Pangolin, p.29
Pangolin, page 29
‘Not unless you’re a member. Chits only.’
‘Then how about going across to the Hilton or somewhere?’
‘Thanks, but I’m nicely settled here. Besides, you can’t buy information from me. Let me get you one. I may be out of a job but I’m not that skint. Still Life!’ Pritchard called, and the fat, hostile-looking barman came to take their orders.
‘I gather,’ said McNair, when the drinks had arrived and Pritchard had scribbled his signature on a chit, ‘that you knew Kiley himself, back in Saigon?’
‘Sure.’
‘And knew the nature of the work he was doing?’
‘He was Chief Spook in the American Mission; quite a few people knew that.’
‘You must have guessed, after you met Mrs Kiley again here in Hong Kong, that he was still in the same business? That he was probably in the same sort of job?’
‘When I gave him any thought at all. This part of the world, these CIA buggers are coming in at the windows.’
‘Sure. I’m just wondering whether you might have suggested this fact to anyone else? Let it slip, maybe, to the man beside you at work, something like that?’
Pritchard laughed, a short, high-pitched cackle that stopped as suddenly as it began, ‘Look, the man just doesn’t figure in my conversation. Let’s get that straight, can we?’
McNair drank some whisky. ‘I have to ask you this. Since you met her again, a few weeks ago, have you had any feelings of jealousy? Any feeling that you’d have liked to keep her?’
‘I thought you weren’t going to get personal,’ Pritchard said.
‘We can’t rule out the possibility that there might be some personal motive involved in this crime.’
‘Well, the answer is no. Ailsa is a back number for me. I’ve turned a few pages again recently, nothing more.’
That, McNair thought, didn’t square with Ailsa’s view of his feelings. So who was fooling whom? There was something about Pritchard, a deep-down bitterness perhaps, that almost made you feel sorry for him.
‘You say you’re out of a job? I thought you worked for the Cathay Star.’
‘I was made redundant. Unquote. Nothing else has turned up yet. Can’t say I’ve been looking too hard.’
‘What are you living on?’
‘Redundancy pay.’
‘You weren’t at work this morning then, obviously.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Where were you?’
‘What time this morning?’
‘All morning.’
‘Listen, Jesus, you don’t suspect me of . . .?’
‘I don’t suspect you of anything,’ McNair said calmly.
‘The way we work is by eliminating non-starters. You can make yourself a non-starter by accounting for your movements from about eight o’clock this morning onwards.’
‘Well, about eight o’clock I was on my way out to Hebe Haven with a pal of mine. Matter of fact, the car was searched at a roadblock on the way. He’s got a junk moored out there; we’re planning a trip to the Philippines in a couple of days’ time. We ran her a few miles out to sea to check the compass, then brought her back.’
‘What time was that?’
‘Round twelve.’
‘And then?’
‘My pal, Eddie Baxter, drove me back to town. I was in here by one, because I heard the kidnapping on the one o’clock news. I’ve been here ever since; Still Life over there will confirm that.’
‘Where does this Mr Baxter live?’
‘Up the Peak Road. I forget the exact address, but he’s in the phone book.’ Pritchard grinned at the policeman, a slightly malevolent grin. ‘You’re wasting your time, Mac—McWhat?’
‘McNair.’
‘Why don’t you have another drink, McNair?’
‘Oh, I couldn’t do that.’
‘I told you, I’m not all that skint.’
‘It’s not that. I have work to do.’ McNair got off the barstool.
‘All right. I think you’ve told me everything I need to know. Sorry for the bother. And thanks for the drink.’
He left the club, vaguely aware as he walked towards the door of the Englishman’s dark, laughing stare following him. As he stood waiting for the lift he heard Pritchard shout, ‘Still Life!’
30
In the American Consulate General, the duty officer put the call from Boyd’s aide at the Incident Centre through to the top-floor conference room, where a meeting was in progress, presided over by the Ambassador from Bangkok.
The Consul General picked up the phone himself. He listened for half a minute and said testily, ‘You’ll have to wait,’ then lowered the receiver with a hand clamped over the mouthpiece. He and the rest of the men in the room—Koch, Stanley and three others—were listening tensely to one end of a conversation on another telephone, and the discussion was being recorded by a cassette machine. The Ambassador was talking to Chief Minister Salim of Simpang State.
He listened and replied, his own comments mostly monosyllabic grunts, for about two minutes before saying, ‘Well, thank you very much for that information, Chief Minister. Let me add that I and my government are more grateful than we can tell you for the time and trouble you are taking in this matter. I’ll talk with you again soon.’
He replaced the receiver and switched off the recorder. ‘So far, so good.’ he said, looking up at the others. ‘He seems to have talked the Moros around.’
‘They’ll deal with us?’ Koch asked.
‘He thinks he has succeeded in convincing them that the Filipino Government means what it says—they’re not about to release any prisoners in exchange for Kiley, and the Moros will have to negotiate with us.’
‘That means they’ll take money instead of prisoners,’ said the Consul General. ‘What sort of money?’
‘He thought he could persuade them to accept ten million dollars.’
‘Ten million! They really have some goddam nerve!’
‘I don’t believe we can afford to refuse. Howard, that money could be got over here from the Director’s Contingency Fund, couldn’t it? How long would it take?’
‘A couple of days at most, depending on the method of payment.’
‘The Chief Minister had some suggestions there, to speed things along. He says we should arrange for a bank draft to be issued to him, payable on sight at a bank in Brunei; there are no restrictions on currency import or export there, which will simplify things. He will then arrange to have the money made available to the Moros whatever way they want it, at an agreed rendezvous. They will issue a receipt which he will pass on to us, together with notification of where and when Kiley can be picked up. It’ll be all very correct,’ the Ambassador added sarcastically. ‘Just like buying a piece of real estate unseen. The rip-off is that it was our property in the first place.’
‘This Salim has a pretty unsavoury business reputation,’ Koch said. ‘The way he’s arranging this exchange, he could be planning to pocket some of the money himself.’
‘I don’t give a damn who gets it, frankly, as long as it buys Kiley back for us. Gentlemen, I don’t think we have any choice but to go along with this plan. But no word of it is to get out until the exchange is complete.’
‘What do we tell the British authorities here?’ asked the Consul General. ‘They know we’re under pressure to pay the ransom.’
‘We stall them. Who’s that on the phone?’
‘Chief Superintendent Boyd’s office. They think they can identify one of the men involved. They’re asking for a list of deserters from the US Navy, to check against their own records.’
‘You mean they still suspect there’s an American involved somewhere? Well, okay, let them have the list. We have to give the appearance of co-operating. On the other hand, we have to be careful that the police don’t do something that screws up our plans.’
*
Baxter came very quickly to the door of his flat, almost as though he’d been sitting close by, waiting for the bell to ring. And his concerned, over-eager manner as he ushered McNair through to the living room made the policeman wonder whether Pritchard had phoned to warn his friend of the impending visit. Even innocent people sometimes did peculiar things when dealing with the police; the encounter made them anxious, self-conscious.
Baxter introduced his wife, a sharp-featured blonde who nodded at him distantly from a corner of the settee. She’d been reading a book and seemed to resent the interruption.
‘Mr McNair is investigating this Kiley business, darling. The kidnapping, you know.’
‘What on earth has that got to do with us?’
‘Nothing at all, I’m sure,’ McNair said. ‘This is purely routine. We’ve questioned a great many people whose names just happen to crop up on the periphery of the case. Do you mind telling me, Mr Baxter, what you were doing between about eight and nine this morning?’
‘Why, sure. I was on my way out to Hebe Haven. I keep a junk out there. Arriving a little after nine, if I remember.’
‘That took you long enough,’ said his wife. ‘You left the flat well before seven, and it’s only a fifty-minute drive.’
‘I had some things to do on the way—’
‘In fact, I remember now, it was just after half past six when I woke up and you were gone already. What took you all that time?’
‘I said I had things to do, Liz.’ Baxter looked flustered, and McNair felt a man’s embarrassed sympathy for a henpecked husband. ‘And then there was Alan to collect at eight.’
‘Is that Alan Pritchard?’
‘Yes. D’you know him? Look, what’s this about, anyway?’
‘You and Mr Pritchard spent the morning together then, just the two of you?’
‘Out on the boat, yes.’
‘All right, Mr Baxter,’ said McNair, standing up. ‘Thanks, and sorry to have bothered you.’ At the door he said, ‘I believe you’re sailing to the Philippines soon. I envy you. Hope this tropical depression will keep away. You wouldn’t want to go out into that.’
The two lists of Navy deserters, one from the police files, one from the consulate, arrived on Boyd’s desk together. It took him less than ten seconds of running his eye down them to find the name he wanted.
‘There!’ he said triumphantly to Lewis, stabbing his finger down at a point on the typed sheet. ‘Quinn, Seymour Kevin. Gunner’s Mate Third Class. Reported absent without leave from the USS Kitty Hawk after a liberty on April fifteenth and still not traced. Height six-two, weight a hundred and ninety, brown hair, brown eyes. That sound like your man?’
‘It has to be!’ Lewis said fiercely. ‘Damn it, how does a guy like that stay free for all that time?’
‘By having good shelter. By having friends to protect him, providing board and lodging. A woman, perhaps: some girl he knew from his earlier stopovers here? Someone, anyway, who may have no idea of his involvement in this caper.’
‘So what do we do? Get on to Vice and have them check out all the whores on their books?’
‘That would take days. Besides, we don’t know that she’s a hustler, or even that there’s a woman involved at all. My idea is this: we make a direct public appeal—to anyone who may have seen him, to anyone who might know who’s sheltering him, even to the people who are sheltering him themselves.’ Boyd glanced at his watch; it was nine thirty-five. ‘Listen. There’s enough time to get a statement and copies of that picture out to the morning papers. With a real rush job we might make it in time for tonight’s late television news, Cantonese and English. We’ll lay it on thick: deserted American sailor, wanted for murder and kidnapping. It should shock a reaction out of someone.’
Lewis looked uneasy. ‘Putting all your eggs in one basket, aren’t you, Chief? We’ll look bloody silly if nobody comes forward.’
‘We’re looking silly right now, son. It’s more than thirteen hours since the job was done, and this is still the only lead we’ve got.’
The statement went out ten minutes later, in the form of a telex message simultaneously relayed to all media. Five minutes after that, blowups of the photograph of Seymour Quinn were on their way by motorcycle dispatch rider to Hong Kong’s three television stations.
McNair was back in the Incident Centre by then and had reported briefly on his interviews with Mrs Kiley and the two men.
‘Pritchard is a queer party,’ he said. ‘Can’t quite make him out: a chip on his shoulder, definitely, and I think he’s jealous of the woman in spite of what he says. But on the whole I’d have to put him down as harmless. I checked out his movements, just as a precaution. Seems he spent the morning sailing out of Hebe Haven on a friend’s junk. Pak Sha Wan station say they can’t locate the local boatboy to confirm that, but the junk is back at its mooring. Pritchard has spent the rest of the day drinking in the Quill Club.’
‘Sounds like you can forget about him then,’ Boyd said.
‘Look, since you’re on the night duty anyway, how’d you feel about taking over the desk about midnight? I’d like to stick in here till then, to catch any flak once this sailor’s picture hits the TV screens. Then I’ll crash for a while on the camp bed they’ve put in my office. You want to go home and get a couple of hours’ rest?’
Canny sat on the couch, her gaze fixed on the television screen without really seeing it, the flickering images of yet another interminable Chinese soap opera bypassing her brain but providing a focus for her attention, like flames in a fireplace. She was tired, as she was most nights by this time, but with the added fatigue of emotional exhaustion that had been building up for weeks. She had felt Seymour slipping away from her, gradually but steadily. She was used now to getting home from work and finding him not here; it happened several times a week; This morning he had left early and had evidently not been back all day. At one time there had been excuses—he had to ‘see a guy’ or ‘set up a deal’—but he no longer bothered explaining, just went out whenever it suited him and never suggested when he might be home. When he was back, usually at night, he used her body selfishly, unsharingly. Deep down, she knew that one day Seymour would leave her, yet she clung to the hope that he wouldn’t.
Ten thirty: part one of the soap opera ended on the hysterical note of a family quarrel, giving way to commercials and then the title shot of the late news programme. It was time she went to bed, but she felt too dazed with tiredness to move. Suddenly she was brought back to life by some urgent impression on her consciousness. It took her a few seconds to focus her full attention on the small screen, perhaps even longer to realize that it showed a photograph—likeness, anyway—of him! The words of the Chinese commentary began to strike home: ‘. . . deserted his ship, the USS Kitty Hawk, in April. Police are asking anyone who knows him or may have seen him to come forward with information. He is described as six feet two inches tall, powerfully built . . .’
After a minute the picture changed. Canny’s mind, in a blur, recorded something of what followed: film of helicopters taking off and hovering over barren rocks, a European police officer having his remarks translated into Cantonese: ‘No, we can’t say for certain that the diplomat is still being held here, but we must continue to search. If this man Quinn is innocent then he should come forward . . .’
The rest was lost to her. She stood up and stumbled towards the kitchen and then turned helplessly back into the main room, not knowing what she was looking for. A clue, any clue, to what had happened. Something to negate that stuff on the TV. There must be some explanation, some mistake.
For a minute she stood clutching the edge of the worktop in the kitchenette, regaining control of herself. Then she went to the small closet at the side of the room. On the left, on top of the stack of shelves where he kept his clothes, was the spot where he hid any spare money he had. She groped among shirts, socks, underwear: there was nothing. Only last night, after the Negro had left, she had seen him put eight or nine hundred Hong Kong dollars in there. And as this realization settled into her, she was aware of another impression. The clothes: there were too few of them. What was left was old and threadbare. In particular she recalled four cotton shirts in pastel shades that he’d bought a couple of weeks ago. They were gone. So were his only good pair of trousers and his leather brogues.
She forced herself to look further. On the other side of the wardrobe, hidden by her dresses, had stood her small leather suitcase, the only luggage she possessed. That, too was missing.
The facts were screaming at her now, but still she could not bring herself to face them fully. And she was confused: distracted from her shock and hurt and anger by what she had heard on the TV. The police wanted Seymour—what for? Deserting his ship? After all this time? Dealing in drugs? Was that why he’d gone on the run? No, there’d been some mention of this kidnapped diplomat. But what in God’s name could Seymour have to do with that?
One thing she did understand, an inner quake, a sudden desperate need. She half ran, stumbling, to the bathroom and flung open the cabinet above the washbasin. The jar of Seconal shook in her hands as she split half a dozen capsules into the other palm. She swallowed them one by one, chasing them with gulps of water. Then, controlling her breathing carefully, she went back to the living room and sat down, waiting for the soothing caress of the drug.
Shortly after midnight McNair, refreshed by two hours’ sleep, a shower and a hot meal, returned to take charge of the Incident Centre. Boyd brought him up to date: after the police statement and Quinn’s picture had gone out on the television bulletins there’d been a brief flurry of activity. Five people claimed to have seen the suspect at one time or another, and all their stories had been checked. A teller in the foreign exchange department of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank thought the American had changed some English pounds into local currency last Thursday. There was no name attached to the transaction. A girl assistant at the Wing On department store thought she had sold him some shirts a couple of weeks ago. Again, he had paid cash and given no name. Two people claimed to have seen him at different times on the Star Ferry.
