We discussed resources. The RMP had eighty-five men available and the police could provide almost two hundred. We agreed that the police would cover the highest risk locations we marked on the map except for the bridge and Fullerton Square. The RMP would have two men on top of the Fullerton Building and men either end of the bridge.
The police would generally patrol the outside of the parade route and the RMP would cover the inside. The lion or dragon costume the police had found pointed to acrobats or dancers as a potential threat. We therefore agreed that units would walk alongside any acrobatic displays. One of the sergeants had the schedule and list of entrants so we allocated police and RMP teams to these.
“What about the general?” Rahman asked.
I hadn’t planned to tell the men yet but they knew the police had found the clippings about General Gaskill that implied he was the target.
I said, “I don’t want it to leave this room but as a precautionary measure, the general and Lieutenant Colonel Atkinson won’t be joining the march.”
There were a few expectant nods in the room.
Robshaw said, “We should allocate a unit to the fort.”
“No,” I said. “The Battle Box is secure enough and the general wants as little fuss as possible. He’ll just sit out the parade just in case.”
“So, who’s leading the march, Boss?”
“Major Vernon,” I said.
After the mutterings of surprise and dismay had died down, Hegarty grinned.
“Well lads,” he said rubbing his hands, “change of plans. We all stay at home and hope there is an attack tonight!”
Everyone laughed and I dismissed them to get prepared.
Rahman was about to leave when I said, “I’d like us to work together on this.”
He nodded and said, “How do you want to play it?”
“You take your best man and I’ll take Sergeant Hegarty. We don’t track anyone in particular. We move up and down the line and keep an eye out for trouble.”
“One team,” he said. “I like that.”
We shook hands.
I checked the time. We had two hours.
“Ironically,” I said, “I actually need something to happen tonight.”
“An attack you mean?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head, not understanding.
I said, “If it happens then I’m free. My deal with Coates is over.”
“Ah,” he nodded and shook my hand again. “Then good luck I suppose, my friend. Let us hope for a happy ending.”
SIXTY-ONE
Closing my eyes, I could hear the distant mumble of voices, men preparing, falling into ranks. The near-full moon was high in a clear sky and lit Fort Canning above us. Hegarty and I stood on Stamford Road at the foot of the hill and greeted Inspector Rahman and Sergeant Kee as they joined us.
We heard the marching band strike up and knew the soldiers had begun their descent from the fort. Waiting at the Padang on St Andrews Road was the pageant. They would tag onto the rear once the parade reached them.
The lead motor cyclist appeared, rolling at walking pace, and a second later we saw the band: Royal Marines wearing red jackets, black trousers, white helmets, brass trimmings, and playing brass instruments.
Behind them was Major Vernon, resplendent in full whites with the addition of a black armband. All the men had armbands in mourning for our king.
After Vernon, a sergeant major twirled his baton, leading four blocks of soldiers from Tanglin Barracks.
As the sergeant major passed I said, “Ready?”
“Ready,” Rahman confirmed.
We tucked in behind and to one side of the sergeant major and walked across Hill Street heading south.
We could hear the carnival now. People cheered and drums clashed as we reached the Padang. We turned right and I saw the floats start to move to join us. Firecrackers banged and whistled and I was happy to see Vernon looking nervous. There was a despatch rider waiting with the front of the pageant section and I waved him over. We’d spoken in advance and he knew to stay close in case I needed him.
We moved back and forth, staying together as a unit but checking all directions and suspicions. Now and again I spotted the motorcycle rider and was happy he stayed within shouting distance.
The head of the parade crossed Anderson Bridge and went on into Fullerton Square. Suddenly the crowds were ten, fifteen people deep, jostling and shouting. But it was good humoured and I sensed no trouble.
Red, white and blue bunting festooned the square and was strung in waves across the front of the Fullerton Building. The upper windows of the building were closed, faces pressed against the glass, but The Singapore Club had its first floor windows open. Club members leaned out, some with Union flags unfurled, all waving and cheering. I think I saw Robshaw on the roof but it was too dark to be sure.
After Fullerton, the parade headed up Battery Road. We turned and started back against the flow.
“Boss?” Hegarty said beside me.
“Just thinking. I’m sorry that the general wasn’t here to receive the applause back there.”
After the soldiers came three acrobats with giant red flags. Health, Prosperity and Happiness they said in both English and gold Chinese characters. The men twirled the flags and moved in a dance routine, weaving in and out of one another’s path, their flags swirling first high then low. Then came the first dancing dragon, gold and white with twelve men in a costume. It jumped, snapped giant jaws and snaked, the men inside working incredibly as one living organism.
As the carnival moved, men with flaming torches walked beside and around the entertainers, providing illumination that, in its flickering, added to the excitement and mystique of the dancing.
A series of floats followed, advertising Chinese companies including Ho Ho Biscuits but there was no sign of white-eyed Chen or his German henchman. Then came acrobats performing somersaults and building human towers, like the one I had watched at the fair.
The first of the lion dancers were next. Three lions: golden, red and green each with two people inside followed by three musicians with a drum, cymbals and a gong.
Hegarty had been quiet for a while. Rahman and his sergeant were over to our right.
“What’s going to happen?” Hegarty asked me.
“What do you mean?”
“You know something.”
“Do I?”
He stopped and looked into my eyes.
“Yes, you do.”
I started walking again. “We should keep checking.”
“Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“What’s going on?”
I said nothing.
More floats passed us at a snail’s pace followed by dancers and then three scantily clad young women leading chained tigers. Then more lion dancers and dragon dancers. I discovered there were two types of dragon dancer, ones inside a costume, like the lion dancers, and ones where the body was long and thin, controlled by men using bamboo poles outside the body and incredibly long tails. Red and gold were the predominant colours for the dancers but no one looked like they could be carrying a rifle.
I reckoned the top of the parade would have been turning right to cross the river again about now.
I waved the inspector over and said, “Let’s make our way to the front again.”
He didn’t disagree and we fell into a routine of checking and switching sides, looking ahead and looking back, looking at the crowd and the buildings. I saw no sign of real trouble, just drunken revellers here and there.
I couldn’t see where they came from, but a series of explosions made a few people around me jump. Gunpowder thrown into flames, I decided. I’d seen and heard it before, and it didn’t have the same report as gunfire.
Hegarty was alongside me again as we left Fullerton Square behind us.
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” he said, “if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“The
re’s nothing to tell.”
“Then why are you so relaxed? My heart misses a beat every time I hear a bang but you don’t even flinch.”
“I have a theory.”
“Yes…?”
“That I’m not going to tell you.”
Hegarty stopped again. “Why?”
I kept walking and said, “I might be wrong.”
We turned right, crossed Coleman Bridge and then left along River Valley Road, past Hill Street Station. From here we would continue to loop around the hill below the fort and then turn up Orchard Road. Midway it would turn up Grange and from there the army would continue their march on to Tanglin. The pageant would loop around along Patterson, rejoin Orchard and then head back to the Padang via Stamford Road.
We kept walking and looking and checking that each unit was in place. By the time we reached the bottom of Orchard I had the sense that the conclusion was approaching fast. I signalled to Rahman to turn around and we worked our way back again.
“At least tell me something,” Hegarty said.
“Red herring. It was your explanation that made me work it out.”
“But you might be wrong?”
“I might be wrong,” I said.
We passed the tigers and the second batch of floats. We were midway through the first group of lion dancers on Tank Road when a loud explosion occurred close by. Suddenly there was chaos. People were screaming and running. A lion was on fire. Then I saw gouts of flame shoot from a shop-house across the way. The crowd stampeded. I stood my ground as bodies pressed past me in panic.
“Hedge!” I shouted, but got no response.
Then I saw him looking desperately around. He had his pistol out, aimed at the burning building. Other MPs and police started to appear, also waving their guns.
Hegarty ran to my side. “What shall we do?” he shouted over the clamour.
“Where’s the inspector?” I shouted back, but just then I saw Sergeant Kee on the floor. Another policeman was damping out his flaming clothes.
We ran over.
His face was blackened and there was blood on his nose and neck.
“The inspector?” I asked him.
“Went inside.”
“When? Just now or before.”
Kee swallowed and tried to compose himself. He was shaking and Hegarty wrapped his coat around the man.
“Before,” Kee whispered and coughed. “He was… suspicious. Told me… told me to wait.”
The police were now thick around us and a medic took Kee from us.
I stood up and scanned the crowd.
“Rider!” I yelled. I cupped my hands to my mouth and yelled again and again.
Eventually I saw the man waving to me. He was off his motorcycle and pointed to where it lay on the ground, only yards away.
“Boss?” Hegarty said running at my side towards the bike.
“I’m going to the fort,” I told him.
I jerked the bike up and threw a leg over.
Hegarty said, “What shall I do?”
“Ignore this,” I said and gunned the engine. “Get to the head of the parade and check on Vernon… just in case.”
I left him then, weaved in and out for a short distance and then had some space to accelerate.
I raced through the pageant, sounding the pitiful horn and screaming for people to get out of the way. At the end of Tank Road, I cut away from the parade and opened up the throttle. I sped around the hill back to the fort back to General Gaskill.
And I prayed I’d not miscalculated.
Two MPs blocked the road with guns raised, alarmed at the motorbike tearing up the drive. I slammed on the brakes, let the bike slide and leapt off.
“Sir?” one of them said, realizing who I was but still a bit jumpy.
“Any trouble?” I shouted.
“All quiet here, sir.”
I ran past them, round the barrier and under the gateway. The courtyard was in darkness except for lamps outside the main house and the Battle Box. I could hear firecrackers from the carnival and a low hum of voices and music. Apart from that, the fort was silent and my running feet crunched loudly on the courtyard stones.
When I reached the Battle Box, the door was shut and locked. As expected.
I took out my key and opened the door.
The room was empty.
I entered and relocked the door, took a seat by the table and waited.
Within a couple of minutes I heard a key in the lock.
The door opened.
SIXTY-TWO
On the edge of the Padang, the man who called himself Jin ducked below the sea wall and climbed over the rocks. He levered aside two medicine-ball sized stones and located the hole just wide enough for a slim person to crawl through. He was one of very few who knew there were old plans of Fort Canning; security plans that marked the sally ports. This exit had been covered by a metal grid, maybe a hundred and fifty years old. Jin had removed it easily a few days ago and replaced the stones.
He squirmed into the hole. There was no dignity in his progress, but he was beyond caring about dignity. After crawling a few yards, the space opened up and he was able to crouch. This was where he’d previously stowed his suitcase though he didn’t expect to need it. Everything had been well planned and the suitcase was merely a contingency.
He began to shuffle forwards awkwardly, but with a practised rhythm. He knew that speed was essential and had timed himself to take twelve minutes to make the tunnel and climb.
Initially the passage sloped gently downwards, but then started to rise, until the height increased and he could stand with a stoop. He trudged through the ancient tunnel for a long time until the stone stairs began. They were wet with water that dripped from the two-hundred-year-old walls.
Forbidden Hill, that was the old Malay name for the mount. It was sacred. Before the British, the islanders believed the spirits of the dead lived here. But the British had not respected the locals’ beliefs. They never did. Cannons had been fired to clear the hill of the ghosts and the fort had been built. But the ghosts were here now. He was here, Jin the spirit.
He reached the top of the steps where a modern metal gate blocked the entrance. Hidden in the tunnel by the gate, Jin located the rifle he’d stowed here and slung it over his back. He placed his hand on the latch and looked out into the courtyard.
Darkness. No staff. No guards.
SIXTY-THREE
Night gave way to the figure of Inspector Rahman as he stepped into the light of the Battle Box.
“Quick!” I said, “Lock the door and take a seat.”
Rahman came over. He was breathless, “Where’s the general? Is everything all right?”
He picked up the chair and moved it to the side, back to the wall. He looked at my revolver out on the table and leaned his rifle against the wall beside him.
“Everything is fine,” I said. “How did you know—?”
“Your sergeant told me where you were headed,” he said and started to rise. “But if there’s no trouble, what are you doing here?”
“Waiting for someone to come through that door.”
He sat back down, his eyebrows cocked like he didn’t know what was going on.
I said, “Do you know the origin of the phrase red herring?”
“No.”
“Sergeant Hegarty told me. It comes from saboteurs who used kippers to distract the hunt. It made me think. Sometimes things are a distraction from the real issue. Sometimes those things are deliberate.”
The dim grey-orange light flickered and I figured it would be on a separate generator to the main house.
The slight movement of the light made Rahman’s face seem animated but it wasn’t. His eyes were frozen for a moment.
I said, “I was trying to find out what happened to my friend. It looked like it dead-ended at Pantelis: the guy who drove Tom’s car off the road. It could have ended there but it got messy didn’t it?”
Rahman said nothing.
<
br /> “But let’s forget that for a minute,” I said. “We had information about a secret society and a date that we worked out coincided with the parade. We had intelligence about guns and your team found them. Your team also found the dragon dancer costume and the newspaper clippings with Gaskill’s picture.”
Rahman nodded. “And there was an incident on Tank Road. We could have been killed.”
“Good intel or misdirection,” I said. “Coates wanted so much to believe there was a secret society behind this—to get Yipp—that he bought it, totally.”
“Me too.”
“But that wasn’t the red herring.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No, the misdirection was General Gaskill.”
Rahman frowned.
I said, “The real target was Colonel Atkinson. Where Gaskill went, Atkinson would follow. Get the general into this bunker and Atkinson would be here too.”
Rahman looked down and I wondered if he was studying my revolver.
“It was to shoot the person who came through that door.”
“But it was me,” he said.
“I knew it would be you,” I said.
“How?”
“Well firstly, you opened the door with a key.”
“But before that?”
“I put two and two together. I should have realized straight away when I saw the photograph on your desk. I thought you were emotional about your father and uncle’s deaths but it was worry I saw. You had to cover yourself. You told me they died on the first day and then you had to work out how many days to the anniversary.”
Rahman said nothing.
“Because it was the third day.”
Rahman shook his head but I knew I was right.
“You told me they were in the 4th Indian Infantry. But there wasn’t a 4th and the only Indian’s involved on the first day were in the 44th Infantry. But even that didn’t matter because you are Singaporean. Your family is from Singapore. Your father wasn’t in any Indian regiment. He was a Singaporean reservist under Atkinson.”
Rahman said, “They weren’t cowards. They weren’t deserting. There was a misunderstanding. Cooke was a deserter. My father, uncle and the other man were loyal soldiers.”
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