‘No.’
‘Let’s try the other first reception countries.’ Again he tapped. Sat back, shaking his head and tapped again. ‘No. No luck in Malaysia, Singapore, any of them.’
‘There must be other possibilities.’
The inspector nodded, tapping his keyboard. ‘Some UN reception camps, Lutha Bol, Gulanga… no, I’m getting negatives from there too, I’m afraid.’
Max got up from his seat in front of the desk. He suddenly felt fear pressing down on him. A claustrophobic fear in this tiny office overpopulated by one fat Englishman and hemmed in by white high-rise buildings all around him. ‘She must have landed somewhere,’ he said desperately. ‘A month at sea isn’t possible, is it?’
He was willing the inspector to reassure him and the policeman knew it. He paused, looking up at Max. ‘Sit down, Mr Benning,’ he said. Max left the window and sat down again. ‘Now I could tell you what you want to hear. Or I could tell you the way it is. What do you want?’
‘I’ll take the truth.’
The inspector swung round in his leather armchair and pulled out invisible creases in his white uniform shirt. ‘At any time,’ he said, ‘thousands of Vietnamese boat people are in the Gulf of Thailand or the South China Sea. Some have compasses and navigation equipment; some have nothing. Some have engines, some have a few shreds of sail. Some have food and more important, water; some have very little…’
‘The girl I’m asking about would not have left unless she were well prepared. I’m sure of that.’
‘OK. Well prepared against sudden, violent storms? Well prepared against Vietnamese coastguard cutters? Well prepared against bounty hunters and pirates?’
‘Oh Christ.’
‘Mr Benning. A short time ago five thousand Vietnamese were landing per week in Hong Kong alone. Does that mean that ninety per cent of those who left Vietnam made it? Or eighty per cent? Or just fifty per cent?’ He looked down at his tanned arms. ‘We just don’t know, sir. We have no means of finding out. But we interview refugees. We hear their stories.’
‘What’s your estimate?’
The Englishman shrugged. ‘I don’t have one. But it’s a long and very dangerous journey. A lot of people don’t make it. I think you’ve got to face that fact.’ The inspector got up and took a bottle of whisky and a single glass from a cupboard. ‘The sun’s very nearly over the yardarm,’ he said. ‘It’ll do you good.’
Max took the whisky the inspector had poured. ‘These journeys,’ he said, ‘how long do they take on average?’
‘It depends on a dozen different factors. If the weather’s bad you can double the time.’
‘But the average?’ Max pressed.
The inspector replaced the whisky in the cupboard without pouring himself a drink. ‘Much less than six weeks, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Much, much less.’ Max put his drink on the desk. ‘You can’t believe it,’ the inspector nodded, echoing Max’s thoughts. ‘Go back to London and get your life going again. I’ll run her name through the UN listings for the next couple of weeks. If she comes up I’ll let you know. But she won’t, Mr Benning. Not now, not six weeks later.’
A few minutes later Max left the Seaguard police station and walked down the wharf. He knew the English policeman was right. As he walked slowly past the row of blue and white police launches he was thinking of the last evening he had spent in Ho Chi Minh City. Stopping now at the edge of the wharf, perhaps it was the lapping of the water against the jetty that brought to mind that first glimpse of the Eros Bar. The hotel building in the old French style with its balconies and shutters relieving a dull, rendered facade; the neon sign, long defunct, tracing out the name Eros, the thin glass tubes outlining a girl, hand on hip, head thrown back; the slogan posters thick on the door and windows. Before Bernadette had called down to him he had stood there beside the front door finding it had required little effort of the imagination to bring the Eros back to life, to see a bright, invitingly red door, to hear to the music, to watch the child Nan Luc run up the worn stone steps, as innocently at home at the Eros as her schoolfriends were in other houses, in other parts of Saigon. Standing there in the street he had been filled with the belief, more than that, the certainty, that he would find Nan Luc in Bangkok or Hong Kong. Storms, starvation, pirates in the South China Sea he had read about but applied to others. The idea that Nan Luc would not survive the voyage had simply not been allowed to engage his thoughts.
He lifted his head and saw at a second floor office window Inspector Ottenshaw watching him. Embarrassed at being seen, the inspector shrugged a clumsy gesture of regret and turned away.
There was something totally final in the gesture. Six weeks, it said, is far too long to prolong hope. Go back to London, the gesture said. Go back and start your life.
When Jill Borota of the registry phoned her friend Freda O’Keefe it was with intriguing news. ‘Freda honey,’ she said, ‘I’ve got news for you.’
‘What about?’
‘Your preposterously beautiful Viet, Nan Luc Hyn…’
‘What now?’ Freda drained her glass.
‘Somebody’s taken her name off the main register.’
Freda’s hand slowly brought the phone down. She was aware of having trouble grasping the significance of what her friend was breathlessly trying to tell her. She sat, the phone in her lap, squinting at the empty glass which she held at eye level.
‘You there, honey?’ Jill Borota’s voice was far away. ‘You heard what I said?’
Freda brought the phone to her ear. ‘You’re saying someone took her name off deliberately. Slowed her passage.’
‘You got it.’
‘You’re sure of this? It’s deliberate?’
‘Couldn’t be more so. Someone’s even cut the reinstatement signal.’
‘Johnny.’
‘He runs the office.’
‘Thanks Jill.’ Freda put the phone down.
Her instincts had been right. She had known it. Her husband was cheating on her. With the Vietnamese slut. You could buy them for nothing. She poured and drank a gin and tonic in one long draught. She felt as if the spirit was spreading through all the vital channels of her body. She heard Nan Luc coming down the stairs. Very quickly she poured another drink. No ice, very little tonic. Mostly gin.
Nan Luc came into the kitchen. ‘Good morning, Mrs O’Keefe,’ she said in her superior way. Why didn’t she have a heavy accent like the other Viets? She had an accent of course, but light, as if she were French.
‘It’s time you and me had a talk,’ Freda O’Keefe said. Nan Luc looked at her without speaking. ‘You’re having an affair with him.’ She finished her drink in one gulp.
‘I don’t understand you, Mrs O’Keefe.’
‘You understand me. I’m talking about my husband. The man you’re having an affair with.’
‘No,’ Nan Luc said. ‘I would be sorry if you thought that.’
‘You’d be sorry?’ Freda O’Keefe fumed.
‘I’d be sorry if you thought that because it’s not true.’
‘You’re lying. He’s paying you. He’s probably promised you a visa.’
‘In the time I’ve been here, Mrs O’Keefe,’ Nan Luc said evenly, ‘I’ve learnt enough to know that Mr O’Keefe alone can’t get me a US visa.’
‘You’re not answering my question, for Christ’s sake. He’s giving it to you.’