by Mark Green
Bozzer reached up with leaden arms. He rubbed sore, wet eyes with tingling fingers. Shaking his head, he looked away from the skulls behind the glass.
So what now – how do I leave this place? What lessons do I take away, for my own life? If it were me, all those years ago, what would I have done differently – what am I going to do now, from this moment on? How am I going to extract some form of positivity from this unspeakable wickedness? Try harder? Yes. Try harder, in everything I do. Focus on the photography, that’s important. Capturing those special, unrepeatable moments. Develop positives from the negative forces. Yeah. That’ll work …
Bozzer drew in a long deep breath, gradually lifting his head to stare up at the stupa once again, keeping it there as he held the air inside his chest. He closed his eyes, breathed out, then straightened his torso and opened his eyes as he pushed his hands down on the ground, standing shakily, stretching his heavy limbs up straight.
Okay, Gramps. In your memory …
He lifted his gaze to the top of the stupa, his eyes dry now, shining, resolute. He clenched his jaw, studied the glass sides and row upon row of human tragedy within, committing this moment, that image to memory, one last time.
‘Gonna make you all proud. Mum, Dad, Gramps … everyone. Just you watch. I will make a difference.’
• • •
All around Maddie were similarities, despite the different mixes of cultures and nationalities. Body posture, height, weight, hairstyles, skin colour, national clothing, distinctive mannerisms – a nation’s identity and cultural uniqueness, yet still, one commonality here. An understanding amongst friends, family, travel companions, strangers … all those wearing the headphones, carried themselves in silence. They all shared the same haunting weariness at the plunging depths of their fellow humans’ evil depravity.
The tinny narrators’ voices, each distinctively different, playing chillingly through the audio. Translations of survivors’ stories:
Losing a child.
Witnessing a murder.
Forced to leave home.
Almost beaten to death.
The sacrifice of a stranger, saving a life …
Maddie slowly panned her aching eyes around the lake. Zombie-like visitors stood or sat on benches staring out across the water, lost in a deep trance as they listened. Others crying openly, quietly, shaking their heads. No words. No cause. No comprehension.
Her feet shuffled on, drawn to the next location on the audio tour, compelled to keep moving, to prevent grief from enveloping her, sucking all future fun and laughter from her body.
Exhibit fifteen. The Killing Tree.
Hundreds of colourful wristbands and hairbands adorned the thick trunk, wedged between ridges of rutted bark. Maddie stopped short of the tree, a respectful distance from the family already stood there, silently listening to their headphones. The audio description began explaining about the atrocities committed here. She watched the family slowly move on, the mother hugging her sobbing teenage daughter, her son red-eyed and self-conscious, his bottom lip trembling.
Maddie tried to move, step forwards. She failed, remaining stuck, her feet immobile as if glued to the ground, or held there by a powerful magnetic force. The narrator described how in order to save bullets, adults were beaten to death with axe handles and bamboo sticks, then thrown into a ditch beneath the tree’s roots, one on top of the other. Little children and babies were grasped by the legs, swung at the tree, their skulls smashed against the trunk.
She gasped, recoiling, her body shaking, fighting for breath. Oxygen sucked from her lungs, like an imploding vacuum.
‘No …’ she croaked, tears falling down her crimson cheeks. ‘Nooo!’ She clutched her stomach, staring down at her hands, scrunched them tight, releasing them. She held up her shaking fingers, studying them, bewildered, then pressed her palms back on her belly.
‘NOOO!’ Maddie spluttered, hyperventilating as she cried out, sobbing uncontrollably. Her body convulsed in waves of increasingly violent shuddering.
‘Easy there, Maddie. I’ve got you.’ Bozzer gently placed his hands on her shoulders. He gathered her into his arms a split-second before all remaining strength failed her and she began to crumple.
‘Nooo …’ she whimpered, her whole body convulsing as she wept in his arms. He reached up, slipped the headphones off her head, held them behind her back as he scooped her up in his arms and carried her away. Her body heaved in his, lungs gasping, grappling for air, her heart pounding flat out. What the hell possessed another human being to inflict such, such obliteration?
‘Shhh … shhh …’ Bozzer stood on the grass under the shade of another tree, far away from that one, cradling her in his arms. Her gasping breaths gradually began to slow. But her arms remained clutched tightly around his neck, her wet, hot face pressed into his chest. Holding onto his kindness, as it were the only thing left remotely safe and real in this shitty world.
‘It’s horrific, seeing these barbaric things we humans do to each other,’ he murmured, ‘it’s beyond comprehension. There are no words to—’
‘Children … babies,’ she blurted out, her chest heaving against his. More tears soaked into his tee-shirt.
‘I know … shhh …’ He sank down onto the grass, lowering her into a sitting position beside him. He eased her head into his neck, holding her gently, his torso rocking slowly with her. They sat there, holding each other for several long, silent minutes.
‘You lost someone … else?’ he said eventually.
She eased back from him, her breathing steadier now, wiping away the wetness from her cheeks with the back of her hand.
‘Yes, sort of,’ she whispered, barely audible. ‘Stefan died seven years ago …’ She took a gulp of air, lay a hand in her lap, fingers touching her stomach. She glanced at Bozzer, hesitated, then looked away. ‘He rarely rode a motorbike on the road, it was too dangerous for a track racer. He died rushing to get home, to take me to hospital … when the contractions started. We’d already agreed, before the birth, to have her, our baby … adopted.’
Maddie shook her head, swaying the fresh trickling tears into a slalom down her prickling cheeks. ‘I tried to reconsider, after Stefan died. But I wasn’t strong enough. The circumstances were … unfeasible. I couldn’t cope without him. So I gave her away. She’ll be almost seven years old now. That tree, what happened here … those tiny, innocent, helpless children.’
She clasped her hands around her waist, doubled up, retching with emotion. Bozzer opened his arms, pulled her in close again as another bout of sobbing consumed her.
• • •
Bozzer wriggled his hand into a pocket and dangled a Kleenex tissue under Maddie’s nose. ‘I think it’s uncontaminated.’
‘Thanks,’ she mumbled hoarsely. Sniffing and propping herself up, she leant away from him to dab her eyes and blow her nose. ‘Sorry about the blubbing.’
Bozzer looked down at his tee-shirt. ‘It’ll dry. How you doing?’
She shrugged. ‘Better, I think. That was pretty intense.’
‘Yeah, horrible. But important.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We should probably get a wiggle on, I think the centre shuts soon.’
Maddie nodded. She wiped her nose again, pocketed the tissue and stood up, shakily. They walked slowly back towards the entrance in silence.
‘There’s something I need to do, before we leave this place.’ Bozzer unzipped a side compartment on his camera bag and withdrew a pen. He stepped into the reception centre and stood over the large visitors’ book, taking a moment to contemplate. ‘Do you want to go first?’
Maddie nodded, absently. She accepted the pen from him and leant over the page to write her comment and sign her name, handing him the pen afterwards in silence. Bozzer looked down at her neat handwriting.
Words fail me.
He nodded, glanced at her puffy, red eyes and fresh tears, then put the pen to the paper and began writing.
One can only hope and pray
for the best in people. But realistic knowledge of the destructive and wasteful nature of the human race creeps in here, and I don’t feel optimistic. Twenty thousand poor souls, murdered here, including one person particularly special to me. Barbaric. Inhuman. Unforgivable.
They shuffled away together, both blinking back their sorrow.
Thirty-Six
Bozzer sat opposite Maddie in the back of the tuk-tuk, their limbs juddering as it trundled along the bumpy road. Neither looked at each other. Lost in their thoughts, they stared out across the dusky fields as the last ebb of warming yellow sunlight sank below the green rice paddies, shimmering beneath the distant horizon.
Maddie shivered, tugging the waterproof jacket tighter around her. She raised her eyes skywards as raindrops began pattering on the tuk-tuk’s canopy roof, strumming louder as the tempo increased.
It was raining that day, too.
Sporadic single dwellings became occasional villages, gradually appearing more frequently, eventually merging into a continuous low-level conurbation peppered with random taller buildings, which in turn gradually increased in frequency with each passing mile. The build-up of increasing traffic slowed their progress as they approached the outskirts of Phnom Penh. Multiple headlight beams tracked slanting rain, now pummelling the road in a torrential downpour.
When you arrived, and he … didn’t.
Eventually Rico swung the tuk-tuk across the road and pulled up outside Maddie’s hotel.
‘Go and jump in the shower, get warmed up,’ said Bozzer, noting her shivering.
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll go and collect my pack, it’s stored behind reception at Charlie and Victoria’s hotel – too swanky a joint for my meagre budget. Perhaps you’ll let me shower in your room, I’ll make a plan from there. Sound okay?’
She nodded, her teeth chattering as she rummaged in her bag and pulled out her purse, handing Bozzer some notes. ‘Here’s Rico’s fee.’
‘Thanks. Go and warm up, get some dry clothes on. I’ll knock on the door when I get back.’
• • •
Maddie opened the door to see Bozzer shivering in the hallway, his clothes and rucksack saturated. In each hand he clutched a glass with a generous measure of dark spirit.
‘Brandy, good for chills,’ he said, handing her the glasses as she opened the door.
‘Perfect, thanks. Bathroom’s there, water’s lovely and hot. Which is more than it was the last time we shared a room. Oh, and watch out for the door catch, it seems a bit temperamental.’
Bozzer nodded and stepped into the room, shrugging off his backpack. He dashed into the bathroom, hurriedly stripping off his wet clothes. She heard the spray of water. ‘Thought you said it was hot?’ he called out from behind the bathroom door.
‘It is, after a few minutes.’ The embryo of a tired smile twitched on her lips. Maddie sat back on the bed, melting into the headboard. She sipped the brandy, holding her nose over the glass lip, closing her eyes to inhale the fumes. The fiery liquid soothed her aching throat as it slipped down, warming her chest.
She picked up her book, Survival in the Killing Fields, and fanned through the pages. ‘Not sure I can read you today, sorry,’ she said, clasping the book shut and placing it carefully on the bedside table. She shut her eyes and rubbed her forehead, kneading the furrows of tension with her fingers, working outwards towards her temples. God, what a day.
The faint sound of singing drifted over the pattering of water in the plastic bath, drawing her subconscious mind back. She opened her eyes, listening to his voice, singing louder now as the bathroom door inched ajar with a low creak.
Maddie eased off the bed, her bare feet padding across the tiled floor towards the bathroom. She stopped short of the door, hesitating. Unable to ignore her curiosity, she leaned forwards and peered through the gap. Bozzer stood in the bathtub, his outline hazy visible behind the shower curtain, eyes shut, rinsing shampoo lather off his scalp.
She lowered her gaze, tracing the outline of his muscled and tanned torso behind the wet curtain, transparent where it stuck to his buttock cheek, hugging the curve down to his thigh where it released from his skin and disappeared behind the side of the bath. She leant against the doorframe, watched him reach down and scrabble around for the shower gel bottle, standing up straight and blindly squeezing some into his hands.
Bang!
Maddie jumped, checking herself as he cursed, his hands searching around again in the bathtub for the slippery plastic bottle.
What the hell am I doing?!
She scampered away from the open doorway, her heart racing. Plonking down heavily on the bed, she reached for her book. She scanned the pages of text, searching for a familiar place to continue from, still listening to the water thrumming against the shower curtain. Her eyes darted over the top of her book at the partially ajar door.
Close it?
Leave it.
Close it—
Maddie leapt off the bed, scurried across the room and carefully pressed the door shut, closing it with a faint click as the latch engaged. She settled back on the bed, lips pursed. Eyes closing, she concentrated on regulating her breathing. She heard the cascading water stop. The shower curtain whooshed back on the rail. Then …
Eeeeerrrrccchhhh.
Maddie peered through half-closed eyelids, witnessing the bathroom door slowly creak open, wider this time. She lifted her book up to her nose, darting her eyes down to the text, then glancing back up at the partially open door. The sound of Barry towel-drying himself ceased. A pause, then his head popped around the doorframe.
‘This door seems a bit, er, unpredictable. One minute it’s shut, then as if by magic—’
‘I did warn you.’ She shielded her blushing cheeks behind the book.
He held her startled stare for a moment, the corners of his mouth threatening to turn up into a smile. Then he withdrew, reappearing with a towel wrapped around his waist. He padded across the floor, unclipped the straps on his pack and began laying fresh clothes out on the bed. Maddie flicked her eyes over at the brandy glass on the side table. She reached out and held the glass to her lips, draining the remains in one swig, wincing as it burned its way down.
‘Um, thanks for the brandy, lovely,” she squeaked. ‘Rough day, think I’d like another. I’ll be down in the bar when you’re … decent. Okay?’
She picked up her purse and the book, breezing past, leaving Bozzer chasing amusement across his weary, dimpled cheeks.
• • •
‘I hope you’re getting all this back on expenses …’
Fender looked up from the iPad balanced on his knee, its glow shrouding the side of his face in a greenish tint, washed white with every set of oncoming headlights zipping past the taxi.
‘I’m interested in how you’ll claim for paying off a Cambodian prostitute and a travelling hustler,’ Rupert added.
A flicker of amusement creased Fender’s mouth. He glanced down at the screen, hesitated as if weighing a thought in his mind, then he switched off the iPad. ‘Is small talk during our downtime your effort to humanise me?’
‘You must need to switch off sometimes.’
‘Alright, Rupert – dazzle me.’
‘With what?’
‘Whatever it is you’re bursting to say. To justify your morally dubious predicament.’
‘Haven’t you ever made a wrong decision, regretted it?’
‘Probably. Fortunately none involving a gang of east London loan sharks and a Samsonite suitcase laden with high-purity Class A narcotics.’
‘Alright … so not the smartest thing I’ve ever done.’
Fender regarded Rupert for a few seconds. ‘Is that it?’
‘This a confessional?’
‘Far from it.’
‘I’m not all bad. I looked after Maddie for a long time, after Stefan.’
‘So you said, before. You were friends?’
‘Since school. I sat with him at his hospita
l bed, when he died.’
‘With Maddie?’
‘No. She was … elsewhere.’
‘Was he conscious at all?’
‘For a time.’
‘So he made you promise, is that it?’
Rupert held Fender’s enquiring gaze. He nodded. ‘Stefan asked me to look after Maddie. I tried to be upbeat. I couldn’t imagine Maddie being able to cope without him, they were inseparable. The society magazines loved them.’
‘I read some articles, as research.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Tragic. Only twenty-four years old.’
Rupert nodded. ‘He loved to race. That rush … he truly grabbed life by the balls and rode the crap out of it.’
‘You admired him.’
‘We were like brothers.’ Rupert looked away, a pang of stomach acid tugging at the back of his throat.
‘So losing him like that, not being there at the end. That and the other unsavoury matter … must have really messed her up.’
Rupert clenched his jaw, turned to stare out of the window. The first droplets of rain pattered on the glass, obscuring the ramshackle town rumbling past beyond the gravel road surface. ‘Which is why I don’t understand this – her destination, or potential travel companions.’
‘No. Given the recent intel, it does seem an illogical fit.’
‘Our relationship may be built more on companionship than intimacy, but it still stings.’
‘Your sense of duty – up until you booked your Thailand holiday – is admirable. But this obligation to a dead friend extends only so far. Sooner or later you need to move on. For your sake, and hers.’
‘Hey, have a heart, Fender – I made a promise. There’s honour at stake—’
‘Are you honouring him, or her, right now? In a Cambodian taxi, wearing a tagging device, in pursuit of a suitcase stuffed with drugs, and at the mercy of a notorious debt collector?’