The Burma Legacy (18 page)

‘I couldn’t say.’

‘He talked to you about them?’

‘If he did it’d have been in confidence.’

The loyalty of Perry Harrison’s friends was getting on Sam’s nerves.

‘That Jap who tortured him …’

Wetherby put a hand up to his birthmark.

‘… Perry wants him dead. Yes?’

‘I don’t know about that.’

‘And he’s gone to Burma because he thinks he’ll find Kamata there.’

Wetherby shook his head. ‘It’s no good making all these wild allegations.’

‘There’s a man’s life at stake, Mr Wetherby. Maybe several lives. If you know something …’

The old soldier licked his lips. The shutters had come down.

‘Ever been back to Burma?’ Sam asked in a desperate attempt to get him to say something else.

‘Never. England’s good enough for me.’

‘You mean you don’t like travelling abroad?’

‘Don’t even have a passport.’

Sam’s throat went dry.

‘You’ve never had one?’

‘Nope.’

So there’d be no record of a Robert Wetherby at the passport office. Which meant that if Perry Harrison happened to have applied for a travel document in that name a few weeks ago, the powers that be would have had no reason to deny it to him.

Wetherby pushed his chair back and got stiffly to his feet. ‘That train …’ he muttered uncomfortably. ‘I’ll miss it if I don’t go now.’

‘Yes of course.’ Sam stood up too.

‘Sorry you’ve wasted your time.’

Sam gave him a kindly smile. He hadn’t.

Bordhill Manor

1.15 p.m.

Melissa Dennis had been found on the floor of Ingrid Madsen’s office soon after 7 a.m. by Ingrid herself. She’d been quite unable to explain how she’d got there and had no memory of what had happened the previous evening. She’d hardly been able to stand and her voice was slurred. Despite the absence of alcohol on her breath, Ingrid had chided her for yet another episode of drunkenness.

Eventually, after Melissa’s voluble protests of innocence, a doctor had been called. He could find no reason for her state and proclaimed her to be perfectly fit but suggested she should spend the day lying down.

Now it was lunchtime and Melissa was fed up with her bed. She felt fine again, apart from a headache and the strange inability to remember what she’d done last night. She recollected her intention to enter Perry Harrison’s private quarters and had a vague memory of setting out to do so. But how she got into the manor and ended up in a drugged sleep in Ingrid’s office she had no idea.

Drugged. She was sure that’s what had occurred. No other explanation. But how and at whose hands
she couldn’t imagine. She’d read in the papers about date rape drugs which made you forget, but there was nothing to suggest her body had been interfered with sexually.

She was experiencing the vaguest of recollections, merely a tickle, that she’d actually opened the door to Perry’s apartment and stepped inside. Suppose,
just
suppose, Perry hadn’t disappeared at all but had been hiding in there … All her plans for travelling to Burma the next day would be a waste of time.

So she had to find out. And there was no other way but to go back in and look. Not in the night this time but during the supper break when everybody else would be in the dining room and the top floor deserted.

And this time she would go armed with the battery-powered rape/attack alarm which she’d bought a year ago on a visit to London.

West London

3.15 p.m.

Sam put down the phone.

Waddell had just confirmed it. An ‘R. Wetherby’ had travelled alone to Bangkok last Saturday, the 8th of January. Then yesterday – Monday the 10th – he’d flown on to Yangon, the Myanmar capital, the return flights left open.

Sam himself was now booked on a Qantas to Bangkok at half past ten that night.

He’d asked Waddell if Tokyo had anything on Kamata visiting Myanmar, but the answer was negative. Wheels were in motion, he’d said. The station head would be given a fresh kick up the backside and the SIS rep in Myanmar would be ordered to check the Yangon hotels to see if a Wetherby was registered. But because of the time difference and communication problems it’d be morning before they heard anything.

Sam stared blankly at the walls of the flat. There was something very basic about the emerging scenario which still didn’t make sense to him. Harrison was seventy-seven and terminally ill. It was inconceivable to him that he could mount a murderous assault in a far off land without help. The man had been away from Burma for thirty-eight years.

The phone rang again.

‘Hello?’

Silence. Then a click as the line cut.

‘Shit.’

He banged the receiver down.

Jack, no doubt. Expecting to get the answerphone and being surprised by a male voice. Fresh doubts set in about Julie’s protestations of innocence.

This was a mad time to be disappearing. Daft to be heading for trouble on the other side of the world when there was a personal battle to be won right here.

The phone rang one more time. He decided to leave it. Let the machine pick it up.

‘
Sam. Ring me straight back
.’ Waddell’s voice.

He snatched up the receiver.

‘Ah. Caught you in the bog, did I?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Listen. IT have broken Harrison’s email password. There’s a stack of messages sent and received that didn’t appear on the newsgroups. They’ve downloaded the lot and are sifting them. Anything interesting’ll be copied to you. Give them five minutes then go online again.’

‘Brilliant.’ He pondered for a moment. ‘Out of curiosity, did you try to get through a few seconds earlier?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Transport have arranged a car to take you to the airport at seven. Ring me when you get to Bangkok and keep checking your email. And good luck.’

‘Thanks.’ He was going to need it.

He rang off, then went to the bedroom to get his suitcase together.

Five minutes later with the task uncompleted he returned to the living room and logged on. The cover note from IT was brief.

The four attachments are all to the same bloke and look highly relevant. We’re having a crack at breaking ‘Rip’s’ password, but no success yet. We’ll keep you posted
.

When Sam opened the first of Harrison’s emails the last of his doubts disappeared.

From: Myoman

Date: 28 December 1999

To: Rip

Subject: Past conversations

Dear Rip
,

I have recently gone ‘online’ as I believe it’s called, and have decided to contact you via the email address you gave me some time ago. Ever since we first met at the Chindit reunion in 1995, you have repeatedly offered me your help in any counterstrike venture I might eventually contemplate. Such a moment has now come and I should like to avail myself of your assistance. I’m not as strong as I was and need someone who knows the ropes. You told me in your last letter that your work now takes you to the Far East. I shall be travelling to Bangkok shortly, and would like to meet and discuss what I have in mind
.

For security reasons I am not signing my normal name, but I’m quite certain I have said enough for you to know who I am!

Yours ever
,

Myoman

December 28th. Two days before Harrison’s disappearance from Bordhill. Sam clicked on the next attachment. Dated the 29th, it was the reply.

Myoman. Bangkok is a city I pass through frequently and will make sure one of my visits coincides with yours. I am intrigued to know what you plan to do. Email me your flight dates as soon as you have them. Rip

The third attachment was from Harrison again. A
week later. Detailing the BA flight he was on and the name of a hotel he’d booked in Bangkok.

The fourth, dated January the 9th, the Sunday just past, bore a more plaintive message.

Dear Rip
,

Sorry not to find any word from you at the hotel in Bangkok when I arrived. Realised I forgot to tell you I was travelling in the name of Robert Wetherby. Please do get in touch if you can. I’m rather relying on you
.

My plan is to fly to Rangoon tomorrow. (They’ll never make me call it Yangon.) Time is of the essence. Please join me in Burma if we don’t meet here in Bangkok. When I’m sure about where I’m staying I shall email you the details
.

Yours in hope
,

Myoman

Sam stroked his chin. Harrison’s ‘plan’ seemed long on aspiration but short on strategy. And did ‘
time is of the essence
’ refer to his failing health, or to the imminence of Kamata’s arrival in Burma?

The former, he suspected, because if SIS was having a hard time discovering Kamata’s plans, it’d surely be almost impossible for an elderly pensioner.

He wondered for a moment if they were panicking over nothing. Looking at the bungle he’d got himself into, there was a good chance Harrison would fail of his own accord.

He heard the key in the lock. Julie was back.

‘Hi. I’m home,’ she called.

He got up and walked into the hall. She was
standing by the open bedroom door, her sopping coat halfway off. She’d seen his suitcase.

Julie turned to him, her face crumpling with disappointment.

Sam put a hand on her arm.

‘I’m terribly sorry sweetheart. It won’t be for long. I promise.’

Bordhill Manor

7.00 p.m.

Melissa found it ridiculously easy to creep up the stairs to the first floor without being seen. Heart thudding and with a quick glance back to the main stairwell to ensure the coast was clear, she tapped in the numbers on the lock to Perry’s apartment. Clutching the battery-powered screecher, she stepped inside, closed the door and listened.

Nothing. Not even the distant clink of cutlery from the dining room downstairs. These quarters had been designed for Perry to be able to shut out the community he’d founded.

Melissa tiptoed to the bedroom. The door was wide open and the bed showed no signs of having been slept in recently. She checked the bathroom and kitchenette. Clean, tidy and unused. Perry always left his imprint. He couldn’t have been living here in secret. So who
had
attacked her last night?

She walked warily into the day room, crossed to the corner and switched on the computer. While waiting for it to power up, she opened the filing cabinet and began checking folders. What exactly she was looking for she didn’t know. Something under ‘travel’ or ‘family’, but there was nothing. She turned her attention to the computer, clicking through his file folders in My Docs.

Gone. Everything deleted. The emails too.

The finality of it shocked her. It was as if all trace of his existence had been purged from the place. The action of a man who knew he would never return.

She switched off the computer and looked round the room, memories flooding back. She’d been nervous the first time she’d come here, but all they’d done was talk.
She
, mostly. He was a good listener. A few little prompts from him and before long she’d spilled out the story of her life, including the extraordinarily personal fact that she was still a virgin and didn’t much want to be.

Instead of taking advantage of her obvious readiness for sex, he’d talked fondly about her predecessors.
Handmaidens
, he’d called them. Spoken of them in a way that deconstructed them, never using their real names. The ‘Jenny wren’, ‘The vole’. Always animals and birds. What did he call
her
behind her back, she’d wondered?

In the ensuing weeks and months she’d come here nearly every day, whenever he requested it. And every evening she’d expected him to make his move. Sometimes they’d lain on the bed together watching
TV or reading books. But he’d never touched her. Not in the way she’d wanted.

The bedroom.

She’d remembered a place where Perry kept things. An odd, schoolboyish hiding place. A hollowed-out book on the shelf next to the TV. She had a feeling – although where she’d got the idea from she didn’t know – that he used to keep contraceptives in it. Imagined that a part of his
usual
ritual with new ingenues had been to take the
Kama Sutra
off the shelf, excite the girl with some exotic illustrations, then open the book’s secret cavity and pluck out a little foil pack.

Melissa entered the bedroom, flushed with vicarious excitement and a touch of resentment. She took the book off the shelf and opened it up. There
was
something in the hiding place, but it wasn’t a prophylactic. Gingerly she extracted a little scrap of paper, half expecting some tawdry item of pornography. She sat on the bed.

It was a cutting from a magazine. A colour picture of a smallish stone obelisk. Some memorial or other with oriental writing on it. And standing in front of it was a tall, straight-backed but elderly man.

She read the caption, saying where it was.

And it identified the person.

A Japanese name. One which had recently taken on a terrible new significance for her.

‘Oh Perry,’ she gasped.

Suddenly there was a noise.

Melissa’s heart missed several beats as she realised it was the clicking of the combination lock. She
struggled to stuff the cutting down the front of her pullover, but Ingrid appeared in the doorway to the bedroom and saw her doing it.

‘What have you found?’ she snapped.

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

The Danish woman’s face went a vile shade of puce. ‘You fat bitch!’ She hurled herself at Melissa, snatching at the hand that was still buried in the pullover. ‘Give it to me. You have no rights in here.’

Melissa tried to roll clear, but Ingrid crashed down on top of her. She reeked of wine. Melissa dug at the hated woman, her elbow making contact with soft flesh.

‘Give it to me!’ Ingrid screamed, tearing at Melissa’s jumper.

‘Get off!’

She managed to slide off the bed and away from her attacker, making a dart for the door, but Ingrid was too quick for her. She was taller than Melissa and blocked her path.