A man came charging along his path, but with hands lifted. Alan half raised himself, showing his rifle.
‘Don’t shoot,’ the man said urgently, pushing his hands higher towards the sky.
Alan removed the safety catch from his rifle, slowly stood up and directed the man back along the path at gunpoint. ‘Slowly,’ he warned him. ‘If you dive I shoot.’
The man walked the middle of the path, never veering, never lowering his hands by a millimetre. As he neared the turtle pots Alan saw the major and Dan.
‘Good man!’ the major said, seeing the prisoner.
‘Speak to you, sir,’ Alan requested, trying to keep calm. If armed men were still in the house with the turtle pots ... ’
The major nodded to the sergeant to take over the prisoner. Alan walked away a little and placed himself so that he screened Sturgess from possible gunfire from the amah’s house.
‘I think the Hammonds’ old nurse lives there. Miss Hammond mentioned those turtle pots and described Josef Guisan. I’m sure I saw him standing in the doorway before the shooting started. I think he’s still inside with two more.’
The major’s face hardened but he did not move a muscle. ‘Ready to go in with me then, Cresswell.’ It was not a question. ‘We’ll saunter back towards the sergeant, then take the steps at a run. OK, off we go!’
Alan was at the major’s side as they walked back towards Sergeant Mackenzie. Perhaps the expression on their faces, or the angle of his rifle as he again drew back the safety catch, made the sergeant ready for action. ‘Take the back!’ Sturgess shouted at him as he and Alan took the front steps at a run and charged into the house.
Alan immediately remembered Liz’s question, ‘Did you see my old amah? An oldish Malay woman in a black sarong and a coolie hat?’
The coolie hat lay on one chair and the Malay woman in black lay in the other as if she had just walked back from the funeral. A boy of ten crouched against her, his arms across her body as if protecting her.
Alan made calming gestures with one hand as they circled the room, gently parting the bead curtain to search the far end and look out of the back door. There was a scuffle, a challenge, then shots and more shouting.
‘Two of them, sir,’ the sergeant shouted.
Back in the main room the old woman now had the boy in her arms. It seemed to Alan that she was restraining him as much as holding him in a caring embrace. Before they could begin to ask questions, the boy made a rolling, exaggerated movement with his eyes — upwards towards the ceiling.
It was not wasted on either of the men, but neither looked up. Both their minds seemed to be working as one, for Alan calculated the spot above them the boy had indicated — and wished they had the Bren gunner with them. Sturgess lifted his revolver as if to put it back in its holster. ‘On with the Nutcracker Suite then, Cresswell,’ he said.
The shots ran out together. Alan pumped his full magazine up into the bamboo roof. The effect was devastating. There was a cry as of someone being hit, then they thought for a moment they were being fired back at as a serious of rapid reports rang out and bullets careered in wild fashion through the house, whining and ricocheting off at all angles. A mirror shattered behind them, glass ornaments burst as if in excited sympathy, the whole structure of the house shook and cracked as above them as flames took immediate hold of dry inner wood. It was like being shut inside a gigantic box of prematurely sparked fireworks.
‘Christ!’ Sturgess exclaimed, grabbing the boy’s arm. ‘Ammunition in the roof. Let’s get out!’
Alan bent low and swept the old Malay up into his arms. The bright heat of flames was spreading all around them with the rapidity of a petrol-soaked bonfire. He saw slithers of bamboo like shards of sharp steel impale themselves into the cushions of the chair he had lifted her from. Crouching low over her, he ran.
As he reached the verandah he glanced back, glimpsing a man, the tall blond man, dropping down from the roof like Lucifer into hell, rifle in hand.
Alan jumped down the steps and fell but tried to keep Liz’s old nurse shielded from the man above. He heard Mackenzie and the major bellow challenges. Someone ran across to where they lay; he could feel the vibration of the ground, saw a pair of army jungle boots near him. The man above him challenged.
‘All right, Guisan! It’s over!’
There was a shot. The man above him swore and dropped to his knees. Several other shots rang out.
Alan raised himself to find George Harfield bent over him, holding his forearm. Some paces from the house Josef Guisan had dropped his rifle and was clutching his face. He nearly fell, but then he began a half-crouching, swerving run towards the jungle. Shots came from several directions in the village, then more from farther down one of the tracks. Even as Alan rose and helped the nurse farther away from the still exploding house, he was sure the man had escaped.
‘Next time, Guisan!’ George Harfield said quietly. He still clutched his forearm.
Alan nodded at it. ‘I’ll put you a pad on it.’
‘I don’t think it’s much.’
‘Take care of it, though, better covered straight away,’ Alan bound up the deep score over the outside of the mine manager’s forearm.
‘Glad it wasn’t my head,’ George commented dryly as the field dressing was wound puttee fashion up his arm.
The major took the nurse to sit on the steps of another house and appeared to be questioning her. When he came back he seemed fairly satisfied, and all in all when notes were compared they felt the operation had been a success.
‘We’ve got six and three dead, two of those I think are on the official wanted pictures with rewards on their heads. That was undoubtedly Guisan, he’s obviously been terrorising the old woman into concealing him. She says the ammunition was down inside the bigger bamboos in the roof. She has marks across her face where he struck her for attending Neville Hammond’s funeral. If ever there was a bastard ... Unfortunately he seems to have got clear,’ Sturgess commented as the last of two units collected in the centre of the village.
‘But he’s injured.’ There was a grim note in the broad Glaswegian postscript from the sergeant. ‘That’ll be no picnic in the jungle — and he may be out of favour with his mates after this little lot.’
‘And we’re not finished with him yet,’ the major said grimly.
Just then the hut, which had looked as if the fire was dying down, exploded with some force. There was little of it left at all now, but with an inclination of his head Alan asked permission of Sergeant Mackenzie to go over to the owner and her grandson.
‘Where will we go now?’ the boy was asking as he approached.
She did not answer, only shook her head, looking up at the blackened, smouldering ashes that had been her home and all her possessions. Alan noticed that the boy had no shoes and the woman no hat, and the hopeless perplexity of having nothing in the world but what they were wearing was in the dull despair in their eyes.
Alan looked back to where the men were giving reports, comparing notes, binding the prisoners’ hands. They were all busy about their duties, or work, or whatever it was they were all doing in this women’s country. This stoical little Malay in a black sarong, what could he do for her?
Then he knew. He reached for the oilskin-wrapped photograph and held it up before her eyes. ‘You should go to Rinsey,’ he told her. ‘You’re needed there.’
Chapter Eleven
Alan stood under the ‘shower’ — a bamboo frame surrounded by a tarpaulin, a bucket tipped by a string — and had difficulty in not breaking into song as the three-day grime and sweat was washed from his body. Three cheers, he thought, for dark-red Lifebuoy soap and the order long ago in England that had sent him on a signaller’s course.