The Night Tiger(39)

With a wrench, Ren watches as William crosses to another building, opens the door, and goes in. Something in that room is calling Ren, drawing him, even at fifty feet, like a magnet. He must enter that room.

But retrieving William’s fountain pen is an order he can’t disobey. The name of the pen, William has explained, is that of the highest mountain in Europe, Mont Blanc. The white, rounded star on the pen represents the snow-covered peak, and it has an engraved nib made out of real gold. It’s the pen he uses to write letters every day. If he doesn’t find it, William will be very unhappy.

Rushing back, Ren gets confused and takes a wrong turn. It’s hard to filter out the flood of signals that assail him. Like a mirror full of fish, he recalls the blind fisherman Pak Idris saying. You must know their song. Though what he senses right now is more like fireflies darting in the darkness. They move in odd and random patterns of people’s interests and emotions, and Ren thinks that if only he can find a still, quiet place, he’ll able to sort them out. But first, he must retrieve the pen. The ward sister on duty tells him that she’s given it to Matron.

Matron, like most of the senior staff, is a foreigner. A sharp-faced Australian woman, she’s all elbows and briskness and looks doubtfully at him when he finally arrives at her office. “This is an expensive pen. You’d best not drop it.” Her white, starched headdress stands out like stiff wings. Clutching the pen, Ren hastens anxiously back to the pathology storeroom. At one point he breaks into a run, only to meet angry glares from adults. No need to ask for directions. The wires are humming in his head, singing. As he races around the last corner, he cannons into William.

“Did you find it?” he asks.

Dazed, Ren stares at him. The pen. He produces it triumphantly.

“Splendid!” William looks pleased, but whether it’s because he’s regained his fountain pen or something good has happened in that room, Ren can’t tell. In fact, William is in a far better mood than he’s been all week. Ren peers past him. The door is now ajar, but the dazzling sunlight makes it hard to see the dim interior. There’s a lean shadow in the doorway. A man perhaps—it looks too tall for a woman. Is this the Dr. Rawlings that William spoke of?

Electricity runs through him. Ren’s thoughts become jumbled, incoherent. His cat whiskers sizzle. He must go back, to the room that William has just exited, but instead he sways on his feet.

“Steady,” says William, marching Ren over to a bench. “Did you not eat lunch?”

Ren shakes his head. Neither he nor Ah Long planned for him to go on this surprise excursion into town.

“Let’s get you something then. There’s a café in town with decent coffee.”

Tears of frustration prick Ren’s eyes as he’s led all the way back to the front of the hospital where Harun is waiting for them, squatting next to the parked car in the shade. As the car pulls away, he looks back at the hospital. It isn’t that far from the Kinta Club where William is planning to go later. Perhaps Ren can return quietly by himself. In fact, he must.





16

Batu Gajah District Hospital

Saturday, June 13th




The foreigner, William Acton, stood in the open doorway of the pathology storeroom. “I haven’t seen you before. You’re not a nurse are you?”

“No, I’m just helping out.” I recognized the flicker of acquisitive interest in his eyes. It made me nervous. Where was Shin?

“I see,” but he didn’t move from the door.

I stood there awkwardly, holding a jar with part of an intestine in it. He took his glasses off and rubbed his face, a gesture that made him look oddly naked and unwell. His skin was grey under its tan and there were rings under his eyes. He could have been anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five though his movements seemed quick enough.

“Do you work for Rawlings then?”

I nodded. He smiled then. It was completely unexpected and lent his face a haggard charm.

“I suppose you won’t tell me your name?”

“Louise.” That at least I knew how to answer.

“Well, Louise, you don’t seem very squeamish about these specimens.”

“I’m not,” I said coolly.

“Some of them were actually contributed by me.”

Despite myself, I was curious. “You’ve donated your own organs to science?” I thought people only did that after they were dead.

The foreign doctor smiled again. “I meant patients of mine. Let’s see—I think I did an unusually large gallstone and a couple of fingers.”

“Fingers?” I was instantly alert.

“One was a vestigial sixth finger removed from an Indian patient. Another actually belonged to a friend of mine. We’ve got quite a collection of digits here, at least a dozen if I recall.”

He crossed the room, pointing out a large jar of murky fluid. “This should be dumped. A lot of the older specimens are fixed in alcohol, which really ought to be changed once a year. We only keep them if they’re medically interesting. And of course, some people take their own parts back to be buried with them.”

He leaned in, and I took a step sideways. I was wary of standing close to men. Working at the May Flower had taught me their long reach, their surprising strength, and how difficult it was to twist away if you were seized by the waist. But there were no glowering bouncers right now, nor the Mama with her eagle eye. It was just the two of us alone in this room. If I screamed, would anyone come?