by Lee Stone
When the cabin lights dimmed over the Indian Ocean, Kate Braganza had slumped against his shoulder. He watched her, wondering about the parts of her story she’d chosen not to tell. The dark line on her stomach said it was a recent thing; too recent for her to be long-hauling on her own. None of his business, he decided, and eventually he kicked back and slept. Sleep had come easily and by the time they landed in Phnom Penh he had felt fresh and energized. The two of them had split up at the arrivals hall, but the conversation had been enjoyable and they made a loose plan to meet up for a beer in Kep, a dot on the map she’d been planning to visit. He watched as she was swept along by a surge of tourists and ushered into a minibus outside the arrivals building. Then he grabbed a dirt bike from a rental place at the airport and headed south through Kampot City and down towards the coast.
The trip South took three hours and Lockhart enjoyed the wind in his hair after the long flight. Kate’s perfume clung to his clothes as he rode, but the breeze and the humidity and the rich forest flowers soon overwhelmed her subtle scent. The further he got from the city the worse the roads became, and soon the rigors of staying upright on the bike pushed all other conscious thoughts from his mind.
He drove on through sleepy Kampot and didn’t stop until he reached the water at Kep. He found a secluded place on the beachfront and paid cash for a week up front. An extra ten percent was enough to avoid passport checks and preserve his anonymity. It was a good deal for peace of mind. Kate had found him by chance outside the beach bar, lying on the sand and staring up at the stars. He was pleased to see her. He couldn’t risk keeping in touch with the people he met on the road. She counted as a rare familiar face as she emerged from the dark. She had joined him with two cold beers and a shy smile. They lay there watching the universe turn for a quarter hour until the sand turned cold in the darkness and they sloped back into the bar.
Now, in the heat of the midday sun she sat up and looked around.
‘Yes, I have somewhere to be,’ she said, answering his question. She raised a hand to shield her eyes from the glare. ‘It’s Sunday. My sister gets in today.’
Lockhart smiled. For the last two days, time had not seemed the least bit important. The sun had risen and fallen, and the tide had ebbed and flowed. That had been the only rhythm and timing they had needed. Now reality, with its flight times and deadlines, was crashing back in like a wave. He threw a glance at the guy with the pale wrist who was scraping his keys across the table and standing up. Slowly he moved towards them, straight out of the sun. The guy was short, no more than five foot eight. He came close and then strode straight past, his eyes fixed on Lockhart. For a split second, something passed between them. A look that Lockhart couldn’t quite decipher. A look that he didn’t like. The man broke the stare as he passed and cut his eyes down towards the sand. He looked surly as he passed. Troubled, even. Lockhart got the feeling that he had won a point without understanding the rules of the game. He watched the guy all the way to the dirt road that flowed onto the beach like a dry riverbed. He scissored onto a scooter and rumbled off towards the town without looking back. And then he was gone. When he was out of sight, Lockhart turned back to Kate.
‘Have you seen him before?’
She shook her head.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
Lockhart turned away from the road and looked back out to the sea. He watched a ship slowly moving across the horizon; the only clue where the water ended and the vast blue sky began. He wondered if it was on its way out, or on its way home. A wave of unwelcome melancholy broke over him. Suddenly the tanker looked lonely, and Lockhart turned back to the beach, and the girl, and the present moment.
‘Do you want to live dangerously?’ he asked, dangling the keys to his rented bike.
She smiled.
‘Do I look like a biker chick to you Charlie?’
‘Maybe.’
‘No thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ll take a walk.’
‘Suit yourself,’ he said, watching her slip a cotton shirt over her two-piece.
‘What’s your plan, Charlie?’ she asked.
Lockhart shrugged.
‘You’ve got a plan, right?’
‘Not especially,’ he said. ‘Not today. It’s too warm for planning.’
She laughed. ‘You got that right.’
She rose gracefully from the lounger and let her hair fall across her face.
‘I’m going to head into town and find Matilda. She should be here soon. I got her a room at The Happy with me.’
‘You’ve not checked in to The Ritz?’ Lockhart asked.
‘No, I haven’t,’ she smiled, looking over his shoulder at the shack he was renting on the beach. ‘And neither have you, wise guy.’
‘True enough,’ Lockhart said. ‘True enough.’
‘Will you still be here tonight?’ she asked. ‘The three of us can go into town. You’ll like Matilda. You like a party, right?’
‘Everyone likes a party,’ Lockhart said. ‘I’ll come and find you.’
He took a slug of his beer and watched as she started to make her way across the sand. She was halfway to the red dirt path when she turned and looked back at him.
‘See you at eight at The Happy,’ she said. ‘We’ll have a party.’
3
Dusk had fallen by the time Lockhart set out to find Kate, and the fireflies were already dancing in the distant mangroves. He headed up through the lonely French quarter, where moonlight splashed across the battered colonial piles that lined the road. The lucky ones still stood intact, puck marked by Khmer Rouge bullets and frayed by years of neglect. The rest were victims of war; little more than scorched shells, bludgeoned into the earth. Trees grew inside their once-great salons and boudoirs as nature reclaimed them for herself.
Beyond the graveyard of forgotten glories, the effervescent sound of modern life was bubbling and frothing as Kep’s Old Town began to wake. The muffled pulse of night-time music called to Lockhart through the grand old relics like a Siren luring him onto the rocks. He hardly heard it. All of his focus was on the noise behind him, back in the salt mist that had swirled in from the sea on the cooling breeze. The sound of an engine. Two stroke. A moped, probably. It wasn’t doing much more than idling. Not traveling at much more than walking pace. The low mists and the moonlight reminded him of Conan Doyle’s spook story from his childhood; The Hound of the Baskervilles. He stopped and listened. There was no hound bursting from the gloom, but the low growl of an idling dirt bike rumbled beyond the fog. No reason for that to worry him. He’d been careful. He always was. He had chosen Cambodia at random. Might as well have stuck a pin in a map. There was no way for anyone to know he was here. And yet, there it was, somewhere back in the fog and the shadows. The low hum of the bike, steadily keeping pace behind him. Lockhart had learned that sometimes a little paranoia was a healthy thing. He quickened his stride, scanning the road ahead for any sign of danger, but there was none. The scrub either side of the path was low and clear, and nothing stirred under the moonlight.
The sound of the Old Town karaoke bars grew louder, a hundred yards away. The first low slung corrugated buildings began to spring up either side of the road. Safety, within touching distance. Lockhart chanced a look over his shoulder and saw the yellow glow of a headlamp behind the fog, like the sun trying to burn through the stubborn morning cloud. The sound of the petrol engine raised a tone. Speeding up. Coincidence? Maybe. He broke his stride and began to jog. Behind him, the dirt bike reacted, notching up another tone. No coincidence, then. And no need anymore for pretense. He broke into a jog and headed for the nearest bar. By the time he reached it, the bike was on his shoulder, and he heard it slide to a stop behind him as he pushed through the bare wooden door and into the stale air of the place. It was already hot and heaving. Noisy too. The perfect place to disappear. Dimmed red lights gave the place an anything could happen vibe, and stick-thin girls shoaled on a pitted dance floor. Throngs of hungry looking guys
watched from the sides. Ceiling fans pushed hot air around the room, and every kind of life had taken into the dark corners. Tous les coins noirs. Lockhart muscled through the hot bodies and headed for the bar, suddenly aware that his breath was rasping and chest was pounding from the exertion of running. He forced himself calm so as not to rouse any unwanted attention and stooped slightly to lose himself in the crowd. When he got to the bar, he found two barmen chatting loudly to one another over western music playing from an ancient sound system. Lockhart paid them over the odds for a beer and didn’t hang about for his change. Then he headed towards the back of the building, swiping a sugar shaker from a low table without breaking his stride.
The restrooms were empty and open to the elements. Lockhart pulled himself up onto one of the sinks before vaulting over the ramshackle fencing and out into the darkness. Then he skirted along the side of the building and back out onto the street, right back where he had started. The dirt bike was parked up in front of the entrance. Lockhart twisted the fuel cap and poured the bar-room sugar into the tank. Then he crossed the road and slunk into an alleyway, waiting for whoever had been following him to return. In the shadows his pulse came down and his breath came back. He waited and wondered who was following him. It seemed unlikely that his demons would catch up with him in this place.
The guy who had been following him emerged from the bar a minute later looking frantic, scouring the street for his quarry. Lockhart recognized him straight away. It was the same guy who had been watching him and Kate on the beach. Lockhart watched him move across the street. He was not a stealthy hunter. Not a professional. He paced up and down for a couple of minutes in plain sight, apparently without a plan. He looked scared. Scared that whatever job he was supposed to be doing, he had screwed it up. That meant he was working for someone else, Lockhart figured. In the dark, he stayed still as the guy paced up and down the street, one hand holding an open pocket knife that he did not try to disguise. His other hand ran franticly through his lank hair. In the glow of the karaoke bar’s light, he looked young and scared.
This was not the kind of guy Lockhart’s demons would send. He was wrong in a million different ways. Young. Nervous. Disorganized. Lockhart watched him get back onto his bike and struggle with the ignition before throwing it to the floor when the sugar-gummed engine refused to start. Twice, he pulled a cell phone from his pocket and began to dial, but twice he thought better of it, slipping it back into his pocket without going through with the call.
A rat moved in the shadows next to Lockhart, and the guy in the street snapped around in the direction of the noise. Jumpy. He started towards the sound, but before he reached the alleyway, his phone rang. Lockhart stayed still and silent, watching him head back to the bike, moaning and complaining to whoever was on the end of the phone, rolling his eyes and shrugging his shoulders. Definitely not working alone, then. When he was done on the phone, he went back and righted the bike and tried to start it up again. But the sugar had done its job well, and it refused to fire. He kept at the ignition for a solid minute before throwing the bike down in frustration. It lay broken on the dirt street where he kicked it again for good measure.
Lockhart watched him slope off towards the highway and thought about following, but decided against as he had enough problems in his life without chasing after new ones. Petty crime happens the world over, mostly driven by poverty. Tourists are rich pickings. Lockhart figured he had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The guy had scoped him out on the beach in the day and tried to rob him after dark. End of story. Probably.
Lockhart let him go and headed up into the Old Town, searching for Kate’s hotel. He found it four streets away, in the worst part. The Happy was a crumbling concrete place that looked like it was being propped up by the buildings on either side. Inside, it was ugly, with cheap stone floors and overflowing ashtrays. The stench of stale beer and sweat hit the back of Lockhart’s throat as soon as he walked in. A sign on the wall said We Never Close, and some of the drinkers looked like they hadn’t been home for a while. Young girls played pool badly, and old men watched them. Lockhart was early and Kate was still upstairs, which was a pity, because The Happy wasn’t the kind of place to be sitting alone for too long. He ordered a cold beer and took a seat at the bar. He was halfway down the glass when he spotted movement in the mirror. A tall guy with a paunch and a scowl was making a line straight towards him. When he reached the bar, he anchored himself to it like a sailor on rough seas. Not too steady on his feet.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he breathed. ‘I only took a piss. I was gone, what…?’
He pawed at his watch, his brow furrowing further, before looking up along the counter to the barman and raising his voice.
‘Mickey? How long was I gone?’
Mikey was local and did not look to Lockhart like a Mikey. He had probably been given the name by ex-pats who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, attempt to pronounce his real one. Mikey picked up a glass and began drying it.
‘Five minutes maybe,’ he said, without looking up. ‘Long enough.’
He kept his eyes on his work as he answered. Textbook conflict avoidance, Lockhart thought. Good for him. It was too early in the night to be brawling.
‘Long enough that you cleared my beer away, anyway?’
The barman put down the glass and picked up another.
‘You want a fresh one?’
‘Yeah, I want a fresh one,’ the guy snapped, and he turned slowly to Lockhart. Like turning required a little extra concentration. ‘And I want my seat back.’
Lockhart said nothing. Life as a reporter had taught him to evaluate people. Twelve months on the run had taught him to be cautious. He had spent those months traveling the world, putting the long miles in, staying one step ahead of the demons on his back. This guy was no big threat compared to them. He was long past his prime and far too noisy. And so Lockhart stayed right where he was. After all, a man can’t spend his life jumping at every shadow.
‘I know you,’ he told the drunk. ‘You served out here back in the day, right?’
Scowler froze. Just for a second. But long enough for Lockhart to know he was right.
‘You used to go hunting in the dead of night. All on your own. Sneaking around killing people. Lots of people, probably.’
The guy backed off, his brow furrowed and his eyes snapping to something that almost resembled focus. Lockhart turned slowly from the bar and looked at him.
‘You went home after the killing, right?’ he said. ‘And you tried to forget about this place. This country. These rice fields. But you couldn’t. Because the voices followed you home, didn’t they? The voices of all those people you killed?’
The guy’s mouth had gone a little dry, and Lockhart heard it clacking as he tried to form his words. He gave him a moment to collect his thoughts, but nothing came. After a minute, Lockhart carried on.
‘You took to drinking. And you hit your wife, probably. And you got a divorce, and you ended up poor. And eventually, like a magnet, this place pulled you back in. You came back out here, where the drink is cheap, and the music’s loud enough to drown out those voices. Most of the time, anyway. And you can do whatever you like to the girls.’
The guy was easy to get a read on. Not for someone like Lockhart, who had spent years interviewing people who told him one story and concealed another. He had a favorite seat in this flea-bitten pub, and the barman knew what he was drinking. That made him a regular. His accent made him an American ex-pat. The dark tone of his skin said he’d been living in the sun for a while. A double lightning bolt SS tattoo on his forearm made him a Scout Sniper more likely than a Nazi. And in that occupation, he would at one time have had a steady hand; but now it trembled and betrayed years of alcohol abuse. The indent on his left hand ring finger had not corrected itself, which meant he’d worn a wedding ring for more years than not. And the fact that he was an ugly drunk meant he was probably bored, and definitely resentful of the hand that life had
dealt him.
‘You want me to tell you what else I know,’ Lockhart asked, sipping his beer. ‘Or do you want to go find somewhere else to sit?’
The guy left without another word. Lockhart was not surprised. People who move five thousand miles from home have usually got something to hide. This guy was half a world from home, which is not a comfortable place to be. It comes at a cost. Sacrificing friends and family, and the places and memories that define who you are. Who you were. A man who has fled as far as Scowler has died and been reborn. And if you can convince that kind of person who you can see into the dark corners of their past, they’ll rarely stick around long enough to find out just how many secrets you know. When the first threads unravel, the blood usually runs cold. And in this case, cold enough to send Scowler stumbling out into the night air.
Five minutes later Lockhart finished his beer, swiveled around, and swept his eyes across The Happy. Still no Kate. She was ten minutes beyond fashionably late, so he went to seek her out. He got up off his bar stool and stretched, feeling his vertebrae realign into a more comfortable position. For all the hassle the seat at the bar had caused him, the thing was uncomfortable as hell. It took him a few seconds of scouting around to spot the small cardboard sign above a doorway with Rooms handwritten on it. Below, a waterfall of orange plastic beads cascaded from the ceiling to keep whatever insects flew around the bar from reaching the accommodation. Beyond the curtain, Lockhart found a dark corridor that smelled of cooking fat and stale meat. He felt around in the gloom until he found a spring-loaded light switch on the wall and pushed it to light up a drab utilitarian foyer. The floor was burgundy linoleum, and the walls were regulation beige. Against the wall, with pizza adverts and bar flyers stuffed into it, was an old colonial French post rack. Opposite, two bikes were chained to the balustrade of a narrow wooden stairway, which folded back on itself as it ascended above the bar.