Torrance: Escape from Singapore Read online

  ‘Well, technically, yeah. But it was me he told about them. And I’m the bloke who knows someone in town willing to pay us eight hundred dollars for the lot, no questions asked. You were happy enough when I told you I’d pay you two hundred dollars for a couple of hours’ work. Stop being greedy.’

  Grumbling, MacRae wheeled the cartons to the wicket gate. Once they were outside, Torrance clambered over the tailgate and MacRae passed the cartons up to him so he could stack them in the back. With all four loaded aboard the lorry, the two of them went back for another four. As they worked – or rather, as MacRae worked and Torrance supervised him – the cockney hummed ‘Nice Work If You Can Get It’. They heard the occasional crash of another shell landing, but none landed close enough to worry about.

  On their final trip they emerged to find a military policeman inspecting the Morris by the light of a torch. Turning, he shone the beam in Torrance’s face. ‘Evening, lads. Can I see your orders?’

  ‘Yes, Corporal.’ Torrance was reaching for his forged order, wondering what he would do if the redcap called Colonel Stewart to check, when MacRae suddenly moved in close. There was a brief struggle between the Glaswegian and the redcap. The redcap’s torch fell to the ground with a crack and went out, and MacRae lowered the inert body.

  ‘Is he out?’ asked Torrance.

  Crouching over the body, MacRae wiped the blade of his flick knife on the redcap’s shirt and closed it, slipping it back into his pocket. ‘Oh aye, he’s out awreet, Slugger.’

  ‘You’ve killed him, you bloody maniac!’

  ‘What was I supposed to do? Let him cart us down the glasshouse for the rest of our naturals?’

  ‘He might’ve had a missus waiting for him back in Blighty! Kids!’

  ‘What about all them Japs ye’ve bumped since the war began? They’ve all got missuses and wee’uns waiting for them back in Tokyo and Yokohama too, ye ken.’

  ‘That’s different. We’re supposed to kill them!’ Looking around, Torrance spotted a partially ruined office building across the road, evidently hit by a Japanese shell, and nodded at it. ‘We’ll dump him over there. With any luck whoever finds him will think he was killed in the shelling.’

  MacRae took the corpse’s feet, which left Torrance to grab him by the armpits. They carried him across to the ruined office building. Two walls had collapsed at one corner, and by clambering over piles of broken bricks they were able to put the corpse down where it would not be seen by anyone passing by outside.

  ‘No one’s gaunae believe for a moment he was killed in the shelling,’ said MacRae.

  Torrance hunkered down to pick up half a dozen bricks one after another and lob them onto the redcap’s corpse. Three of them just rolled off again, leaving the other three perched awkwardly on his chest.

  ‘Oh aye,’ said MacRae. ‘That really looks like he was killed in the shelling.’

  ‘Never mind, it’ll have to do,’ said Torrance, struggling to mask his irritation. MacRae had been the one who had murdered the redcap, after all; he might have done something more constructive to conceal the body than stand around making sarcastic comments. ‘Come on, let’s scarper before his oppo turns up.’

  ‘He disnae have an oppo.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it! Redcaps always have oppos.’

  They climbed into the cab and MacRae got the engine started. Torrance took a pack of Gold Flake from his pocket, plugged one in the corner of his mouth and lit it with a match, noticing as he did so that his hands were shaking.

  ‘Ye ken… I may have murdered yin redcap, but you’re an accessory now,’ said MacRae. ‘If ye grass on me, mebbe they’ll put me in front of a firing squad, but they’ll send ye back to the glasshouse.’

  ‘The thought had occurred to me.’

  The Gurkhas opened the gates for them at the main entrance to the naval base: apparently only people entering were stopped and questioned.

  They headed south across the island, past the airfield at Sembawang, through the village of Nee Soon and up into the jungle-covered hills of central Singapore where reservoirs nestled between the ridges. There were other vehicles out on the roads that late at night: three-tonne lorries, Bren-gun carriers, Quad tractors towing twenty-five pounders, motorcycle dispatch riders weaving in and out of the traffic.

  ‘What time is it?’ Torrance asked MacRae.

  The Glaswegian glanced at the luminous dial on his watch. ‘Just coming up to three o’clock.’

  ‘Jesus! Get your foot down, Smiler. We’ve got to get the lorry back to the barracks before oh-four hundred.’

  ‘Why? What happens at oh-four hundred? Dis it turn back intae a pumpkin?’ MacRae chortled at his own wit.

  ‘No, at oh-four hundred “Hoot” Gibson replaces “Blanco” White on sentry-go at the main entrance at our barracks. Which means you and I get nabbed for being outside of barracks without a pass – not to mention misappropriation of one three-tonne army lorry – if we try to get in that way.’ Lance Corporal Gibson was bum-sucking for promotion and would not hesitate to report Torrance and MacRae to demonstrate his dependability to his superiors.

  That wiped the smirk off MacRae’s face. He eased the accelerator down perceptibly.

  At last they descended Thomson Road into Singapore Town. ‘Head for Chinatown,’ Torrance said as they crossed the bridge over the canal.

  At Farrer Park, the barrel of a Bofors gun jutted skywards. Walls of sandbags protected the doors and windows of all the public buildings they passed. Mounds of sand were heaped on every other street corner to be used to extinguish any incendiary bombs the Japanese might drop. A fresh bomb crater on South Bridge Road forced them to take a detour. Many of the shops and houses they passed were no more than burned-out shells: the island of Singapore offered no shortage of targets of strategic importance, but for some reason the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service seemed to direct the bulk of its wrath at the teeming streets of Chinatown. In one street, a Malay ARP warden supervised as a dozen of his countrymen collected corpses from a bomb site and loaded them into a waiting lorry.

  ‘Take the next left,’ Torrance told MacRae.

  ‘What, down yon alley?’

  ‘Unless you’d rather park up on the street and unload a lorry full of hooky nylons where all the world can see us?’

  The alleyway was narrow but MacRae managed to manoeuvre the Morris down it. He put on the hand brake, and Torrance jumped down from the cab. ‘Wait here.’

  He stepped past some overflowing rubbish bins and crates full of empties to hammer a fist against a black door. When a few seconds passed without anyone answering, he hammered again, and a moment later a peephole opened up and a pair of eyes peered out at him, spitting out a torrent of Singaporean Hokkien.

  ‘Never mind all that malarkey,’ said Torrance. ‘Is the boss man in?’

  The peephole was slammed shut again. A few seconds later the door opened and a stocky, middle-aged Chinese stepped out. He wore a white tuxedo, but at some point during the night his bow tie had come adrift. ‘Charlie Torrance, you son of a gun!’

  ‘Wotcher, Boon Lam Po!’

  The two of them embraced. As they separated, Boon indicated a crimson stain on the front of Torrance’s shirt. ‘You’ve got ketchup down you.’

  ‘Can’t take me anywhere.’ Torrance folded his arms self-consciously over the bloodstain.

  ‘Is it true about the invasion?’

  ‘What invasion?’

  ‘That the Japanese landed earlier tonight. One of my boys has a ham wireless set, he says he can pick up the Australians’ transmissions and tonight they’ve been going crazy. Lots of messages about the Japanese swarming ashore in the mangrove swamps near Sarimbun.’

  ‘First I’ve heard about it. You know how it is. Some poor bloody Chinese from Choa Chu Kang probably went for a piss in the bushes, some Aussie saw him and shat himself, and now they’re convinced there are Japs crawling out of the woodwork. Everyone knows that if the Japs come, it’ll be the ot
her end of the island, somewhere between Seletar and Changi. And I was at Seletar not half an hour ago, it was as quiet as the…’ He remembered the redcap he and MacRae had partially buried amongst the rubble, and felt a flush of guilt. ‘Well, it was very quiet.’

  ‘If you say so, Charlie. Hey, you want to come in and have a drink? We’re playing mah-jong.’

  ‘Thanks, but I don’t have much time. I gotta be back at Tyersall Park by four and we’ve got twenty cartons of nylons to unload before we go.’

  ‘You got them! Let’s have a look.’

  Boon and Torrance made their way to the back of the Morris. Torrance lowered the tailgate and helped Boon climb up beside him. The Chinese produced a flick knife to slit the tape holding one of the cartons and pull back the flaps. Taking out a stocking, he stretched it between his fists, felt the nylon between his fingertips and rubbed it against a cheek. ‘Oh, these are good quality, Charlie. Yeah, I’ll take them off your hands.’

  The two of them spent a couple of minutes haggling before Boon produced a wad of Malayan ten-dollar notes and counted off eighty, handing them to Torrance. The private had never been so rich.

  ‘Always a pleasure doing business with you, Charlie.’

  ‘Likewise.’

  The two of them jumped down from the back of the lorry. ‘You sure we haven’t time to seal our bargain with a drink? I’ve just got a case of Scotch in. Your favourite: Laphroaig.’

  ‘Some other time, Lam Po. I’ve gotta get back to our barracks before four.’

  Boon glanced at his watch. ‘You’d better get a move on, then. It’s quarter to now.’

  ‘Shit!’ Torrance climbed back into the lorry and began manhandling cartons towards the tailgate. ‘Give me a hand!’

  The Chinese laughed. ‘Stay calm, Charlie. My boys will get it.’

  While they had been talking, one of Boon’s boys had emerged from the back door and stood in the alley with one hand inside his white jacket, watchful eyes glancing up and down in search of trouble. Boon shouted an order at him in Hokkien, and the man repeated it into the back of the nightclub. In a matter of seconds, a squad of muscular young Chinese had emerged, forming a human chain to transfer the cartons from the back of the lorry and into a store room.

  ‘Gotta get yourself a team, Charlie,’ said Boon. ‘In China we have a saying: a man with the right team to hold him up can shake the pillars of heaven!’

  ‘Yeah. In London we have a different saying: the more people you depend on, the more people will let you down.’

  ‘So cynical!’ Boon proffered Torrance an unmarked, unsealed envelope.

  ‘What’s that?’ Torrance asked suspiciously.

  ‘What you asked for.’

  Torrance took the envelope and took out the two pieces of card it contained. ‘You got them?’

  Boon nodded. ‘Berths on board the Hsiu T’ung. I’ll warn you now, it’s not exactly the Queen Mary. She sails for Batavia on Friday evening.’

  ‘As in Friday the thirteenth?’

  ‘You’re not superstitious. You’ll be sharing a cabin with two other couples. It was the best I could do at such short notice.’

  ‘That’s okay. I don’t mind roughing it for a week or two, provided I get off this island. Separate bunks?’

  ‘Did you want a double?’

  ‘Separate is probably better.’

  ‘You’re not sleeping with this woman?’

  ‘Dr Sheridan’s a respectable woman. She might think I was being presumptuous if… well, you know. What do I owe you?’

  ‘A hundred and twenty dollars.’

  Torrance started counting out ten-dollar bills from the wad Boon had already given him, then paused. ‘Really? I’d’ve thought tickets out of Singapore would be at a premium at the moment.’

  ‘They are. But you’re a friend, Charlie. You don’t think I’d take advantage of a friend in need?’ Boon rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Also, I feel a little guilty about how much money I took off you at mah-jong last time.’

  ‘You won that money fair and square.’

  ‘That’s just it, Charlie. I… I kind of cheated.’

  Torrance shrugged and tucked the tickets in the breast pocket of his shirt. ‘That’s all right, Lam Po. So did I. You just did it better than me.’

  Boon’s boys had finished unloading the lorry. A rapping sound: Torrance turned and saw MacRae’s gargoyle face glaring at him through the window of the cab of the Morris. He held up his watch and tapped it.

  ‘I’ve gotta go.’

  Boon nodded. ‘See you around, Charlie. Take care of yourself.’

  ‘You too, Lam Po.’ Torrance clambered up to the cab of the Morris, slamming the door. ‘You wanna get the engine started?’

  ‘Ye want to pay me my two hundred dollars?’

  Torrance counted out twenty ten-dollar bills and handed them over. MacRae pocketed them and started the engine, reversing carefully out of the alleyway. Outside, Boon lingered long enough to give them a final wave, then disappeared into the back door, signalling his bodyguard to follow him.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked MacRae.

  ‘Mate of mine,’ said Torrance. ‘Local entrepreneur.’

  ‘What was in that envelope he gave ye?’

  ‘Boat tickets.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Batavia.’

  ‘Java! Ye hivnae got any leave coming.’

  ‘It’s just a little insurance policy, in case the Japs succeed in crossing the straits.’

  MacRae looked shocked. ‘Ye’d desert?’

  ‘I ain’t sitting around waiting for the Japs to put me in the bag, Smiler. I spent a week in a Jap POW holding cage a couple of weeks ago and believe you me, they are not what I’d call the perfect hosts.’ In the right light, the bruises still showed faintly on his face. ‘Anybody thinks I’m spending the rest of the war in one of their POW camps can think again.’

  There was little traffic on the streets of Singapore Town at that time of night, and in a few minutes they were driving through the leafy avenues of Tanglin with its mock-Tudor villas.

  MacRae glanced at his watch, and grimaced.

  ‘What time is it?’ asked Torrance.

  ‘Two minutes past four.’

  Three

  Monday 0402 – Tuesday 1000

  MacRae hunched over the steering wheel as he drove the Morris up Holland Road. Beside him, Torrance was unusually silent, lost in his own thoughts. He was thinking that ‘Hoot’ Gibson being late on sentry-go was as unlikely as the regimental sergeant major turning out for the changing of the guard at Stirling Castle with a twisted bootlace.

  Headlights cut through the darkness up ahead: a convoy of eight Morris three-tonners. MacRae eased his foot off the accelerator. The lorries coming towards them suddenly turned left up Tyersall Avenue.

  ‘They must be heading towards our barracks,’ said Torrance. ‘Plonk yourself on the end of this lot.’

  ‘Are ye crazy?’

  ‘If a convoy of lorries comes in through the gate, no one counts to see if there are eight or nine. Go on, do it!’

  The last lorry in the convoy was following the one before it up Tyersall Avenue. MacRae spun the wheel and followed it. Through the opening in the canvas tilt of the lorry ahead of them, Torrance could see no pale faces in the darkness: it looked as though the lorries were empty.

  ‘Sumptin’s up,’ said MacRae. ‘What the hell are eight empty lorries doin’ heidin’ to our barracks at this hour of the morning?’

  ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Smiler.’

  ‘Tell that to the Trojans!’

  Instead of turning in through the gates to the encampment, the lorries parked on Tyersall Avenue. MacRae parked behind the rearmost one. He and Torrance climbed down from the cab and walked briskly back towards Holland Road until they came to where a rough track led off the road, across a patch of waste ground where weeds grew over a man’s head, through a band of jungle where the neighbourhood cats hunted rat
s. This miniature jungle ended against the fence surrounding the Tyersall Park Barracks. A tembusu tree grew there, and a couple of nimble young men like Torrance and MacRae had no difficulty scrambling up the trunk and climbing along a stout bough overhanging the fence. The two of them swung themselves along the underside of the bough, hand over hand, until they could drop down on the other side, landing on the balls of their feet and rolling over. Rising, they dusted themselves off. Torrance took off his shirt – revealing the faint bruises left by a Japanese NCO’s bamboo cane – and folded it so the fresh bloodstain did not show. It was nothing unusual to see a squaddie going shirtless in this climate.

  The men were housed in long huts thatched with atap and walled with panels of plaited bamboo, raised a couple of feet off the ground by low brick piles. Even though it was still dark, the lanes between the huts bustled with their comrades hurrying to and fro between barrack huts, latrines, showers and the mess hall. Thirty-five minutes before reveille, everyone should have been tucked up beneath their mosquito nets. ‘What time have you got?’ Torrance asked MacRae.

  ‘Four twenty-five.’

  Torrance saw Private Rossi coming back from the latrines. He grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into an alley between two huts.

  ‘Where the hell have ye been?’ Short of stature, with crinkly black hair, dark eyes, thick black brows and dimpled chin, Giaocchino Rossi might have inherited his father’s swarthy complexion, but his accent, like his politics, was pure Clydeside.

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Torrance. ‘What the bloody hell’s going on? It’s only twenty-five past four!’

  ‘They sounded reveille early. The Japs have landed.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. Wherever they’re about to send us, I suppose.’

  ‘Did anyone notice I wasn’t there?’

  ‘Aye: Corky.’

  ‘Shit! What did he say?’

  ‘He didnae say anything. He just gave your empty charpoy a long, hard stare, then—’

  ‘Torrance!’ Sergeant ‘Corky’ Cochrane bawled in his broad Clydeside accent. A florid, ferret-faced man with crew-cut ginger hair, like many who hailed from the slums of Govan, Cochrane was no giant. ‘Come here, Torrance.’