The White Pearl (4 page)

Connie’s hand crept closer to his on the sheet. She held her breath until the space between them was less than the width of
her little finger, and she could feel the springy hairs on the back of his wrist tickling her skin. It was a faint, feathery
touch that she allowed herself once each night while he slept, stealing it in the darkness. Like a thief. Outside, beyond
the extensive lawns and the scented hibiscus, the jungle was stamping its feet, making itself heard as it took possession
of the night. The endless chirruping and croaking, the humming and the cackling, the echoing sobs and booming barks, all seeped
into the room, soaking into her sweat and into the clammy folds of the sheet that twined around her legs.

Tonight she didn’t resent the sounds because tonight she didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to retrace, second by second, those
vital moments in Palur when her car and her life slid out of control.

If she had not taken the corner so fast …

If the black car had not been so greedy …

If she had fought harder, braked quicker …

If she hadn’t broken her sunglasses or arranged to meet Harriet for a swim …

Was this a punishment? Was that it?

She shook her head on the damp pillow, strands of her restless blond hair grasping at her throat like tentacles. Her mind
replayed each image relentlessly again and again; the slippery feel of the steering wheel under her palms, the roadside stall
on the corner selling hot roasted corn husks, the stallholder open-mouthed and toothless as she skidded past him, tyres fighting
for grip. A tan-coloured dog scampering out of her path, its tail rigid between its legs. All things she didn’t even know
she had seen. But worse, far worse, was the look on the faces of the daughter and the son while their mother’s eyes drowned
in blood.

Hold my hand.

Connie rolled onto her side so that she was facing towards the black shape that was her husband, and let her arm brush his
as she did so. He snatched it away as though she had burned him, and murmured something in his sleep. Her chest hurt, ached
with a sharp physical pain,
and she realised she had not breathed. So she drew in air, and with it came a rush of vivid memories of another masculine
arm, cool and smooth, hairless as a mirror. A strong arm that belonged to Sho Takehashi.

For one startling moment she could hear Sho’s breath, alive in the room. She lay still, listening hard. Frightened he would
touch her face.

Connie had never set foot inside a police station before. The one in Palur was situated in Swettenham Road at the back of
the public library, with a clock tower that chimed every quarter of an hour. It was built of a sombre grey brick and had a
blue lamp above its main entrance, smeared with the remains of mosquito carcasses. Connie removed her new sunglasses and walked
up the front steps.

Inside, it was much smarter than she had expected. This morning as she’d sat stiffly in the back of the car, being driven
into town by Ho Bah, their Chinese
syce
, she had conjured up an image in her head of a cramped waiting room with stained linoleum and a wooden hatch through which
she would have to speak to a burly uniform. She was prepared for a hard and sceptical gaze that could spot a murderer at ten
paces. But she was pleasantly surprised. The room was large and airy with cream-painted walls and windows that looked out
towards the tall areca palm trees in the park opposite. A ceiling fan stirred the sluggish air, and a row of chairs was arranged
neatly along a wall facing a central counter of polished mahogany, smooth and shiny from years of elbows. The moment Connie
approached the counter, the duty officer shifted his attention from the notepad in front of him and focused on her.

‘Mrs Hadley, good morning to you.’

That took her by surprise. He knew her.

‘I’m Constable Forester. I took down your statement yesterday,’ he explained. ‘In the bank.’

‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking clearly.’

‘Of course not. It’s understandable, you’d had a nasty shock.’

Was that what caused the sense of disconnection? She studied the
young officer with care, and this time made a mental note of his freckles, his helpful smile and his bony features. Dimly
she recalled them. It was as if she’d seen them before but underwater, so that their exact outlines were blurred.

‘How can I help you?’ he asked courteously.

‘Constable Forester,’ she smiled at him and saw him relax. ‘I’ve come because I need to know the name of the woman I …’
I killed.
Say it, go on, say it, say it out loud for everyone to hear.
The woman I killed.
‘ … the woman who died in the accident yesterday.’

He frowned. With a sudden change of manner he was ushering her into a small office at the back of the room, and she was shaking
hands with a heavily built older man in uniform whose gaze on her was much more what she had expected; keen and questioning.
He had a small moustache that straggled over his upper lip and made her wonder what he wanted to hide. The handshake left
her in no doubt of his authority, and it was reinforced by the silver braid on his uniform.

‘Mrs Hadley, I am Inspector Stoner.’

He gestured to a chair, but she remained standing. She wasn’t staying here a moment longer than she had to. The office was
airless, the walls bare except for a framed photograph of King George VI in an ermine robe, and there was a filing cabinet
of battleship grey. A table stood in the centre with a chair on either side of it. It felt far too much like an interrogation
room. It made Connie nervous. She smiled her thanks and remained near the door.

‘Good morning, Inspector. I don’t mean to disturb you. I’ve only come to ask for the name of the woman who died in the car
accident yesterday.’

He nodded. Not in a good way. ‘I offer my condolences, Mrs Hadley. I’m glad you were not hurt. But I do not think the deceased
woman’s name need concern you.’

Connie said nothing. She wasn’t the one who deserved condolences.

‘Unfortunately,’ he added, ‘the black sports car that caused the incident vanished from the scene, so we have not been able
to detain the driver responsible. Is there anything you would like to add to your earlier statement?’

‘No.’

He studied her carefully, eyes razor-sharp, but she asked again, ‘The name of the woman, please?’

There was a pause, long enough to be awkward, while she kept her eyes firmly on his and he worked out how far he could upset
a member of the powerful Hadley family.

‘Sai-Ru Jumat,’ he said reluctantly.

‘Do you know how old she was?’

‘Thirty-five, I believe.’

‘With two children?’

He looked away, determined to hide his irritation.

‘What was her address?’ Connie persisted.

‘I think it best,’ he said, ‘if we leave it there, Mrs Hadley.’ His sigh was as sticky as honey in the room.

She felt an urge to rip off his moustache and yank the words she wanted out of his mouth. Instead, she smiled and tossed her
hair at him. ‘Come now, Inspector, I only want to make certain that her poor children are all right. It must have been a terrible
experience for them to witness their mother …’ The final words stuck like pebbles in her throat.

‘You mustn’t concern yourself. Your husband’s solicitor, Mr Macintyre, is dealing with it.’ He reached towards her and for
one sickening moment Connie believed he was going to seize her, take her wrist in his broad fist and clamp handcuffs on her.
But he patted her arm consolingly. ‘Don’t fret over it, my dear. These things are best left to us professionals, you know.
My advice to you is to forget about it.’

She removed her arm. ‘Inspector Stoner, I would appreciate it if you would take my request seriously. Just because they are
Malays it doesn’t mean …’

‘Mrs Hadley, we have to deal with situations like this with delicacy.’

‘I realise that.’

‘Have you spoken to your husband about this?’

‘Of course. He was the one who suggested I come to you for her address.’

The lie was blatant. Not for one second did he believe her. Stiffly he opened the door and summoned the duty officer. ‘Forester,
give what assistance you can to Mrs Hadley.’

‘Thank you,’ she said in a polite voice, and left the room.

Palur was a town built by Englishmen for Englishmen. It made them feel that they were walking down Piccadilly in London. In
this strange country of Malaya that was so alien in every way to European sensibilities,
the early colonials had brought their buildings with them to demonstrate to the natives how civilised people lived. Not in
flimsy
attap
houses with fronds for roofs that blew off in the monsoon, or built up on bamboo stilts looking for all the world like a
child’s treehouse. These were solid and permanent, with elegant porticos and Corinthian columns. Good, respectable, English
homes. It meant that if Connie blocked out all her other senses except sight, she could imagine she was at home in England.

She could look up at the brick-built trading hall where the prices of rubber, copra and spices were argued over, at the British
banks with their brass plaques or the church steeple, and be transported to England. Only the window boxes spoiled the illusion.
Too vivid, too ebullient, altogether too promiscuous. Too damn full of the life force of Malaya, that produced ferns that
drilled through paving stones and creeper that dismantled buildings if you turned your back on it for even a moment.

Nine years ago when Nigel had dropped on one knee, his face as red as one of his favourite hibiscus flowers, clasped her hands
in his and invited her to be his wife and join him in Malaya, Connie’s heart had leaped. A streak of pure joy had ripped through
her. She couldn’t say yes fast enough. She closed her eyes now and tried to recapture that urgent desire, but it was as elusive
as the mist that slunk out of the jungle at dawn and crept across the lawns of Hadley House. She had scoured maps and atlases
to learn more about this wild and wonderful place that was to become her home, and relished the exotic sounds of it in her
mouth – Malacca, Kuala Lumpur and Penang.

Oh yes, she’d learned the facts and the names of the towns. She’d discovered that Malaya consisted of a long shapely finger
of land that stretched for over four hundred miles from Siam in the north right down to the steamy island of Singapore in
the south. It was one of the principal rubber and tin exporters in the world, crowded by dense jungle with a backbone of mountains
running down the centre.

She had found out that its population of Malays, Chinese and Indians possessed hereditary rulers called sultans who elected
from their number a
Yang di-Pertuan Agong
, the glorious title – it made her laugh – of the Kings of Malaya. On the map she explored with excitement regions with exotic
names like Selangor, Terengganu and Johore, and in the history books she discovered that the Dutch had colonised the country
before surrendering it to the British under the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824. Sir
Thomas Stamford Raffles had run up the flag for England and turned Singapore into the greatest trading port in the Far East.

‘It’s almost on the equator,’ Nigel warned her. ‘That means it’s hot.’

She’d laughed. She recalled that careless, girlish, ignorant laugh when she had said, ‘How exotic! I shall love it. There
will be parrots.’

There were parrots, she’d been right about that. Gaudy clouds of them. Parrots and weird hornbills and the screeching
pekaka
, all flashing their strident colours in her face. Worst was the brainfever bird, the
burong mati anak,
which uttered its tuneless dirge hour after hour. Teddy told her that
burong mati anak
meant
dead child bird
, which made her want to cry each time she heard its call.

But no one had warned her that it was a country of sweltering nights and fierce smells – of the stink of bad drains and of
fish frying in coconut oil in the streets, of sandalwood and hair oils. A country of ferocious insects that would devour you
alive, and of jungle sounds that haunted your dreams. A country where towns boasted wide avenues and monolithic government
buildings set back to back with tawdry dance halls and wretched slums.

When Connie emerged from the police station, she squinted at the sun and turned left, adjusting the wide brim of her sunhat
to shield her eyes. She set off in the direction of the town’s busy harbour. It was not somewhere she normally cared to venture.
As the familiar streets with their shops and restaurants slid away behind her, she felt her certainty slide away with them.

Was she making a mistake? Inspector Stoner was convinced she was. But she couldn’t leave it there.

She couldn’t.

Underfoot was unpleasant, slippery and slimy. Connie picked her way carefully over the remains of rotting fruit and vegetables,
and God knows what else. The air down here by the quays tasted of fish and clung to her hair and her skirts, as hawkers shouted
to her, pushing slabs of meaty-looking raw fish, lobster claws and live octopus under her nose.

‘
Tidak.
No, thank you.’

She kept moving, but among the crowds of coolies carrying loads on their bare backs it wasn’t easy. On her left rose the rows
of
godowns
, the huge warehouses where trade goods were stored before being loaded onto ships bound first for Singapore and then on to
Europe. Her eyes
automatically sought out her husband’s
godowns.
They looked bigger and better cared for than the rest, the name Hadley emblazoned above their doors in huge black letters.
Inside, she knew, lay the large rectangular sheets of finished rubber that the Hadley Estate produced, the eventual result
of the strange latex milk tapped from hundreds of thousands of trees on the plantation.

Rubber was the lifeblood of Malaya, but oddly not native to the country. Nigel had told Connie in detail about how rubber-tree
seeds from Brazil in South America had been germinated in London’s Kew Gardens at the end of the nineteenth century, and sent
out as fourteen-foot saplings with Frank Swettenham to Malaya where a patch of jungle was cleared for them. It was a match
made in heaven, Malaya and rubber, in the same way that the British had brought poppy seeds to China and started the opium
trade. Europeans had a lot to answer for, it seemed to her.