by Gavin Black
No one was out there yet, the carp still undisturbed in their pool, only the tree glowing. I was certain no one saw me find shadow and use it, making my way to the rock garden.
Amongst the great chunks of cemented lava it was suddenly still, the sounds from the house cut off. The sunset had gone and the grey light remaining wouldn’t last for long. My feet made a crisp sound on the freshly raked gravel.
Kim Sung was waiting for me, sitting on the marble seat, back in the little artificial cave. He stood, a short, little man, thick chested, tidier now than I remembered seeing him, in a khaki shirt and trousers, with an odd peaked cap. He grinned.
“Tuan. It’s a long time since we’ve met.”
“Too long, Kim. How are you?”
“Excellent, and highly respectable.”
“You mean it bores you?”
“A little.”
“I’ve wanted to thank you about de Vorwooerd for a long time.”
“That was nothing. The old man is now happy, back in Kuantan.”
“And we’ll never use that route again, Kim.”
“I’ve thought of another, tuan. Across the Kra Isthmus, just south of Singora.”
“I don’t like the idea of getting mixed up with the Thais.”
He grinned again.
“They have a worse police force than Malaya. Especially down there. It’s wild country. We’d have to use porters, but we could.”
“Are you talking about the stuff hidden in Johore?”
“No, tuan, I want to take that by sea. The patrol situation seems good just now.”
I looked at Kim. I was fond of him, and I think he was of me.
“Was I a damn’ fool suggesting you come here like this?”
“No, tuan. It was an excellent idea. Especially with the policemen at the gate.”
“What?”
“Yes, they’re there.”
“You don’t mean Kang?”
“Oh, not his excellency. He’s too important. His boys. Plenty of them.”
“But they haven’t been watching me since I came from Penang. Kang said he wasn’t going to.”
“He must be suspicious of parties.”
“How did you get in, Kim?”
“Easy. I came as a chauffeur. Driving one of my honourable cousin Tong Fatt’s hire cars.”
“I didn’t even know you drove a car?”
“I’m better with a boat,” Kim said, and laughed.
What he had to say took another five minutes. Then I handed over the fat bundle of notes which was the real reason for our meeting. Kim put them inside his shirt where they bulged slightly more than they had in the inner pocket of my suit.
“Take care of your health, tuan,” he said, turning away.
I watched him go around a projection of that twisted agonised rock. I had just moved when I heard a sound like a cork coming out of a wine bottle. The bullet came by my ear, I heard it, that close. It pinged against rock and ricocheted upwards, whining.
My first thought was the cave. Someone with a gun fitted with a silencer was in this maze. I hadn’t a gun. I’d better not be a target any more. It was getting dark. I could wait.
But I didn’t wait. I ran up the path, though it hurt my legs, round a corner of the rock. I wasn’t sure where the bullet had come from at all. Sound was tricky in here. I hadn’t seen the flash of light.
Then I saw the Goldfish. He was standing where the path widened, in his long white robe, his eyes stuck out of his head, staring. I couldn’t really see the colour of his face, only the man standing there, rigid, frozen.
“You …” I said. “What the …?”
His hands were empty. I went up to him and ran mine down his body. There were no bumps.
“What did you see?” I shook him, holding him by the shoulders. “What did you see?”
“Tuan! Tuan!”
His voice was an echo, feeble. He was shivering.
“You must have seen something! Tell me!”
“No. Nothing. Nothing.”
He began to weep, a dismal snivelling. I had the feeling that he could scarcely stand, that if I took away my hands he might crumple.
It couldn’t have been the Goldfish. He hadn’t the guts. I was certain. But he might have seen something. It was no use trying to get it out of him now if he had. He was making a sound like a whine, that went on and on.
“I’ll talk to you later,” I said.
I went on up the path, and I was afraid doing it. I was sweating.
There was no use looking, the dark was near, dripping down, and there were twenty paths, twisting in and out, and other little caves, too. The man with the gun wouldn’t have loitered, he’d have got clear while I was standing shaking the Goldfish. Bloody fool I’d been!
A gun with a silencer, it wouldn’t be small. How the hell could you bring a thing like that to a party?
Sound reached me again, that roar of a lot of people. The lights were on in the lanterns, and the whole effect was the thing I’d planned, the house and verandas bright, the garden beyond them glowing with softer colour. Almost everyone seemed to have moved out on the grass.
I pulled out my handkerchief and wiped my hands, then my face. I didn’t loiter in shadows, wanting people about me. I decided not to say anything, I didn’t see what good it would do now, and I didn’t want Ruth to know. I didn’t want more horror to come near her.
Ruth was coming towards me, as though she’d been watching out for me.
“Paul! I sent the Goldfish to find you. What an odd time to wander in the garden. Alone, too? I hope you were?”
“Yes. I was just having a breather.”
“I didn’t know what to do about the lights. So I had them put on.”
“That was right.”
“Paul, you look odd. Aren’t you enjoying this?”
“Yes. A lot.”
She laughed.
“I’ve got a feeling we’re not going to lose our guests for ages. I heard someone say this would be a perfect lawn to dance on. Shall we just carry on, put on the gramophone? We could put a speaker out on the veranda.”
“Why not?”
“Paul, are you really all right?”
“I’ve got a bit of a headache. I might get an aspirin.”
Ruth put a hand on my arm. She was smiling.
“You’ve been drinking too much.”
“It’s in the morning you get a head, remember? I’ll be right down. Have them fix up the speaker if you want it.”
“Don’t be long. You know I can’t go on playing hostess unless I can look up and see you somewhere.”
“I won’t be long.”
I went to the bathroom off my bedroom, and even in there the sound of the party followed me. I was glad of it. The last thing I’d have wanted was the house empty to-night, and those acres of garden taken by blackness. Ruth was right, you could have a house that was too big, with too much ground around it.
I felt sweaty and my shirt was damp. I took a shower and changed completely. Then I took the aspirins.
Should I go on keeping quiet about this? To-night, yes. There would be no good in telling anyone. A little whisper might start travelling amongst the guests, and there were lots of reasons why I didn’t want that.
I thought of Jeff, standing by the mirror combing my hair. I’d thought of him earlier when the party started, remembering what inevitably happened when he came to us for something like to-night. Before very long there was a bull session in one corner of business men talking about markets. Ruth had said he was hopelessly anti-social and that he didn’t like European women, didn’t know how to behave with them. It was probably true enough.
But I could have talked to Jeff, pushed things off on him, and done what he told me. I still wasn’t quite used to this hugging things to myself.
I got downstairs to find the music had started, softly still, a kind of invitation, but no one was dancing yet. It was pretty out there under the lanterns and my lit pool was popula
r. I found Kate and Russell standing by it, alone on the far side, though there were quite a few opposite.
Kate looked up at me.
“Your carp don’t like cheese straws or smoked salmon. What do they eat?”
“Red ants’ eggs.”
“Just that?”
“Nothing else.”
“I’ve got a feeling,” Russell said, and his voice was a little slurred, “that they don’t like all this publicity. Poor old fish. They are old, aren’t they?”
“The biggest had passed his fortieth birthday when I got him.”
“Forty years on ant eggs,” Russell said. “We’re a long way from the champagne. If you’d been a proper jolly bourgeois you’d have seen it was pink. It is not pink. What about the ladies?”
“None of them are proper bourgeois.”
Russell moved, he was a heavy man, and not always steady when sober. Now he heaved.
“No pink champagne. Not up to standard, old boy, not up to standard. Your lights are pretty, though. Very pretty.”
“Russell has drunk an awful lot,” Kate said, as he left us.
“He always does. Have you been keeping an eye on him?”
“Most of the time. I keep thinking about that drive home in his Citroen.”
“Russell is seeing a lot of you these days.”
“It’s only out of kindness, his kindness. He thinks I don’t see enough of the world. Perhaps I don’t. Oh, Paul. I hate this dress. You can’t sit down in it without showing your thighs. No one told me that.”
“You’ve seen plenty of them.”
“I thought you could order a lady-like version, but you can’t. They’re not made that way, or you couldn’t move.”
“You can move all right,” I said, looking down. “Fast, if you had to.”
“Now what on earth do you mean by that? I don’t have to run from things. People don’t chase me. Do you think Day would like a couple of paras. on this party?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. Oil palm isn’t very interesting. I might write about old, old carp eating ants’ eggs. In that snippy style we’re all trained to. Oh, Paul, do you hate me?”
“Kate!”
“It’s all right. No one’s looking. I’ve had too much to drink, too. It brings nostalgia for the things you’ve missed. I could sit down somewhere and weep quietly. I shouldn’t drink champagne. I stay sober on whisky perhaps because I hate it so much.”
“There’s some food coming up. You could do with something solid in you.”
“Oh, look. They’re starting to dance. On the grass. Isn’t that cute? I’ve never danced on grass. If I’m going to I’ll have to get rid of this hold-all.”
“Yes. Let me take it?”
“No. No, I’ll go in for a bit. Tidy up the wreckage. A gal needs to. Good-bye, dear.”
“So long, Kate. Give me the first rumba.”
She giggled.
“In this?”
It’s an odd feeling to walk around your own party, talking to your guests, wondering if one of them had taken a shot at you with a large pistol fitted with a silencer.
I had never been to Kang’s office, or to any police office for that matter. It didn’t look like a place laid out with much thought for the occupants. The furnishings were assorted hand-me-downs from earlier generations of law enforcement and the chair he offered me was very hard indeed.
Kang was behind his desk, watching me while I talked. He looked less like a policeman than ever, sitting there with his elbows supporting his hands, with fingertips just touching. He might have been a schoolmaster listening to a pupil.
“I don’t understand why you had a posse of police watching my place,” I finished. “Did you expect something like this to happen?”
“I thought the party might present an opportunity. I must admit, though, I never thought of a gun fitted with a silencer.”
“You mean you expected your men to be able to get to my corpse quicker than anyone else?”
Kang laughed. He was genuinely amused.
“If anything did happen, I wanted them handy, shall we put it like that?”
“Thanks. I don’t see much protection value for me in all this.”
“Mr. Harris, if I’d phoned up and asked you to allow policemen in your grounds and mixing with your guests what would your answer have been?”
“I’d have said no.”
“I’m surprised at the moderation of your language this morning. But it is unnerving to be shot at, isn’t it?”
“Somewhat.”
“Tell me about this servant of yours.”
“I talked to him alter. He didn’t see a thing. My wife sent him to look for me. That was the only reason he was there.”
“I see. You know about his past history?”
“Well, he’s been a servant all his days. The best one we ever had. Devoted to my son, and to my wife.”
“Yes. He saw nothing. Did he hear the gun?”
“He heard the pop, that’s all it was. I must say he was scared silly. He still looked sick when he served breakfast this morning.”
“An alarming experience for a devoted domestic.”
“Inspector, you’re not telling me all you know. You’re keeping something back. Russell Menzies thinks so, too.”
“Ah, but lawyers are suspicious characters. I am not keeping from you anything that I know, Mr. Harris. If I knew more I might be able to make an arrest.”
“All right, you’re keeping back something that you guess.”
“That I will agree. And I must keep it back. Because I have no proof that would hold in court, nothing that comes near it. Look, Mr. Harris, I think you have come to change your opinion of me somewhat?”
“Yes.”
“Well, don’t err too far to the other side. The police work in the dark a lot of the time. They feel about in it. If you are getting the idea that I have a clear picture of something about which I am not talking, I don’t. Very far from a clear picture. And you might even say that the only reason I had my men at your gates was a kind of hunch. If my guess was anywhere near, then the party would provide the kind of opportunity a murderer might choose. By the way, you knew that Kim Sung was there?”
I looked at him.
“Would you retire from the police, Inspector, if I offered you a partnership?”
He sat back and laughed. Then he returned to the old position, fingers touching.
“You were in the rockery not for a breath of fresh air as the jaded host, but to meet Kim Sung?”
“I put all my cards on the table, every damn’ one.”
“Thank you. Kim Sung could have fired that pistol.”
“How did you know he was in the place?”
“There were only three hired cars used. We checked up on who was driving them. It was easy.”
“Everything is too damn’ easy. I present the easiest target. I think I’ll have your boys back. And I’ll give them tea at regular intervals.”
“I do not feel, Mr. Harris, that you are normally in danger. Only on occasion.”
“I’ll send you my diary and you can decide when I need a bodyguard.”
“I’d be most fascinated to have your diary. But to get back to Kim Sung, he could have shot you. I should say that when the shot was fired he couldn’t have been much farther away than this servant.”
“Perhaps not, but he didn’t shoot at me. If he’d wanted to do that there have been a thousand perfectly good opportunities in the last fifteen years.”
“Circumstances alter, Mr. Harris.”
“They haven’t altered as far as Kim Sung is concerned. To Kim my life ought to be exquisitely valuable. He comes within the Harris and Co. profit sharing scheme. And it’s a very good scheme. Even if he was offered bribes, quite big ones, to do me in, it wouldn’t be worth his while from any long term financial prospect.”
“How sensible of you to build up loyalty of your subordinates on such a sound fiscal basis. Very well, we�
�ll eliminate Kim. Actually, he wasn’t really in my mind as the man with the gun. Incidentally, does anyone beside the servant know about what happened last night?”
“No. Just the gunman, you and me and the Goldfish. I swore him to secrecy.”
“You hadn’t thought of telling your wife?”
“It’s the last thing I’d do. She’s nervous enough as it is since Jeff was killed.”
“Quite. The fewer people who know the better. I wouldn’t, for instance, advise you to tell Mr. Menzies.”
“I’m not going to. Look, Inspector, when I was in bed up in Penang you said that Jeff’s killer had thrown away his gun because he didn’t intend to do any more killing.”
“I’ve revised that theory.”
“You’re a great comfort. What do I do, just trust in Inspector Kang?”
“I’ll do my best. It’s taken you a long time to come to that trust.”
“I know. I’m sorry about that. Inspector, I wouldn’t like to have you on my tail if I’d been a killer.”
He smiled.
“And you haven’t been, Mr. Harris? Oh, how reassuring. I must remember to add your declaration to this effect to our dossier on you.”
“Is it fat?”
“Plump, Mr. Harris, plump.”
“What do I do now? Avoid crowds?”
“Not exactly. My view is that the murderer chose the party because practically everyone you knew socially and in the business world in Singapore would be there. A similar occasion is not likely to occur in the immediate future, is it? If you have any plans of that sort, please let me know about them. You might even allow us to penetrate into the shrubbery.”
“You can come right into the house.”
“With the millionaires. I’ll look forward to it.” Then he added, “Oh, there’s one thing I’ve been meaning to tell you. We have released that poor fisherman who was so helpful to your brother. It seemed to us, on reflection, that after all that Leica might have been issued by your brother as something in the line of the man’s duty, you understand? I’m not asking you to give me your opinion on that. And it all seems rather unimportant now, I must admit, with active murderers about. But the fellow is now back to his fishing. We even let him keep the Leica.”
“What humane and pleasant chaps you really are.”