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

by Peter May

  ‘Mr Blair. What brings you to Bangkok?’

  Blair made no attempt to take the proffered hand. He waited until the girl had closed the doors behind him. ‘I’ve been hearing stories, Tuk.’

  Tuk’s hand hung uncertainly in mid-air for some moments before he let it fall to his side. ‘One always does.’ He sank back into his leather swivel chair.

  ‘About how you tried to have Elliot killed on the Cambodian border.’ Blair walked into the centre of the room, keeping his eyes on Tuk.

  ‘I have many enemies, Mr Blair. It is inevitable, a man in my position. People will always try to discredit one.’

  ‘It’s not true, then?’

  ‘Mr Elliot crossed the border safely into Cambodia. What has become of him since, I have no idea.’

  ‘And his daughter?’

  ‘His daughter?’ Tuk frowned, a look of implausible consternation creasing his brow. Then enlightenment, equally implausible, flickered across his dark eyes. ‘Ah, yes, you mentioned her when we spoke.’

  ‘You’ve seen her, then?’

  ‘No. I told you on the phone.’

  ‘That’s strange, Tuk. Because I’ve been hearing other stor-ies. About a white girl fetching big money. White pussy’s a valuable commodity among wealthy Thai businessmen, I understand.’

  ‘Of course. It is the way of the world. We both know this.’

  ‘So you know about it?’

  ‘One hears stories, of course, just as you do. But I have no personal knowledge.’

  ‘Do you mind if I have a drink?’

  ‘Please, help yourself.’

  Blair crossed to the drinks table and poured himself a large whisky. ‘You know I spent some time in Angola?’

  ‘It is common knowledge. But, I don’t . . .’

  Blair waved his hand and Tuk stopped short. ‘Some people think I’m a nice guy, Tuk. I think I’m a nice guy.’ He sipped at his whisky. ‘What do you think?’

  Tuk felt a tiny trickle of cold sweat run down the back of his neck. ‘I think you’re a nice guy, Mr Blair.’

  ‘Of course you do. Trouble is, sometimes people who think you’re nice think you’re soft, too.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re soft.’ Tuk was irritated by having to play this childish role. But fear held him glued to the script.

  ‘Good. I’m glad.’ He took another sip of his whisky. ‘Good stuff this.’

  ‘Best Scotch.’

  ‘Makes me think of home.’ Tuk smiled nervously. ‘See, there was this laddie in Angola. He thought I was soft. His first mistake. He was taking money from the other side, feeding them our position. Second mistake. I cut his dick off and stuffed it down his throat.’ Blair drained his glass and replaced it carefully on the table. ‘Sometimes I’m not such a nice guy.’

  Tuk reached suddenly for the top drawer of his desk. Blair was there in two strides, grabbed his arm and slammed the drawer shut on his hand. Tuk screamed and tried to pull away, but Blair held him firm. His voice was almost a whisper. ‘See what I mean?’

  ‘You’ve broken my wrist!’ Tuk squealed.

  ‘What a pity. That’ll put you out of action for a while.’

  Tuk flashed him a venomous look. Blair opened the drawer and lifted out a small pearl-handled revolver. The distant rasp of the buzzer on the gate failed to register, even in his subconscious. ‘Very pretty. A real girl’s gun.’ He slipped it into his pocket, and was about to shut the drawer when his eye caught the familiar gold crest, on dark blue, of a British passport.

  ‘Well, well, well.’ He lifted it out. ‘Dieu et mon droit.’ He let go of Tuk’s arm and walked back around the desk to face him. Tuk doubled forward, clutching his wrist. ‘So Lisa never called on you? Odd that you should have her passport, then, isn’t it?’ Tuk turned frightened eyes in his direction. Blair seemed calm, almost benign, as he drew the Colt .45 out from the belt beneath his jacket and levelled it at Tuk’s head. ‘I’ll give you ten seconds to tell me where she is.’

  The door opening took Blair by surprise, and brought Tuk a flicker of hope. Blair took a step back and glanced towards the door, without removing Tuk from his sights. A small, beautiful, Eurasian woman, all in white, stood framed in the doorway. If she was surprised at what she saw, she gave no sign of it. There was a vacant quality about her eyes. ‘Grace!’ Her name slipped involuntarily from Tuk’s lips.

  ‘Don’t fucking move, lady!’ Blair shouted at her.

  Tuk took courage from the interruption. ‘Don’t be stupid, Blair! If you harm me you’ll never find her!’ He glanced triumphantly at Grace, and felt his bravado ebb before the cold, dead stare she returned.

  ‘You are looking for Lisa?’ Her voice carried the same detachment as her eyes.

  Blair glanced warily from one to the other. ‘You know where she is?’

  ‘I’ll take you.’

  ‘No!’ Tuk screamed.

  ‘But we may already be too late. He is having her killed tonight.’

  Blair tensed. A shudder ran through him and his eyes glazed as he turned them back on Tuk. ‘Goodbye, Tuk,’ he said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  I

  A white light filled her head. Somewhere, beyond the clouded edge of consciousness, soft music dripped like rain. Voices drifted across the horizon like shadows, dark and lacking definition. Out of the mist a face emerged, ugly and grinning, eyes burning with hideous desire. She felt hands touching her, warm and damp, like soft breathy kisses, and she rose towards the distant vague outline of the ceiling before tilting forward and revolving slowly through the palest of blue skies. The same grinning face appeared time and time again, ballooning out of the blue. Then a door opened on to darkness, and for the first time she felt the vaguest sensation of her own body, limbs moving through cold air. Somewhere inside lay the seed of consciousness, a tiny eye straining to focus on a reality hidden by thick suffocating folds of obscurity.

  The touch of cold stone, beneath bare feet, worked slowly through her, until she was consumed by it. The lights that drifted by overhead appeared like frozen pinnacles. Rough brick grazed her arm and felt warm, a heat that grew until it burned, searing through her icy interior.

  Slowly, so slowly that she was hardly aware of it, the inner eye was enlarging its perception, focusing her mind first on a sense of her own nakedness. A hand gripped her arm, propelling her forward, though she still felt as though her feet were gliding over the concrete beneath them. She turned her head through a lengthy arc and saw the brown hand that held her white flesh, and the dark pinpoint needle marks below. Cold water dripped from the ceiling and touched her breast like an icy finger, and with a sudden unbearable perception she heard the splashes of a thousand drips echoing off wet stone, the clatter of leather, and metal studs, on concrete.

  Another door opened, this time on light and space. A cavernous echoing vault supported on pillars. A distant pool of light grew closer, drawing her into its centre until, at its vortex, she was compelled to stop. The hand that held her arm relaxed its grip and fell away. She was aware simply of standing now, her nakedness bathed by the cold white light. She heard the scuffle of feet, the clearing of nervous throats. Somewhere, behind the growing perception of the inner eye, she heard her own voice screaming. But there was no sound. Her lips did not move.

  Time seemed to drift along the edge of consciousness, like a sailboat on the horizon, remote and elusive. There was no way of judging its speed or size or distance, before a gradual clearing of the mist in her eyes dispelled the illusion, and the focus of her horizon drew closer – darkness beyond the ring of light, along whose edge she saw, for the first time, the watching faces. Hands raised glasses to dry lips. Dark eyes consumed her with an inner fear of their own unnatural lust. She stared back blankly at the brown, hungry faces, with only a distant awareness of what it was they wanted of her. A frown crinkled her brow �
� something familiar in one among the watchers, fat and ugly, a far-off recollection of his mouth, twisted by passion, looming over her, close hot breath against her, the sweet smell of opium. And yet there was something comforting in the familiarity. She tried to smile, but found that she could not.

  Suddenly, and yet slowly, fingers grasped her hair and jerked her head around. Dead eyes gazed into hers. A uniformed arm rose with measured intent, a gloved fist at the end of it rising above her, before crashing down and striking her hard across the cheek. She felt no pain, but a wave of weakness ran through her. She felt her legs buckle at the knees, but the hand still grasped her hair, she could not fall. The eyes that stared into hers gleamed now with unspeakable malice. Another blow, this time striking her full in the mouth. Again there was no pain, but as the hand released her and she fell, she saw her own blood, crimson, splash across the white of her legs.

  II

  Row upon row of dark deserted warehouses drifted by. Blair stared anxiously from the window, searching for light, some sign of human existence. He turned towards the Eurasian woman seated beside him, and wondered at her calm. She was almost serene. It only increased his disquiet.

  ‘You’re sure you know where we’re going?’ He had surrendered himself to her completely, as had all the lovers she had known. But it was not passion that won his surrender. Like a drowning man, he had been forced to grasp the only hand which held out the hope of survival. Lisa’s survival.

  Grace still held, in her mind’s eye, the image of the dead and bloodied Tuk. A frail figure, crumpled in his leather desk chair, his abject terror at the point of death somehow erasing long years of corruption – like a mortal sin forgiven at the confessional. Death had come as a release, for both of them, from the power of his evil. She turned and looked at the red, perspiring face of the Scotsman. ‘My driver will find the place.’ And for the first time she was curious. ‘You were a friend of her father?’

  Blair would not accept the past tense. ‘I am a friend of her father – unless you know something I don’t. I heard Tuk tried to have him killed on the border.’

  ‘And failed. Jacques crossed safely into Cambodia. If anyone can be safe in Cambodia.’

  ‘You knew him, too, then?’

  A faint smile crossed her lips. ‘Once. In another life, it seems.’

  ‘And Lisa?’

  The smile faded. ‘I have done her great harm. I came tonight to plead for her life, though I knew I would fail.’

  Blair regarded her with bewilderment and distaste. He guessed this was the woman Sarit had named as La Mère Grace, responsible – if Sarit was to be believed – for what amounted to Lisa’s sexual enslavement. Why should she care whether the girl lived or died? And yet clearly she did.

  ‘What is this place we’re going to? If Tuk wanted her dead, why not simply kill her?’

  ‘Tuk never did anything simply. It is his way of avenging himself on Mr Elliot, for having failed to kill him.’ She looked away at the endless dark buildings. ‘You have heard of snuff movies?’

  Blair felt a chill run through him. ‘Yes.’

  ‘In Bangkok there is a live version. If you are rich enough, and sick enough, you can pay to see a girl beaten nearly to death, like a long, lingering foreplay, and then shot dead – like an orgasm.’

  Blair found it difficult to speak. ‘And this is what he planned for Lisa?’

  ‘I told you. We may already be too late.’

  He was trembling now. ‘If we are, I’ll kill you.’

  ‘If we are, I would not want to live.’

  His anger was overlaid by confusion, like oil on water. ‘I don’t understand.’

  She shook her head. ‘Neither do I.’

  ‘Madame, we are there.’ The chauffeur’s voice refocused their attention. The car drew to a stop and the engine idled gently in the darkness. They had drawn up in front of a large brick warehouse, devoid of any sign of light or life. It looked to Blair like all the others they had passed, with nothing to mark it out.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Follow me.’ Grace slipped from the car and her heels echoed back off the cobbles. Blair strode after her, down a narrow lane between rising walls that disappeared into the night sky. At the far end they could see lights twinkling on the black waters of the Chao Phraya. The place smelled damp and rotten.

  Halfway along, a figure stepped out from the shadows of a small doorway to block their path. His white shirt caught the reflected light from the water beyond. The butt of a revolver glinted in his belt, but his face was still masked by shadow. There was surprise in his voice.

  ‘La Mère Grace.’

  Her voice seemed remarkably calm. ‘Is it over?’

  ‘Not yet. Soon.’

  ‘Tuk said we could watch.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ He stepped forward so that they saw his face for the first time, a squat, brutish face, a man of about forty. He cast a wary eye over Blair, then grinned dismissively back at Grace. ‘From what I hear you’re next. Who’s the old man?’

  Blair listened impatiently to the exchange. ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘He’s not going to let us in.’

  The Thai did not expect such speed from the silver-haired foreigner. His hand never reached the revolver in his belt, and he barely had time to be surprised when his face smashed hard against the wall. A sharp inhalation drew blood into his throat, and he choked briefly before an arm encircled his head and a swift jerk snapped his spinal cord. His body went limp and Blair slid him gently to the ground.

  Grace’s shock caught in her throat as she gasped, paralysed by the sight of the figure sprawled at her feet. Blair grabbed her arm, fingers biting into soft flesh. ‘Go, lady! Fucking move!’ She caught a glimpse of the pistol in his hand as he pushed her ahead of him, through the door and into the vast, damp interior. A tiny lamp, somewhere far overhead among unseen rafters, cast a feeble light in the emptiness of the warehouse. Grace kicked off her shoes and ran across the huge expanse of concrete floor, kicking up tiny clouds of dust, dodging the massive iron hooks that hung on great chains from the darkness above. The patter of her feet, the clatter of his shoes, the rasp of their breath, echoed around them like ghosts mocking them from the shadows, telling them they were too late.

  On the far wall, a small lamp glowed beside a large, rectangular hole in the brick. As they reached it, Blair saw that it the opening to a lift shaft. The iron gates were drawn back, but there was no lift, only rusted metal cables reaching up and down into the void above and below. Grace pressed the lower of two buttons set in the wall below the lamp, and the cables went taut, as power coughed life into the pulley, and the whine of the summoned lift ascending surged up the shaft. They waited in tense, breathless silence as the seconds crawled agonisingly by. Somewhere, far away, Blair imagined he heard the voice of a girl screaming, but he couldn’t be sure it was not just one, among many, of the sounds issued by the rising lift. As it drew near ground level, light spilled out from the shaft, casting their shadows long across the dusty concrete.

  Blair grabbed Grace’s arm and pulled her into the bright box of yellow light. He punched the down button and they began their slow descent.

  ‘Will there be someone at the bottom?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

  He pushed her across the floor. ‘Get up against the wall!’ He dropped to the floor, pressing himself into the boards, and levelled his gun at the brick that drifted slowly upwards. It was a full minute of painfully slow downward progress before a black rectangle opened up from the floor and rose before them. Blair tensed. The light from the lift fell out to illuminate a long empty corridor. There was no one there. Blair scrambled to his feet and jumped down before the lift had come to rest.

  As Grace followed the sound of a gunshot echoed dully from beyond the door at the end of the corridor. ‘Oh, God!’
She felt as if the bullet had pierced her own flesh.

  With acid burning in his throat, Blair sprinted the length of the corridor. As he kicked open the door, another shot rang out.

  A ring of men drew back from the centre of light, startled faces turning towards the door. A man in a brown uniform and black knee-length boots stood under the light, a gun smoking in his hand. Lisa was on her knees, battered and bloody, her face almost unrecognizable. The man had fired two blank shots, the prelude to a live third round, the climax of the performance. His left hand grasped her by the hair, his right pressed the barrel of his gun against her temple. He too had turned a startled face, his concentration broken. Blair raised his pistol and, two-handed, fired three shots in quick succession. The first two bullets struck in the chest, the third in the face. The man in the brown uniform spun away out of the light, like a pirouetting ballet dancer, dead before the smack of his head hitting the concrete reached them. His gun clattered off into darkness and Lisa fell in a lifeless heap.

  Grace appeared at Blair’s shoulder, a moan of anguish on her lips. She pushed through the ring of stunned faces, dropped to her knees and drew the naked Lisa into her arms with tender hands. Blair advanced in grim silence, pistol still levelled, his eyes flicking back and forth among the men who had been denied their pleasure.

  ‘If she’s dead I’ll kill every last one of them!’

  Grace whispered, ‘She’s alive!’ And she brushed blood away from the girl’s face with the back of her hand.

  ‘Then let’s get her out of here.’ Blair moved, cautiously, into the light. With his free hand he helped Grace pull Lisa to her feet. Lisa groaned, her eyes rolling, as she drifted back to consciousness. Blair saw the great red weals across her chest and back, inflicted by the discarded riding crop that lay at her feet. He wanted to put a bullet between every pair of watching eyes.

  ‘She needs a doctor quickly.’ The urgency in Grace’s voice blunted his anger and he turned his attention back to the battered girl.