Diamonds in the Dust Read Online Free Page A

closed on a piece of paper and she drew it out, listening to its rustles and its whispers. She could feel its creases and its folds, grown dog-eared over the last months from her handling of it. The blackness obliterated the words on the telegram but she didn’t need to read them because she knew them by heart.
    Killed in action.
    Softly she started to sing “Happy Birthday.”

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    Keep reading for a special preview of
     
    The White Pearl
     
    by Kate Furnivall
    Available March 2012 from Berkley Books
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Malaya 1941
    It was not the first time Connie had killed someone. But today there were witnesses.
    A car’s bumper should be a mute object, but in November 1941 the chrome bumper on Constance Hadley’s 1938 Chrysler Royal found its voice. It screeched, an ear-ripping noise of metal against metal. It cracked, snapping one of the wooden supports on the covered walkway that ran along Alexandra Parade. It thudded, a warm, muffled grunt as it smacked into human flesh. Those sounds were to play over and over in Connie’s head. A screech. A crack. A thud. Over and over, like one of the merry-go-rounds where the tinny music knows no end.
    The sun is a source of life.
Whoever said that had never lived in Malaya. Connie squinted through the windscreen as she drove through the crowded streets of Palur and felt the sun battering her brain with its fist. She had considered, on more than one occasion, taking her husband’s best hunting rifle, the one he’d had specially shipped over from London last year, aiming it at that massive yellow orb hanging in the sky and pulling the trigger. Popping it like a balloon. She’d once mentioned this desire to Nigel, and he’d looked at her oddly.
    Today she’d broken her sunglasses, damn it. That was what was making her bad-tempered. Without those, she always developed a vicious headache in the sunshine.
Sunshine.
She grimaced as she peeled her back off the seat, feeling her damp blouse stick to the upholstery.
Sunshine
was far too gentle a word. Sunshine was what existed in England. It warmed your toes in the grass and peeked at you under the brim of your straw hat. She loved sunshine. The brutal heat and humidity here in the heart of Malaya were killing her.
    There had been a mud slip that had delayed her drive into town, and she was hurrying now to make it to the Victoria Club in time for a swim with Harriet Court. She squeezed her big American car past one of the bicycle rickshaws that darted up and down the high street, as irritating as the fat black flies, and spotted a gap in the traffic. Instantly she accelerated into it. She swung the wheel to take the corner into Alexandra Parade, an elegant boulevard of imposing buildings where the British Empire had placed its colonial stamp on this docile patch of the Malay Peninsula.
    At exactly that moment, another car did the same, as sleek and ruthless as a black-finned shark.
    “Damn you, look out!” Connie shouted, and slammed on her brakes.
    It was too late. She fought the steering wheel, but the back end of the Chrysler cut loose. With a sickening lurch of her stomach, she felt it start to swing in a wide, uncontrollable arc. Her wing raked the black car, but instead of slowing, it seemed to gather momentum from the impact. It was the screech of her bumper that alerted people. Faces turned to stare at her, wide-eyed with shock as the two-ton metal missile hurtled toward them on the sidewalk. The car jerked when its wheel caught in one of the deep storm drains, but still it didn’t stop, and figures scattered in all directions.
    The moment seemed to elongate. Appalled, Connie watched it happen. She saw a woman yank her child off its feet and open her mouth in a huge melon-sized scream. An old man in a straw boater stood paralyzed with fear directly in front of her, and a dark moist patch blossomed on the front of his pale flannel trousers. Connie dragged at the steering wheel, her heart slamming against her ribs. The car’s hood