by Peter Tonkin
Chapter Two
The lone survivor from the Sulu Queen opened his eyes. He was lying on his back and he looked straight up at a featureless white ceiling. The fact that it was a ceiling seemed important, somehow. Now, why was that?
His head hurt.
He lay for a little while before allowing his gaze to wander further. He was thinking about dreams. He decided he had not had any before he woke up and he wondered about that. And he wondered, in a vague way, about the pain in the side of his head.
After a few moments, he moved his gaze a little down and left. A long fluorescent light fitting came into view. It was switched on and the ceiling was very bright. It was a brightness intensified by the fact that everything was painted white. This in turn gave the room an atmosphere which was pleasantly cool against the sensitive flesh of his cheeks and forearms. Cool enough to make him grateful for the slight weight of the blanket covering him from his chest to his toes.
Idly, he rolled his aching head to one side, allowing his gaze to follow the light across the ceiling to a Venetian blind whose edges were etched with an absolute darkness which spoke of a window open to black night. The fact that it was a window seemed important too.
But the movement made the pain in his head intensify until the room swam as though it had suddenly been plunged underwater. He blinked his eyes for the first time and felt hot tears trickle down his cool temples towards his ears. Before they moved more than an inch or two, they soaked into the bandage binding his head.
A bandage! It came as a terrible shock to realise that his head was bandaged and yet, somehow, he felt that he had known about it all along. Certainly, the pain in his temple was intense enough to warrant a bandage. Still, the surprise was powerful enough to jerk his right hand up to his forehead and his lingers explored the padded gauze. The movement of one hand seemed to liberate the other one as well. He lifted it and brought it close to his face. At first he simply examined the back of it, noting tanned flesh, skin containing patterns of veins and lightly furred with black hair. The fingers were long and broad-knuckled, beginning to peak here and there with incipient arthritis. The nails were strong and square cut. Round the wrist there was a band of paler flesh where a watch had protected the skin from the sun but there was no watch to be seen. He turned the hand and continued to examine what he saw like a trainee palm-reader. The palm was paler than the back but still pink-hued. There were yellowish callouses at the bases of fingers and thumb. The lines were manifold and meandering but they defined strong, muscular areas. He tensed the muscles, turning his fingers into fiercely hooked claws, watching the way the skin behaved and the play of muscles beneath. Then he let the hand fall back listlessly onto the counterpane at his side as his eyes explored the rest of the room.
Individual impressions fell into patterns now as though the shock he had given himself about the bandage had kicked his brain into gear. He was lying on a white-painted, iron-framed bed. There were big, soft, crisp-starched pillows under his head and shoulders. Beyond the foot of the bed there was a plain white wall with a picture on it and a door in it. The picture showed three tigers romping in snow. The door was made of wood. It looked solid and it was shut.
At the other end of the wall was a chair of moulded grey plastic, which occupied a corner. The second wall which made the corner behind the plastic chair was the wall which had the window in it. The Venetian blind covering the window had been adjusted to exclude whatever view there might have been. On the wall opposite the window there was a second picture, this time of a fearsome dragon. The reflection of the Venetian blind in the picture glass made it seem that the dragon had been put in a cage with thick white lateral bars.
The man in the bed wondered whether the strong teak door was locked. Slowly, thoughtfully, he lowered his hand from the bandage to the crisp, starched linen sheet on his chest and lay for a moment more, deep in thought.
Of course this was a hospital room. He had known that right from the start. He didn’t need to examine the standard hospital equipment all around the bed-head behind and beside him to realise that. The whole room could only be a hospital room. Everything about it spoke of hospitals. There was even, on the still, silent air, that smell of disinfectant which you find in hospitals anywhere in the world.
Anywhere in the world, he thought. Where in the world? He found he had no idea at all. He frowned.
He glanced across at the bedside cupboard on his left side, looking for clues. There was water, there were plastic bowls, jugs and beakers. Nothing else. He moved his left hand, twisting his arm and shoulder almost painfully until he could pull open the cupboard itself. It was empty apart from a book. He picked the book up and examined it, opening it. It was a Bible, in English. It seemed new, unused.
‘And the sea gave up the dead which were in it,’ he read idly, ‘and death and hell gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man according to their works.’
He closed it and put it back. On a panel behind his bed was a pair of earphones. On the table by his right side was some kind of remote control. He held the earphones to his ear and fiddled with the control but no sound came out. No national radio; no hospital channel.
Well, he decided, he wasn’t going to find out very much just lying here and wondering.
When he moved, it was with an explosion of energy, instantly controlled, as though he were a robot. He moved in slightly jerky movements, each one complete before the next was begun, as though he was incapable of doing more than one thing at a time. He sat up straight. He closed his right fist on the tangle of sheet and blanket at his waist and pulled it back. He paused, looking down. The pain in his head made his vision swim again but that was not the reason for his hesitation. It was the sight of his white hospital gown. If he was wearing a hospital gown, he reasoned, then his own clothes should be close by. Suddenly he very much wanted his own clothes.
He swung his legs out of bed and slowly, stiffly bent his knees until his feet were firmly on the thick carpet. In the wall between his bed-head and the window there was a light door made of overlapping strips of wood. It looked like a cupboard door and this was where his clothes seemed most likely to be. He stood, again stiffly. Once up, he paused again, waiting for a nauseating giddiness to pass. Then he moved. Three firm, purposeful strides took him to the wardrobe door. He hesitated for an instant with his right hand on the handle, then pulled it wide with unnecessary force. The wardrobe thus revealed was utterly empty except for half a dozen wire coat-hangers. He could hardly believe his eyes. He stepped in and confirmed what he could see by touching the vacant shelf, sliding numbed fingers along the empty horizontal column of the clothes rail until the coathangers chimed like distant bells.
‘What is this?’ he asked himself, aloud in English.
As though the sound of his own voice had liberated him from some magic spell, he swung round, pushing the wardrobe door closed behind him as he did so, and strode across to the big teak door. He closed his hand round the big brass handle, twisted and pulled. Nothing happened. He twisted again and pushed with all his might. The door remained absolutely firm.
‘It’s locked,’ he told himself bitterly, and slapped the wood as though it had insulted him.
Full of decision and energy now, he strode across to the window and pulled up the blind. He saw a massive darkness etched against distant constellations. The stars in the lower galaxies were white and red and yellow and green. Some of them moved in a multitude of ways and some did not move at all. He stood there, blinking owlishly until his vision cleared.
His first impression was one of height. He was in a room on an upper floor of a tall building. The feeling of height was emphasised because there was some distance between this building and the next. He was overlooking a black-shadowed area of grass and trees but around the edge of this panorama was a jagged light-specked wall of tall buildings which glimmered and wavered in the night heat. Beyond the buildings he could see the sea, a sparkling surface over
a black heart through to nothingness in the far distance. He knew this scene. He recognised it — not exactly, for he had never been in this room before. But he knew this place. He knew where he was.
A jumbo jet laboured by slightly below his line of sight and he felt, disturbingly, that the passengers whose pale faces he could make out all too clearly would be able to see into the room. Then the massive plane settled down behind the nearest of the buildings and he thought it must have crashed into the city or the sea until he realised that there was a runway stretching out across the bay; there was an airport down there.
But, almost inevitably it seemed to him, his eyes were dragged away from the airport and out over the anchorage again, straining to see past those maddeningly familiar buildings down to the familiar sea. There would be something down there in that jewel-bright sparkle or that utter velvet blackness which he knew, which would make it all click back into place.
Such was the survivor’s concentration on the scene below him that he did not hear the quiet grating of the key in the lock, but the swish of the door opening made him swing round at once. There were three men hesitating in the doorway, apparently surprised to see the bed empty. When their eyes fell on him, they seemed taken aback, almost nervous.
One of them, a bird-like figure in a loose white coat, bustled forward. ‘You should be in bed!’ he chided with a surprisingly light tenor voice. He was familiar. The straight black hair; the ivory coloured, angular face, the bumingly intense, almost-black slanting eyes, the quiet, compelling Oxbridge English tones. The survivor remembered having talked with this man at some length. That was perhaps the most important of all of his disturbingly imprecise memories.
The survivor stood where he was, looking past the doctor to the two men who had accompanied him. Both wore uniform. Both, like the doctor, were disorientatingly Oriental. One was a wiry young man with an open, almost boyish face. He wore a uniform which was familiar, Naval. The other was a taller, older, fatter man. His uniform was also easy to recognise. He carried a briefcase and wore the unmistakable uniform of a police officer. The policeman, like the doctor, was familiar.
Even when the doctor took him by the arm, the survivor refused to move. Something about their demeanour told him that the doctor was almost redundant here, in spite of the fact that this was a hospital. It was the policeman and his youthful associate who were important.
The fat policeman crossed to the bed and placed his briefcase on it. He moved with stiff precision, as though on parade. Leaning forward, with his back ramrod-straight, he snapped the locks up and lifted the top open. He pulled out a buff folder and crossed towards the window, opening it as he did so. The survivor watched the man’s face and eyes, not his hands. The eyes were rounder than the doctor’s, but not much. The skin quality was different — less refined. There was perspiration in the folds which ran from behind the policeman’s neat ears down to his collar and the bulge of his double chin. He looked like a Buddah and barked like a boatswain. ‘Any of this material familiar?’ he snapped, stumbling over Is and rs as he offered the folder to the survivor.
The survivor took the folder and looked down as it fell open before him. He found himself looking at a glossy ten-by twelve-inch photograph of a blonde woman with bright eyes and an engaging smile. He turned the photograph over. There was nothing written on the back, no clue to the identity of the subject. Thoughtfully, he placed it face up on the windowsill and turned his attention to the next. It showed two children, a boy and a girl, seemingly about the same age, perhaps twins. They bore more than a passing resemblance to the woman so he put their picture on top of hers. Then there was a ship. That was more familiar, but he still couldn’t put his finger on why it seemed so important. He squinted at the forecastle, but the name had been blanked out in the photograph. He put it beside the pictures of the woman and the children, shaking his head in mild perplexity.
For some reason he hesitated before looking down at the last picture. It showed a head and shoulders portrait of a man. The colours were a little too garish, perhaps, and made the face seem larger than life. The eyes in particular gleamed with an unsettling blue intensity. The black hair seemed unnaturally glossy, seeming to contain also a glint of blue. The long nose, broken slightly out of line, was etched against the long, lined cheek. The mouth was straight but full and with the slightest hint of an upward curl at its comers emphasised by the crows’ feet stretching back from eye comers to grey-flecked temples. The chin below the mouth was square and strong. The survivor’s eyes were drawn back almost against their will to the blue dazzle of the photograph’s hypnotic gaze. For the first time, the survivor seemed to flounder uncertainly as the suspicion came over him that there was something deeply, unsettlingly wrong here. He put the whole manila folder down with a decided slap. ‘Who are these people?’ he rasped. ‘What is going on here?’
The boyish Oriental in the Naval uniform reached into the policeman’s case and crossed the room decisively. He handed the survivor something and the man took it before he realised what it was. It was a mirror; a long oval mirror set in wood with a wooden handle. Holding it, the survivor looked around the room again, shocked that he had missed such an obvious fact. Two pictures; no mirror. It had been important and he hadn’t even noticed. The survivor raised the little mirror and looked into it. Looked at the man in the fourth photograph. The hair in front of the ears was greyer and what little could be seen of it beyond that was dishevelled. The chin was grey with stubble and the mouth had no upward curl to it. But there was no mistaking the patrician line of that nose, broken slightly awry. Nor was there any escape from the hypnotic glimmer of those burning blue eyes.
‘It was me,’ said the survivor, stunned. ‘The last picture was a photograph of me!’
‘You are certain?’ asked the young Oriental officer. ‘You are sure? ‘Of course. But I —’
‘And me?’ the Oriental man interrupted gently. ‘I am Captain Daniel Huuk of the Royal Hong Kong Naval Contingent. Do you not remember me?’
‘Not your name … Your face …’
The police officer stepped forward and interrupted as though his Oriental colleague and the survivor had not been speaking at all. ‘In that case, sir,’ he began, then paused to clear his throat with a mixture of formality, pomposity and nervousness. ‘In that case, I have to inform you that you are Captain Richard Mariner of the Heritage Mariner shipping company of London, England. Your registered domicile is Ashenden, South Dean, East Sussex, England.’ He stopped. Drew breath.
‘I have further to inform you that I am Commander Victor Lee of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force. I formally arrested you earlier this morning, at five past midnight when you were last conscious. At that time you signed the form waiving your right to legal representation. I now charge you with the wilful murder of Charles Macallan, chief engineer of the motor vessel Sulu Queen and of Brian Jordan the first officer. And, Captain Mariner, you should be aware that further charges concerning the murders of thirty-seven other crew members aboard the Sulu Queen will be laid against you in due course.
‘You were formally cautioned and told your rights earlier this evening. I must formally re-caution you now but presume you do not wish to say anything in the circumstances.’
Chapter Three
Robin Mariner had no sense of foreboding at all as she wrestled the big Monterey round the last turn of the drive and up to the front door of Ashenden, her home. She was too tired and far too angry to have any chance of entering the psychic plane. She was tired because it had taken her nine solid hours to get down here from Cold Fell, her father’s house outside Carlisle, a journey usually accomplished in six hours at the most. She was angry because the twins, William and Mary, six and a half years old, had taken leaving their beloved grandfather and ending their short holiday very badly indeed and had been murder for every blessed inch of the M6, M5, M40, M25 and A22 on the way down here. And not one service station, not one bloody toilet, between the back end of Manchester and
Stratford-upon-Avon and then not another one until Sevenoaks! And all those accursed roadworks: mile after mile of three-lane traffic jams. It was enough to make a saint enraged.
But most of all she was angry with her errant husband Richard.
They had arranged this holiday — a fortnight away over the May Bank holiday — so that they could all be together for a change. They had planned it so carefully and booked it so hopefully and it should have been perfect, their little family and Nurse Janet in a perfect little holiday home just outside Portree on the Isle of Skye. She had arranged to take the Monterey all the way up and back, using the CalMac ferry from Mallaig and breaking the journey each way at Cold Fell where Richard was due to catch up with them on the outward journey, but had she imagined in her wildest dreams that Richard would have been called away to Singapore on the very day of their departure, she would have refused point-blank to go.
It had been a disappointing holiday without him. She was as good a sailor, as intrepid a fell-walker and as knowledgeable a bird-spotter as he; she read — and told — as mean a story and played an equally cutthroat game of Monopoly, but she lacked something of his boundless zest for life. She had missed him bitterly and so had the twins. ‘It isn’t as much fun without Daddy,’ had been their endless, irritating cry. And, secretly, she had agreed with them.
The weather had been stunning, the sea surprisingly warm and perfectly set for sailing and bathing. The fish had been plentiful and easy to catch — except for the trout — and delicious. The wildlife had been spectacular and endlessly fascinating. The local people had been warm, welcoming and cheerfully courteous. There had been beaches, cliffs, caves and wild places aplenty. They were returning, tanned and wind-blown, from what should have been a perfect family holiday and yet here they were, tired, dissatisfied and at each other’s throats. And all because Richard hadn’t been there!