The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller

by Peter May

  ‘I knew the canal we were digging would never carry water. I said nothing, my children said nothing. We just kept digging.’

  From somewhere, perhaps a mile away in the direction of the city centre, came the crackle of automatic fire. A short single burst that was smothered by the night, leaving the silence to be broken again only by the screeching of the cicadas. They sat for so long in the quiet after Serey had finished speaking, that Elliot thought she must have drifted off to sleep. McCue had never stirred. The fire was virtually dead. The brief flare of a match momentarily illuminated the room, sending undefined shadows dancing around the bare walls as Elliot lit a cigarette.

  McCue inclined his head a little and turned to look at him. His voice was a hoarse, broken whisper. ‘Whatya gonna tell her old man?’

  ‘Tell him what I told you.’ Serey’s voice drifted softly across the room, and Elliot peered blindly in the dark in a vain attempt to catch the outline of her face. ‘I don’t expect to see him again.’

  McCue’s head drooped forward and he shook it slowly. ‘Guess you win, Elliot.’

  But Elliot felt no satisfaction. Only an emptiness. And a desire to sleep.

  *

  The sound of voices pierced his restless slumber. Shrill, insistent, argumentative. His eyes flickered open to the hard, painful glare of daylight. He blinked away the grit, but they still stung from the smoke that had filled the room the night before. McCue was sitting back against the wall below the window, the smoke from his cigarette drifting in lazy blue ribbons in the still light.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  McCue’s expressionless glance across the room reflected his indifference. ‘Who knows? They’re all in the garden.’

  Elliot rolled over and climbed stiffly to his feet to pick his way through the debris to the back door. Serey and Ny were on their knees, digging with calloused hands in the soft damp earth of what had once been a carefully tended flower bed. Now it was overgrown with weeds and creepers that snagged on their arms and wrists. The boy, Hau, stood defiantly before them, hands on his hips, brows furrowed, anxious and intense, speaking rapidly in a husky high voice. His thin brown legs poked out like sticks from the green canvas of the shorts McCue had made. McCue’s T-shirt hung voluminously from his narrow shoulders, gathered at the waist and tucked into the shorts. He bore little resemblance to the pathetic creature they had found huddled in the back room only twenty-four hours earlier. Children, Elliot thought, had the most extraordinary resilience. And, yet, for all his lack of height, and his meagre twelve years, they were old and knowing eyes that he flicked darkly towards Elliot as he appeared in the doorway. Even more incongruous was the Kalashnikov slung casually across his shoulder. A hand slipped instinctively towards the barrel and held it firm. Ny glanced back over her shoulder, but her mother paid no attention and kept digging.

  ‘What is it?’ Elliot asked.

  Ny said, ‘He want guide you through city tonight, put you on road west. My mamma forbid it.’

  ‘We could do with a bit of help,’ Elliot said. ‘If the boy knows the way . . .’

  ‘You can find your own way!’ Serey’s voice was sharp and hostile, but she did not stop digging.

  ‘Now that’s what I call gratitude.’ Elliot hawked a gob of phlegm up from his throat and spat it into the bushes.

  ‘Why would you need my gratitude?’ Serey asked. ‘Is my husband’s money not enough?’

  Elliot glanced at the boy who was watching him intently. The boy averted his eyes towards his sister and there was a brief exchange between them. Then he turned again to his mother, uttered a few short words, and strode past Elliot into the house, the Kalashnikov rattling at his side.

  ‘What did he say?’

  Ny opened her mouth to speak, but Serey cut in. ‘He said he is doing it anyway and that I cannot stop him.’

  Elliot shrugged. ‘I guess you can’t.’

  Serey stopped digging for the first time, and she turned on him a stare leaden with hatred. Steam rose around her from the sodden earth, the rain of yesterday evaporating with the heat of the sun. With the slightest shake of her head she turned back to her digging. Elliot inclined his head to meet Ny’s gaze. It wasn’t hatred in her eyes. It was sadness. Or something more. Pity perhaps. He looked away. Hate was easier.

  A single harsh word from her mother recalled Ny to the task of digging. They had made a hole nearly half a metre deep. Elliot trod through soft earth towards them.

  ‘What are you digging for? Gold?’

  ‘As good as,’ Serey said. And he heard the sound of her fingernails scratching on metal. He crouched down to watch as both pairs of hands intensified their digging, scrabbling hard to uncover a rusty metal box about a foot square and six or eight inches deep. Serey muttered something in her native tongue as they lifted it out and dragged it on to the mound of earth they had dug out. Burrowing insects scuttled away from the sudden light. She fumbled with the clasp, but it was rusted solid.

  Elliot took out his knife. ‘Here, let me.’ After several attempts he broke the clasp and prised back the lid. Inside lay a heavy-duty black plastic bag gathered and tied securely at the neck. Serey held her hand out for Elliot’s knife. He handed it to her and watched as she slit open the bag to reveal its hidden treasure: gold and silver jewellery; necklaces and bracelets, earrings, brooches; diamonds, rubies, emeralds glinting in the slanting sunlight. Thousands of dollars’ worth. Elliot stared in amazement.

  Serey kept her eyes lowered. ‘We were once very wealthy, Mistah Elliot. When one had no need to worry about food, one spent one’s money on the luxuries of life, the beautiful things, the expensive things. One would have needed ten thousand bowls of rice to buy a single diamond. But you can’t eat diamonds. Now, perhaps, my diamonds will buy a few bowls of rice.’

  From the bottom of the bag she drew out a bundle of notes. US dollars, maybe five thousand in hundred-dollar bills. She tossed them to Elliot. He caught the bundle and looked up, surprised. ‘What’s this for?’

  She looked at him steadily. ‘I do not wish to be in my husband’s debt. Or yours.’

  Elliot felt the cold touch of the golden handshake, the dismissal of the hired help.

  Serey delved again into the bag and lifted out a thin, tattered book embossed with the colonial crest of pre-revolutionary Cambodia. ‘What is it, Mamma?’

  Ny took it from her and flicked it open. A photograph of a pretty young woman, barely recognizable as the woman kneeling beside her, stared out from its faded pages, a curious half-smile recalling happier days in another life. Serey was still looking at Elliot, defiance in her eyes.

  ‘It is my passport,’ she said, then turned to Ny. ‘And yours and Hau’s. It is not worth much now. But it is who we were, and who we will be again.’

  Elliot rose slowly and walked back to the house. Serey took the passport from Ny and slipped it back into the bag. As she got unsteadily to her feet Ny said to her, ‘Mamma . . .’ And she turned to look as Ny picked up the wad of notes from where Elliot had left it lying in the dirt.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Lisa awoke feeling doubt: about who she was, about who she had always thought herself to be. She had come in search of her father and found herself instead. But a self who was still a stranger, full of contradictions, of responses she did not know herself well enough to predict. She was, at the same time, excited and frightened by this new self. The book of her life had quite suddenly opened up an unexpected chapter, leading her off on an eccentric spiral of delicious uncertainty.

  The door opened and she saw that it was Grace, and was suddenly self-conscious, as if the older woman might have read her mind.

  But Grace seemed not to notice. Her eyes were blank, a hunted look in the lines around them. Her movements were quick and nervous. Lisa smiled uneasily in an attempt to disperse her sudden sense of foreboding. ‘I was just going to get dres
sed.’

  ‘Get packed. You must leave quickly.’ Grace’s tone was cold and impersonal. Yet more confusion filled Lisa’s mind.

  ‘Why? Where are we going?’

  ‘I am going nowhere. You are going home.’

  ‘Home?’

  ‘I have booked your flight. But first you will need to sort out passport details at your embassy. Move.’

  And she hurried out leaving Lisa feeling foolish and deflated. Gone were the revelations of the new Lisa, the unsuspected Lisa who had emerged so recently from the cocoon of her past. Suddenly she was the Lisa she’d always been. Young and naive and frightened. She glanced about her in the bedroom’s half-light, sunlight flickering around the edges of the shutters. Everything seemed alien now. All the intimacy between her and Grace dismissed by those few harshly spoken words. Get packed! You’re going home! The eyes that didn’t want to meet hers. Now, another piece of the old Lisa re-emerged. The stubborn Lisa. The petulant child who wanted to stamp her foot and scream, Won’t! Won’t do it! She started to dress hurriedly.

  *

  Grace wandered through the cool semi-darkness of the dining room, drumming her fingers along the length of the table. Through the French window, the sun spun soft patterns of light among the green tropical foliage, bright and optimistic, a visual echo of the chattering birdsong, the creak of the cicadas. A normal day, a never-ending cycle. Always the same. And yet, for her, nothing would ever be the same again. It seemed unfair, and unreal, that for her there should be such turmoil and change in the midst of such normalcy. It set her apart, somehow, from the world. She felt disembodied, a ghost haunting the familiar life she had known, but unable to touch it or be touched by it.

  Nor could she understand why. Why she should risk everything, even her life, for this girl. Was it guilt? The thought almost brought a smile to her face. Conscience was for those who drew lines of moral distinction. She had never done that, would not know where those lines should be drawn. As Lisa’s naivety blinded her to her innocence, so Grace’s cynicism had never allowed her a sense of guilt. Of course, deep inside she knew the answer, but she shied away from letting it crystallize in her thoughts. That would be too painful.

  She caught herself reflected in the glass of the French windows and saw an old face looking back at her, one she barely recognized. And yet it was an accurate reflection of the way she felt. She shivered, sensing cold sweat on her palms. Tears pricked her eyes and she wanted to weep. The layers of self-protection she had wrapped around herself across the years had somehow been stripped away, leaving her exposed and vulnerable. She heard the crunch of tyres on gravel as her chauffeur brought the car to the front of the house, and turned as she heard a footfall in the doorway behind her. Lisa stood framed against the hall, her face set and flushed with defiance.

  ‘I came to find my father,’ she said. ‘I am not leaving until I do.’ For a moment there was no sound, except for the squawking of birds in the garden. Lisa’s defiance faltered in the face of the naked hostility which hid the tears in Grace’s eyes.

  ‘Do you really believe he is still alive? After all this time?’ Lisa didn’t know what to say. ‘You said it yourself last night. He’s dead, Lisa! You must go home!’

  Lisa shook her head. ‘I was wrong – just looking for reassurance. He’s not dead. I know it.’

  ‘What do you know?’ Grace’s voice was jagged with contempt. ‘You don’t know anything.’

  ‘I – I don’t understand.’

  ‘No, you don’t!’

  ‘Mr Tuk said—’

  ‘Hah!’ Grace’s eyes blazed as she moved down the length of the table towards the trembling English girl. ‘Tuk used you like he uses everybody. He double-crossed your father when he went into Cambodia, tried to have him killed. And then you stumbled into his nasty little web, the perfect insurance against your father’s return, a hostage to vengeance. You thought I was your friend. You were my prisoner. Tuk gave you into my safe keeping to do with as I would until you were no longer required.’

  The blood pulsed painfully at Lisa’s temples, confusion and disbelief crowding her mind. She wanted to run away from this, didn’t want to hear any more. But a vast weight seemed to bear down upon her, robbing her of any ability to move. Grace stood no more than a foot away from her now, her face twisted and ugly, her voice rising in pitch, almost to a scream. Flecks of spittle gathered at the corners of her mouth. ‘You thought the General raped you. Well, he paid for the privilege. Paid me. Paid dearly. And there would have been others. Dozens of them. Wealthy Thais willing to splash out for a girl like you.’

  ‘No!’ Lisa screamed. She desperately wanted to wake up, prayed for the nightmare to end. If she screamed loud enough—

  The slap of Grace’s palm across her face nearly knocked her over – the same hand that had so tenderly held her in the dark the night before. But still she could hear herself screaming. And again the hand smacked the side of her head. This time she stumbled and half-fell across the table. A voice was still screaming, only it was no longer hers. It was Grace.

  ‘Get out! Go! Before it’s too late!’

  A deep sob tore itself from Lisa’s chest, tears burning acid tracks down her cheeks. She lay across the table unable to move. Grace’s hands took her roughly by the shoulders, pulling her to her feet, as if she were no more than a rag doll. Through the tears Lisa saw the blurred and distorted features of Grace’s face only inches from hers. Hot breath hissed in her face. ‘Don’t you understand? He’s going to kill you !’

  A girl appeared in the doorway, Lisa’s case in her hand. ‘The car is ready, La Mère Grace.’

  Grace collected herself, brushing the tears away from her eyes. ‘Take the case out to the car.’ Her voice sounded abnormally controlled. The girl melted away into the hall. Lisa pulled herself free and took a step back. She was no longer weeping, but she shook uncontrollably. She stared at Grace with an intensity close to pain.

  ‘I hate you,’ she whispered, and she turned and ran into the hall. Grace heard her footsteps recede and then the slamming of the front door. Slowly she sank into a chair, staring vacantly into nothingness. She felt empty, sucked dry of blood and life. For a long moment her face was calm, without expression, before suddenly crumpling, and she wept as she had not done since she was a child. She did not hear the scurry of feet across the hall and the cry of her name. Only the shaking of her shoulders by urgent hands caused her to look up.

  ‘La Mère Grace, La Mère Grace. They are taking Miss Lisa!’

  It took a moment for Grace to assimilate what the girl had said. With an effort she pulled herself out of the chair and ran through the hall, wiping the tears from her eyes. On the steps, heat and light rained down like blows. Her tear-blurred vision created the mirage of Tuk’s white Mercedes gliding on air towards the gate. But she heard the crunch of its tyres on the gravel, and saw Lisa’s panicked face pressed against the rear window, her mouth opened wide in a silent, terrified scream. And she knew it was no trick of the light.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  In the hours before they left, while they waited for darkness to fall, Elliot was aware of the boy watching him. Big saucer eyes that fixed themselves, unblinking, on Elliot’s hand as the Englishman absently fingered the tiny silver medallion that hung from his neck. McCue had stripped down his M16 and was cleaning it with an instinctive professionalism. They could hear Serey in the kitchen boiling up a pot of rice. Ny seemed lost in time and space, sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring at the wall beyond Elliot. The boy’s eyes flickered up to meet Elliot’s, and held his gaze for an inordinate length of time, staring with unselfconscious candour. Finally he turned away towards his sister and whispered something to her. The only indication that she had heard was a slow refocusing of her eyes on Elliot. ‘He want know what you wear round neck.’

  Elliot felt, between his thumb and forefinger, the contour of the
small figure set in its circle of silver, familiar and comforting. McCue glanced up curiously from his gun parts. ‘It’s a St Christopher,’ Elliot said. ‘Patron Saint of travellers. My mother gave it to me on my sixteenth birthday.’ It came almost as a shock to McCue to think of Elliot as having a mother.

  ‘A charm?’ Ny asked.

  ‘I suppose you could call it that.’

  ‘And it work?’

  ‘Well, I’ve made it this far, so I suppose it must.’

  Hau scanned his sister’s face passively as she offered him a brief explanation. The boy was silent, then, for a long while, his gaze drawn back again to the tiny figure, like needles to a magnet.

  McCue said, ‘I think the kid would like it, Elliot.’ Elliot shook his head. McCue’s chuckle was sour and filled with irony. ‘I’d never have figured you for a superstitious bastard.’

  ‘Lots of things you’ve never figured, Billy.’

  McCue’s smile never wavered. ‘We’ll need more than a good-luck charm to get us out of here in one piece. It’ll take a fucking miracle. How are you on miracles, Elliot?’ Serey came in with a pot of steaming rice and set it on the floor. McCue’s gaze settled on the sticky brown grains and his smile faded.

  ‘The last supper,’ he said.

  *

  Small campfires flickered in the dark, ravaged brown faces huddled around the flames, more for comfort than for warmth. Occasional troop carriers rattled down the broad boulevards. Jumpy sentries nervously fingered the triggers of automatic weapons, small heads in pudding-bowl helmets. Smoke rose all across the city like clouds of luminous mist. During the day, thousands of newly liberated Cambodians had drifted in from the south, in search of food, friends, relatives – the past. And now, an uneasy silence had settled on the city, like dust; fear and hunger and weariness afflicting both the liberators and the liberated.