The Travel Mate

by Mark Green

  Maddie frowned and starred at Victoria for a long moment, something jarring in her tone. Maddie shrugged off the feeling and left the gloomy stuffiness of the hotel lobby. She stepped out onto the wide pavement, the warmth and bright sunshine encouraging her to break into a smile.

  ‘Hey, lady. You take tuk-tuk tour?’

  Maddie turned towards the voice. A young Cambodian guy in his early twenties stood by the road, grinning at her. He pushed off from leaning against a red, green and white tuk-tuk parked up by the kerb and scurried over, sweeping his hands low, tilting sideways to gesture behind him. ‘Best tuk-tuk in Phnom Penh. Very sensible price.’

  ‘Only best in Phnom Penh?’

  ‘I say Cambodia, but no want to boast!’

  She chuckled. ‘How sensible a price?’

  ‘How much tour you want? Where go? Whole day, half?’

  She checked her watch. ‘Um … maybe a quick tour of the city, then to this place, here. For coffee.’ Maddie pointed to the small map in the guidebook.

  ‘Okay, yes. After?’

  ‘I was thinking of the museum.’

  ‘Tuel Sleng?’

  ‘Is that S21?’

  ‘Yes, yes. S21 and Tuel Sleng museum, same-same. You must go.’

  ‘So I’ve read. Okay, how much?’

  He smiled coyly, comically adjusting his body posture, raising a hand to stroke his chin, portraying a man deep in thought about overcharging her. ‘I do special price … for you, forty dollar.’

  ‘Forty dollars? I thought you said sensible price. What’s your name?’

  ‘Rico.’

  ‘Okay, Rico. I’m Maddie. And my sensible price would be twenty dollars.’

  ‘Thirty dollar.’

  ‘No, twenty dollars. With an extra five dollars at the end if you tell me all about the city as we drive around.’

  ‘Like talking tour?’

  ‘Yes, exactly.’

  ‘My voice, it wear out. Ten dollars extra—’

  Maddie raised her eyebrows disapprovingly. Rico’s slender frame crumpled. He stooped, hugged his knees, giggling enthusiastically. ‘Okay, okay. You tough lady. Twenty-five dollars and five dollar talking tour—’

  ‘Twenty dollars, plus five equals twenty-five, total. Deal, yes?’ She held out her hand. Rico straightened up. He nodded, grinning, placing his hand delicately in hers.

  ‘Okay, good deal. We go now?’

  Maddie nodded and followed Rico to his tuk-tuk. ‘You speak English very well.’

  ‘Yes, my brother, he teach. Good for me. Please, make joyful.’ Rico guided her into the tuk-tuk carriage, then swung his leg over the motorcycle and pressed the electronic ignition. He glanced over his shoulder to pull out into the light traffic, grinning at Maddie’s reflection in the large side mirror. ‘Okay, we begin.’

  • • •

  Victoria pressed her nose up to the hotel’s glass entrance window and watched Maddie climb into a tuk-tuk. She waited until it had pulled away, then headed for the reception desk. ‘Room twelve.’

  The receptionist smiled politely, reaching behind her to select the correct key.

  Victoria pushed the door open and surveyed Maddie’s backpack. ‘Right then, miss prissy-perfect, where have you stashed them?’ She emptied the backpack one compartment at a time, carefully checking the contents.

  Six minutes later she stood with her hands on her hips staring at the empty pack propped up against the wall, the contents of which she’d spread out on the bed. ‘You’ve either got them with you, they’re in the hotel safe, or …’ Victoria swivelled around on her feet, her eyes resting on the bathroom door. ‘I wonder.’

  Her slender hands unzipped the washbag’s various compartments, carefully removing toiletries, deodorant, a toothbrush and toothpaste. Shit.

  Victoria stepped back into the main room, leaned against the wall and stared at the bed and empty backpack. She lowered her eyes to the pair of walking boots on the floor, frowning. She stepped over to them, crouched down and stuck her hands inside, removing the first insole. ‘There you are, my beauties!’ She wriggled her hand free, two balls of tissue paper held between her fingers.

  She sat down on the corner of the bed, laid one of Maddie’s tee-shirts over her thighs and unwrapped the thin paper, tumbling two gold and diamond-encased pearl earrings into her lap. She grinned and carefully picked up an earring, mesmerised by the shifting patterns of dancing light. ‘Jackpot.’ Victoria wrapped each earring back in the tissue, deposited them in her surfer’s wallet and hurriedly replaced everything into Maddie’s backpack. Before she left the room, Victoria turned to glance again at the pair of walking boots.

  ‘Surely you’re not that trusting …’ Victoria stepped over to the boots and removed the second insole, a sly quirk at the corner of her mouth growing into a full blown sneer as she pulled her hand out, clutching the neatly flattened wedge of US dollars. ‘Payday, again. Maddie, you’re the gift that keeps on giving.’

  • • •

  Bozzer glanced up from studying his mobile phone, lifting a hand to fully obscure his face under the flat cap. He peered around the chair to see the glass entrance door swing back on its hinge, revealing Victoria. She breezed in, heading for the hotel reception desk.

  ‘Could you ring room twenty-seven, tell my boyfriend I’ve arrived,’ she said, strumming her fingers on the counter.

  Across the lobby, Bozzer narrowed his eyes. He shifted around in his seat to sneak a proper look at Victoria, stood with her back to him. Bozzer eased back in the chair, turning away from her as she waltzed over to the bar, dumped her rucksack and ordered a drink. He sipped from a bottle of water, peering sideways across the foyer at her profile, careful to keep the lip of his cap low, shielding his face.

  He waited for a few minutes, then slowly lifted his camera out of its padded bag and tucked it behind the armrest, out of sight. The lift doors at the far end of the lobby opened. Bozzer lowered his head again as Charlie stepped into view, scanned the lobby and made his way to the bar to join Victoria. She greeted him with an affectionate embrace and a firm kiss on the lips.

  ‘How’d it go?’ he asked, settling onto a stool beside her.

  She grinned, opened her wallet and tipped the two small tissue-wrapped parcels onto the bar.

  ‘Not here,’ he hissed, closing his hands around the small packages.

  ‘Yes, here – who’s gonna know?’ she hissed back, continuing to unravel the glinting earrings, slipping her own plain gold studs out of her earlobes. ‘We’re celebrating. Let’s have a drink—’

  Shh-clitch.

  Memory Card 3. Pic 325

  ‘Venomous, jealous greed, from this gutter-level thieving creed. The lowest of travel scams, stealing from one of your own, comparable to treason and evil to the bone.’

  ‘What the hell!’ Victoria spun round to face Bozzer, strolling across the lobby.

  ‘Those don’t look like they belong to you, darlin’.’

  Charlie leapt off his bar stool and squared up to Bozzer, red faced, the veins in his forearms bulging as he glared at the camera being tucked safely away into its protective bag.

  ‘Why so surprised, Charlie-boy? People must make you all the time, looking so shifty. Sooner or later you’re gonna attract the wrong sort of attention.’

  ‘Fuck off, kangaroo brain!’

  ‘Ah, so nice to hear the honest guttural London-street twang in your voice, chief. What happened to the hoity-toity, freshwater-drinking multinational humanitarian superhero twat?’

  Charlie launched forwards, swinging his fist. Bozzer flexed his torso, swayed his head back, simultaneously reaching up to grab Charlie’s flailing arm and yank him off-balance. Bozzer snapped his knee up, whacking it into Charlie’s groin.

  ‘Yeaarrggghhh!’ Charlie’s eyes bulged, yelping noisily. Bozzer stepped back, allowing him to crumple at his feet in a contorted, writhing heap.

  ‘Never try and get the drop on an Aussie, mate. We never wait patiently in a queu
e, especially when there’s dirty deeds being dished out.’

  Bozzer threw his hand out, clamping his fingers around Victoria’s wrist, pinning it to the bar. ‘Those, Vicky – are – not – yours,’ he said with a tightly clenched jaw.

  He ducked her wild cougar slap, grabbed her incoming hand, forcing it down on top of her other wrist, clamping one of his hands around both of hers.

  ‘Calm down, or I’ll headbutt you in the chops, make a mess of your pretty cheekbones. Now, breathe, relax, and release …’ He held her glare and prised her fingers open, revealing the earrings. He flicked his eyes down at Charlie, still moaning on the floor, and pressed a foot down onto his back, making him groan louder. Bozzer returned his attention to Victoria, who was scowling at him. ‘They’d cut your hands off in some countries, for thieving. I’ll make sure these get back to their rightful owner. Where is she, by the way?’

  Victoria spat in Bozzer’s face. He wiped his cheek on his sleeve and scooped the earrings into his hand, depositing them in his trouser pocket. ‘Lovely. So ladylike—’

  ‘Fuck off!’

  Bozzer squeezed his hand, crunching her fingers into his fist.

  ‘Arrrggh!’

  ‘Shh … suck it up, you miserable, despicable, green-eyed cockroach. I have you on camera going all Gollum-like with Maddie’s preciousssss stolen property. I reckon the Cambodian cops have a string of petty crime they could pin on you two. Tell me where Maddie went and you and laughing boy are in the clear.’ Bozzer squeezed harder, crushing her fingers.

  ‘The museum – she’s at Tuol Sleng!’ screeched Victoria. She snatched her hands away as he released them.

  Bozzer removed his foot from Charlie’s kidney and stepped away from them, the tension in his facial muscles lessening as his angry focus waned. He withdrew, his voice sombre and composed. ‘Cheers. You folks have a shitty day now.’ Bozzer collected his camera bag off the floor and paused. ‘I’ll be back later,’ he said in a congenial voice. ‘I can get a bit cranky in the afternoons, so best you take off. You wouldn’t want to run into me when I’m in an ugly mood.’

  Bozzer poked his index finger under the lip of his flat cap and strolled out of the lobby, leaving Charlie and Victoria glaring after him.

  ‘You’re not the only one who’s interested in her!’ Victoria yelled as Bozzer exited the lobby door.

  ‘That I don’t doubt,’ he murmured, smiling as he stepped out into the sunshine.

  • • •

  Fender reached into his pocket and withdrew the gently vibrating phone. He glanced at the screen, a thin smile briefly creasing his lips as he lifted it to his ear. ‘Miss Stevens.’

  Rupert straightened his slouching posture against the side of the taxi. He unfolded his arms and turned to face Fender.

  ‘It’s about Maddie,’ said Victoria, over the phone’s speaker.

  ‘Okay. Do you have—’

  ‘Five hundred dollars, cash.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I know where she is. But another fifty isn’t gonna cut it. I want—’

  ‘A serious payday.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Alright, Miss Stevens. You have my attention.’

  ‘Do we have a deal?’

  ‘How accurate is your—’

  ‘She’s in Phnom Penh. I know which hotel. I know exactly where she’ll be for the next twenty-four hours. How quickly can you get here?’

  Fender glanced at his watch. ‘I’m still at the temples. Transportation will be slow, it’s the Cambodian celebration of—’

  ‘Yes, I know. How soon?’

  ‘Later tonight, probably.’

  ‘Okay. Do we have a deal?’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘Good. Meet me at the Pickled Parrot bar, street 104. Ring me when you’re thirty minutes out. Bring the five hundred dollars in cash. You don’t show, stiff me for my fee, or try anything nasty and Charlie will warn Maddie.’ Victoria hung up.

  Fender lowered the phone. ‘Charming travel companions Maddie’s befriended.’ He rapped his hand on the roof of the taxi, rousing the sleeping driver from the back seat. Then he turned to Rupert. ‘You’ve got approximately eight hours to get your please forgive me speech prepared. It’s time to decide how badly you want your fiancée back.’

  Thirty-Four

  Bozzer clasped his two-dollar entrance ticket and shuffled away from the kiosk, leaving the tourist queue behind. He lifted his head and looked around the playground of the former Tuol Svay Prey High School.

  He swallowed, painfully, and took several slow deep breaths as he shuffled past the three-storey grey concrete building into a dusty, dry, wispy-grass schoolyard. He panned around the perimeter, lifting his gaze to the top of the ten-foot high concrete wall, capped with rusty, wrought iron spiked railings. To his right, oxidized corrugated iron fencing, topped with spools of corroded barbed wire, marked another side of the boundary. A concrete rectangle of paving slabs sat within a grassy corner in the middle of the compound. Small trees lined one side, their fragile limbs stretching out over a row of raised tombs, painted white.

  Bozzer’s hands flopped by his side, heavy and useless. ‘Come on Bazza, mate. There’s a job to do …’ he whispered, his words strained and shaky.

  He stopped at the head of the first white tomb, then cast his eye up towards the far end of the schoolyard, where a heavy wood frame stood twenty feet tall, fifteen feet across. Around him, tourists mingled solemnly in the sunshine, any conversations between them spoken sparingly in muted tones. To his left and directly ahead stood the first three-storey concrete building. It had an open continuous balcony walkway on each level behind corroded wire mesh. Blue louvered doors flanked dark entrances, with rows of terracotta air bricks forming a full width lintel over each aperture.

  Bozzer lifted his camera out of its bag, ducked his head to remove his cap, then eased the strap over his head.

  Is this the right thing to do … here, of all places?

  With trembling hands he held the camera in front of him, his finger resting over the power button.

  Be professional. The book needs this context, however upsetting it may be …

  He drew in a slow, shaky breath, lifting the viewfinder to his eye, flinching at the soft shh-clitch of the shutter each time he captured an image.

  No words though, mate. Not here. Not today.

  Bozzer stood facing the drab concrete building. A shiver rippled through his limbs, an advance anticipation of the cool, dank air within, drawing him inside, away of the warmth and eternal optimism of the sunshine. He ambled up the steps, hesitating, his feet heavy and reluctant at the threshold of the unlit room.

  It’s necessary, to try and comprehend.

  To his left, bare concrete steps transited upwards to the other two floors. Ahead, parallel to the schoolyard’s grassy sections and intersecting paved paths, a long open-sided corridor stretched out, past regularly spaced structural pillars clad with brown wire netting and tainted coils of barbed wire. Off the corridor at regular intervals were rooms containing faded cream and brown square tiled floors, dusty with patches of dark brown stains.

  The first room, dim and subdued, lacking any natural or artificial light, contained only a rusty metal bedframe and a sign describing the torture method employed there. Bozzer eyed the stark metal warily. He paused to read the description, his face contorted, cheeks hollow as he digested the gravity of the words.

  Shh-clitch.

  The faint shutter sound echoed around the room, the quick-fire resonance matching his racing heartbeat, pounding inside his skull. He lowered the camera, the image’s parameters and fine detail still imprinted in his field of vision. He slowly shook his head, turned and shuffled towards the door, his very core icy, craving the warmth that lay beyond the claustrophobic concrete structure. He stopped outside the doorway, glanced to his right, towards light flooding in across the floor, asking himself whether he should he retrace his steps, or continue …?

  Onwards. I
have to.

  Bozzer turned, padding along the corridor. He stepped into the next room, pausing to allow his heart to sink a little further, take a photograph and reflect some more, his soul suffocating, weeping away comprehension with every step.

  Unlike the first section of rooms, their layout unchanged since they’d been used as classrooms, the next area had been altered by the Khmer Rouge regime to suit their sinister, hellish requirements. Roughly built brick and blockwork internal walls with tatty wooden doors compartmentalised the previously large open-plan schoolrooms, segregating each area into a series of tiny brick cells, barely six feet by five. Tourists filtered past, squeezing by each other in sombre courtesy, ducking their heads into the cells. Some shook their heads, visibly moved by the experience. Others exchanged comments, seemingly in good humour as they snapped a continuous stream of photographs, perhaps oblivious to the true horror of this place, the segregation of humanity in the barbaric compartmentalised structures, leaving crushed human spirits lingering.

  Bozzer shivered, despite the heat radiating from the mid-afternoon sun. Cold to his core, his stomach squeezed bile up towards the back of his throat, forcing him to concentrate on his breathing to keep it at bay. He reached into a pocket for his tobacco tin, clasped his fingers around its reassuring familiarity. Then he stopped, recalling a notice he’d read on the way in. He relaxed his grip, eased his fingertips away.

  Last building. This is the really tricky one …

  Bozzer squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled deeply, slowly exhaling in shoulder-slumping resignation. He opened his eyes and shuffled forwards, joining the trickle of other visitors mingling towards the final building’s entrance.

  Whitewashed walls and ceilings brightened these large open-plan schoolrooms, minimally populated with exhibits. Paintings and photographs with placard descriptions of S21’s inhumane conditions hung alongside glass-fronted display cabinets housing torture implements. But these exhibits held little interest for Bozzer. He gravitated past, towards the far wall where a row of end to end open doorways led onwards. Each former schoolroom led into the next, towards the farthest section, the one he’d read about so many times. He forced his feet to move, the action feeling remote and surreal, almost as if they were unconnected to his own body. Instead, instructions from his brain transferred through a woolly spinal gearbox, reducing his momentum to agonising slow motion. His tunnel vision saw only doorways to the rooms beyond, each containing implements of an alien, medieval, morbid world. Everyone else, all those other hardened travellers, tourists and voyeurs, filtered away to each side as he transited onwards, blinkered, unable to make eye contact. Each room he passed through faded away, merging into a gloomy background. The surfaces around him were painted white, yet appeared so grey, so solemn, so … desperately wretched.