The White Amah (33 page)

Mei Li stepped out in front of him and swung the shovel at his head. Immediately she knew she should have hit him harder the first time when the element of surprise was on her side. She was no match for the Asian gangland leader, who’d won his territory by wiping out all opponents. Watching her arm with the concentration of a mongoose with a mercurial cobra within
striking distance, he had ducked sideways a fraction before she swung and then lunged at her, grabbed hold of the shovel and yanked it out of her hand. She gasped, backing away from him, as he advanced towards her, a dangerous glint in his eyes. With no place to retreat, Mei Li turned and fled up the ladder like a panicked mouse deer that had glimpsed the hornbill’s savage beak.

‘Got you!’ Joe stared up at his trapped quarry and placed his hand on the sides of the ladder.

‘Don’t tell stories,’ Kiri scolded Oscar. The au pair’s panic at not being able to find him had been replaced by anger. Holding his hand tightly, she dragged the struggling child past the furniture van. It looked like that Chinese family was moving out. ‘Maybe the new people will have a boy your age,’ she said brightly.

‘But there’s someone down there,’ said Oscar, not to be diverted. He broke free, stepped off the pavement and squatted down beside the manhole.

‘What have I told you about running into the road?’ admonished Kiri. Really, he was getting to be a handful and she was reaching her wits’ end. ‘Oscar, I’m very –’

The rest of the speech was lost as she heard Joe roar. ‘Come down or I’ll shake you off your perch!’

From below street level, Kiri heard a girl scream and realised someone down there was in terrible danger. She glanced at Oscar. ‘Stand back,’ she said sternly and grasped the handle of the manhole cover.

Wild-eyed and gasping like a long-distance runner and covered with residual coal dust and dried blood, Mei Li pulled herself up through the gaping hole and onto the road. Squinting,
her eyes tightly shut against the blinding light, her frantic hands grasped the lid and she slammed it shut. She knew it was impossible to lift the cover from below, but all the same she planted both feet firmly atop of the lid.

‘You call police please,’ she said to Kiri with a look of grim satisfaction.

‘Would someone mind telling me what’s going on?’ asked the bewildered Kiwi.

Cowering in the dark below, Joe trembled. Tan had told him that Interpol suspected the Triads were running a human trafficking ring and he’d boasted about how they would never be able to infiltrate the society because none of the members would ever talk. Now, inadvertently, he had put Dai Bin Tan’s operation in jeopardy and he dreaded the Triad boss’s vengeance. It would be no use begging for mercy. Joe knew how merciless Tan could be to anyone who exposed his criminal activities.

For the last time he whispered the blood oath he’d sworn when he became a Han brother. ‘I must never injure or offend my blood brothers or sworn master. If I do so I will be killed by ten thousand long knives.’

He drew his revolver and thrust the barrel in his mouth. The sound of the approaching police siren muffled the blast.

‘I
T’S ABOUT TIME YOU LET ME PADDLE FOR A WHILE
.
You must be getting tired, darling.’ David was itching to take over from Mei Li, who was lording it over him like a female version of Captain Bligh, acting as if she was the only one who knew anything about boats. Earlier that morning they’d set out from the town of Miri by canoe and each time he offered to take a turn she had turned him down flat.

‘Get there quicker if I paddle.’

David didn’t have the heart to tell he’d rowed for Cambridge and was considered one of the best oarsmen of his year.

‘Do you fancy a dip?’ he asked, looking longingly at the crystal-clear water.

Mei Li shaded her eyes and looked at the sun. ‘Okay, we’ve made good time,’ she said and headed for the bank where wild lilac orchids were growing on long grassy stems, an entire meadow of them.

‘You look like Eve and this is Eden,’ David said later as he floated blissfully on his back in the warm water, watching as Mei Li weaved a garland from the bunch of flowers he had picked for her earlier, a look of rapture on her face. She was definitely on the road to recovery. There was an excited sparkle in her eyes, which he put down to being back in Sarawak. Happiness was not a state he’d seen her in for a long time and he knew he’d done
the right thing in agreeing to postpone their wedding plans until her grandfather endorsed their betrothal.

‘When I was in desperate need in that black cellar, I prayed to our gods,’ she’d told him. ‘I made a promise to obey the laws and customs of my people. If I marry you now, without first seeking approval from my grandparents, I’ll be breaking that solemn vow and there’ll be dreadful consequences for the entire tribe. That’s what we believe,’ she told him. ‘It’s not just you and me who’ll be threatened as a result of my defiance. The whole village will suffer: rice won’t grow; there won’t be any wild pigs around to hunt; people will get sick; and young women will give birth to dead children.’ She looked at him earnestly, hoping he’d understand that the sins of one tribal member would be visited on the whole community.

David had agreed to abide by her grandfather’s decision because he’d come to understand that their marriage wouldn’t stand a chance if they couldn’t reconcile their different customs and beliefs. Mei Li might look like a delicate, enchanting English rose but she’d been reared in a remote, steamy rainforest by fierce headhunters who still worshipped pagan gods and she was a Dayak through and through.

Just look at her, he thought admiringly as she climbed out of the water, laughing, sparkling prisms glistening on her arms and face like the most pure and rare of white diamonds. That was what she was: a peerless diamond, flawless and perfect. It wasn’t an original notion but it was heartfelt and he groaned. What would he do – what
could
he do – if he didn’t measure up as husband material? It was an unnerving prospect to accept for the gifted young lawyer, long regarded as his county’s greatest catch. According to Mei Li, her grandfather’s notion of the ideal suitor
was a gifted carver with the skill to manufacture all the objects a newly wedded couple would need to survive and prosper in the harsh and dangerous forests of Borneo. But much more vital was the ability to carve statues of powerful spirits to protect his family from malevolent deities.

‘Evil spirits can enter the longhouse through unprotected front doors,’ she told him now. ‘Our door is protected by an open-mouthed python. There’s a place between its open fangs where you place a frog so that a hungry demon will feast on the sacrifice and not on any of us. Grandfather carved the panel on the door when he married Grandma – and from when I first learned to walk, it’s been my job to catch the frogs.’

She watched him warily for any sign that he mocked her beliefs, but David was silent as he floated on his back staring at the cloudless sky. How he wished he’d shown more aptitude for woodwork when he was at school. A moment later the whir of a helicopter’s rotor disturbed his unhappy appraisal of his shortcomings.

‘I knew there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that they’d leave us in peace. That’s the media for you,’ he said, rising up out of the water, growling at the chopper’s pilot and shaking his fist.

Mei Li thought he looked like an enraged, hairy-nosed otter that had lost a young trout he’d been stalking to a skilful hornbill, and she covered her mouth with her hand so he wouldn’t know she was laughing. Not even the pervasive publicity could dampen her spirits. She was back in her country and her senses were sated with its spicy, peppery fragrance.

While the Cambridge Blue paddled strongly with a steady easy rhythm, determined to show Mei Li he was as good as
any Dayak when it came to boating, Mei Li searched through Rubiah’s jewellery for the collar of the matriarch. She lifted her hair and slipped it around her neck. When she saw her people she would be wearing the tribal talisman proudly. Rubiah had been a wealthy woman. David had estimated Rubiah’s estate, which included property, her salon, a sizeable bank balance and her magnificent jewellery collection at close to a million pounds. At least Grandma and Granddad won’t starve, she thought, and she choked back her tears. Riches couldn’t compensate for a murdered daughter.

‘How much we get if we sell this?’ she said to David, holding up the little golden locket. It was the only item of jewellery that had not been bought by Rubiah’s Chinese lover, a tawdry trinket that Roger had bought her when Mei Li was only a baby.

‘It’s pretty and that could be a real ruby, but it’s not valuable. It’s certainly not in the same league as the diamond necklace and the emerald bracelet. I guess Rubiah kept it for sentimental reasons. Why don’t you open it? There might be a picture of her inside.’

As soon as he uttered the words he wished he could take them back. If there were a photograph, it would undoubtedly be of Rubiah’s lover, the gangster Joseph Ling. David crossed his fingers and mumbled a prayer under his breath.

It seemed like his fears had been confirmed when Mei Li gave a little cry and held out the locket to him in a hand that was trembling uncontrollably. Her eyes were wide and every drop of colour had drained from her face. The small oval case contained just two mementos: a lock of silky, baby hair and a photo of a beautiful young woman laughing into the camera, a pigeon perched on her hand, in front of the fountain in Trafalgar Square.

‘Oh, David,’ sobbed Mei Li. It was the photo she’d sent to Rubiah’s mobile when she still thought there was a chance of developing a relationship with the only mother she’d ever known. ‘She loved me all the time.’

‘No doubt of it,’ agreed David. ‘Let’s get you back to the longhouse.’ he said and put his arms round her comfortingly. ‘You belong with your own people, Mei Li.’

‘Our
people,’ countered Mei Li and they smiled at each other. It was time to go home.

T
HEY’VE SEEN US, THEY’RE WAVING,’ SAID
T
UFF,
waving back from the television company’s chopper. ‘Let’s buzz them.’

‘I don’t think David will be thrilled to see his future mother-in-law, Ducky,’ said Benny with a knowing smile, ‘and we don’t want to get him offside. I had a devil of a job getting him to agree to take part in the program in the first place.’

‘Hari’s been sick,’ interrupted Rashni, one of Tuff’s adopted twins. He tugged at Tuff’s sleeve urgently.

‘Oh my god, not again,’ wailed Tuff.

Lady Chadwick, who was seated across the aisle, smiled in her friendly fashion. ‘It’s hell travelling with kids. Get your brother to suck this, Rashni,’ she said, taking a couple of barley sugars out of her capacious bag. ‘And there’s one for you too. I’ve got some tissues if it’s a help, Tuff.’

Accepting the tissues from her former lover’s wife ungraciously, Tuff glowered at her agent. It had been his idea to remove her adopted sons from their boarding school and foist them on her. ‘Why did I let you talk me into bringing the twins, Benny? They were perfectly happy at school in Scotland. It isn’t as if the doco has anything to do with African orphans. It’s just about trees, for christ’s sake.’

‘Excuse me for trying a last-ditch attempt to rescue what’s left of your reputation. Why don’t you trot along, Ducky, and look after the nippers while I have a chat with this lovely lady.’
He smiled across at Sandy Chadwick, who was making out that she was interested in her book and wasn’t paying any attention to their quarrel.

‘Do you mind if I sit down, Lady Chadwick?’ asked Benny, eyeing the empty seat.

‘Call me Sandy,’ she said, moving her book off the empty seat vacated by her husband, who was sitting up front with the producer talking shop. ‘We’ve never really had a chat, have we? You know, I’m really pleased you persuaded Josh to make this program. I’ve not seen him so excited about anything for a long time and of course it’s giving him an opportunity to get to know his daughter,’ she added happily. There wasn’t a jealous bone in Sandy’s pleasantly plump body.

‘The pundits predict the TV spectacular will have the biggest audience ever,’ gloated Benny, settling his large bulk into the seat. This was the biggest coup of his career and he could hardly believe he’d pulled it off. After seventeen years of stubbornly refusing to even appear on the same show as Tuff, Sir Josh Chadwick had capitulated, agreeing to co-present, and on top of that, amazingly, he’d waived his fee. And his enthusiasm for the undertaking had increased since they’d flown over the deforested interior of the state.

‘I’ve never been what you’d call a tree hugger,’ he’d said to Benny after they’d visited a makeshift government camp with inadequate facilities, where proud, self-sufficient Dayaks were living humbly and unproductively, forced off their ancestral land by rapacious loggers. ‘But now that I’ve seen the devastation firsthand, as it were, I’m convinced that something has to be done before we lose the bloody lot to them greedy buggers. I’m working on a protest song and I’m going to donate the profits
to set up a fighting fund to help save the Dayaks. Me and the wife were thinking it might be something our Mei Li and David might like to manage. Weren’t we, Sandy luv? What with him being a lawyer and all.’

Benny wasn’t fooled. He knew Sir Joshua Chadwick was an astute and canny businessman; the broad Lancashire accent was just his way of relating to his legions of working class fans. It was obvious to Benny that the only reason Josh was willing to underwrite the funding for an environmental protest group was to please his daughter. And if I Mei Li were his daughter he’d be doing the same. David’s a lucky sod. Tuff’s courageous daughter was tops in his book and Benny was glad she was marrying someone top drawer like David, even though young Galahad had almost queered his pitch. Convincing David to allow Mei Li’s story to be the focus for the anti-logging documentary had been a hard sell.