Over dinner, he told her about his relationship with his sister and growing up in their mother's coven. He told her of their fantasies about what their father did, and the rare times that he came home. He found himself calling her Sherri ,and she made no objection. She seemed to like it. He wanted to tell her everything, and he was just about to divulge state secrets he had sworn to keep to himself, when she dropped a bomb that blew up his fantasy.
"You know? You're very much like your father."
He turned to look at her in disbelief.
"You met him? But when? How?"
"He saved my life . . . or actually my lives. He saved my physical life first, and then my psychological life."
John squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. "But you couldn't have been more than—"
"I was almost nine."
"You met him in Burma?"
"Didn't you wonder how my story ended? I was in Te Pao."
He felt a peculiar mix of disappointment and anger.
Shirley noticed his change of mood. "What's wrong?"
He shook his head and let out a sigh so deep it flapped the napkin on his tray. He couldn't force himself to look at her. "Carry on. I'm listening." But he was listening from a considerable distance.
She was aware of it but continued: "I’d seen Jim in the camp once before. He was the first Western man I'd ever seen."
"The camp. . . ? Wait. This is a Burmese military camp?"
"Yes."
"What the hell was he doing there?" There was accusation in his question.
"The first time, he was walking across the yard with an armed soldier behind him. He was carrying a pack. The second time, he was a guest. He came to eat with Bohmu Din. My reading of English was going well even then, but I hadn't had any opportunity to hear it spoken. I heard the BBC from a distance at times. I didn't get a lot of their conversation, but they appeared to be on good terms."
She wanted eye contact with John, but he stared at the seat in front of him the whole time. He was dealing with the doubts that she stirred carelessly into his disappointment.
"Go on."
"I knelt in the corner as always, and ran to bring things when Bohmu Din ordered. I remember Jim tried to talk to me, but the major told him something about me being an ignorant jungle girl. Those weren't the words, but that was the idea. I noticed your father looking at the bruises on my arms. He tried to look into my eyes, but I kept my head down.
"He looked across often to where I was sitting. Bohmu Din noticed and was getting restless. I believe at one stage Jim asked again about me. As I say, my ear wasn't quick enough to pick everything up. I did hear Bohmu Din say something about me being 'good sex.' Jim laughed and punched the major on the arm, playfully like boys joking. I suppose I was a bit disappointed, but I assumed all men had the same urges. I shouldn't have been surprised.
"I was surprised though when Jim openly made an offer for me. I quite clearly heard him say, 'How much for the girl?' The major looked angry at first, then smiled and told him I wasn't for sale. 'She makes good gruel,' he told him. 'It's hard to find a girl who makes gruel the way I like it.' I'd never made him gruel.
"Jim looked at me and made another offer. I remember it was a good price. I was proud that my body was worth so much. But Bohmu Din stood, said something I didn't catch, and the meal and the evening were apparently over. Although they shook hands in the doorway, the air seemed to be a lot heavier.
I suffered badly that night. He accused me of 'flirting,' although I didn't understand the meaning of the word. He had never been so cruel or so violent. I tried so hard to keep my cries inside, because I knew how much they angered him. But I had no choice. He pushed and pushed me towards the edge. I prayed he’d give me that final push that would send me falling into the death I'd longed for.
But when he finished, something in me was still alive. He didn't call the medic this time, just left me to swoon in and out of consciousness on the bare earth.
"It was in one of those moments of dreamlike waking that I imagined a blanket being wrapped around me, and my body being hoisted into the air. I thought the angels had come for me. I believed there were explosions and fire around, and I bounced and bounced back into unconsciousness.
"I was told it was two days later when I came to. The first thing I remember was Jim looking down at me and smiling. He had red hair and a beard, and the sun shined at me over his shoulder. He said, 'Welcome back.' And because I recognized it as English, and felt obliged to say something back, I replied, 'Two and sixpence please.' It was a phrase I'd learned from one of Bohmu Din's old books. Your father laughed so warmly I had to smile too.
“He asked me if I could speak English, and I told him I could, a little. I was delighted with the words coming out of my mouth. I asked him where we were, and he looked around pretending he was completely lost. Then he smiled and told me not to worry. He seemed so relaxed in everything he said and did that I relaxed, too.
"He had a compass he looked at often. I continued my convalescence under cover during the days, and we traveled at night. Before I was able to walk, he would carry me. He was so polite. I was expecting him to take me as Bohmu Din always did, but he told me how wrong that was. He told me a lot of things. We always spoke in whispers. It was like a secret language. He helped me with my English while we walked, and told me stories.
“We always kept 12 kilometers from the main roads, because that was the area controlled by the Tatmadaw. He told me eventually we’d run into a Karen patrol, and that's exactly what happened. They recognized Jim and took us to a camp.
"Your father stayed with me one more day, then told us he had to go back to Te Pao for something. I never learned what had happened at there that night, or why he had to return. Although I didn't recognize the emotion at the time, in the few days I’d known Jim, I’d come to love him very much.”
John felt a sliver of ice cross his heart.
"It wasn't until much later, when I studied counseling at med school, that I realized what Jim had been able to do in those few days. He increased my value. He made me believe I was somebody. Everything he said to me—how strong I was, how pretty, how brave, how clever, how he couldn't have survived what I had, how he respected and admired me—it was all to build up my self-confidence.
"He convinced me that I wasn't responsible for what had happened to me. I had been a victim and I’d survived. I had to be proud of myself for that. In those few days he helped me to take the hate out of myself.
“But it had to go somewhere. I put all that hate I had for myself into Bohmu Din. That helped. Before that time with your father, all I wanted was the relief of death. He made me want to make the most of life instead.
"He told me he had a daughter my age, and a son. He showed me your pictures. You looked so happy, I wanted to be in the photo with you both. I imagined I was another sister.
"You see, John, it was your father who made me strong enough to survive on my own. The Karen took me to a camp on the Thai border, and by some magic Jim had arranged, I was adopted and shipped off to the States. I lived in a nice house and went to school. It was the perfect fairytale ending—except it hadn't ended. It couldn't end as long as the major was still doing what he did. Revenge isn't a healthy emotion. I tried, really tried to let it go, but there’s no forgiveness in my heart for him.
"When I was still in the camp, I'd heard what had happened to Jim. I didn't mourn for him then because my emotions had been filed down to bare stubs. But I felt his ghost would always be there. His words stayed with me when I had doubts. They pushed me on. I still believe he's here. When I saw you at the camp, I was sure Jim's ghost had come back for me."
John was slumped in his seat looking at his lap . . . a victim of mistaken identity, a big sulky boy. This woman who had followed him from Chiang Mai—who had hung on his arm and listened to his stories, who had filled him with love—she thought she was with his father. Like Norbert, she was just renewing an old friendship with a dead man.
She had no interest in John at all.
He was ashamed of himself. With all he'd learned about her since Chiang Mai, it was incredible that his primary feelings now were about and for himself. After what Shirley and his father had been through, what right did he have to be heartbroken? How could he be jealous of a man who had died twenty years ago?
With all his will, he tried to be unselfish, and transfer his emotions into her account. But the ache was too great. "I suppose I was half hoping you liked me," he said, still looking down.
She didn't reply.
"I'm afraid I’ve joined the legions of men who are in love with you, and I'm feeling a really peculiar jealousy for my dad."
Again with no answer, he looked to his left.
Shirley, purged of her story, slept silently.
Eventually, John slept too. His dream was complicated and vivid. His mother as a pretty young woman was there, and a man he didn't know. He saw their faces in the shadows. They were laughing at him and he was angry.
When he woke, Shirley was eating the top breakfast of a pile of two. His attitude had benefited from the sleep, and he had a firmer grip on real life. He was more prepared to be a surrogate.
"Ah, you're awake. That's bad luck. I was planning to eat your breakfast and tell you they hadn't brought any."
He smiled and accepted his tray. He ate in silence while she chatted about comparatively unimportant things. He wasn't good at trivia first thing in the morning.
"Who broke your arm?"
The bread roll stopped its flight to her mouth, and he thought he saw some guilt in her eyes. "That's not really a breakfast question. Who bit your ear off?"
He laughed. "And that is a breakfast question. . . ? I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."
"Okay."
"Well, Mike Tyson came into the station one day and—"
"I'm serious."
"Tell the truth, I don't really know. Or I can't remember. They tell me it was this stupid little lapdog that used to follow Coletta around everywhere and piss on the floor. I was about five. It just went berserk one day and went for my ear. They had it put down. You think I'd remember something like, that wouldn't you, but I don't."
"Strange."
He thought about just how strange it was. The vicious little bastard had made a couple of appearances, all snarly and drooly, in some of these dreams he'd been having lately. He hadn't thought about it for years. The mind was a funny old thing.
"Your turn." She hesitated, put down her coffee, and leaned very close to John. In a whisper she told him, "They were holding me in a prison in Pa'an, and I decided to escape. The only way I knew was to use the element of surprise. They saw me as a weak woman, and I hoped that would be to my advantage.
"I called the guard—the woman who’d searched me earlier—and told her I was bleeding internally. I pointed to the commode and she went to take a look. I had a weapon that I’d learned to use from old Karen fighters in the States. It was a fish wire adapted to kill. I knew the techniques, but there’s more than technique to overpowering someone. All my medical training had been to keep people alive. I had no killer instinct.
"She was stronger than me and was able to fight me off. We waltzed around and wrestled and we both knew one of us had to die. Then we fell onto the card table. It gave way beneath our weight and her head cracked against the concrete floor. She was dead.
"It was a terrible feeling to know I had caused that. I had to stop thinking of her as a person. I looked at her uniform and saw her instead as the enemy, as my trainers had taught me. I took off the uniform and put it on myself.
"There was one more guard at the gate. It wasn't a prison. It was just an admin building with an interrogation room. There was little need for security. They didn't see me as dangerous. He was asleep on his seat. It took me some time to get into the frame of mind, but again I looked at his uniform and forgot that he was just a man doing a job he probably didn't like. . . . I could do with some more coffee."
She called the stewardess and ordered for both of them.
John was stunned. Then she went on in the same unemotional tone: "I'd learned from the attack on the woman. The wire sliced through his throat and he bled to death without a fight. He died in confusion really. He woke to find himself dying. I just unlocked the gate with his key and walked out.
My eyes were swollen from the fight with the woman, and I'd cut my head. I was a bit dizzy. Somehow I had to get back to the border. Pa'an is a busy city. You’d never know there was a war raging less than twenty kilometers away. It's on a major trucking route south. I went to the checkpoint and ordered a truck driver to take me along. He looked at the uniform and told me to get in.
“I guess I fell asleep. After a few hours, I woke up and his hand was up my skirt and his disgusting breath was on my mouth. He'd pulled off the main road. I fought him, poked my fingers in his eyes, and threw myself out the door. It was a hell of a drop. Snapped my forearm.
"Luckily he didn't come after me, ’cause I was swooning from the pain and it was all I could do to stay conscious. I managed to set the arm with bamboo, then passed out in the jungle somewhere. When I came around, it was daylight and I was only a few kilometers from the border. The driver had kindly brought me all the way to Myawadi before he tried to have his way.
“Just across the river was Mae Sot and Thailand. I stole a shirt and a sarong and walked over the bridge. In Mae Sot I went to the refugee committee, got fixed up, borrowed some money, and took a bus to Chiang Mai. I got some money wired from the States, checked the passenger manifesto at Thai Airways, and found your name. And here I am. . . . I really have to go to the bathroom."
When she stood up and walked along the aisle to the toilet, John was still stunned. She had confessed to two murders, albeit in a kind of battle. She didn't appear overly distressed or remorseful. She had told it like a movie plot.
But then he compared her with himself. Most things that disturbed him, disturbed him deep inside. But he kept them there. They were nobody else's business. He understood then that the turmoil she obviously felt, she was dealing with herself. If she wanted him to share her feelings, she would let him know.
*
When Shirley finally got to the end of the snail-paced Immigration queue of unfortunates not born in the EC, John was deep in conversation on the pay phone. He'd tried to call Maud, Bruce, and Emma from the in-flight phone, but none of them had picked up. The night sergeant at Kingston told him to call back when the team arrived in the morning.
She held back and waited. She could tell from his expression that something awful had happened. She was sure that Bohmu Din had been active while he was away. He snapped down the receiver, looked around for Shirley, and ran over to her.
"Quick," he said. "We have to go somewhere right now. Sorry, there's no time to drop you off anywhere."
"I'd be pissed if you did."
He hurried her to the long-stay parking bay where he found his Peugeot and swore at the ignition before it would turn over the engine. She waited patiently until he was ready to tell her what he'd learned. As they emerged from the tunnel under the main runway, he seemed to have ordered things in his mind.
"The night before last, they found the body of Susan's husband, Bruce."
"Oh, God. I'm sorry."
"He was under police protection . . . which doesn't say much for police protection. He'd been on to Scotland Yard to tell them that someone posing as a detective had contacted him and was trying to get Susan's address. They supposed it was Te Pao. A few days earlier, my old boss Maudling was done in, probably by the same perpetrator, although the MO was different."
As he spoke, Shirley noticed how John was talking about people he had been close to as if they were John Does. He showed no sadness.
"That means two things. Firstly, your major pal is a lot more resourceful than we gave him credit for, and that scares the life out of me when I wonder just how close he was able to get. Secondly, it means Sue doesn't
have any contact at all with the outside world. She might have got desperate and breached security. Either way, we have to get over there and move her and Eddo out."
"John."
"Yeah?"
"It won't help either of them if you and I are killed in a motor accident."
He lightened his foot on the accelerator.
*
At the entrance to Mendleton House, a large country constable blocked the way. The sight of him sent a wave of panic through John that Shirley sensed. She put her hand on his on the wheel.
"And where would you be going . . . sir?" the constable yelled through the closed driver's window.
John wound it down. "What's happened here?"
"No, I asked the first question, and you haven't answered that yet."
John was fumbling for his ID and getting agitated. He finally got the card from his wallet. "Just let us in and cut the crap."
The uniform took it and read it more carefully than he needed to.
"See the rank on there? If you don't open the fucking gate in ten seconds, I'll drive through it anyway, then reverse back over you. Understand?"
The constable raised his eyebrows, walked slowly to the gate, and swung it open. "Delighted you're having a nice day . . . sir," he mumbled as the car sped past him.
There were two plain-clothes men in front of the cottage filling out forms. They looked up as the car skidded along the gravel drive and stopped a few centimetres from their shins. They didn't flinch.
John threw open his door and ran around to them. "What is it? What happened here?"
"And you would be. . . ?" one of them said.
John still had his ID in his hand. He gave it to one of the detectives, who looked at it with the same country patience as had the uniformed man.
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