The Travel Mate

by Mark Green

  ‘You want go to Cambodia?’ the minibus driver asked, slipping off his perch on the edge of the reception desk, pointing to Rupert’s suitcase.

  ‘No, thank you. I’m looking for a friend.’

  ‘Okay.’ The minibus driver sucked on his cigarette and withdrew.

  • • •

  The minibus driver passed Maddie, slumped on her side, hidden behind the couch’s backrest, her eyes wide open. She took a slow calming breath, listened to the footsteps passing by. Other Western voices drifted into her woozy awareness.

  ‘How many hours … ten or twelve?’

  ‘Twelve, although it depends on the driver’s right foot and how many other vehicles he manages to avoid slamming into.’

  Maddie listened intently, until … again – his voice, instantly recognisable.

  ‘I’m looking for a friend of mine, Madeline Bryce.’

  Maddie snuck a look up to her left, around the side of the couch.

  ‘Morning Gabby, you on the bus too?’

  Maddie glanced right, towards Victoria. She caught her eye, sprung a finger up to her lips before Victoria could call out her name. She frowned and threaded her way between two tables, easing herself down onto the sofa beside Maddie, her back to Rupert, who stood at the reception desk behind them.

  ‘What’s with the secrecy?’ Victoria whispered.

  Maddie leaned in and cupped her hands around Victoria’s ear. ‘Up there, at reception, is my ex. He can’t know I’m here …’

  Victoria shifted around slightly, enough to steal a look up at Rupert.

  ‘Will you take me to her room? I need to make sure she’s alright,’ Rupert explained to the receptionist.

  Victoria looked back at Maddie. ‘But I thought—’

  ‘Me too. I don’t know how he found me, but I need to be on my own right now. Will you help me, please?’

  Victoria’s expression changed from sleepy indifference to wide-awake intrigue. She glanced back up the steps. ‘The receptionist is taking him to your room.’

  Shit.

  Maddie propped herself up. ‘I’ve got my essentials here. He won’t recognise any of the clothes or other stuff …’ She glanced down at the street, pointing. ‘Is that the minibus to Cambodia?’

  ‘Yes. Some of the passengers are loading up.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll get my passport when Rupert’s looking at my room. Can you nip up and grab my stuff when he comes back down?’

  Victoria nodded, pocketed the key and glanced over her shoulder. ‘Go now. Wait on the main road, around the corner by the 7-Eleven. I’ll make sure we stop to let you on.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Maddie, scampering up the steps to the vacant reception desk.

  • • •

  ‘You’re sure this is Madeline Bryce’s room?’

  ‘Room eleven, yes. But she not here.’

  Rupert stepped into the room, scanned the unfamiliar backpack and boots. ‘This isn’t hers, she must be in another room. You have a signing-in book, a list of guests?’

  The girl nodded and led Rupert out of the room. He followed her through the corridor and down the main staircase, brushing past a hotel guest, making her way up to the first floor.

  Rupert loomed over the reception desk, watching the girl search through the pigeon holes, opening different colour passports, shaking her head, replacing them methodically. He glanced sideways, flicked his eyes over the same attractive girl from the stairwell. She looked away, hoisting her backpack higher on her shoulders. She maintained the same sedate, untroubled pace down the steps until she reached the street below.

  Rupert rested his hands on his fleshy hips and gritted his teeth, exhaling through his nose as he looked back at the receptionist. ‘She has to be here somewhere. I tracked her mobile phone, look, see it’s … here.’ He held the screen between him and the hotel manager, showing a navigation map and flashing flag icon.

  Below him, in the street, the minibus clattered into life and pulled away from the hotel entrance. He remained fixated on the phone, his eyes bulging. ‘She’s moving – bollocks!’ Rupert spun around, his eyes scanning the lobby, darting back to stare at the phone. ‘Outside!’

  He grabbed his suitcase and rushed down the steps into the street, fixated on the screen. A scooter buzzed past, swerving to avoid hitting him. The rider tooted his horn as he sped off. Rupert sprinted down the alley to the main junction, dragging the Samsonite case.

  • • •

  ‘Get in!’ yelled Victoria, flinging the sliding door open. Maddie squeezed into the packed minibus, helped by several pairs of hands. Victoria turned to face the driver. ‘Go, go, GO!’ The van lurched forwards, accelerating away from the convenience store on the corner of the main road, quickly filtering into the traffic amidst honking horns and erratic, zig-zagging, wasp-like scooters.

  Memory Card 3. Pic 008

  ‘Stowing away, launching into an adventurous fray. Grabbing life by the balls, scaling the confines of her relationship’s walls. Leaving behind the well-trodden tourist trail, the hope that a traveller’s life is better than one merely existing, behind a veil. Her fiancé, a few frantic steps behind – in hot pursuit, perhaps her backpack will transform into an emotional parachute? A leap of faith into the travel abyss, will it all end in tears, or a near-miss? A lunge of desperate optimism is a brave move, you go for it ritzy-chick, find your own journey’s groove.’

  Maddie scowled at the camera lens, her glare disrupted by Victoria’s hand pressing her shoulders below the window.

  ‘Down! He might be following us.’ Victoria peered at the back window. ‘There! He’s flagging down a taxi. What is he, some kind of control freak?’ she said, her voice an octave or two higher than normal.

  ‘Sort of,’ came Maddie’s muffled reply from floor level, ‘I don’t understand how he found me—’

  ‘You got a mobile phone?’ asked a male voice.

  Maddie shifted onto her side, looked up towards the back of the van. Charlie poked his head between a gap in the seats.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it switched on?’

  ‘Um …’ Maddie pulled her shoulder bag out from under her. She shifted into a sitting position and rummaged through it, retrieving the phone. ‘Yup. I left it on charge overnight, switched it on early this morning. Should I turn it off?’

  ‘Definitely. Remove the SIM card to make doubly sure. He’s probably used a find-my-phone website and tracked you to the hotel.’

  ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘You didn’t set it up?’

  ‘No, of course not!’

  ‘Is your phone passcode protected?’

  ‘No. I never saw the need.’

  ‘Then it’s easy enough for someone else to access your phone and register it on the tracking website—’

  ‘But I didn’t agree to that!’ Maddie gritted her teeth and leaned back against the side of the van, jolting with its motion as she focused on the phone, shutting it down. ‘Rupert, you’re a jealous git,’ she muttered.

  Shh-clitch.

  Memory Card 3. Pic 009

  ‘Concealment confusion, but unplugging from technology may lead to seclusion. Ripping the heart out of being online, how will she cope without her social media shrine? Uncertainty how Facebook friends will cope without her, be mindful gossip girl, that the world doesn’t pass by in an indifferent social media blur.’

  ‘Oy! Give a girl a break, will ya?’ Maddie’s glare bored into the dimple-cheeked, stubbly face behind the lens.

  Barry peeked over the top of his camera, grinning. ‘Hey, just trying to capture a moment—’

  ‘Yeah, I got that. Just not right now, at this precise, uncomfortable, moment!’

  Barry lowered the camera and winked at her, withdrawing. Jody wagged her finger at him, quietly tutting.

  ‘You okay?’ Victoria asked Maddie, snatching a sideways look at Charlie.

  Maddie ran her fingers through her hair, wiping a sheen of moisture off her forehead. She
nodded and stowed the phone and SIM card in her bag. She turned to face forwards, her heart racing, chest aching.

  Jesus Christ, Rupert!

  Maddie’s tummy lurched as the minibus’s suspension swayed to the right, creaking and groaning as they made a sweeping, tyre-squealing left turn. She peeped over the bottom of the windowsill at pedestrians ambling behind railings on the Phra Pin-Klao Bridge.

  ‘Stay low,’ hissed Victoria, pushing Maddie’s head back down. ‘His taxi’s coming up fast, honking its horn. I don’t think he’s seen us … we’ll know in a few seconds. Looks like he’s going … straight. There he goes – close one. You must have turned the phone off just in time.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Uh-huh. His taxi’s heading off on the main drag. Same bloke asking questions at the hotel – bit overweight, face like a city banker.’

  ‘I bet he’s seething,’ said Maddie, pushing awkwardly up to a crouch, glancing around at the other passengers. She attempted a sheepish smile to acknowledge anyone who met her eyes. ‘Cambodia, here I come …’ she muttered, to several muted whoops and stilted hand-clapping from a few of the other passengers.

  Eleven

  Memory Card 3. Pic 012

  ‘Urban living, Thai style. Black spaghetti power lines dangle, strung out like weeping willows in a burdened telegraph-post tangle. Dotted beneath on the potholed scree and tarmac, children of school age lay mud bricks beside an old wood shack. These power and communication dreadlocks suggest hope and progression, but will these kids really be able to build a future out here, on the edge of civilisation? That, my friends, is the West’s perpetual, unanswered guilty question.’

  Barry lowered his camera onto his lap and turned away from the rear window. He slumped back in the seat, absently panning around his fellow travellers. His gaze rested on Maddie, squeezed in next to Victoria in the front row. She shifted her eyes away, darting past the side windows.

  ‘What are you listening to?’ asked Maddie.

  Victoria paused her MP3 player and tugged an earphone out. ‘Bit of Chicane. Old stuff, but it fits somehow, being on the road.’

  Maddie nodded and gazed out of the side window, watching a muddy river zip by beneath a small provincial bridge. ‘I prefer to watch music videos. Feels strange, being disconnected.’

  ‘I’d be totally lost. Necessary, for you though – being pursued. How long are you going to torment him?’

  Maddie frowned. She leaned back to refocus on Victoria, seated in uncomfortably close proximity. ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘It’s a punishment, right? I mean, you still want all that don’t you – the lifestyle?’ Victoria tapped her earlobe to emphasise her point. ‘They look expensive. Were they a present from hubby?’

  Maddie touched her ear, fiddled with the pearl and diamond cluster.

  What was the occasion … a birthday, Christmas, perhaps?

  ‘Rupert was very generous, and attentive in the early days. After …’ Maddie’s expression glazed over. She smiled a sad smile. ‘When we first got together.’

  Maddie placed both hands in her lap and massaged her thumb into her opposite palm. Victoria placed her hand on Maddie’s shoulder. ‘They all start out being charming, even in my world. My last one was a loveable rogue. You know the type. So he had to go.’

  ‘How did you end it?’

  ‘Packed my stuff, left a note and walked a hundred yards to the nearest hostel.’

  ‘You bump into him again?’

  ‘Oh yeah, but that’s the great thing about travelling in a hot climate, sunglasses are your forcefield. They save a lot of awkward eye contact.’

  ‘It sounds so easy …’

  ‘It wasn’t, still isn’t,’ Victoria said quietly, ‘but show no weakness, that’s my motto. Never let them see that you gave a shit.’ Victoria flicked her gaze away from Maddie, replaced her earphones and sat back, closing her eyes.

  Maddie folded her arms and turned to face forwards, staring past the back of the driver’s head, through the windscreen. She watched rain drops form, smeared to the sides of the glass by the wipers slowly dragging across the screen, too slow and worn to cope with the increasing intensity.

  • • •

  ‘So you fail, to find wife. She off, having good time,’ said Joe-Ho’s crackly voice over the intercom system outside in the narrow alley. ‘You know not where?’

  Rupert ran his fingers through his saturated hair then wiped his wet hands on his sopping shirt, which clung to his belly. He shivered as a waft of cool air gusted past. ‘No. I set a location alarm on one of those phone-tracking websites. It woke me this morning – she must have switched her phone on. But when I got to the hotel, the signal disappeared.’

  ‘She know you coming.’ Joe-Ho sighed, his breathing rattling in an elongated yawn through the plastic speaker housing.

  ‘So what happens now?’ Rupert clenched his arms around his chest to contain a shiver as the rain increased intensity.

  ‘You speak to London, they decide. You go in, same place.’

  A buzzer sounded, clunking the door an inch away from the catch. Rupert hesitated, then pushed it open and stepped inside.

  • • •

  ‘So what made you change your mind about Cambodia?’

  Maddie gazed out through the windscreen, watching the chaotic intensity of scooters, cars and bicycles. All those people, with somewhere to go. They had a purpose.

  ‘Maddie …?’

  She jerked in her seat, spun round, her eyes searching the minibus for the voice’s source. Charlie made eye contact with her.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I think you’re the only Maddie on board.’ He scanned around the rest of the travellers. ‘Yup, you’re an original.’

  ‘Sorry, what was the question?’

  ‘I didn’t think you were getting the bus. Guess the taxi in hot pursuit persuaded you?’

  ‘Um …’ Maddie glanced away, paused, then shuffled her body around to fully face him. ‘That was my fiancé – possibly now an ex. We had a misunderstanding.’

  ‘Sounds terminal.’

  Maddie’s gaze twitched away, her eyes glazing over. ‘Maybe not. I just need some head space … to reflect.’ She looked back at him. ‘What’s your story? Last night you said you’re on a research trip.’

  ‘My story is nowhere near as interesting as yours. But yes, I’m looking into volunteering on some village regeneration projects, to give them clean drinking water. To cut down on typhoid, among other diseases.’

  ‘How long are you travelling for?’

  ‘A few months. I want to see for myself where the help is really needed, cut out the corruption when the money starts to roll in.’

  ‘Is it that much of a problem?’

  ‘You never heard of Pol Pot, back in the Seventies …?’

  Maddie returned a blank look.

  ‘The killing fields – mass genocide and starvation of the Cambodian people?’

  ‘No, I …’ Maddie frowned. She rummaged inside her shoulder bag, pulled out Liz’s book: Survival in the Killing Fields. ‘I’ve just started reading about it.’

  ‘Oh, wow. May I see …?’ Charlie weighed the book in his hand, flicking through the pages. He turned it over to read the blurb. ‘I was hoping to pick up a copy of this. The writer starred in the movie, with Sam Waterstone and John Malkovich. Incredible story. Perhaps I could borrow this, after you’ve read it?’ Charlie passed the book back, watching its journey back to Maddie’s hand.

  ‘Oh, sure. Soon as I’m done with it.’ Maddie turned to face forwards, cradling the book in her hands as she reread the description on the back cover.

  Barry glanced up from sprinkling tobacco into a Rizla. He glanced sideways at Charlie, perched attentively on the edge of his seat, still looking at Maddie. ‘Sick fucker. Never brought to account, survived until 1998—’

  ‘Heart attack, wasn’t it?’ Charlie cut in, ignoring Barry’s unblinking scrutiny.

  Maddie shifte
d in her seat, turning around. She alternated her focus between Charlie and Barry.

  ‘That’s one theory. Another is that he took a cocktail of anti-malarial pills and tranquilisers to avoid an investigation by the United Nations. Valium and chloroquine makes for a lethal combination.’

  ‘Oooh, look at you, Google-geek,’ said Jody, switching her focus between Barry, Charlie and Maddie.

  ‘Just being aware of my environment. It’s background research, for my book,’ Barry replied quietly, dropping his eyes back to his cigarette rolling.

  ‘What was his infamous catchphrase? “If you live it’s no gain, if you die, it’s—”’

  ‘“To destroy you is no loss, to preserve you is no gain,” that’s the quote,’ said Barry. Glowering at Charlie, he clamped his fingers around his tobacco tin, snapping the lid shut, his knuckles white and bony.

  ‘Easy, baby, relax …’ Jody whispered, laying her hands carefully over Barry’s. Then, projecting her acidic tone from the back of the minibus, she asked ‘So, Maddie. What lies ahead?’

  ‘A bit of quiet time, to gather my thoughts,’ Maddie replied, turning away.

  ‘What then?’

  The minibus trundled on, passing dusty, narrow side roads between rough-faced concrete shopfronts. Maddie dropped her eyes back to the book, began reading.

  ‘I said, what lies next?’

  Maddie twisted around just enough to glare at Jody. ‘I told you, some quiet time.’ She held Jody’s icy stare. Charlie flicked his eyes between the two girls, then at Barry, who toyed with a wry smile.

  Barry tucked his freshly prepared roll-up behind his ear. ‘Has anyone heard my theory about Bangkok?’ He glanced at Jody before he panned around the minibus, seeking out anyone showing signs of interest. ‘It’s a simple analogy to do with food. Take my dinner last night, for example … red snapper. A big, beautiful, colourful fish. Strong possibilities for a decent meal, you might think. Add the seasoning: lime, garlic and chilli. But, and this is key, the lime was sliced and laid on top. Garlic, raw, also sliced, as a decorative topping. Chilli sauce – most likely from a supermarket – in a dipping dish on the side. A promising meal spoilt by superficial flavours. That’s Bangkok’s tourist district – backpacker-ville. It’s a reasonable starting point to get acquainted with Southeast Asian culture, it offers exotic, yet diluted possibilities. It’s tainted by a mere sprinkling of authenticity. Now imagine that same red snapper – or even a lesser fish – served somewhere other than Bangkok, away from the tourist scene. This time it’s been marinated in lime, crushed garlic and freshly diced chillies. The chef has allowed the flesh to soak up these sumptuous flavours over several long, genuine, hours. Now the same seemingly similar eating experience is so much richer. Flavours dance on the taste buds. This culinary experience is infused with an authentic taste of Thailand, yet emanated from the same raw ingredients. It’s the quest for all real travellers – to seek out the truth from their surroundings.’