‘I thought you were someone else. Sorry! Did I startle you?’ She smiled both because she recognised him and because her words and his actions were ludicrous, more like a couple bumping into each other in a peacetime English lane than a tropical track in terrorist country.
‘Don’t tell my commander I took my hat off to you. I mean,’ he said, screwing the hat in his hands and smiling ruefully at his own supposed failure, ‘I should really have shot you — well, challenged you.’
It was a relief to laugh. With his wry expression and his military-cropped, sandy hair exposed, he looked much younger than when she had seen him last. ‘You’re the boy from the lorry.’
‘Lorry, yes. Boy — well?’ He cocked an eye. ‘Just because I didn’t shout after you? I was better brought up, but it wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate … ’
She found herself both blushing and laughing under his approving look. ‘Why are you here?’
He displayed the wire he was holding. ‘I’m looking for a friendly native to shin up one of these trees and fix my aerial to the top. I’m stationed here for the time being.’
‘Really? That seems too good to be true.’
‘Thanks!’ The closed-mouth grin and twinkling brown eyes were so full of good spirits she did not qualify the remark. ‘So you’ll be the daughter of the house, Miss Hammond?’
‘Liz.’ She held out her hand, then found herself swallowing hard as his hand enveloped hers. Looking down at her he stood many inches nearer than he needed.
‘Alan Cresswell. Until now I thought I was going to hate it here by myself.’
They both turned, still holding hands, as Chemor came back along the path portering a heavy coil of new rope. ‘Here’s someone who might help you. He’s one of George Harfield’s men.’
The native glanced at Liz as if questioning the fact that she had not obeyed his employer’s summons. ‘You come now,’ he said.
‘Is something wrong at the bungalow?’ she asked.
‘Something found.’ He smiled and with a gesture indicated that someone else was coming. ‘All going now to look.’
‘What is it?’ she demanded as her mother and George Harfield came into sight, alarmed at their sombre expressions and the fact that George was strapping on his gun and holster as he walked.
‘Themor — ’ he paused to nod to her companion — ‘has found a vehicle in the jungle. A jeep.’
Consternation and anguish fought to take her breath, and though her lips parted the doubts and fears were too many to be put into words.
‘We are going to see,’ Blanche said, her face, her lips, absolutely without colour.
Liz turned like an automaton to accompany them.
‘Can I help?’ Cresswell asked. ‘Come with you?’
‘I’d rather you stayed here and looked after my men,’ George told him. He hitched his revolver in the holster. ‘You’d best show us what you’ve found, Chemor.’
The scout turned and led the way in the direction of the manager’s bungalow, but after about thirty yards he turned abruptly to the right through part of the plantation. He pointed to the ground, parting ferns so they could see the tracks of a vehicle.
Here and there it looked as if dead vegetation had been deliberately pulled over the tracks. For some distance they walked straight into the trees, then turned abruptly left. Looking round, Liz for the first time really understood how confusing these plantings could be. The rubber trees were set some twelve to fifteen feet apart and whichever way you looked they formed lines, radiating away from you like a fiendish maze. You could go only a short distance into the trees before becoming totally disoriented.
She did remember that in the direction they were going, to the southeast of Rinsey, were a number of rocky waterfalls cascading from the hills and culminating in a steep, jungle-clad ravine. She glanced at her mother’s back as they walked in line — the scout, her mother, herself, George last. Her mother looked like one travelling in a nightmare, dragging her feet wearily free of the encumbering undergrowth, moving only because compelled.
Liz wondered if Blanche remembered the one time they had brought their daughters this way for a picnic. It had come to a premature end as Wendy had ventured too near the edge of the falls. Liz had also found herself the target of parental wrath and anxiety — because she had wanted to stay.
If her father’s vehicle had been hidden, it was by someone who knew the area well. She could think of no other place where it would be possible to drive through the trees and find flat rocks and a convenient ravine on the other side.
Once they came to the edge of the rubber trees they were on solid slabs of rock where water gushed down in wide and pleasant falls — until the fourth downward step was reached, where land and water fell steeply away, down into a deep midnight green mass of dense jungle. Against the dark panorama, parrots in hues of brilliant white, red and unnatural green flashed across like players in an airy theatre.
It was noisy standing above the crash of the water and alarming to see where Chemor had found the continuation of the tyre tracks. Losing them at the edge of the plantation and across the hard table of rock, he had found them again at the lip of the ravine.
‘I can see nothing down there,’ Blanche said, shielding her eyes, then exclaiming, ‘Oh, as the wind moves the bushes … ’
Liz knelt on the rock. She could just make out the back wheels and undercarriage of a vehicle, which seemed to be almost standing on its nose some hundred feet below.
‘Have you been down?’ Liz asked Chemor, who shook his head.
‘No, need rope to climb back up,’ he answered.
‘That — whatever it is — could be from the war?’ George suggested.
Chemor shook his head, pointing to the narrow stretch of earth and vegetation. ‘Tracks through plantation same as here.’
Liz could see where the tyres had dug into the lip, then where the vehicle must have fallen clear and free — down. ‘It could have been an accident?’ She turned an agonised look up to George. ‘My father could be ... ’ She swallowed and turned back, peering down, her ears suddenly singing; she felt very sick. George gripped her shoulders.
‘You stay here with your mother.’ He began unbuckling his holster to leave his gun with her. ‘Chemor and I will go down.’
‘There’s a way down the other side of the falls,’ Blanche said, her voice almost matter-of-fact in its control. ‘It’s not that far, actually.’
‘Would we be able to reach where the vehicle is?’
She nodded at George. ‘Neville and I often came here and explored these falls, long before we had the children.’
Blanche and Chemor changed places and she led them across and down the first two shallow slabs of rock to the other side. The route led down a narrow gully which the falls would wash out when in full spate during the monsoons. The noise of the water grew louder as they proceeded and the path was certainly slippery and dangerous for the unwary. Liz adjusted her view of her mother’s concern for the tiny Wendy.
The gulley the water had cut fell back so the light came to them through a curtain of water, blue at the top of the slope when they could still see the sky but greener and darker as they descended down the rocky course. Liz could imagine her parents younger, carefree with no children to hamper their explorations, discovering this strange and rather awesome pathway with the wonder of living water before them.
A sharp turn to the right and a level stretch of rock, amazingly quite dry behind the falls, made her realise they were actually at the bottom of the ravine. They had crossed the falls at the top through the water, now at the bottom they walked back to the side they started from, this time underneath the falls.
The last hundred yards from the falls were the most hazardous. None of them was dressed for pushing through this mass of growth and Chemor unsheathed his machete.
‘Don’t catch hold of anything if you can help it,’ George advised, and, as the slope grew steeper once more, gripped Blanche’s hand and supported her down.
Sliding and slipping, Liz remembered from her childhood that the most beautiful plants and flowers usually had the biggest, sharpest thorns. Under the massed jungle canopy the gloom increased. Perspiration poured from them as they negotiated each step, while Chemor worked with steady rhythmical sweeps of his machete from head height to ground level to clear a way large enough for them to pass through. Roots, ferns, tortuous vines and creepers climbing up to the light, wonderful pale ghostlike sprays of orchids, and butterflies that looked like flowers until they moved, inhabited this dripping, drowned world.
Liz wished she could stop dwelling on the thought that anyone who had gone over the edge in that vehicle would, even if they survived, never have made this climb back up. Then again, they might still be there in the jeep ... A gasp of alarm came with the thought and the consequent stumble. She raised an arm to sweep away both tears and the perspiration which was running into and stinging her eyes.
Chemor heard and paused to look at her. Then they both turned to look farther back to George, who, progressing at her mother’s pace, was some way behind.
‘Your mother a brave lady,’ Chemor said. ‘This is bad jungle.’
Liz nodded, too breathless to speak.
‘You too.’
She shook her head with conviction. She was terrified of what they might find — a bloated body cooked in a metal jeep for two tropical weeks. Oh, God, stop it! Stop it!
‘Go on!’ she urged.
They battled on for another half an hour. She felt as if they had travelled to the far side of the peninsula, but calculated they had probably only gone about a hundred yards. She suddenly had a different fear, of not finding the vehicle after all. Once they had descended into the ravine they could no longer see where they were heading. George had taken sightings from the sun and the steep escarpment, but once in the jungle proper they could see neither sun nor rock face.
In another quarter of an hour, George hailed from the back for a halt. It was not until Liz’s laboured breathing had eased that the two caught up. George swept his boot and then his hand along a wet but substantial fallen branch where the two women could sit down.
‘I think we’ve come too far,’ he told Chemor. ‘I feel we’ve veered too far from the rock face.’
‘You stay with the ladies, tuan, I’ll go back to see.’ Chemor immediately began to retrace their steps along the path he had cut. George too wandered back some paces, then a low birdlike whistle made him go more urgently after his man.
Listening, the two women could hear more jungle being cleared and with tacit agreement both rose and went towards the sound.
Chemor was chopping into the side of their original path. He stopped as they reached the two men. ‘You smell something here, tuan?’ he asked.
They all sniffed the air. George pushed his head into the new way. ‘Perhaps ... oil? Or … ’
‘Rust,’ Chemor said. ‘I think jeep this way.’
It took ten minutes and the vehicle lay within some five yards of the path he had first cut.
‘Be careful, look around.’ The anxiety in George’s voice matched a sudden concern in Liz’s mind as the machete, willingly wielded, swung high and to ground level.
‘Let me,’ George said, taking the machete. ‘Stay well clear, it might move as we cut closer.’
He worked a little more slowly, with more regard to what might be lying around, then reported, ‘I don’t think it’ll move. It’s wedged between rocks like something stuck fast in a pair of scissors.’
They watched with terrible fascination as George worked his way near enough to climb on to a wheel and peer into the vehicle. ‘I can’t see anyone — and I would have thought I could here.’ He glanced up to the canopy, which was thinner here, the plants merely reaching across, for the rocks below gave no purchase for roots. He leaned back, pulling at the closed door. It gave and he had to reclose it hastily to keep his balance. He climbed down and reached the handle again, letting the door fall open.
Liz’s hand flew to her mouth. Blanche got slowly to her feet as Harfield climbed back on to the wheel and half got inside the vehicle.
‘There’s no one in here,’ he reported.
‘Thank God!’ Blanche breathed.
Chemor, who was by his side, concluded, ‘No one in it when it fell.’
‘No ... ’ George was right inside the vehicle now, peering and running his hand over surfaces, looking at the damage. ‘I agree with you.’
‘So you think it was pushed over?’ Liz asked.
‘Not pushed — look at this, Chemor.’ The two men partly disappeared into the bowels of the nose-dived car, then reappeared with a length of rope. ‘The engine was set running and the jeep kept on course for the edge by tying a rope around the seat stays and the bottom of the steering wheel. Whoever sent it over was probably quite unlucky it didn’t burst into flames.’
Liz, glancing at her mother, saw the bleakness. ‘But do we know it’s my father’s?’
‘I’m afraid we do,’ George answered. ‘Between the rocks at the other side is part of the front number plate — enough to be sure.’
George and Chemor scoured all around the vehicle, but found nothing else. ‘No one has been to or from since it fell,’ Chemor was confident.
‘So his jeep was deliberately hidden ... ’ Blanche addressed herself to George.
‘We must tell the police.’
‘And assume that Neville was … ’
‘Kidnapped — otherwise … ’
‘Where is his body?’ Blanche added the words George was reluctant to say, then asked, ‘Will the police fingerprint the jeep?’
‘Two weeks in the jungle, already red with rust — the only prints would be inside. Chemor said he will have another look round at the top of the falls. He may learn something more.’
Liz immediately stood, ready to move off; Blanche rose only as George offered his hand to pull her up.
It was hardly with any feeling of success that they climbed back up into the light. One mystery solved, another deepened. ‘The jungle keeps it secrets,’ Anna had told Liz when Wendy had been born and, feeling neglected, the elder sister had packed doll, drawing book and crayons to leave home. And it will keep
you
if you run away.’
At the top of the escarpment they rested while Chemor looked around the area. Another time Liz would have pulled off her shoes and socks and dangled her feet in the running water, but it was not the time to take comforts.
Chemor beckoned from some fifty yards away where the jungle grew down to the first rocky step of the falls. ‘Here, see,’ he said, pointing to the ground, ‘tiger tracks. He drinks here — ’ his fingers traced a line from trees over the rocks to where a natural hollow in the rock made a deep pool — ‘but more.’ He moved a few more paces and stooped to show them a tunnel through the undergrowth. ‘Way tiger comes, and man goes — once, anyway.’ He stood up to show where twigs had been broken above the height of the tiger’s back. ‘Man pushed through some two, three weeks ago.’ Delicately between his finger and thumb he held a twig that had been broken off and displayed where two new young growths sprang from it. He found others the same.
‘You think whoever sent the jeep over left this way?’ George said.
‘Someone did, tuan.’
George nodded.
‘You want me to follow man’s trail, see if he went to jungle or plantation?’ Chemor asked, demonstrating the two directions the track could take — straight on or curving back towards Rinsey.
‘I don’t want you eaten by a tiger or murdered by communists,’ George told him.
Chemor shook his head. ‘No one here now, and tiger he no bother, he well eaten, big heavy tracks.’ He pointed down to a recent spoor and swayed his body, holding his hands some distance from his stomach and grinning. ‘He very full.’
George nodded agreement but added, ‘Don’t go far. I don’t want to lose any more men.’
‘Quite safe.’ Chemor turned and stooped into the tunnel.
George and Blanche turned to make their way back through the plantation. Liz waited until they were some dozen paces away and called after them, ‘I’m going with Chemor, I have to see where this man went.’
She heard their protests as she too ducked into the run, like Alice down the rabbit hole, she thought. Indeed, hurrying to catch up Chemor she was reminded of the rabbit runs she had seen through the English hedgerows. This run was just a larger version, she told herself, and provided you could stoop low enough it was a much easier way of travelling then hacking a way through the jungle.
Chemor heard her coming and waited. ‘Tuan know you come?’ he asked. When she nodded he looked doubtful but moved on. They had not gone far when he stopped. She was both awed and fascinated by the way he crouched quite still, every sense so alert she was reminded of a sea anemone, tentacles drifting, trawling for sensations.
She realised as he slowly looked around that he was motionless because he did not want to destroy any shred of evidence either beneath his feet or by pushing through the undergrowth. Unexpectedly he put out a hand to the wall of the run, gave a low grunt of satisfaction and beckoned Liz off at a tangent through the jungle again.
He used his machete a few times but Liz could see it was merely to give her better passage. In minutes they were in the lesser jungle, the
beluka
. Suddenly her mouth dropped open in surprise. They were at the rear of Rinsey. She could see ahead the old buildings at the back and the young guardsman coming out of one of them.
So whoever had caused her father’s jeep to go over the escarpment had come back to Rinsey. She folded her arms over her stomach and rocked with anguish.
Under questioning from Sturgess, Josef had only belatedly remembered his employer had driven down to Singapore, but had been unsure what day he had left. Josef had said he was living at the manager’s bungalow. So much pointed to the duplicity of Josef. It was like finding one’s brother was a thief or a murderer ... She felt the prickly chill of icy perspiration on her forehead.
Alan Cresswell turned and smiled as he saw her. She thought he looked as if he suddenly decided to come to meet them, but was not sure. In the tide of blackness that was rushing over her, she felt her limbs, her life, drift like some hapless thing unanchored from all it knew. Then someone caught and lifted her as she sank into insensibility.
She came to on a long chair in the house. For a moment she thought it was a compassionate, sympathetic stranger looking down at her, then she remembered the soldier.
‘Lie still,’ he said.
She closed her eyes again, half rebellious. Was he going to start ordering her about too, like his officer?
‘I’ll fetch missy drink.’ It was Chemor’s voice. ‘Then go find mother and tuan. They coming long way round,’ he said, nodding significantly to Liz as she opened her eyes again.
Alan Cresswell supported the glass as her limbs shook. ‘I think it’s shock,’ she reported as the glass rattled on her teeth.
‘I would say that’s about right,’ he agreed, holding on to the glass and pulling up a stool so he could hand it back if she wanted more. ‘The tracker told me you had found your father’s jeep.’ She looked up at him with such an agonised expression he reached forward and took her hand, held it tight.
‘Mysteries about people you love are awful,’ he said.
She suddenly realised he was older than she had first thought, probably not an eighteen-year-old conscript at all. She wondered if there was some personal reason he had made that remark, or whether he was just talking to distract her from whatever thoughts had driven her to escape consciousness.
‘I heard before I came that your father was missing. I’m not sure how that feels — but maybe something like my father’s sudden death.’ He stopped, frowned and looked down at their hands, and instinctively she curled her fingers tighter around his as if the role of comforter could be hers too. ‘I went to his funeral the day before we sailed from Southampton.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Her concern for him now veneered the raw anxiety she had been feeling; innate sympathy and trained good manners prompted the question, ‘What happened?’
‘I still can’t believe it, really. He was only forty-eight. In the air force all through the war, then dies digging the garden. My mother’s completely floored.’
The unseemliness of rushing a son from his mother within a day of his father’s funeral was outrageous. ‘Wouldn’t the army give you compassionate leave?’
‘I did have extra time, but there was a postmortem and an inquest — and they said as I had an older brother at home they considered my mother was taken care of.’ He paused and looked at her a little shamefaced, ‘Sorry,’ he apologised, ‘I shouldn’t he … you have enough worries.’
She pushed herself upright, denying the need for apology. ‘So your mystery was how he died.’
‘More why, really. The sort of question you ask yourself when you’re hurt. It doesn’t make sense, just gives you a better sense of grievance.’ He smiled ruefully.