by Lee Weeks
‘What is it?’ she asked again.
He turned and smiled at her. ‘Just thinking, that’s all.’
‘About?’
‘Last night mainly. What is it with Mo and Alak about him having killed her son?’ He looked down from the platform. He could Run Run playing with the children; Alak was talking to Captain Rangsan in the clearing.
Sue lowered her voice. ‘I’ll tell you later.’
Beneath the ladder, the rest of the parties were beginning to congregate. Gee was sat on a log smoking in his self-contained manner—same red T-shirt, same red cap on his head. He looked to be in a contemplative mood. Nearby, Dok and Keetau were packing the provisions into their bundles and tying them onto bamboo straps. Mo had kitted them out with enough food to last the next five days of their journey. By then they should be at Gee’s village and able to get more supplies. Mann threw the rest of his coffee into the undergrowth. ‘Okay, I’m ready.’ He made a last check of his bag and followed Sue down the ladder.
‘Alak and I are discussing tactics.’ Louis looked up as they approached. They were hovering over a map drawn in the earth. ‘Alak has more news this morning,’ he added.
‘Yes. My scouts came here before dawn. Saw and the volunteers are no longer in the Golden Triangle. They have returned to this area. They are somewhere in these forests.’
‘That’s good,’ said Sue. ‘Isn’t it?’
Alak looked pensive. ‘Perhaps. But we do not know why.’
Louis pointed his stick in the dirt and etched a map.
‘Alak’s men will sweep around to the west; we’ll go east and meet in five days at Gee’s village. We will keep in touch by radio.’
‘Where’s our first destination?’ asked Mann.
Alak answered. ‘The old refinery, two days’ walk from here. I think Saw will have gone there. ‘ Alak had a final word with Captain Rangsan before he and the men picked up their equipment, strapped on their new weapons, and disappeared stealthily through the village and out into the jungle. The others stood in silence and watched them go. The silence was broken by Mo’s booming voice, berating Run Run about something. Run Run walked quickly towards them, her head bowed and her face set in stone. She had obviously heard enough from her mother.
‘You do that and you are no daughter of mine.’ Mo scrambled after her, hurrying to keep up with her. Run Run wheeled back around to face her.
‘I will not live my life like you, Mother! I want to be happy. I want to feel love. I would rather die than live a life without love…I am a thay-ne to you—a walking dead. I mean nothing to you.’
Mo had stopped dead in her tracks, shocked. She watched Run Run pick up her pack and throw it over her shoulders, stopping only to hug Phara and Kanya before starting out towards the jungle. She didn’t look back at her mother. For a few seconds Mo stood where she was, bewilderment and hurt on her face, then she swung around and scowled at Alak.
‘Pah…’ Mo looked at him and spat. ‘Don’t fuck up.’
Just as they started after Run Run, the dog began barking furiously, just out of sight on the edge of the camp. Everyone turned to look and to watch Mo’s reaction. She knew its barks as if they were a language. She started slowly towards the direction of the dog. This bark was of alarm, not an intruder, but something was frightening the dog.
Alak removed his gun from its holster. Mann moved Delilah from his boot to his hand and Alak, Louis and Mann walked towards the spot where the dog was still barking. They fanned out as they came near, approaching from three directions. Louis was the first of them to spot the soldier’s body.
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He was slumped over at the base of a tree. His head was bent back where he had fallen awkwardly. His eyes stared vacantly upwards. His mouth hung open, forming a cave for the flies to explore. His trousers lay around his ankles. It was the soldier who had pulled Phara onto his lap.
Louis knelt down to look him over. Mann bent down beside him.
‘Fucking religious crap.’ Louis snatched something from round the soldier’s neck and threw it into the bushes.
‘What was that?’ asked Mann.
‘Animist charms,’ said Louis. ‘Spirit appeasers. Fucking voodoo beads.’
He looked up at Mo, who had followed them with Phara. ‘How did he die?’ asked Riley.
Louis and Mann searched his body. They found one wound on the soldier’s chest. ‘This is what killed him,’ Mann said as he examined the wound closely. ‘It’s a clean deep cut, made by a fine stiletto-type blade, about an inch wide. There’s bruising either side of it, the knife had a hilt of some kind.’
‘Straight into the heart,’ said Louis. ‘Why wasn’t he missed this morning?’ Louis turned to ask Alak.
‘I sent him to look for the scouts last night. He doesn’t see many women. I didn’t want him causing a problem here in Mo’s camp. The scouts arrived without him; I knew he must have hit trouble. I did not expect it to be so close.’
‘It looks like he came out here when he was caught short,’ said Riley.
‘Not exactly,’ answered Mann, looking at the dried semen on the soldier’s leg.
‘What shall we do?’ asked Sue, her voice sounding panicky.
‘We have no time to find out who killed him or why,’ said Mann. ‘We’ll have to leave his body here for Mo to deal with. We have no choice. We are together now for good or bad. If one of us is a murderer we will find out soon enough.’
‘Yes,’ Alak agreed, picking up his gun and slinging it over his shoulder, ready to leave. ‘We must hurry now.’
They carried the soldier’s body to the medical hut and now, with the sun already high in the sky, they had to hurry to make up for lost time. They picked up their packs and followed Alak as he turned and led them out of the village. Mann looked back to see Mo cutting an anxious, lonely but stoic figure at the village entrance as she watched them go.
After they left, Mo went to tend to the soldier’s body. It must be given the proper rights to appease the spirits. His death, which had taken place in such a violent manner, would bring a curse on the village and his spirit would haunt them all. Phara helped her and together they removed his clothes and prepared his body. They washed him and removed his intestines, then anointed his body with palm oil before wrapping it in strips of white fabric.
‘A blood sacrifice must be made.’
Mo picked up her knife and went to the pig pen below her house. There she grabbed one of the small pigs and thrust the knife into its heart.
‘Tonight we will eat the pig and appease his spirit. We will give it passage to heaven.’
The soldier’s body was carried to a funeral pyre, high up on a sacred mound a half a mile away. Ten of Mo’s women accompanied her whilst the rest stayed in the village.
The brightness of the soldier’s body as it burned lit the evening sky. It was the inadvertent signal that the Burmese army captain, Boon Nam, needed. Mo had taken her best fighters to carry the soldier on his long journey up to the sky. She had left behind Phara to cook the pig in preparation for the evening and to look after the camp. The camp was unprotected.
From their positions on the ground Kanya and the dog were the first to feel the earth beneath them tremble at the approach of many feet. The dog listened; it twisted its head and gave a series of small alarmed barks and then it looked at Kanya. Both of them looked towards the sky. Birds were rising, monkeys were squawking. The dog’s hackles went up. One by one, the other children stopped playing and came to stand with Kanya and the dog. An old woman stood in her doorway and called to them.
‘What is it? Is it Mo returning already?’
Phara stopped turning the pig on its spit. Her eyes went first to one side of the camp and then the other. The jungle was moving all around them. Then she saw the flash of a gun, she heard the crack of twigs breaking beneath army boots, and she shouted to the children, ‘Run, run, run!’
They scampered into the jungle; most were hacked to pieces as they ran into the
waiting soldiers. The old woman was killed where she stood. Phara was pinned to the ground by Boon Nam’s men and gangraped whilst her face was forced towards the fire to watch not the pig on the spit, but Kanya, suspended upside down and roasted alive.
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Mann and the others headed west and followed a small tributary of the river. The night came thick and fast and Alak called a halt to the march when they could no longer see well enough to walk. They cleared an area of the bank twenty feet from the fast-flowing river and made a makeshift camp. The place was cleared of snakes and insects, hammocks were slung between trees and a fire was lit. Run Run and Gee took out the pots from the porters’ packs and began preparing the meal of rice and a thick vegetable sauce. The mood was pensive. They had spent much of the morning discussing the soldier’s death and come to no conclusion. They were all together now for good or bad, till the end.
An hour later, Mann found himself with Sue in the river. Her clothes were already hanging from a branch. As he approached, she waded deeper into the water.
‘So, tell me the story,’ Mann said. ‘What was that all about with Mo and Alak?’
Sue kept her shoulders submerged beneath the skin of the water as she answered him.
’Run Run, Alak and Saw Wah Say were all friends as children. Like Alak said, he and Saw were taken away to fight as youngsters and then to help run the refinery. It seems that Saw was in love with Run Run and so was Alak. Alak is a Buddhist and Mo wouldn’t allow the marriage. Saw was a Christian and she said yes, but Run Run didn’t want it. The two men lived side by side like brothers both after the same girl.
‘From what I heard, in their years at the refinery, they committed many terrible crimes between them—raping, killing, high on drugs—it was a mad time. After the refinery changed hands and they were kicked out, they returned briefly to the village. As Alak said, there was nothing to return to for Saw; his family were all either dead or gone. He stayed with Alak but that brought everything to a head, and he tried to rape Run Run. Alak nearly killed him but, in the process, Run Run’s brother tried to help. He got in the way and he was killed. We don’t know how. No one knows exactly what happened that day, only the three of them. Since then, Saw has been on the run, getting wilder, apparently. Mo will always hate Alak. All I know is that Alak and Run Run can never be together—it is forbidden. But it doesn’t mean they don’t love each other.’
As Sue was talking, Mann was staring at her. She looked beautiful, like King Arthur’s ‘Lady of the Lake’, the moonlight tracing the curve of her breasts and silhouetting her bare shoulders. Her hair, loose now, pooled on top of the water, gold turned to liquid platinum in the moonlight. Mann was almost lost for words.
‘Talking of love…’ said Mann. ‘You’ve known Riley for a long time, haven’t you?’
She smiled. ‘We are good friends, Johnny. We have been through a lot together. I love him like a brother now.’
‘Does he know that?’
‘Yes, he does. We split up ages ago; we only live together out of convenience.’ Mann took a step closer towards her and she rose a little out of the water. He cupped some water in his hands and poured it over her shoulders. The water dripped from the tips of her erect nipples; her breasts had goosebumps. There was a rustle of noise behind them.
‘Dinner is ready.’ Riley appeared on the riverbank behind them. Sue dived back under the water.
‘Thanks, Riley, coming.’
‘Okay, look away, boys, I’m coming out…’ She waded out of the water, naked.
Mann had no intention of looking away. Riley scrabbled to find her clothes but Sue was in no hurry to cover up. Riley looked as if he was seething, and he wasn’t going anywhere.
‘Did you need to borrow the phone again?’ Mann asked him. ‘Go ahead, it’s in my bag.’
Riley hesitated. ‘No, you’re all right, mate. Not tonight. Thanks for lending to me last night, hope you didn’t mind. It all got a bit lively at the table.’
‘I don’t mind. As long as we keep it to emergencies. The battery on those things isn’t massive and there’s nowhere to recharge it out here.’
‘Oh yeah.’ Riley paused. ‘I needed to speak to a new guy in charge at the camp…I just have to keep an eye on stuff, that’s all…’
‘Just wanted to make sure there haven’t been any more incidents.’
‘Face it, Riley. You’re just a control freak, aren’t you?’ Sue smiled at him affectionately and gave his arm a squeeze as she finished dressing. She picked up her bag and started walking back up to the camp. ‘The camp will be fine, Riley. They won’t attack it twice in such a short space of time.’
He shook his head and shrugged as he smiled after Sue. ‘Yeah, you’re right—as always. But you know me—I just have to make sure.’
‘You coming?’ Sue asked them both. Mann shook his head; he didn’t intend to be hurried. He walked out of the water and started drying himself.
‘Five minutes,’ answered Riley. ‘I just want to have a word with Johnny.’
Mann started getting dressed. Riley waited until Sue was out of earshot before he spoke.
‘Look, mate, this isn’t some fucking camping trip for singles dating. We are here to do a job. I know Sue. She can get hurt easily. She looks tough but inside she is very fragile.’
Mann held up his hand.
‘Let me stop you there, Riley.’ Mann’s temper was like a lit candle inside him, always burning, never going out; and occasionally someone came along to breathe gasoline on it. ‘Don’t ever fucking tell me what I can and can’t do. I will do my job and anyone else’s who doesn’t make the grade and don’t think for one second that I will take my eye off you, Riley. You lied to me when I asked you about Louis in the camp. You said you didn’t know him very well—that’s bollocks. You lied to me about the kids having their own transport. The soldier who you had words with yesterday was murdered just feet from where you were on the radio last night. To my mind, you have to be the number one suspect here.’
‘It’s not how it looks. I didn’t want to get Louis or myself into shit for maybe bypassing a few rules when it came to qualifications. Louis isn’t the normal type but I wanted to give him the work. And don’t talk to me about that soldier’s death. You carry a knife just like the one used to kill him.’
‘Yeah, but you know who the killer in stories never is, Sherlock? It is never the fucking detective who comes halfway around the world to help. Who it turns out to be is a local with a motive. And maybe that’s you, Riley. As far as I can see, you’re a liar. You lied to me once and you will do it again. Now, until I make sense of what’s going on, I won’t believe a word you say. We have five missing kids and as many loose ends as a bowl of spaghetti right now. I still don’t know where you fit in to all of this, or why you wanted to come on this mission, but, believe me, I will. By the end of this “camping trip”, as you call it, we will all know each other much better. And, Sue and I? That’s none of your fucking business.’
Mann finished dressing and picked up his bag before heading back up towards the camp. Riley was left at the water’s edge. He stood there for a moment, then ran to catch up with Mann.
‘Sorry, mate.’ He held out his hand for Mann to shake. Mann did not take it and he retracted it after an awkward few seconds. ‘Believe me when I say I had nothing to do with the soldier’s death. I haven’t got a fucking clue who killed him or why. But you’re right. Sue and I have been over a long time. I just feel protective towards her, that’s all. But, of course, she can more than handle herself and it’s no bloody business of mine.’
‘Let’s just get on with the job, Riley. Even if you did come on this mission just to stop me making advances to your ex-girlfriend. A handshake won’t get you off my list of suspects.’
‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous,’ Riley scoffed. ‘I came because I thought you might need me. Whatever else you think of me, you have to realise that this is my world. I don’t want it shat on. Where do I go if all this di
sappears? If we don’t find those kids alive then nothing will be the same here and here is all I care about. I will do everything I can to preserve it.’
He was right, admitted Mann. Thailand attracted people like Riley. They might be escaping from the past but they cared passionately about hanging on to their present.
As they rejoined the others, Alak was busy talking on the radio. Sue was waiting for them and scanned their faces anxiously. Mann gave her a smile and shook his head, as if to say there was nothing to worry about. She looked relieved. Riley was about to say something when Sue put her hand up for silence.
‘Wait…’ She was listening to Alak’s conversation.
‘Something’s wrong. Alak’s on the radio to Mo. I heard him ask her about details of an attack.’
Run Run was waiting at Alak’s side to speak to her mother. She bowed her head and her shoulders shook with sorrow as she listened to her mother’s account of the attack, then she handed the receiver back to Alak. He wound up the conversation, stooped briefly to comfort Run Run, and then came over to update the others.
‘There has been an attack on Mo’s village.’ His face was dark with anger. ‘Boon Nam has killed many women and children.’
‘Mo?’ asked Riley. ‘Is she all right?’
‘He could not have known who she was. If he had known she was the infamous fighter, responsible for wiping out many Burmese army regiments, he would have made sure he killed her. As it was, he sought to punish her for allowing foreigners to stay in her village.’
‘How many dead?’ Riley asked.
‘Thirty. The school burnt. The houses destroyed.’
‘Bastards,’ said Riley bitterly.
‘That means they are on to us,’ said Mann. ‘They know we are here and why.’
Alak nodded. ‘It means that the Burmese junta knows about the kidnapping and is helping Saw. We are going to be attacked from all fronts—anyone who knows or helps us will be slaughtered.’