Evil in the Land Without
Page 24
“But eventually they came to realize that what they'd been doing wasn't just plain old political espionage. When the news of the murdered guards in Mendleton appeared in the papers, it occurred to them their spying was setting people up to get killed; normal people. It didn't take a lot of deduction to work out that their psychotic boss was the murderer, and it had nothing to do with their government.
"They were afraid that eventually he'd expect them to do the killing, or he'd get caught and drag them down, too. So they opted for a deal. As soon as Bohmu Din ordered them to do me in, they . . . what. . . ? Defected to our side. And that's why I'm still alive."
"And the world's a better place for it."
"Alleluia."
"Mummy. There's blood on my foot." Eddo limped smiling on to the balcony.
"Is it yours?"
"Yes."
"Then come over here and we'll plug up the hole."
"I'll go get the Band-Aids." Norbert walked into the house for the first-aid kit. He passed Kruamart on her way out and kissed her cheek. She was holding the newest and tiniest member of the Jessel clan.
Susan looked up. "Oh, don't tell me she's hungry again. Where does she put it all?"
Kruamart lay her gently on Susan's lap.
John watched his sister unbutton her shirt. "Sue, darling. If you had decent sized udders, she could get all she needs in one sitting."
"I know. I bet they’d have been huge if she'd arrived when she was supposed to."
The beating had brought Coletta into the world a month premature. At the hospital they were fighting to save two lives at the same time. Susan had lost a lot of blood, and was in no state to help with the birthing. But the little lass found her way out somehow and waited patiently on life-support for her mother to join her. It was a long wait.
Given the state of Susan's face, they had been forced to bring in a team of cosmetic surgeons to help put her back together. John, the only living relative, gave permission while Susan was still unconscious. He sat with her day and night at the hospital, talked her through the ordeal that had put her there, and told her about their mother. It was the decision of both of them to name the little girl who was so very small, but so very tough.
At some stage, while John was beside Susan's bed with the employment section of the newspaper spread out on her cover, Lawless received a visit from someone very important. John wasn't sure what had been said, but it resulted in a retraction of the complaint against him, a commendation for bravery, and the option of staying at a higher salary.
Despite Emma's warning that promotions like this didn't come along every day, John declined—or at least deferred. He told her that if the job were still there in a couple of years, he might very well take it. But he had something else he needed to do first; something that had been niggling at him since it became obvious that his relationship with Shirley was doomed to purity and platonic respect.
As soon as Susan and the baby were well enough to travel, John loaded them on a flight to Thailand. Norbert had phoned the hospital and insisted they come to his place. The change of scenery would do them all good. For very good reasons, Susan didn't even get a chance to go home first.
John had decided not to mention Jim's drug involvement to Norbert, especially as much of his work in the region had been in drug suppression. He may have known already of course, but there was no reason to float a storm cloud into a sunny memory.
They had arrived early that morning, but already felt that Norbert's house wanted them there. They ate dinner together. To John's amazement, Eddo and Kruamart were already exchanging Thai and English words. Susan sat at the table with the baby at her breast. Norbert perched at the head of the table overseeing the scene like some happy, beer-buzzed grandfather.
He and John had looked for opportunities to continue the story, but the mood was too good to bring down. Norbert had of course heard the general facts, but he wanted the details. It wasn't until much later that night that the opportunity presented itself.
*
They were in the jeep on the road into Chiang Mai. They hadn't been able to shift old Bruiser out of the front seat, so John sat in the back. At first, once Norbert had refused to let him drive, John considered the back seat safer. He'd counted more than 12 cans of Singha beer pass the Thai's lips. But in fact he seemed to drive better on beer.
"Okay, boy. We only got an hour. That has to be enough time. I been real patient."
"All right." John leaned forward between the seats and watched the road magically unwind in the jeep's headlights as he spoke.:
"I'd left Shirley alone at Susan's house. She had a feeling something was wrong there. At first her instinct told her she wasn't alone. But in fact, what she was feeling was Bohmu Din's presence. He'd been staying there all the time in Susan's room. He'd been there from the day he arrived in England.
“Shirley went up to Susan's room and I can't begin to imagine what she felt when she opened the door and looked in there. One whole wall had been turned into a kind of altar, a shrine to her."
"To Shirley?"
"Yeah. He'd saved everything of hers from the first day she arrived at his camp. He had her clothes, all the things he'd ever given her as presents, small things she'd made and hidden from him, even the utensils she used to cook. It was all there.
“He'd bought dolls, the largest ones they sell, and dressed them in her clothes and lined them up across the wall. Their faces had been melted off. There was a platform of Eastern gods and saints or whatever, turned to face the name 'Sherri' painted across the wall in big letters. It wasn't until the investigation that they found out it had been painted in blood."
"Man. Whose?"
"His own."
"Damn."
"And all of Susan's photos of her and me from her albums had been plastered across the shrine. In every picture our faces had been burnt out with a cigarette. In the tiniest letters, a thousand times on each photo, he'd written Sherri's name.
"And there were two corners—sacrificial corners—one for me, one for Susan. He'd made body outlines on the floor in the same blood, with our names. I suppose he planned to put us there after our deaths. Except the outlines were too small—like the outlines of children."
"This is one seriously disturbed mother." Bruiser yawned agreement.
"You're telling me. But Shirley realized that all of this . . . revenge . . . this blood lust, it stemmed from an obsession he had with her. We'd all assumed he was angry that Jim had helped her escape, but that there was something else that drove him nuts. In fact, there wasn't.
"In his sick, twisted way, he had really loved Sherri. He’d only been able to show his emotions through cruelty. It was all he knew. After she'd gone, he grieved because he hadn't been able to tell her. That grief ate away at his sanity. The man wasn't just suffering from a psychosis. There was real damage. He was dipping in and out of a clinical insanity."
The jeep pulled into a familiar car park at Chiang Mai Airport, and Norbert turned off the motor. He jumped out of his seat and joined John in the back.
"Shirley couldn't see a taxi, so she ended up running to Emma's. It was a couple of miles. When she got there, the car outside was the one reported on the police site. She knew Bohmu Din was inside. She found Susan beaten to a pulp and Bohmu Din about to cut her stomach."
"Jeez!"
"She said she was calm by then. She didn't care for her own safety. She just wanted to protect Susan and the baby. He didn't recognize Shirley as Sherri at first, and she was certain he intended to kill her. But at the last second, he realized who she was. It clicked some switch in him. He went from being chronic aggressive to chronic passive.
"He told her how Jim had returned to his camp that night to kill him. There had been no other motive than to make him suffer for what he'd done to Sherri. When Jim was alone with her, she'd quite openly told him everything as if it were normal. He was so outraged that he decided to go back and stop Bohmu Din from abusing other girls.
"Shirley had a weapon—a length of fishing wire. She looped it over Bohmu Din's head and prepared to rid herself of him. But Jim's ghost was with her. He told her he had already died administering her revenge. He had planted the seeds of insanity in Bohmu Din's troubled mind all those years ago, and they had grown, and taken root, and were gnarled and knotted. No other revenge was necessary. Bohmu Din, rocking, dribbling, crying there at her feet, was already destroyed.
"She did what she could for Susan and Eddo at the house. She told Bohmu Din they’d need to be taken to a hospital. He helped her carry them to the car, and nursed Eddo on his lap as they drove.
"When the police arrived at the hospital, she and the old man were sitting hand-in-hand on a bench. He was rocking gently to the sound of an old Karen nursery rhyme she hummed for him."
"Oh man. What happens to him now?"
"They're looking at the diplomatic immunity issue. He wasn't in the UK officially, so he could be tried as a regular citizen. But the Burmese will probably ask for him to be sent back. Either way it doesn't matter much. His mind's gone. He'll be put in some institute for the criminally insane, and be forgotten. The professional opinion is that he's no longer a danger to society."
"Wow. One hell of a story, John boy."
The flight from Bangkok boomed over their heads as it came in to land.
"And finished just in time I might say. There she comes. How's ya jingly-jangly?"
"Now, I've told you not to get excited about this, Norbert. Shirley went to the States for a while, but it wasn't where she wanted to be. She's on her way back to finish her work on the border. Get it. . . ? She's stopping off here for a week or two to get her mind back together. She's been through a lot. She's exhausted, like all of us. This trip has nothing to do with me at all. I have an unexploded jingly-jangly."
"Well, I'm mighty sorry to hear that, boy."
"That's real life, mate. No happy endings."
"She ain't the reason you're going bush, is she?"
"Africa? No. I think I'd already got my head sorted out about her before I made that decision. I don't really believe anywhere's far enough to run away from disappointment. No, this is something that started burning in me when I was there, in Kenya."
"You ain't gonna solve all their problems by yourself, you know?"
"I know it. It's all modest: a modest little organization, a modest salary, and modest objectives. But it's a pilot project. If we can make a difference with some of the beach kids in Mombassa, who knows how big it'll get?"
"Two years in Africa, man. I can see it. There's you and some leggy Masai princess trailing around a pack of black and white striped babies."
"There you go again. Why is it married people are always trying to fix up single blokes?"
"We want you to be as happy as us, boy."
They headed off towards the terminal arm in arm.
"But that reminds me." Norbert grinned. "I got a mighty pretty sister-in-law wants to meet a good-looking rich guy."
"Will I do?"
"Well, actually, she wanted an American. But I'll ask if she's willing to lower her expectations some."
"Thanks."
The End
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