I'd be as safe here at the Red Orchid as anywhere. I'd spent the whole day sniffing the place out like a fox in a badger's burrow, going from floor to floor and onto the roof and down the fire-escapes and into the basement, memorising distances, blind spots, alcoves, dead ends, doorways, until I could go through the building at a run and with five seconds' head start get clear and survive, if they came for me here.
It was midnight before I slept, lying on my left side because of the long knife-wound that had slashed across my back from the right shoulder to the spine, the heel of the right hand swollen from the thrust to the driver's face, the other wrist throbbing under the dressings where the walls of the artery were slowly knitting, the blood pumping rhythmically through it to sustain the life in me that was already running out if she had had her way, Shoda.
A last thought before sleep, trying to betray me: Kityakara knew what had happened, and he wouldn't now expect me to take on the mission, so why not accept that, and go home, and live?
Because this was home, lying curled like a fox in the dark, unnerved and bloodied but with cunning still left for the morrow.
6 Katie
He was an absolute shit. Fantastic in bed, but that was all, and that was the trouble, I suppose' she leaned across the little bamboo table, her thin shoulders moving forward, her eyes intense – 'I mean, sex isn't enough for a relationship, is it?' She forked some more satay off the skewer, dropping a piece of pork. 'Do you think so?'
The girl in the green silk dress, today in khaki with a beaten gold necklace, her light hair swinging as she moved, moved constantly, restlessly, watching me hard, wanting to know what I thought. 'Am I talking too much?'
I'd been coming out of the Thai Embassy an hour ago and she'd seen me and swung round. 'Oh, hello, look, I'm sorry I was so – well, I don't know, brusque the other night.' The night when she'd asked me to escort her to a taxi and then slammed the door on me without any thanks.
'I didn't notice.' Then I'd suggested lunch because it looked as if she worked at the embassy or had some kind of connection with it, and that could be useful. I was parched for information and as soon as I could get what I needed I could go to ground, where it was safe.
'Love to.' Her blue-grey eyes narrowed, focusing, taking me in. 'What about Empress Place, on the river?'
Sitting next to me on the torn plastic seat of the cyclo she'd filled me in. 'The divorce was only a couple of months ago and he still thinks I'm ready to hop into bed with him again – taking it in turns with his bloody mistress, thank you very much – and that night he was half-seas over and if you hadn't got me into that taxi he'd have pushed me into a corner and torn my clothes off – God, doesn't that sound sordid! But that's why' – twisting round on the seat and putting a thin ringless hand on my knee – 'that's why I didn't even have the grace to thank you, because I was furious. Or scared, I'm not sure which.' She took her hand away. 'I'm Katie McCorkadale.'
'Martin Jordan.'
'Of course. Everyone's talking about you.'
The nerves tightened. 'Where?'
'At the British High Commission – that's where I work. You were almost killed, weren't you?'
'So they told me.'
She stared into my eyes, beginning to say something and changing her mind and saying instead, 'How did you manage not to be?'
'Bit of luck.'
The cyclo lurched between a taxi and a standing bus and she grabbed the rail. 'I was terribly upset when I heard the news.'
I said carefully, 'There wasn't any news.'
'What? Oh. I know. I mean, when I heard from my boss. There was nothing in the papers the next day, and that puzzled me. Who are you, actually?' Another level stare.
'I wondered, too,' I said, 'about the blackout.'
'It came from the Thai embassy, I know that. We traced it through. Their ambassador phoned the Singaporean minister for home affairs and asked him if he could hush the whole thing up.'
'Well, this place has got a good reputation for safety in the streets, and tourists read newspapers.'
'It could be that.' Her eyes didn't leave mine. 'But it wasn't. Was it?'
I didn't say anything.
'The Chief of Police was also requested to pursue his enquiries with the utmost discretion, in the interests of the state. I quote.'
Which explained why there weren't a whole drove of people from the homicide squad waiting round my bed at the hospital.
'1 don't know how these things work,' I said.
'No?' She blew out a gentle laugh. 'There's something else that intrigues me. I'm pretty certain you're the first man I've ever met who can deal with five assailants armed with knives. And smartly.'
'They weren't very good.'
She laughed again and said, 'Do you mind the Empress? It's only a food centre, but you can pick and choose among all the hawkers, absolutely anything – Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, whatever – and they bring it to you cooked. Or do you know all this – have you been here before?'
'Just passing through. The Empress sounds fine.'
The place was crowded when we got there but some people were just leaving. It was a corner table not far from the river and I spent the first ten minutes sweeping the environment, simply as a matter of routine because there were upwards of a hundred people in this area and if any one of them wanted to do anything with a gun I couldn't stop him. But it was going to be safer for me in the open until I could go to ground. Shoda didn't want to make any fuss: the limousine thing had been set up carefully to provide discretion. My little Yasma was meant to kill with the first thrust, and afterwards my body would have been buried deep in a rubbish dump and the car would have gone back to the hire company.
Shoda would have been very upset by the agitation at political level, in spite of the news blackout, and the next time she'd order the subtlest kill she could think of. But that was an assumption, and assumptions are dangerous. As I sat talking with this reasonably attractive but rather chatty girl at the rickety bamboo table my nerves were crawling, just below the skin.
'You take everything in, Martin, don't you?' She pulled another kebab out of the basket and skinned the skewer. 'I mean, you actually listen.'
'You're so interesting.'
She gave me another stare, then looked down suddenly. 'Not really. I talk like a bloody -' she shrugged, her thin shoulders coming forward. 'I've made it a rule, you see, not to bore my friends – I mean about him, Stephen. And you turned up as an absolute stranger, and I suddenly felt like letting my hair down.'
'It looks nice like that.'
Two Asians watching me from the table twenty yards away, twenty-five yards, tough, track-suits, intent.
'Actually,' Katie said, 'the wounds are still raw. It hasn't been long. Do you remember that film? A Married -no-An Unmarried Woman?
'I don't think I saw it.'
They looked down, not away, when they saw I'd made contact. I didn't like that. But there were quite a few track-suits among the crowd; I'd seen the joggers in the park on the way here.
'They were just walking in the street, in New York. She was Meryl Streep – no, Jill Clayburg. She's asking him about where they ought to go for their holiday, and he suddenly tells her he's met someone else. And, I mean, it was a long marriage. And she doesn't say anything, or I don't think she does. All I remember is that she just goes across the pavement and throws up into a rubbish bin. God, what a script.'