Singapore 52

  SINGAPORE 52

  Also by Murray Bailey

  Map of the Dead

  Black Creek White Lies

  I Dare You

  Dare You Twice

  SINGAPORE 52

  Murray Bailey

  Heritage Books

  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Heritage Books

  1

  copyright © Murray Bailey 2017

  The moral right of Murray Bailey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-9955108-5-2

  e-book ISBN 978-0-9955108-6-9

  Printed and bound by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

  Heritage Books, Truro, Cornwall

  It’s been a long time coming but

  this one’s for you, Dad.

  ONE

  Friday the first of February 1952, the sixth day of the Chinese New Year and my first in Singapore. I was here for two reasons: partly, because a friend had asked for help but also because I needed to get away from Palestine. Quickly.

  On the flight from India a young army lieutenant told me everything he knew about Singapore. Which wasn’t much. He said it was run by the British and strategically important both militarily and for trade. He said it was the best place to get posted and get laid. Nestled in the tropical jungle, the place was as exotic as the women were beautiful. He told me it was the size and shape of the Isle of Wight but upside down and with ten times the number of people. I’d never been to the small island on the south coast of England but I guessed it wouldn’t have been as packed as the streets where I was now. I was in the Chinese quarter of the city and heading for the docks where my friend worked.

  I sidestepped a street vendor who tried to block my passage with his tray of steaming noodles. He touched my arm. “English. I have something you like.”

  Even before he’d spoken I knew it was more than noodles he wanted to sell me. He had a large bag over his shoulder. A protective hand hovered over the opening. He’d have stolen goods in there. Watches maybe. I stood out, a white man in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. Not an army uniform but not a labourer. If I didn’t buy his watch maybe the plan was someone else would pick my pocket. I moved on.

  Observation and deduction. We do it every day, often without realizing it. It’s instinctive and vital for my line of work. My previous line of work. The crooked street vendor selected me because he spotted me and deduced I was a prime target. It works the other way too. Recognizing something that’s out of the ordinary, out of place.

  The first rule of covert surveillance is to blend in and act natural. Tailing someone is easier when there’s two or more of you, but a good operator on their own should be fine when in a crowd. And this was a crowd. The man I’d spotted could have been a dock worker, dressed in brown overalls and a cap. After all, the docks were about a mile away and there were other labourers dotted around. Most of them were in clusters and walking with purpose. This guy acted more like a tourist. He slowed down and sped up and never overtook me. The real give-away was his shoes. Not dockers’ boots, not army boots. Smart brown shoes. Probably Brogues.

  I had two choices: evade or confront. It was an easy choice. We were in public and the guy didn’t look a threat. I continued to walk along the street as though acting like a tourist without a concern. Rain drops, the size of small marbles, smacked the exposed skin of my arms and I glanced up. People around me started to scurry. A tropical downpour was coming. The timing was perfect. I saw an opening to what looked like an undercover market and stepped inside. It smelled of roasted chicken, incense and dust.

  Doubling back, I stood by the entrance, hidden from the approaching tail. He’d come inside and I’d grab him.

  Ten seconds passed. Twenty seconds. The guy didn’t enter and he didn’t walk by. A whole minute must have passed before I was tempted to step back into what was now a torrential downpour. The sound of trade was masked by the rain as it crackled like an intense wood fire on the canvas roof above. And then I heard another noise above the racket. Shouting.

  I looked around. Smoke wafted, green in the thick air. The undercover market extended for at least a hundred yards and probably had offshoots I couldn’t see. Stalls and customers were everywhere with hardly any space to move. At six-two I could see over the heads of most of the crowd. And then I saw a definite movement like a wave of heads. In an area about a third of the way down people were moving away, hustling, pushing one another. There was no panic, just an urgency to get away. Some of the people at least. It seemed to be the source of the commotion too.

  I headed in that direction and as I drew closer I could see the problem. A stall had been overturned, the wares scattered on the cobbled floor. Three British soldiers were remonstrating, shouting and throwing things around.

  I moved closer still. There were just two rows of people in front of me now.

  I heard one of the soldiers say something about dirty Japs and I moved through the last remnants of the crowd. I could see him now: a fourth person, on his hands and knees. With a white band tied around his forehead and a red dot in the centre, he was clearly supposed to look like a Japanese suicide pilot.

  One soldier kicked the prone man in the rear while another forced his boot into his face and indicated that it should be kissed or licked.

  “Enough!” I shouted. Either they didn’t hear me or they were distracted by a young white woman who threw herself at the nearest soldier. She flailed her arms and screamed and was batted away like an annoying fly.

  I helped her to her feet. She was just a teenager.

  “You all right?”

  There was dust all over her pretty white dress and tears streaked down her cheeks but I could see she wasn’t hurt. She sobbed something about protecting the vendor and I nodded.

  In the voice I’d used many times in similar situations, I bellowed, “Military Police!”

  For a moment even the crowd fell silent. All three soldiers stopped, frozen to the spot. Then the guy who was clearly the leader stared at me, eyes cold and hard. I could read doubt on his face.

  “Military Police,” I shouted again. “Get out! Get out now!”

  Two moved. The leader didn’t. Then he laughed.

  “Bugger off. You ain’t an MP. Where’s your red cap?” The other two closed ranks, pushed out their chests.

  No point in getting into a discussion. I skipped forward. One step. Two steps. Punch. It was a straight right to the guy’s nose. Just a tap, but it spun him around. Before the blood appeared I was already sidestepping to hit the next guy with a left hook.

  The third man was a problem. He was the one behind the Japanese vendor who was starting to rise. Still only half upright, the vendor was pushed and fell towards me. I instinctively caught him which was a mistake. It slowed me down. The bloody-nosed leader was up and also lunging. I tripped on something on the floor and we fell together, knocking over a trestle table.

  I felt a blow to my head, scrabbled to my feet and blindly tangled with another of the soldiers. I hit him hard but again found myself tumbling to the ground.

  And then suddenly there was an eruption of noise: whistles and shouts. Strong hands pressed down on me, pinning me to the ground. I expected more blows but there were none. I breathed in the hot dust. What the hell?

  “Stand up!” a voice barked in
my ear. He spoke with the same authority I’d tried just a few minutes earlier.

  With my arms locked behind my back I was pulled to my feet and held by two men in uniform. They had red caps. Royal Military Police.

  A major glared at me. Behind him I could see the three soldiers I’d been fighting, each of them also held in an arm-lock.

  I saw the girl in the white dress. She was kneeling by the vendor, offering him a drink. She looked over and seemed to smile, perhaps apologetically. The items that covered the floor looked like Japanese war memorabilia which made sense for a Japanese vendor. I spotted a sheathed Samurai sword under one of the over turned trestles. Thank goodness the soldiers hadn’t noticed that. I looked at the trouble makers. Not one of them could have been twenty. Just kids probably high on booze and adrenaline. They hung their heads now, no fight left in them. Which was a good thing because you don’t mess with the military police.

  The three men were dragged away and the crowd immediately parted to let them through.

  My captors didn’t move and the major continued to glare at me, unblinking.

  I nodded. One officer to another. “Thank you.”

  The major said nothing.

  He seemed to wait until the last of the three was almost out of the covered market. Again I nodded. “Right. You can let me go now.”

  Only now did he change his expression. The glare became a kind of smirk.

  “Let you go?”

  “Yes. I was just—”

  The major barked, “You are going nowhere, matey boy.” He spun on his heels and I was nudged forward, my arms locked behind my back. “You are under arrest.”

  TWO

  I blinked in the bright sunlight. Water sloshed from pipes and ran over the cobbles down the street. A truck with military police markings was pulling away and I figured the other three guys were in it.

  A second vehicle waited, its rear doors open.

  “I’m a civilian,” I said to the major but he ignored me. He walked to the front of the vehicle where a beetle-browed sergeant opened the door for him.

  A second later I was bundled into the back of the truck. At the last moment, I caught a glimpse of the guy who’d been following me earlier. He was leaning against a wall, cigarette in mouth, watching. He inclined his head, perhaps as a courteous nod. It was the first indication that maybe something was going on.

  The MPs snapped cuffs on me behind my back then attached the cuffs to a metal bar in the rear of the truck. Once secured, they sat either side and slammed the door shut.

  “Where to, lads?” I asked trying to lighten the atmosphere. They didn’t respond but then again I didn’t expect them to.

  I couldn’t see outside but the bumpy ride took no more than ten minutes. We were still in the city. When we stopped, I heard the front passenger leave. Then the two in the back got out and shut the door again. It was hot inside, maybe eighty degrees Fahrenheit, maybe more. I tried to stay relaxed with shallow breaths. Don’t think about the heat. I knew what was going on. I’d done or instructed the same thing many times. This was about weakening a prisoner’s spirit. Exhaust him, break him and gain control.

  Thirty minutes later, the doors opened.

  The sergeant with the eyebrows looked at me. I’m sure I was dishevelled, my short hair plastered on my head, my clothes soaked with sweat. Not an impressive sight. But that was the point.

  “Welcome to Hotel Bras Basah,” the sergeant said in a Welsh accent.

  He climbed in and detached the cuffs from the bar. My arms ached from the uncomfortable position.

  “Could you uncuff me, Sergeant?”

  “When we’ve got you inside, sir.”

  I could see from his eyes that he’d made a mistake, shouldn’t have called me sir. But there was no point in confronting the situation, not yet anyway. I may have been hot and bothered and thirsty and quite pissed off, but I was also intrigued.

  We were parked on a street behind a Land Rover. The other truck was there too, the one from outside the market I guessed. Since I hadn’t heard anyone get out of it, the squaddies were either still inside or hadn’t been kept waiting.

  We were outside a single storey brownstone, just wider than the parking space for the Land Rovers. It had large windows and glass doors which were wide open to the street. Five stone steps took us into a foyer. There was a long desk in front of me and three MPs behind it, one an admissions clerk. They all looked hot and I figured that was why the doors were open, trying to get some air into this hothouse.

  The corporal behind the desk watched us approach. He would log the prisoners in and ask for the usual details: name, number, rank and regiment. He’d also note the reason for arrest. I knew that the majority of soldiers that I’d seen were on shore leave. The three I’d fought were from the Staffordshire regiment and had come ashore a couple of hours earlier.

  “Causing affray,” Eyebrows said. The admissions clerk wrote it down and then reeled off the usual questions aimed at me.

  “Ash Carter,” I said. “No number. No regiment. Civilian.”

  Even though I put emphasis on the last word, the clerk didn’t bat an eyelid. He just grunted, “Cell one.”

  Eyebrows led me around the desk to a corridor. On the left was a door that I suspected led to a couple of offices. On the right was the main cell. It could probably take over twenty men comfortably. Double that uncomfortably. But there were just three today. The squaddies. They sat on the bench, looking sorry for themselves—especially the one I’d jabbed on the nose. It was stuffed with cotton wool and his face was swollen.

  To a man they looked up and tracked me through the metal bars as I was led past the pen and through a door at the back. There were four individual cells here. Each about eight by six feet, each with a stubby wooden bench.

  Eyebrows opened the gate and I stepped inside. He removed the handcuffs, stepped outside and locked me in. He left me for a minute before returning with a metal mug of water.

  I drank it and sat on the bench to wait. Through the door I could see the corridor that led to the foyer. I couldn’t see the large pen or the squaddies but sometime during the next two hours, I heard the three Staffordshires close-quarters marched out. I heard one of the guards say the name of a troopship and surmised they were being taken to brig aboard the ship. Soldiers would never be retained on land if their ship was about to leave. But they wouldn’t be free. All troopships had their own equivalent of these cells.

  Later, I heard two drunken soldiers dragged in and dumped in the pen. Unlike the Staffordshires, the two new prisoners argued and, when the clerk shouted at them to shut up, their abuse turned to him briefly before they resumed their argument.

  I had been dozing when I heard my door unlock.

  Two guards stood in the corridor.

  “You’re to see Major Vernon,” one said.

  The other one said, “It’s a long walk.”

  I stepped outside the cell and they stood one in front and one behind as though we were about to march close-quarters. The one in the front stepped forwards smartly and I waited for the inevitable prod in the back. It didn’t happen.

  The guy in front opened the door to the corridor and I took a casual step forward. The guards walked awkwardly for five paces and then stopped. I stopped.

  The man in front opened a door on the right and we filed through. As suspected there were two offices here, one on either side. He knocked on a door and we waited.

  After a count of twenty, a voice called, “Come.”

  The guard opened the door and we stepped in. I was wrong. It was more like an interview room than an office.

  The major stood with his back to us, looking out of an open window. There was a large oak desk between us and one large chair on his side, one small chair on my side.

  The guards left.

  “Sit, Mr Carter,” Vernon said.

  I remained standing.

  He turned and glared at me. He had small, cold eyes and a half-bald head. As a
civilian he may have been tempted to shave it all off or have a comb-over to hide the lack of hair. Instead, he had shaved his scalp halfway like two heads had been stuck together, one bald and one not. It was some kind of signature look. Whatever, he was clearly proud of the unusual hairstyle because he smiled after I looked at it.

  On the desk was an open book. He glanced down. “Causing affray, it says here.”

  I said, “The three Staffordshires were bothering a local market trader. A girl was knocked off her feet. I stepped in to help.”

  “They were on shore leave. A little merry from drink and having a bit of fun.”

  “I judged the situation—”

  “Judged?” Vernon shouted. He slammed both hands on the desk and leaned forwards. “Who the hell are you to judge?”

  I didn’t respond.

  Vernon made an exaggerated show of turning a page.

  “Witness statements,” he said, spitting the words.

  “Good.”

  “Not good.” He stood ramrod straight, maybe trying to look big though he was a couple of inches shorter than me. “Have you wondered why you are here rather than in a police cell?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “I have witness reports that say you shouted, ‘Military bloody Police’.”

  “Without the bloody.”

  Vernon said, “Military Police. Impersonation of a military police officer.”

  “Who were the witnesses? Did you get a statement from the Japanese market trader?”

  “Impersonating a member of His Majesty’s armed forces—a military policeman not least—is a criminal offence.” He trotted off some regulations and then waited for me to say something.

  I met his glare and said nothing.