White Crocodile (21 page)

He tried to shake his head, but he couldn’t find the motion. ‘Let’s go back to my house. I’ll tell you everything.’ His voice was strangled, his face wrung out.

He held out his hand to her. Turning away, she sprinted off down the street.

The sleet must have turned to rain. Wessex could hear a ghostly patter from the rooftop above them. He glanced at his watch. He had been allotted half an hour and was allowed to ‘get happy’, as the rat-man at reception had put it, twice in that time. The half-hour was almost up. Soon he would be joining Viles across the road in the café, a warm cup of tea on the table in front of him.

Get happy.
Eight men every night, she had told him. She didn’t have good enough English to explain how she had wound up in Manchester, but she kept repeating the same word. ‘Battambang.’ He’d committed it to memory, would find out what or where it was as soon as he got back to the office.

‘Why don’t you go home? Back to Cambodia?’ he asked her. ‘Go home and be with your son?’

A tear ran down her cheek. ‘No passport.’

He fought the urge to whip his warrant card out of his jacket pocket, slam back down the stairs and ram it down rat-man’s throat.

‘You need to go to the police.’

She shook her head. ‘Police bad.’

‘Not here. Not in England.’

‘I no get out.’ She raised a hand and pointed dispiritedly to the door.

‘I can go to the police for you.’ It was as close as he could get to admitting who he was. He thought it would give her some reassurance.

Instead, she gripped his arm. ‘Please no.’ Her voice cracked. ‘Happen before, another girl. Hid her. Police go, they kill her. Show us body.’ She started to sob. ‘They kill me too. Please no police.’

Still sobbing, she slid her hand into the pocket of her gown. When she pulled it out, she was holding a small black-and-white photograph. She held it out to Wessex. It showed a little boy. Two or three he must have been, sitting in the dirt, all distended belly and stick arms and legs. The shiny surface of the photo was cracked, one corner faded entirely where she must have held and held it, looking at the image of her little son, frozen in time. He was four now, she had indicated, holding up a hand, fingers outstretched, the thumb tucked into her palm. She hadn’t seen him for three months.

‘I can’t take it,’ Wessex said. ‘It’s too precious. I’ll remember his face.’

She raised her head and thrust out her chin, her gaze meeting his directly for the first time.

‘Please.’ She looked desperate. ‘If you take it you remember. Remember help me.’

Someone had put some music on downstairs. Tom Robinson’s ‘War Baby’ floated up through the boards, drowning out the sound of the rain. Wessex tucked the photograph into his back pocket.

‘What’s his name?’

‘Dien. Dien Yathay.’ She indicated herself. ‘Me, Jorani Yathay.’

‘I will find out what has happened to him and I’ll come and let you know.’
Come back with the cavalry.
He pulled out his wallet and emptied it of notes. ‘A hundred pounds. It’s all I have.’

She looked shocked. ‘No.’

‘Take it. Please.’ He pressed the notes into her hand. ‘And I will find your son. It might take some time but I will find him.’

I’ll get you out too.
He couldn’t say it; couldn’t afford to give himself away.
All of you. And I will nail those bastards who imprisoned you and killed that girl.

Her smile looked so sad, but at least it was a smile.

When Tess slotted her key into the lock and pushed her apartment door open, she half expected to see Alex sitting on the sofa, cradling his Browning on his lap and watching her with those black eyes. But the room was empty, neat and impersonal, just as she had left it this morning.

Unzipping her dress, she let it slide to the floor and climbed straight into the shower. Turning up the water as hot as she could bear, she scrubbed herself from head to foot, and then again, as if she could scrub hard enough to scour Alex’s touch from her skin. Then tugging on light khaki cotton trousers, a T-shirt and her trainers, she ran downstairs and out into the dark street.

Battambang Provincial Police occupied a low brick building on a dusty plot of red earth fifteen minutes’ jog from Madam Chou’s. She knocked on the front door and waited. It was a couple of minutes before she heard movement from inside, footsteps making their way towards her. The lock clicked and the door inched open. A strip of bottle-green beret and a fleshy cheek appeared in the crack, the wood-coloured eye blinking blearily. It widened briefly on seeing her. The policeman hauled the door open, smothering a yawn with the back of his hand. Smoothing his shirtfront, he adjusted a couple of buttons where the material had strained around his middle and straightened his beret. Then he pulled back his shirtsleeve, gesturing to the Rolex on his wrist.

‘Late. Station closed.’ He had a smoker’s voice, heavily accented. ‘Three in morning.’

‘I’m sorry, but I need to speak to you. It’s urgent.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Tess Hardy. I’m one of the mine clearers who works at Mine Clearance Trust.’ She gestured behind her, in the general direction she imagined MCT House to be.

‘Interviews tomorrow morning. Arranged with Mr MacSween. You ask him. Come back then.’ Withdrawing, he shut the door.

Interview? What was he talking about? Then it dawned on her: Jakkleson. She jammed her foot over the threshold – ‘No, please—’ and was thankful that she wasn’t wearing sandals as the door ricocheted off her toes. ‘It’s about something else. Please. It won’t take a minute.’

The policeman remained where he was, blocking the doorway, one hand resting on a meaty hip. He studied her from top to toe without embarrassment. She would not have put up with such scrutiny in any other situation, but this felt like the end of the road. The bullet that killed Huan was the only thing that led back to the Crocodile.

Finally, a gruff nod. ‘Follow me.’

He turned and beckoned her down the hall. She followed, past a couple of grainy black-and-white photographs dull with dust, a line of uniformed men standing to attention in front of the police station; a statue of the Buddhist god of fortune, Kuvera, perched on a wooden shelf nailed to the wall; an Asian sunset vividly portrayed in batik print. On her right were rooms, offices from the scatter of paper on the desks, all of them dark, except for the second, where another uniformed man leaned back in his chair, feet crossed on the desk, a telephone jammed to his ear. The policeman went slowly, glancing over his shoulder every few steps to study her face, to click his tongue against the back of his teeth.

They entered another office at the end of the hall. A desk covered in papers faced the door, a large window behind it looking out on to darkness. A fan rotated in the middle of the ceiling, stirring the ash in a heavy glass ashtray on the desk with its rhythmic thump. The room smelt of incense and tobacco. Indicating a chair across the desk from him, the policeman sat down.

‘Provincial Officer Prak Long. Please sit.’

Tess caught sight of her reflection in the window behind him as she lowered herself into the chair; her face was ghostly white.

‘What do you want?’

‘A good friend of mine was killed in Battambang a few hours ago. I want to find out where his body has been taken.’

The policeman was watching her closely. ‘Why?’

‘I want to see him. To say goodbye. It’s, uh, it’s an English thing.’

‘English, eh?’

She nodded.

‘You know Liverpool Football Club?’

She nodded again. ‘Steven Gerrard – great player. Peter Crouch – should have gone for basketball maybe, but still a great player.’

A half-smile tilted the corners of his mouth. ‘It is not usual for us to give out this information, even to the English.’

‘I appreciate that. But I would really like to see him. Just one last time.’ She held his gaze, fighting the urge to dip hers to the desktop.

‘Your friend’s name?’

‘Huan. Huan Rae.’

‘My colleague, he deal with this murder. I will ask him – see if he help you.’ He shrugged. ‘But I doubt.’ Holding up an index finger, he added: ‘Minute. One minute.’

He left the office, and she heard his footsteps receding down the corridor. She waited and waited, the muffled sound of voices, a phlegmy smoker’s cough, drifting back to her. Standing, she went over to the window. The offices backed on to a rectangle of land, surrounded by low buildings – she could just make out the outlines of their roofs against the midnight blue of the sky. No hint of sunrise yet.

She turned back to the office. Minutes ticked by. She could still hear the policemen chatting and laughing.

Provincial Officer Prak Long’s desk was messy; it reminded her of MacSween’s. A few sheets of paper had slipped on to the floor. She bent and picked them up, looking at them before she slid them on to his desk. They were written in curving Khmer text, meaningless to her. She took a stack of papers from his desktop and flicked through them. All in Khmer. The other stacks, the same. She was looking for anything written in English – the international language. If MacSween had communicated with Battambang police, or if they had communicated with Jakkleson’s home country, it would be in English.

She realised that she was abusing his trust, but felt no guilt. If he returned with the news that his colleague was not prepared to help her – as she expected he would – she would curse herself for having wasted this opportunity.

Putting the papers back, she pulled open the desk drawer. Like MacSween’s, it was a miscellany: pens and pencils, a stapler, a couple of pads of lined paper, an ancient Motorola mobile phone wrapped in a tangle of headphones, a well-thumbed copy of the
Official Liverpool FC Annual 2008
– how the hell had he got hold of that? In the bottom of the drawer she found an unopened packet of tissues, a tin box containing betel nut, one shoelace, a dried slice of pineapple and a layer of crumbs and lint. Rearranging the contents more or less as she had found them, she closed the drawer.

His computer screen flared into life when she nudged the mouse. He had been looking at www.rolex.com. Online porn for middle-aged men who would need to work a lifetime to be able to afford one – a real one at least. There was another tab open. Glancing up, she scanned the doorway – empty – tilted her head – the mutter of conversation from down the corridor was unchanged. She clicked.

Battambang Provincial Police’s email inbox opened in front of her. She scanned the page quickly. Just a list of emails, every one in Khmer script. Moving the mouse to the bottom of the page, she clicked the back button. The inbox flicked to the second page. She scanned the list quickly. Scanned it again, more slowly. Stopped. One email stood out. The title was written in Khmer – just one word. One of only three Khmer words that she recognised, along with the words for ‘Danger’ and ‘Mines’.

‘Help!’ – an exclamation mark after the word. Her eyes flicked to the email address it had been sent from: [email protected].

Police? UK?

The policeman had obviously Googled the Khmer word for ‘Help’ and then copied and pasted it into the title box because when she opened the message it was written in English. She scanned the email quickly. Saw that it was from a Detective Inspector Andy Wessex of the Greater Manchester Police. Something about a body they’d found. DI Wessex was asking Battambang police for help. The words ‘dead woman’ and ‘orphan’ jumped off the screen. There was a photograph attachment on the email. She double-clicked on the attachment and the computer started whirring, the little egg timer turning over and over. Over and over. She looked around the room frantically, searching for a printer. There wasn’t one.

The computer was still opening the photograph; it seemed to be stuck. Pressing the back button to cancel the operation, she scanned the menu bar above the email. Which one of those elaborate Khmer words meant ‘forward’? She pressed one and the email disappeared briefly, then reappeared underneath the GMP email address. She had pressed reply.
Shit!

As she closed the reply, reopened the original email and moved the mouse to another of the words, she realised that the chatter from down the corridor had stopped. She looked up quickly. The doorway was empty, the dimly lit corridor behind it silent. She would hear him coming back down the corridor surely? Hear his tread? She knew that the sensible thing would be to return to her side of the desk, sit and wait patiently until he came back, but now that she had seen those words – ‘dead woman’ and ‘orphan’ – she just couldn’t.

Forward.

A cough. That phlemy cough, and footsteps approaching.

Hurriedly, she typed in her own email address: [email protected]. Was just about to press send when she realised she’d hit the ‘i’ twice. Deleted one, hit send.

The footsteps had come to a halt. She looked up from the screen, met his surprised gaze. Smiling, she straightened. ‘Were you able to find out—’

He spoke over her. ‘What are you doing?’

Tess felt the fear in her gut, tugging at her like the grinding ring of the unanswered telephone she could hear from the neighbouring office.

‘I, uh, I picked up some papers that had fallen on the floor. When I put them back, I must have touched the mouse by mistake.’ She indicated the screen. ‘Rolex. I’ve always wanted one. I noticed the one you have. The Submariner, isn’t it? It’s very cool.’

His face was unmoving. Tess stared back at him, an instinct for self-preservation driving her to hold his gaze steadily. Provincial Officer Prak Long breathed in deeply. His eyes were very black in the darkness of the corridor.

Suddenly, he laughed – so loudly that she almost jumped.

‘Oyster Perpetual Submariner.’ The words were laboured. ‘You know watches?’

‘I’ve always wanted a Rolex.’ She smiled and shrugged.

‘One day.’ He held out a piece of paper. ‘Municipal Hospital. Hospital for poor. Your friend taken there.’

The little boy was woken by a noise. A brief cry. Silence followed, so complete he wondered if he had dreamed his mother’s voice. But sleep wouldn’t come, even when he tugged the duvet right up to his chin and closed his eyes.

He could picture Mummy sitting motionless on the sagging faux-leather sofa in the lounge with that empty stare she got in her eyes sometimes, on those afternoons when he would call and call her and she wouldn’t hear. Opening his eyes again, he saw the black night framed in the curtainless square of window above him, a few flakes of snow circling past. It was Christmas in two days’ time.

Pushing his duvet aside, he climbed out of bed and went out into the corridor. His mother’s bedroom was dark. He tiptoed silently into the room. The moon slid from behind a cloud, lighting the unmade bed, the duvet in a heap on the floor, six cans of Special Brew and four of Stella – he counted them carefully, was proud for a moment that he could count that high – littered on the carpet, a spent wrap of foil and a syringe on the bedside cabinet.

No Mummy.

He turned back to the door. The corridor beyond was still and dark.

‘Mummy?’ Just a whisper.

He strained to listen. ‘Mummy?’ There was no answer, but he heard noises coming from the sitting room. Familiar noises. Hugging his arms around himself, the little boy tiptoed towards the sitting-room door.

Through a crack of the doorway he saw a shirtless man, jeans and Y-fronts around his ankles. His legs were hairy, like the old donkey at the city farm. The man bent forward over the sofa and his bare buttocks twisted. A thick groan. He began to thrust his hips backwards and forwards. From the sofa in front of him protruded a pair of legs spread wide. The boy could only see the soles of the feet, the rail-thin ankles with the damaged, bruised veins. But he knew they were his mother’s legs. And he knew what she was doing. Just like he’d seen in those magazines the men she brought home left lying by the toilet.

He sank to the floor outside the door and shivered. He felt sick for a moment and then realised it was hunger. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten. Yesterday, he thought. Baked beans yesterday evening. The thought of them made his stomach growl. His pyjamas were too small, the trousers barely past his knees, the sleeves exposing the dimples of his elbows. Though he could hear the old heating system in the tower block creaking and shuddering in the belly of the building at night, the air in the flat was freezing and stale.

Again and again the man’s buttocks twisted as he thrust. The man was shoving his willy inside her, and she was groaning and gasping like she did just after she had slid one of those needles into her arm.

He stared through the crack. His lips were moving, though he didn’t know it. Get off her. Get off her. His heart was racing. He let out a sob: ‘No.’ Jammed himself blindly forward into the crack between the door and its frame. ‘Get off her.’

The man stopped. He turned around and the boy saw his willy bobbing grotesquely in its nest of dark hair, the startled face of his mother beyond, her mouth hanging open, lips wet.

‘I mean it,’ he sobbed. ‘Leave her alone or I’ll kill you.’

Silence. He realised his teeth were chattering.

The man hauled up his pants and jeans, looked down at his mother, and then walked towards the little boy.

‘Well, good evening there, son!’ he said, and his accent was funny – a Scottish accent his mum called it, like the little girl who lived across the hall. ‘Did you ever hear about knocking before you walk into a room?’

‘Sweetie . . . baby . . .’ his mum drawled, and the little boy didn’t know whether she was talking to him or the man.

‘Because your mum and I were just in the middle of something.’ He was standing right in front of the little boy now. The little boy could smell his foul breath. ‘In fact, it’s probably safe to say –’ the man’s face, which had been smiling, twisted with rage – ‘that you couldn’t have come in at a worse time.’

The little boy shot back, slammed hard up against the wall. Scrabbling sideways, he tried to find purchase on the threadbare carpet of the corridor. But he wasn’t fast enough, and the man’s hands gripped the lapels of his pyjamas. He struggled to free himself, panicking. The man slapped him around the face, and the back of his head struck the plaster.

‘Sor . . . sorry—’ he struggled to say through his tears. ‘P . . . please, no—’