by Medina, KT
‘I’m not involved any more. Keav. Keav was one of the first. I saved her.’
‘Keav’s dead, and you killed her, you fuck.’ Alex spun around and slammed his boot against the base of the bed, ricocheting it into the wall. Johnny cowered against the headboard. ‘Why did you do it?’ Alex yelled.
‘For the money.’
‘But you . . . you told me that your parents have millions. How much fucking money do you need?’
Johnny didn’t answer. He had started to sob quietly. Alex knew he would hurt Johnny badly if he stayed where he was, so he retreated, shaking, to the window.
‘They had miserable fucking lives, in a miserable fucking country,’ he heard Johnny croak. ‘It’s not as if they left anything behind. They’re probably better off where they are.’
‘They left their children, their babies, behind. Without even having the chance to say goodbye.’ The mosquito netting was right in front of him, hard and thin. He placed his hand on the cheese-wire mesh. ‘You are fucking scum, Johnny.’ Clenching his hands, he scraped his fingertips down the mesh, grazing their ends. He imagined slamming his fist through it, and the jagged hole that would leave, the sharp metal ends scoring into his flesh. He imagined dragging his wrist against them so they would cut into him, tearing them up the soft flesh of his forearm, still slashed and bloody from the last time. ‘Is it MacSween? Is that who you’re working with? Is he running things?’
‘MacSween?’
He forced himself to turn from the window to stop imagining harming himself, but he couldn’t get the picture out of his mind. His whole body was trembling with rage.
‘Did MacSween sell these women to fund MCT?’
He looked down at the scars on his forearm, realised he’d been scraping them with the nails of his other hand, had ripped some of the scars open. Blood was dripping on to the floor.
‘MacSween? No. Not MacSween. Dr Ung. Dr Ung sold those women to fund this hospital.’
*
Tess held her breath. Someone seemed to be breathing in and out with her. No, not someone. An animal?
All her senses had been on high alert, quivering with the effort of listening, straining to see in the dark, feeling any change in temperature, but the breathing sounded so close. How could it have got so close to her without making any noise?
She spun around, slashing the letter opener wildly in front of her. Aiming for a wall to press herself against so that at least her back would be covered, she stumbled backwards in the dark, felt something behind her, solid and unyielding. Grateful for that small mercy, she grasped it.
Pulpy under her fingers – pulpy?
Her brain, expecting rigid plaster, struggled to comprehend what she was feeling. Something pappy and moist, and it was undulating under her fingers, rippling against her skin, and suddenly that humming sound that had become background noise filled her ears and the air was alive with flies. The stench of opened flesh was so intense she felt she would drown in it.
Rigid with fear, she stumbled away from the body. All sound had gone except for that mad ceaseless humming – she couldn’t even hear her own breathing – the animal she’d heard could be an arm’s reach away from her and she wouldn’t even know.
A pale blue stripe of moonlight cut suddenly across the boards to her left, a window, and she blundered for it, falling to her knees, clambering on all fours to the edge of the room, squatting against the skirting board, trembling and panting. A hand surged out of the darkness – the fingers huge and very white. She struck out blindly with Jakkleson’s letter opener, felt it slice into something soft, a grunt, and then something hit her on the head so hard she felt as if her skull had been cleaved in two. Blood ran into her eyes, blinding her. She didn’t register the second blow, but from the sound her head made as it bounced off the rough wooden floor, she realised that it must have knocked her flat. She felt the weight of something pinning her down, warm breath on her neck.
And all she could think was: It is real.
*
He was sitting at his desk, his back to the door, doing some paperwork. Alex pulled out his Browning. Though he made no noise, Dr Ung must have sensed his presence. He turned. Their eyes met.
‘So Johnny has remembered?’
‘Is it true?’
Dr Ung half-shrugged; there was something almost apologetic in the movement.
‘Why?’ Alex croaked.
‘Because I am fighting a war, Alexander. And in war people are sacrificed for the greater good.’
‘A war?’
‘Against the suffering caused by land mines. The human suffering they cause in this country is incalculable.’ Slipping off his glasses, he rubbed at the elliptical imprints they had left in his nose. ‘We are the only hospital in this region that saves the lives of land-mine victims, gives them back a future.’
‘People trust you. You’re a fucking doctor.’
‘What do you think I’m doing?’ Anger flared in Dr Ung’s voice. ‘How do you think I pay for all this year after year?’ He spread his arms irritably. ‘I tried to get funding from legitimate sources and it was impossible. Western governments and most charities see mines as a way of life for countries like Cambodia. I had to make this hospital happen by myself. All of it.’
‘By sacrificing those women?’
‘This is bigger than they are. Those women had nothing to live for.’
Alex stared back at him, his finger frozen on the trigger.
‘They had their babies.’
‘What future did their children have, born out of wedlock in a place like this?’
Alex felt the solid butt of the Browning in his hand. It would be easy and quick. There were no ballistics tests out here. They could never link Dr Ung’s murder to his gun.
‘Kill me and all this,’ Dr Ung spread his hands, ‘all this crumbles to dust. The land-mine victims in this region will have nowhere to go. No one to save them.’
‘What about Johnny?’
‘He threatened to expose me. Johnny is a restless man. Never satisfied with his cut.’
‘But why did you then save him, when the mine failed to kill him?’
‘I made my point. And I’m a doctor, Alexander. It’s my business to save lives.’
‘What about those women who were found dead in the White Crocodile minefield? The ones who fought. What about Huan and Jakkleson?’
‘I have taken the Hippocratic oath.’ Dr Ung’s face was patient, unperturbed. ‘I save lives. I don’t kill.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. You might have saved Johnny in a fit of misplaced conscience, but you’ve murdered—’ He broke off. Dr Ung was always in the hospital working. When would he have had the opportunity?
‘I didn’t murder anybody. And I didn’t plant the mine for Johnny.’
Alex lowered the Browning. Whatever Dr Ung had done, he couldn’t kill him in cold blood. He met Dr Ung’s gaze, and saw that he knew the same.
‘Where is Tess, Alexander? At MCT House? Alone?’ With a faint smile, Dr Ung slipped his glasses back on. ‘I am not the White Crocodile, Alexander. I only pull the strings.’
*
I’m not going to die. Not now. Not like this.
Pressing her hands flat to the floor to give herself leverage, she slammed the sole of her combat boot backwards, blindly, as hard as she could. The crunching sound and the howl of pain told her she’d connected with bone and muscle. The weight on top of her shifted slightly, and it was enough.
She scrambled away, tipping and weaving in the dark like a drunk, hoping she was moving towards the door. Luck was with her and she felt the frame of the doorway in her hands. She plunged through it, aiming left – the front door was left out of the team room – and in the hallway there was a faint light from the moon shining in the picture window above her. She stumbled again, found her balance and ran for the front door.
She yanked the door handle. Nothing. She heard herself yell, desperate, heard the sound of feet approaching – s
lowly – grabbed at the handle and pulled and kicked, but it was no good because the door wasn’t stiff, it was locked. Locked not only with the bolt, but also with a key.
The Crocodile’s voice was a whisper in her ear: ‘My beautiful wife. How nice of you to come all this way, just for me.’
56
January 1991, England
The little boy clutched the plastic bag containing his spare pair of underpants and his pyjamas, and looked at the black door in front of him, the building it was set into towering over him, so tall he felt as if it might topple over and squash him. He started to cry. He wanted to turn away, run somewhere – he didn’t know where – but it was freezing cold, slushy rain falling hard from a winter sky, and he didn’t have a coat. He was soaked through and shivering.
He was frightened of what was behind the front door but he was more frightened of what was behind him.
‘This is your new home, kitten,’ Mummy had said, twisting around to look at him from the front seat of the man’s car, with that glassy vacant look she had in her eyes almost all the time now. ‘It’s a children’s home. A home for children like you.’
The little boy looked at her without speaking, tears making white tracks through the dirt on his cheeks. He was frightened of her too now, but he still loved her because she was his mummy. He didn’t want to get out of the car.
‘Get out of the fucking car.’ Jonjo leaned over the back of the seat and shouted right in his face.
‘Mummy—’
‘Get out.’
‘Mummy,’ he sobbed.
Jonjo was drunk and angry and his mummy was high. The car was so rusty that the door stuck and he got frightened as he struggled with the handle. Frightened that Jonjo would lose patience and hit him again, like he had hit him every day since he moved in with Mummy. He was so frightened these days that sometimes he wet himself accidentally, which made both Jonjo and Mummy furious.
They drove off as soon as he was out of the car. He watched them through the rear window, thinking that Mummy would look back at him. But she didn’t. Not once.
He began to cry, but then he stopped himself. He took a breath and held on to it, half closing his eyes so that he was looking at the great black door through tiny slits, so that everything around him was dark too and slightly fuzzy. In that way he found that he could imagine it was a black hole in space, and he could step through it into a whole new world of stars and moons and aliens. He was free then. Free to go where he wanted, to be on his own, to fly through space like a rocket ship and find a planet where no one else lived. A new home – just for him. Alone. Alone and safe.
Imagining helped him and he stepped forward. He couldn’t stretch high enough to ring the bell, so he just tapped with his fist on the door, hoping that someone would hear him. It was a long time before anyone did. A grey-haired woman with mild blue eyes, wearing a big brown cardigan, opened the door.
*
Anna didn’t realise there was anyone on the doorstep for a moment. She had been expecting a delivery of bread and was looking around at head height for a delivery driver in a crisp white coat. Finally, she looked down. The little boy on the doorstep was tiny and shivering. He wore a filthy white sweatshirt and jeans that finished halfway down his calves. His shoulders stood out from the sweatshirt like a wire coat hanger. He had a black eye and she could tell from the angle his left arm was hanging at that it was broken. In his other hand he held a plastic Tesco carrier bag. She looked beyond him, either way down the street. There was no one around. No people. No cars. He was alone.
‘Why are you here, sweetheart?’
No response, no change in his expression. His eyes were alert for any sign of danger.
‘Come inside out of the cold and then we’ll talk.’ She ushered him into the hallway and shut the door. Then she knelt down in front of him. ‘Who brought you here?’
‘Mummy,’ he whispered, his voice so tiny and timid she had to tilt her head towards him to hear. ‘This is my new home.’
The woman looked confused and the little boy felt desperate. Desperate to make her understand him. He dug deep in his brain to find the right words. The words that would make her like him. He knew that it was important for her to like him, but he didn’t know how to make that happen.
‘Mummy said . . .’ He was struggling not to cry. ‘She said that this is my new home.’ It was warm in here and the woman had a kind face. He didn’t want to go back outside. It was beginning to get dark, he could see the light outside the hall changing to grey and he didn’t want to be outside in the dark and the rain. ‘Can I live here? Please.’
‘It doesn’t quite work like that. We’ll need to speak to social services, the police.’
The words were meaningless to the little boy.
‘We’ll sort you out, sweetheart. Let’s get you to bed now and we can sort everything out in the morning. Where are your things?’
The little boy held out his plastic bag. Inside were a pair of grey underpants and a pair of pale yellow girl’s pyjamas with Minnie Mouse on the front, size 3 to 4 she noticed from the label. He looked embarrassed when she took them out of the bag.
Anna knelt down beside him; slipped an arm around his shoulders.
‘How old are you?’
The little boy smiled for the first time at that question. She saw that one of his front teeth was missing. ‘Six,’ he said. ‘I’m six today.’
The woman’s eyes were bright and furious and when he looked up at her, she looked away. He started to shake again, thinking that a smack or a punch was coming.
‘No, sweetheart,’ she said, pulling him against her. ‘It’s OK. We’ll look after you. You’re safe now.’
The warm air in the hall moved over his skin, he could smell food cooking, and the sound of children playing somewhere above him, running feet and their laughter. He could hear laughter. The woman’s arms were soft and he hadn’t been cuddled for longer than he could remember. It felt so good that he started to cry, great shuddering sobs that felt as if they came all the way up from his toes.
‘Shhhh.’ She kissed his cheek and hugged him tighter. ‘Shhh, it’s OK. You’re safe.’ Levering him gently away from her, she stroked a hand over his face. ‘Can you tell me your name?’
He nodded and smiled, knowing that for once he was sure to get something right.
‘Luke.’
57
She heard the familiar sound of leaves rustling, the creaking of wood, the hiss of rain. The air was cooler, the smell mellow and damp – not the stuffy smell of a closed room. She thought that she must have left her bedroom window open, which was good because she liked to sleep with the outside close by. She opened her eyes a crack. Darkness.
Still night, she thought, relieved.
She closed her eyes and felt a dull ache in her head, like a hangover. She twisted and shifted. The mattress was hard – hard and cold – a cold that seeped through her skin. She wondered why. Her tongue felt thick and heavy, and she could taste something chalky and metallic. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was so dry . . . and the taste, what was the taste? She just wanted to sleep. Curling herself into a ball, she shut her eyes again.
‘Tess.’
A whisper.
‘Luke?’
She tried to open her eyes, but her lids felt too heavy.
Luke? Luke was dead. Wasn’t he?
She stretched her arms above her head. She recognised the taste in her mouth – blood – and now she was moving the pain in her head was almost unbearable. Lying still, she gulped in air, fighting a tide of nausea.
When the feeling had subsided, she hauled herself to sitting. The surface behind her was rough. She shifted against it, trying to get comfortable, but it was the same wherever she moved – grooved and knotted. She looked up; her head thumped and her vision swam. Holding herself still, she breathed hard, willing the spinning to stop. Slowly her vision refocused and she made out dark shapes above her: branches, a bobbing, twisting mosai
c of leaves. A tree, its bark rough against her back. Through the leaves she could see a sliver of moon.
Lowering her gaze, she stared hard into the darkness around her. Muted outlines began to form. An undulating landscape, puddles of water reflecting the moonlight, elephant grass swaying in the wind, and closer to her, the dark sides of a crater, too deep for the moonlight to penetrate.
Further away there was something else, something twisting and fluttering in the darkness. She had heard that sound so many times before in different places around the world, when the wind was up and the red-and-white striped mine tape was lifting and dancing.
*
Johnny lay back against the pillows and knew that he was dead.
Johnny the joker.
Johnny the dead man.
In some other plane, somewhere else entirely, he recognised that he should feel some guilt, some shame. But he couldn’t bring himself to feel guilty. It hadn’t been like that at the time.
The rain rattled against the mosquito mesh.
It was time. He knew it was time.
Shifting on to his side, he reached to the bedside table for his trousers, which Dr Ung had folded neatly and laid in the drawer. He found what he was looking for in an instant. The penknife was small, but the blade was sharp.
Better to do it now, while he had a choice about the how, than to wait.
Blinking, concentrating hard to make sure he didn’t fuck it up, he drew the blade down his wrist, breaking open the tender skin, slicing vertically through veins. Blood bloomed, bright, but instinctively he knew that it wasn’t enough.
Tilting sideways so that he could lay his arm flat on the mattress, he nudged the point of the knife into the wound. He winced as the blade met open flesh. Jamming his eyes shut, his brain fumbled for an image, something to take him away from the abhorrent things he had done. Something to leave with—