by Peter Tonkin
‘Swing out,’ she ordered. As though the team had been practising every day so far, they swung into action, hitting the trigger lever and standing ready for the gravity davit to swing out. The long arms moved, then hesitated, then stopped altogether. This was just what she had been afraid of. The pivots were salted solid. Mentally berating herself for not having done more, Robin strode forward, pushing her men aside, to get a closer look at the problem.
It was the wrong thing to do, more risky than she could have calculated. But she was tired, under more strain than she cared to admit and at the far end of a chain of circumstances which could not have been better designed to undermine her solid grasp of professional sealore if it had been worked out with care and on purpose.
Just as she came under the davit, before she could crouch to inspect the apparently frozen pivot, the whole thing lurched into motion once again. No one moved a muscle or called a warning. Perhaps the disaster happened too quickly, too unexpectedly, catching them all unawares.
The keel of the lifeboat came down like a guillotine blade exactly across the crown of Robin’s head and laid her out cold on the deck, curled up against the upright of the safety rail, as the boat lurched on down into position with a thunderous scream.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
So important was the package from London that the courier was sitting waiting with it when Edgar Tan arrived at the China Queens office for his regular morning checkup at ten thirty Singapore time on Thursday, 19 June. ‘What’s this?’ Tan asked the delivery boy.
‘Urgent package from London,’ answered the courier. ‘They said I had to wait and hand it over personally.’
The detective let himself into the office so that he could show his identification and letter of authority to the young man. The envelope was padded and, in spite of its directions, Customs stamps and senders’ details, it looked brand new, as though it was ready to send not as though it was at its destination, half a world later. And it was so light, he discovered as soon as he had signed for it, it might almost have been empty.
He turned it between his long fingers, wondering whether to open it at once or whether to listen to the answerphone messages first. Fortunately he listened — so that he could think a little more — before he acted. It was the second message which told him what he needed to know.
‘William Heritage here. I understand that in my daughter Robin’s absence I will be talking to the detective Mr Tan. Earlier today, Wednesday, we came into possession of a postcard apparently posted last week by Captain Walter Gough, somewhere in the Philippines. We have taken all the details we can here and will try to work out whether he really sent it or not, and if he did, where exactly he is at present. In the meantime, I have sealed the card itself in plastic and sent it by courier directly to the China Queens Office. If it hasn’t arrived yet it will do so imminently and you are advised to wait for it. I have notified Hong Kong of my actions and they agree that Singapore is the better place for the card to go. It may well be that local people there with you will be able to discover more about it than we can at this end. I would strongly advise some sort of contact with the police if that is possible. At the very least you will want to check it for fingerprints, I am sure. We have no record of Captain Gough’s fingerprints, I am afraid. Nor have the British authorities, as far as I can ascertain. But there might be others and they might be germane. We are certain that the writing is his, and so is his wife. There seem to be several obvious conclusions to be drawn at once, even at first glance. This is especially true if the photograph on the card is a picture of the captain’s current whereabouts or anywhere nearby, as seems to be suggested in the message. But these thoughts will be best discussed at a later date, I think. If you wish to talk things over do not hesitate to call me. If I’m not here myself I guarantee that there will be someone competent to pass on my thoughts and those of the International Maritime Bureau with whom I have been in touch. Signing off now.’
*
‘What does it say?’ mused Inspector Sung, looking down at the plastic-wrapped message while various of his underlings assembled to operate upon the little square of cardboard as though it were a murder victim at a post-mortem.
Tan took the question literally and read out the message. ‘It says “I’m fine, don’t worry. Policies all activate within six months. Death or disappearance — standard for sailors. Should start to pay by Xmas if you tell no one. Mortgage should hold till then as company continue to pay OK under HM personnel rules. Bri Jordan will advise if any trouble. He knows. Don’t tell Wally. Too much for him. The picture is what I see each evening. Never stopped loving you — started to hate the life. Sorry, sorry, sorry.” It’s unsigned but there’s apparently no doubt.’
‘Yes,’ said Sung, ‘but it actually tells us much more than that, doesn’t it? Much more than that this is a message from a desperate man at the end of his tether who has run away and yet cannot bring himself to make a clean break.’
There was a brief silence as the two men looked at the writing on the card, and then at the spectacular sea, sand and sunset picture on the other side and then at the writing again.
‘He has no idea about what happened to the Sulu Queen, has he?’ said Edgar Tan at last.
‘It doesn’t look like it,’ agreed Sung.
‘There’s a supposition here that First Officer Jordan will be alive to advise Mrs Gough. And a supposition, therefore, that Jordan is the kind of person who won’t mind joining in a little fraud. Gough sounds pretty confident about that.’
‘He obviously assumed Mrs Gough would join in on a fraud, too,’ said Sung, ‘and he was wrong there. But he wasn’t absolutely sure. Otherwise why say “if you tell no one”? You would have supposed that he would know his wife well enough to be certain whether or not she would be willing to join in or not after all their years of marriage. Twenty, was it?’
‘Twenty-two, according to the China Queens personnel file,’ agreed Tan. ‘But it isn’t a simple fraud any longer, is it? Even if she was the kind of woman to close her eyes and collect the insurance payments, she’s den mother to an awful lot of widows all of a sudden, including Mrs Jordan. And the man who owns the company responsible for her income until Christmas is being accused of all these murders. She can’t close her eyes to that.’
‘So, if Gough was right about her, he was probably right about his first officer too — is that what you’re saying, Tan?’
‘First Officer Jordan, a man to trust with something a little less than legal. Interesting. And what was there to hate, I wonder, about sailing in a big circle round the South China Sea, putting in his last couple of years and waiting to retire to Budleigh Salterton?’
‘Beginning to realise that there is more to life than Marine Drive? Beginning to get a bad feeling about exactly what the less than legal Jordan might be up to? Being apart from the nubile Anna Leung?’
‘She certainly seems to have started coming on board very much more regularly during the last couple of years. It’s all in the files — apparently routine.’
‘Coming on board. I like that. Is she nubile by the way?’
‘Do you know, that’s a very good question. You may not be surprised to hear that her personnel file seems to have gone and there are no photographs of her anywhere that I can find.’
‘Even so,’ said Sung, ‘whoever heard of a sailor running away with an ugly girl.’
There’s only one way to find out isn’t there?’
‘Go with the obvious, you mean? It’s what we policemen do all the time, Tan. But in this case you would go, and I would guarantee to update you if the experts here find anything unexpected or revealing.’
‘You’re right. Even if you find sand from a beach you can identify or spores from a fungus which only grows in one place on earth, there’s no guarantee they didn’t rub off another postcard going to the next house down Marine Drive in Budleigh Salterton. When you get right down to it, there’s no guarantee that anything your experts find
on the card didn’t get there somewhere en route. No. Captain Gough really expected his wife to read it then destroy it. And even if she didn’t, there’s no indication on the picture, or the postcard as a whole, of where the original photograph was taken so he probably felt safe on that count as well. Sure as hell he didn’t expect her to tell anyone except First Officer Jordan about it. But he obviously didn’t know his ship had been hit and his crew killed and what should have been a small-beer disappearance was extremely big news. Wherever this sunset is, it is somewhere so remote it’s beyond the reach of television. And he doesn’t bother with the radio, so batteries are hard to get hold of or oil for the generators is expensive — or hard to ship. And we can safely assume that he doesn’t have any morning papers delivered. He was taking a chance and being more stupid than he knew, but then he never expected anyone to come after him, especially in somewhere this far from civilisation. It’s all there on the card.’
‘When you’re right, you’re right,’ said Sung. He squinted a little to make out the Italic printing at the top of the left-hand panel. ‘Printed by Beautiful Views Ltd, Rizal Avenue, Manila. They have copyright of the photograph and therefore, one assumes, a record of where it was taken.’
‘And it was posted in the central post office in Laoag less than ten days ago. What can I say? I’m on my way.’
*
On Thursday, the evidence presented in Court Four of the Hong Kong Supreme Court was all expert testimony, exact, unassailable and tedious. After Commander Lee had described the smuggling system and the China Queens’ alleged position in it, the Crown’s experts worked doggedly to link Richard to the violence this smuggling had caused. Section by section, in spite of all Maggie could do in cross-examination, the witnesses called by the Crown built up the case which defined the exact manner in which all the victims had died, and purported to link Richard with all the deaths except those of the Vietnamese women and children.
There was little Maggie could do. The fact was that Richard’s fingerprints had been found upon the panga, the semi-automatic and the handgun. There was no question that the clothing he had been wearing when arrested had been covered in blood, sprays of soft body parts and copious traces of gunpowder. All that Maggie could suggest was that Richard had been closely involved with the dead and dying as he sought to bring some measure of relief and that he had certainly been involved with at least two of the weapons as he fought off homicidal intruders.
For the Crown, Mr Prosecutor Po re-emphasised that the sprays of soft body parts found on his clothing had in the past been taken to prove that the accused was immediately proximate to the victim while his life was ended. The accused must have been standing, for example, just beside the victim’s head while his brains were blown out. Or immediately in front of the victim while he was being hosed to death with automatic fire. Or just beside the victim while he was chopped to pieces with the panga. The only reasonable explanation for all this forensic evidence, submitted the Crown, was that Captain Richard Mariner had been the perpetrator of all of the crimes of which he stood indicted. And, they insisted, they would support their case beyond any question of a reasonable doubt tomorrow, when they called their final witness.
*
‘Do you really think they have anything hidden up their sleeves?’ asked Tom Fowler as they finished the early-evening war council at eight that evening. They would hold another one later, when Tom reported back from his nightly interview with Richard.
‘Heaven knows,’ answered Maggie. ‘What do you think, Andrew?’
‘I think they definitely have something. Who is it that they haven’t called yet?’
‘I have no idea. There isn’t really a new witness. We certainly haven’t had anyone enter the game who hasn’t been playing for a fair length of time already. What do the trial notes say? Just that a witness is coming and they will give us his statement as soon as it’s prepared. That could be five minutes before he actually takes the stand. I have no idea who they could call.’
‘Well,’ said Tom, ‘if you think of who it might be, then give me some idea and I’ll put it to Richard. We might get a reaction from him. We could certainly do with one.’
‘What is the game plan for tonight?’ asked Maggie.
‘Photographs. Random association. Carefully considered questions. Extension of most recent memories. Truth serum. Hypnotism. Prayer. Black magic. Entrails. Virgin sacrifice. Anything else I can sodding well think of. Same as usual.’
‘Right,’ said Maggie.
Tom still had no idea how close he had come two evenings ago with his random association. He had mentioned the sequence of words to no one because they had seemed to him to be gibberish. When he entered the little consultation room in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital later that evening, therefore, he had no idea of the progress that he and his subject had actually made and the impact his proposed sequence of moves might have.
The first thing he did was to throw the folder of photographs almost casually across the table at Richard. Richard’s great hands came down on the slithering file with a decided slap. The long, gaunt face looked up, blue eyes blazing under the slightest of interrogatory frowns. The two of them had become fast friends, even on so few days’ acquaintance. Those few days now apparently comprised the whole of Richard’s memory. ‘What is it, Tom?’ Richard still had only the scantiest understanding of the danger he stood in. He was far more concerned about the emotional state of his psychologist.
‘Nothing you can’t put right, Richard. Take a look through those, would you, and tell me about anything which springs to mind.’ Tom got out his notebooks, one full of the notes from previous meetings and another in which he would make notes of this one. Richard watched him in silence for a moment, his face utterly blank, then opened the file and began to examine the photographs it contained.
‘Yes, of course. This is me isn’t it?’
‘It is. How do you know?’
‘I recognise it from yesterday.’
‘Nothing wrong with your short-term memory, then,’ observed Tom, scribbling in his notepad. ‘Next?’
‘William and Mary. You told me this was taken in London …’ Richard’s voice faltered slightly, as though doubting the certainty of what he was saying.
‘I told you that under Pentothal …’ The psychologist consulted the notes of the last session, just to be sure. ‘But not under hypnosis. Even so, an impressive feat of memory.’ Tom made more notes.
‘Are you going to put me under Pentothal again tonight?’
‘If I have to. And under hypnosis. If I have to.’
‘I don’t like that. I don’t like to lose …’
They had gone through this conversation every evening so far and the content had never varied. Tom drew in his breath automatically to finish Richard’s sentence for perhaps the tenth time.
‘ … control,’ said Richard, before the psychologist could speak. ‘I don’t like to lose control. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ said Tom. ‘Yes, I do indeed.’ He leaned forward and made a note. Without looking up, he said, ‘Do you want to continue leafing through those photographs for me, Richard?’
‘Yes, of course. These are my parents. That’s Summers-end, their home. There’s Summersend again but …’ The tone of Richard’s voice was thoughtless, unguarded, open.
‘But?’ Tom’s voice invited confidence but exerted no pressure whatsoever, his pencil poised.
‘Well, I don’t recognise this contraption down the front steps to the garden.’
‘That’s because it’s a new contraption. The picture is only three weeks old. It arrived earlier today, as a matter of fact. But you recognise the house?’
‘Well, yes, of course. As a matter of fact …’ He turned over the next photograph and his speech stopped.
‘You recognise those two?’
‘Well …’
This had been carefully calculated by Tom. The photograph in front of Richard was a recent one of th
e twins which he could never have seen. He had looked at pictures of William and Mary, but never any so recent, never any which showed the twins as they were when he last kissed them good night or goodbye.
‘Well, of course. It’s the twins.’
‘You didn’t seem too certain.’
‘They look so grown up.’
‘It’s a recent picture.’
‘It must be. I mean, there’s that cut on Mary’s leg. She did that tackling William just before … just before …’ Richard’s voice faltered, the unconscious certainty beginning to slip away.
‘Well, never mind. It’ll come back later.’ Tom’s tone was dismissive but his pencil was busy. ‘Turn over again, why don’t you?’
‘All right. Well, that’s easy. That’s Ashenden. I can’t remember how many of those I’ve seen …’ And he stopped once again, with the next photograph half revealed.
‘You recognise her then?’ asked Tom casually. His senses were really beginning to quicken now. All his responses were on full alert. He switched over to shorthand and began to record things verbatim.
‘Yes, of course. I’ve seen more pictures of her than I can count since I woke up properly. This is my wife, Robin.’
‘But it seems that you really do recognise her. What do you feel?’
‘I feel … alone …’
Tom was startled. He had phrased the question uncal-culatingly. Richard had not been drugged or hypnotised yet. Now here they were suddenly into word association and truth games.
‘Why? Do you think she has left you?’
‘She was here, wasn’t she?’
Tom could have danced. This was the first evidence of communication between the Survivor and Richard himself, for Robin had only spoken to the former since this episode began, never the latter.
‘Yes, she has been here. Often. The next picture is of her, too. Does it bring anything to mind?’
‘Well, she’s in uniform … She is very beautiful, isn’t she?’
‘Very. And?’