Removing the last piece of the lamb with his fork, Leo noticed for the first time the dish it was served on. It was not like anything he’d seen before. Long and thin, curved at the edges and rounded to a point at each end. Lifting it briefly from the table, he observed the weight – it was heavy. Whatever dark metal it was made from was solid. Looking at the dishes the others ate from, Leo noticed they were all similar. The same curve and point, but all slightly different too.
“That was really good,” Jack said, lying backwards to rest his stomach. Miles had finished too and adopted the same slumped position. Leo picked the last bit of meat from the bone with his teeth as Allissa skewered the remaining onions with her fork.
“Yeah, decent,” Miles said, as a lull settled over the table.
On the other side of the restaurant, two locals got up. One stretched and scratched his hanging stomach, the other threw a few colourful notes on to the table. They walked to the door and out into the night without looking back.
“I told ya it was amazing,” Miles said, throwing his left arm backwards to encompass the restaurant in his comments. “You guys had almost lost faith, yet here we are!”
Jack ordered more beers as the waiter came to clear the table. He only lifted two of the dishes at a time, Leo noticed, probably owing to their weight.
Miles sat, looking contented.
As one of the waiters lumbered off through the darkness carrying the dishes, another approached. Leo looked up at his smile, a radiating half-disc in the glow from the hanging bulbs.
“Excuse me,” he said to the four of them around the table. “As you are special customers, we would like to offer you smoke as our gift. Would you like?”
Chapter 66
The night brought no sleep for Marcus Green. After his call with the editor he’d managed to book on an early flight next morning to Dubai, where he’d connect on one to Mumbai, and then on to Kathmandu. The journey was going to be frustratingly long. Particularly as he knew Stockwell’s words would roll constantly through his mind: No loose ends.
Green had run investigations on killers before, many of whom he’d brought to justice. He had always found something animalistic about them, primal even. That ability to undo years of learning about right and wrong, to go against the very fabric of society to take another person’s life. That was one thing. But to instruct someone else to end the life of someone in the calm, business-like way he’d heard Stockwell speak? That was something else. Especially if, as Green assumed, that person was his daughter.
He found the thought disgusting, enraging and inspiring. There were some people who needed to be brought to justice, and Stockwell was one of them.
Green knew he would have to work quickly once he got to Kathmandu.
Chapter 67
“Yes, we do!” Miles said. “You guys haven’t seen the best part of this place yet.”
The restaurant had become quiet; the only other customers were a pair of tourists sorting through unfamiliar money to pay the bill.
“I remember last time we were here,” Miles continued, “we spent the whole afternoon eating, drinking and smoking in this place. We came in about midday and it was after midnight before we left.”
The four sat in silence for a few moments drinking their beers – the liquid was cool and tasted especially good with the latent, lingering spice of the lamb.
“You know something I’ve realised,” Jack said, unfocused eyes looking ambiguously across the table.
“What?” Leo asked, looking towards him. Miles appeared to be in a world of his own, grinning at things around the restaurant.
“Loads of things in life are bullshit.”
“What do you mean?” Leo asked, laughing at Jack’s outburst.
“I mean that loads of the things we work for are crap. This is total freedom that we’re feeling now. It’s what Miles had in his twenties before mortgages, hire purchase and package holidays. Yes, you might have a great house and a fast car, but is it worth giving your life up for?”
Miles grinned across at Jack.
“All you really need is a place to sleep, something to eat and clothes to wear, that’s it,” Jack continued, “why do you need that new car or the big TV when you’re missing the opportunities to come to cool places and do cool things?”
There was something in Miles’ smile that made Leo feel uncomfortable. A mask had lifted from his expression and what Leo saw now was eerie and malevolent.
Leo looked towards Allissa. If she thought the same, there was nothing in her expression that showed it.
The smoke arrived. A waiter put a large sisha pipe on the floor next to the table. It was almost as tall as the sitting diners. Leo examined it; the bodies of snakes curved around its surface. One open mouth overlaying another scaly back.
The waiter lit coals and placed them on the metal top, then he drew powerfully on one of the hoses. The coals glowed like red eyes. Pulling on the pipe again, a bubbling noise came from the base of the shisha. The third time he exhaled thick white smoke. The waiter gave each of the diners a hose through which to draw the smoke. They too looked scaly in the darkness.
“Nah, I totally get that,” Miles said, half-focused and breathing out a lungful of the smoke.
“It’s like these people,” Jack said angrily, pausing to pull on the smoke, “who are obsessed with taking pictures of themselves in front of everything. Some people who we travelled with seemed to just be in it for the monument selfie, they weren’t bothered about getting to know people or culture. They were trying to own the world, not just be part of it.”
“Yeah, you can never own the world,” Miles said, stumbling over the words. “You can only be shaped by it.”
“Guys, this is top,” Jack said, noticing Leo and Allissa’s hoses were untouched. “You need to try it.”
“Yeah, come on, man. You’re in Kathmandu, this is what the place is about,” Miles said.
Leo looked down at the hose; he felt hazy enough from the beer and the smoke in the air. To him it seemed uncomfortable, foreign and dangerous. Allissa didn’t seem keen either.
“You know what, I remember this guy we met in India,” Jack said, “he was telling us about where he’d been before, Laos, or somewhere like that. Anyway, he’d travelled for days to see this big old waterfall. It did look pretty special to be fair, he showed us the pictures. I asked him what the water was like. He said he didn’t like swimming. What a dick! You can’t travel for days to see a waterfall and not go in the water, that’s just not how it happens! Sometimes, whether you like swimming or not, you’ve got to jump in the water because you might not ever go back there again.”
Jack was right, Leo knew it, and he knew that’s exactly what Mya would say. He picked up the hose and drew cautiously on the sweet-smelling smoke. Allissa did the same.
“Yeah man, jump in,” Miles said, “the water is good!”
Leo drew on the tube, the angry red eyes of the coals sparked and the smoke filled his lungs.
He would just have a little. A taste.
A warm rush covered him, like a wave from a tropical ocean.
Breathe in, hold, and out. The wave retreated and left the room further away than it had been before – a warmth remained.
“Mate, you’re not wrong about this,” Leo stuttered. “That taste, lemon, spices, cool, what is that?”
“They flavour the water, put loads of stuff in to make it taste good and cool the smoke,” Jack said.
The wave came again. Breathe in, hold, taste the lemon and the spices. Leo held it until it was about to burn and then let it out. Washing away every emotion, leaving a calm, blank beach, a desert island.
On the third wave, the room began to wobble, distances changed and noises became further away. Then the wave came and broke over Leo, the restaurant, Jack, Miles and Allissa.
The reason he was here, his success – Allissa.
Jack and Miles had been smoking harder for longer than Leo and Allissa, but Leo felt it
affecting him already. The first three drags had hit him so hard that he’d stopped pulling on the hose. He needed to keep his head in the game.
The eyes of coal burned ferociously.
For everyone, talking was done. The world had been reduced to the smoke and the burning eyes of coal.
Leo just needed to stay in the game.
Don’t close your eyes.
Don’t close your eyes. Focus on breathing.
Focus on breathing.
Chapter 68
“It’s just like drinking, isn’t it?” It’s not really a question. Mya’s just daring Leo to disagree.
“What’s that?” he asks as she eyes the bottle. As though it too is daring to disagree with her.
“Being with someone. It’s like drinking,”
“What, because you keep going until you’re sick?”
“No!”
They’re in bed on their first afternoon in Ko Tao. They’d arrived on that morning’s ferry from Champon and before that the overnight train from Bangkok.
“It’s like drinking because when you start it’s great, heady, exciting. You can’t get enough of it, you just want more and more. Then, after a while, you realise you’re not seeing your friends as much, it’s more important than them. Then you realise you’re not spending the time you used to with your family, it’s more important than them, too. Then you realise you haven’t thought about anyone or anything else for ages. It’s just you and the drink, or you and that person.”
She tilts the bottle and looks myopically through it.
“We’d better get rid of this then,” Leo says, taking the bottle from her and pushing her on to her side.
Her thoughts absorb him completely. They speak to his understanding in a way he’s never experienced before.
He pulls her in close so that all he can see is her lips in the darkness. All he can hear is her shallow breathing joining his.
He kisses her from his soul and their breaths dance in silent noise.
Two breaths in the silence.
Chapter 69
One breath in the silence.
Breathe in, and out. Breathe in, and out.
Leo was floating inches above the chair, holding on for everything he could.
Breathe in, and out.
The room spun and swayed across his vision.
He’d only had a couple of pulls on the smoke, but whatever was in there was strong.
He tried to look across at Jack and Miles opposite him. They appeared as though in a dream, far away and moving farther all the time. Turning his head, he saw Allissa doing the same, her jaw tense, eyes straining forward.
He knew they were only feet from him. If he tried, he knew he could reach out for them. No one was smoking anymore. The shisha hoses lay in their laps. Miles’ head was slouched forward, Jack’s was back.
The more Leo tried to reach forward, to tap on one of Jack’s arms which lay limp on the table, the further he seemed to move away. Jack was at the end of a tunnel, everything else was darkness.
Time curved in on itself as his movements were slowed.
He needed to stay focused, or he knew he’d fall…
Breathe in, and out.
Breathe in, and out.
He needed to stay focused, or he knew he’d fall…
He needed to fight this.
Breathe in, and out. Breathe in, and out.
Every molecule of Leo’s body wanted him to close his eyes and relax. He felt each individual atom telling him to sleep. He felt the space between atoms, the vibrations of energy between the subatomic particles which made up his body and all of time and space telling him to close his eyes and sleep.
But he needed to stay focused.
He had to focus on the slumped figures of Jack and Miles.
He hoped Allissa was doing the same, but right now, he couldn’t see her.
Then, through the fish-eyed tunnel vision which strained his brain, he noticed something.
One of the waiters approached the table. Without a word, he removed the coals from the shisha pipe with glinting metal tongs and put them into a small metal bucket. Then he carried the pipe back into the kitchen.
Which waiter was it? Leo didn’t know. It could have been the bigger of the two, but he wasn’t sure.
A moment passed. A sluggish, immeasurable, treacle-like moment.
Both waiters appeared on either side of Miles. Each put a hand under one of his heavy arms and raised him from the chair. His slumped figure gave no resistance. He was lifted and then dragged toward the kitchen door, limp feet trailing across the uneven ground.
Leo watched them disappear in a haze. He couldn’t do anything. He tried to move, tried to stand, but the room was spinning and his legs were no longer beneath him.
Just concentrate on your breathing, he thought. Don’t close your eyes.
The men were back. They lifted Jack, his head rolled forwards to the extremity his neck would allow.
The chair was pushed to one side. They began to drag him towards the kitchen.
You have to move, thought Leo. The strength rising in him. A moment of clarity.
You have to move.
You have to move.
You have to see what is in that kitchen.
Somehow, Leo made it to his feet. He was moving through water, high wind, he and time were moving together. Slowly, incredulously, insidiously.
Looking back, Leo saw Allissa slumped on the chair next to him. Her eyes were open. Could she move? Could she make it up? Her eyes were open. There was hope.
She pushed herself forwards and stood clear of the table. Stumbling onto shaking legs.
Talking was still impossible.
Reaching the kitchen door, they supported themselves by the frame.
The door had not shut completely. A vertical bar of light.
Leo and Allissa peered into the kitchen.
Eyes strained, looking through the gap. Wide eyes. Open mouths.
Jack was slumped across the arms of one of the men. His arms forced to his sides. Head hanging limp.
The men spoke to each other, unrecognisable mutterings.
Leo and Allissa recoiled when they registered the movement.
The other man picked up one of the dishes they’d eaten from. Dark, thick, heavy metal. He held it up at an angle which gave them no doubt what he was about to do.
The moment paused as though tired.
The dish began to move through the air. Down. Down. Down.
Focus on your breathing.
Breathe in and out.
In and out.
Do not scream.
Two breaths in the silence.
Two breaths in the darkness.
One crack in the silence.
A crack which rang around the bare walls of the empty restaurant.
The man holding Jack dropped him to the floor. Blood moved down the edge of the dish and fell into the pool. It spiralled from the red gash on the back of his head.
Behind Jack, Leo saw the slumped, face-down body of Miles. His grey hair and thick body now only remnants of life.
The two men said something to each other that Leo and Allissa couldn’t hear or understand. Leo knew they’d be back for them in a moment.
He knew they were going to have to run, and run now.
He knew he could run, his body was capable of it, if he could just get it to work.
Turning, he half-dragged Allissa across the empty restaurant. They stumbled the first two paces, using the tables for support.
Through the door, the humid night air was thick with heat and raw with danger. They heard the men moving in the restaurant. Shouts muffled as the door closed behind them.
They were running. Voices somewhere behind. Shouting unknown words.
They were running. Both concentrating on the effort it was taking to put feet down to match the speed of their bodies, supporting each other when needed.
Leo straightened up as much as he could. His legs pumped
automatically.
He held Allissa’s arm, pulling her on.
Neither stopped to turn or look.
They ran. Dodging piles of rubbish where they could, crashing through them when they couldn’t.
With no idea where they were going they turned right, turned left, right again.
Leo ran until his legs felt like knives and he could taste acid. Then he kept running. Dragging Allissa, being dragged by Allissa. Fleeing shapes in the darkness.
Each street seemed as dark as the last. Another dusty alleyway lit with the occasional island of light. Faceless street after faceless street. Neither turned to see if anyone was following.
How long had they been running? It felt like it was all they’d ever known.
Ahead there was light. The narrow street joined another, barely lit, but a beacon to eyes used to the darkness. They were moths running for the bulb, certain that with light would come safety.
A main road by Kathmandu standards. Large enough for two cars and lined with shops, their rusting shutters pulled closed against the darkness. Empty and quiet as the city slept.
Leo and Allissa turned right and continued running. They needed to keep going. Running was life. To stop now was to die.
Leo’s vision fizzed, the road waned, jolting up and down with each step. Twice he fell into the metal shutters of the closed shops, crashed to the floor with the sound of metal on metal.
They groped their way forward, using the shutters, parked cars, anything they could for support. They had to keep going.
Stumbling against a pink and white taxi, something stirred inside. Someone was asleep on the back seat, curled under a blanket in the tiny vehicle. Leo banged on the glass, waking the man inside who rolled with a blanket over his head.
Allissa, knowing the lure of money in the city, pulled a wad of colourful notes from a pocket and pressed them against the window.
Kathmandu Page 16