The Jade Figurine Read online

  After that, there is only blackness.

  And the sound of Pete screaming.

  Blackness.

  Screaming.

  Blackness.

  Screaming. . . .

  I came out of it very quickly, the way I usually come out of it. I was kneeling on the wet, rumpled sheets of my bed, and my body was coated with a hot and viscid sweat. My heart hammered brutally, irregularly, inside my chest cavity.

  I knelt there without moving for a long time, until the last vestiges of the dream evaporated and the sounds were gone from my ears. Then I drew back the mosquito netting and sat on the edge of the bed with my head hanging between my knees. How many more nights would I relive what had happened on Penang? How many more nights would I feel the blackness surround me, and hear the tortured death cries of Pete Falco? Rhetorical questions. It had been two years now, but the dream still came three or four nights a month—stilt vivid, still frightening, a nightmare within a nightmare.

  I stood and crossed on rubbery legs to the rattan chair near my bed, where I had draped my clothes the night before. I put on my khaki trousers and went into the half-bath. My lacerated hands inside the gauze wrappings throbbed and burned, and I put a fresh coating of salve on the cuts and abrasions; then I filled a carafe with tepid water from the tap and poured it over my head and neck.

  I was toweling myself dry when the knock came at the door.

  Frowning, I went out there, the towel draped around my neck. I stood to one side of the door and listened to whoever it was knock again—soft, insistent. Pretty soon I said, “Who is it?”

  “Police,” a cultured and unfamiliar voice answered. The accent was Malay.

  Now what the hell? I thought. I unbarred the door and opened it just far enough so that I could look out, blocking it with my body. He was a little man, wiry, dark-skinned, with very large and very intelligent black eyes, kinky blue-black hair that reminded you of poodle fur, and a thin, humorless mouth. A neat, conservative white suit, with a crisply laundered white shirt beneath it, comprised his dress; and his plain black shoes had been polished until they were bright mirrors.

  I let my body relax and pulled the door wide. He said, “You are Mr. Daniel Connell?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I am Inspector Kok Chin Tiong, of the Singapore polis. I would like to speak with you, please.”

  “What about?”

  “May I come in?”

  “I’m a lousy housekeeper.”

  “Tida apa,” he said without smiling.

  I shrugged and stood aside for him. When he had entered, he stood looking around and wrinkling his nose as if something smelled peculiar to him. His eyes were expressionless. He waited until I had closed the door before saying, “You have had an accident, Mr. Connell?”

  “What?”

  “The bandages on your hands.”

  “Yes, an accident,” I said shortly.

  His black eyes searched my face for a moment, and then he put his hands behind his back and walked to the window. He looked down at Punyang Street below, at the palpitating ebb and flow of Chinese there, at the arcaded market stalls with their infinite variety of goods spread out in rows on the littered street and in the shadows of the Five Foot Ways—covered walkways which are formed by the supporting pillars and the jutting overhang of the buildings. I could hear the voices of hawkers extolling the virtues of their wares, rising above the strident, excited singsong of their potential customers. An automobile horn punctuated the din with short, sharp, angry blasts.

  Tiong said finally, turning, “Do you know a French national by the name of La Croix, Mr. Connell?”

  I went to the rattan armchair and shook a cigarette from the pack there. “Why?”

  “Do you?”

  “I might.”

  Tiong rubbed at his upper lip with the tip of one forefinger. “Are you familiar with the Severin Road, near Bedok, Mr. Connell?”

  “A little. It runs through a mangrove swamp, doesn’t it?”

  He nodded. “The French national was found there shortly past two o’clock this morning by a native boy hunting frogs,” he said. “Shot once through the heart—and five times in the face—with a .25-caliber weapon.”

  Very carefully, I stubbed out my cigarette in a ceramic ashtray on the table near the bedroom door. I held a long breath and then let it out slowly between my teeth. “Five bullets in the face does a lot of damage,” I said. “How did you make an identification?”

  “His papers had not been disturbed. And we discovered a rented automobile, leased by him, not far from his body.”

  “I suppose you think I had something to do with it. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  “Did you, Mr. Connell?”

  “No.”

  “Among the French national’s effects was a scrap of paper containing your name and address,” Tiong said. “Do you know why he would have such a paper?”

  I decided to level with him; there was no point in doing anything else. “He came to see me yesterday morning. It was the first time I’d laid eyes on him in over two years.”

  “What was the purpose of his visit?”

  “He wanted to hire me.”

  “To do what?”

  “Fly him out of Singapore.”

  “To what destination?”

  “The Thai coast, near Bangkok.”

  “Singapore has excellent airline service to Thailand,” Tiong said pointedly.

  “Yeah.”

  “What was his reason for not utilizing the normal modes of transportation?”

  “He didn’t give me one.”

  “He only said he wished you to fly him to Thailand?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Did you agree to do this?”

  “No.

  “And why not?”

  “I don’t fly any more,” I said.

  “Ah yes,” Tiong said. “Your commercial and private pilot’s license was revoked two years ago, was it not? Because of a certain incident on the island of Penang?”

  I said nothing. He was obviously well aware of the incident on Penang, and the ensuing investigation of it.

  Tiong smiled faintly. “Why do you suppose, Mr. Connell, that the French national would seek you out in particular with his request?”

  “We had dealings once, a long time ago.”

  “What type of dealings?”

  I met his eyes squarely. “I’d rather not say.”

  He touched his upper lip again, and we stood for a time with our eyes locked. Finally he said, “I would like to know your whereabouts last evening, Mr. Connell.”

  “The Old Cathay Bar.”

  “All evening?”

  “Most of it.”

  “What time did you arrive?”

  “Midafternoon.”

  “And what time did you leave?”

  “Around ten o’clock.”

  “Do you own a gun, please?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Have you ever owned one?”

  “A long time ago.”

  “What was it?”

  “A German Walther.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “I don’t have any idea.”

  “Would you object to a search of your quarters?”

  “Be my guest,” I said, “but I’ll tell you something, Inspector.”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re wasting your time coming around to me. I didn’t kill La Croix. I didn’t have any reason to kill him. But I’ve got an idea who might have done it. Look up a guy named Van Rijk, Jorge Van Rijk, and ask him the same questions you’ve just asked me.”

  Tiong’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know of Van Rijk?”

  I still didn’t want to get involved in whatever this thing was. But what had happened last night on Betar Road, and La Croix’s death—the way Tiong had said he died—seemed to make it necessary now. “We had a little chat yesterday,” I told him. “He knew I had spoken with La Croix, and he thoug
ht I knew where La Croix had gone after he left here. He tried to find out what we had discussed. I wouldn’t give him any answers, and he made a few very plain threats. Last night, when I left the Old Cathay, the two men he had had with him earlier jumped me on Betar Road. One of them, a Eurasian, took a few shots at me with a small caliber automatic—a .25, maybe.” I lifted my bandaged hands. “I had to go over a couple of fences, one of them capped with barbed wire, to get away from him, and that’s how this happened.”

  Tiong digested the information. Then he said slowly, “I see.”

  “I take it you’re familiar with Van Rijk,” I said.

  “We know of him, yes.”

  “Just who the hell is he?”

  “Ostensibly, a tobacco merchant.”

  “Ostensibly?”

  “We have reason to believe he has other, more profitable —and less legal—interests.”

  “He can’t have been on Singapore long.”

  “As a matter of fact, no. Less than a year.” He studied me clinically. “How did you know?”

  I shrugged. “Lucky guess.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Look, La Croix was pretty damned shaken up when I talked to him yesterday. He wanted to get out of Singapore in a hurry. Judging from that little incident last night, I’d say it was Van Rijk he was frightened of. And that he had good cause.”

  “Perhaps,” Tiong said noncommittally. “You still maintain the French national told you nothing other than his wish to hire you to transport him to Thailand?”

  “I still maintain it,” I said, “because it’s the truth. Listen, Inspector, I’ve told you everything I know. I’ve co-operated with you right down the line. I’m sorry La Croix is dead—he was a lot of things, maybe, but he was also something of a friend of mine once—and I’d like to see you get your hands on whoever killed him. I know the kind of reputation I’ve got with you, and there’s nothing I can do to change it—except to stay clean the way I’ve done for the last two years. Am I making my position clear?”

  “Quite clear, Mr. Connell.”

  “Fine. Now if there’s nothing else, I’d like to get dressed. I have to be at work in less than an hour.”

  “You are employed where currently?”

  “Harry Rutledge’s godown, on Keppel Road. At least for today, anyway.”

  Tiong nodded slightly, studying me, and then he stepped across to the door, opened it, turned again. “You will, of course, make yourself available in the event your assistance is required in the future.”

  “I’m not planning to go anywhere.”

  “Then, selamat jalan for now, Mr. Connell.”

  When he had gone, I stood there for a time in the quiet heat of the room. I had the feeling he had not quite believed me, that he thought I was holding back on something; reputations die very hard in Southeast Asia—as hard, sometimes, as men like La Croix, who help to build them in the first place. I also had the feeling that my assistance would be required again, all right.

  And soon—very soon.

  Chapter Six

  TWO O’CLOCK.

  The sun bore down with burning fingers on the bared upper half of my body, and the back of my neck felt blotched and raw from the roote hond. Thick sweat had chafed my crotch beneath the khaki trousers I wore, had formed beneath the bandages on my hands; the barbed wire cuts burned hellishly as I worked.

  I set my teeth and rolled another barrel of palm oil from the deck of the tongkang across the wide, flat gangplank and onto the dock. One of the Chinese coolies took it there and put it onto a wooden skid. An ancient forklift—belching smoke in rancid cumulus, operated by a barefoot Tamil —waited nearby.

  I rubbed the back of one forearm across my eyes and thought about the taste of an iced beer when we were through for the day. It was a fine thought, and I was dwelling on it when Harry Rutledge came out of the godown and walked over to me.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Another hour or so should do it, Harry.”

  “Well, you’ve got a visitor, ducks.”

  “Visitor?”

  “Bit of a pip, too, for a bloody Aussie,” Harry said. “You Yanks have all the effing luck.”

  “A woman?”

  He nodded. “Fetch Mr. Dan Connell, she tells me. Urgent. Now I don’t like the birds coming round here bothering my lads when they’re on the job. But like I said, she’s quite a dolly. Young, too. Never could say no to them.”

  “Did she give you a name, Harry?”

  “Marla, she says. Marla King.”

  I did not know any woman named Marla King. “Did she say what she wanted?”

  “Not a word of it.”

  I frowned a little. “Okay,” I said. “Where is she?”

  “My office,” he told me. “You know where it is.”

  “Thanks, Harry.”

  He gave me a grin. “My pleasure, ducks.”

  I picked up my bush jacket and put it on without buttoning it, and then went inside the huge, high-raftered godown and threaded my way through the stacked barrels and crates and skids to Harry’s small office. There was a window set into the wall beside the door, facing into the warehouse, but the glass was speckled and dust-streaked; I didn’t get a look at the woman until I had opened the door and stepped inside.

  She was sitting in the bamboo armchair near Harry’s cluttered desk, wearing a tailored white suit and fanning herself with a jarang sun hat. Her skirt was very short, and she had her legs crossed at the knees; they were good legs, if a little heavy, and tanned the same odd sort of coffee-with-cream color as her face and arms. Thick butter-yellow hair, worn short and shag-cut, curled under small ears like beckoning fingers. Her eyes were a kind of sea-green, shallow green; she wore too much shadow on the lids, giving the eyes a veiled look that was at the same time sensuous and too-wise. She was on the near side of thirty, but she was coming up fast.

  She sat watching me as I closed the door. The red oval of her mouth was stretched into a speculative smile. “Dan Connell?” She had one of these whisky voices—distinctly Australian in accent—that would sound fine and caressing in a bedroom, but which seemed only theatrical in the hot, airless space of a godown office.

  I said, “That’s right. Miss King, is it?”

  “Marla King.” She lifted her right hand, with the wrist crooked down, like a Southern belle greeting a suitor. All she would have needed was a frilly dress and a mint julep.

  I took the hand and let go of it again. “What was it you wanted to see me about, Miss King?”

  “The Burong Chabak,” she answered.

  “The what?”

  “The jade figurine, of course.”

  “I don’t think I follow.”

  She laughed softly. “You’re being careful. Well, that’s natural. It is all right to talk here, isn’t it?”

  “If the conversation makes sense.”

  “I think we can arrange a deal where the Burong Chabak is concerned,” she said. “Does that make sense for you?”

  “No.”

  The smile went away, and her face took on a brittle cast, as if she were entering a transitional state between quiet patience and cold fury. “The figurine belongs to me now.”

  “Does it?”

  “La Croix is dead, isn’t he?”

  La Croix again. For Christ’s sake! I said, “Just who are you, Miss King?”

  “A friend of La Croix’s.”

  “What sort of friend?”

  “We had a partnership agreement.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning the figurine.”

  “What in hell is this figurine you keep talking about? Look, Miss King, we’re going around in circles.”

  “You deny that you have it?”

  “I don’t know anything about it ”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You think La Croix gave me this figurine, is that it?”

  “Either that, or you killed him for it.”
/>   I stared at her. She was the second person today who had all but directly accused me of murdering the Frenchman, and I was beginning to grow damned weary of it. Well, all right. It was time I found out what this was all about; you can only keep out of something, can only maintain your neutrality, if those who are involved allow you to—and nobody seemed to be willing to let me off the hook.

  I said, “This figurine—tell me about it.”

  “That would be pointless, under the circumstances.”

  “Humor me.”

  “The affair was reported in the Straits Times.”

  “I make it a point never to read the newspapers.”

  She stopped fanning herself with the sun hat and leaned forward on her chair, looking up at me with greed shining like firelight in the depths of her eyes. “All right, then. Early last week, a white jade figurine—the Burong Chabak —disappeared from an exhibit at the Museum of Oriental Art here in Singapore. The figurine is priceless, although it was insured for two hundred thousand Straits dollars. Double that can be gotten at the right source in the South China Sea, Connell. Four hundred thousand Straits dollars.”

  “And you and La Croix were the ones responsible for the disappearance of this Burong Chabak.”

  “He committed the actual theft.”

  “Sure. What happened then?”

  “Then?”

  “How did La Croix get the figurine for himself? If you’re looking for it, the two of you had to have gotten mixed up on your signals somewhere along the line. Either that, or he tried to double-cross you.”

  “Of course he tried to double-cross me!” Her hands gripped the bamboo arms of the chair, and the jarang hat dropped unnoticed to the dusty floor. “He was a fool, a stupid fool.”

  “And so you killed him for it.”

  “I killed him?” She laughed in a masculine, derisive way. “I had no idea where he was. But you knew, didn’t you? He’d been to see you.”

  “How did you find that out?”