Алистер Маклин - South by Java Head

The cry had come from the young soldier, Sinclair, but he wasn’t looking at Jenkins, or anywhere in that direction. He was on his knees on the floorboards, rocking gently to and fro, staring down at somebody lying stretched on his back. Even as Nicolson watched, he flung himself to one side and pillowed his head on his forearms and the gunwale, moaning softly to himself.

In three seconds Nicolson was by his side, gazing down at the man in the bottom of the boat. Not all of his body was lying on the boards – the backs of his knees were hooked over a thwart, the legs pointing incongruously skywards, as if he had fallen backwards from the seat on which he had been sitting: the back of his head rested in a couple of inches of water. It was Ahmed the priest, Farnholme’s strange and taciturn friend, and he was quite dead.

Nicolson stooped over the priest, quickly thrust his hand inside the man’s black robe to feel for the heart and as quickly withdrew. The flesh was cold and clammy: the man had been dead for hours. Unconsciously, almost, Nicolson shook his head in bewilderment, glanced up at McKinnon and saw his own expression reflected there. He looked down again, bent over the body to lift up the head and the shoulders, and it was then that the shock came. He couldn’t shift the body more than a couple of inches. Again he tried and again he failed. At his signal, McKinnon lifted one side of the body while Nicolson knelt down till his face was almost in the water, and then he saw why he had failed. The jack-knife between the shoulder-blades was buried clear up to the hilt, and the handle was caught between the planks of the bottomboards.

NICOLSON ROSE slowly to his feet and drew his forearm across his forehead. It was already hot for the time of the day, but not that hot. His right arm hung loosely by his side, the butt of the Colt gripped tightly in his hand. He had no recollection of pulling it out of his belt. He gestured at the fallen priest.

“This man is dead.” His quiet voice carried easily in the hushed silence. “He has a knife in his back. Someone in this boat murdered him.”

“Dead! You said he was dead? A knife in his back?” Farnholme’s face wasn’t pleasant as he pushed for’ard and knelt at the priest’s side. He was on his feet in a moment, his mouth a thin white line in the darkness of his face. “He’s dead all right. Give me that gun, Nicolson. I know who did it.”

“Leave that gun alone!” Nicolson held him off with a stiff arm, then went on: “Sorry, Brigadier. As long as the captain’s unwell I am in charge of this boat. I can’t let you take the law into your own hands. Who did it?”

“Siran, of course!” Farnholme was back on balance again, but there was no masking the cold rage in his eyes. “Look at the damn’ murdering hound, sitting there smirking.”

“ ‘The smiler with the knife beneath the cloak’.” It was Willoughby who spoke. His voice was weak and husky, but he was quiet and composed enough: the night’s sleep seemed to have done him some good.

“It’s not under anyone’s cloak,” Nicolson said matter-of-factly. “It’s sticking in Ahmed’s back – and it’s because of my damn’ criminal carelessness that it is,” he added in the bitterness of sudden recollection and understanding. “I forgot that there was a boat jack-knife as well as two hatchets in number two lifeboat… Why Siran, Brigadier?”

“Good God, man, of course it’s Siran!” Farnholme pointed down at the priest. “We’re looking for a cold-blooded murderer, aren’t we? Who else, but Siran?”

Nicolson looked at him. “And what else, Brigadier?”

“What do you mean, ‘what else’?”

“You know very well. I wouldn’t shed any more tears than you if we had to shoot him, but let’s have some little shred of evidence first.”

“What more evidence do you want? Ahmed was facing aft, wasn’t he? And he was stabbed in the back. So somebody in the front of the boat did it – and there were only three people farther for’ard than Ahmed. Siran and his two killers.”

“Our friend is overwrought.” It was Siran who spoke, his voice as smooth and expressionless as his face. “Too many days in an open boat in tropical seas can do terrible things to a man.”

Farnholme clenched his fists and started for’ard, but Nicolson and McKinnon caught him by the arms.

“Don’t be a fool,” Nicolson said roughly. “Violence won’t help matters, and we can’t have fighting in a small boat like this.” He relased his grip on Farnholme’s arm, and looked thoughtfully at the man in the bows. “You may be right, Brigadier. I did hear someone moving about the boat, up for’ard, last night, and I did hear something like a thud. Later on I heard a splash. But I checked where the priest had been sitting.”

“His bag is gone, Nicolson. I wonder if you can guess where?”

“I saw his bag,” Nicolson said quietly. “Canvas, and very light. It wouldn’t sink.”

“I’m afraid it would, sir.” McKinnon nodded towards the bows. “The grapnel’s gone.”

“Weighted to the bottom, eh, Bo’sun? That would sink it all right.”

“Well, there you are then,” Farnholme said impatiently. “They killed him, took his bag and flung it over the side. You looked both times you heard a noise and both times you saw Ahmed sitting up. Somebody must have been holding him up – probably by the handle of the knife stuck in his back. Whoever was holding him must have been sitting behind him – in the bows of the boat. And there were only these three damned murderers sitting there.” Farnholme was breathing heavily, his fists still white-knuckled, and his eyes not leaving Siran’s face.

“It sounds as if you were right,” Nicolson admitted. “How about the rest of it?”

“How about the rest of what?”

“You know quite well. They didn’t kill him just for the exercise. What was their reason?”

“How the devil should I know why they killed him?”

Nicolson sighed. “Look Brigadier, we’re not all morons. Of course you know. You suspected Siran immediately. You expected Ahmed’s bag to be missing. And Ahmed was your friend.”

Just for a moment something flickered far back in Farnholme’s eyes, a faint shadow of expression that seemed to be reflected in the sudden tense tightening of Siran’s mouth, almost as if the two men were exchanging a guarded look, maybe of understanding, maybe of anything. But the sun was not yet up, and Nicolson couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t imagining the exchange of glances, and, besides, any idea or suspicion of collusion between the two was preposterous. Give Farnholme a gun and Siran would be only a memory.

“I suppose you have a right to know.” Farnholme appeared to be holding himself tightly under control but his mind was racing furiously, fabricating a story that would bear examination. “It won’t do any harm, not now, not any more.” He looked away from Siran and stared down at the dead man at his feet, and his expression and tone softened. “Ahmed was my friend, you say. He was, but a very new friend, and only then because he desperately needed a friend. His name is Jan Bekker, a countryman of Van Effen’s here. Lived in Borneo – Dutch Borneo – near Samarinda, for many years. Representative of a big Amsterdam firm and supervisor of a whole string of river rubber plantations. And a lot more besides.”

He paused, and Nicolson prompted him: “Meaning?”

“I’m not quite certain. He was some kind of agent for the Dutch Government. All I know is that some weeks ago he broke up and exposed a well-organised Japanese Fifth Column in Eastern Borneo. Dozens of them arrested and shot out of hand – and he also managed to get hold of their complete list of every Japanese agent and fifth-columnist in India, Burma, Malaya and the East Indies. He carried it in his bag, and it would have been worth a fortune to the allies.