Milkshake (3 page)

The queue edged slowly forward. David watched the face of the
officer scrutinising first passports, then documents, then back to
the passport. Had he been told to look out for him? Did he already
have a photograph of David? Had he already seen him waiting in line
and was coolly working his way through the line until David reached
his desk?

David noticed a door opening. Two uniformed men emerged and
walked towards them, not the crowd in general but the Turners in
particular. Halfway across the floor, the pair divided. David’s
heart pounded in his chest. He kept his head fixed straight but his
eyes hurt in their sockets as they strained to the right. David
moved closer to Katherine in a vain attempt to gain protection.
“Excuse me,” a polite but firm voice said, “Please follow
me.”

The instruction was directed at both of them. David realised
that as far as the Singaporeans were concerned, they had travelled
as a pair. It would be prudent to arrest them both.

Katherine still had no idea what had happened to him in
London. He had wrestled with telling her during the flight but she
had fallen asleep for several hours, then woke and got into deep
conversation with a woman sitting next to her who would have been
able to hear every word. It now seemed a feeble excuse but the
opportunity to explain his incredible story had not presented
itself during the entire flight.

Now he was glad she would be able to tell the absolute truth
when the time came to be questioned about their short time apart
prior to their departure from Heathrow.

David expected to be guided towards the door the two men had
emerged from. His mouth was dry. He prepared for an angry exchange.
Instead they were led parallel to the queue of waiting passengers
to a previously vacant immigration desk at which the second man now
sat looking intently at the screen in front of him.

The first man smiled. “No point in waiting long time when we
have an officer free to assist, please?” He gestured towards the
free desk. Katherine thanked him with the smile David knew she
reserved for any man in a uniform. The immigration official ignored
their approach and continued to stare intently at the computer
screen. He took their passports one at a time, scrutinising first
the person, then the photo, before waving them through, to David’s
disbelief.

Their luggage had been checked all the way through to
Auckland, meaning they could bypass the baggage carousel; pass
through customs unchallenged and out of the terminal to the rank of
waiting taxis, a row of twenty identical Datsuns.

David slowly stretched his limbs and breathed in the warm damp
tropical air, contemplating how easily he had succeeded in avoiding
arrest. He couldn’t ignore the unwashed hair and body odour of the
man who now approached with a half toothless grin offering them his
taxi. Having spent half a day sitting in the same seat, he probably
smelt equally unpleasant. “Can you take us to our hotel
please?”

“Sure. You get in, I take you.”

David took the front seat, noticing the badly frayed and
tattered owner's licence untidily taped to his side of the dash.
The photograph on the licence bore no resemblance to the current
driver.

Loose change and empty cigarette packets were scattered
beneath his feet. The driver reset the meter before glancing over
his shoulder, throwing the shift into ‘drive’ and nudging the nose
of the car into the stream of taxis exiting the airport.

David and Katherine sat in silence, staring out at the sights
of this unfamiliar city–state. Their driver made an attempt at
friendly conversation. “You like a David Beck-ham, Manjester
Unided?”

David did not hold out much hope of the driver understanding
anything other than a very simple reply, which was all he was
prepared to offer given that the question had encapsulated about
seventy-five per cent of his entire football knowledge. “Yes, very
good,” he answered with no enthusiasm, It sounded patronising, a
belittling answer to satisfy a simple soul, but it was genuinely
his most eloquent answer on the subject. He turned to Katherine to
be rescued. “Look at that,” he said, pointing to some dull,
uninteresting apartment block. “People actually live in
there.”

Luckily years of previous experience had taught her to
recognise when her husband began floundering in a sea devoid of
sporting knowledge, a completely dead sea as far as he was
concerned. She was ready to dive in, a ring of life-saving banality
tucked under her arm. But first she always relished the few seconds
of silence she made him endure as she circled for a few moments;
hesitating, just to watch his ever–widening eyes sink lower and
lower into the murky depths of embarrassment and ignorance. “Do
they really?” She smiled. “How interesting.”

This device was designed to eliminate the driver from any
further conversation. He would not feel confident in either his
language or cultural skills to attempt a three way conversation,
particularly when the other parties were husband and wife. Just for
good measure, she secured his total exclusion. “Jan and Tony came
here for their honeymoon, do you remember?” There was little chance
they would have travelled in this particular taxi.

At the hotel, they successfully negotiated the curious ritual
of giving their hand luggage to the porter at reception, only to
have to buy it back from him in their room five minutes
later.

The next eighteen hours were spent in a listless,
semi-conscious state. They had planned to shop, eat and take in the
sights but the heat and jet lag had suppressed their appetite for
anything. Completely drained by lack of sleep and the
disorientation it induced, an overly frantic search for a suitable
restaurant found them sitting down to a hearty steak dinner at
eleven–thirty in the morning, their brains telling them it was only
seven-thirty a.m. and their appetites craving protein and
carbohydrates.

The reality of being homeless added to their sense of
disassociation. Enveloped in a suffocating oriental haze of
humidity, relieved only by the artificial air–conditioned chill of
the numerous shopping malls, their senses assaulted at every turn
by the vibrant atmosphere of Singapore, all only added to an
unnerving sense of unreality and disconnection with the
present.

David’s mind was on the next leg of the journey. Too much
fatty food and far too much caffeine continued playing tricks. He
imagined they were in a jungle clearing, trapped amidst the chatter
of machine gun fire. motorbikes and mercenaries selling cheap
electronic equipment. They would be rescued by an SAS taxi driver
and delivered safely back to the airport to await the last flight
out of the country.

Energy-sapping fatigue was not a pleasant feeling. He
progressively lost concentration as they sat in the airless cab on
the way back to the hotel, thankful someone else was taking the
risk of negotiating busy, unfamiliar streets.

Young men on whining mopeds careered past, weaving dangerously
between the cars and trucks. Each bike and rider looked identical
to the last, their brightly–coloured shirts flapping wildly in the
hot breeze as they overtook the taxi, clasping a box or a large bag
of food in the arm which was not aiming the small bike at the
traffic ahead.

David’s head drooped and his eyes came to rest on the taxi
driver’s licence. The face looked the same as the driver the day
before. He looked and the driver smiled. “You like soccer? Chelsea?
West- a–Ham?”

David shook his head.

Katherine had fallen asleep in the back of the taxi by the
time they arrived back at their hotel. “I’ll give you the key so
you can go straight to bed,” David suggested to her. “I just want
to check to see if we have any emails.”

He fed some coins into the computer he’d noticed in the lobby.
The clock on the website flashed UK time, confirming why he was
feeling so exhausted at six-thirty in the evening.

You have no new messages.

On the opposite wall was an ATM machine. He remembered the
credit card that had appeared in his wallet the day
before.

He had successfully left the UK, had entered Singapore
unchallenged and was now an insignificant speck amongst four
million others. Taking out his wallet, he almost hoped the card
would be gone. It may have already been cancelled and would remain
inside the machine.

Please enter your PIN number and press OK.

He fumbled for the small scrap of paper, typed in the number
and pressed OK. The option menu appeared. The card was still
active.

How could the owner be so stupid as to not cancel a credit
card with such a huge balance on it? The answer came straight back
at him - because it had belonged to the man who had fallen to his
death in the car park!

The other men had stolen it from him. A dead man cannot cancel
his own credit card. This would give the thief time to do some
serious spending before it was cancelled by the company who had
issued it.

Questions began to flow once more. What was his part in their
plan and why had they planted the card on him instead of just
taking it for themselves? How had he managed to evade the police,
leave the country and enter Singapore unchallenged?

The machine beeped, reminding him to make a selection. He
looked again at the options. The balance had been some incredibly
high amount when he had checked it back in London. He decided to
get another printout and keep this one, then get another one in
about twelve hours' time, just before leaving Singapore, and check
if anyone else was using the account.

The dead man may have a wife or partner who shared the account
and he wanted to see if they were continuing to use it, He knew
when Katherine had her credit card stolen in Spain both the cards
on the same account were invalidated.

He suspected he was already being followed or tracked in some
way. The coincidence of apparently getting the same taxi driver
twice in a city of four million people had already heightened the
suspicion that had been lurking ever since the security guard had
somehow found him in the toilet at Heathrow.

The machine beeped again. He pressed the button. It whirred
and sent the card back out. David placed it into his wallet. In the
lift back up to his room on the twentieth floor, he read the
printout. The number was huge, but was it exactly the same as the
first one he had read? He would check it against the next enquiry
he made.

David decided not to tell Katherine any of this until they
were on the plane heading for New Zealand. The long flight would
give him plenty of time to explain what had happened so far and she
could help him decide what to do next.

* * *

The second night was worse than the first. Their body clocks
were stubbornly refusing to adjust to the time difference and David
sat in bed pretending to read the hotel magazine at 3.00 a.m., his
head spinning. Katherine lay beside him reading her latest book.
This was not the best time to broach the subject of his lost half
an hour at Heathrow.

They finally drifted into a fitful sleep before waking again
two hours later. “Are you OK? You’re very quiet.” Katherine broke
the silence as they repacked the small amount of belongings they
were carrying. David was taking longer than usual to slip into the
happier relaxed frame of mind that was usually evident within a few
hours of beginning a holiday. For Katherine at least, this
certainly felt like a holiday. “Not homesick already I
hope.”

“I’m fine, just severe jet lag,” David replied, not entirely
untruthfully.

Chapter 3

David decided to take the hotel shuttle bus, determined not to
be unsettled by the possibility of the same taxi driver for a third
time, but this did not stop him scanning the faces of all the taxi
drivers overtaking the bus.

The departure lounge swarmed with people preparing to fly
throughout Asia and beyond. David was trying to work out a way he
could re-check the card balance. “I was just thinking maybe we
should change our Singapore dollars for New Zealand ones. Give me
your Singapore cash and I’ll go and find somewhere to do
it.”

Katherine agreed. “OK, I’ll be sitting over there by the
magazine shop. DON’T wander off too far, DON’T get lost and be back
in ten minutes.”

There was an ATM next to the bureau de change. He was
confident he could accomplish both tasks and Katherine would be
none the wiser.

He completed the exchange transaction, stuffing the crisp new
notes unfolded into his wallet. Now he began to feel nervous. So
far each time he had used the card no-one else was anywhere near
the ATM. The concourse was loud and bustling with people. Two young
backpackers were already in front and he was soon sandwiched by
others as they queued behind. He considered walking away but the
temptation to know if someone else had used the card in the last
few hours was too great.

Pulling his wallet from an inside pocket and keeping it
protectively within the lining of his jacket, he took out the card.
He had memorised the PIN, torn up the paper and thrown it into the
hotel waste bin.