Those Who Feel Nothing

by Peter Guttridge

  ‘If we could get back to the question of these objects in the basement …’ Gilchrist said.

  Rafferty ignored her. ‘Mainly, though, indigenous people flog the artefacts off or learn how to copy them and rip the West off with forgeries,’ he continued.

  ‘The objects in the Pavilion?’ Heap repeated.

  Rafferty steepled his fingers. ‘Whoever bought these things has ensured they will be protected, celebrated and saved for the future.’

  ‘They were hidden in a tunnel,’ Gilchrist said. ‘I think the only person who would have been celebrating these things was whichever wealthy private collector bought them.’

  Rafferty said nothing.

  ‘You sure it wasn’t you?’

  Rafferty leaned forward. ‘You know, I thought you were here to tell me what’s happening with this other thing.’

  ‘We’re evaluating.’

  ‘Evaluating?’

  ‘Yes. Then we pass our papers on to the Crown Prosecution Service and they decide whether to take it further.’

  ‘And the charges?’ Rafferty said.

  ‘Will be decided upon when the evaluation is complete,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘As a matter of fact, sir,’ Heap said, ‘it would help us reach some decisions and speed up the evaluation process if you were willing to undergo evaluation yourself.’

  ‘What kind of evaluation?’ the lawyer said.

  Rafferty pointed at him. ‘Earning his money, you see,’ he said.

  The lawyer pursed his lips.

  ‘A psychological one,’ Gilchrist said.

  Rafferty laughed an exaggerated, high-pitched laugh, rocking a little. He stopped abruptly. ‘To see if I’m sane enough to testify, you mean?’

  ‘Not precisely that, no,’ Gilchrist said. ‘And it will just be part of the mix.’

  ‘Do you think I’m sane, Clarence Darrow?’ Rafferty called to his lawyer.

  ‘Of course,’ the lawyer said shortly. ‘You’re as sane as the rest of us.’

  Rafferty sneered. ‘That leaves quite a lot of leeway,’ he said.

  ‘Are you willing to be assessed, Mr Rafferty?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘What do you think, Clarence?’ he said to his lawyer.

  ‘It’s your decision,’ the lawyer said. ‘You’re not legally obliged to submit to any evaluation until and unless you’ve been convicted. Reports are usually asked for at that stage to assist sentencing.’

  ‘This evaluation will help us decide whether we proceed at all,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘There’s some doubt?’ the lawyer said quickly.

  ‘We’re trying to establish the facts,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Until we do so there is neither doubt nor certainty.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Rafferty said. ‘If I can do it here. I don’t particularly want to leave my little bolthole. The public and the press have shown a surprising amount of interest in this matter.’

  ‘We can arrange for the psychologist to come here,’ Gilchrist said. ‘But let me just go back to these artefacts discovered in the storeroom underneath the Royal Pavilion. Are you denying you put them there?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Do you know who did put them there?’

  ‘Since I didn’t know they were there I can hardly be expected to know the answer to that, can I?’

  ‘Can you think who might have put them there?’

  ‘Aside from God, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, you mean?’

  When you were younger you were scared of no man. You would steam in against anyone. But now you have to be more careful. More cunning. Especially with the drink you’ve been consuming lately. You haven’t counted today – when did you? – but you know you are teetering on the edge of recklessness.

  You take a deep breath. You are pretty sure the breeze that is shivering the bamboo is a through draught from somebody opening a door or a window in your room. Maybe more than one person. Maybe in your bathroom. You’re pretty sure Sal Paradise has sent him or them back to finish the job.

  You are wrong. Your bathroom is empty. You set the chain on the door. Your phone is ringing again.

  ‘You dropped two bombshells on me,’ Bob Watts says. ‘First, that someone killed your wife. Second, that you have a bloody wife.’ He laughs. ‘I didn’t know you’d even been married. Hell, I didn’t even know you were straight.’

  You rub your face and work your jaw for a moment. ‘It was a long time ago. And it wasn’t for long.’

  ‘Jimmy, I don’t know what is going on with you here.’

  ‘What is going on with me is I find the men who killed my wife are still alive when I thought them dead. I find that one or more have been living in the same town as me. In Brighton.’

  ‘They run this antiques shop?’

  ‘Certainly one of them is linked. Will Rogers. But I don’t know if he’s there or here. Some investigator I am if he’s there. How many times do I go down the Lanes, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Hardly ever, I would think,’ Watts said consolingly. ‘You never get beyond the Cricketers, do you?’

  Your laugh turns into a sigh.

  ‘You thought these men were dead?’ Watts says.

  You grunt.

  ‘And you want revenge. I understand that. But there’s more to this than your desire for retribution. We can use legal means.’

  ‘Just find out about them, would you?’

  ‘Sure – but do you hear what I’m saying about legal means of bringing them to justice?’

  ‘I’ve been hearing about exploring legal means all my life, Bob. For me it’s just an excuse for inaction.’

  ‘Not on this occasion.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Me, James.’

  A beat.

  ‘Just make discreet inquiries, old friend,’ you say. ‘Please.’

  Watts breaks the connection but you keep your phone to your ear and make little grunts as if you are still listening to him. You are standing by your bed. You are pretty certain there is someone standing behind you. A creak on the floorboards, a quiet exhalation of air, a change in pressure in the room – you don’t know what has alerted you, but you know you are right.

  You take a chance.

  ‘The vodka is in the fridge, Will,’ you say half over your shoulder. ‘Help yourself.’

  ‘What is she saying?’

  Gilchrist was standing by the window in her office looking down at the blustery promenade when Heap approached. It had been a very long day and her brain was turning into spaghetti.

  She turned to Heap. ‘The Asian woman – what is she saying?’

  Heap shook his head. ‘She isn’t making too much sense, ma’am. Her son disappeared. We have him down as a missing person. As I mentioned to you before, a fortune teller told her he had died but he would return on Madeira Drive or in one of several pubs in town. She’s been going into pubs and buying a pint for him for when he comes back.’

  ‘How did she move from that to cutting her wrists?’

  Heap spread his hands. ‘That’s the part she’s a bit confused about.’

  Gilchrist nodded.

  ‘She did a bad job of it,’ Heap said. ‘But most people get it wrong.’

  Gilchrist raised an eyebrow. ‘There’s a right and a wrong way?’

  ‘You cut along the vein, not across it, to be most effective.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘I can’t imagine why you would need to,’ Heap said.

  ‘Why not?’ Gilchrist said, vaguely flattered. ‘You don’t think I’d ever be tempted to kill myself?’

  Heap shook his head decisively.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You wouldn’t let the rest of us off so easily, ma’am.’

  Gilchrist watched Heap flush, then said: ‘Let me come and have a word with her.’

  ‘Her name is Prak Chang. Her missing son is called Youk.’

  Prak Chang’s wrists were bandaged. There were spots of blood on her smart jacket.
/>   ‘I come here twenty-five years ago,’ Prak said in halting English. ‘I carried Youk.’

  ‘Did you come here with his father?’

  She shook her head. ‘No father.’

  ‘He was dead?’

  ‘No father,’ she repeated. She picked at a red mark on the back of her hand with a long purple nail. Not blood; it looked like some sort of eczema.

  ‘Did you enter the country illegally?’ Heap said.

  ‘I have passport,’ she said indignantly. ‘I nurse.’

  ‘You’ve been working as a nurse in this country?’ Heap said.

  Prak nodded. ‘Private nursing home.’

  ‘We’ll need the name of it,’ Heap said. ‘For our records.’

  ‘You still work in a private nursing home?’ Gilchrist said.

  Prak shook her head. ‘Now I run it.’

  ‘You had family here when you arrived?’

  ‘No family.’ Prak leaned forward. ‘In my country many people have no family since the Khmer Rouge. It split up families. And killing. Lot of killing.’

  ‘You lost your family in the seventies?’

  ‘Everyone. Brothers, sisters, parents, uncles and aunts.’ She scratched at her hand. ‘My father was a doctor.’

  ‘How did you survive?’ Gilchrist asked gently. ‘You must only have been a child.’

  Prak looked down, the purple nail never stopping its scratching. ‘If people really want to survive they find ways.’ She dropped her voice. ‘I find a way.’

  ‘That was many years before you came here.’

  Prak looked up, her face hard. ‘People never stop looking. They don’t know whether families are alive or dead. So many years after they still don’t know. They still hope. Old people like me trudging through malaria jungles searching for their missing families. Disappointed in refugee camps that have turned into towns after so many years. We have a TV programme now. Reality TV. Long-separated families reunited. Very popular among older viewers.’

  ‘Where is Youk’s father?’

  ‘No father,’ she repeated.

  ‘There must have been,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Do you mean he’s dead?’

  The woman looked at her with the same intent expression on her face. ‘I do not know who the father is.’

  Heap interrupted. ‘What prompted you to leave Cambodia and come here?’ he said.

  ‘A fortune teller in Battambang.’

  ‘Told you to leave Cambodia?’

  ‘I cut the cards seven times and she told me the child I carry is a boy. Youk. She told me to take him to a place of greater safety.’

  ‘She warned you about giving birth in Cambodia?’

  She looked down at her hand, bright red now from where she had been scratching it. ‘She said he would die in Cambodia.’

  The irony hung heavy for a moment.

  ‘The fortune teller here tells me a man often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.’

  ‘The appointment in Samarra,’ Heap murmured.

  ‘What?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘A man in Baghdad sees Death staring at him in the marketplace and thinks it means his time has come. He borrows a horse to escape his appointment with Death. That night he arrives in Samarra and the first person he meets is Death. He complains to Death: “I saw you staring at me in Baghdad. I thought my appointment with you was there. Why am I meeting you here?” Death says: “I was staring because I was surprised to see you in Baghdad. My appointment with you was always in Samarra.”

  ‘You think Youk couldn’t evade his destiny?’ Gilchrist said to Prak. ‘Is that because the same people you tried to get away from in Cambodia found him here?’

  Prak looked immediately suspicious. ‘Who said there were people I tried to get away from?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Gilchrist said, showing her palms. ‘I thought that’s what you meant about the fortune teller advising you to leave Cambodia for somewhere safer.’

  Prak looked down. She remained silent until Heap said: ‘Tell us about the last time you saw Youk.’

  ‘He lived with me. He came home after work and he went out and he never came back.’

  ‘Do you know where he went?’

  Prak nodded. ‘A house in the Lanes.’

  ‘The north Lanes?’ Gilchrist said, puzzled. She didn’t think there were any houses in the main Lanes. ‘Whose house?’

  Prak looked equally puzzled by Gilchrist’s question. ‘A beer house.’

  Heap twigged first. ‘A public house,’ he said.

  Prak nodded again. ‘Bath Arms,’ she said.

  ‘Was he meeting someone there?’ Heap said.

  Prak shrugged. ‘He drank beer there often.’

  ‘He was a regular?’ Heap again.

  ‘I think so. I leave a drink for him there but he never drink it.’

  Gilchrist frowned. ‘Now, you mean?’ she said after a moment.

  ‘Fortune teller thinks he return either to pub or beach.’

  ‘The pub I understand, but why the beach?’ Gilchrist said. ‘Did he go to that part of the beach a lot?’

  ‘There was a nightclub there.’

  ‘Who was this fortune teller?’ Heap said. ‘Do you have his or her contact details?’

  ‘He has a place on the seafront in one of the arches.’

  ‘Cambodian?’

  ‘Yes. He advised Tallulah Bankhead.’

  Gilchrist frowned at Heap.

  ‘That’s the Romany place,’ he said. ‘Xavier Petulengro – but I think it’s a brand name. His grandparents probably advised Tallulah.’

  ‘Tallulah is a film star, yes?’ Prak said.

  ‘And a very naughty girl,’ Heap murmured.

  ‘Petulengro doesn’t sound Cambodian to me,’ Gilchrist muttered.

  ‘I think different fortune tellers hire it by the half day or day,’ Heap said.

  ‘What kind of work did Youk do?’ Gilchrist asked Prak.

  ‘Labour. He loaded and unloaded things at Shoreham.’

  ‘And he worked for the port authority or for a company using the port?’

  Prak’s eyes never left Gilchrist’s face as she thought about the question.

  ‘All I know is that he worked there.’

  Gilchrist nodded. ‘All right, Prak. Now, have you anything more to say about your suicide attempt?’

  ‘My life for his,’ she said simply.

  ‘You don’t know what has happened to him,’ Gilchrist said. ‘If he is alive he would not want to return and find you dead. And if, by some sad chance, he is dead then your death would achieve nothing.’

  ‘If he is dead it would bring me to him,’ Prak said. ‘I have nothing but my son. I am nothing without my son. My one good thing.’

  Gilchrist gave her a rueful smile. ‘We’ll have someone take you home. And we’ll do our best to find out what happened to your son.’

  ‘Youk,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. We’ll find out what happened to Youk.’

  Prak put her purple-nailed finger below her eye. ‘This programme on Cambodian television. I could never do that. Families are reunited with much emotion. A lot of tears. It is moving but it is show business. Reconciliation is a personal thing.’ She touched the side of her eye. ‘Beside, I have no more tears to cry.’

  Gilchrist and Heap were just leaving the station when Karen Hewitt called them over to the front desk. A tall, tanned, broad-shouldered man in a dark suit was standing beside her, dwarfing her.

  ‘Sarah, I was just about to phone you. This gentleman is asking for you.’

  Gilchrist looked the man up and down. And up again.

  ‘I’m asking for you if you’re the officer in charge of the investigation into stolen artefacts,’ he said. He had an American accent. He smiled and held out his hand. ‘George Merivale, FBI.’

  She shook his hand, then introduced Heap. ‘We’re not exactly investigating the stolen artefacts,’ Gilchrist said. She frowned. ‘But how do you know about them?’

  �
��They showed up on one of our lists and that set off a signal in our system.’ He smiled again. ‘Didn’t you put them up there?’

  She shook her head. ‘I might have looked at the Ten Most Wanted database once on a slow day.’

  He smiled again. Flawless American choppers.

  Gilchrist looked at Heap. ‘Did you?’

  Heap shook his head. ‘Probably the curator at the Pavilion,’ he said. ‘Ms Rutherford.’

  ‘Bit out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you, Agent Merivale?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘George, please. Actually, I’m not. I work with UNESCO. Pretty much a worldwide remit.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Listen, I don’t suppose I could explain my business over a drink if you’re nearly done for the day? I’m staying at some feng shui hotel opposite your library in Jubilee Square.’

  ‘Very nice,’ Gilchrist said. She knew the rooms in the exceedingly modern four-star hotel only from hearsay but she had drunk in its bar, with its banks of giant screens showing eccentric images and its fish tanks in each corner.

  Gilchrist glanced at Hewitt. Hewitt inclined her head.

  ‘Perhaps a coffee,’ Gilchrist said.

  Hewitt’s restricted smile almost managed to be sardonic.

  In the hotel bar Agent Merivale ordered a pint of beer, Gilchrist ordered wine. Heap was havering but saw Gilchrist’s look. He also ordered a pint.

  ‘Not from California then?’ Gilchrist said as they got settled.

  Merivale frowned whilst they chinked glasses. ‘Actually, I am. What prompted that comment?’

  ‘I thought people only drank water over there – the health thing, you know.’

  He chuckled. ‘There are a few desperadoes around. We take our lead from Mad Men.’

  The actor Jon Hamm. That’s who he reminded her of. She could almost smell the pheromones.

  ‘What exactly is your remit?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘Tracking down stolen artwork. Artwork in the widest sense.’

  ‘Stolen from museums and so on?’ Gilchrist said.

  ‘And archaeological sites – open-air museums if you will. Ancient sites are being looted on an epic scale. Some are now little more than rubble as looters hunt for treasure.’

  ‘You think what we have here is some of that?’

  ‘I do. Cambodia is in the worst position. For centuries the ancient Khmer built stone temples for their different gods. Many of these temples are lost to the jungle. Profiteers who know where they are can rip statues and reliefs from the walls with impunity, destroying other remains in the process.’