My mouth was dry, brassy, and the pain in my head had sharply intensified; the throbbing percussion seemed loud enough to be heard in the muggy stillness. Gently, I explored my right arm with the fingers of my left hand. The bullet had gone through the flesh and muscle just above the elbow, and there was a lot of blood. The arm had very little feeling left in it-the fingers were already useless-and I knew I would have to cradle it against my chest when I moved again, to keep it from flopping into something.
“Connell!” Dinessen shouted suddenly. “Connell, you listen! You come out and we make a deal. I don’t kill you if you come out, Connell.”
The words tumbled and echoed through the blackness. I held myself motionless. The silence grew thick again, and I knew Dinessen had realized the futility of calling out as he had. Another thirty seconds crept away, and then he began moving once more, the slap of his shoes seeming to retreat in cadence. The shipping counter, I thought. And the switches for the overhead lights.
I crawled out from the skid of hemp rope, across the cleared space, and worked my body between crates of kiam chy water jars. Another narrow aisle-and this one bordered on the far side by ten-foot piles of empty pallets, stacked close together. There was no way I could get over them, and if I tried to go around them, into the main aisleway, Dinessen would spot me immediately. Unless I could get there before he came away from the shipping counter…
The lights went on.
Bright white illumination spilled down from the large-wattage bulbs suspended at regular intervals from the ceiling rafters. I paused, blinking against the glare, and I could hear Dinessen running across the concrete again, toward the main aisleway. I stood there, indecisive, holding my useless arm-and I saw the forklift.
It was an ancient American-made model, painted a dull yellow. And it had been parked so that its rear end and the right-hand driver’s side were partially hidden behind the crates of kiam chy jars at the main aisleway. The twin iron blades jutted out waist high in front like opened and entreating arms.
I went down to it in a humped-over position, trying to move as silently as I could, taking air with short, openmouthed breaths. Dinessen had stopped moving again, to listen, and I knew I didn’t have much time, that he would have to start down the aisleway pretty soon. He wasn’t going to play the waiting game all night.
I came to the rear of the lift and got my left hand on the cold metal bar there, leaning in on the open side. The ignition key was in its dashboard lock. I released a silent breath and reached in to turn it to the On position. It made a small click that was barely discernible even to my own ears. There were no front or side-mount lights on the lift, nothing to show that I had switched it on.
I looked at the gearshift. The machine was old enough and small enough so that it only had two speeds- forward and reverse. Whoever had driven it last had parked it in the forward position. I put my left foot into the rung set into the metal side plate and lifted myself prone across the seat. The high dashboard and the wide cylinder and crossbars of the lift forks were an effective shield between Dinessen and me.
Still, I lay there for a long moment, not breathing at all now. The warehouse remained shrouded in silence, and the lights burned like miniature suns overhead. I was sweating heavily, covered with blood and filled with pain and rage.
Dinessen began moving again.
I could hear his shoes scuffling along the concrete as he started down the main aisleway-slow steps, careful steps, wary steps. I groped with my left foot until I found the lift’s clutch and then pushed it to the floor. It made no sound. I brought my right foot under and got it positioned on the accelerator, then lifted my left hand to the dashboard with my thumb poised on the starter button.
I had worked for an import-export firm in Singapore for a while, and part of my duties there had been the moving of freight with a forklift similar to this one. It had constantly been in need of repairs, and I had had trouble starting it on occasion. If the engine on this one didn’t catch on the first or second try, I was through with it. Dinessen would be down on me in a matter of seconds once he heard the cough and grind of the lift’s starter.
I worked wetness onto my lips and inhaled deeply-and then I raised up on the seat and hit the starter.
The motor whirred, whirred, didn’t catch. Frantically, I pumped the accelerator and shoved the button in again, using my little finger to draw out the choke. This time the engine came to life with a guttural rumble. I wrapped my left hand around the wheel and snapped the clutch out. The undersize rear tires spun, smoking violently on the concrete, and finally took hold.
The lift jumped forward, the engine roaring now, the rear end snapping around. My fingers were slippery with blood, and I had to fight for a firm grip on the wheel to get the machine straightened. Through the crossbars I could see Dinessen, his face a mask of surprise and sudden terror, crouching in the middle of the aisleway with the Luger raised in his hand.
He squeezed off twice, convulsively. The reports seemed popgun loud amid the rumbling in my ears. One of the bullets came through and sang past my right ear; the other pinged sharply and metallically off one of the crossbars on the lift frame. Dinessen turned and started to run, clumsily, his huge feet tangling with one another in his haste to get out of the way of the hurtling machine. I let go of the wheel and jumped out to the side, hit the concrete on my numbed right shoulder, felt only the shock of impact.
I rolled over, and when I came up I heard Dinessen scream-a high-pitched, terrified sound over the amplified roar of the forklift’s motor. But then the scream was chopped off in a thundering, reverberating crash, and I knew the machine had slapped into the upper wall that separated the warehouse from the office.
I got to my feet, painfully, and went down there. The lift lay on its side at the base of the wall, its rear wheels spinning. The stench of gasoline from its ruptured tank was heavy in the stagnant air. I took one look at Dinessen, and at the dripping red grooves the forks had made in the wooden wall, and turned away to keep from being sick.
One of those gleaming metal forks had caught him just above the belt at the rear, carried him forward, and driven him into the wall as the lift collided with it. There was not much left of him now at all.
Chapter Thirteen
Dinessen’s car was an old, primer-patched Citroen. I found it parked just outside the entrance to the office, the key in the ignition. That was something, at least. I wouldn’t have had the stomach to search the mangled thing there in the warehouse; it had been bad enough during the minute I had used to wipe my fingerprints off the surfaces I had touched on the forklift.
That act had been automatic, and now I wondered why I had taken the time to remove the prints. It was, in a bitter sense, like closing the barn door after the horse had fled. But I still had some hope-the odds were a little better now-and I decided I had done the wisest thing. There was no point in tightening the noose around my neck.
I slid in under the Citroen’s wheel, holding my stiffened right arm in my lap. There had been no time for cleaning up, and my bush jacket and khakis were stained with patches of blood; but the wound had stopped bleeding at least. My head still ached piteously, and my strength was flagging from pain and exertion and loss of blood. And yet the urgency which filled me was like a narcotic, allowing me to function, compensating.
I got the car started and brought it into a sharp turn, onto a short access lane. I had to shift the four-speed transmission awkwardly across my body with my left hand, using my shoulder to keep the wheel in position. The floodlit buildings, the small and darkened airstrip, receded and finally disappeared as I reached Bukit Timah Road and swung south along there, into the city proper.
The Citroen had a dash panel clock, and its luminescent dial coincided with my wristwatch… 8:05. It would take me maybe twenty minutes to get to the Lavender Street area and Tampines Road… 8:25. Not much time-but I had to go there, I had to find whatever evidence Dinessen had planted with Marla King’s body; and if it could be accomplished, if there was enough time, I had to get rid of the body as well. Even with any evidence removed, I didn’t want Tiong walking in there and finding her dead.
There was a considerable amount of traffic on Bukit Timah Road, and the headlights of the oncoming cars were like streaks of yellow-white paint on the black canvas of the night. Tall palms and Jamaican peppers and fruit- laden mangosteens dotted the landscape, occasionally illuminated by the headlights, occasionally drenched in the clinical white shine of the moon when it drifted free of a rolling pattern of clouds. I drove too fast in spite of the
