Singapore Killer: An Ash Carter mystery-thriller by Murray Bailey

Author:Murray Bailey [Bailey, Murray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Heritage Books
Published: 2020-05-31T22:00:00+00:00

“You’re not good at making clothes,” Solomon said, confronting me as we returned to the workshop.

“I’m doing my best.”

“It’s not good enough. You’re to work in the fields like I said before. Executive decision.”

I didn’t argue. I’d promised to save Safiya, but she didn’t want my help. So I trailed after Solomon into the fields, where I was given a hoe and spent a sweltering afternoon turning over soil.

I used the shower block and got a bundle of fresh clothes. My dirty ones went in a huge pile and I guessed they’d be washed by the laundry team in the morning.

Dinner was in the covered area beside the cookhouse. We had rice and vegetables and noodle soup. Solomon met me and we found a table. We were the only whites in a room full of women and girls aged somewhere between fifteen and thirty I guessed.

“Who’s that?” I asked when another white man arrived. Like me, he was wearing the green fatigues. We exchanged nods but he didn’t join us. I judged him to be about sixty, with cropped grey hair and tight skin on hard muscles. His bare arms were covered in tattoos and I noticed one of them looked like a dagger.

“That’s Doug. He’s the carpenter.”

Safiya sat on the table behind him, and despite me looking that way, she made no eye contact with me.

“How long has Shangri-La been here?” I asked Solomon.

“Seven years. There was a village here before but I think it was deserted when Jeremiah broke ground and declared this to be the sacred site.” Which would have been shortly after the end of the war.

“Were you here then?”

“No, I’ve been here over four years.”

“But you can’t leave.”

He looked at me like my words were sacrilegious.

“Why would I want to leave?”

I shrugged. “Free will.”

He shook his head, not getting it. Then: “People do leave. Jeremiah doesn’t like it. Coming and going disrupts the peace, disrupts the purity.”

It sounded like nonsense to me. From what I’d interpreted, they didn’t kill the babies, but keeping them separate from their mothers was like holding them to ransom. I couldn’t imagine any woman leaving without her child.

I said, “All right, when was the last time someone left?”

“Recently. That’s why we’re uncomfortable about you.”

“Why?”

“Because he came and then two days later he disappeared.”

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