by Alec Waugh
‘I will check his movements from this moment.’
Back in his office Forrester set his controls in motion. He instructed the post office and the cable office. All letters addressed to Francis Reynolds were to be opened and their contents noted before delivery; all cables were to be copied. Letters addressed by Reynolds were also to be opened and all cables copied. The correspondence of all those with whom he was in correspondence was to be watched. A telegram to London requested information about Reynolds.
Forrester then called up Kassaya.
‘It’s about his nibs’ visit,’ he told Keable. ‘You have your own security police, and have probably taken far more precautions than are needed, but you know what an old fusspot I am, and I’m being badgered at this end. I want to keep myself covered. It’s not his nibs but hers that matters. So I’ll come down myself the day before and check over everything. I’d also like you to shut those gates for three days before the visit and check the credentials of every visitor to the camp. I also want to send down a few of my own men who can mingle with, the crowd. I’ll issue them with green cards. Don’t bother about feeding them: but let them doss down at your guard headquarters. I’m sorry to be such a bore, old boy: I’d hate myself if I were you.’
Chapter Sixteen
Basil was in charge of Annetta’s tour of the refinery. But Shelagh insisted that she should be the guide. ‘I want to see how much I remember. Let me explain it all. Basil can correct me if I get it wrong. Now first of all, Annetta, how do you think oil exists? Do you conceive of it as a series of large liquid reservoirs below the surface?’
‘I suppose sq, more or less.’
‘That’s where you are so wrong. It’s found in sandstone and if anyone asks you how oil can exist in sandstone, ask them how anyone who didn’t know any better would realize that a sponge in a washbasin is full of water. You’ve got a lot to learn. I’ll make it as elementary as possible.’
They drove in a closed car. Forrester sat beside Basil, who was driving as well as being in charge of the tour. Shelagh and Annetta were on the back seat.
They started at nine o’clock before the heat of the day had mounted. The men were in their offices, the women finishing their daily chores; nurses were taking their charges to the beach or to the swimming pool or watching them at play about their gardens. The elder children were at school. Their was an air of quiet; of peace, prosperity and repose. A typical morning in a typical oil camp in the tropics. For all these young women, Annetta told herself, it was a day like any other. This life might so easily have been her own. She might even have married somebody in oil. Several of her beaux had gone abroad with firms like Shell, B.P. or I.C.I. The prospect of going abroad would have appealed to her sense of the romantic. Eighteen months ago a young man just down from Oxford had wanted her to marry him. She had not been in love with him but she had liked him and had been attracted by him. She would probably have said ‘Yes’ if marriage had meant a bungalow in the tropics instead of a flat in Westminster and a husband going each morning to his Whitehall office in a bowler hat with an umbrella over his arm.
A young woman walked out on to the porch of her bungalow and shouted instructions to a nurse who was indolently rocking the handle of a pram. I might so easily be that woman, Annetta thought, with my future already settled: the path of ambition cut in a clean straight line; with its well-marked stages of promotions and new contracts and triennial leaves. That woman had worries of her own no doubt but the basis of her future was secure. How could she guess that in that car passing below her window was an English girl who might have been herself, against whom someone within the very perimeter of this camp was plotting murder? She could not in fact herself believe it: that she had become someone whom somebody would want to murder. She had done nothing. Rhya had done nothing: his father was well loved. She remembered herself so little a while ago preparing for that cocktail party where she had met Rhya. She had nearly not gone to it. There was a TV programme that she had wanted to see. By deciding against that TV programme she had become somebody whose life was threatened. How could it be true, how could it be happening? That shrivelled old monkey in the front seat could not be a bodyguard.
‘Now this is the cracking plant,’ Shelagh said.
She pointed out the tall wide fractionating columns that were festooned every night with brilliant light bulbs; the four levels of platforms that flanked the columns and the tall thin chimneys at their sides; the boilers with their fiercely raging flames. Outside the plant was a great stack of bicycles.
‘How many people do you have working here?’ Annetta asked.
‘About fifteen thousand.’
As many as that; how easy it would be to slip two or three conspirators into that vast concourse. Perhaps one of those bicycles had been ridden by the man who was waiting for her arrival; a man for whom, on the surface, this morning had been like every other morning; who had arrived at the same time, gossiped with the same friends, gone to the same job of work: a man who was savouring, just as she was, the dramatic irony of the situation; saying to himself, ‘For all these others it is a day like any other day. For me how different.’
This is ridiculous, she thought. It can’t be this way. As the Colonel had said, the betting was a thousand to one against.
They went to a drilling rig. Basil had taken over now from Shelagh. Annetta tried to concentrate on his explanation that the rig worked on the same principle as an artesian well, the flow of mud counterbalancing the gas pressure. It was, he said, a deviation drilling at forty degrees, the oil being drawn up from below the sea. He showed her the storage tank farm and the barrels of bitumen. She watched the process by which steel sheets were cut, rolled, ribbed, closed and painted black. Sparks flew from the welders. In the roof revolved a bar painted with the Pearl colours, red and green; she saw elaborate disks with graphs showing various pressures with water foaming from the gasoline condensers.
She tried to take an intelligent interest in what she was being shown.
‘It looks to me like a succession of specialists each at his own job,’ she said. ‘I suppose that somebody has an over-all picture of what this is all about.’
‘The old man has.’
‘But Daddy’s not a specialist,’ Shelagh said.
‘That’s his strong point. If he were, he would concentrate on one side of the camp’s work, thinking it the most important; other sides would suffer. Now for the repair shops. That’s the last thing on our programme; then we’ll see the village.’
And then I can relax, Annetta thought.
The repair shops covered a large area; there was a group of workmen outside the main entrance. As they walked to it from the car, Annetta was aware of a disturbance. It happened so quickly that she did not realize what had happened. There seemed to her to have been a scuffle. She looked at Shelagh. She had not noticed anything; but Forrester had.
‘Will you excuse me? I won’t be long. I’ll join you inside,’ he said.
He was back within three minutes, smiling contentedly. He stood apart from the others and Annetta joined him.
‘Did something happen?’
‘You can relax now. It’s over.’
She had seldom seen anyone look more relieved.
‘Now that it’s over,’ he said, ‘I don’t know how I risked it.’
‘The village next,’ said Basil.
They drove by a wide macadamized road that was flanked with storage tanks. Basil stopped the car. ‘Let’s get out for a minute. I’d like you to hear the silence. It’s eerie.’
Eerie was the appropriate word. She had not been aware of the silence when she was in the car because of the engine, but standing in the empty road with the engine turned off, the difference was striking.
Basil had stopped the car on the crest of a hill. She could see right round her. This was the centre of the oil camp. But there was no sound of any kind. The silence was the more remarkable because there were so many evidences of activity. Ther
e were the large silvered tanks and the gleaming oil pipes. Half a mile away a dozen men with helmets were gathered round a derrick. Drilling was in progress but no one was hurrying. A small squad of Karakis in floppy hats were digging a ditch. They paused after each isolated effort. On the veranda of a bungalow beyond the tanks she could see children playing, but they were too far away for her to hear their shouts. Yet all the time below this road, below these fields, oil was being drawn from its sandstone bed. So much surface calm: so much activity beneath the surface and fifteen minutes ago on this ordinary routine day a man had tried to murder her.
‘On our way,’ said Basil.
The village was as much a part of the camp as the refinery. There had been no village here at all before the discovery of oil, only a cluster of fishing shacks beside the river. It lay outside the fence, but the land was owned by Pearl. It consisted of two main intersecting roads that were lined with shops about the point of junction. There was a supermarket. There were Chinese restaurants. There were bars and garages, laundries, hairdressers. They were wooden, one-storied with corrugated iron roofs. It was all very shabby, but the side roads—they were little more than alleys —had a travel-folder charm: picturesque shacks in the shade of palm trees; flamboyants and yellow cassia in bloom; bamboos draped with creepers; chickens and pigs wandering at leisure with half-naked children tumbling on the doorstep. It seemed centuries away from the brisk efficiency of the camp.
‘It looks as though they sold coffee there,’ Annetta said.
She pointed to a small shop with a Coca-Cola sign outside. She had never needed coffee more. Had it really happened? And if it had how likely was it to again? She looked inquiringly at Forrester. He made a gesture with his hand. ‘Patience,’ that gesture said. ‘I’ll tell you everything the moment that I can. Let me play this my way.’
He waited till the coffee had been served. Then he turned to Basil. ‘I didn’t want to alarm you at the time; I don’t know whether you had noticed it or not, but outside the repair shop one of the workmen pulled a gun out of his pocket. One of my men saw him. I do not know what was in his mind. He may be a lunatic, he may be an anarchist; he may be something more.’
He looked at Basil as he spoke. ‘I don’t know anything about the man. I will give you such facts as I can find as soon as I possess them. As your branch is responsible for personnel, we shall need to know how he came to be employed; we must see who recommended him. We discussed that point before. I don’t suppose we shall find anything from your records. It’s always the same way. We have these elaborate checks, all these visas, these spare photographs, forms to be filled in, references to be given. They irritate honest citizens, the bad hats slip through the net, and old fogies like myself who wanted to retire years ago are kept on in service— at the taxpayer’s expense.’
Basil dropped Shelagh, Annetta and the Colonel at the Keables’ bungalow. As long as they were in the car with him he maintained his insouciant manner; but the moment he was alone his whole body became taut. He sat motionless at the wheel, staring straight in front of him. What had happened? Had anything happened? And how could it affect him anyway? He did not know: he did not want to know: he was desperately afraid.
In the G.M.’s bungalow Forrester sat alone with Annetta. He said, ‘Sir Kenneth must be told. The incident has to be reported in the Press. But I don’t want to tell anyone the whole story yet. I want to see first what I can find out in interrogation. But I won’t keep you in the dark: I promise that. I want you to trust me for the next few weeks. You’ve been very brave. By your bravery you may have saved more than you can ever guess.’
The telephone bell rang. It was one of Forrester’s sergeants. ‘The man’s an Indian, sir. He has been in Karak for six years. He is a welder. He works in the barrel-cutting section. He has been employed by Pearl for two years. He’s called Rajat Singh.’
‘Thank you very much. Have him moved to Kuala Prang as soon as possible.’
He rang up the personnel branch. He asked for Basil Hallett. Mr. Hallett wasn’t back yet, he was told. He looked at his watch. A quarter of an hour since he had left them at the door. He should have been at his desk within five minutes. ‘Ask him to ring Colonel Forrester at the G.M.’s bungalow as soon as he comes back. Oh, by the way, what’s the number of his bungalow? Thank you very much.’
He rang the bungalow. A feminine voice answered him. ‘Is that Mrs. Hallett? This is Colonel Forrester. Is your husband there?’
‘As a matter of fact, he is.’
‘Could I speak to him?’
‘He’s taking a shower at the moment. Is it urgent?’
‘Nothing’s urgent, my dear lady, or practically nothing. And the longer one lives the smaller one finds the category of things that are. I’ve left a message for him at his office. Ask him to call me at the G.M.’s bungalow as soon as he gets back there.’
The telephone was in the bedroom: from the bathroom Basil called, ‘Who was that?’
‘Colonel Forrester. He wants you to call him as soon as you get back.’
‘Colonel Forrester.’ The same taut sensation that had sent him to his bungalow for a shower held him once again. He felt tired and weak. He came into the bedroom as he dried. His fingers itched to lift the telephone’s receiver: to find out what the Colonel wanted. He mustn’t though; he must not show impatience; he must take it in his stride. His muscles might have been tied in knots.
‘I’d like a beer,’ he said.
He lingered over it, gloatingly. It was twenty minutes before he rang the G.M.’s bungalow. His voice was jocular.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting, Colonel, but after this morning’s little drama I needed to put my head under a shower. What can I do for you?’
‘Find out all you can about Rajat Singh. That’s the man who caused the trouble. He’s a welder; works in that shed where they make barrels. I’ll look in this afternoon before I go back to the big city. I’ll be grateful if you could have the dope ready by half past two.’
Forrester rang off quickly. Keable and Studholme were in the room with him. Basil at the end of the line did not know that. The abruptness of a man who was usually so garrulous disturbed him. He sat at his desk, staring at the telephone. He felt lost and helpless.
In the G.M.’s bungalow, Forrester was in his turn undergoing a cross-examination.
‘Had you any suspicion that anything like this could happen?’ Studholme asked him.
‘There is always danger where prominent people are concerned. That is why I took the precautions that I did.’
‘But had you reason, any special reason to believe that anything might be attempted here? You never warned me against this visit.’
‘This people is passing through a period of change and crisis. Anything may happen at any moment. You have said that yourself, sir, more than once. We cannot put Miss Marsh behind barred doors. We can only do our best to protect her appearances in public.’
Studholme looked at him, distrustfully. Did Forrester know more than he was telling? Very likely. He looked so bland, so transparent, but that was his stock in trade: the secret of his many successes. The old boy knew what he was doing: or at least he had. He was now in his middle sixties. The tropics had taken their toll of him. Was it possible that he was losing grip, that he had become the slave of his own technique? I’ve got to trust him, though, thought Studholme. He’s all I’ve got. He’s my eyes and ears.
‘Have you any idea why he did it?’ he asked.
Forrester shrugged. ‘He’s an Indian. My first thought naturally would be that he has Communist affiliations. He has only been here six years. He was part of that big wave of immigration that followed the development of oil. It was impossible to keep any real check on the immigrants. I’ve asked young Hallett to find out all he can. I’m not expecting much.’
Forrester received that afternoon very little more than he had expected. Basil had no recollection of Rajat Singh. There was no security check on manual workers. Rajat Si
ngh had been a steady, industrious worker. The foreman was summoned. He had nothing to tell. Rajat Singh was one of those unobtrusive fellows whom you never noticed: who never arrive late, make no trouble and perform their quota of work.
‘Did he take any part in the staff’s recreational life?’ asked Forrester. ‘Did he play cricket, hockey, football, basketball?’
The foreman shook his head. He had taken no part in the camp’s social life.
‘Was he married?’
‘Yes, to a Karaki.’
‘Do you know her name? Her family’s name? You don’t. Well, I can find that out.’
Forrester half-closed his eyes. What was he thinking? Basil asked himself. Or was he only trying to keep awake? Forrester stood up.
‘That’s all for the time being. Thank you for your co-operation. I’ll let you know how it all turns out. We’ve come out of things pretty luckily. One at least of us might be dead by now.’
Chapter Seventeen
Forrester took a long steady pensive look at his prisoner. He could understand why Rajat Singh had made no impression on the foreman. He was completely nondescript. He might be any age between thirty and fifty-five. He was about five foot six, which for an Indian was medium height. His complexion was rather dark. He had no distinctive feature. Forrester’s eye was trained to spot the slightest peculiarity in a man’s appearance but he did not expect to recognize Rajat Singh the next time he saw him. He looked at him, then at the revolver on the table. He picked it up. It was a service revolver; it had probably come into the country when it was occupied after the war by British troops. He turned it over between his hands.
‘How did you get this?’ he asked.
‘I bought it.’