In the Mouth of the Tiger (101 page)

‘I had to come, to say goodbye to my friends,' she said as if we were still friends. ‘And to see you, because I knew you would be here.'

‘How could you kill them?' I said. ‘How could you, Catherine? What had any of them done to you?'

‘It wasn't the Tigers,' she said quickly. ‘I promise you it wasn't the Tigers. It was a squad from central Pahang. My people don't attack civilians.'

‘Don't lie to me, Catherine,' I said angrily. ‘You are a common murderer. All of you are murderers, and I hope you all swing for your crimes.' I took a huge breath. ‘Why did you really come here? To gloat? Well, if you think I'm not going to give you away you are mistaken.' I looked around for a policeman and saw three of them not ten yards away, their submachine guns under their arms.

Catherine looked genuinely astounded at my outburst, and then she must have realised how close I was to giving her away because a spark of fear leapt in her eyes. ‘Listen to me, Norma,' she said desperately. ‘I don't blame you for being upset, but remember why we are doing all this.' She also took a deep breath. ‘There is another reason why I'm here. I need to speak to Denis. It's desperately important, because we're being betrayed.'

‘I have no idea what you're talking about,' I snapped. I was about to shout out, call the policeman over, but something wouldn't let me. An echo of misplaced loyalty? Puzzlement at what she was saying? I have no idea why,
but I simply couldn't call out to those policemen. ‘Go away, Catherine,' I said. ‘Go away now, before I change my mind and call out for the police.'

But Catherine stood her ground. She must have known how close I was to denouncing her because I saw that she was trembling with fear. As the commander of the feared Tiger Regiment, she would have known perfectly well that she would be executed if she were caught.

‘Please tell Denis that Lau Yew was betrayed by someone in the Politburo,' she said, the words tumbling out as she watched the policemen over my shoulder. ‘Tell him we think it was Chin Peng. The MCP made a terrible mistake running off into the jungle, and Lau Yew was trying to correct that mistake. He was going to lead us back into the towns, but he was betrayed and killed.' She suddenly stepped up to me so that her face was inches away. ‘The only people who knew where Lau Yew was that night were the members of the Politburo. And Chin Peng is the only member of the Politburo who wants us to stay in the jungle. Don't you see, Norma? Chin Peng is doing what Loi Tak did: betraying those who oppose him to our enemies.'

It was all double-Dutch to me. And what had all this to do with Denis? I stared back at Catherine, suddenly at an utter loss, and then turned on my heel and walked away. When I glanced back she was gone.

I cannot for the life of me remember leaving that little churchyard. I must have been in shock because my next memory is of bowling along the KL road. It was unbearably hot and humid, clearly about to rain. All the car windows were open and I remember the terrific racket from the insects along the sides of the road, and that when I took off my cotton jacket its collar was wet with perspiration.

‘I ran into Catherine Koh,' I said. ‘She was at the funeral. She wanted me to pass on a message to you.'

‘Whatever do you mean?' Denis asked. ‘Catherine couldn't have been there.' It was rare to see Denis discomfited, but he was certainly discomfited now. I glanced at his profile and saw his lips dragged down in a grimace of surprise.

‘Oh, she was there all right,' I said.

Denis recovered his sangfroid almost immediately, and when he spoke next he almost drawled. ‘What the dickens was the silly girl doing there, I wonder? Rather walking into the lion's den, wasn't she?'

‘Don't you want to know her message?' I asked.

Denis glanced at his watch as if concerned about the time. ‘I don't think I do, actually,' he said. ‘But you had better tell me.'

I paused for a moment, arranging my thoughts. ‘She said that Lau Yew had been betrayed by someone in the Politburo. She said that it was probably Chin Peng, because he opposed Lau Yew's efforts to get the Communists out of the jungle and back into the towns. Oh, and she said that Chin Peng is doing what Loi Tak did: betraying anyone who disagrees with him.'

‘And what does she expect me to do about all that?' Denis asked. ‘If I had my way I'd keep Chin Peng and his thugs in the jungle until hell freezes over.'

I was so tired that I didn't say anything. What had Catherine expected Denis to do? She was, presumably, quite sane and yet she'd risked her life to get her message through to him. I shook my head vigorously, trying to clear my brain. But I was too tired for rational thought. And far too emotionally drained.

I lay back in my seat and listened to the shrill of crickets, and watched the coconut trees flick past.

We had booked into the Railway Hotel in KL, and I rang the Alexandra Hospital after dinner and spoke to Tim's ward sister. Tim was still in a deep coma, and the doctors believed that there was no brain function. ‘I'm afraid that all we can do is to make sure he isn't in any pain,' the sister said.

I know it was wrong but I remember hoping that Tim would never wake up. What did he have to wake up to? Half a life, and knowledge of all that he had lost.

I had difficulty getting to sleep that night. My restlessness was partly due to KL's unaccustomed heat after the cooler nights of the highlands, but there was something else as well. Catherine's message still weighed heavily on my mind, making me toss and turn in the hot, still darkness. Catherine had risked her life to deliver that message. A message that made absolutely no sense at all.

Unless . . .

Unless – and the implication shocked me, so that I lay for a moment rigid with fright – unless Denis was still involved with the MCP, and was still in touch with Chin Peng. Which would mean he was a traitor.

Dreadful thoughts blossomed in my mind with the vigour of lush, rank weeds. But even as they blossomed I realised that the seeds of those thoughts
had been with me for a long, long time. Since I had run into Catherine and Wu Sing in Singapore, and sipped teh halia tarik with them. Since Catherine had said that nobody knew better than I did that there might be a need to use guns to bring about a new and better Malaya. Since the visit to Casuarinas by Ivan Sokolov, and the award to me of a Russian medal. Since Malcolm's words at the Singapore Swimming Club: ‘All they're waiting for is a signal,' Malcolm had said. ‘A signal that the Russians, the Chinese, or even a top British traitor is on their side, able to secure their lines of communication.'

I scrambled out of bed, too agitated to lie still, and went into the little sitting room attached to our suite. I tried to laugh. Surely it was an absurd idea to think that Denis was a spy. After all, he was one of the Linlithgow Hunt, wasn't he? One of Stewart Menzies' most trusted men?

And then an insidious little voice:
It's the most trusted ones who make the most dangerous double agents. They know all the deepest secrets.

And didn't Denis know all the secret arms dumps and jungle access points that had kept Force 136 alive during the Japanese Occupation? He should – he established most of them.

I paced the floor, my heart beating like a drum. So many things were falling into place. Denis's dealings with Seman Makarov in Australia. Had we really been passing on the secret cables at Stewart Menzies' request, or had that just been a story to obtain my cooperation? Certainly we'd been well paid for our efforts, and equally certainly the Russians had benefited. And the Skripkin business. Denis had felt more than sadness that Skripkin had been betrayed, he had felt
guilt
.

‘Can't sleep, darling?'

Denis had come into the sitting room, his hair rumpled by sleep, concern in his eyes. I started violently, and when he saw me shake he put his arms around me.

‘You are still upset by the funeral,' he said. ‘I've got some tablets that will make you sleep.'

I woke the next morning and lay in bed feeling refreshed and well, my mind as clear as the sunlight that flooded into our room. It must have been quite late because Denis was already up and dressed, packing our suitcases, and I could hear the mid-morning traffic in the street outside. I lay there for a while, watching Denis as he folded the dark cotton suit I'd worn at the funeral and put it into my case with strong, careful hands.

The panic and the paranoia of the night before had quite gone, and I
felt calm, almost detached as I considered what I should say or do. After all, I told myself, Denis was in a curious business, where the truth was never quite as simple as it seemed. Where one should never take anything at face value. Where one really mustn't jump to conclusions.

Denis noticed that I was awake and smiled at me. ‘I've arranged for them to bring your breakfast up to you, darling. Go back to sleep for a while – you've had a rotten couple of days and it's taken it out of you.'

I smiled back. In that instant I realised just how easy it was going to be. Denis loved me – I knew that as a certainty – and he had promised me, at Whitelawns in the middle of the Japanese attack, that he would never, ever deceive me. All I had to do was to ask him if he was in touch with the MCP and with Chin Peng, and he would tell me.

I flung myself out of bed and went over to him, and kissed him on the mouth.

‘What have I done to deserve that?' he asked, bemused.

‘Oh, that was just because you are you,' I said. ‘And because I know you love me. Now, ring room service and tell them to cancel breakfast in bed. We'll go down to breakfast together. They say that the chef here does superb devilled kidneys.'

Of course, Denis needed to know I was serious when I asked my questions, so I prepared carefully. To start with I dressed with care, because when one knows that one looks good one has greater confidence. Then I put on my London sapphire, which I had had made up into a brooch, because Denis knew I only wore that brooch on important occasions. Finally I picked my timing. I chose the moment after we'd had our porridge and a cup of tea but before the main course had arrived, so that we were comfortably replete but our minds still crystal clear.

‘I want you to promise me something,' I asked Denis quite out of the blue. ‘I'm going to ask you some questions, and I want you to promise that you won't answer them if you can't, but that if you do answer them, you will tell me the truth. On my part, I promise that I will only ask what I really need to know.'

Denis smiled. ‘This sounds awfully serious,' he said. And then he saw the look in my eyes and the smile faded. ‘Of course I promise, darling,' he said sincerely.

‘Are you . . . working on the side of the Communists? Working with the bandits?'

Denis looked me straight in the eye. ‘I promise you that I am not working for the Communists.'

‘And you're not in touch with Chin Peng?'

Denis' eyes flickered but stayed candidly on mine. ‘I haven't set eyes on Chin Peng since the war. And no, I'm not in touch with the blighter.'

I breathed a deep, deep sigh of relief. ‘Then everything is perfectly all right,' I said. For some absurd reasons there were tears in my eyes, and Denis passed across his handkerchief.

‘Silly girl!' he chided gently. ‘It was that extraordinary message from Catherine, wasn't it? She must have gone a little bit potty, I'm afraid. I don't think the poor girl has been thoroughly herself since Robert and April's deaths.'

And so we drove back to Cameron Highlands as a team again. Invincible, so that even while we ground up the steep hill road from Tappah, with the jungle crouched and ominous on either side, I was laughing and happy and not afraid.

Chapter Thirty-Six

O
n the night we returned to Cameron Highlands I saw a tiger in our garden.

I'd gone to bed early, tired out by the travelling and the emotion of the past few days, and fallen asleep immediately. It was some time after midnight when I awoke, and lay staring out at the jungle ridges marching into infinity. A full moon rode high in the sky, putting a sheen on the whole world. At first I was happy just to lie there and look out at the silvery treetops but after a while I padded out onto the balcony. The air was cool and I leaned against the warm stone balustrade, staring down into the transformed garden. It was a magic world down there, with the cannas and the delphiniums, the banks of hollyhocks and the serried foxgloves all robbed of their colour and painted fairyland white. I walked to the end of the balcony and peered around the corner of the house, looking across the side lawn to where the jungle began. As I looked, there was movement in the inky shadows beneath me – and a tiger stepped out into the light.

It stood there, a huge, magnificent beast, glowing in the moonlight like something freshly minted in a silversmith's furnace.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

It looked up at me for a long moment, and I looked back, and then it turned away indifferently and stalked across the lawn, back into the shadows of the jungle. It was only after it had gone that I realised that I had stopped breathing.

It had been such a beautiful moment that I ran back to Denis and shook him awake. ‘A tiger, darling! It's gone but it might come back.' I was whispering so as not to break the spell, and I don't think Denis really heard.

‘For heaven's sake,' he grumbled, looking at the bedside clock. ‘It's the middle of the night. Come back to bed and tell me about it in the morning. I'm teeing off with Parsons at seven.'

The children were deeply impressed when I told them about the tiger next morning, and they dashed outside halfway through breakfast looking for footprints. ‘Everywhere!' Tony reported importantly. ‘Big paw prints everywhere.'