The Devil's Garden Read Online Free Page B

figure treading water and peering at them timorously through glass. ‘It is an arrangement that has been greatly to the advantage of Dai Nippon, rather than having them in prison.’
    â€˜So they are collaborators. And Changi is not a prison. It is a processing centre for aliens.’ It was a mere administrative reflex, displacing another. He embarked on a swift ill-natured tour, stumping along the wooden corridors, hands clasped behind his back He peered into the library.
    â€˜Books,’ he said.
    â€˜There is some disorder while we are moving some of the less academic volumes to the prisoners in Changi.’
    â€˜There are no prisoners in Changi. They are detainees only.’
    â€˜Quite so.’
    Tiger grunted and set off again, the floorboards resonating loudly and untigerishly under his boots. Through the ethnography gallery that traced the Malays’ endless birdlike ingenuity in teasing twigs and vegetable fibre into human culture.
    â€˜Jungle stuff,’ he snorted. Through fish, monkeys and insects to arrive, finally at … ‘Birds,’ he nodded and half turned, then frowned and turned back. It was a display of brightly coloured finches or some such, stuffed and spaliered like a Kyoto cherry blossom into a sort of family tree against a backboard. He read aloud. ‘Birds of Cocos-Keeling. Collected by J. Pilchard 1940.’ Cocos-Keeling was a place of interest, the new front line, as yet still held by the British, a communications centre, the only place from which the Allies might now attack the Asian mainland by air. A hundred miles closer, on Christmas Island, sat a division of Japanese troops, sharpening their bayonets, just waiting for the order to advance before sweeping on to Australia and final victory. He tapped at the glass. ‘Where is …’ he leaned back to see the name ‘… Pilchard?’ He looked up. ‘Which one is Pilchard?’
    â€˜Not here,’ said Tanakadate hastily. ‘Gone.’
    â€˜In Changi!’ sniggered Catchpole from afar, a practised hatdoffer, the class sneak.
    â€˜In Changi or not in Changi?’ echoed Tiger sweetly. Tanakadate squirmed and glared at Catchpole.
    â€˜Oh yes. In Changi. I forgot.’ Tiger’s voice dropped back into military growl. Addressing his ADC, Captain Oishi.
    â€˜Find him. Fetch him. Send him to the Kempeitei next door. Let them ask him some questions about Cocos-Keeling but not about birds. I wish to have everything on this Cocos-Keeling.’ He bowed, turned on his heel and stamped out swiftly, hands behind his back, bent forward, the museum staff flocking after like geese. As he passed Raffles he sniffed contemptuously, then dived into the back of the fat, leather-smelling Daimler that was now his. He adored it, shiny and solid as if carved from black marble. Its bench seats made him feel well upholstered. ‘Back to HQ!’ He settled into his seat. ‘Raffles College!’ he added happily, as if they did not know where it was and young Captain Oishi leapt to his place in front and slammed the door in one smooth drill movement. The driver, knowing what the General liked, floored the accelerator and they tipped back into the softened red oxhide and sped off with a gratifying spray of gravel and a cloud of wasteful, blue smoke.
    * * * 
    Over by the prison wall, Corporal Higgins was snipping away industriously inside a sort of frayed canvas lean-to that looked like a giant’s trenchcoat, trimming neatly around the irregular ears of a gnarled Aussie commando, perched on a soap box. Muscularity was a sort of disease that had invaded the man’s entire body. He even had clenched, muscular hair.
    â€˜Always hang on to the tools of your trade, lad,’ me Dad used to say—not that he meant it in quite that way you understand—and it’s advice that’s stood me in good stead over the years.’ He was a tiny, impish wisp of a man,