Pausing on the final landing to get his breath back, Leo looks up at the strip of sky above, smirking from orange to red.
This is the moment. This is his moment. Their moment.
Taking the stairs now one at a time, each revealing a little more, he prepares himself.
Breathe deeply.
In and out.
In and out.
The city is now just a murmur, no sound exists but the thumping of his heart and the words he wants to say so much.
Will you… Will you…
Reaching the top of the stairs, Leo looks out across the bar where they’d both been sitting ten minutes earlier.
Mya stands, watching the city.
She’s not alone. Another man stands with her, they’re talking. Leo steps back into the stairwell and watches, a waiter clattering past him with a tray of drinks.
She turns to look up at the man – he’s young, striking, attractive. He puts a strong hand on her slender waist as they laugh together.
In that moment Leo knows – you can’t travel to change the world, but when you travel you feel the world. Whether that’s the helplessness of Indian poverty or the true intentions of someone you love.
Chapter 73
As the light over Kathmandu turned from mango to aubergine, the rain started to pepper and fizz against the window of Leo’s hotel room.
Leo opened his eyes. He recognised the room from the web of cracks across the ceiling, the dust-ridden green curtains and the noise of the grinding ceiling fan.
He was fully-clothed on top of the bed as though he had physically fallen there. Next to him Allissa slept soundly, her body curled tight, her breathing slow and deep.
Then the memories of the night before thumped into Leo’s thoughts. The lamb, the noxious smoke, the dish, Jack and Miles. Leo sat up on the bed and pulled his knees inwards.
“I don’t know why you wanted to be a journalist anyway,” Leo’s Mum had said at a family meal a few months ago. “I just can’t see how you’re right for that. It’s not an insult,” she’d continued, seeing his dejected look, “you’ve just always been so shy. I just can’t imagine you interrogating someone in an interview.”
She was right, what could he do? This just wasn’t right for him. He couldn’t do this. Who was he to think he could?
The man who didn’t like complaining in restaurants was trying to solve a missing person’s case and now a murder? This wasn’t him. It was a joke. Looking around the room, Leo longed for the feeling of his now-distant flat. He wanted more than anything to collapse into his own sagging sofa and look at the world through the soft, safe glow of a computer screen.
This wasn’t him, this just wasn’t him.
* * *
Waking to the sound of movement in the room, Allissa opened her eyes slowly. The headache had gone, and although she felt grimy, her mouth furry and her tongue thick, she knew that would pass. She was alright, she thought, pulling herself up onto her elbows. She was still fully-clothed, lying on the bed where she had collapsed moments after arriving.
The noise, she soon realised, was Leo frantically stuffing clothes into a backpack on the other side of the room.
“Going somewhere?” Allissa said croakily, before pulling herself up against the headrest.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Leo said. “You should as well, it’s not safe. What we saw last night, that could have been us. And I can’t believe the police won’t even help us.”
Leo swore under his breath as a bundle of t-shirts fell to the floor.
“We will do something,” Allissa said, picking up a glass of water from the bedside table which didn’t look fresh, but taking a sip all the same.
“No, we tried that this morning,” Leo said, scooping up the clothes and stuffing them one by one into the bag. “They laughed at us. We tried to help. I’m done with trying to help. I didn’t get into this to see people get killed. I’m getting out of here.”
“Oh right, so you’re just going? That’s you done is it?”
“Yeah, you should get out of here too. I’m not trusting a place when even the police won’t take me seriously.”
“Well, we didn’t turn up there in the best of states,” Allissa said, looking at him squarely. Leo didn’t stop to meet her eye. “Things do work a bit differently here, you’ve got to appreciate that…”
“I’ve got to appreciate that?” Leo said, raising his voice and looking at Allissa for the first time since waking. His eyes were reddened and bracketed with dark circles.
“Yeah, you’ve got to appreciate that if you have to be taken to a police station because you’re on drugs, they’re not going to always be totally receptive to what you claim you’ve seen. Especially in Kathmandu. This city has seen a lot of drugged-up westerners in its time.”
Leo propped the bag he was packing against the wall and grabbed another pile of clothes without answering.
“We were drugged,” he said finally, but with less conviction than before.
“Well yes, but they didn’t know that,” Allissa said coolly. “I’m not saying we do nothing. I’m just saying it’s pretty obvious they weren’t going to believe us this morning.”
“I can’t,” Leo said after a moment’s pause, looking from Allissa to the window through which Kathmandu appeared grey. “I came here to find you. I’ve found you. Now I’m going.”
Allissa watched as Leo pulled the rucksack onto his shoulder, picked up his other bag from the chair and opened the door. For a moment he paused, the open door in one hand, and looked back at Allissa across the room.
“I’ll tell your family you’re safe and well,” he said as though it was some kind of apology, “but don’t worry, I won’t tell them where you are.”
“Do what you like,” Allissa replied, unblinking, trying to keep her expression carefree although disappointment burned. “People always do,” she muttered to herself as Leo’s lumbering footsteps grew quiet down the corridor.
Chapter 74
Kathmandu airport smelled of lemon and damp. The building, a mid-twentieth century reminder of what Kathmandu was trying to be, teemed with people all wanting to leave the city.
Although the storm had yet to arrive, it was hinted at by the winds and rain which began to tear and streak. The skies around the mountain city swirled with electricity and anticipation.
No flights had left since the night before, choosing the safety of the ground over the turbulent air.
Most people sat bright and optimistic, chatting on benches or together on the floor. These were people at the start of their journeys. To them, the storm represented just another travelling story. The harder it is to get there, the better it’ll be when we do. For others, those mid-way through a longer journey who had already been on flights that spanned continents, this spirit had long since disappeared. They wore the look of battery hens, weary from days without real sleep, each moment of rest indicated by electric light and opportunity rather than the cycle of days.
To the back of the brightly-lit international departures hall, a smaller space for local flights within Nepal and trips up to the mountains sat in gloom. The lights that did work flickered, mimicking the nearing flashes in the sky outside. The room was quiet, as no flights would be leaving from this terminal in the coming days. The small planes had been taken off the runway and stored in their hangars some time ago. Even being exposed on the ground during the storm could damage their fragile bodies.
Between a sign advertising flights to the Himalayas and a humming vending machine stripped of its contents, sat Leo. Having discovered, arriving at the airport an hour before, that all outbound flights were cancelled, his brain throbbed. He sat on a metal bench, head in his hands, his mind swirling and pounding like the storm outside.
He needed to go. He needed to get out of this city. Coming here had been a terrible idea. He wasn’t the sort of person who could do this.
Focus, calm, breathe. Leo counted his breaths as self-doubt closed i
n.
Why had he thought this was a good idea? He couldn’t do this. This wasn’t him.
Staring morosely at the grime-darkened floor, he realised it wasn’t the thought of Jack, the moving dish or the spiralling pool of blood that bothered him the most. Neither was it, as he rubbed the palms of his hands across his face, the restaurant, the chase or the police.
Breathe in and out – calm, focus, clarity.
All he could think about, all that plagued his mind, twisting and clouding his thoughts to such an extent that he felt tightness occupy his chest, was Allissa. Allissa.
Finding her had been his success, he’d done it. For it only to go so badly, so wrong.
Should he have seen it coming? Could he have done any more? He knew cities could be dangerous, they always were, but how could he have known that was going to happen?
Breathe in and out – calm, focus, clarity.
But Allissa, he’d found her. That was a success, right? That was his only success, and that troubled him. Why had he found Allissa, only to almost lose her again? Beneath the worry, self-doubt and anxiety, he heard the beat of an instinct. An instinct which, despite everything else, demanded attention.
Something here just didn’t seem right. The question was, why had he succeeded in finding Allissa when everything else had gone so wrong?
Allissa had been the exception that proved the rule. She had been the one thing in the last week, the last year, in which he had succeeded.
Why, how, had he succeeded in finding her, only to fail at everything else?
Something Allissa had said the day before floated into his mind. The thought caused him to look up, to look through the rain-streaked windows, and see the tail lights of a plane cross the tarmac outside. Green and red strobes, blinking discs in the thick mist. But it was the words that stuck.
Just you wait, he’ll have a plan.
Chapter 75
Flying had never bothered Marcus Green. As part of his job, he’d flown across the world numerous times, frequently to unwelcoming places and under hostile conditions. But the flight into Kathmandu’s airport that evening, his knuckles draining of blood on the arm rest, was one he knew he’d remember.
Green braced for landing on the bouncing plane as streaks of lightning flashed past the windows. He knew normally planes wouldn’t land in these conditions, but to get across the mountains again in the storm would be even more dangerous.
Peering out into the darkness, the thick, grey, absolute darkness, Green watched the flicker of the plane’s underbelly strobes, occasional flashes from the sky and the red light on the end of the wing which seemed to twist and buckle in the impenetrable air.
At the moment of landing, the plane falling heavy on the runway, Green thought for a fleeting instant that it wasn’t the runway at all, but the hard and welcoming side of a mountain. It wasn’t until he heard the roar of the engines thrusting to slow and saw the distant glow of the terminal building that he started to breathe again properly. Wiping a hand across his forehead, he noticed it came away damp.
Outside, he and the other passengers, each pale, tired but thankful, were herded out into the driving rain and down the stairs on to the tarmac. A man in a bright yellow plastic jacket hurried them, each running, faces turned down against the rain, across to the terminal building only a few metres away.
Entering the steamy building, Green pulled out his phone and connected it to the local network. He needed to get in touch with the team back in London as soon as possible. He was lucky to have made it to Kathmandu. Two days in a hotel in Mumbai had been the other option. Now he had work to do.
Drifting through baggage claim and immigration, the adrenaline draining from his system, Green checked the phone a number of times. Nothing. In place of the network icon, two arrows spun around each other.
Walking towards the double doors, leading out into the rain-lashed evening, the sky ripped and turbulent, the phone finally beeped. Green paused, pulled it from his pocket and stepped aside to let others pass.
An e-mail from his editor glowed promisingly in the inbox. Green hoped it was news from the research team assigned to help. Reading the information it contained, Green took a deep lungful of air. The circus of the terminal dropped to a faint hubbub around him.
No wonder Stockwell wanted this hidden, Green thought, his eyes wide and breath caught. This wouldn’t just be him losing his job and reputation. This was prison.
Chapter 76
Leo might have wanted to leave Kathmandu, but Kathmandu wasn’t finished with him. Cursing, he got to his feet and pulled the hurriedly-packed bag back up on to his shoulders. The weather had closed in and no planes would be leaving the city for a while. But the storm wasn’t the only one with a score to settle, Leo thought, heading for the doors, his realisation still fresh in his mind.
“Man, how are ya? What’s happening?” Tau’s voice seemed distant ten minutes later as he answered Leo’s call. It was difficult to hear him over the rattle of the taxi and the pounding rain.
“Yeah, so much to tell you,” Leo said, leaning back into the seat as the taxi began to accelerate. The lights of Kathmandu again flashed past, just a blur behind the rain-soaked glass.
“I thought so, as I hadn’t heard from you all day,” Tau said.
Leo swallowed hard, trying not to be irritated by the insinuation as the taxi took a corner. The weather, poor visibility and soaking roads were clearly no reason to slow.
“Nah, listen, it’s not good,” Leo shouted into the phone against the rattling rain. “Meet me at Allissa’s guesthouse. It’s not good. I’ll explain when I see you.”
Leo heard Tau’s agreement and hung up. The rain was getting heavier. The city was in for a rough ride tonight.
Leo had thought he was leaving Kathmandu, but now the city was swallowing him once more. He again, as he had nearly a week before, watched the uniform buildings streak past. Thinking about the first journey he’d taken, wide-eyed as the unknown city flew past, Leo almost didn’t recognise it.
Yet again he had a job to do. The only difference was, this time he knew exactly what it was.
Chapter 77
A bulb began to blaze in the dark sprawl of back street passageways. To those who knew, it advertised the restaurant was open for business.
The passage was dark, it had been for hours, as the heavy leaden sky crushed light from the city long before it was due. The residents had closed their businesses and gone home with the arrival of the storm, securing windows and fastening shutters.
To the two men in the backstreet restaurant, preparing meat for their evening service, the day was like any other. Tourists would still make it out, they always did. Tonight, Himalayan Lamb was on the menu for the crowd who filled up their dark dining room.
Outside, moths started to orbit the bulb, swinging in the turbulent air. For forty years the bulb had called to the insects who darted around it. Dirty creatures who didn’t think about what they were doing, they just followed their instincts. The restaurant did the same for the travelling vagrants who ate behind the grimy door. That’s how the brothers contrived their living. If someone needed to be made to disappear in Kathmandu, they just needed to find their way to the restaurant. There was a fee, of course, but it was reasonable, considering the brothers handled everything, including disposal.
Preparing meat for the evening’s service, the brothers talked casually. They knew it would be busy. It always was, storm or no storm. Short, sharp knives moved expediently, separating bone from muscle and fat from flesh. They needed to hurry – customers would be arriving soon, and they would expect the famous Himalayan Lamb.
Both men were concerned about the two that got away. It was unexpected and unacceptable. The customer, the man they only knew by voice, would be disappointed. There was a loose end, and that was bad for everyone.
The brothers had considered staying closed for a few days, letting things settle, but decided not to. It’s not like the two who got away w
ould remember anything. The drugs in the smoke would have made sure of that.
The phone on the wall rang, piercing the silence.
The smaller of the two brothers answered, leaving the meat he was cutting on the counter. Blood dripped from his hands.
“Is it done?” said a distant voice.
“We kill two of them,” the brother said. The line crackled.
“Did you kill the girl and the young man with the long hair?”
He didn’t fully understand the question. Thirty years of working in a restaurant had only taught him English in patches.
“Old man and young man.”
The silence on the line fizzed over five thousand miles.
“You didn’t kill a girl?”
“No.”
“What happened to the girl?”
“She gone.”
The line disconnected.
Chapter 78
Standing at the sink in the small kitchen of the Teku Guesthouse, Allissa watched the storm lash the city behind the window. Filling the sink, warm water running over her hands, she admired the blurred filter the rain laid across her vision. Somehow it felt comforting, as though the rest of the city got to see life from her perspective for once.
She’d got back to the guesthouse just before the rain started and had been met with anxious hugs and questions by Chimini and Fuli. They’d been worried about her, they’d said, not coming home the entire evening. She’d promised that she was alright. There was nothing wrong, she’d just got carried away with the evening. She’d known from their smiles that they did not believe her, but they asked no more questions. They’d had dinner together, laughed as they normally did, Allissa trying to join in from behind her glaze of detachment.
As the warm water filled the sink and covered her hands, Allissa started to wash the plates they’d eaten from. Two more tourists had arrived at the guesthouse, Chimini and Fuli had told Allissa excitedly. They were a pair of young women and were staying for three nights. It was good news, they now had real money coming in. Money to eat and live and survive.
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