Bill Pronzini - The Jade Figurine

I thought about the Citroen, and wondered if it was still parked on Jalan Tenah. There was nothing at this point to tie Dinessen to me, and so there was no reason why Tiong would have paid any attention to the Citroen, why he would have had it removed from the area. If it was still there, if I could get to it, I would have transportation to the Katong Bahru Housing Estate; the key to the car was still in my pocket. Two things were certain: I couldn’t walk to the estate, and I couldn’t take any public conveyance. The only other alternative was to steal a car, and in a conscientious and wary city like Singapore, that wouldn’t be simple.

I wished I knew the time. If it was late enough, Tiong might have called off the search of the area and things would have settled down and become quiet again. There was still the chance that he had left one constable, or two, to watch Number Seven Tampines Road-but after the removal of Marla King’s body, he wouldn’t expect me to have a reason to return there.

I knew I had to get out of this mangrove brake now, that I couldn’t afford to wait. Unless I moved soon, I would be too weak to move at all. I leaned away from the palm bole and lifted my body onto my knees. The thunder began inside my head again, raging. I set my teeth and began to crawl out the way I had come in.

When I reached the edge of the bank, I parted some of the resilient bamboo stalks and peered across the stream and across the road at the bungalows on the other side. No lights showed anywhere, and there was no discernible movement. The moon was high and bright amid brilliantine stars, the clouds completely gone. In the creek below, the rushing water had shrunk to half its earlier size-and that in itself told me a considerable amount of time had passed since I had crawled into the brake.

I worked my way down the bank, crossed the stream, and crept up to the roadway. It took me a minute to get to my feet, but once standing I seemed to be all right. I tried a couple of mincing, experimental steps. My knees buckled, stiffened, held my weight. I shuffled across the road, to the left, keeping in the shadows. When I reached the corner, I turned right on the street paralleling Tampines Road; every house was shrouded in darkness, and there was only the singing of cicadas to intrude on the quiet.

Before I came to Jalan Tenah, I had to pause several times for rest. My face felt hot and flushed, and oily sweat formed thick pustules on my forehead that broke like thin blisters and ran down over my cheeks. Weakness turned my legs into rotted tree stumps, my arms into sapless branches.

I saw the Citroen as soon as I turned right on Jalan Tenah, still and dark where I had parked it earlier that evening. Luck seemed not to have deserted me completely. I moved toward the car, slowly and carefully, on the near side of the road. Moonshine washed the street, but the darkness was thick among the trees and fences and shrubbery. I paused several times to watch, to listen. Nothing moved. Distantly, a dog barked softly and then was quiet once more.

I drew abreast of the Citroen and hunkered down beneath a casuarina tree, looking across the moonlit roadway. I got the key out of my pocket, clenched it tightly against my left palm. Stillness. If Tiong had a man posted to watch Number Seven, he was either well-hidden somewhere along Jalan Tenah or Tampines Road, or staked out inside the bungalow itself. I knew the possibility existed that the car was a trap, that Tiong had somehow discovered its connection with me and had left it in position as bait; but the chances of that were slim. Dinessen’s body wouldn’t have been discovered yet, and there was nothing to link the Swede to me, his car to me.

Get it over with, I thought. You’re dead on your feet, in more ways than one.

I levered up and ran stumbling through the moonlight to the Citroen, jerked open the door. No whistles, no shouts. I lowered my body under the wheel, eased the door to, and fumbled the key into the ignition lock, awkwardly, with my left hand. The starter made a soft grinding noise when it turned over, but the engine caught immediately. I released the clutch, looking up at the rear-vision mirror; the street remained dark and empty.

At the first intersection, I swung the wheel right and went half a block before I touched the switch for the headlamps. With the dash lights on, I could see the pointers on the clock there; it was 2:28. I could also see my left hand as I returned it to the wheel, and the way it was trembling…

The streetlamps in the Katong Bahru Housing Estate glowed a dull amber, mingling with the shine from the swollen face of the moon to brighten the empty streets. I drove two blocks distant, on Geylang Road, and left the Citroen in a public parking slot. I wanted to park directly in front of Tina Kellogg’s building, but that hadn’t seemed wise; once Dinessen’s body was discovered, there would be a bulletin out on his missing automobile, and I had no way of knowing when that would be. The two-block walk would be a long haul-and a dangerous one, in my blood-spattered condition-but it couldn’t be helped. I had enough strength to make it, and enough sense to keep to cover.

Two cars passed as I made my way through the landscaped grounds of the buildings in the estate, but neither of them was a police vehicle. I saw no one. I was breathing heavily when I reached Tina’s building; I had just about reached the limit of my endurance as well. Once into the vestibule, I tried the interior door. It was locked. I leaned heavily against the bank of mailboxes on the far wall, found the button for Apartment 34, and put my finger on it, leaving it there.

A long time passed, and then an intercom unit mounted to one side clicked and hummed static. Tina’s voice said guardedly, metallically, “Yes? Who is it?”

I put my mouth close to the speaker. “Dan Connell.”

“Dan! My God, what-?”

“Let me in, can you? I have to see you.”

“What is it?”

“I need help, Tina. I’m hurt.”

“Hurt? What happened-?”

“Let me in and we’ll talk,” I said. “But prepare yourself. I’m in pretty bad shape.”

The unit clicked and hummed again, and the inner door buzzed softly, like a giant mosquito. I shoved it open and pulled myself up the stairs to the third floor, hanging onto the hand railing. Tina had her door open on a night chain, peering out at me when I came down the hallway, and I heard her gasp audibly when she saw my face, my body, my clothing in the pale light from a domed wall fixture.

She snapped the chain free and opened the door, and I stumbled into the apartment past her and sank into one of the chairs at the half-table in the wall niche; I didn’t want to bleed all over her girlfriend’s settee. Tina closed the door, locked it, and ran over to me, her face white, her eyes wide. She wore a flowered Chinese robe, held closed by a pair of buttons, and it was obvious, even in my condition, that she wore nothing beneath it. Her hair was tousled, her face scrubbed free of make-up. She looked like somebody’s teenage daughter.

Soft fingers probed at the dried blood on my right arm, gently. Then, without speaking, Tina hurried out of the room-and came back half a minute later with iodine, gauze, adhesive tape, a bottle of wood alcohol, a package of absorbent cotton. She set everything on the table, still silent, her face grimly concerned, and then poured alcohol on a wad of cotton and began swabbing at the caked blood. Twisting my head to watch her, I could see the puckered bluish edges of the entrance hole on the near side, just above the elbow, and the exit hole on the far side when she turned the arm over. The alcohol burned coldly, like an ice abrasion.

I said, “Listen, Tina, I had no right coming here-I know that. I’m six kinds of bastard, and if you want to throw me out after you bandage that arm, I’ll go without argument. But I’d like to stay the night; I need sleep and I need it badly.”