‘Mrs Hammond.’ He bowed himself into the kitchen. ‘More men are being detailed to come immediately so we can make a thorough search both around the jeep and around your house.’ He paused, then pronounced in more serious and ponderous tones, ‘Also farther afield for the son of your former manager.’
‘What are you expecting to find?’ Blanche asked.
‘Well ... ’ The inspector paused to put his finger ends together as if steadying himself against this English mem and her disconcerting directness. ‘We cannot afford to overlook anything. Mr Harfield’s man found much on his own, so my trained men may find ... much more.’ He smiled disarmingly.
That afternoon there was a message from Bukit Kinta for George to return immediately — some difficulties with one of the dredgers.
‘Shall I try to ring back,’ Blanche asked.
‘No, I’d better go. It’s getting on for time and I’ve a mechanic whose favourite tool is a big hammer if I’m not there to restrain him.’
It seemed to Liz that hardly had the mine manager left Rinsey than his men digging holes for the fencing and lighting posts became severely hampered by the police, whose search was closing around the bungalow. Some of the officers were working slowly over the area just looking, others with stout bamboo poles prodding and poking the ground.
‘I wish they’d hurry up,’ Liz exclaimed, thinking she had spent most of her day watching men take decisions and do things, while she and her mother wandered around the bungalow from window to window, as if the mental seige they felt under also restricted them physically.
Blanche came to her side, inhaling on yet another cigarette. ‘Those poles!’ Liz exclaimed. ‘Is that all really necessary? What are they doing?’
‘I just know enough about gardening to know a cane goes into the ground much easier where it has been dug.’
She had hardly screwed out her cigarette in the ashtray on the kitchen windowsill, and Liz just begun to put together the possible implications of what her mother had said, when one of the men shouted. Those nearby hurried that way, then the inspector arrived at a run.
The two women watched as the inspector took a pole from his man and gently probed into the earth under the great tree.
In a curious kind of flashback it seemed to Liz she saw her father sitting under the tree, with herself as a child reaching up and begging to look at a sketch he had made of her as she sat at his feet. It was like looking into a picture containing a picture of the original and on the picture another representation of the same scene. She felt a strange conviction that if only her mind had been capacious enough to hold all the images together, it would have been possible to go back in time to the original, to that very time.
So was the image confirmation of the worst possible scenario? Never had she felt so vulnerable, so unprotected.
The kitchen window seemed suddenly like a proscenium arch, with overgrown lawn as theatre apron, the trees a backdrop with policemen and poles. Friendly guardsman entering and coming towards front stage, while lesser players entered stage left, carrying spades.
Chapter Eight
Some of the police had begun digging while others rigged tarpaulins. The very discretion of the screening sheets added to the anxiety. The noise of the spades and the quiet talk of the men went on, it seemed to Liz, endlessly.
Blanche went to the study at the far side of the bungalow where it was quiet. She sat at first looking haphazardly through the desk drawers. Liz stood and watched for a time, leaning in the doorway.
‘I’ll write to your aunt Ivy,’ her mother suddenly decided, pulling out air-mail notepaper. ‘I shall write what is happening now and ... ’ She paused, then added quickly, ‘add the result of the ... police activity. If necessary I’ll ask if she’ll go and see Wendy, take her home with her for a time.’
‘Good idea,’ Liz agreed huskily. ‘She’ll need some spoiling.’ Blanche’s sister, married but childless, had always been more like a second mother to the girls than an aunt. She left her mother writing with some degree of fevered concentration — while she seemed doomed to spend another day wandering aimlessly about.
A man emerged from the tarpaulins, his mouth and nose shrouded in a tightly knotted scarf. Without the slightest conscious intention she found herself outside and heading for the screens.
Someone called and she began to run.
She peered over: the police were in special overalls; the hole was deep — and the smell appalling. She registered no more as voices were raised in protest and arms waved her away. She turned, gasping, staggering into the path of the young guardsman hurrying to her side. They caught each other, but she snatched free to retch dryly. The smell felt lodged for ever in her throat. ‘I had to see if ... if there was anything to see. What have they found?’
His height made it possible for him to support her closely, tucking her under his arms as it were, then turning and walking her slowly away. ‘They won’t tell me, obviously, but something’s been buried quite deep there, by someone strong, according to Chemor. Look.’ He stopped and turned her round to look back at the scene. ‘Themor pointed out how the leaves on the big tree, there way above the tarpaulins, have died. He says it is because someone has cut the main roots. I understand he told them to dig there.’
The turn had lessened his supporting hold, and for a moment she wanted to lean back again just for the sheer comfort of a man’s strength. Pride made her resist the urge — he’d be thinking she did nothing but faint away. ‘I’m all right now,’ she said. Then, as she looked from tree to screens, either a breeze or her memory resurrected the smell. ‘No, I’m not.’
‘No,’ he endorsed and held her so firmly that even if she had fainted clean away, she would not have fallen. ‘I did suggest you and Mrs Hammond be taken back to Bukit Kinta until this was over and the fencing built. But they didn’t think you would go.’
That was a fair assumption, she thought, considering the performance her mother had put up at the Ipoh police station and the persistence they had shown in returning to Rinsey. ‘Not so sure today.’ She forced herself to smile up at him, she felt that wry quality of it on her lips, but saw understanding in his eyes, intense, total understanding. ‘I feel I wouldn’t mind running away for an hour or two.’
She felt the span and pressure of his fingers on her waist increase, comforting. ‘I don’t have to be on network call again until eighteen hundred hours,’ he said, then paused as they came to the front of the bungalow, ‘but unless we kidnap a police vehicle …
He felt her body straighten from him and tentatively he released her again. She had walked a few paces when a voice from the site of the digging was raised in a tone of alarm.
They both strained to hear. Another man pacified and ordered mildly, then the sound of the spades slicing into the ground was heard again.
The incident had caught Liz mid-stride and so she remained until it was over. Then a long shuddering groan escaped her and she grasped her head with both hands as if the thoughts inside might well burst it open.
Alan moved swiftly to hold on to her again as she screwed her fingers into her hair. He was alarmed by the violence of this grief, this biblical rending and tearing, afraid it might be doing her actual harm.
‘Please ... ’ As he restrained her, she gestured towards the plantation, beyond the shy, worried glances of the Malays digging out the post holes.
Alan took her gently forwards, both arms shielding and supporting, taking her into the trees, into the privacy of mazing trunks and patches of neglected undergrowth. When he would have stopped, she took the lead and kept walking, following a kind of path which had obviously been walked quite recently.