Authors: Tom Knox
Bible of the Dead (28 page)
Julia said:
‘Do you know who she is? The killer?’
‘No. Not exactly.’
‘Do you know why she is killing all these people?’
‘Revenge!’ Barnier tapped ash, and stared at her, with a sudden expression of deep and existential fear. He was scared. He was really and visibly
scared.
But then the bravado returned. ‘Yes it is revenge – it is surely revenge – for the poor Khmer millions we helped to destroy. And I cannot blame them, you know? That is the poignancy. I cannot blame them. The fucking things we did, the Marxists, us, me, Danny the Red and the rest of us, all the reds now in socialist governments across Europe, we gave the Khmer Rouge succour, we told the world their lies, we were their useful idiots, maybe we fucking
deserve
to die. But if I am gonna die then I am gonna die happy. Do not go gentle into that good night, but rage rage and order some hookers and blow.’
His eyes flicked around the room. ‘Come. You are right. If we want to talk, let us do it in a good place, somewhere safe, somewhere there are pretty girls. Naked. We can have lady-drink short time. You know you are not the first person to come and see me today. I am suddenly an attraction, a destination, a tourist honeypot.’
‘How?’
‘A girl from Cambodia. Chemda Tek. And her boyfriend, Jake . . . Jake something. A photographer. A Brit.’ He belched smoke. Profanely. ‘They found me this morning. They are frightened. They are also pursuing these mysteries. I told them to go away for a while cause I want to pack, and I told ’em I would meet them in a bar this evening, a nice busy bar with lots of witnesses. It’s at Soi Cowboy.’ He dropped his cigarette butt in his glass of wine. The cigarette sss’d and died. ‘I have a feeling no woman would ever just walk in this bar alone so we should be safe. C’mon, s’go. Because staying here feels like sitting, waiting to die, a target.’
‘Who are they? These people, what do they want?’
‘I am not totally fucking sure. I was drunk when they told me. Hey it was eleven a.m. Let them explain, non? Come if we are to talk we might as well all do it together. Somewhere safe.’
They took the elevator to the ground floor. It was a short walk around the corner, then ten minutes down thrumming Sukhumvit Boulevard, with Barnier gazing down each soi as if he expected to be run over – or attacked – at every junction; and then they crossed the Asok walkways, whereupon they were immersed in another sex districty strip of the most garish neon, with go-go bars and massage parlours and love hotels and small baby elephants carrying drunken western boys on a stag weekend who threw hopeful leers at the harlots enticing them into Sheba’s and Suzie Wong.
The bar they apparently wanted was called Baccara. It was luridly advertized by scarlet neon, and inside it was dark and noisy and big and full of Japanese men staring at a central stage where maybe thirty or forty nubile girls were dancing in gauzy bras and equally transparent miniskirts.
But then Julia realized the Japanese men in their sofas and armchairs were staring
up:
she followed the communal gaze: above them was a glass ceiling, on top of the glass ceiling about twenty more young girls danced languidly to Chinese pop music, naked apart from tartan school skirts, the girls were wearing no underclothes at all.
‘Biggest no panty bar in the world.’ Barnier’s laughter was like a vulgar heckle. ‘The Japs love it here, and the girls love them back. You know why? You wanna know what the girls call Japanese men? Mister Four. They call Jap punters Mister Four –’
‘I’m sorry –’
‘’Cause they pay four thousand baht for a fuck, they last just four minutes, and they are four centimetres long! Hah. Look, there’s our good friends. Let’s get some Tanquerays and Tonic and Talk. Corner left, nine o’clock.’
Julia followed Barnier’s gesture and noticed a particular female figure sitting discreetly in the darkest corner, with her back to them. Her body language was uncomfortable; she seemed Asian judging by the petiteness, the dark bare arms, dark long hair. Julia empathized with any discomfort the woman might be feeling: they were virtually the only two women in the bar who weren’t half naked and dancing on a stage in no panties.
The woman’s companion was a young white guy, tall, presumably Jake Thurby. Julia glanced back at the woman. Her profile, seen obliquely, was familiar in other ways.
The shock of recognition was liquefying. This was no ordinary Asian woman. This was no coincidence.
Julia swayed on the cliff edge of fear.
Barnier was gesturing to a smiling bargirl.
‘
Nong
? Hello?
Sawadee
? We go talk-talk with friend over there? Gintonic. Bring three.
Kapkap
.’ He pointed at the table, then turned to Julia, ‘Let’s go over.’
‘No. Stop.’
Barnier didn’t hear her; Julia whispered again. Urgently:
‘Stop.’
She reached out a hand and pulled at the Frenchman. He was bemused.
‘What? Eh? What is it?’
A pause. Julia hesitated. Maybe she was wrong. But no, she wasn’t wrong. That long dark hair, the stance, the profile.
She was right.
As she stood, immobile, and silent with shock, Barnier shoved on and walked to the tabled and said:
‘Chemda, Jake. Look. I have brought yet another exciting new friend. I am such a fucking
wanted
man.’
Jake rose and offered a hand and said hello to Julia. But Julia’s focus was still fixed on the face of the Asian girl. Chemda Tek.
Then Chemda Tek spoke.
‘Hello?’
This was it. The final proof.
She even had an American accent.
Chemda Tek was the killer.
Jake watched this woman’s reaction with astonishment: the Canadian woman, Julia, was refusing to sit down. She was muttering, half shouting, she was frightened and gabbling and staring at Chemda.
Finally she managed to say.
‘It’s her. It’s her.’
Barnier turned to Julia.
‘What?’
Julia pointed directly at Chemda.
‘Her. That’s her. That . . .
thing.
It’s
her.
’
‘That’s who? She’s who? What are you saying?’
Jake listened. Confounded.
The woman stammered: ‘That is . . . the same person I saw in Paris. The woman who killed the archivist. The curator. That’s her, the killer –’
Jake stood.
‘You fucking
what
?’
Barnier was leaping away from the table, as if the bar stools had just been electrified. Chemda reached for Jake’s hand, her own hand damp and trembling. Jake was standing, and shouting:
‘How can you say this?’
The Frenchman turned, he was shouting at the staff: demanding that they chuck Chemda out of the building, and instantly fetch police. Bar girls were gathering. Staring. And in the middle of the flashing lights and the thumping music Julia stood, still, gazing at Chemda, transfixed, appalled, terrified; Chemda was mute and pale. Bargirls hurried over.
What the fuck was happening?
Even the pantyless schoolgirls were motionless, peering inquisitively down through the glass ceiling, trying to work out the reason for the hubbub. Several Japanese punters were pointing, alarmed.
Now Barnier ripped it all up: yelling at everyone.
‘Get that bitch out of here,
nong! Papasan! Mamasan?
Now! Get her out of here before she fucking knifes someone –’
Chemda found her voice:
‘
It’s not me!
How
can
it be me. I have been in Cambodia. Jake tell them!’
But Jake was staring at Julia’s face, the pale soft face of the Canadian archaeologist, and her face spoke some kind of truth. The woman really believed what she was saying, she really believed this outrageous accusation.
Jake swallowed his next words. Momentarily, he was dumbed. Chemda flung his hand away.
‘You believe them, Jake?’
‘No of
course
not!’
‘But you do. You do! I see it in your face!’
‘I don’t. Sorry. A moment. Only –
Chemda –’
But it was true, she was right, even though a few seconds’ consideration told him that the accusation was absurd, he had let the shadow of a doubt pass across his face: thinking of her odder behaviour, inviting him to the Sovirom compound –
His Khmer girlfriend was staring his way, with royal fury.
‘Don’t ever speak to me
–
ever again –’
Chemda pushed aside his protesting arms; she stepped down from the table and she ran through the parting crowds – through the g-stringed dancers and the Taiwanese punters and the trio of fat and chortling white businessmen just coming through the doorway curtains.
The curtains rustled and closed. Chemda was gone. The bar returned to life. Ladydrinks were fetched. Someone ordered short time. Once again, the punters stared up at the glass ceiling, where the girls in plaid miniskirts and no underwear resumed their bored and languid shuffle.
Jake was momentarily paralysed by anger, and guilt. Run after Chemda? Phone her? Give her space? Why had he let the doubt even enter his mind? The idea that she was the killer was beyond absurd, it was physically impossible – how could Chemda have been flying to and from Europe to kill people? Just surreally ridiculous. And then there was the moral impossibility: Chemda. Of all people. No. Not Chemda.
But then why did Julia appear so genuinely shocked and convinced?
The Canadian woman was tentatively approaching, she put a hand on Jake’s shoulder.
He shrugged it off. Snapped in her face.
‘You are
wrong
. She’s been with me in Asia for the last weeks. Every minute of every day. What you said was
grotesque.
’
Her answering expression was pained.
‘Mister Thurby. Jake . . . I’m sorry, but I thought it was true –’
Barnier was behind her.
‘So you think, Julia, it might
not
be true? Then why did you fuckeeeng
say
it?’
‘Because it
was
the same woman, only with darker skin! I’m not joking. I wouldn’t joke. Not about this! Chemda is the same only with much darker skin. But the same age same eyes same face same stance same everything else.’ Julia frowned. ‘Jake, does she have any siblings? Close in age?’
Jake shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Then I don’t understand. An identical killer? Maybe they are cousins . . . or what?’
‘Who cares. Let me through.’
He shoved between Barnier and Julia, pushing himself into the sordid bustle of Soi Cowboy.
The streetlife of Cowboy was blithely ignorant of the turmoil in Baccara. Freelance whores were eating sausages on sticks outside Rawhide, fake monks were begging sorrowfully at the corner by the Dollhouse.
Where was Chemda?
Jake tried the phone three times. Nothing. Voicemail. He went back, walking up to the doorman of Baccara.
‘Did you see a girl? A Khmer girl, running out of here?’
‘Nnn?’
‘A dark girl? Please, which way did she go?’
The doorman grunted, and shrugged – and pointed at another bar. Jake demanded:
‘Lucky Star? She went in there?’
A shrug – then another curt, but directed nod.
‘Girl.’
Pushing urgently through the Cowboy crowds Jake entered the indicated bar.
Lucky Star. It was dark, he squinted, two naked girls were on a stage, one was wearing a pelvic harness and a strap-on dildo and she was penetrating the other, time and again. The girls writhed and moaned, robotically. The music was Debussy.
Clair de Lune
. Men in the shadows were silently throwing fifty baht notes on to the stage.
Jake ran right out. Despairing, depressed, desperate. Evidently the doorman had thought Jake had just wanted girls. Girls on girls.
It was all disgusting. Soi Cowboy disgusted him. Meeting here had been some kind of joke by Barnier, a repulsive joke by a sick and frightened man.
He was never going to find her. Maybe they would kill her. Whoever they were. His anxiety surged. Raged. A monster from the swamp. At the corner of Soi Cowboy by the Dutch pub, he anxiously phoned his hotel on the off chance, as a last chance – but the receptionist had not seen her either and that was that.
His hopes had gone.
Jake looked up and down the glittering lights of Asoke Boulevard in terminal dismay. A bleeping from his phone told him he had got a text message.
Kdnapd. Car. Plz Help. Don;t know where going. They’ll find fone in a minute. lease help Jake help.
Twenty-four hours later and Jake still hadn’t heard anything. Her phone was, of course, switched off. He’d waited for hours in the hotel just hoping, but it was hope
less
. He’d tried ringing Tyrone but Tyrone’s phone went unanswered, he’d had to leave despairing voicemail. Had they got to him, too?
In desperation, he had even tried calling Chemda’s mother and grandfather, risking everything – but all he got was the Sovirom maids, who answered his questions with impenetrable Khmer. He was lost in a world he didn’t understand; and now he was sitting in a streetside beer-bar in central Bangkok with Julia and Barnier.
Marcel Barnier’s breath smelled of whisky. He always smelled of whisky. He had apparently been drinking on the sois of Sukhumvit, non stop, since the incident in Baccara, as he was too damn ‘motherfucking scared’ to go home to the flat in case ‘the witch’ came to kill him.
It was accepted by all that the witch, the killer, was not Chemda. Julia had been tearful and profound enough in her apologies on that score. But that didn’t answer any of the other questions. The questions that
burned
through Jake
.
Where was Chemda? Who’d taken her? The Laotians? Her family? The Khmer Rouge loyalists? Would they come for Jake? And if they did find Jake, would they bother with a kidnapping? Maybe they would just
kill him,
as they had so nearly done, in Anlong Veng.
He remembered the smells and the senses of that moment: involuntarily praying in the dust by Pol Pot’s grave. Staring at the incense sticks, planted in the noodle jar. Smelling the rotting trash. Waiting to die. He knew that could happen again any moment – but he couldn’t flee for his life. Because of Chemda. He couldn’t leave Chemda to her fate. Not now, not ever.
Jake turned and looked at his drinking companions. Julia – miserable and guilt-ridden and earnest. And Barnier, drunk and frightened and smirking.
‘Why have you asked us here, Marcel?’
The Frenchman swallowed another shot of Mekong whisky.
‘I want to know what you have discovered, I want to compare notes. Apparently Julia has a theory.’
‘A theory?’
‘What happend in Cambodia thirty years ago, Julia says she has worked out why. The theoretical
basis
.’
Jake looked at the Canadian woman. Pale and tense, and sober.
‘Yes,’ she said, very quietly. ‘I believe I might have pieced together the intellectual idea, that underpinned what happened in Cambodia in 1976.’
‘So! Now is the time to tell!’ Barnier grinned, quite vulgarly, and a little desperately. ‘Ideas, theories, discoveries, whatever. Confess! It might help us, and it might even help Chemda. No?
Allez, les braves!
’
Barnier lit a cigarette and sat back. Jake stared, in depression, at the neon of the nearest sushi bar, and then he shrugged at his own bleakness. They had nothing better to do, nothing else they
could
do, why not discuss, why not do this?
He motioned at Julia.
‘Go on?’
In five very dense minutes, she outlined her theory: but she did it in precise and deeply confusing scientific language. The words were long and slippery; Jake found it hard to follow. His thoughts persistently drifted to Chemda. Barnier had no such problems, he kept saying, Yes, Yes, and grinning self-consciously, and exhaling cigarette smoke in clouds of triumphant approbation – like he was winning a game of poker. By bluffing.
‘It’s a stunning thesis,’ said Barnier, when Julia had concluded. ‘It is surely right! This is surely what Ghislaine’s essay must also have affirmed.
C’est magnifique!
You are a true scientist, and a sleuth!’
Julia looked half anguished, half pleased. Jake was entirely confused.
‘Can you guys explain it a bit slower, in more simple terms. Remember, I’m just a bloody photographer. A snapper.’
Julia offered a sympathetic smile. ‘Of course. Sorry. First you have to know a little bit about the evolution of the human mind.’
‘OK.’
Patiently, and more slowly, she explained
Behavioural Modernity:
the accepted idea that men and women made a Great Leap Forward in their cognition and cultural development, around 40,000 years ago. Jake nodded.
‘So, cave art, music, religion and stuff, proper burials, and tool making, they all . . . this is the first time we see them?’
‘Correct,’ said Barnier. ‘Abstract mentation! Team work in hunting. Even humour is born. We see many many signs that the human mind, the human spirit, quite suddenly changed during the Ice Ages.’
‘Why did it change?’
Barnier puffed smoke at a passing tuk-tuk, and answered:
‘Genetic mutation. Or change in the neural structures. Or both. No one is sure. Take your pick!’
‘OK. In which case. Go over it again? The
entire
thesis?’
The archaeologist shyly nodded. And answered. ‘It’s actually quite simple but, like I say, very relevant. In essence I believe that the birth of the art evidenced in the cave paintings shows the birth of guilt, and this guilt is the key to the modern human condition.’
‘And . . .?’
‘Around 40,000BC it also seems that we, as a species, became truly aware of death. Hence the complex ritual ization of burials. And a corollary of this is that we humans must surely have become aware that we were killing our fellow creatures, condemning them to death – and so we began to feel guilty about this slaughter.’
Jake looked at the rumbling Bangkok traffic. The pink and yellow Toyota Corollas reflected the streetlights, casting a subtle light on Julia’s animated face.
‘The intriguing nature of this theory – a theory which, as I say, I am sure Ghislaine Quoinelles first brought to birth – is that it neatly explains many puzzling aspects to the great Paleolithic cave art of France and Spain, and this art is, in itself, the strongest evidence we have for the Great Leap Forward.’
‘Puzzling aspects?’
Julia answered:
‘
The obsession with animals
. All the great caves are just
filled
with drawings and engravings and even sculptures of animals, galloping animals, herding animals, animals charging, animals copulating. Animals being speared to death. Various people have tried to explain these obsessive animal paintings as part of some ritual, to aid the hunt, to magically enable better hunting, but then why show so many animals – like horses or lions – that were rarely if ever hunted? Alternatively, why not
just
show hunts? Others have claimed the artworks are mere doodles, but then why are these paintings often so beautiful, so inaccessible, so treasured, so carefully hidden at the very ends of caves?
Barnier interrupted:
‘This theory might appeal to an artist like yourself, Jake. Julia believes that the cave artists were, in a sense, returning to the scene of the crime! They were working through their own sudden guilt at seeing these animals suffer. A psychological reaction to trauma.’
Jake’s nodding smile was faint. The word trauma reminded him of Chemda. He forced himself to focus on the argument:
‘Sure. That’s interesting. Sure. But this theory seems a bit
fragile
?’
‘There is more,’ Julia continued. ‘My theory – Ghislaine’s theory –
this theory
also explains why we see animals that were never hunted, why we see animals presented so rev erently – and the reason is
envy.
The newly modern humans wanted to return to the Edenic state they once enjoyed, the guiltless freedom still enjoyed by the animals they killed. So they painted these animals as a form of worship, envious worship. This also explains several puzzling images of men with animal masks, like the
Sorciere
of the
Trois Freres
, these show men wanting to be animals
once again.
Men were now feeling exiled from their fellow creatures – and they looked back with regret.’
Jake frowned.
‘OK.’
‘Another puzzling aspect of the cave art is why there are so few representations of
humans
. I remember my friend Annika mentioning this. That was one of my first clues. I have now worked out the relevance. All we have in the caves, in terms of human representation, are a few crude sketches, most of them seem to be obscene caricatures, insulting, like the heavy breasted women of Pech Merle, or the grinning imbecile of La Pasiega, or the ludicrous faces of Rouffignac. Why are these paintings so few, and so crude?’ Julia barely paused, her question was rhetorical. ‘Mankind is not known for his lack of vanity and self-interest, for thousands of years we have painted and drawn and sketched ourselves and each other, yet back in 30,000 or 10,000 BC when there were
truly
great and skilful artists working, artists who could conjure an auroch or a lion with a few lines, like a Stone Age Matisse or Raphael, these artists refused to depict the beauty of men and women. They either ignored their own kind, or obscenely insulted them, as if they despised themselves, despised mankind.’
Barnier interrupted once again:
‘There’s lots of other evidence, in addition. I am correct?’
‘Yes.’ Julia nodded, firmly. ‘For instance, when the few images of men don’t show cartoons or abusive doodles, they show men being tortured and speared: in the caves of Cougnac, there are the so called
hommes blesses
, the wounded men, men being speared to death. Or the tortured boys of Addaura. What despair made them record all this? Why all the horrible and existential self-loathing?’
‘So,’ said Jake. ‘Why?’
She gazed his way. ‘Now we come to Gargas. The famous Hands of Gargas. These hands have been a total mystery for a century. Some say they show frostbite in the ice age. But why would you go to the trouble of stencilling nasty wounds? Others say the hands must have belonged to a tribe with some kind of genetic malformation, but there is no skeletal evidence for this, and again why stencil such embarrassing disfigurements? The latest theory is that the fingers are not mutilated or severed, they are bent over, before being stencilled, and the hands show a hunting code, one finger closed means antelope, two for auroch, similar codes are utilized by some tribes today –’
Barnier came back, like they were working as a tag team:
‘A particularly ludicrous theory. You only have to go to Gargas to see that. The hands are profoundly affecting. Intense. Hands of men and women and children. It’s not a few men making signals.’
‘So what –’ Jake stared at Barnier, and then at Julia. ‘What do
you
think about Gargas?’
Julia answered:
‘The strange mute stencils of the hands express
guilt
and they seek
redemption
. The stencils say: these human hands have sinned. These hands have killed. Forgive us. We can speculate that the fingers were, at first, mutilated
deliberately
as a kind of atonement, in a shamanic ritual. There is good evidence for this, some tribes did the same in very recent times, like the Tui-Tonga, or the Tahitians – they cut off knuckles and digits – as a form of human self sacrifice, when the tribe needed to atone for sin, to propitiate some deity, or to mourn a noble death.’
A pause. Jake listened, intently. Julia added:
‘But after these initial amputations, in Gargas, probably the fingers were just bent over for ritual stencilling and the severed fingers became symbolic. But still the cavemen came into the cave to ritually stencil the hands, the hands that killed the noble animals. To express contrition, to seek redemption. To mourn the deaths they caused.’
Jake sank some of his Singha beer.
‘Alright. I’m beginning to understand . . . I think. But the skulls, the skulls and the bones, how do they fit in?’
Tapping his ash, and hunching forward, Barnier interruped:
‘Think about it Jake, think. Here we have, in Julia’s magnificent thesis, the unique tragedy of
la conditione humaine
. Encapsulated. Uniquely, it seems, we as a species have a sense of shame and guilt for
just being human
, for the sin of simply being ourselves. And all of this . . .’ He smiled. ‘And yet all of this can be prevented with a few slices of the knife.’
