Suddenly at Singapore (19 page)

“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.”

“But, of course.”

At the door I turned and looked at him.

“Inspector Kang, that offer of a partnership holds indefinitely.”

He bowed in his chair.

“Thank you, Mr. Harris. Even a policeman can get into the sort of disgrace which might well make him willing to consider such an offer. So kind of you.”

M
RS. BRADDOCK
and I were working things out together in the office. She was charming and cautious and never did anything without letting me in on it. I knew how badly she felt about not being in control of the telephone to my desk, so I gave in on that, as a tactical move, realising almost sadly as I did it that in a way Sylvia Flores had been right, it was something I wouldn’t have allowed with her.

“Your home is ringing now, Mr. Harris,” Mrs. Braddock said very sweetly through the inter-com, indicating that she was getting off the line at just the right moment.

“Ruth?”

“Oh, hallo, Paul. You just caught me. I’m on the way out.”

“I’m fed up. I’m sitting here with stacks of work I ought to get on with and I know I’m not going to. I suggest I leave it and you meet me at the swimming club for lunch. Then I’ll work late, and we can have dinner about nine.”

Ruth didn’t like the swimming club, there was too much sun out there, but recently I had only to make a suggestion to have her fall in with it. I wondered about this time.

“I was going out to Changi, Paul. They’ve got the stones for the chimney. I want to see that the colours are right.”

The chimney and fireplace was Ruth’s idea. It was to be something unique, a great open log fire burning at one end of the living-room. It was going to mean turning the air-conditioning up to top to make the atmosphere livable, but it would certainly be something out of the ordinary, a small sensation at the house warming.

“Couldn’t you choose your stones and meet me for lunch, too?”

“Yes, if you won’t mind me being a little late. I was only going to have a snack.”

“I don’t approve of these women’s snacks, you’re too thin.”

“I stay that way at my time of life by a continual vigilance. But it’ll be lovely having lunch with you. Maybe one-thirty?”

That hadn’t been quite my idea. It was Saturday afternoon, and I’d thought to be ready to plunge in the pool about twelve, with Ruth sitting under an umbrella watching while I showed off my crawl. But everything in marriage is a compromise.

“Fine. See you.” I got through to Mrs. Braddock. “I’m playing hookey, as from now. You do it, too.”

“Oh, Mr. Harris, the work I’ve got on hand will keep me until after one.”

“It’ll keep till Monday, Mrs. Braddock. These are the tropics. You’ve got to make a deliberate point of relaxing the tensions every now and then or you go pop.”

She laughed.

“I’d hate to do that. Well … if you don’t mind?”

“It’s an order. It would spoil my escape to think of you sitting here. I’m coming back later, though, I’ll probably be here until about half-past eight. But I won’t want overtime from you. Go away and play.”

The swimming club, after all these years, still gave me a kid’s pleasure to go into. I’d been a member ever since the days when my father bought me a boy’s ticket, and always when I walked through the cool lobby and smelled the sea and saw the glitter on it I got that feeling of lift. Saturday was the business men’s morning, but there were still plenty of children about, shouting, and the tow-headed ones were the best looking, a polished teak colour, and not afraid to go up to the top platform of the diving tower and come down from it like little brown bullets. Anyone who says the tropics are a bad place for the young ought to have a look at those kids. A lot of them may just be sent there with amahs to be kept out of the way, but they love it, just as I had.

Some of the business men weren’t so pretty to look at, banquet bellies spaced out under the groomed palms, but the unappealing nakedness of even these was in some way clothed by tan and made half respectable. There were the lean, keep fitters, too, grey but still well muscled, who would wither suddenly and go yellow when they were transported to retirement in a cold country. I could never understand why they planned to go home, and at a lot of farewell parties I wanted to say you’ll be sorry. But maybe they were scared, deciding to clear out before things blew up, thinking it better to take rheumatism and be safe.

My legs were still a little stiff, and the scars on them very noticeable, but the doctor told me swimming was the prescription and it was one I was ready to take. The slabs of paving by the pool were hot under my feet and the water below me a clear, aquamarine blue. I dived in.

The water was about seventy-five, ten degrees cooler than the air. It gave you a slight, invigorating shock, and then offered comfort. I surfaced and struck out to do two lengths and back without stopping, slowed down a little at one end by a kid’s water polo game that ought to have been broken up by this time. We had rules about this, the swarming children should have been swept out of the place by eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning.