Singapore Girl_An edge of your seat thriller that will have you hooked

by Murray Bailey

  “I don’t know…”

  “But you do.”

  Hegarty said, “Shall we just rip the place apart, boss?”

  “No need. Let’s walk this way.”

  I headed towards the far right-hand corner. Goodwyn’s eyes had told me he was nervous about this spot, and then I saw them. Boxes with sacking over the top. Everything, except for the new shipment, had dust on it. Or maybe sand or salt or flour. Whatever the coating, it was a sign that things hadn’t been moved for a while. These boxes had no dust. In fact, the floor around the box also showed a lot of activity.

  “Open them,” I said.

  Goodwyn sighed and pulled back the sacking. He picked up a crowbar and prised open the top box.

  Upon first inspection, the contents looked innocent enough. Twenty-four canteens on a layer. There were two layers.

  Hegarty picked one up, opened it, sniffed and wafted a sweet, sharp smell towards me.

  He replaced the cork. “Samsoo?”

  Goodwyn bowed his head and then held his hands out in a gesture of contrition.

  “Anything to say for yourself?” Hegarty asked.

  “It’s just hooch?” Goodwyn said hopefully.

  “You’re trading in illegal alcohol.”

  “Not trading. Just buying for our use.”

  I looked at the number of boxes. Three hundred and eighty-four. A delivery every couple of weeks, maybe. Not only for personal use, that was for sure.

  But I wanted more than samsoo.

  I said, “Move the boxes aside.”

  Goodwyn stared at me.

  “Move the boxes!”

  He only had to slide three boxes out of position to reveal what I’d suspected: a trap door.

  When it was open, we could see a short ladder to a storage area below.

  Hegarty went down with a torch. He found a light switch, and a second later he called out excitedly, “A drum.”

  I heard a noise like a lid being prised off.

  “More samsoo. And empty bottles. They’re emptying the canteens in here and rebottling it.”

  I looked at Goodwyn, whose face had sweat lines. The sweat must have been sticking to dust on his skin.

  “Ah!”

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve found our amphetamines. I think they’re mixing the samsoo with amphetamines.”

  Goodwyn hung his head.

  I said, “Who’s the supplier?”

  Goodwyn said nothing.

  “Is it Stevenson?”

  Goodwyn shook his head.

  “Someone else in the aid unit at Kota Tinggi? Come on, man. You can’t get in deeper trouble, and I’ll be able to find out who the driver was.”

  The light went out and Hegarty started to ascend the ladder.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Goodwyn said. His voice was brittle, like he would burst into tears at any moment. “It wasn’t the Kota Tinggi boys who delivered here today.”

  Hegarty handed me a long thin case. Inside was a row of ampules, each one labelled “Morphine”.

  I said, “So who was it?”

  Goodwyn looked away.

  “Talk!” Hegarty said.

  The aid worker shook his head, and now tears really did flow. “If I talk,” he spluttered, “I’m a dead man.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Sergeant Goodwyn refused to say anything except that the morphine was for medical purposes. There was a shortage. I suspected he was a user, but I wasn’t an expert in this, as Flight Lieutenant Turner had guessed when I’d met him in the Sin Sin bar.

  I’d arranged for the shipment to Malacca and I’d also arranged for a pick-up from Penang. My plan had been to find the supplier en route but we’d lost the aid truck in the jungle. Had there been some kind of switch? Is that what Goodwyn had been telling us?

  The Penang connection was a trap for Jeevan. Better to catch him red-handed than confront him with no evidence at his home base.

  I’d asked General Gaskill to arrange transportation so I could be at the airport in Penang by tomorrow morning. I regretted not being more specific.

  The Dakota was loaded ready for its propaganda mission. The twin engines rumbled and thundered as it taxied off the airstrip north of Terendak Barracks. It was based at Kuala Lumpur but had been diverted to Malacca, and this was my organized ride. Thanks, General!

  Dakotas were nicknamed the “biscuit bombers” because they were favoured for dropping supplies to active troops. They were also used for broadcasting messages and dropping leaflets in the jungle. The idea was to convince the communists they wouldn’t succeed. Of course that would work! Tell the enemy they can’t win and give them a leaflet.

  One saving grace was that it wasn’t as cringeworthy as the Americans in Vietnam dropping giant condoms to intimidate the Vietcong. Some US general somewhere had believed the enemy would be worried by the size of GI Joe’s penis.

  A flight would get me to Penang much quicker than a car or train. And it wouldn’t involve travelling through bandit country.

  At least, I thought it was safer, until I experienced how these guys operated.

  The pilot, co-pilot and navigator took up their comfortable seats. I was alone in the hold and found a box to sit on. The co-pilot had given me headphones and, with the cock of an eyebrow, wished me luck.

  The headgear muffled the sound but I could still feel the vibration from the lumbering engines as we took off.

  Once the plane was airborne, I settled down for the long flight and looked around. By the hatch was a huge metal frame, as tall as a man and stacked with the small white leaflets. On either side of the fuselage were banks of speakers. There was little additional room in the hold; enough for a man to walk the length of the plane but that was all.

  I figured a direct flight to Penang should take a little over an hour. However, I was warned that the Dakota would take more than two. I looked again at the leaflets and knew the flight wasn’t just for my benefit. This was an operational run too.

  As I waited, I wondered how Hegarty was getting on. I’d left him filling in the relevant forms. Goodwyn was in the barracks jail and could stay there for a long time. Court martial was the likely outcome. But he didn’t interest me. He was the end of the chain. And he was afraid. More afraid of someone than of being charged for dealing with drugs. I gave this person a label: Mr X.

  Was the body on the causeway another Goodwyn? Was it someone Mr X had dealt with? Was it a message to other Goodwyns?

  The co-pilot interrupted my thoughts. He opened the cockpit door, squeezed over and signalled that I should lift one of my ear protectors.

  Over the juddering engine noise, the co-pilot shouted, “Go up front!” He leaned closer. “I’m about to do the first drop.”

  I manoeuvred past him and then the navigator. As I stepped through into the cockpit I felt air being sucked out. The co-pilot had opened the hatch door.

  Sitting beside the pilot, I exchanged nods and looked out of the window.

  I knew we’d been descending but was surprised we were so close to the treetops. We were in a valley between mountains. I could see breaks in the jungle and clusters of huts.

  “How high?” I shouted.

  “Five hundred feet,” the pilot mouthed back, or maybe he shouted, but I couldn’t hear him. The navigator patted him on the shoulder and he did a thumbs up.

  Seconds later, a thin cloud of leaflets sprayed from the Dakota like out of a crop duster.

  The leafleting stopped as suddenly as it had started and the pilot took the plane higher. The rush of air ended abruptly as the co-pilot closed the hatch. But he didn’t come back to his seat up front.

  We continued north and I noted that the tree-clad mountains were becoming higher and more frequent. In the distance they became purple then violet before fading to a pale blue.

  People described the jungle as both beautiful and terrifyingly vast. I could see why.

  I watched the altimeter slowly tick up to twenty-five hundred fe
et. In the co-pilot’s comfortable seat and with the incredible view, I was starting to think this extended journey wasn’t too bad after all.

  That was until the navigator patted the pilot on the shoulder and pointed. A few seconds later and the Dakota was turning in a wide circle. The navigator checked I was strapped in and made a thumbs-up sign to the co-pilot in the rear before buckling into his own seat.

  The co-pilot opened the side door. Suddenly there was no air in the cockpit and at the same time a wall of sound hit me. Two thousand watts of loudspeaker boomed through the aircraft. Then the pilot cut the engines.

  The Dakota stalled.

  Initially, I felt no change, the booming bass of the speakers much greater than the rumble from the engines. And then it was as though the plane suddenly realized that the engines had been cut. Like something out of a cartoon.

  The plane started to lose height quickly. My stomach lurched. I gripped the seat. Cold prickles of fear covered my neck and I looked desperately at the pilot. He smiled at me and gave the “OK” hand gesture.

  OK? We’re falling out of the sky, for God’s sake!

  And then it was over as quickly as it had begun. The pilot pressed the starter and the engines kicked into life again. He took control and we rose and levelled off.

  “It’s so they can hear the message without the engine noise!” he shouted.

  I was about to shout my gratitude that it was over when he repeated the procedure, cutting the engines again.

  The speakers boomed, the plane went into free fall and my heart froze.

  Over and over, the pilot repeated the manoeuvre. By the fifth time I realized the stall lasted for less than thirty seconds. Although it seemed like minutes.

  I’d been on the rollercoaster in Blackpool as a child. I didn’t enjoy it but I knew the trick. If you tensed up, it was worse. Relax and you could enjoy it. Like the pilot seemed to be enjoying himself.

  I tried to imagine I was a bird and focused on what the recording was saying, but it was too distorted. It was the same message repeated over and over.

  Finally the rollercoaster ride ended and the side door closed. A tap on the shoulder by the navigator told me to switch places again.

  As I passed the co-pilot I lifted his earphones. “What was the message?”

  He lifted mine. “Simple message to the bandits, ‘Come out and go back to a better life’.”

  “Does it work?”

  He pulled a face, who knows? and patted me on the arm.

  I settled back on my uncomfortable box and stared at the speakers.

  I could no longer see anything but I felt the Dakota climb. My vague sense of the geography told me we were going north over the Central Highlands. When we were bumped and buffeted by turbulence for about half an hour, I figured I was right.

  Worrying about turbulence seemed pointless when you’ve plummeted a thousand feet without engines. However, when we finally touched down at Penang’s airport, I was relieved.

  I also knew I could never fly in a Dakota again.

  Minden Barracks was four miles north of the airport, just outside George Town, the capital. A driver met me and drove his Land Rover quickly on tarmac roads.

  The low sun gave the clouds an orange tinge that made the buildings look warm.

  My immediate impression of Penang was one of wealth. Well-spaced British colonial mansions had beautiful grounds with attractive palms and ferns. Singapore’s colonial buildings were mainly in the city centre where the original settlement had been. The houses in the suburbs, north and west, were pretty and grand, but not on this scale.

  I didn’t know the colonial history of Penang, but based on the company names along the wharf it was an easy guess that it had revolved around shipping rubber and tin.

  After reporting to the commanding officer, my driver showed me the officer’s quarters and my room. Gaskill had arranged the room for me. I showered and changed and then headed out to have a look around.

  The main barracks could have been purpose-built, but it had in fact been a plantation house. Except for a central block of three storeys, the barracks were only two high, with offices and officers’ rooms downstairs and men’s quarters above. There were six smaller barrack blocks, all grey concrete, but partially hidden by the numerous palm trees in the grounds. There were married officers’ houses away to one side and other smaller buildings including a school.

  On three sides I could see rubber trees. The fourth side looked out to sea across playing fields and open grassland. Beyond, I could see a white sandy beach.

  Unlike the bases in the south, there was no high fence or walls. I figured the bandits weren’t expected here. It was an island with one port and much further from the mainland than Singapore. And there was no causeway here.

  I remembered the businessman at the European and Oriental telling me about the giant ferries and his equally massive propellers. I made a note to visit the port and see the behemoths for myself if I had time.

  I spotted the building I was looking for: the Minden Military Hospital.

  Penang had so far given me the impression of tranquillity. However, inside the hospital, the illusion was shattered.

  Injured soldiers, mainly from fighting in the north of Malaya, were brought here for treatment and safety. The wards were crammed. Beds lined the walls. There were no curtains for privacy, just a mobile screen used when a patient died.

  A ward sister bustled past and I managed to catch her attention.

  “Where can I find Jane Dobson?”

  “Off-duty,” she said without stopping. “You’ll find her at the bar.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The sister scurried away before I had chance to ask where the bar was. I walked back into the barracks’ grounds and found a soldier having a sneaky cigarette against a wall.

  “Tuckers?” he said. “Outside. Opposite side of the road.”

  I left the barracks and looked at the row of wooden shacks with palm-leaf roofs opposite. A badly painted sign informed me of the bar’s full name: Tucker’s Bar and Grub.

  I could see darkness rushing in fast from the east and Tuckers had gas lamps hanging outside. There were tables to the front and side with palm-leaf parasols. Most tables seemed occupied by off-duty men and women. I saw no sign of food. I saw no sign of Jane.

  I crossed the road and saw more of the side tables. And there she was, chatting with another woman. Jane’s hair shone in the light from the lamps, the usual strawberry-blonde looking more flame-orange in the light.

  “Hello,” I said as I approached.

  She looked up, startled. “Ash? Ash!”

  “Just the one Ash will do.”

  She gave me her awkward smile and I remembered how much I liked her mouth. Her kiss.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  The other woman stood. “Kate. Kate Williams,” she said in a broad Australian accent. She grinned and then walked away saying she’d get us a waiter.

  I sat at an angle to Jane and a man plonked a bottle of beer in front of me.

  “Don’t mention it’s not Australian. Tucker—the owner—is a bit sensitive about it. We call it chemical beer.” She smiled at me again. “But then you aren’t much of a drinker as I recall.”

  I took a sip. It was cold and welcome.

  She was still looking at me. “I didn’t expect to see you again… It’s nice though… seeing you, that is.”

  “I was passing through.” Which was sort of true. Yes, I’d arranged for Jeevan, the aid pilot, to fly to Penang tomorrow, but the truth was I could have picked somewhere else. I chose Penang because of Jane.

  She said, “Well I’m glad you did. Have you eaten? Tucker starts serving grub soon.”

  I said I hadn’t and added: “I assume you’re here because it’s better than the mess?”

  “Not really.” She laughed, light and relaxed. “And the beer’s no good either. It’s just good to get outside the barracks. Plus I like Kate.”

  “And t
here’s the great view.” I was looking at her rather than the coast but fortunately she didn’t pick up on my corny line. Instead she looked out into the gathering dark.

  “You should have been here half an hour ago,” she said. “You could see the mainland then.”

  I checked the menu and Jane ordered a bottle of Australian wine. I could smell the cooking, meat on hot griddles, and decided to gamble on the dish of the day. Which was meat on a hot griddle. When it came, it looked like beef, although I noted Tuckers suspiciously avoided any reference to a specific animal. It oozed with a rich, peppery juice and was served with a chunk of bread.

  We were one of the first to be served and I noted that there wasn’t a sitting time. Food came out when it was ready.

  I said, “We were lucky we didn’t have to wait.”

  Jane grinned. “That’s because Tucker is a mate of mine.” She nodded over to the bar and Kate Williams waved back.

  “Ah, Kate is Tucker.”

  “Her father set this up and Tucker is her maiden name.”

  “Not bad,” I said, after a bite of bread soaked in sauce. “I went to the adoption centre and met Miss Liang.”

  She ate a chunk of meat and washed it down with a slug of wine. “I hope you made more progress than me.”

  “I persuaded her to show me the books. Laura’s name wasn’t there.”

  “Do you think she was lying?”

  “I found out she was new. She used to work at the hospital in the town, responsible for baby adoption.”

  “Makes sense, I suppose.”

  “A lady at an orphanage told me she didn’t trust Miss Liang, but I don’t think she was lying. I think she was just stressed. It seems her predecessor just up and left and wasn’t as organized as Miss Liang would have liked.”

  When I started talking about Laura, Jane must have hoped I had good news. I had nothing for her. All I could say was I’d tried.

  “What about the predecessor then?”

  “A chap called Petersen. The lady at the orphanage thought he might know. But I couldn’t find him. I went to a school over on the west. Bukit Zarah. A finishing school apparently.”