The Payback

by Simon Kernick

  ‘Come on, Mick, you didn’t want to do this for ever, did you?’ she asked incredulously when I’d knocked that particular suggestion. ‘You’re too good for this.’

  But the point was, I did, because the alternative – going back to the UK – simply couldn’t happen. I suppose I’d always known in the back of my mind that something like this was inevitable, yet I’d chosen to ignore it. We argued and, with her being strong-willed, she announced that she was going back anyway, telling me that if I loved her, I’d come back too.

  It was a terrible position to be put in. I tried to persuade her to change her mind, saying I was the owner of a business, that I was happy here in the sunshine, and that she and the baby would be too if we only gave it a chance. For her part, she continued to try to persuade me that England offered the best, most secure future for us and our unborn child.

  Eventually, we settled into an uneasy détente, neither of us wanting the arguments to destroy our relationship before it had had a chance to grow, and life continued with the two of us living apart. But then Emma announced that her parents were planning to visit, and wanted to come with her to Ko Lanta for a short holiday, and to meet me.

  So it was with a heavy heart and a growing feeling of dread that I met them off the ferry a couple of weeks later.

  Straight away, I knew her father didn’t like me. A short, rail-thin man in his late sixties who dressed like he’d just come from the eighteenth hole, he regarded me with barely suppressed suspicion from the moment we shook hands, his eyes scouring me for confirmation of my unsuitability. His name was Stephen, and he made a point of emphasizing the second syllable as if I might forget myself and insult him by calling him Steve. Emma’s mum, Diane, was the complete opposite, a cheery, smiling woman a few years younger who gave me a welcoming hug and a kiss on both cheeks; but I hardly noticed because I was too worried about the old man. An accountant by profession, he was the classic retired busybody who read the papers from cover to cover, doubtless bemoaning the state of the country, someone I knew would have devoured every detail of a story about a renegade police officer implicated in at least six murders.

  Emma, on the other hand, seemed hugely happy to be introducing her parents to me, and talked with pride about our relationship, my business, and the good times we’d had together. Three months into the pregnancy, she was blooming, her face a picture of health, the bump not yet showing. Acting like a woman without a care in the world.

  After they’d settled into their hotel, half a mile down the road from where I had my bungalow, we went for a late lunch, and then I drove them round the island in a jeep I’d borrowed from a friend, showing them the various sights. It turned out to be quite a pleasant afternoon, mainly because I managed to avoid talking too much to the old man. At the same time, he seemed to be on his best behaviour, asking me the odd question about the business and my background, but mainly keeping his own counsel.

  But when we met for dinner that night, I could tell he knew that something wasn’t quite right about me. He asked me more in-depth questions about my background – what I’d done in England; who I’d worked for; where my family were – a forced casualness in his tone that contrasted with the cold suspicion in his eyes. Diane playfully told him to stop interrogating me. Only Emma seemed to notice that something wasn’t quite right with her father.

  I tried to shrug it off, turning on the charm full throttle, asking questions of my own, discussing current affairs, putting my hand in Emma’s to demonstrate our closeness. But inside I was rattled, a situation that grew steadily worse as the evening progressed and I caught Stephen watching me out of the corner of his eye when he thought I couldn’t see him, as if he knew he’d seen me before and was trying to remember when and where.

  It was then that my panic gave way to something else. A numb resignation that my relationship with Emma and our unborn baby – my one true shot at happiness – was over. Her father might not have made the connection yet, but it was only a matter of time before he did. And then I wouldn’t just lose Emma. I’d effectively lose the rest of my life.

  Lying in bed that night, with Emma’s head nestled in the crook of my shoulder as I listened to the chirping of the cicadas in the long grass outside the window, I made my plan.

  The next morning, I told her I was feeling sick, and said that if she didn’t mind, I’d stay in bed a little longer and see if I could sleep it off. We’d only arranged to go to the beach with her parents so I could walk down to meet them later.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, touching my brow and looking concerned. ‘Take your time. I think they’ll be disappointed though. Especially my mum. She likes you.’

  ‘I like your mum too,’ I said, pulling her in closer, holding her for one last time, taking in her scent, the smell of shampoo in her hair, my hand running gently over the tiny bump as I silently said goodbye to a child I’d never meet, before finally letting her go.

  I’ll always remember how low and empty I felt as I watched Emma disappear out of the door with a grin and a wave, knowing that as long as I lived I could never set eyes on her again.

  Ten minutes later I was out of the bungalow carrying a holdall full of possessions, not even leaving a note behind. Using the car I’d borrowed the previous day, I drove down to the port and on to the car ferry, making my way to Krabi Airport. Six hours after that I was on an Air Asia flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh in Cambodia – the kind of destination where I’d be able to lie low while I worked out my next move.

  But things didn’t quite go according to plan. When I arrived at Phnom Penh Airport I was stopped at immigration, and before I knew it I was being taken down an adjoining corridor and into a windowless room by two silent men in uniform, who told me I was under arrest. When I asked on what charge, I was met with blank faces.

  I was locked inside the room and left to stew for what was one of the toughest hours of my life. I knew that somehow they’d found out who I was. I didn’t know how – although I suspected that my prospective father-in-law might have had a hand in it somewhere – but that was irrelevant right then. All that mattered was finding a way out of the situation. The problem was that there was no way out of it. I was trapped in an unfamiliar country with no weapon, no friends, and definitely no escape route.

  The door finally opened, and I remember my stomach lurching as a hatchet-faced Cambodian in the uniform of a military officer came in and sat down at the table opposite me.

  ‘My name is Lieutenant-Colonel Thom of the Royal Gendarmerie,’ he said in heavily accented but perfect English. ‘And your name is Dennis Milne.’

  ‘No,’ I said firmly, determined not to show any sign of the panic that was tearing up my insides. ‘My name is Marcus Baxter. It says so in my passport.’

  His face remained impassive. ‘You are Dennis Milne, and you are wanted by Interpol for murder. We can take a DNA swab from you and it will match the DNA of your family members back in Britain. You will be held in prison here in Phnom Penh while we await the results, and then you will be extradited back to your own country to face trial.’

  I felt the whole world closing in on me. This day had always been coming, but now that it was here, its true ramifications were still impossibly hard for me to comprehend. Only twenty-four hours earlier I’d been driving round the paradise island of Ko Lanta in an open-top jeep with the woman I loved sitting next to me. Now my life was effectively over, because as soon as they got me back in the UK I’d be behind bars for the rest of my natural life. Even death was preferable to that, and it took every ounce of self-control to stop myself from breaking down.

  So much so that I hardly heard Lieutenant-Colonel Thom’s next word.

  ‘Unless . . .’

  I stopped. Looked into his dark eyes. Wondered if this was a trick to get me to admit who I was. ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless you do exactly what I say. There is a possibility that things do not have to . . .’ He paused, as if choosing the right word. ‘Escalate. If you are
in agreement, then we are going to walk out of this door and go for a drive. Your passport will be left here. It will be destroyed. It is no use now anyway as the name on it has been identified as an alias used by you.’

  ‘But how will I be able to move around?’

  ‘You must ask no questions. You just do what I say. Yes?’

  I had no idea what I was getting myself into but figured that it had to be better than the situation I was already in. So I said yes.

  I felt as though I was in some kind of dream as Lieutenant-Colonel Thom led me down a series of corridors, through the baggage area where the holdall containing what few possessions I owned was waiting for me, through doors marked No Entry, and past grim-faced officials who simply nodded deferentially at him before finally emerging into a rear car park outside the main terminal building. A military Land Rover pulled up almost immediately and we both got in the back.

  As we drove out of the airport, I saw that the surrounding area was very different from the lushness of Thailand that I’d become used to. It was very flat and very dry, a patchwork of parched fields that were little more than red dust, with emaciated-looking palm trees poking up at various intervals like scarecrows, and scrawny cattle grazing by the roadside on what scrub they could find. This was the land of the Killing Fields: the barren, terrible place where the bones of thousands of victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide – men, women, children, even babies – lay buried beneath the soil. Thirty-plus years on there was still a vague, lingering feeling of evil in the hot, close air, as if the ghosts of the past had yet to be fully exorcised, and my mood continued to darken as we drove into Phnom Penh.

  The jeep wound through a maze of squalid, crowded streets until we came to a narrow, tree-lined boulevard of attractive brick and timber townhouses dating back to the French colonial era, the kind of architecture that Manila could only dream of. We stopped at a set of high double-gates, and a couple of seconds later they were opened from the inside by an armed guard in a blue uniform, with a rifle strapped to his back.

  A western man in a suit came out of the house and led Lieutenant-Colonel Thom and me into a sumptuous, classically decorated entrance hall. We were then split up, he and the man in the suit heading off into a backroom while I was directed through a side door and on to a pretty covered veranda that looked out on a small but beautifully kept and watered garden.

  I sat down in one of the wicker armchairs, and immediately my thoughts turned to Emma. I’d tried not to think too much about how she must be feeling now that she knew I’d gone, the look on her face as she slowly realized that I’d left her without a word of explanation. And then her dad putting two and two together before informing her that the father of the baby she was carrying was nothing more than a brutal murderer who’d spent the previous six years living a lie. I swallowed hard, fighting to keep down my emotions as I thought about the extent of my betrayal. How, in the space of a few hours, I’d managed to leave her life in utter ruins. I could imagine her weeping and inconsolable. The woman I loved. The woman I’d vowed to protect.

  I’ve hated myself many times in my life – that’s the cross you bear when you’ve sinned like I have – but never as much as I hated myself then, and I was shocked by the speed with which the intense wave of self-loathing enveloped me.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Milne,’ said a voice, interrupting my thoughts.

  And that was the moment I first met Bertie Schagel.

  ‘It’s good to meet you at last,’ he continued, squeezing into the wicker armchair next to mine, a glass of what looked like G&T in one meaty hand. ‘I’ve read a great deal about your exploits.’ He smiled in the vulpine manner I’ve since become used to, the smile of a man who knows he’s holding all the cards.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said instinctively, but there was no conviction in my tone.

  ‘There is no point lying,’ he told me. ‘I received a phone call from a contact in Bangkok who said you were on the plane. It seems that every police officer in South East Asia is suddenly after you. The photo of your face taken at Thai passport control has now been passed on to police forces across the region. You are in a very dangerous position, with no room for manoeuvre at all.’ He paused to take a sip of his drink, eyeing me over the rim of the glass.

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘I can still help you though, Dennis.’ His cunning eyes, an icy blue, glinted. ‘Do you mind if I call you Dennis?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘If you accept my offer, the following will happen. You will remain here for the next three days. There is a reliable staff here who will endeavour to make your stay as comfortable as possible. None of them know who you are, and Lieutenant-Colonel Thom can be trusted not to tell anyone. During this time, a whole new identity will be prepared for you, including a passport and driving licence. I will also organize a prosthetics expert to make some further cosmetic changes to your features so that you will be able to move around freely again. Finally, I will supply you with a Panamanian bank account into which ten thousand dollars in cash will be deposited to – what is it you English say? – get you back on your feet.’

  ‘It sounds a very attractive offer, Mr Schagel,’ I said at last, my voice cracking just a little.

  ‘It is. The best, in fact the only one, that you are going to get.’

  ‘And what do you expect in return?’

  He put his drink down on the table and regarded me closely. ‘Sometimes I have a need for the type of service you provide – the elimination of certain people who have become a threat or a hindrance to certain other people. I will only need such services on occasion, and will pay you a fair market rate each time that I do. The remainder of the time you will be free to do as you please, although I insist on always knowing where you are based. I am a fair employer, and prefer my employees to be happy, but should you decide at any point that you do not like working for me and try to disappear, then I will make the authorities fully aware which alias you have been travelling under and will put all my resources into making sure you are either imprisoned or eliminated. Do you understand?’

  I nodded. It was pretty self-explanatory.

  He put out a hand. ‘So, you will agree to work for me, yes?’

  The fact was, he had me over a barrel and, as he’d pointed out himself, I wouldn’t be getting any other offers. I felt mildly nauseous at the prospect of going back to killing people for money after I’d left that whole life behind and started afresh back in the legitimate world, but in reality I had little choice. Needs must when the devil comes calling, and right then he was sticking his hooves straight through my front door.

  With a heavy heart, I’d put out my own hand and we’d shaken on the deal.

  And now, three years later, here I was sitting on a bed in yet another hotel room, although somewhat superior to the one I’d been in the previous night. It was 11.30 p.m. and I was drinking a San Miguel – the local Filipino brew. I was tired, but also restless, and thinking far too many melancholic thoughts. I was wondering whether O’Riordan and his partner had been in love, in the way I’d been with Emma, and concluded from the way the partner (a man whose name I would never know) had gone for me in a grief-stricken rage that they must have been. And I’d destroyed it.

  ‘I’m sorry, hon,’ I said aloud to the wall, addressing Emma as I still did sometimes when I was alone.

  I wondered once again where she and our child were now. Emma would have found someone else, I was sure of that. She had too much personality, too much spirit, to be on her own for too long. Our child – for some reason I always imagined him as a son – would be two now. I imagined the three of them together. A tight-knit family tucked up round a warm, roasting fire, the kind I hadn’t seen for years now. I pictured Emma and her new man kissing; making love in front of that roaring fire; my son, walking now, smiling and calling him Daddy . . .

  I drained the beer, knowing I had to stop torturing myself, and got myself another. I drank t
hat one far too quickly. Then I picked up the copy of the Manila Post that had been left in the room and skimmed through it, conscious that there was no mention of the murder of one of their journalists yet. That would come tomorrow. I concentrated on the articles, working hard to keep the black cloud of melancholy at bay, though it continued to sit waiting on the edge of my field of vision.

  The new mobile I’d bought that afternoon to replace the iPhone rang. Since only one person other than me had the number, I knew the caller would be Schagel.

  He asked me if I’d picked up the email message with the details of the new target.

  I told him I had.

  ‘Good. I can now confirm that she is arriving tomorrow on Singapore Airlines flight SQ910, landing at Ninoy Aquino Airport Terminal L1 at 1.25 p.m. local time.’

  I found a pen and paper on a desk by the window and wrote the information down, the booze making my handwriting shaky.

  ‘I want you to meet her there, follow her to whichever hotel she goes to, and make sure she checks in. It’s imperative you don’t lose her. Understood?’

  He seemed more agitated than usual, his cold arrogance noticeably absent, and I wondered yet again if everything was OK.

  ‘Understood. But how do we know she’s not being met by officials at the airport?’

  ‘She isn’t. Her business in Manila is unofficial.’

  I was surprised at how much Schagel knew about her movements but didn’t say anything. I knew he had his methods.

  ‘And remember, if you do what needs to be done on this job, you can leave my service afterwards. You have my word.’

  I thought about Tina Boyd – a woman, a police officer, someone who doubtless had loved ones of her own. People whose lives would be crushed savagely and permanently by my actions if I carried out the job.

  And then I thought once more about the prospect of retirement. Of running my business in the hills of northern Laos, safe from prying eyes; of never having to be at the beck and call of anyone again.