A Dawn Like Thunder (15 page)

She came in now, her shoes clicking on the tiled floor of the entrance hall. She looked tired, perhaps sorry they were here. The Colonel kissed her on the forehead, and it made Ross realize how tall he was. ‘I dunno, Jamie, women in uniform!' He smiled, the years leaving his face. ‘Still, they were well up in the line with us in Flanders.'

She said, ‘I'd like a swim, Daddy. I feel sticky.'

He nodded. ‘Show Charles the garden – and the swimming pool, of course!'

She put her hand gracefully through Villiers' arm. ‘Come with me,
sir.
Perhaps it is Hollywood after all!'

The Colonel said, ‘Make a striking pair, eh?' But his eyes were on Ross and his reaction. Then he chuckled. ‘Come into the Museum – that's what everyone round here calls it – and tell me what you want to do about this bloody war-correspondent fellow.' He went towards a closed door and took out a key. ‘You can tell me about England, too, while you're at it.'

It was a large room with only a single lamp on a broad desk. Ross looked around with interest as the other man switched on more lights. Despite what he had said about its being called ‘the Museum', Ross guessed it was a very private place, and he was surprised and touched that he had been invited to share it.

One wall was lined with books and there were several military engravings interspersed with old swords and
eastern knives. Opposite the door, with its own small spotlight, was a portrait of Mackenzie himself, a likeness so good that it could have been a photograph. He was dressed in a green uniform with a white sun helmet balanced on one knee while he stared into the distance.

He heard Mackenzie filling some glasses. ‘When was that painted, sir?'

Mackenzie replied, ‘Before I stepped down. Frontier Force Rifles.' His voice was casual, matter-of-fact, but Ross knew it was important to him. ‘The regiment spent a lot of time in Singapore and Malaya after the war, what was left of the poor little buggers. Fought like tigers in Flanders – even that couldn't break them, but British Army cooking nearly did!' He held out a glass. ‘Pink gin suit you?'

Ross grinned. There were no cobwebs on this old warrior.

‘After that I was supposed to leave the Indian Army and be promoted. Drink all right?'

Ross sat down, avoiding the fixed stare of a tiger-skin rug by the desk. Mackenzie went on as though to himself. ‘My wife and two sons were with me. It was expected in those days.'

He moved to the window and peered out between the blinds at the purple sunset.

‘I got to love the place. Unfortunately, my wife hated it. I sometimes think she hated the Army, too.' He smiled, but it only made him look sad. ‘A general's daughter at that. You never know, do you?'

Ross wondered why he was telling him all this, when they had only just met: at the same time he felt certain that it was not something the Colonel usually did. Especially here, in this room, which must be so full of memories. ‘So they went home in a trooper.' He sounded far away. ‘The
two boys have done well. One is in the Hampshires, the other in the Royal Armoured Corps.'

He said abruptly, ‘Smoke your pipe if you want to. No rules here, y'know.' He watched as Ross pulled out his briar pipe and pouch and said, ‘We had an
amah
in Singapore, for the boys' sake. She'd been a nurse, and was very good with them.' He looked steadily at Ross. ‘An affair was something else – lots of chaps had those, a mistress perhaps to make the monotony of garrison duty tolerable. But one was never allowed to carry it any further. The honour of the regiment or something like that!' He looked at Ross again, the same searching gaze. ‘Come over here.' He switched on another light above another portrait. A serene, beautiful oriental face with long plaited black hair.

Mackenzie said quietly, ‘Victoria's mother.' He touched the gilt frame very gently. ‘Jeslene. I often sit here and look at her. She died just after we came to Ceylon.'

‘And you quit the Army, sir?'

He stroked his white moustache. ‘No choice in the matter, really. So I had a go at tea planting. Paid off, as it happens, but nowadays I have people to handle everything for me. I'm just the
old soldier
around here.'

‘Thank you for telling me, sir.'

Mackenzie smiled. ‘Sign of old age. If I lived in London, I'd be lying in wait in the club, ready to bore the pants off anyone stupid enough to listen to how we held Hill Sixteen!'

He expertly mixed another pink gin. Ross hesitated, then asked, ‘How did your daughter become a Wren?'

‘Hated the Army, probably. They formed a women's volunteer unit here shortly after the outbreak of war. She wanted to do something.' He stared into his glass. ‘For the country, she said. But, like that young man you brought
with you, she has no country, not to call her own. It needs more than a passport to find that.'

Ross saw two pale shapes passing the window, and wondered if Villiers would tell her about his girl, another man's wife, in England.

‘I'm glad she's attached to your lot, Jamie. Some of the people at the Base – well, you know how it is.' He did not elaborate.

‘Captain Pryce said he couldn't manage without her.'

‘Pryce – oh, yes, he would. She's still only a petty officer.' He grinned broadly. ‘But then, Hitler and Napoleon started as corporals, right?'

Ross heard the girl laugh at something. Mackenzie said, ‘Don't tell him, not yet anyway, but I used to play golf with his father in Singapore. Didn't
know
him, but like everyone else there I knew the family.' He switched off the light above the picture. ‘I worry about Victoria. When I'm gone.' He added angrily, ‘Let's go and get something to eat. You young chaps must be starving.'

Villiers was standing in the hall, studying the ornaments. Mackenzie put his hand on his shoulder and said quite gently, ‘You miss the old place, don't you, son?'

Villiers looked at him, his face suddenly bare and defenceless. ‘On days like this, I do.' He turned and stared into the shadows, almost as though his ghosts moved there for him.

The girl came to join them, wearing a loose robe and a towel draped over her hair. ‘It was lovely!' She glanced at Ross and at her father. ‘You should try it!'

But Ross was thinking of the portrait in the Colonel's room. What their love had cost them, although it had endured, strengthened by adversity.

The others had gone ahead. She asked softly, ‘Did you have a good talk with my father?'

‘I could have listened to him for hours.'

‘Did he show you the portrait too?'

So casually said, but it was important. Perhaps there had been someone before him, someone who had answered the same question. Villiers might be right after all.

He said, ‘I can see where you get your looks from. She was lovely.'

She stared at him, her eyes startled, but without anger. She exclaimed, ‘You must not say that! It is not right!'

His voice was surprisingly level. ‘Someone
should
say it, and mean it, as I do.'

Was he just repeating what another man had told her?
I could reach out and touch her, but she is as far away as Charles's girl on the other side of the world.
He thought of his father; there was never any warning. These memories would always ambush him.
What's she like, Jamie? When are we going to meet this girl of yours?

She said softly, ‘It wouldn't work. But . . . thank you.' She touched his face with her fingertips. ‘I wouldn't want either of us to be hurt.' She walked slowly away, her bare feet leaving small damp prints on the tiled floor.

Then she said without looking round, ‘I will be going back to my quarters. I'll tell the duty officer to send transport for you.'

‘No!'
He was shocked by the sharpness of his voice. ‘I'd prefer it if you waited. I don't like the idea of you going back on your own.'

He saw the argument and resentment fade, and she answered indifferently, ‘If you say so. If it's what you want.'

He nodded, feeling stupid. ‘It is.'

The others looked at him as he sat down at the supper table, wondering no doubt what had happened between them.

The Colonel banged his fist on the table as a servant entered and said politely, ‘Telephone call for Commander Ross, please.'

‘
Confound them!
Can't they let you off the hook for a second?'

Villiers made to stand as the girl, dressed now, entered by the other door. She waved him down, and he saw that she was quite pale, almost ashen.

At that moment Ross came back, and stared unseeing at the table. ‘That was the Provost Marshal. A woman's body was found an hour ago in a ditch on the main Trincomalee road.' He raised his head, knowing she was there, that she had heard. It was where she would have been driving.

The Colonel exclaimed, ‘Why did they call you?'

Ross looked at his hands, but they were quite still, even relaxed. Then he said, ‘It was Second Officer Clarke. She was murdered.'

CAPTAIN RALPH PRYCE
moved restlessly about his office and snapped, ‘I'm away for just a few days, and then I come back to all this!' He waved vaguely at the window. ‘And now the bloody rain!'

Ross waited by the desk, half listening to the concentrated roar on the iron roof, the memory of the night before last still stark in his mind. The cars in the road; the field ambulance, its red crosses like blood in the headlights; the various lamps carried by the military policemen. He had heard her sharp breathing as she had braked the car, and a redcap had loomed out of the shadows.

He had said, ‘Wait here. Charles, look after her.' Unemotional, cold, although even that was a lie.

The major in charge of the MPs had said curtly, ‘Sorry to drag you out. I thought it best to keep it in the family.' They had met once before; he had a neat, impassive face with a small moustache. A policeman's face – the uniform was irrelevant.

The major said, ‘Not a very pretty sight, sir, I'm afraid.'

The woman had been lying half on her side, one arm outthrust, frozen in the attitude of death. Her body was all but naked, and the torn articles of clothing scattered around
in the darkness were being examined and noted by some of the military policemen.

More lights had been switched on and Ross had stooped to brush two ants from her bare shoulder. Her skin had been like ice; it had not seemed possible on such a humid night. He had heard himself ask, ‘Can she be moved now?'

‘Of course. I'll have her covered up. I suppose I've got hardened to this sort of thing.'

‘It's not that.' Ross knelt and looked at the body. So still, and yet he could see her as she had been that same day, offering to drive them to the Mackenzie estate. There was a bruise and a scratch below her right breast. He put his arm around her and raised her slightly towards him. Around him all movement had stopped, and he could feel the redcaps watching him.

The major said, ‘There's a lot of blood. Just the one wound, though. We'll know more when we get her to the M.O.'

Someone lowered a lamp and Ross had leaned over the dead girl's shoulder, seeing the shadow of her spine, and then the wound: narrow, but the thrust so savage that the skin was torn and bruised around it. Like a kind of madness, in his mind he could hear the instructor's voice, laconic, bored even, as he had repeated the lesson for their benefit.
‘Thumb on the blade and stab upwards, gentlemen. Otherwise the blade will glance off the ribs and most likely end up in your own leg
.
'

The major said, ‘You've seen this sort of thing before, then?'

Ross lowered her with great care and brushed some hair from her unblinking eyes. ‘I've
done
it, if that's what you mean.' So callous, as if he had wanted to shock them, make them realize what it was all about.

He had heard a car door slam and Villiers shouting, ‘No!
Victoria, come back!' She had burst through the scrub and had almost fallen as she saw the nude body on the ground.

Then she had seized the outflung hand and crouched down beside her, stroking her, speaking to her in a small voice until one of the redcaps had brought a groundsheet to cover the body.

There had been a few heavy drops of rain on the trees, and then in seconds had come the downpour. The monsoon. It had not stopped since.

Pryce had returned, fuming at the plane's delayed flight, and further enraged when he found out what had happened. For a while it had seemed he was more angry at the intrusion of the Provost Marshal's men than the girl's brutal murder.

It appeared that the meetings in Bombay had not been as smooth or as full of praise as Pryce had expected.

‘They seem to think that Europe and its eventual invasion by the Allies is all that counts. I told them,
here
, here is the vital role. If we fail against the Japanese, we can say goodbye to the Far East and India for good!'

Now as he watched the rain with barely concealed hatred, as if it were some sort of personal attack, he snapped, ‘Send for Petty Officer Mackenzie. I want my special file and intelligence pack.' His eyebrows went up.
‘Well?'

Ross said, ‘I sent her home, sir. I thought she had gone through enough.'

‘I see. I suppose under the circumstances . . . And I
did
leave you in charge.' It sounded like an accusation. ‘Glad you managed to see the Colonel, though. Useful chap, if he wants to be.'

There was a tap at the door.

‘Come!'

She entered the room and shut the door. ‘I thought you might want the Intelligence file and signals log, sir.'

Ross stared at her, trim and neat in her white uniform, her black hair shining; he remembered the rain smashing down on the M.P.s and bouncing off the groundsheet and the dead girl's bare feet. Victoria could have been naked herself as the drenching rain had battered her shirt around her body. She had seemed heedless, unaware of it; even her tears had been concealed by the downpour.