White Crocodile (16 page)

Unsurprisingly, the lift was broken, the open doors revealing a cube of dull steel covered in graffiti. There was a puddle in the middle of the floor, and the ammonia stench of urine pulsed from inside it.

Detective Inspector Wessex turned. ‘Fancy a climb, Sergeant Viles?’

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘’Fraid not.’

They reached the sixth floor of the tower block, both of them panting – Wessex considerably more heavily than Viles, he realised in a moment of uncomfortable clarity – and stopped for a minute, leaning against the metal stair railing to catch their breath.

Viles scratched a hand through her crew cut. ‘Do you think he’s in?’

‘Bound to be. The lift’s broken and he’s a lazy arse. Years of shooting up doesn’t predispose you to fitness.’

She smiled. ‘Are you trying to confide in me, sir?’

Wessex rolled his eyes. ‘My problem is burgundy and takeaways. Heroin doesn’t get a look in.’ Patting his stomach, he added: ‘I wouldn’t have a gut like this if it did.’ He paused, raised an eyebrow. ‘Now there’s a thought . . .’

Crossing the narrow concrete landing, Wessex rapped his knuckles on the flaking, hospital-green door.

The voice from inside the flat was sleepy. ‘Who is it?’

Wessex flicked open the letterbox, angled his mouth to the rectangle of light. ‘It’s Detective Inspector Wessex,’ he shouted. ‘Open up, Bear.’

‘Bear?’ Viles mouthed.

‘You’ll see.’

They waited. They could hear faint sounds of someone scuffling around inside the flat, hurried footsteps, the slam of a door.

‘What on earth is he doing?’

‘Depositing his skag somewhere he thinks we won’t find it,’ Wessex said, with a wink. He thumped his fist hard on the door three times, making it rattle on its hinges, stepped back and shouted – ‘Police’ – into the void of stairwell.

A muffled voice came from behind the door. ‘Fuck’s sake, I’m comin’.’

They heard the safety chain being unhooked, and the door was whipped open. If a grizzly had slipped on a dirty white T-shirt and torn jeans, it would have looked a lot like Ryan James. It was obvious why anyone who knew him for more than a brief ‘hello’ referred to him as Bear. Though he was slouching, his head grazed the top of the doorway. Brown hair fell in dirty curls to his shoulders; the bottom half of his face was lost to an untidy salt-and-pepper beard.

‘Keep your voice down,’ he hissed. ‘Do you want the whole of Longsight to know that I’m being visited by the fuckin’ bizzies?’

Wessex pushed past him into the narrow hallway. ‘Should have got a move on, then. I’m not interested in your smack.’

He looked back, wide-eyed. ‘Wot you talking about?’

‘Don’t give up your day job, Bear. Hollywood won’t be beating down your door quite yet.’

Shrugging and muttering, James followed Wessex back down the hall, leaving Viles to close the front door behind her.

The living room was small and filthy, opening on one side to a tiny balcony which looked out on to another of Longsight’s slate-grey council tower blocks, and on the other to a kitchen piled with Lucky House Chinese takeaway boxes and cans of Kestrel lager. The brown carpet was threadbare and dotted with cigarette burns. A tattoo gun and some half-empty plastic bottles of tattoo ink sat on a small Formica table against the wall behind the brown PVC sofa, the only thing in the room that was orderly. Photographs of tattoos: all colours, shapes, sizes and designs made a multicoloured collage of the wall, from tabletop to ceiling.

Wessex cast his eye around and decided to remain standing. Viles stayed in the doorway.

‘I need your help, Bear.’

‘Help? Why the hell should I—?’

‘For turning a blind eye to the smack, which I’m sure we’d be able to dig out without having to search too hard.’ He tilted his head towards the tattoo table. ‘And I have no doubt that social security would like to know about your sideline.’

‘Do me a fucking favour,’ James muttered, with a sneer. ‘That’s pennies, that is. Wouldn’t affect me social.’ Slumping down on to the sofa, which gave out a huge puff of air as he landed, he retrieved a packet of Marlboro and a plastic disposable lighter from the floor. ‘Wot you after?’

‘I need to know which gang this tattoo belongs to.’ Wessex passed over the photograph of the tattoo.

Lighting up, Bear glanced at it. ‘I dunno. Never seen it before.’

‘Take a better look.’

Bear looked from Wessex to Viles and back again.

‘Well it’s not a professional job, is it? None of the fucking edges are straight. Cheap ink.’

‘And the symbol?’

‘Means nothin’ to me.’

‘Is it a gang tattoo?’

‘Nah.’ He shook his head firmly.

‘Why?’

‘Too small, too plain, too badly done. Nah. Never seen a gang with a tattoo like that.’ He sucked on the cigarette, blew a cloud of smoke into the room. ‘They got more pride than to ’ave something like that on their skin. Can’t ’elp yeh.’

Someone in the car park below had fired up a stereo. Grime, the kind of music Wessex had heard hundreds of times as a police constable, trawling around the city-centre clubs arresting pickpockets and breaking up drunken fights. He glanced out of the window: saw three teenagers with matching buzz cuts, gathered around a souped-up black Vauxhall Corsa.

Looking back into the room, he exchanged glances with Viles; she shrugged.

‘We’re not so busy today, Bear. Just this case. Maybe we should stick around for a while. You weren’t going anywhere, were you?’ Wessex slumped, uninvited, on to the sofa next to James, crossed his legs and plucked the Marlboro packet and lighter from James’s lap. ‘Going to get us a cup of tea then? Mine’s milk, no sugar. Viles?’

‘I’d prefer coffee.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’ James threw up his hands. ‘OK, OK. Some of those hookers up at Cheetham Hill have tattoos like this. Little ones. Not too obvious. Badly done like this one.’ Dropping his cigarette into an empty can of Kestrel, he coughed out a harsh laugh. ‘Marks out their owners. Like a cattle brand – dumb fuckin’ cows.’

His eyes met Wessex’s briefly, before sliding away. Wessex resisted the urge to lean over and smack him around the ear.

‘You’re a quality guy, you are, James.’

‘Speak to your vice boys, Officer. They’ll ’elp you better than I can.’

The day had been busy. Fifteen anti-personnel blast mines found in the rice paddies Tess’s teams were clearing and an anti-tank mine buried beneath a dirt road, the main thoroughfare between two neighbouring villages bordering Koh Kroneg. Thankfully, the ox carts that traversed the track were too light to detonate it, so the anti-tank mine had been traipsed over for years by farmers oblivious to its existence. Her teams had worked hard. She was hot, dirty and in need of civilisation.

The swimming pool at the Victory Club was empty except for a tall elderly white man who stood in the shallow end, splashing water over his back like a baby elephant and talking to himself. He obviously viewed himself as an engaging companion because enthusiastic nods and animated facial expressions accompanied his dialogue.

Tess had been surprised by the size of the swimming pool, thirty-five metres long, and reasonably well maintained: whitewashed walls and terracotta tiles, a few of them cracked but clean, surrounding the pool, the water clear and smelling faintly of chlorine, a large semicircular bed of tropical plants and palms at the far end which, if she squinted through semi-closed lids, made her feel almost as if she was swimming in the pool of a five-star hotel.

The Victory Club restaurant bordered one side of the swimming pool, the tables spilling out on to the poolside. Two of the tables were occupied by Khmer businessmen in collared shirts and pressed trousers, holding late meetings over bottles of Angkor beer and bowls of cashews; another by four young men wearing Ray-Bans, ripped jeans and fake pastel-coloured Ralph Lauren polo shirts – the only Khmers who could afford the Victory Club’s two-dollar entry fee, two days’ wages for the average Cambodian.

The whitewashed wall on the opposite side of the swimming pool bore giant posters – the images obviously pirated from American fitness websites – showing buff Westerners in various fitness-related poses. In one, a couple of blonde women in bikinis relaxed in a steam room. Another showed a musclebound man in tight black shorts and a white Nike vest posing on a running machine. It struck Tess as strange that any advertisement for fitness or beauty in Cambodia seemed to feature Westerners; or maybe not so strange, as they were the only ones able to afford the time or energy to exercise.

The club would have been impressive once, no doubt built to entertain the scores of Western aid workers who had arrived to help rebuild Cambodia after the fall of the Khmer Rouge. But, as with everything in Cambodia, it was now in a state of ‘use until it falls apart’ maintenance, paint peeling off the walls, tiles cracked, the exercise machines in the gym – she had a quick look before she’d changed for swimming – rusting, half of them broken.

She swam a few more laps and then stopped in the deep end, holding on to the side so that she could check her watch. It was getting on towards 5 p.m. and she realised she was hungry and in dire need of a beer. Ducking under the water, she front-crawled back to the shallow end.

Alex was standing by the steps, holding out her towel. She didn’t recognise him for a moment because he was wearing chinos, a white linen long-sleeved shirt and spotless brown suede desert boots, not his usual grubby mine-clearing uniform, and his dark hair was damp, as if he’d just got out of the shower. A pair of aviator sunglasses were tucked in his shirt pocket. He looked as if he’d just stepped out of a Giorgio Armani advert.

She reached up for the towel before she started to climb out – she had no intention of letting him see her in a bikini, and especially one that had been bought for her honeymoon with the express purpose of looking slutty – wrapping it around herself awkwardly with one hand as she shuffled up the stairs.

‘Is this a coincidence?’

‘Planned,’ he answered. ‘Madam Chou told me where to find you. Beer?’

She met his gaze with a raised eyebrow, but he didn’t elaborate.

‘Please. I’ll just get changed.’

‘You don’t have to.’

She smiled sarcastically. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Make mine a large one.’

He watched her walk away. Ordering two large bottles of Angkor from the restaurant, he found a table by the swimming pool, where they wouldn’t be overheard. When Tess returned, she was wearing a short green cotton dress patterned with tiny white daisies, and he almost choked on his beer when he saw her.

‘You look . . . different.’

Ignoring his comment, she sat down across the table from him and knitted her fingers around the ice-cold bottle of beer. ‘So what’s up, Alex?’

‘Have you been here before?’

She was momentarily thrown. ‘To the Victory Club?’

He nodded. ‘Yes. Swimming. Using the exercise machines?’

He sounded as if he was trawling for lines on an awkward first date.

‘No. This is the first time. Madam Chou mentioned it, so I thought I’d check it out. It’s nice.’ Unlacing her fingers from the bottle, she picked at the label, easing a corner away from the damp glass with a fingernail. ‘What’s up, Alex?’

He looked away, across the swimming pool, fixing for a moment on one of the posters on the opposite wall.

‘A little girl was killed this morning in the White Crocodile minefield.’

‘A little girl?’

He nodded. ‘Mao radioed me a couple of hours ago. He had just heard. He said you’d already left the field for the day and he wanted you to be told. He said that you knew her.’

Tess felt a growing unease. ‘Knew her?’

‘Knew is too strong, maybe. Met her. He said you’d met her.’

‘Where?’

‘He wasn’t clear. Her father said she’d spoken to you a few evenings ago. Was it the evening you drove out to the field and found that anti-tank mine?’

Tess sat quite still, staring at him. ‘The little girl, with the missing arm? Not her? It wasn’t her?’

He nodded slowly.

‘What happened?’

‘She picked up a butterfly mine.’

‘Why? Why did she pick it up?’

‘Her father found a pile of dollars next to her.’

‘So someone laid them deliberately to tempt her towards the mine?’ Her voice broke. ‘If she hadn’t tried to warn me about the White Crocodile, she might still be alive.’

‘No. It wasn’t your fault.’

‘Why not? Why else was she killed? Because the Crocodile fancied a kid this time? She must have been trying to tell me something important – something more – and I just shooed her away.’ She dropped her head, fighting back tears. ‘Why did you come here to tell me? Why didn’t you just leave a note with Madam Chou?’

‘I wanted to tell you in person. In case you were upset—’ He tailed off.

Snatching a paper napkin off the table, she scrubbed at her cheeks. ‘I already told you I don’t need babysitting.’

He kept his eyes fixed on the bottle in his hands. ‘I wanted to talk to you anyway.’

‘What? Now you know that I’m not just going to turn tail and run away, like you want me to?’

‘We’re both after the same thing. To find out who is doing this to these women, to Johnny and Luke, to that little girl. We may as well help each other.’

She glanced up at him.

‘You don’t trust me, I know that,’ he continued. ‘And you’re wise not to. You shouldn’t trust anyone. But I know why you are out here and surely, with that knowledge, I’m more dangerous as an enemy than as a friend.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘What do they say? Keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.’

She dropped the twisted napkin on to the table; took a large slug of beer, then another. She knew that Alex was right. She had no friends out here, no allies, no one to support her or watch her back. If she continued on her own she would get nowhere. Probably just end up getting herself killed. And if she trusted him? She didn’t know, but the alternative was most likely worse.

‘Another woman went missing last night,’ he said, breaking the silence. ‘An old man from her village found her this morning at the edge of the jungle. Her throat had been cut open.’

‘Another single mother?’

‘Six-month-old twin girls. The old man lived in the hut closest to hers. He heard the babies crying this morning, and went to have a look. He found them alone, and got his wife to look after them while he went to search for the mother. He said that he’d seen the woman two nights ago, running from the edge of the jungle, looking terrified. She kept her animals in a small corral there. She told him that something had been out there watching her. He went up there to look for her this morning and found her dead. He was shaking when he told me. He said that no human could have done what was done to her.’

Tess looked across at him.

‘But you don’t believe that, do you?’

‘I come from a small village in Croatia. We believe all kinds of shit out there too. They come from somewhere, these myths. They’re not just taken from the air.’

‘They come from the lips of people with too little education and too much imagination.’

‘Thank you for describing me so perfectly.’

‘That’s not what I—’ she broke off, catching the twitch at the corner of his mouth. It was only momentary, like grey clouds parting to reveal a tiny patch of blue sky. ‘We’re looking for a man, Alex. Someone very human and very sick.’

Alex’s face was expressionless again, closed down. She wondered if he was berating himself for letting a chink of light through.

‘Family. It’s about family, Alex.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Young, unmarried women with babies, rejected by society for messing with society’s values. The women disappear or are killed. The children are left. So whoever –’ she paused – ‘or whatever is doing this, is punishing the women.’

‘Maybe they’re punishing the kids. And what about Luke? Johnny? Where do they fit in?’

‘I don’t know. But there must be another link that involves them.’

Alex’s eyes flicked up to meet hers for a second.

‘What, Alex?’

‘There’s a kid who works with Dr Ung at the hospital. Ret S’Mai, he’s called. He was badly injured and his father killed when their moped collided with a Land Cruiser in Battambang last year.’

‘Yes, I met him briefly with MacSween.’

‘Ret S’Mai is Huan’s nephew – his father was Huan’s only brother.’

She thought of the glimpse she had of Huan and Ret S’Mai chatting on the veranda before Huan had run, but held her tongue and waited.

‘It was an MCT Land Cruiser that hit them.’

‘MacSween told me. It was Johnny, wasn’t it? Drunk driving? But MacSween said that Ret S’Mai’s father was also drunk. That it wasn’t Johnny’s fault.’

Alex nodded, but there was something unconvincing about the movement. ‘MacSween was right. Drink-drive laws don’t apply out here. They were both in the wrong. Johnny was lucky that he was the one in the Land Cruiser.’

‘That’s not all, is it, Alex?’

Silence.

‘Alex?’

He was looking back across the pool towards the posters, but his gaze was unfocused – looking but not seeing. Mellow orange evening light lit his face as he looked back and caught her eye.

‘Johnny had an affair with Ret S’Mai’s sister. Made her pregnant. She was fifteen.’

Tess felt suddenly lightheaded. ‘Jesus Christ.’

‘He paid for her to have an abortion.’

‘And just dumped her after?’

‘Johnny lost interest, gave her a bit of cash and hasn’t seen or heard from her since. He says that he tried to find her, but that she’d disappeared. I can’t imagine that he tried too hard, but still—’ He broke off.

‘So you think she might be one of those women too? One of the disappeared?’

‘I don’t know. She may just have been sent away to family somewhere else in Cambodia, but it does give Huan another reason to hate Johnny. The accident aside, messing with an unmarried daughter from a good family is madness, particularly the niece of an employee. It would have been different if he had intended a future with her, but he was just playing with her. Once his brother died, Huan became the guardian to his children, both Ret S’Mai and his sister. He is responsible for their welfare, for keeping them safe.’

‘And I suppose Huan is also responsible for getting revenge when something bad happens to them?’

‘Khmers don’t sit and let justice sort itself out, because there is no justice in a country like this,’ he said. ‘Just like there is no justice in the country I came from. If I was him, I would do the same.’

Tess waited for him to continue, but he said nothing else. Behind him, the sun was dipping below the tree line, turning the swimming pool into a cage of shadows.