I had to do something about that, and about the pulpy bruise on the side of my head, and about the stinging marks on my wrist where the langsat mongrel had sunk its teeth. But first, I needed rest, sleep, a void where there was no pain and no confusion. I could afford that now, I was safe here, they wouldn’t find me here.
Rest.
Rest…
Chapter Fifteen
I awoke trembling, drenched in cold-hot sweat.
I had no idea how long I had slept-been unconscious — but the silence seemed deeper somehow, the way it gets well past midnight. Mosquitoes crawled and fed on my face, and I had no strength to brush them away. The fever burned brightly inside me. Rhythmic pain pulsated in my temples, my right arm.
What now, dead man? I thought.
I had gotten away from Dinessen, and I had gotten away from Tiong and his men, and I was still free and still alive-if just barely. But where did I go from here? I was wrapped up, imprisoned, in a web of circumstance so neatly and so beautifully that there was no way out, no way to prove my innocence. Dinessen had killed Marla King, and Dinessen was dead; and I had been found with Marla King’s body to top it off. There was simply nothing I could do to convince Tiong of the truth-especially after the way I had run. He would put the whole bundle on my head, too; he would decide I had the figurine, and that I had killed La Croix, and if he was able to dig up a connection between Dinessen and Marla King, he would revise the toll upward to three murders once the Swede’s body was discovered.
By this time he would have posted men at the harbor and on the Johore Causeway and at the airport, and he would have dozens of others out combing the island for me. I was trapped on Singapore and trapped in the web, with no real choice except to keep on running. The odds were too great with any other alternative. There was the slim possibility that if I could find the Burong Chabak, find out who had killed La Croix, and lay them both in Tiong’s lap, I would be able to talk my way out of most of the jam. A prayer. But if Marla King had killed the Frenchman, I was still a loser; and if Van Rijk had killed him, I had no illusions that I could get to Van Rijk, force a confession out of him, before either he or the police got to me. And, in spite of what La Croix apparently had told Dinessen, I had no idea where the figurine was secreted. No, my only chance was to run, to pick up the pieces somewhere else once I was free of the island, to swallow the bitterness of injustice and begin all over again with a new identity and a new hope.
But before I could even think about making preparations for getting out of Singapore, I had to have my wounds attended to, and fresh clothes, and time to rest and time to think. I couldn’t stay where I was-and yet, I had nowhere else to go, no friends I could trust, no…
Tina Kellogg.
The name popped into my mind, and instantly I tried to push it away. No. No-I had no right to drag her into a thing like this, not after the way I had treated her, not in any case. Christ, she was just a kid, a bright-eyed little girl, and I could jeopardize her future by going to her, by involving her; if Tiong found out about it, he would jail her without compunction for aiding and abetting.
But Tiong didn’t have to find out. All I wanted was some medical attention from her; a place to spend the night. I would leave in the morning, and the pain in my arm, the fever, the possible infection, I needed help, I had to have help, and there was nobody else and I wanted to live, I was innocent and I wanted to live…
I knew I was going to do it.
You stop being noble and unselfish when your life is at stake-it was as pure and simple as that.
I thought about the Citroen, and wondered if it was still parked on Jalan Tenah. There was nothing at this point to tie Dinessen to me, and so there was no reason why Tiong would have paid any attention to the Citroen, why he would have had it removed from the area. If it was still there, if I could get to it, I would have transportation to the Katong Bahru Housing Estate; the key to the car was still in my pocket. Two things were certain: I couldn’t walk to the estate, and I couldn’t take any public conveyance. The only other alternative was to steal a car, and in a conscientious and wary city like Singapore, that wouldn’t be simple.
I wished I knew the time. If it was late enough, Tiong might have called off the search of the area and things would have settled down and become quiet again. There was still the chance that he had left one constable, or two, to watch Number Seven Tampines Road-but after the removal of Marla King’s body, he wouldn’t expect me to have a reason to return there.
I knew I had to get out of this mangrove brake now, that I couldn’t afford to wait. Unless I moved soon, I would be too weak to move at all. I leaned away from the palm bole and lifted my body onto my knees. The thunder began inside my head again, raging. I set my teeth and began to crawl out the way I had come in.
When I reached the edge of the bank, I parted some of the resilient bamboo stalks and peered across the stream and across the road at the bungalows on the other side. No lights showed anywhere, and there was no discernible movement. The moon was high and bright amid brilliantine stars, the clouds completely gone. In the creek below, the rushing water had shrunk to half its earlier size-and that in itself told me a considerable amount of time had passed since I had crawled into the brake.
I worked my way down the bank, crossed the stream, and crept up to the roadway. It took me a minute to get to my feet, but once standing I seemed to be all right. I tried a couple of mincing, experimental steps. My knees buckled, stiffened, held my weight. I shuffled across the road, to the left, keeping in the shadows. When I reached the corner, I turned right on the street paralleling Tampines Road; every house was shrouded in darkness, and there was only the singing of cicadas to intrude on the quiet.
Before I came to Jalan Tenah, I had to pause several times for rest. My face felt hot and flushed, and oily sweat formed thick pustules on my forehead that broke like thin blisters and ran down over my cheeks. Weakness turned my legs into rotted tree stumps, my arms into sapless branches.
I saw the Citroen as soon as I turned right on Jalan Tenah, still and dark where I had parked it earlier that evening. Luck seemed not to have deserted me completely. I moved toward the car, slowly and carefully, on the near side of the road. Moonshine washed the street, but the darkness was thick among the trees and fences and shrubbery. I paused several times to watch, to listen. Nothing moved. Distantly, a dog barked softly and then was quiet once more.
I drew abreast of the Citroen and hunkered down beneath a casuarina tree, looking across the moonlit roadway. I got the key out of my pocket, clenched it tightly against my left palm. Stillness. If Tiong had a man posted to watch Number Seven, he was either well-hidden somewhere along Jalan Tenah or Tampines Road, or staked out inside the bungalow itself. I knew the possibility existed that the car was a trap, that Tiong had somehow discovered its connection with me and had left it in position as bait; but the chances of that were slim. Dinessen’s body wouldn’t have been discovered yet, and there was nothing to link the Swede to me, his car to me.
Get it over with, I thought. You’re dead on your feet, in more ways than one.
I levered up and ran stumbling through the moonlight to the Citroen, jerked open the door. No whistles, no shouts. I lowered my body under the wheel, eased the door to, and fumbled the key into the ignition lock, awkwardly, with my left hand. The starter made a soft grinding noise when it turned over, but the engine caught immediately. I released the clutch, looking up at the rear-vision mirror; the street remained dark and empty.