Alistair was interested. “Really? A great female element? Now I see why Tim has not introduced me. I shall have to insist. She sounds very interesting. What do you say, Tim? Do you think I’d find her interesting? Or are you keeping her for yourself?”
“She’s interesting, alright. Very interesting, and sexy too, but I don’t give you much of a chance. Hangchi seems to be taking all of her time at the moment. He takes her around Singapore, to places like the zoo and the bird park.”
“Hangchi? With a woman? I can’t believe it. He’s an old bachelor. I don’t think he knows what women are for.”
“You’re right. He probably thinks she’s his daughter. Or granddaughter.”
“Well, well, well. Now you’ve surprised me. If I were you, Papi, I’d be careful with that lady. You don’t want to be leading the Inspector’s daughter astray. I can’t imagine what he’d do to you. He’s already keeping a close eye on you.”
Papi acted surprised. “Me? Why would he be interested in me? I’m only a teacher.”
Alistair smiled. “Of course, Papi, but you do have business interests as well. I think he’s particularly interested in an illegal shipment that he found on the Aljunied estate. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
If Papi was troubled by the question, he gave no sign of it. “No, nothing at all. I can set his mind at rest.”
“Good, good. I just thought I’d mention it. Perhaps he should be looking at your friends…”
“I’m sure the good Inspector would be wasting his time. I don’t know where he gets his ideas. I have to tell you, Tim, that in Singapore Indian people are not always treated with fairness. Always Chinese people are suspicious of us, thinking the worst.”
Alistair smiled. “I’m sure it’s nothing. Now, what are you going to give us to eat, Papi. I’m starving.”
The food came quickly. Banana leaf platters were laid in front of them and a variety of small vegetable dishes covered the table. Tim served himself under Papi’s direction and ate small mouthfuls wrapped in torn chapatti. The variety was delicious, and he washed down the fiery food with more beer.
Papi spoke as a man with wide interests. They discussed business in Singapore and Malaysia, and it was clear that he had a personal involvement. Then they moved on to the oil industry and Papi questioned Tim closely in an effort to understand the process of drilling. Alistair tried to bring the conversation around to terrorism and Islam, but Papi would not be drawn. He claimed to know very little about it.
They left the restaurant together, feeling full and contented. Papi invited them to his office to sample his malt whisky. “You will see the room your wife comes to every week,” he said to Tim. “I hope you will find it interesting.”
They followed Papi across the road and up the steep steps leading to the ashram. For all his weight, he climbed nimbly and was soon unlocking the door. It opened into a large dark room with three tall windows letting in light from the street. Papi reached for the light switch but no light came. He flicked it on and off. “Never mind. We will repair the lights tomorrow. Come into my office. I have candles there.”
Tim followed Alistair into the room. He stepped through the doorway and a bright light flashed into his eyes. Shouting filled the air and strong hands were grasping the back of his shirt and pulling him down. “Stop—stop—stop!” a voice was shouting. He struggled, trying to reach the people behind him as he started to understand that the men in front of him, dangerous Chinese men, were holding pistols. Black and menacing, and pointed at him. He stopped fighting and tried to understand what he was looking at.
Alistair was already on the floor, buried under two men who were forcing his arms up behind his back. Papi, in front of him, had been stripped of his robe. He was still standing, a fat man in long cotton drawers, his glasses crushed on the floor and his arms held behind him. He showed no inclination to struggle.
The scene was slowly making an impression on Tim. There were two men with powerful torches giving light to the room and illuminating the others with their pistols trained on him. He guessed there were two more behind him, pushing his hands together behind his back and trying to fasten something around his wrists. He was watching like a dazed spectator. He was not part of it. The men did not want him.
The men behind him finally secured his wrists with the zipping sound of a cable tie being pulled tight. One of them bent to do the same to his ankles. Alistair, his face pressed to the wooden floor, was being tied up in the same way. Papi had started to struggle now, his captors fighting to hold on. Tim was pushed to the floor. The men were talking to each other in Chinese. A rough hand pulled his head back. In the corner of his eye he saw an aerosol being sprayed into a gauze pad and smelled ether. The pad was clamped over his face and he lost consciousness.
Chapter 32
Sherry did not call Hangchi until after two o’clock in the morning. Darti had come to her room in tears. She was frantic with worry for Tim and forced Sherry to call. At first Hangchi tried to soothe her but Darti had taken the phone and convinced him very quickly.
He came to the door two hours later looking tired and worried. “No news yet. I’ve called Alistair’s house and they’re not there. Apparently they were going to have dinner with Papi Bombar. I’ve sent someone around to find Papi but he’s not at home either. The ashram door was open and there were a pair of broken glasses on the floor, probably Papi’s. Things don’t look good.”
Sherry slumped onto the sofa. What had happened to Tim? It was a nightmare. Hangchi sat beside her and put his hand on her shoulder.
“I’ve come to get Darti. I want to take her down to the ashram. Are you going to be all right by yourself? Janice will sit with you.”
She waited. There was nothing else to do. Sometimes she cried. Sometimes she tried to tidy the room. Janice put a cassette into the stereo and Boney M played in the background. Janice seemed as distraught as she was. Hangchi returned at dawn and sat with her while Darti and Janice made some breakfast.
“It doesn’t look too good,” he told her. “They ate at The Grand Trunk Road and then they seem to have gone on to the ashram. I expect Papi was going to offer them a drink but someone was waiting for them. A few people. There were all sorts of scuff marks on the floor and Papi’s glasses. And his robe. It looks as if there was some sort of struggle—Papi’s glasses had been trodden on—but there was no blood. That’s a good sign, if you like.
“Whoever it was, they seem to have been quite clean. No clues, apart from one plastic cable tie that might be related. The floor’s polished wood so we’re looking for fingerprints. If they didn’t wear gloves, of course. Our men are going around asking for information. Someone must have seen how they were taken away. They all live on top of each other down there, and everyone knows his neighbour’s business. We’ll get some sort of lead from them, I expect, but probably nothing useful. People don’t go to all the trouble of setting up a job like this and then use an identifiable vehicle to make their getaway.
“No, the best sign is that they were apparently taken alive. If it had been a contract or a terrorist hit, all three would have been killed there and then. I’m still trying to get my mind around
why
they were taken. Who’d want all three? An Indian, a Malay and an Englishman. Doesn’t make any sense.”
“Did Darti help?”
“Yes, but I don’t know if I understand that either. She says there were a lot of men involved. They were waiting in the dark and they had guns and big torches. Strangest thing is she says they were Chinese. She tried to repeat some of their words, just fragments, and they sound like Hakka. Hard to tell because her pronunciation’s not very good and anyway, Chinese attackers just make things seem stranger. I shall have to think about it. I’m not running the case but I’ve got a watching brief on it because I told my bosses that Tim was my informant. It’s better that way because I don’t have so many people directly under me, but now there are lots of police involved. I expect we’ll know a bit more by the end of the day. That’s usually how these things work.”
Ranji called soon after Hangchi had left. She was crying for Papi Bombar and they cried together when she heard that Tim and Alistair had been taken too. She called back after an hour with the news that the local word was that the Irishman had been behind it.
At first Hangchi was inclined to discount the story but he did admit that the Irishman and his people were Hakka, so perhaps the rumour had something in it. He called back soon after and said he was coming for Darti again. He wanted to know her shoe size and told Sherry to have her waiting with her hair pinned up. He brushed off Sherry’s questions and hung up.
He pulled up in a proper police car with a uniformed driver. He was carrying a navy blue police uniform for Darti and Sherry took her upstairs to change.
Sherry thought she looked terrible. From her silly cap down to her clunky shoes, the uniform could not have suited her less, and she looked nervous. Sherry kissed her and told her to stand up and pretend she really was a police woman. That seemed to do the trick and she followed Hangchi out to the car looking something like a defender of the community.
They were away for nearly two hours. Darti rushed upstairs to change into normal clothes as soon as they got back and left Hangchi to tell the story.
“It was the Irishman. Darti’s sure of it. I couldn’t do anything, of course, I could only insist on seeing him to ask a few more questions about the bombing, and that was difficult enough. I asked him about the guns we recovered from the Aljunied Estate, just to let him know he’s in our sights. Of course, I didn’t get anything useful out of him, but the important thing is that he’s involved and that Darti says our people are not in Telok Blangah and never have been.
“So we’re going to start putting a little pressure on his friends. They won’t like to hear that the Irishman’s kidnapped Alistair. He’s a very important person on the other side of the causeway, and they all have businesses over there. If word gets out on the streets that Chinese kidnappers have him, there’ll be riots. And riots are bad for business.”
“But why would the Irishman take him? And Tim and Papi? What does he want with them?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense at all. I could understand him have a falling out with the Indians and maybe grabbing Papi as a hostage. Or I could see him being upset with Alistair, though it’d be senseless to touch him. I can’t see there’s any reason at all for him to be interested in Tim. Oh well, I’d better get back to the office and see if anything’s come up. Say goodbye to Darti for me, and I’ll pick up her uniform this evening.”
That night Sherry lay in bed crying quietly. She had become used to sleeping with Tim every night and now his side of the bed was empty. The dark brought horrible thoughts that forced themselves onto her. Her imagination insisted on conjuring up images of what Tim might be suffering now. She got up and went to the bathroom for a sleeping pill.
Her bedroom door clicked open and her friends slipped in. She drifted into sleep with Darti and Janice beside her.
Next morning, she awoke with a start and looked around. The weight of Tim’s disappearance sank back onto her shoulders. Beside her Darti and Janice slept curled up together, black hair mingling on the pillow. Janice had a black lacy nightdress and panties, but Darti wore a child’s pyjamas covered in bouncy rabbits. She looked at the alarm—six twenty. She would have to wait before calling Hangchi for the latest news. She got up and started to do things. It would be a long day.
Chapter 33
It was wet and it was noisy, but in the end it was the stink that woke him. Pungent, ammoniac, farmyard, it overwhelmed him. He floated back to consciousness, trapped, confined and unable to move. He could not see. He was being crushed from all sides by hard bands that cut into him, and a heavy weight lay above him. It was dark.
Slowly he started to make sense of his surroundings. He was moving, in some kind of vehicle. He could hear an engine and feel the drumming of a truck moving rapidly on a road. He was wet, and there was water running over his face. Rain water, he supposed. The smell crystallized in his mind. Pigs. The stink of the pig sty. It dawned on him that the weight above him was warm and breathing lightly, probably a pig. He was in a pig basket, buried in a load of pigs. The pigs were in tubular open-work baskets made of thick rattan. Strong, light and completely confining. The strength of his rattan cage bore most of the weight of the pigs above. The animals lay quietly, resigned to their fate.
He cleared his throat. “Alistair?” he croaked.
“Yes,” came his quiet reply. “Are you OK?”
“Yes, I think so. Where are we?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only just woken up. They’re transporting us with some pigs, the dirty bastards.”
Tim thought some more. His mind still refused to work properly. He remembered Papi Bombar. “Papi? Papi?” There was no answer.
“Perhaps he’s still sleeping,” whispered Alistair. “They were Chinese. What are they doing with us?”
“God knows.” He frantically tried to understand what was happening. “It must be a mistake. Perhaps they were looking for some-one else.”
“Not in Papi’s place. Perhaps we were a mistake, but not Papi. Who in their right mind cares about Papi?”
They lay in silence with their thoughts. Suddenly there was the sound of the window through to the truck cab sliding open and light fell on his face. He could see the framework of his basket and a head beside him, probably Papi. Tim caught the smell of cigarettes. The people in the cab spoke Chinese. They were very close, within touching distance if Tim could have touched anything. He heard a hissing and again the smell of ether filled the air. Alistair swore and started to snore. A hand grabbed his hair and forced his head back against the basket. A pad was roughly forced over his nose and mouth and he lost consciousness again.