It was as if he had not spoken.

‘I was walking up the path in the shadows of the trees. I saw Saffie, as I often do, a little ahead of me, as if she wanted to lead me to the right place…’ Nikki’s eyes were intent on his, willing him to believe her. ‘Then…’ her voice wobbled, ‘I suddenly felt frightened, as if I heard steps behind me. I dropped my water bottle, and as I bent to pick it up I couldn’t breathe. I could not get my breath. I felt as if I was being suffocated…I was kneeling on the ground, terrified. Then it was over. I got up and turned the corner and saw the clearing with ticker tape round the hole…’ She gave a sigh, suddenly exhausted, and then she moved nearer to him and said urgently, her hands on his arms. ‘I know. I know that Saffie was suffocated by someone holding a hand over her mouth. She wanted me to know that. She wanted me to know…’

Despite the warmth, her hands on his arms were cold and Mohktar felt a superstitious dread in the pit of his stomach.

‘The most likely cause of death, Detective Sergeant Mohktar, is suffocation. A hand held over the mouth with undue force. So much force, in fact, that the child’s thin neck was broken.’

He met the girl’s eyes, hypnotised by a primitive fear of the unknown. His mother believed that the ghosts of their ancestors, their loved ones, were all around them. As a child he had thought so too. Now he did not. He was a policeman.

‘Am I right? Is this how Saffie died?’ Nikki’s eyes on his were bright and insistent.

He nodded. ‘Yes, Miss Montrose.’ ‘So you believe me?’

He did not answer, but took her hands in his and held them firmly for a moment. ‘Let us go back to the house; you are cold and it is late,’ he said gently. ‘To visit the place where your sister died was perhaps unwise on your own. Imagination plays such a part in what we believe.’

But Nikki saw that James Mohktar was disturbed by what she had said. He let her hands go with a smile, and together in silence they made their way over the sand back to the house.

TWENTY-SIX

Fleur said the next morning, ‘Nikki, let’s go out for a while, I’m beginning to get cabin fever. It seems cooler today. Do you feel up to walking to the little row of Indian shops near the big hotel at the other end of the beach?’

Nikki looked up from her book. She had read the same sentence fifty-two times. ‘I’m not ill, Mum, just huge. Sounds like a good idea.’

They walked across the beach and then turned down a track by one of the hotels and carried on by the road, which led to the small square of local shops that tourists from the hotel considered a bargain after the expensive hotel precincts in Kuala Lumpur. Rows of bright hippy skirts and cheesecloth shirts hung on racks outside the cramped and hot little shops. Small electric hand-fans whirred inside, only stirring the stale heat and dust until it settled somewhere else. Flip-flops in boxes on the pavements adorned with gaudy plastic flowers lay beside balls and spades and faded sun-creams.