by Lee Stone
5
Lockhart had arrived in Quetta in northern Pakistan in the heat of summer, with no particular plan except to keep moving. Two days after he arrived, they offered him a job in Afghanistan. He took it, hoping the adventure would block all thoughts of home from him mind. He drove a truck through the Khyber Pass and into Camp Bastion, through the rough-cast concrete blocks and into the British camp. There were twenty thousand soldiers in Bastion and Leatherhead, and he’d found a room in a two-story block which comprised beige shipping crates piled on top of one another. The same night Lockhart arrived, the Taliban launched eight Rocket-Propelled Grenades off the back of a Toyota flat bed high in the Hindu Kush, and they landed right next door to where he was sleeping.
He had been in the dusty street when the attack happened, in a scene that felt more like moonscape that anything he’d seen on earth. Pin bright stars shone down from a pitch-black sky and impossibly bright halogens lit patches of sand around the base. When the alarm siren sounded, every soldier bolted for the nearest cover, and Lockhart did the same. And RPG hit a heavy blast wall and splintered concrete through the air. A stray shard had skimmed across his scalp, leaving a two-inch gash just above his forehead.
He had been lucky. A solider next to him has been slashed above the knee by a larger fragment. The dust around him turned red as two of his colleagues hammering away at his chest and imploring him to live. It was Lockhart’s friend Miller who had yelled at them to get a tourniquet on him.
‘There’s no point pumping blood around him if there’s an open artery pissing it out of the other end,’ she had yelled. ‘It’s like trying to blow up a balloon that’s already burst.’
Afghanistan. It felt like a lifetime ago.
*
In the darkness of the alley behind the Rabbit, Lockhart’s subconsciously felt the long thin scar that ran just under his hairline. He looked down at the guy slumped against the brick wall behind the Rabbit. He was bleeding slowly, and he would not die anytime soon. The flow from his hollowed eye was coagulating into a thickening clot and slowly oozing from the empty socket like cooling lava. Even so, his breathing was shallow and labored and his skin pale and clammy. Blood soaked the front of his shirt and shone blue-black in the moonlit alleyway. Lockhart watched him intently.
‘What’s your name?’
It was the second time he had asked the question.
There was a pause while the injured men mustered the energy to answer.
‘Chhan.’
Lockhart knelt down next to him in the dirt and said, ‘Why were you following me, Chhan?’
Chhan was struggling to hold it together.
‘Cold,’ he said, eventually.
Lockhart nodded.
‘Sure you’re cold,’ he said. ‘But why were you following me?’
Chhan seemed to drift completely out of the conversation before rolling his head, slowly focusing back in on Lockhart, and then re-joining exactly where he had left off.
‘Very cold.’
‘You’re cold because you’re bleeding,’ Lockhart told him. ‘You’re running out of blood, Chhan. You’re running out of time.’
Chhan would not die. When they were done talking, Lockhart would buy him a bottle of cheap whiskey from the Rabbit Bar and sling him a Tuk-Tuk ride home. He didn’t owe the guy a thing, but he’d do it all the same. Sure, Kate Braganza was lying cold and lifeless in the sordid room at The Happy, and if Chhan bled the death in the dust, it might even things up. It might go some way to paying for her death. But Lockhart knew he was not the arbiter of who should live and who should die, and he did not want the man’s blood on his hands. If he stood and watched the life ebb from him and did nothing about it, a part of his own soul would be lost in this lonely alleyway forever. The memory would grow to haunt him, and Lockhart had ghosts enough already. So he would help. But not just yet. Not until he had some answers.
‘What did you want?’ he pushed. ‘Back in the French Quarter? I know you were following me. What did you want?’
Chhan looked up from the floor and let out a mucus-cloyed sigh.
‘The girl,’ he rasped. ‘I follow you, I find her.’
Chhan relaxed somewhat. His shoulders fell and his body relaxed more into the contours of the ground he was resting on, like he had unburdened a great weight. He knew about Kate. He was a part of it. He was involved. In some way that Lockhart did not yet understand, Chhan had helped to kill his friend. Chhan’s breath was labored, and guilt was etched thick on his bloody face. Whatever had happened to him in the last couple of hours since Lockhart had seen him in the French Quarter, he was too exhausted to keep his secrets to himself any longer. Now that Lockhart had found him, he was surrendering to his fate. He slumped back against the wall, awaiting a retribution that didn’t come.
‘Why?’ Lockhart asked. ‘Who told you to do it?’
No answer. Chhan’s head had slumped forward. It was possible that he really couldn’t hear what Lockhart was asking. It was possible that he had given up, and was praying that whatever retribution was coming, it would come swiftly. Lockhart gave him a nudge with his foot.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Who’s your boss? Who told you to follow me? The guy with the ponytail? The guy with the long hair?’
Lockhart pulled at the back of his hair upwards so that Chhan would understand. Underneath the rattling air-con unit, the guy’s eyebrows furrowed in concentration - one over his good eye and the other over his bloody socket.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He did this.’
He pointed at the place where his eye should have been, but Lockhart ignored his complaints.
‘Why?’ he demanded. ‘What did he want with Kate?’
Chhan made an exasperated sound and shrugged his shoulders against the coarse brickwork. He didn’t know the answer. Lockhart had spent enough years interviewing people to see that. He was still shaking his head and protesting his innocence when a shadow fell across his face. He looked up and over Lockhart’s shoulder, and Lockhart saw recognition in his one good eye. Recognition and fear. Something changed in the alley, the way a subway station changes just before the train emerges from the darkness and explodes into the quiet air of the station.
Lockhart reacted. He was already moving when he heard the noise behind him. He had been traveling for a long time, and life on the road gave him a natural litheness. He hadn’t seen the inside of a gym for years, and yet his stripped back lifestyle had left him in good shape. So when he heard the footsteps behind him and saw the change in the bleeding man’s focus, and felt the bow wind of someone coming hurtling down the alley towards him, he snapped up to his feet and twisted fast towards the sound. The man who he had seen skulking through the shadows outside Kate’s room was bowling towards him, his arms held high, already swinging something heavy in Lockhart’s direction. Even as he moved upwards, Lockhart felt his body reacting without conscious thought; millions of years of programmed instinct kicking in to help him survive. He moved unusually confidently for someone shocked into action. If the last few months of travel and evasion had taught Lockhart anything it was this: he was a natural survivor.
Chhan watched Lockhart’s reaction, his senses reawakened by a fresh shot of adrenalin. He noticed the tourist moved with an unusual assured detachment. He had something of a swagger, arching his back as he turned, dropping his knees and snapping his neck back as he ducked underneath the blow.
Lockhart felt the heavy bar coming down through the dark air towards him and saw it glint in the moonlight. It was a cast iron railing, most likely pulled from one of the colonial French wrecks in the old Quarter. Two angry metal shafts branched off the main bar at right angles, splintering into razor shards where they had been sheered from their original home. Lockhart felt the deep whoosh of it passing over him, huge and heavy as it skimmed past his dropping jawline. It clanged into the wall behind him as he rolled as he hit the floor, tumbling backwards into Chhan, and feeling his hand slick in his blood as he pushed hims
elf away from him, and back to his feet.
By the time Lockhart was upright, the pony-tailed guy from The Happy had pulled the iron bar back above his shoulders and was poised like he was in the batting box, waiting for CC Sabathia to toss him another pitch. A smell of oil hung in the air, following in the metal's wake. Lockhart presumed it was a relic from the days when the French Quarter lawns were manicured, and the residents coated their iron railing to guard against the salty air. The man from The Happy swung again. Lockhart ducked and lunged at him, crunching his shoulder hard into the guy’s ribs. The aggression surprised him and he gave way, toppling backwards. Lockhart’s weight drove hard into his chest until his back hit the wall, knocking the wind from him. As he crumpled, Lockhart grabbed his ponytail and pulled him sideways, hard into the creaking air-con unit. His forehead caught the angle of the metal and for a moment he dropped to his knees, dazed.
In the dust, he stretched his empty hand out blindly in front of him as blood began to trickle from the wound. He lashed out with the iron bar as he pulled himself to his feet, and Lockhart flung himself against the chicken wire fence to avoid it. But the fence sprung him back into the alleyway like a trampoline and caused him to lose his footing. He rolled as he hit the floor, his hands scrabbling in the dust for something he could use to defend himself. Above him, the guy with the iron bar used the sleeve of his unbuttoned shirt to wipe the blood from his eyes. His face was sharp and angular, so that the moonlight accentuated his features and gave him an otherworldly appearance. His cropped hair gave way to a pulled tail spilling from his crown. There was no question he was the guy from The Happy. The guy who had crushed Kate Braganza’s neck until her life had slowly drained from her body.
His shoulder against the wall, Lockhart looked across to see Chhan staring back at him. He wondered which side Chhan would pick now, if he had the choice, but it didn’t matter. The shock of losing his eye had taken hold, and he was watching the scene impassively, incapable of helping or hindering. Lockhart’s fingers found a breeze-block in the darkness and the dust, and he grabbed it with both hands and slammed it hard against the other guy’s knee. The joint buckled unnaturally, and the guy yelled in pain and cursed in Khmer. He fell into the chicken wire fence and then burst forward, lashing out furiously with the metal bar. It cleaved through the air above Lockhart, missing him completely. Instead, the flailing metal found Chhan. The vicious splintered prongs disappeared into his skin, one shard slicing through his cheek and the other sinking deep into his neck.
If Chhan had been hovering between one world and the next, the blow was enough to sever the connection. Instinctively his hands moved towards the metal, but he had no strength to remove it. The shard that had pierced his cheek had force its way between his teeth and jimmied his mouth open. His tongue lolled grotesquely over his chin and blood pulsed lazily from the wound in his neck. By the time the man with the ponytail began levering the metal from his flesh, Chhan’s eyes had closed and his hands fell back to the dust. The spikes had driven deep as a pitchfork into wet clay, and the guy struggled to wrench them from the flesh. Lockhart seized his opportunity and brought the breeze-block down hard on his back. He heard a hollow thump as the weight of it knocked the wind from his lungs.
The guy with the ponytail twisted as he fell. He pulled all of his weight into one last spiteful swing of the bar, giving it everything he’d got. But Lockhart had seen it coming, and although the bar passed close enough for him to feel a flick of Chhan’s blood as it swung in front of his face, it made no contact. Instead, it flew past him and smashed straight into the old rusting air con unit. The guy with the ponytail had swung it with such force that the metal spikes punched straight through the metal skin and embedded themselves into the electric heart of it. Stale water showered from the base of the unit and there was an instant crack of electricity that sparked in the dark alleyway. The guy’s body snapped rigid and his hands gripped hard at the metal bar, unable to let go. They began to smolder and burn and his lungs puffed and grunted uncontrollably.
Lockhart swung the breeze-block at the guy’s hands until they dislodged from the metal and he fell on top of Chhan, crumpled like he had been caught in a threshing machine. He was dead before he landed. He had grasped the metal with both hands and pulled a lethal current across his heart. Underneath him, pinned to the ground by the weight of charred flesh, Chhan starred up with his single eye glazed and unseeing. He was beyond help too. The smell of burning flesh was nauseating, and Lockhart headed back down the alleyway along the side of the Rabbit where the revelers still drank and danced, oblivious to what had happened in the alleyway outside.
6
Lim watched carefully as the tourist emerged from the dark shadows next to the Rabbit. He looked calm as he mingled back into the passing crowd. This surprised Lim. He had sent Rith down the alleyway like a poacher sending a snake down a rabbit hole, and he had not expected the tourist to emerge at all. In Lim’s experience, few men looked calm after meeting Rith. Especially when the meeting was in a dark alleyway, far from prying eyes, late in the dead of night.
Lim had discovered Rith years earlier, brawling in the street with two older boys. They had been pulling at an unusual tail of hair that stood proud on the top of his otherwise cropped head. They were bigger than him, but Rith had beaten them to the ground. Once they were in the dust he had shown them no mercy, stamping on them until they were silent and still. Lim had watched on, impressed by the boy’s tenacity. He had gone about his task with such venom that Lim had immediately offered to feed him and train him. Rith had accepted. Over the years he had grown stronger and smarter, but he never surrendered his explosive fury or warrior soul. This pleased Lim. So when he sent Rith to retrieve the carved wooden box from the girl, it was no surprise to Lim that she ended up dead. Whenever Rith’s tasks became complicated, somebody usually died.
Lim did not care that the girl was dead, but the fact that someone had seen Rith in the corridor was a problem. The tourist might recognize him at a later date if the police questioned him. Lim still had friends within the force, but they were not so easily paid off as they had once been. The chances of an investigation were remote, but Lim was a prudent man and thought it was best to deal with any witnesses before people began asking questions.
Lim hated loose ends. Wronged men had a nasty habit of developing restless souls and searching for revenge. The tourist and the girl had seemed close, and Lim had guessed that he might come hunting for them, ready to settle a score. When Lim spotted him sneaking up the alleyway behind Chhan, he had smiled knowingly.
Back in the killing fields when the great Ta Penh had not needed to hide in the shadows, they had always taken the time to execute sons along with their fathers. Vengeful boys became vengeful men and killing them early helped Lim sleep easier in his bed.
What was bothering Lim most was that after the Rith had killed the girl, and after her room and possessions had been torn apart, they still had not found Ta Penh’s precious box. Lim was carrying Chhan’s severed eye in his pocket, wrapped in black cloth and ready for his boss’s inspection. The weight of the package reminded Lim that the price for failing was high. Even though it was Lim himself who had heated the spoon and scooped the jelly from its socket, the thought of carrying it around turned his stomach. Like all flesh, Lim knew that the eye would decay, especially in the humid days before the monsoon rains. It would be two more days before he pushed back into the jungle to report to Ta Penh. Two more days during which the flesh would rot. Two more days for him to find good news to bring to Ta Penh, so he didn’t suffer as Chhan had suffered.
There was word from New York that the girl had left the city alone, and that the box had been with her. They had watched her onto the plane, and Chhan had spotted her when she landed at Phnom Penh International. He had lost sight of her briefly before she turned up again with the tourist in Kep. Lim watched the guy pushing through the crowd in front of him. If the girl didn’t have the box, Lim figured, maybe
she had passed it on to her new acquaintance. He had sent Rith into the alleyway next to find out. But Rith was still in the alley.
Lim hesitated for a second, torn between following the tourist or exploring the alleyway. Where was Ta Penh’s box? That was the important question. It was not with the tourist. He was dressed lightly in cotton trousers and a short-sleeved shirt. If he had been carrying the box, Lim would have seen it as he moved between the late night crowds. Maybe Rith had taken it, but it was not in Rith’s nature to let the man go.
Maybe Rith had taken the box and tried to open it, out of curiosity? That was possible. Maybe he was still standing in the alleyway, frozen with fear. Rith was a physical man, but the contents of the box went far beyond the physical world, and if he had looked inside and recognized what was there, he might well have been overcome with terror.
7
Lockhart could still smell burned flesh as he slipped back into the marketplace. The stench of the swift and violent electrocution was clinging to him. He wondered if the waves of passing tourists would smell it too as they crashed around him and pulled him into the fast current. The street vendors were still calling to them like hopeful fishermen casting their lines, and Lockhart soon lost himself in the fray. He thought of Kate as he meandering through the warm Kep night: the softness of her skin and the whip-crack edge to her conversation. She had been a typical New Yorker. Her worldview had been brash and confident. She had been witty and vivacious.