Death in the Rainy Season

by Anna Jaquiery

  The spasms subsided and he found himself uttering a loud, ragged sigh of relief and thanking a God he didn’t believe in. Just when he’d thought he couldn’t take much more, this release had come. He sank back into his pillow. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. It was amazing how swiftly pleasure followed. To feel nothing was blissful.

  His watch told him it was a quarter to eight. That meant he’d slept barely three hours. Where had he ended up? He and Kate had gone from club to club, moving in a downward spiral from the semi-respectable to the positively dingy, before ending up at the seediest bar in town. He could remember the River Boat, a favourite with the local gay community. Music throbbing through his veins, the place so loud and crammed with people that you had to either surrender to the heaving dance floor or leave. He had surrendered willingly, Kate trailing behind him and hanging on to his shirt like she was afraid she might get left behind. They’d waded into a sea of pulsing, sweaty bodies and gyrated along with the rest of them to the deafening beat.

  And after that? They’d been to the Blue Lotus. Or was it the Gecko Club? Yes, that was it. A memory resurfaced: a Cambodian girl standing up on the bar counter in high heels, her skirt so short you could see right up her legs. She was alternately dancing and crouching like a tigress, all tensed up and ready to spring. Every once in a while she shrieked unaccountably, her made-up face contorted, red lips curled into a snarl. No one except him and Kate seemed to find this particularly unsettling.

  ‘I’d be scared if I was him,’ Kate had said, pointing to the kid whom the tigress had set her sights on. Well, not technically a kid; he was probably Adam’s age, early thirties. But he’d looked so naive sitting there in his polo shirt and baggy shorts, beaming at his taxi-girl like he’d won first prize. She crouched again and placed her hands on his shoulders, her fingernails digging into his shirt. She landed on his lap, straddling him. Before long, his fingers were at the back of her neck, playing with the knot that held up her halter top while she made a show of stopping him.

  No one else was looking at them. They could have had sex on the bar counter for all anyone cared, but it was beginning to piss Adam off. He wanted to drink without having to look at the pair of them making a spectacle of themselves.

  ‘Get a fucking room, will you,’ he said, and Kate laughed. But he could see she was excited. She couldn’t keep her eyes off them.

  Adam wasn’t too fond of Kate, and in any other circumstance they would never have found themselves drinking together. Hugo’s death had done this. It was ironic, in a way. Hugo had been dead for less than forty-eight hours and already Adam was stepping into his shoes. Consoling Kate, which was something only Hugo did.

  They had come into the office just after lunch on Monday. The French police attaché, whom Adam had met once at a party somewhere. A humourless, built-up sort of guy, like one of those marines you saw in American films. And a Cambodian policeman with a prosthetic limb.

  They had all listened in silence while the French attaché stood before them, the Cambodian officer to one side. Everyone except Kate, whose mouth had stretched into a wide O before she started wailing. She had sobbed at her desk, comforted by Julia de Krees. Everyone was upset; there were tears and there was a great deal of hugging. No one really knew what to do next until Julia proposed they close the office for the rest of the day so that everyone could go home to their families. For once, Adam thought, dull, practical Julia had done something they could all be thankful for.

  The others had left, mostly in pairs or small groups, heading for a place where they could sit down and talk about what had happened to Hugo. Adam excused himself and said he needed to be alone. Later, without telling anyone, Kate had gone to the Ardas’ house to tell Paul that his best friend had died. It had been wrong of Kate to go to Paul, but then she had never been tactful. Around eight, she had turned up at Adam’s, looking a complete mess, saying over and over that she couldn’t be left alone tonight, not for a minute.

  Why had he agreed to take her out? He owed her nothing. Because of some mild sadistic streak, he had picked the sort of place where he knew she would feel uncomfortable. The girls at the Gecko Club were probably laughing at her. She was wearing what she always wore, some hippie outfit that made her look more overweight than she was. Cheap earrings and open-toed Birkenstock shoes.

  They’d both had far too much to drink. At some point, Adam had looked at Kate and thought what a shame it was that she didn’t make more of an effort with her appearance. She could be quite pretty if she tried.

  He’d ended up taking her back to his place. A big mistake, as it turned out. He knew it was wrong even as he followed her up the stairs to his room. Still he couldn’t resist reaching out to touch her.

  Before he’d even had time to shut the door and unzip his trousers, Kate had stripped her clothes off. Next thing he knew, they were going at it like dogs in heat, like they’d been deprived for too long. Kate on all fours and him behind her on his knees, holding on to that fleshy arse of hers while she moaned so loud he worried she’d wake everyone in the building.

  Afterwards, he’d fallen asleep. He had no recollection of her leaving.

  The pain had jolted him awake. He’d looked at the time. Eight o’clock. Much too early. How many times had he doubled over in the past forty minutes? Ten, eleven? That must be the last of it.

  He propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at his pale, naked body. The ribs were clearly visible. Below his navel, a trail of black hair, becoming thicker at the groin. Legs as white as the sheets below. You’d never guess he lived in the tropics.

  He wondered, as he always did, whether he should see a doctor. It was ridiculous not to. Maybe it was an ulcer? Or something to do with gallstones? He had a vague memory of having had an ultrasound, many years ago. An Indian doctor telling him in a mild, lilting accent that he might want to get the stones removed someday.

  He had told Hugo about the pain once.

  ‘How long have these panic attacks been going on?’ Hugo had asked. They were together in his living room after dinner. Florence had gone to bed early, as she usually did. She was often tired. Adam thought it was probably due to her pregnancy, but she’d always seemed frail.

  ‘They’re not panic attacks.’

  ‘Talk to me. I can help.’

  ‘Leave it alone.’ For once, Adam didn’t want to know what Hugo had to say.

  ‘Look, never mind about all that,’ Hugo continued. ‘Focus on the work we’re doing here, now. That’s all that matters. I feel like I’m on top of the world here, you know? Like anything’s possible.’

  Adam knew Hugo’s father was dead and that he had very little to do with his mother.

  ‘She’s a silly, superficial woman,’ he’d told Adam once. ‘I find it hard to stomach her.’ Harsh words, but then Adam was hardly one to judge other people’s attitudes towards their families. He hadn’t told anyone about his. Some things were too ugly to voice. Maybe it was the same for Hugo.

  Everyone had secrets. It was just that some were harder to carry than others. Some secrets sank so deep into your conscience that they ceased to trouble you. Almost. Every once in a while they resurfaced and that was when they knocked the wind out of you.

  Gingerly, Adam placed his hand against his skin. Below the ribs, where moments ago the pain had been at its worst. It was gone, but he felt shaken. He pushed the mosquito net aside and sat on the edge of the bed. His skin felt scratchy and unfamiliar and his mouth tasted sour. The thought of the hours ahead and of what was expected of him at work, today of all days, made him want to cry. How tempting, to stay in bed and bury himself under the sheets. But he knew that was out of the question.

  Instead, he reached for the framed photograph on his side table and took it in his hands. Examined it carefully, as though he didn’t already know it well. Him and Sabrina, as children. Their mother in the background. Her face was blurry. He hadn’t seen either of them in thirteen years.

  He p
ressed the frame to his cheek. The sensation was comforting and he closed his eyes.

  He opened them again and placed the frame gently back on the table. He picked up his mobile phone and after a moment’s hesitation, dialled a number. After several rings, his sister picked up, as she always did. The silence stretched out, while they listened to each other breathing.

  ‘Adam?’ She sounded sleepy. Of course. He must have woken her up. His stomach contracted and he leaned forward, still holding the phone to his ear.

  A bicycle bell rang in the street and he heard Kate calling out his name. What the hell was she doing back here? Without having said a word, he ended the call to Sabrina. He crossed the room and looked out. Kate was leaning her bike against a wall. Behind her, a couple of mangy dogs were sniffing at something on the road. It looked like a dead chicken. He stepped away from the window, feeling sick.

  Seconds later, Kate was stomping up the stairs. He recognized the tread of her practical shoes and felt annoyed.

  ‘Adam? You ready to go yet?’ Kate came barging into the room and stopped when she saw him.

  ‘Not even dressed yet? Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘I know, I know. What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I figured you’d have trouble getting up,’ she said. She had put lipstick on, he saw, but she still looked wrecked. ‘We’ve got that presentation, remember?’

  ‘Relax. I’ll be there.’

  ‘Well, I’ll wait for you. We can go together. OK?’

  He looked at her. A blind person would pick their clothes more successfully. Her bag was the sort you’d expect a homeless person to lug around. It was hard to believe they had been naked together just hours earlier. She looked back at him with clear, indifferent eyes. There wasn’t a hint of awkwardness about her.

  He sauntered naked across the room, and took his time looking for clothes in his chest of drawers. With any luck she’d feel embarrassed and leave. But she didn’t.

  He opened his underwear drawer, sensing the weight of her irritation against his back. There was one clean pair of shorts left.

  ‘Looks like I’m in luck.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Take a seat. I’ll be ready to go in just a couple of minutes.’

  Kate looked around the room. There was a chair but she perched on the edge of his bed instead.

  ‘You look like shit,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks. Really.’

  ‘I guess I do too.’

  He didn’t bother denying it. She looked bloody awful. He went to the bathroom that was more like a cupboard, with barely enough room for a sink, a toilet and a shower. Even alone, he occupied the whole space in there. He stepped under the shower. He still hadn’t got used to it, the way it made everything in the small bathroom wet, turning the toilet paper into a soggy mess. The hot water had also stopped working weeks ago and he hadn’t got around to getting it fixed.

  When he came out, Kate was still sitting on his bed, clutching her bag with both hands.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked. She looked strange and he wondered whether she’d been looking through his things.

  She didn’t look at him. Instead, she picked up the photo and pointed to Sabrina.

  ‘Who’s this? Girlfriend?’ Kate asked.

  ‘My sister.’ He took the frame from her and put it back in its place.

  ‘You two must be close. I have three brothers and I don’t have any photos of them at my place, let alone on my bedside table.’

  He didn’t respond.

  ‘If you think you’re not up to it today, I can deliver the presentation for you,’ she said.

  Leave me alone, he thought. I’m not your new best friend.

  ‘What was Hugo doing in that hotel room, Kate?’ he asked her. He’d been thinking about it all night.

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘You and him were buddies, right?’

  She picked up the photograph again then put it back. Played with a pen lying there. She couldn’t stop messing with his stuff.

  ‘Perhaps we were,’ she said, putting the pen down and looking for something else to interfere with. ‘But that doesn’t mean he told me everything. Obviously, because I have no idea what he was up to.’

  Kate looked at him and gave a half-hearted smile. Something in her eyes made him feel almost sorry for her. Almost.

  ‘So you want me to do the PowerPoint?’ she said.

  ‘It’s touching that you care so much but do me a favour. Go worry about someone else,’ he said, suddenly annoyed again.

  He fumbled with the buttons on his shirt, trying to ignore her. She was jiggling her foot up and down and he wanted to tell her to stop. The fact was that it wasn’t just Kate who got under his skin. The thought of all his colleagues at work, of having to face them this morning, made him want to cry.

  ‘How about you?’ Kate said, a little too casually. ‘Any idea what Hugo was up to? Did you see him on Sunday?’

  ‘Why would you ask that?’

  ‘It’s just that I called him at home that night,’ she said. ‘I had a question about work.’

  Yeah, right, he thought.

  ‘Anyway, Florence told me he was out. She thought it was something to do with work.’

  ‘Maybe it was. Why would he lie?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Kate was looking at him curiously now.

  ‘What’s on your mind, Kate? You think I had something to do with what happened to him?’

  ‘I’m just trying to make sense of it all.’

  He held her gaze for a while.

  ‘Why don’t you wait for me downstairs,’ he said coldly. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

  Once she was gone he sat on the bed and took a deep breath. He was sweating. What had Kate meant, exactly? Did she suspect him of something? No, it was just Kate being Kate, he reminded himself. She was a nosy parker, always meddling. She could pry all she liked. She wouldn’t find anything.

  He slid the bedside drawer open to see if anything had been touched or moved. It didn’t look like it had. Yet Kate had definitely had a sneaky look on her face. Adam felt sick. When would he learn to stop feeling guilty?

  Hugo was dead. You couldn’t predict anything. He could die too, anytime. Who knows, I might have cancer? Or maybe it’s the guilt, consuming me from the inside. I’m paying for my sins.

  He would call Sabrina. Tonight. He would call her and this time they would talk.

  He finished getting dressed and grabbed his bag with the laptop in it. Before heading down the stairs, he made sure the door was properly locked.

  TEN

  They stopped briefly at the French embassy on Monivong Boulevard. Morel followed Nizet inside, past the high white walls that turned the place into an unwelcoming fortress, and met with the French ambassador, a courteous and insubstantial man who held out his hand to Morel with the fading energy of a wilting plant. He spoke of Morel’s diplomat father with warmth, saying their paths had crossed at the Quai d’Orsay some years back. Morel kept it short. He had little time for these social niceties.

  From the embassy he and Nizet drove a couple of hundred metres down Monivong Boulevard, a distance they could easily have walked. Past Calmette Hospital and the Institut Pasteur, and into the grounds of a nondescript building tucked behind a white fence and some low-lying shrubbery. Like many signs around Phnom Penh, the one on the building was in French. It read ‘Centre d’Hémodialyse’. The place looked deserted.

  As they got out of the car, a man with a towel tied around his waist emerged lazily from a security booth in the car park and looked at them before disappearing back inside. Another, dressed in a vest and khaki shorts, had managed to fall asleep in a plastic chair.

  Nizet was looking the other way, towards a box-like building with a corrugated iron door on its side.

  ‘There they are,’ Nizet said. Morel now noticed the black Mitsubishi that was parked at the end of a gravel path that ran alongside the main building.
He guessed that the boxlike structure was the morgue where Hugo Quercy’s body lay.

  As he and Nizet drew nearer, a man got out of the driver’s side. He stretched his leg and placed his foot on the ground. Morel had time to register the prosthetic limb before raising his eyes to the man’s face. Pockmarked skin, scarred from acne, and hooded eyes. What he lacked in height he made up for in posture: he stood tall, despite his handicap. Morel glanced at the man’s trousers, wondering about the missing leg.

  ‘Traffic accident,’ the man said, and held out his hand. ‘Five years ago. These days, traffic accidents are the number one cause of limb amputation, not mines. Did you know that?’

  Morel shook his head, thinking that Nizet must have told the police officer that he was half-Cambodian. Otherwise why would the man assume he spoke Khmer?

  ‘It doesn’t prevent me from doing my job but I let other people do the chasing, if it comes to that,’ the man told Morel. ‘Not that it does. A lot of what we do, we do from behind a desk.’

  ‘Then our jobs aren’t that different,’ Morel said.

  ‘This is Chey Sarit,’ Nizet said. ‘As I mentioned to you before, he’s in charge of the investigation into Hugo Quercy’s death. And this is Doctor Sok Pran.’ Nizet gestured to the other man, who had got out of the passenger’s seat. ‘He works at Calmette. He’s had a look at our victim’s body.’

  ‘Commandant Serge Morel of the French criminal brigade,’ Morel said, shaking hands with both men. Sok Pran looked at him testily.

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘I’m very sorry about that,’ Nizet said. ‘The ambassador wanted a word.’

  ‘I have to get back to the hospital,’ Pran said.

  ‘Let’s make it quick then,’ Sarit said, and Pran nodded.

  Pran’s French appeared to be flawless, which surprised Morel until he was told by Nizet that the doctor had spent two and a half decades in France, before choosing to move back to Phnom Penh. Morel was thankful. He could manage in Khmer, but it was easier to revert to French.