A Whisper of Southern Lights Read Online Free PDF

how long.” Both fell silent because neither knew the answer. Others in the cell were chatting quietly, though no one took control to address everyone. Gabriel wondered whether they all knew each other. He’d seen hundreds of prisoners being marched to the jail and thousands more inside, and the chance of finding one man in such a place seemed impossible.
    He leaned forward and put his hand on the man’s shoulder, and then he injected the weight of all his years into his voice. “I’m looking for someone,” he said. “It’s important.”
    “You sound so tired,” the man said. “But so alive.”
    “I am tired. I’ve been out here a long time.”
    Perhaps then this man sensed the importance of what Gabriel sought. Because he leaned in closer, staring at Gabriel’s missing eye, and lowered his voice so that it was barely louder than a sigh.
    “What’s his name?”
    “Jack Sykes.”
    The man shook his head, confused. “But I don’t know him.”
    “I know he’s here somewhere. But there’s someone else looking . . . a man of many faces. I have to find Sykes first. It’s important.”
    “Important,” the man said. “Of course it is. Who are you?”
    “My name is Gabriel.”
    “Like the angel.”
    “Nothing like the angel.”
    The man nodded, sat back on his haunches and closed his eyes. For a second, Gabriel thought he had drifted into sleep, removing himself from the sudden strangeness of this conversation and into a protective cocoon of sleep. But then his eyes snapped open again, and he smiled. “Perhaps I can find him for you.”
    “I’d be grateful for your help.”
    “Henry.” The man held out his hand.
    “Henry. Thank you.” Gabriel shook his hand and smiled.
    Henry stood and walked to the cell door. Outside, there were men lying in corridors, spilling out of other rooms, sleeping beneath broken cisterns; a sea of defeated humanity that exuded hunger and pain in unbearable waves. He stepped into the throng. From his stance, Gabriel knew that Henry was glad of something to distance him from the cloudy future.
    How cloudy is my future?
he thought.
I have brave young Henry seeking the man I came here to find, but if Temple finds and kills him first, I’m back where I began. And he’ll kill Henry, too. Another death seeded in my selfish quest.
    Gabriel wiped another bloody tear from his cheek and waited for things to change.

Six
    A DAY AFTER ARRIVING at the jail, they sent us out to cremate bodies.
    Singapore was full of them. A thousand dead, maybe tens of thousands, and the Japanese wanted someone else to clean up the mess they had made. So, they chose us, of course. The prisoners, the defeated and dishonoured. They gave us matches and paper and told us to break up furniture and fences, pile bodies and burn the evidence of slaughter.
    We worked in small groups watched over by a few guards, and though they seemed more laid-back than during the battle, the Japanese were still very much on the alert. One young lad from our group—can’t have been more than eighteen—returned to the jail one night with a pocketful of dates. The guards searched us all on the way in, and when they found the smuggled food, they beat him and tied him to a tree outside the jail, leaving him there all night. We took him down the next day and carried him with us, supporting him all day, afraid that if he fell, the guards would finish him with a bayonet.
    I tried not to catch their eyes, because I couldn’t hide my hatred.
    The more time went by, the worse the job became. Each day in the baking heat, the bodies smelled more, and by the end of the first week, the stench of the city was dreadful. Most of the bodies had been cleared from the streets by then, and we started going into bombed houses and destroyed vehicles. Many of the corpses were already torn up by their violent deaths, worked at by dogs, picked at by birds and beetles and rats.
    Each time I added another body part to a funeral pyre, I whispered a few