The inside, though, was a revelation. No sooner had he undone the padlock and eased open one of the doors than the stench of the beach was replaced by the fresh smell of soap, and he found himself stepping into what for all the world looked like a cross between a storeroom and a mobile home that had been constructed with materials from a scrapyard.
The place was as clean as it was tidy, ventilated by panels of secondhand louvres welded over holes cut in the walls, and illuminated by sunshine filtering through two cracked skylights in the roof.
A primitive kitchen was separated from a bedroom by a screen of cardboard boxes, while at the rear of the container behind a sheet of plywood, stood a chemical toilet and a foot pump that fed water to an ancient shower-head bolted to the wall.
Realizing too late that he was tracking mud everywhere, he searched around for the items she wanted, finding bandages and antiseptic in a bedroom cupboard and dumping them in an empty box together with several bottles of water he collected from the kitchen.
Remembering at the last minute to refasten the padlock, he hurried back to the crowd of people, intending to see if there was anything else he could do.
There wasn’t.
An ambulance was speeding across the mud, and in the distance, two more were on their way.
Quite how they’d managed to get here this quickly, Coburn didn’t know. But wherever they’d come from, for some reason or another, the wail of sirens had been a signal for Heather Cameron to abandon her efforts.
Even before paramedics started spilling out of the ambulance, she’d been retreating, reaching into her pocket for a headscarf to hastily cover up her hair, and evidently no longer prepared to play an active role or hang around in case she could.
Still limping and still retreating, she almost backed in to Coburn who had gone to see what the problem was.
‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ She reached out to take the box he was holding.
He didn’t let her have it. ‘Doesn’t look as though you’ll be needing this now,’ he said.
‘No. It’s all right though. I can carry it back.’
‘It’s heavy.’ He kept hold of it. ‘Are you packing up because of the paramedics?’
‘The local health authorities don’t much like me being here. I’m not a Muslim, and the shipyard owners think I’m making trouble for them.’ She glanced back at the ambulances. ‘If you’re the person who’s brought the Rad Block and the AED, you’re two days too late.’
Having no idea what she was talking about, he decided to start again. ‘My name’s David Coburn,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what Rad Block is, and I’m afraid I’ve never heard of AED.’
‘What are you doing here then?’
‘Looking for someone called Heather Cameron. That’s you isn’t it?’
‘What if it is?’
Had the circumstances been different, her bluntness could have been amusing. As things were, Coburn wasn’t sure if it was a reflection of the strain she’d been under, or whether she was finding it hard to distance herself from what she’d just been dealing with.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘if you want to talk to me here, that’s fine. But if you want to know why I’ve been looking for you, how about inviting me back to that nice shipping container of yours?’
‘All right.’ She began to walk off, trying not to wince in pain from what was obviously some kind of injury to her leg.
‘Hey.’ Coburn stopped her. ‘Did you get hurt?’
‘It’s nothing.’ She pushed past and limped away, keeping ahead of him until she reached the container and having to wait there until he gave her back the key for the padlock.
He helped her swing open the doors and accompanied her inside, this time remembering to remove his shoes. ‘Do you live here permanently?’ he asked.
‘Mostly. If I can save up enough money, once in a while I treat myself to a hotel room in Chittagong.’ She found a folding chair for him to sit on and disappeared behind the wall of cardboard boxes. ‘You can talk to me while I clean up and get changed. What is it you want?’
Because it was a difficult question, Coburn elected to start somewhere else. ‘How about this?’ he said. ‘Suppose I tell you what I know, then you can tell me how much of it I’ve got wrong.’
‘Is it about the Rybinsk?’ She put her head round the wall. ‘It is, isn’t it?’
Although he half remembered seeing the name on the stern of the supertanker where the boys had been working, London had made no mention of it.
‘Was it the Rybinsk that arrived here with the sick crew?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I’m still waiting to hear what you want.’
‘OK.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I work for the IMB — that’s the International Marine Bureau in London, but for the last three months I’ve been on loan to the Singapore Government.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Not if you don’t want to tell me.’
Coburn ignored the remark and carried on. ‘About a week ago someone called Sir Anthony Fraser contacted the IMB and told them he had information about the possible radioactive contamination of a Russian ship that was being broken up on a beach in Bangladesh. He said that the crew of the ship arrived here suffering from what could be radiation sickness and suggested it might be a good idea if the IMB were to send someone to check things out.’
‘And that’s you?’
‘I happened to be in Singapore, and I used to know a bit about nuclear radiation, so here I am.’ He paused. ‘Does any of that make sense?’
‘Mm.’ She came back into the kitchen. ‘Yes it does.’ She was wearing a cotton blouse and was buckling up the belt of a pair of shorts while she tried unsuccessfully to inspect the back of her right leg.
‘Let me see that.’ He knelt down. ‘Turn round a minute.’
She had a wound in her thigh, a nasty jagged cut about half an inch long. It wasn’t bleeding, but the edges were puckered and inflamed, and to Coburn it didn’t look too good at all.
‘Well?’ She stepped away from him.
‘How close were you to the shooting?’
‘I don’t know. A hundred and fifty yards or so. Why?’
‘My guess is you’ve picked up a metal fragment from the jacket of a bullet that’s ricocheted off something. Whatever it is, it’s going to have to come out.’
‘You’re an expert on these things, are you?’ She sounded slightly scathing.
‘Just trying to help. Was it you who decided the crew of the Rybinsk had been exposed to radiation?’
She nodded. ‘I hadn’t seen the symptoms anywhere before, so I was really slow to get on to it — you know, because I didn’t believe that’s what it could be. It was only after the men got worse that I started making phone calls and began to think they might be suffering from radiation poisoning. Even then I wasn’t certain.’
‘But you contacted UNICEF anyway.’
‘No. I’m fairly sure UNICEF have forgotten all about me. They only sent me here to write a report on child labour in the shipyards. I’m not supposed to be working as a nurse. Anyway, if I was right, I needed anti-radiation drugs in a hurry, and it takes months and months to get anything out of the UN.’
‘So you got hold of someone else instead.’
She nodded again. ‘Anthony Fraser’s my godfather. He’s a director of a London company of insurance underwriters called Maritime Fidelity. I called him one evening and explained the whole thing to him on my sat-phone.’
‘And he promised to send you this Rad Block and AED stuff you thought I’d brought?’ Coburn was starting to put the pieces together. ‘They’re anti-radiation drugs, are they?’