The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) (36 page)

The gate was shoulder-high, white and metallic, one of those that slid open electronically. Everyone else he knew lived behind higher walls, with a security guard posted outside their front door
seven nights a week. These two had never worried about their safety. It seemed to him now that this was arrogance. They had thought they were immune to the threats others faced. Well, it had turned
out they were wrong.

Normally he’d ring the bell and someone would buzz the gate open from the inside. He wouldn’t be doing that now, of course. Slinging his backpack over his shoulder, he climbed
carefully and within seconds was on the other side. No big deal. He was careful not to step on the dog. Through the darkness, he could make out the whites of its eyes.

He knew where the spare key was hidden and he let himself in, remembering to drop it back where he had found it. Inside, the house was dark but for some reason this didn’t frighten him.
From the moment he’d stepped away from the scene in the hotel room on Sisowath Quay in the early part of the evening, he’d been guided by a fierce desire to salvage something, to
compensate for his calamitous loss.
My brother, my friend.
These words went round and round in his mind. A refrain of mourning.

Several hours had gone by since then and he’d lost track of time. But he knew it was late. He crept across the living room with his hands reaching before him, like a blind man. Slowly, his
eyes adjusted to the darkness and the room became familiar. The rattan two-seater and armchair with the square off-white cushions, where he’d spilled a glass of wine the first time he’d
been invited for dinner. A Balinese print of women picking rice, like a child’s work with its exuberant use of blues to convey the terraced paddies; a pair of lean Masai warriors, crafted in
ebony. Along the hallway leading to the kitchen, an emerald-green silk Laotian print, hanging from a bamboo pole. There were many ornaments, collected by the couple over the years. A favourite of
theirs, he knew, was the handcrafted bullock cart sitting on the bookshelf in the living room. Lovingly made by a Cambodian refugee staying in a camp across the border in Thailand. Over several
glasses of wine they’d told him how they had befriended the man and kept in touch throughout the years he and his family lived in the camp, waiting for a new life to begin. Wood, bamboo,
copper wire and string had gone into its making.

He’d heard all the stories, sitting here drinking their booze and enjoying their warmth and hospitality. He’d begun to feel more at home here than at his place, among the few
knick-knacks he had accumulated during his own overseas missions.

His gaze wandered over to the bullock cart and picked out several other ornaments he had admired before. It did occur to him, just then, that only a lunatic would do this. Wander at night
through the home of a dead man. He should take his pick now, and leave. But he didn’t. Instead, he moved quietly up the stairs, listening for signs of life. He was vaguely aware of the dirty
footprints he was leaving behind. He should have thought about that. It would be upsetting for her to find them. That wasn’t his intention.

Still, it occurred to him now that maybe this was what he had really come for, this voyeurism. There was no one to witness the extent of his obsession.

Outside the master bedroom he paused, and then opened the door quietly, holding his breath. First he saw the empty side of the bed, and then the shape of the woman lying on the other side with
her back turned to him. Gently, he closed the door and turned to the next room.

What was he looking for, exactly? A memento? A trophy? The American Indians liked to scalp their victims. A scalp was a trophy of war. Some Indians even sewed them onto their war shirts, or used
them as decoration for their lodgings. He liked that. The warrior-like aspect of it. But this was different. What he wanted was something private, that only he would know about. And he
wouldn’t leave without it.

The second bedroom had been converted into a study. Even she had not been allowed in here. It had been
his
sanctuary. Outside this room, he hesitated. Behind this door lay the core of
the man he’d admired and envied all at once.

When he stepped into the room, it was as though that part of himself, which he had silenced until then, broke loose. He realized for the first time that he was sweating heavily. He was intensely
aware of his own smell. For a moment, he panicked. He must remain in control and not give in to fear or any of the other emotions running wild inside him. He must not think of the hotel room
he’d come from, and what it contained. Above all else, he was afraid of going mad. What if he were to lose his mind and forget where he was or what he was doing?

Just at that moment, from the next room he heard her stir and call out something. The dead man’s name, spoken in a half-dream. He froze. Then he heard her say it again, this time louder.
To hear it spoken out loud like that, in that clear, hopeful tone, made the hairs on his arms stand up. He heard the rustle of sheets as she moved in the bed. Followed by silence. He waited for a
while but there was nothing more. She must have gone back to sleep.

With an effort, he turned back to the desk and looked carefully at the things spread out there. He took an object and ran his fingers over it. It was a large stone, smooth and black, which
he
must have used as a paperweight. He had probably enjoyed the sleek, cool texture of it, and you could see why. Few things in life came like this, unmarred.

Something else on the desk caught his eye. A green folder. He opened it. As he skimmed its contents, a look of puzzlement crossed his face. He closed it again and took it.

And then he shut the door and walked quietly back down the hallway, towards the front door.

Outside, the night was warm, bristling with noise. The whirring of cicadas. A rustling in the leaves. The dog whimpered in its sleep. Overhead, a large bat detached itself from a branch and
flapped past. It settled on a different tree, its winged form like an omen, blacker than the night sky.

He began walking towards the lights along Sisowath Quay, away from the darkness.

From where he stood near the bedroom door, Police Chief Chey Sarit could see that the dead man was Caucasian and young – in his early thirties possibly, though it was
hard to be sure from what was left of his face. He had bare feet and was dressed in a short-sleeved T-shirt and long trousers. It was impossible to tell the colour of his shirt from this angle. It
was soaked through with blood. His eyes were open and he lay slumped against the wall, his arms bent at the elbows and held against his body as though he had tried to shield himself from his
attacker.

A futile attempt, Sarit thought. Whatever was left of the dead man didn’t add up to much.

It wasn’t as though Sarit hadn’t been exposed to violence before. He’d seen plenty. But the savagery of this attack seemed to be of a very personal nature and that made him
uncomfortable.

Sarit turned to the older man who had entered the room with him. Having Sok Pran here was a lucky break. To conceive of a fully functional forensic pathology service in Phnom Penh was like
trying to imagine a future where spaceships zipped across the skies. But in the meantime there was Pran: not a pathologist but a doctor, one with real credentials, which he’d obtained in
France. He was perhaps a hard man to like, moody and unpredictable, but there were few in Phnom Penh as qualified as he was.

A dedicated, hard-working man. Those were esteemable qualities, but Sarit knew that the hospital staff who had to deal with Pran on a daily basis used different, less flattering words to
describe him.

‘The manager says the room was booked by a man called Jean Dupont. Presumably this is him,’ Sarit told Pran, gesturing towards the body. ‘Take your time but make sure you get
as much information as you can.’

‘This dead Frenchman is your problem?’

‘For now.’

There was a grunt from Pran, who was pulling a pair of rubber gloves onto his hands. He was looking at the murder scene through a set of black-framed glasses and shaking his head, like a
professor assessing a particularly mediocre student assignment.

‘Let me know when you’re finished and also whether there is anything you need to do your job,’ Sarit said.

‘What I need, you cannot provide,’ Pran said. His tone was gruff but his manner gentle as he eased the dead man’s shirt collar open. ‘A modern mortuary, for a start. A
qualified forensic pathologist would be helpful, too.’

It wasn’t the sort of statement that required a reply, and so Sarit didn’t respond. Instead, he directed his gaze to the view outside the window.

It had rained heavily during the night. Now there was a pause in the downpour, but it was just that – a brief respite. The sky was still heaving with rain; any moment now the clouds would
burst open again to relieve the pressure building up inside them. The second-floor hotel room had a generous view of the Tonle Sap. On the other side of the river, the low-lying shrubs and reeds
had taken a battering and stood drenched and exhausted. In the provinces, the floods had claimed dozens of lives over the past few weeks. Sarit looked at the river and wondered how much more it
could take before it overflowed. So far in Phnom Penh they’d been spared, but the water was inches from the top of the embankment. He couldn’t remember a monsoon like this one.

Sarit turned to his colleague, crouching over the dead man.

‘I should go talk to the girl, the one who found the body.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘In the manager’s office. I’m sure she wants to leave as soon as she can so she can run to the temple and rid herself of any contamination from the murder scene.’

Pran had no time for superstition. He gave a dismissive snort.

‘You’d better go then.’

Sarit nodded, but made no move to leave the room. He knew he should, but he didn’t feel much like questioning an impressionable young employee who was probably too terrified to provide a
sober account of what she’d seen. Someone – presumably the victim or the murderer – had hung a sign on the door asking for the room to be cleaned and she’d walked in, found
the dead man and started screaming.

What irritated him was the certainty that she would be spinning stories in her head and to others about the victim’s departing soul. He knew from experience that his people could be matter
of fact about flesh and blood, but spirits were another matter.

Sarit resisted the urge to rub at his leg, just below the knee. Though it was five years since he’d lost the lower half of his leg to a traffic accident, an ancient pain took hold of him,
as though that part of him still lived as more than a distant memory.

It must be the rain
, he thought, looking out the window.

Sarit looked at the corpse one more time. It would take hours to clean up the mess. Days for the hotel staff to get over this and get on with their work. Beyond these considerations, he
didn’t waste any time thinking about the dead man – who he was and why this had happened to him. He didn’t think this case would occupy him for much longer. Antoine Nizet, the
French police attaché from the embassy, was already on his way. Nizet, an energetic sort of man, would likely want to immerse himself in the investigation. Officially just as an observer,
but who knew, maybe more? The thought that this could end up being someone else’s problem cheered Sarit up somewhat.

‘Well, well, well,’ Pran said, and Sarit turned his gaze to the pathologist, who was holding up the dead man’s driving licence. He’d pulled the victim’s wallet from
his pocket and he read now from the ID card in his hand.

‘The victim’s name is Hugo Quercy The room’s booked under Jean Dupont. Which means that, unless he was just visiting someone who was staying here last night, there’s a
possibility Quercy checked in under a false name. And another interesting fact: he lives just five minutes from here. So what was he doing in a hotel room?’

The two men exchanged a look. Pran snorted.

‘He was probably caught with his pants down, what do you think?’

Moments later Pran’s face changed. He had pulled a folded piece of paper from the man’s wallet and opened it up to see what it contained. Now he handed it to the police chief, whose
smile froze as he scanned the document.

‘Looks like this could be more complicated than you and I thought,’ Pran said, turning his eyes away to look at the dead man.

Outside, thunder erupted like a prolonged drum roll. Rain pelted the half-open window as though someone were hurling handfuls of stones at it. The wooden shutters banged against the window
frame. Pran swore and stepped widely to reach the shutters with one hand without leaving more bloody footprints on the carpet than he needed to. With the window shut, Sarit became aware of how
stale the air was.

He frowned. As far as he was concerned, this was a straightforward business. It was personal, a settling of accounts between
barang.
Westerners. Still. The contents of that piece of
paper Pran had found gave the affair a new, unwelcome slant.

Sarit thought again about the imminent arrival of the French police attaché and looked at the paper in his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, he folded it and slid it into his
pocket.

Pran looked at him. ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’

‘It is not relevant information and will only complicate things,’ Sarit said. He held Pran’s gaze until the older man looked away, shaking his head.

The police chief turned his head to stare out the window, waiting for Pran to finish the job. Pran had come at Sarit’s request. Without him, the body would never have been examined.
Thankfully, he was a practical man. He did not speculate about the soul’s journey after death.

Through the rain, lightning flashed and thunder boomed. The river was a deep brown. Water would be filling the drains, Sarit thought. It would be running, swift and deep, beneath the
city’s footpaths. The thought of all that water made him unsteady, like the ground was brittle beneath his feet.