Evil in the Land Without

by Colin Cotterill

  He had many books. My only happy times were when he was away and I was under lock and key alone with the books. They were my friends. I hid my writings so he would never find them. I was sure he would have killed me if he found out I had a mind. He was an educated man. He spoke and read several languages, and he too liked to study. He graduated from a prestigious British university with an engineering degree. It was incredible to me that someone with such a love of books could hate people so. Books obviously could not impart compassion. In this category he was not human.

  I got to where I could sense the major’s return, even hours before he kicked his big boots against the door post. My heart would squeeze up like a fist. He marched in without looking at me or acknowledging my presence. He knew I would be there, just as his cup and his pipe were always in the right place. Before even showering off his stink, he would use me. It was his way. He was like a starving man who finds fruit and has no time for table manners.

  There were several times, were it not for the camp medic, that I should have died. I learned about medicine from this man, and from the bruises and fractures on the body that had once been mine. I asked many questions when I was in the sick bay. There were times they let me help out there when casualties were high. I appreciated the skills of the medic, but hated him for keeping me alive.

  For three endless years I lived with Bohmu Din. I was his instrument. He began to talk, to ask questions, even to be civil towards the end. There were times he would bring me gifts, pilfered from the corpses of villagers. But day by day the pebbles of hatred in me had piled into a mountain that had buried Sherri the little girl. No man could ever understand what effect abuse has on a child. There will always be something missing in me that no end of searching will find. I only pray that

  It ended there.

  When he looked up, his eyes were wet with tears. The steward asked him if he was all right. He nodded and smiled but he couldn't speak. The story had taken hold of his throat.

  He knew who Sherri was. Instinctively he knew. He knew the name of the major and what he would become. He knew that his doctor harbored more hate for Bohmu Din than he ever could. John's losses—his father, Mick, his mother—had all been second-hand, disconnected. Her contact with Din had been a personal violation. It would have been devastating.

  From his training, he knew how the post trauma would have eaten at her all these years. It was a cancer, uncured and unresolved. He believed he knew why she had returned, why she’d gone inside, and even in some way, why she’d been singled out at Camp G. It made sense.

  His receiving this package could mean one of two things. Either she had entrusted the package with someone to give to him, before she was abducted, or she was safe and had left it herself. Either way, it told him more than just her story. This incredible document told him they were allies. It lifted his spirits to a level they had never flown.

  For some reason she trusted him with her past life. It was a feeling he'd never known. It was the oiling of a rusted soul that had lain all its life in some dusty corner. He felt alive. He wanted to tell her he understood. He wanted to see her. As the 747 bounced through the clouds, he could think of no more appropriate place to be.

  "Please let her be safe."

  40

  Susan slammed down the receiver. It made Eddo jump.

  "Mummy, you scared me."

  She was scared herself. "Sorry, babe. The phone gave me an electric shock."

  Eddo thought that was funny for some reason, and his laughter calmed his mother a little. But she was still very disturbed.

  She'd phoned Bruce. The phone was answered with a muffled, "Hmmm?"

  She assumed she'd just woken him. "You lazy bugger. Were you sleeping?"

  The reply was another muffled, "Mmmm." But Susan knew it wasn't Bruce.

  "Who is that?"

  There was a moment of silence and then a voice said, "You want Bruce? Just a minute, I'll get him."

  Why would someone else have Bruce's phone? The accent was unfamiliar, but she suddenly recalled Bruce telling her about the detective.

  All sorts of thoughts chased around in her head. What if Te Pao had taken the phone? What if he were tracing the call? What if. . . ?

  That's when she slammed down the phone.

  Panic dropped on her and left her numb. She suddenly felt so very alone. Without John, without Maud . . . now without Bruce. The cottage in its vast grounds, the secrecy, the elaborate security . . . it had all seemed so protective until now. In the phone box with perspex all around them, she felt very exposed.

  Could he be close? The signal was strong. Yes. She hadn't thought about it at the time, but the man's voice was so sharp, so loud.

  Eddo was still laughing, still electrocuting himself by touching the phone cable, and the door, and his mother's bag. He hadn't picked up on her fear.

  She breathed deeply and crouched down to him. "Eddo mate, we have to get back to the cottage as quickly as we can."

  "Is it a race?"

  "Kind of."

  They were both caked in mud from the walk over the fields, and night was gathering her black skirts round them. She didn't want to go back that way. But the alternative was to walk beside the road where every passing car would display them in their headlights. She looked up to the sky for a suggestion, and the goddess of country buses must have been looking back.

  Susan threw open the door of the kiosk and waved her arms frantically at the driver of the orange bus as it passed them. He smiled, put his foot on the brake, and even steered onto the grass verge to collect them. Country bus drivers get so few passengers, they have time for good manners.

  The old Bedford trundled along the main road, the driver chatting about this and that. He let Eddo sound the horn, and told him about a sheep farm down the road that was so advanced the wool came off the sheep and it already had a zip.

  "I don't believe you. You're fibbing," said the boy, who’d been fibbed to by some of the world's best. "Look mummy, Big C."

  They passed the supermarket and the car park, and the rental car that was parked facing the road. The men inside were foreign. They were probably tourists. They didn't notice the only two passengers on the bus, and the passengers didn't notice them.

  41

  There was an hour delay at Bangkok's Don Muang Airport before the ongoing flight to London. After a frustrating time at the Long Distance Phone office, John went to look for a magazine. He found himself browsing through the trashy novels. He wasn't much of a reader. But something light would be all right, perhaps a comedy—a romantic comedy. Or even a romance.

  He turned to the back pages of one or two and read the last chapters. It was something he'd always done. That way he wouldn't be surprised or disappointed. He didn't want anyone dying on him.

  "That's cheating. Don't you like a little mystery in your life?"

  He turned to see who was speaking, and found himself gaping stupidly like a banked codfish. Shirley stood behind him. She looked as if she'd been dragged to Bangkok behind a bus. Her left arm was in plaster. There was a thick pad of bandage over one eye, and the other was puffed up and black.

  "Bloody hell." He was shocked but very happy to see her. He stared for a moment, confused. "You need a doctor. What happened?"

  "Can I tell you later?"

  "Well, yes, but I'm flying in half an hour."

  "I know. Me, too."

  "Where are you—"

  "We're on the same flight."

  His British demeanor was knocked down like a skittle. "Wow! That’s . . . I mean that's a . . . well, it's a coincidence."

  "You know it isn't. I've been following you since Chiang Mai. I left the copy at the airport. Wanted to give you time to read it."

  There was a long silence, during which he was suddenly aware that he was holding a book with the title, Be Still My Bangkok Heart.

  "Are you going to buy that?"

  "Er, no. I er . . . know the author."

  "Right."

/>   42

  Bohmu Din had his boots on the Elizabethan table. He had removed the protective plastic and was allowing the mud to drip from his soles and soak into the wood. In one hand he held the mobile phone, in the other a barber's blade some eight inches long. It was clean but not showing off its usual glint there in the dark.

  He was angry but composed. He couldn’t have missed them by more than a couple of minutes. The guard said they'd just left.

  Finding the location had been a simple enough matter once he'd put together the three clues from the phone recording: a stately home, a Big C supermarket, and a fire brigade call at 5:30 in the evening. With the right resources it wasn't so difficult to arrive where he now was. And he had ample resources.

  The bemused clerical staff at the London embassy had been following up on a good deal of Bohmu Din's strange requests of late. Although he was officially based at the South African Consulate, he was a senior diplomat, and he carried papers which afforded him any co-operation he requested.

  The junior staff there were scared to death of him. Even those who hadn't heard of his reputation trembled when he walked smiling through the back rooms of the embassy. They were sure he was insane and up to no good, but their lucrative careers depended on not rocking any boats. This particular battleship militarily outgunned the ambassador himself. So they all kept quiet and did as they were told.

  He sighed now that matters were so close to reaching their climax. He was becoming aware of how much this whole thing had tired him. Once it was put to rest, he could relax and the headaches would stop. Nothing else in his life was more pressing than ridding the world of the angels.

  This girl he would make understand first. He would explain that by watching her die, he was actually allowing himself to live. She would need to understand that this campaign was not a mindless exercise for revenge. She was a tumor that had grown inside him over the years. With her gone, he could breath again. He would explain this, and then take her life slowly.

  "Oh darling, I know you weren't to blame. It was him. Your interfering father took something from me you see, something precious, and all he left me was a picture of you. Then, after robbing me of my treasure, he robbed me of the opportunity for revenge. What possible chance was there for me to find peace? How could I go to heaven while this passion still bubbled inside me?"

  For 18 years Bohmu Din had searched. His rage built year by year from the frustration of failure. The rage turned inward upon his sanity. His mind would give him no rest. Every decision he made, every post he took up, was with one intention. The angels in the photograph were his tormentors. He had to find them.

  He had no names for them and no address. He didn't know what they had grown into, and he didn't care. Because in his mind they would always be the two angels in the picture their father had shown him that night at his camp.

  "The boy's a bit of a terror. See his ear? A dog took it," he had said to Bohmu Din. "He'll either end up a criminal or a policeman. The girl's an angel by comparison. Well, they're both angels really."

  Why didn't he ask more questions about them? Why didn't his instincts warn him that he would be flying after the angels for 18 years? Public records: two children about six and nine in 1981; father an IIC employee fluent in Burmese, southern—perhaps London—accent; mother, Hungarian; both parents deceased. Scratch. Scratch.

  It was a hapless task that had occupied and frustrated many of his ex-officers and nibbled at his vast fortune. He tried to be there with them. He applied for the prime posting in London. He interviewed for it but failed. So all his research had been done in transit, from a distance, or by his people stationed in the UK. He could have resigned his posting of course and dedicated his retirement to the search. He was wealthy enough. But it was only by being inside the SPDC machine that he could use it. He needed the mechanism and the power.

  Then the mother came back to life. His soldiers in England found first her history, then her present. They sent a photograph to Bohmu Din to confirm. After 16 awful years, he finally had his mother angel and the game could begin. There was no hurry now. First he would introduce himself.

  The boy, the one who could have been a policeman or a criminal, had made the wrong choice. And to make the game more fun, he was working in child protection. What a sweet irony.

  Bohmu Din hadn’t lost his taste for young girls, although his appetite was finicky and he was never fulfilled from what he got. The Internet had proven a great new ally to him and others like him.

  Through contacts he'd made at the underground African brothels that specialized in pre-adolescents, he had earned access to a number of closed organizations. It surprised him how many men shared his desires and how moderate he was compared to some. They boasted of their conquests on member-only websites.

  The unity, the commonness made all of them artificially strong, and convinced them that they were the normal ones. If so many men needed sex with immature children, how could it be wrong? The Internet had elevated a perversion into a cult. It's members had grown from timid lone mice into mighty cat prides. As they grew in confidence and arrogance, it was the police and the child protection workers who became the perverts.

  On one of the sites, they had set up a warning board. On it they told of places where “sicko NGOs” were active, or countries where the courts wouldn't take bribes, or where the police were harassing their members.

  It was onto this site that Bohmu Din posted a warning: "Beware. Beware. Southern England. Spread the word. The Surrey CPU are active undercover. Watch out for a red-headed man with one ear. Information contact this number."

  It was worth a shot. As the Surrey CPU was unlisted, this was one way to locate them and perhaps pick up his angel at the same time.

  He got a result almost instantly. It came from a member of an English paedophile ring whose code name was "Dong.” He said that a man answering the description had attended his group's last meeting. He was annoyed and asked whether he should inform the other members of the club. Bohmu Din convinced him to wait.

  "I think it would be more fun to prepare a little surprise for the detective. Don't you?"

  Dong agreed. As it turned out, Dong would contribute to the fun to an extent even the major hadn't considered.

  They arranged to meet. When they did, Dong foolishly introduced himself by his actual name: Marcus Aldy. He was what Bohmu Din considered the idle British aristocracy. He lived from a substantial inheritance, and had never performed a day's work in his meaningless life. He had unlimited time for pursuing and expanding upon his perversions.

  He kept three homes: a country place in Sussex, an apartment in unfashionable Colliers Wood, and a summer home in Sri Lanka. He also spent time in Kenya, and it was here that he had agreed to meet Bohmu Din.

  Aldy was unlikable, the type who had filled in the gaps in his personality with cash. He drank too much and became obnoxious rather quickly when he did. But Bohmu Din seduced him with kindness and politeness and stories of the boys in his country. They drank together in the rented Mombassa house on their first night together.

  Aldy was a weak-willed man with no passion for life. He was constantly hunting for excitement. So it was that the Burmese was able to implant the idea that murder was the ultimate erotica. The children were meaningless and without worth in this country that produced millions and refused to look after them. Their deaths would distress nobody. But by writing their deaths into a beautiful aria of sexual pleasure, that would give them some purpose. They would have made the ultimate sacrifice for a man's pleasure.

  So the stage was set, and the opera sung. The tenor, engorged with the stimulation of death, carried the reviews to England. He endured the brief humiliation of arrest at the BLOUK raid, and escaped back to Nairobi with the ease that Bohmu Din had predicted. He had felt the ultimate power over his victims, and he lusted for more.

  But his job was done. Bohmu Din was pleased. He was sent to join the cast, dust to dust.

  Bohmu Din r
eceived another photograph from his men in England. They had followed the cars after the raid. Certainly the detective in the picture was overweight and unkempt. But there was no mistake. The likeness was incredible. To his delight, Bohmu Din had found the first angel. He would play with him for a while before traveling to England.

  It had all been so much fun at first, but now the game had begun to bore him. It was time to end it. In the dark of the cottage he imagined his new angel-free existence. And, like a prelude to this liberty, the sound of footsteps crunched on the gravel path. He stood, stretched his aging muscles, and wrapped himself into the shadows.

  43

  Shirley had been able to upgrade to the seat beside John in Business, but he would have gladly gone back to sit on the floor beside her in Economy if she hadn't. He liked the way the stewardess assumed they were a couple. He liked being beside her in the nice seats. He almost accepted a glass of champagne.

  ". . . I mean no. Thank you."

  "You don't drink?" Shirley asked, sipping at her glass.

  "I suppose the answer now is 'no,' But it’ll probably take another six years before the stuff's completely cleared out of my bloodstream."

  "What made you stop?"

  "Bohmu Din. I need to be in the ring with him in an equal weight class. I’m so afraid of losing to him through not being alert. I decided to stop beating myself."

  As they flew over Burma and Bangladesh, he told her about his war with the bottle and his guilt at having endangered Susan and Eddo. He told her everything about the case. He told her about the Kenya connection, and the murders of Mick and Coletta. Shirley sat attentive the whole time with her unbroken hand on his sleeve, like a child listening to a fairy story.