Death Trip (30 page)

Magda followed Dorothy back along the office corridor.

‘Yes, she was from the Lisu tribe. They live in the hills, they’re the opium farmers. She was rescued by Deming when her village was destroyed, caught up in some local drug wars.’

‘Do you think he was involved in those drug wars?’ asked Magda, dreading the answer.

Dorothy shrugged and shook her head.

‘Who knows? Maybe. But I seriously think he thought he was doing the best thing bringing her over here. He gave her to a missionary couple. They had just returned from working in Africa. They were a nice couple, bit strict, they lived very simply. It was a terrible tragedy when they were killed in the fire.’

They stopped halfway along the corridor just by the
orphans of the conflict
photo.

‘No one knows who started it?’ asked Magda.

‘No. They left all their money to the church. You would have thought they would have left it to their other child.’

‘What other child?’

‘They had a child of their own before they adopted Katrien. That’s what I wanted to show you in this photo.’ Dorothy put on her glasses and scrutinised the photo. ‘Look, here is Katrien standing beside the missionary couple. Here are the survivors from the attack and can you see there is a child hiding there, just behind the man’s leg, you see?’

Magda moved closer to the photo. ‘The child looks blonde,’ she said, surprised.

‘Yes. She was a beautiful little girl. Her name was Sue.’

Shrimp moved around the market and kept out of sight but never far from the lock-up. He kept his phone on vibrate only and held it tightly in the palm of his hand. He could not afford to miss Mann’s call. He was sure he would need him. He had no trouble blending in, no one gave his Oriental looks or his battered face a second glance, unlike the woman he spied from the corner of his eye. She was blonde, a plait down her back. She was an incongruous sight moving furtively amongst the dark and the dreadful of a Mae Sot night. Shrimp watched her as she came into the market from the lock-up lane. She seemed to be hovering like him…He waited until she had passed him and was out of sight, hidden amongst the stalls, before he slipped out onto the lane where she had come from.

A man lay on the ground, moaning in agony. Shrimp knelt beside him and looked at his injuries. He was badly hurt from a single stab wound just below the ribs.

He clutched at Shrimp’s arm.

‘My name is Gee.’

Shrimp recognised the name. Here was the only man trading under the Golden Orchid. He knew enough about him to make him wary, but he had to help him.

‘I will carry you out of here,’ said Shrimp.

‘No, no…leave me. There is no time. Are you a friend of Johnny Mann’s?’ Shrimp nodded. ‘Good, my friend. So am I. His father, Deming, was my friend; he was very good to me when I was young. He gave me a chance when no one else would. I told him I would repay him one day and I have been looking after Johnny. But I cannot help him any more. I was about to go in when she stabbed me.’

‘Was she blonde?’

‘Ah ha, you have seen her. Sue her name is; be careful, my friend, she is mad. She will kill again. Quick now, he needs your help. I have heard them fighting, the window is smashed, Johnny is inside.’ He clutched his chest as he whispered. ‘There is a door at the back of the lock-up. Here is the key.’

Two of Saw’s men turned to look as Mann smashed through the window and fired five, six-inch hardened steel throwing spikes out of his right hand. Their feather tips pierced the air in a volley of red as they found their marks and the men were blinded by the needle tips as they pierced the eyeball. They didn’t see the seven four-inch flying stars that followed the spikes. One cut Weasel’s jugular, the others mortally wounded the blinded men. A star embedded in one man’s throat. He drowned as his lungs filled with his own blood. Another had a star cut deep into his temple and one stuck in his chest. One man was left wounded but alive. Handsome was unhurt, he had used the dying Weasel as a human shield.

Mann rolled across the dirt floor and came to a stop opposite the table. He saw Jake petrified, thin, his eyes huge with fear, sat in a chair opposite the dead body of Anna. There was a gun at his head. Mann rose slowly, his hands raised, his back to the wall. He looked at Jake, and he felt an instant bond. It was like looking in the mirror. Mann’s emotions took him back to when
he was eighteen. Took him back to his father’s execution. Mann’s temper roared inside him as his heart broke to see his brother so abused. He looked at the man holding the gun and he knew it must be Saw Wah Say. He was a wild man, his eyes alight with blood lust and madness. He feared nothing…

Jake stared at Mann; he knew that he must know him, but he didn’t know how until Saw said his name.

‘Johnny Mann. I have waited many years to come to this moment. To have all Deming’s sons here in one room. It is a pity your brother Daniel died before I could kill him.’

Jake stared at Mann, trying to take it all in. Katrien crawled out from under the table where she had been hiding. She stood and glared at Mann.

‘I told you to wait. Now give me the fucking money.’

‘You don’t get it till the boy is safe.’ Katrien was fuming as she turned to Saw. ‘Let him go. Let’s get the money and leave,’ she hissed.

Saw didn’t answer her. He didn’t take his eyes from Mann. They grinned at one another. Mann felt his anger settle into a white heat. Nothing would stop him now. Saw would never leave the room alive.

‘I am not finished here,’ said Saw.

‘Yes you are. I didn’t do all this work to have you fucking blow it, now let him go.’

Saw kept his eyes on Mann as he reached across and hit Katrien full in the face. She yelped in pain and surprise as she was knocked sideways.

‘I am your sister. Show me some respect,’ she said, clutching her face and looking at the blood on her hand.

‘You are my bitch. Shut up or I will kill you.’

Saw turned his attention back to Mann.

‘You stole something from me, you and this boy…’ He tightened his grip on Jake and dug the gun hard into his temple. ‘I want it back. Deming promised me land, he promised me wealth.’

‘Deming is dead. His promises died with him,’ said Mann.

‘No, the sins of our fathers must be paid for.’

‘We have paid enough. Let the boy go or you will die here in this room.’

Saw laughed, ‘Big words.’

‘Let the boy go and we will settle this, you and me.’

Mann could see out of the corner of his eye that Handsome was on the move, coming up behind him, and the other man was working his way around the side. But then they stopped. Someone was standing in the doorway. Sue stared around the room as if she didn’t understand how she got there or why she was there. She shook her head and looked down at her hand. She was holding a dagger. It was shaped like a crucifix and still dripping with Gee’s blood.

‘It’s all right. It will all be okay.’ Katrien said softly when she saw her. ‘Don’t come in here, my love.’ At the sound of Katrien’s voice Sue seemed to come awake. She looked at Saw and at Katrien’s face.

She looked puzzled. ‘Did Saw hurt you?’

Katrien shook her head emphatically as she quickly wiped the blood away. ‘No, no, he didn’t mean to. I’m all right.’

Sue stared coldly at Saw. ‘What’s happening, Saw?
We did all this so that we could be together. We are one family: you, me and Katrien.’

Saw looked at her with contempt. ‘You are not family. Katrien has tricked you all along. She has used you. You will never mean anything to me or to her. She got you to kill your parents. She used you to get close to Mann. She doesn’t love you or anyone else. She is incapable of love. Her heart is twisted even more than mine.’

Sue’s face took on a pained look of confusion as she shook her head and her eyes filled with tears.

‘Don’t listen to him, my love,’ Katrien said. ‘I love you. He is lying. He—’ Saw struck her again, harder than the first time, and she lost her balance and gave a cry of pain as she landed hard on the dirt floor.

Sue let out a roar of anger as she flew forward and lunged her dagger at Saw. But she never made it. Handsome’s blade came singing through the air. Sue stood for a minute swaying, staring at the knife as it protruded from her sternum, and then she looked up at Katrien and at Saw and shook her head, a look of complete bewilderment in her eyes as she fell to the floor dying. Katrien crawled forward to hold her for a few seconds as she died and then she crawled back and clung to Saw’s leg.

‘Please, Saw. I am your sister. It will be just us. We can be happy. We can have everything. Please…please…’

Irritated, he tried to shake her off but he couldn’t.

Shrimp eased himself through the back door and stood behind Handsome. Shrimp knew he would get
only one chance to kill Handsome and the other man. He edged closer.

Katrien was crying.

‘No, Saw, don’t forsake me again. You let them take me when I was a child. I cried for weeks. I missed you.’ Saw tried to ignore her but it was a noise he remembered from his distant childhood. The cry of a baby who belonged to him, who needed him. He could not ignore it, its pitch, its tone was designed to penetrate his concentration. And it did. The sound of Katrien’s plaintive cries distracted Saw for two seconds, only two seconds. But two seconds was all it took for Mann to reach inside his shirt, extract the Death Star from its leather pouch, lower his stance, raise and level his arm and send it flying, curving through the air like a boomerang and then coming down to cut Saw’s spine in two. Delilah flashed from her hiding place inside Mann’s palm and she darted straight and powerful and thumped into Saw’s heart. At that second, Shrimp rolled forward into the room to face Handsome and shot him through the heart and the other man through the head.

Saw’s body juddered as he took his last breath. He lost control of the gun and his hand turned away from Jake’s head. He looked down at Katrien clinging to his leg and staring up at him and his fingers contracted in a death grip. He fired one shot straight between Katrien’s eyes.

‘Sue?’

Mann turned and saw Riley standing in the doorway looking very sick and on his crutches. ‘I’m sorry, Riley, she’s dead.’ Riley looked about to collapse. He leant on the door frame for support.

‘I tried to find her in time. She was very sick. She was a schizophrenic. She needed her medication but she hadn’t been taking it. Katrien told her not to. She was easy to manipulate then.’ Mann could see that he was bleeding from his amputated stump.

‘There was nothing you could have done, Riley. Katrien had been planning this a long time. Let’s get you back to the hospital.’

‘Gee’s outside. Sue stabbed him. We need to get him to hospital fast.’

‘I’ll do it.’ Shrimp went outside to look after Gee.

Mann walked over to Jake and knelt down beside him. Jake stared into his eyes and shook his head, he couldn’t speak. He looked across at Anna and his eyes filled. He looked back at Mann. Mann nodded and smiled sadly.

‘We will wait here with Anna until we can make arrangements for her.’ Mann stood. Jake looked up at him in panic as if he were about to leave him. Mann put his arm around Jake’s shoulders. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere, not until I get you home.’

Mo was waiting for them, dressed all in black, a rifle over the crook of her arm.

‘Thank you for agreeing to see us.’ Mann greeted her as the boatman steered towards the jetty. ‘I wanted my brother to meet one of the greatest soldiers in the longest civil war in history, and to thank her.’

The boat came to a stop. Mo nodded and smiled as she held up her hand.

‘I am not alone,’ she said, glancing to her right. Mann looked at the dense undergrowth. A shadowy figure was lurking there. Someone stepped out.

‘Wassup, dude.’

Jake nearly fell out of the boat with the shock of seeing Lucas.

He looked at his friend, pale, sick, but very much alive.

‘I found him near to death.’ Mo squeezed Lucas’s shoulders. ‘He needs feeding up, but he will live.’

Lucas and Jake hugged whilst Mann shook Mo’s hand.

‘I hope we meet again one day, Mo.’

She shook her head. ‘There is nothing left of my village.’

‘I am sorry, Mo. Where will you go?’

She shrugged and turned her eyes to the distant hills. ‘Somewhere. The days of the Karen are numbered, deals will be struck between the Thai government and the Burmese junta and we will be wiped out.’ Mann nodded his head sadly. ‘But for me, there is only one way to live and to die. “Never give up, never surrender”…Churchill was a good man.’ She turned and disappeared into the jungle. Mann looked up and on the bank he saw Phara, waiting. She raised her hand and waved a sad farewell.

‘You okay, Riley?’ Mann had gone to visit him at the hospital. Gee was sleeping in the next bed.

Riley nodded. But his eyes said otherwise.

‘I should have stopped Sue years ago. I always thought I contained it in her. She was diagnosed in her late teens.’

‘She must have had some serious religious issues to have used a sharpened crucifix.’

‘Yes, her paranoia was always based on religion. Something to do with her parents. She heard voices. Sometimes imaginary, other times they were real. Katrien—she could make Sue do anything. I am sorry I didn’t speak out sooner, I might have saved Louis, and the murdered soldier at Mo’s camp. She liked to flirt and turn men on, but she killed them when they tried to touch her. But I loved her, she listened to me—most of the time. When did you suspect she was involved?’

‘When I met with Hillary at Mary’s. She told me it was Sue who told her not to pick the kids up from the camp that day. I knew you were over-protective—I figured you were covering for Sue, but I didn’t know the rest of it.’

Riley lay back exhausted.

‘Will you be okay?’ asked Mann.

‘The refugees need me more than ever. We have to rebuild and we won’t be getting any more money for a while.’

There was a knock on the door. Shrimp came in.

‘Hey, boss. I wanted to see you before I go. What do you want me to do with this?’ Shrimp held the case with the two million dollars in his hand.

‘Give it to Riley here. He’ll put it to good use.’

For a moment Mann thought Riley was going to cry. But instead he reached over and shook Mann’s hand.

‘I’m grateful, mate. Really grateful.’ Mann could see his resolve returning.

‘Shrimp and I are going now, but we’ll see you next time we’re in Thailand.’

‘Uhh…boss. That’s what I wanted to say. I’m going back down to Phuket. I have loads of leave owed to me and I am going to help a few friends in need of my legal expertise.’

‘Would that be Summer?’

‘Summer, June and July.’

‘Sounds like some girls I used to know,’ said Gee, opening his eyes and grinning sleepily. It was the first time Mann had seen him without his hat. He was as bald as a baby.

‘Glad to have you back with us, Gee.’ Mann went to sit on his bed. ‘You’re a man of many secrets. Shrimp told me you felt indebted to Deming.’

He nodded. ‘I have been waiting for my chance to
repay my debt. I knew you would come when your brother was kidnapped. I told my cousins in the Chinese dragon shop to watch over Magda. They told me they had seen you at Casa Roso. Then I made sure to be in Chiang Mai for when you arrived.’

‘He must have meant a lot to you.’

‘Yes, Deming was my friend. I didn’t tell you before because I felt I could serve you best if you didn’t know my history. The past is not always welcome in the present.’

‘How did you know him?’

‘Deming gave me hope when I had none. I was nothing. He gave me the Golden Orchid so that I could take over for him. We stopped heroin production and moved back into village crafts. He gave me the lock-up at Mae Sot. He kept the refinery and the land. He said it would never be used for anything but destruction. It was a place of ghosts and he said, in years to come his sons would decide its fate.’

‘Whatever you feel you owed Deming it is definitely repaid now.’

Gee nodded his head thoughtfully. ‘Ah ha. I agree. But I will never stop being grateful.’ He looked at Mann curiously. ‘I know you have learned much that you did not want to know about your father on this journey. I understand your mistrust but in one thing you can believe—your father tried to change. He tried to make amends for his bad ways. It was Deming who wrote the inscription on the Buddha outside the lock-up.
We are what we think. What we think, we become.

‘He tried to become someone better.’