For The Death Of Me

32

As summings-up go, that one was pretty near the mark. ‘Doesn’t make you a bad person,’ Rod Steiger once said, in one of the greatest ad-libs ever filmed. That’s how I try to look at my less user-friendly side.

I got some sleep; not a lot, but enough, I woke at seven thirty and went straight down to the gym, where I ran the treadmill, rowed till it hurt, then slammed a hell of a lot of weight up in the air. I was punishing myself. Why? Because I had a sense of failure, that’s why. I had seen myself going back to Scotland and handing Harvey a slim, if expensive, envelope, then watching while he reduced it to crispy black ashes. Instead I was going back with the news that his former wife. . since he’d married the woman, he must have loved her at some point. . was a killer, out there somewhere, on the run. Or maybe not: maybe she wasn’t running any more, maybe she’d been caught in KL and her pickled head was in some Triad chieftain’s trophy cabinet. If it was at least her hair would look good: the Philip Kingsley Trichological Centre had made sure of that. (You’re a bastard, Blackstone, you really are. No, I’m not; not that bad at any rate. We all have our own ways of dealing with horror when we meet it, that’s all.)

I was punishing myself for giving up, too. I had met the woman; I had reached an agreement with her. There was a bond between us, a shared obligation. Just because she wasn’t in a position to honour her side, did that absolve me of mine? There was even more to it than that. Maddy January was a chromium-plated bitch, no doubt about that, but when we had met in that steaming hot place, I had seen something in her, buried pretty deep, I’ll grant you, but something I liked. Maybe she showed that to all the guys, but I didn’t care. I didn’t like the idea of someone cutting it off at source. . or at the shoulders.

I felt better when I’d finished: I went upstairs and rang Lufthansa to get us on to their evening flight, then called Reception and arranged a late check-out. Once I’d done all that and showered, it was nine thirty and I was ready for the day. I called Mike, but he wasn’t, so we agreed to go our separate ways and met up at five thirty, to check out, dump the bags and have a drink in Raffles before we headed for the airport.

He mumbled something about sightseeing, but there was only one sight in the city that I wanted to see before I left, so I called her. ‘Hiya,’ I said, as she answered her mobile. ‘Are you working today?’

‘Reading scripts,’ Marie replied, ‘but I don’t have to. You call to tell me you leaving?’

‘I’m afraid so. I only have a few hours left in Singapore, and I was hoping I could spend some of them with you.’

‘You want to get in my pants now?’ Her voice had a lovely laugh to it.

In other circumstances I’d have said, ‘Yes,’ no hesitation. As it was I just went along for the ride, so to speak. ‘And if I did?’ I asked.

‘Maybe still too soon.’

‘Let’s just meet up, then.’

‘Okay, let’s go to the zoo. You like animals?’

Fact is, the animals I like most are those I eat, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I have a hire car, can I pick you up?’

‘No, I meet you there. I take a taxi, it’s quicker. I see you ten thirty.’

I can take or leave zoos, leave them mostly, although I have taken the kids down to San Diego. It’s bigger than Singapore, but probably no better. Marie seemed to know it like the back of her hand. The girl in the ticket booth seemed to know her too, for she smiled at her as I bought the tickets and said something quietly in Chinese.

‘What did she say?’ I asked, as we moved off.

‘She asked if you are my lover.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘I said you were my friend. . for now.’

‘Time we saw the zoo,’ I said, and let her lead me to the tram ride.

We spent three hours there, getting to know every part of the place. There was a sound commentary on the tram, but Marie overrode it, acting as my personal guide. As you’d expect, the orang-utan, a near native, is the star of the show, but there was just about every other species of mammal on display, or so it seemed. The only part I didn’t like was the polar-bear enclosure; as I watched the poor bastard parading back and forward, forward and back, oblivious to the gawpers on the other side of the glass screen, I knew, instinctively and beyond doubt, that it had been driven quite insane.

When we were done there, I took her for lunch. I expected her to choose a fish restaurant, but she took us to an Italian place called Al Dente, on Boat Quay, where she said they did a killer lasagne. It looked pretty good, but I passed and chose a shark steak, and a nice bottle of well-chilled Frascati to go with it.

Our table was by the river, shaded by an umbrella but still hot. That was okay by me: too much air-con is bad for you, and probably explains why half the people in Singapore seem to suffer from fairly noisy sinus conditions.

‘Are you serious about the film part, Oz?’ she asked, after we had eaten and were staring into a couple of cappuccinos.

‘Of course. Why would I not be?’

Her answer was a smile and a raised eyebrow.

I replied in kind. ‘And when will you have known me long enough?’ I asked.

She looked at me with honest open eyes. ‘I don’t know; maybe never. Or maybe this afternoon. I’m a very careful girl. I don’t know how to be impulsive, but maybe I can try.’

I took her hand, drew her across the small table and kissed her. ‘Marie,’ I told her, ‘you go on being careful. Impulsiveness is for guys like me, not girls like you, and now even I avoid it like the plague. It can get you into a hell of a lot of trouble.’

I said that, yet I confess that my impulse was to take her back to the hotel and make love to her until it was time to go to the airport. The harder I resisted it, the more I found myself wondering what it would be like. Resist I did, though.

‘The movie part is yours,’ I promised, ‘without conditions before or after the event. You give me an address where I can write to you.’

‘I have a post-office box,’ she replied. ‘It’s best here.’ She wrote the number on the back of a restaurant card and gave it to me. ‘Thanks, Oz. It’s been wonderful to meet you. I will think about everything, I promise.’

I parted from her there; she said she wanted to catch the MRT, so I walked her to the Clarke Quay station. We kissed goodbye. . it was meant to be just a friendly peck, but it wound up going on for a little longer than one of those. The last I saw of her, she was waving, as the escalator took her down and out of my sight.