“And when you were aboard, it was usually business.”
“Always,” Curtis said. “I have a station out beyond the Darling Downs, that’s where I go to rest, when I can. That’s where I was when the word came about Captain Zhang.”
“You’d gone there from the ship.”
“Yes.”
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Fairchild said, peering at Curtis over the top of his little glasses, “this most recent time, what business were you doing on the ship?”
“We’re planning a new destination resort,” Curtis told him, “on an island out by the reef. I have partners, and we were looking at the first stage of construction.”
Fairchild had opened his notebook to a page covered with cramped little writing. He gazed through his glasses at it, then over them at Curtis again, and said, “This work was in the charge of an engineer named Manville?”
“George Manville, yes,” Curtis said, and laughed. “You’ve probably seen our names together in the news, just yesterday.”
“Yes, I did,” Fairchild agreed. “First, he’d stolen secrets from you, and second he hadn’t.”
“It’s a long story,” Curtis said. “I’m sure it has nothing to do with Captain Zhang.”
“Still,” Fairchild said. “I’m the tidy type, I like to roll all the pieces of string onto the same ball.”
“Someone had stolen privileged information from me,” Curtis said. “It looked as though it must have been Manville. Angry, I made too hasty an accusation. Robert Bendix is a competitor of mine, who either did or did not pay for these documents. At first, he wouldn’t say anything, which is why I thought Manville must be guilty, but it was merely that Bendix didn’t want to have to point to the actual thief. Bendix and I know each other, we’re friendly rivals, so eventually we spoke on the phone and he cleared Manville’s name, and I was happy he had. George and I have always gotten along very well.”
“And where is Mr. Manville now?”
“On his way to Singapore,” Curtis said. “Which is where I’m supposed to be right now, myself. My main office is there.”
“So if I wanted to talk to Mr. Manville,” Fairchild said, “I’d have to go through your Singapore office.”
“That would be simplest,” Curtis agreed. “But what do you want with George? He knew Captain Zhang even less than I did.”
“Still, he might have some ideas.” Fairchild frowned at his notes again. “I believe there was a young woman guest on your ship as well,” he said. “One Kimberly Baldur.”
Curtis didn’t like this. The conversation had been ranging too far from Captain Zhang almost since they’d sat down together. And now Kim Baldur. What is this police inspector up to?
The girl has gone to the police. That has to be the answer. She told who knows what story, and at the same time Curtis and Manville are in public with accusations and then retractions, and to top it all Captain Zhang has to commit suicide. Naturally this inspector is intrigued; what’s going on here?
All right, he’s talked with Kim Baldur. What does she know? Nothing that matters, not if this police inspector can be dealt with here and now. Tread carefully, and all will be all right.
Curtis chuckled. “Kimberly Baldur. Kim. Yes. Not exactly a guest.”
“Tell me about her.”
Curtis did, from the explosions on Kanowit Island to her unconscious in a cabin when he and his business partners helicoptered back to Townsville. And through it all, Fairchild took no notes; meaning he already knew all this.
At the end, Fairchild said, “What happened to Kimberly Baldur next?”
“I have no idea,” Curtis said. “I haven’t been interested enough to ask. I assume she got off the ship here in Brisbane.”
“Well, no,” Fairchild said. “She had no passport or other identification, as I understand it, but there’s no record of her arrival at Immigration, and there would be.”
Curtis did his own angry frown. “Just a second,” he said. “The reason Mallory’s still here is because she lost a lifeboat. I was told it was just an error, carelessness when the boats were brought back aboard at Kanowit. Does Kim Baldur have something to do with that boat?”
“Ms. Baldur says,” Fairchild answered, admitting his knowledge at last, “that people boarded the ship out by Moreton, intending to do her harm, and she and George Manville escaped.”
Curtis displayed astonishment. “Pirates? This close to Brisbane? I’ve never— There are things like that hundreds of miles from here, but not in these waters.”
“It is her belief,” Fairchild said, “that you sent those people.”
“Me? Good God!”
“She believes you wanted her dead,” Fairchild went on, “to help you deal with your problems with Planetwatch.”
“This is a very crazy and very paranoid young lady,” Curtis said. “Inspector, I have lawyers to deal with the groups like Planetwatch, and they do it very well. The situation is, the environmentalists are on one side, and the developers are on the other, and we both lobby government, and compromises are worked out, so that business can go on and the planet is once again saved. That’s the way it works. We’re businessmen, we don’t kill people. Inspector, I do not know of one businessman in the world who ever murdered an environmentalist. The idea is absurd.”
By now, Fairchild was smiling. “I suppose it is,” he said. “Put it that way, and I do see what you mean. And if it weren’t for Captain Zhang’s suicide, I would be most inclined to think of Ms. Baldur as a young woman with far too much imagination. But here we have it. Captain Zhang. Why did he kill himself? You profess not to know. Would you like to hear Ms. Baldur’s theory?”
“I’d love to,” Curtis said, “though I have the feeling I should be eating popcorn while listening to it.”
Fairchild acknowledged that with the thinnest of smiles, and said, “She is convinced you wanted her dead, in order to tie up Planetwatch in the courts. She believes you wanted Captain Zhang to do the job, but that when he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, you arranged to have men intercept the ship, and ordered Captain Zhang to slow down to help the villains get there. She believes Captain Zhang was a basically good man who grew despondent at the things you’d asked him to do, and who grew afraid there would be too many questions directed at him. When Ms. Baldur’s parents tried to talk to him, he pretended not to speak English. None of us can understand why he’d do that, unless he had some guilty knowledge.”
Curtis sat back in the sofa, “Inspector,” he said, “you may be right. I’d never even suspected the man.”
Fairchild raised an eyebrow. “Of what?”
“I assume it’s some sort of smuggling,” Curtis said. “As I say, I’m rarely on the Mallory. Captain Zhang had the ship to himself most of the time. He could have been smuggling who knows what — dope? jewels? even people, for all we know — for years.”
Fairchild now was taking notes, and his expression was intense, brow furrowed. He said, “So you’re saying, these people who came aboard—”
“They weren’t from me,” Curtis told him. “I’ll say that flat out, that’s not the sort of thing I do. So if there were these people, and if Captain Zhang slowed for them, then they must have had something to do with him. And here was an unwanted witness, Kim Baldur, so naturally they tried to kill her. But she escaped, and Captain Zhang realized the truth would come out. No wonder he pretended he couldn’t speak English. And then he saw there was no way out. Or just the one way out.”
Fairchild flipped back and forth between new notes and old. “Ms. Baldur says she left the ship with George Manville.”