. At first he thought it was another launch heading into the harbor, but then he realized the sound was coming from the north. It had to be an aircraft.

  He went out onto the veranda and looked skywards, one hand shielding his eyes against the noonday sun. In the far distance were the mountains, spines of basalt that ran the length of the island. Above them Manning could just make out a black speck moving towards Vancoro.

  Gradually the speck took shape, the ungainly and unmistakable silhouette of a flying boat. At first Manning thought it must be an RAAF Catalina, but then he realized that was impossible. The nearest Catalina base was at Tulagi, far to the south. The aircraft was approaching from the north-west.

  Suddenly it dipped its wings dropped towards them.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ he moaned and leaped from the veranda in one jump and ran as fast as he could towards the harbor.

  Chapter 13

  By the time Ma
nning got there, the Kawanisi was banking over the coconut trees that lined the bay and had begun its bombing run, approaching low from the south-west. A crowd of islanders watched it come with happy curiosity.

  ‘Run!’ Manning shouted at them. ‘For God's sake, run!’

  They stared blankly back at him.

  The Europeans milling around the gangway of the Melinda began streaming back down the jetty. Manning heard screams and saw the woman who had tried to assault the Melinda's captain being jostled and then fall headlong into the water.

  Manning ran over to the islanders and began to push them towards the casuarina trees. ‘Run, run damn you!’

  Bewildered, several of them jogged slowly off, still peering over their shoulders at the flying boat.

  They would target the ketch first. It would be easy prey, unarmed and with the Union Jack fluttering over the stern. Then, unexpectedly, Manning heard the chatter of machine gun fire.

  Incredibly, someone in Tulagi had had the foresight to arm the ketch with an ancient Vickers machine gun. Two of the Melinda's crew had remained on board to fight it out, and he saw fabric from the flying boat's starboard wing being torn away by the shells.

  The roar of the Kawanisi's engines was deafening now. He heard a shrill whine as the first clutch of bombs began to fall.

  Manning looked up, the Kawasini was so close he could make out the pilot sitting behind the controls.

  ‘You bastard!’ he shouted. ‘You bloody bastard!’ But his voice was drowned out by the scream of the engines.

  The first bomb struck the wharf just a hundred yards from where he stood, throwing him to the ground. The concussion sent a searing agony through his eardrums. He felt the ground shake and then a stinging spray of earth and stones on his back and legs.

  He pressed his face hard against the dirt.

  When he looked up again the jumble of tin and corrugated iron buildings that had once made up the Chinatown were either flattened or burning. The quay was strewn with bodies. One of the bombs had exploded in the middle of the bund, scything down the islanders before they could flee back towards the village. The tall palms on the waterfront had snapped like twigs and now lay across the road or half submerged in the water.