The Noble Path

Chapter Forty

For three days Elliot hovered between life and death, sometimes consumed by the fire of his fever, sometimes shivering uncontrollably. In flashes of lucidity, between bouts of delirium, he was aware of a young face fluttering over his, a small feminine hand wiping his brow with a cool, damp cloth. He had the impression of being surrounded by countless tiny diamonds of light, a gently curving universe that shone with the fire of a million stars. He floated here, adrift between light and darkness, and dreamt that he heard the slap of water, the dull chug of a small motor, and, once, that he lay in the arms of a naked girl, her soft brown skin burning where it touched his.

The pain in his chest and shoulder pulsed like a heartbeat. At times it appeared to envelop him, smothering all other awareness so that nothing else existed; a relentless, endless pounding of his brain.

When, finally, his fever burned itself out, consciousness came like a waking dream. He lay on wooden boards covered with coarse rush mats, swaddled in blankets and bundles of cloth. He gazed up at the familiar diamonds of light. But even as he focused they seemed to fade. The light was dying around him, and yet the air still glowed. For some moments his sense of disorientation flooded his mind with panic. He attempted to raise himself on one elbow, but fell back with the pain that forked through his chest, while the boards beneath him rocked gently from side to side. The slap of water on wood increased his confusion with the realization that he was on a boat. It came to him then, as he gazed upwards, that he lay beneath a canopy of rush matting arched across him. Tiny chinks of fading light shone through the gaps in the woven pattern. This vessel could be no bigger than a sampan.

He tried again to pull himself up, this time gritting his teeth against the pain, and pressed his face to a slit in the matting to see the sun dipping behind dark, scattered clouds. As it set across a wide expanse of water, its liquid gold seemed to spill out towards him. He fell back on to the mat, breathless and sweating.

A ragged cloth partition at his feet was suddenly drawn aside, and in the dusk he saw the light of concern in Ny’s young eyes. ‘You hungry, Mistah Elliot?’

‘Thirsty.’ His voice creaked in his throat, like a rusty gate.

‘How you feel?’

‘Dried up. Like a raisin.’

She disappeared behind the curtain and returned with a cup of water. ‘Mamma boil it. It good.’ She helped raise his head, lifting the rim of the cup to dry, cracked lips. His mouth soaked up the water like a sponge. It caught in his throat and he choked, spilling it to cling in droplets to the thick growth on his chin.

‘You been very sick, Mistah Elliot.’

‘I guess. How long?’

‘Three day.’

‘Three days!’ He felt as though a slice of his life had been excised by a surgeon’s scalpel. What had happened in all that time? ‘Where are we?’

‘South.’

‘South where?’

‘Kampuchea. On river Mekong. We tied up till it dark.’ She gave him more water and he felt it track cold down to his stomach. The effort of raising his head exhausted him, and he let it fall back on the bundle of cloth that served as a pillow, confused, uncertain as to whether this was another delirium.

‘How?’ he asked. ‘How did we get here?’

‘Mamma,’ Ny said. ‘She bring us.’ She paused. ‘Mistah McCue, he go to shoot you, but I tell him ’bout your friend, ’bout his cancer.’

She leaned over him and dabbed his forehead lightly with a cool cloth. He rolled his head to one side and looked at the bandage on his shoulder. ‘Who did this?’

‘Me and Mistah McCue. It good. Clean dressing. You been very sick.’

The murmur of voices came from beyond the cloth partition. ‘Who’s there?’

‘Mamma, she cook rice and fish. Hau catch fish. He very smart.’

‘And Mr McCue?’

‘He there, too. You hungry?’

He nodded.

Nothing had ever tasted so good before. She fed him with chopsticks, morsels that exploded flavour on his tongue. But it was hard work eating — his jaw felt stiff and his throat swollen — and he tired quickly, lying back to drift again into the netherworld that had held him for the past three days.

He dreamed he heard the cough of an engine, the slow chug-chug of a propeller, water whispering past his ears. Then silence, a sensation of floating through space, followed by darkness and a dreamless oblivion. When next he opened his eyes he could see nothing. He heard the splash of water against the sampan, then smelled smoke — the sweet tang of tobacco. The red end of a cigarette glowed in the dark, and by its light he saw McCue’s face. He was squatted on the boards beside Elliot, smoking in silence.

‘Give me a pull at that.’

Without a word McCue leaned over to hold the cigarette to his lips. He took a deep draw and coughed violently. ‘Better?’ McCue asked.

‘Sure.’ The smoke drawn into his lungs made him feel giddy. ‘What time is it?’

‘Night. Does it matter?’

Elliot felt irritation rising in his chest. ‘Yes, it matters. Where are we?’

McCue’s voice remained calm and even. ‘We crossed the border a couple of hours back.’

Elliot frowned. ‘What border?’

‘Into Vietnam. Just like coming home, eh?’ His voice was edged with irony. ‘We set off just after sunset, then about a mile up river we cut the engine and just drifted over in the dark. Easy as pie. You can see the lights of Chau Doc from here. Ever been to Chau Doc? It’s a shitheap.’ He held the cigarette to Elliot’s lips again. Elliot took a light draw and managed this time not to choke.

‘How the hell did we get here?’

McCue shrugged, as if it had been nothing. ‘She did it. Mamma Serey. She’s quite a lady. Just sort of took over. You were as good as dead. Me, I’d given up. Didn’t see the point no more. She took the kids and her jewellery into town, bartered for food and a sampan. They came back with a cart. We got you on it, then they hid you and me under all kinds of blankets and shit and wheeled us right past the noses of the Vietnamese, down to the docks. The place was crawling with refugees, soldiers. All kindsa stuff was going on. It was chaos. Shit, no one blinked an eye at an old woman and a couple of kids wheeling a cart. We been on the river ever since. Same on the water, too. All kinda boats going up and down, and the gooks not giving a shit. They don’t know what’s happening any more than anyone else. We never even been stopped. Not once.’ He chuckled. ‘Some lady, that Mamma Serey.’

Elliot lay back, staring wide-eyed into the darkness, trying to block in McCue’s sketch of his lost three days. But his thoughts were as confused as the scenes McCue had described. He could form no picture of a Phnom Penh alive with refugees and soldiers; just empty streets and desolation. Neither could he picture the river, or the sampan in which he now lay; only the wide, empty waters of the Tonle Sap, and the small open boat in which they had so nearly perished. He felt lost in a void. And, for the first time that he could remember, he realized that he was not responsible for his own life. A huge burden had been lifted. He could embrace death with an easy conscience.

‘Why are we in Vietnam?’

McCue breathed a lungful of smoke into the darkness. ‘She reckons we can make Long Xuyen in a couple of days. I know a guy there, or did, if he’s still alive. Ethnic Chinese. Hated the Viets. I was stationed there for a couple of months. He and I played a lot of cards together, drank a lot of whisky, lost a lot of money. It’s not so far from there to Rach Gia, on the coast. I thought maybe he could help.’

Elliot laughed. The easy laugh of one who will never have to face the problem, of one suddenly free to no longer care. ‘What are you going to do, Billy? Just waltz into town, say “Hi, remember me?” Five years since the Yanks pulled out. Not many white faces around these days, I’ll bet.’

‘A few Russians, though.’ Elliot heard him grin in the dark. ‘That’d be some irony.’

‘Know any Russian?’

‘Da svedanya.’ He paused. ‘You?’

‘Skajitay pojalsta gdyeh astanavlivayetsya avtobus numer adin.’

‘Shit, I’m impressed. What the fuck does that mean?’

‘Excuse me, please, where does the number one bus stop?’’

It was the first time Elliot could remember hearing McCue laugh. ‘Hey, Elliot, I never knew you had a sense of humour.’

Elliot let his eyes close. The mere act of talking had tired him.

He was not sure if he had slept for any length of time, or merely dozed for a moment, before he next heard McCue’s voice. But it came to him as if in a dream and he had to force his eyes open. There was the faintest grey light around them, and McCue was smoking another cigarette. ‘What? What did you say?’

‘I said quit snoring. I can’t get to sleep, and they can hear you in Chau Doc.’

‘Give me a cigarette.’

McCue lit him one and Elliot took it in his right hand. There was a foul taste in his mouth again. He said, ‘Who’s on watch?’

‘The boy. I done my stint. It’ll be dawn soon, then we’ll start the motor and get moving.’ He shifted to straighten a cramped knee.

Elliot took several draws on his cigarette. ‘I suppose I should thank you.’

‘What for?’

‘My life.’

‘Nothing to do with me. It was the girl. Changed your blankets when they was wet with you sweating, laying cold cloth on your forehead to stop you burning up, cleaning and changing your dressings. You’d think she really cared for you. Can’t think why.’

‘I dreamed I slept with her.’

‘No dream, pal. When you was shivering your life away, she just stripped off, and wrapped herself up in the blankets with you, to stop you freezing to death. I can’t believe these people. You treat them like shit, and they return it with kindness.’

Elliot was pricked by irritation. ‘I don’t need their kindness!’

‘Why? Afraid you might feel you owe ’em something? ’Cause you do. Your life.’

‘Who needs it?’

‘You, presumably. I mean, you was busy thanking me for it just a minute ago.’

‘I was being polite,’ Elliot said. He felt McCue’s eyes on him without having to turn to see them.

‘How come you never told me Mikey had cancer?’ There was no change of tone, yet the question was laden with accusation.

‘He didn’t want me to. I only found out by chance. He didn’t want anyone’s pity.’

‘I mean after you’d shot him.’ There was an edge there now.

‘There didn’t seem any point. Would it have made a difference?’

‘To me, yes.’

They heard, from the distant bank, the first cawing of tropical birds as the sky lightened.

‘You know, I can’t figure you, Elliot. It’s like you want to be hated.’

‘Maybe I deserve to be.’ He saw that his cigarette had burned down to the filter. ‘Get rid of that for me, would you.’ McCue took it and stubbed it out in the bottom of the sampan.

‘What are you talking about?’

Elliot turned his head and their eyes made contact. ‘You know what I’m talking about, Billy. People like you and me, we do what we do because we know something about ourselves that most people never do.’ McCue’s eyes flickered away in discomfort. ‘We’ve all been face to face with the other side, the dark side. Of ourselves. You know it, don’t you? The place you keep all the nasty things you’ve done or thought, that little seed of evil that’s in us all. Only we let it grow, didn’t we? Till it choked all the good in us, all the love. I mean, all that shit about duty and honour. You stop believing in that pretty quick when it’s kill or be killed. They know that, the ones who send you out there. They know that war is fuelled by evil, and they reward it with medals and citations. Christ, I mean how else are they going to persuade kids to go on killing each other day after day? And when the dark side takes over, how else are any of us going to excuse it?’

The brief burst of passion in him was snuffed out by fatigue. He lay gasping for breath.

McCue was staring down at his hands. He was silent for a long time. When he spoke it was in a monotone. ‘I had a puppy once. In Nam. Inherited it from this kid that got blown away by a frag grenade. I only had the mutt a few days. But I was pretty sore inside. Hurting. Angry. He’d been my buddy, that kid. I never made the same mistake again. That’s why I volunteered for the Rats. Make no friends, lose no friends.

‘So, anyway, they gave me his puppy. And I would take it and just sort of squeeze it till it yelped, or twist its paw till it would try to bite me. Shit, somebody or something had to suffer for all that pain, and it was going to be that fucking puppy.’ He shook his head. ‘I grew up on a farm, Elliot. Never hurt an animal in my life. But I was hurting that dog, and suddenly I knew it was in me. I got scared and gave it away, ’cause I knew I was gonna kill it.’ He paused to light another cigarette. ‘Maybe I should have. Maybe I wouldn’t have done all the other things I done.’ He glanced self-consciously at Elliot. ‘What did you do that was so bad?’ It was more a defence than a question.

‘Killed a lot of women and children.’

‘All that Aden shit? Everybody knows about that. You didn’t know they was there. You were just some kind of scapegoat, right?’

Elliot shook his head. ‘I knew they were there, alright. They were waving a white flag, as if that somehow wiped the slate clean. I had friends cut to pieces all around me. We were supposed to be protecting these people and they were feeding the enemy every damn move. I was mad. I was so mad I just didn’t care any more. I didn’t fire the first shot. But I still pulled the trigger. I was the officer, I could have stopped it. I was more guilty.’

He reached out for another cigarette. McCue lit one and handed it to him.

‘People used to ask, “What’s it like to kill someone? How many people did you kill?” They never asked what it’s like to see your best friend blown to bits by a mine, how it feels to be covered in his blood and hear him screaming in agony with his guts hanging out.’ The pain in Elliot’s shoulder had begun to throb and he felt dizzy and sick. ‘You know what I’m talking about. You said it yourself, you never let yourself get close to anybody ever again, never owe anybody anything. And the guilt...’ he closed his eyes. ‘Well, that’s something you’ve just got to live with. The knowledge inside, of who you really are and what you did. Death’s too easy. Life’s much harder. That’s the real punishment.’

He groaned, a long breath rattling in his throat. McCue leaned over him. ‘What’s wrong?’

He felt sleep, like a mist, slowly rolling over his consciousness. ‘Nothing that dying wouldn’t cure.’

McCue laughed. ‘You ain’t gonna die, Elliot. Like you said, that’d be too damned easy.’

It was dark. The mist rose up around him. He heard voices. Whispering. But he couldn’t make out what they said. He wanted to call out, but when he opened his mouth no sound came. A body lay in the swamp beside him, blood running rich and dark in the mud. He was scared. He knew they were all around, and when they found him he would be killed. A shadow loomed out of the mist, a dark figure towering over him. It leaned in and he saw its eyes, eyes without pupils or irises, just whites, shot with red veins. At last he found his voice, as terror dissolved control, and he cried out. An arm reached towards him and he grabbed the wrist.

He opened his eyes wide, the cry still on his lips, and saw Ny’s pain. He let go her arm and lay breathing heavily. Light burned through the chinks all around them. The air was hot and humid and fetid, and he was covered with a fine film of sweat. ‘I’m sorry.’

She rubbed her wrist. ‘You have bad dream.’

‘Yes. Bad dream.’

‘I change your dressing now.’

He watched and winced as she removed the dressing. There was an area of bruising all around, and it was red raw where the dead flesh had been cut away. From the smell and the colour in the centre he knew it was still infected, but it was not as ugly as he’d been expecting. He drew his breath in sharply as she took a small bowl of yellowish liquid and began gently swabbing it clean from the inside out. Even as he wrestled with the urge to yell with pain, he thought how absurd it was that he should feel the need to disguise it. Would she think him any less a man? Should he care? He gasped and tried to speak. A distraction. ‘What are you cleaning it with?’

‘Piss,’ she said.

‘Jesus Christ!’ He tried to jerk himself away.

‘Please stay still, Mistah Elliot. Mistah McCue, he say it...’ she searched for the word. ‘Sterile.’

‘Yeah, he would.’ He paused for a moment, then, ‘Whose piss?’ he asked.

She smiled, a coy little smile, keeping her eyes lowered. ‘Mine.’

He lay back and closed his eyes, wondering what further indignities life could heap upon him.

‘Mistah McCue drain wound for couple of days. Lot of pus. Smelled real bad.’

‘Didn’t feel too good, either.’

‘Much better now, but infection still there. We make — poultice.’ She pronounced the word carefully, proud of her new vocabulary. She lifted his arm with great care and washed out the wound in his armpit where the bullet had come out. He clenched his teeth and breathed stertorously through his nose. ‘It hurt bad?’

‘Yeah, it hurt bad. Jesus—!’

The cloth partition was drawn aside and Hau crouched down to enter, carrying a bowl from which steam rose like smoke. He looked anxiously at Elliot for a moment, then grinned.

‘What the hell’s this?’

‘Poultice,’ Ny said.

‘What’s in it?’

‘Rice. We boil rice and mash it and wrap in cloth. Mistah McCue say very good to draw infection.’

‘Seems to me Mr McCue’s been saying a lot of things.’

‘Lot of thing,’ Ny repeated seriously. ‘Very smart man, Mistah McCue.’

‘Yeah, very smart. I’ll bet that’s hot.’

‘Very hot. It hurt, maybe.’

‘No doubt Mister McCue told you that.’

‘No, Mamma say. She know ’bout poultice, too.’ She gently pressed the first steaming bundle into his shoulder, and it hurt like hell.

Later, both wounds freshly dressed, he was able to sit up a little, propped against his backpack, while Ny fed him rice and fish from a bowl. Hau squatted in silence by the partition, watching gravely. Their sampan put-putted through the water, making steady progress. The chinks in the matting gave him a splintered view of the river. It was busy, small boats plying wares up and down between villages in the delta. The wash from a laden ferry boat, sitting very low in the water, rocked their little craft from side to side, the deep throb of its engines receding north.

‘How come we haven’t been stopped?’ he asked.

Ny shrugged. ‘Many Cambodian here. Refugee.’

On the far bank he saw the rusting hulks of American patrol boats blown asunder by the Viet Cong, epitaphs for a high-tech superpower defeated by a people in black pyjamas.

Hau’s voice broke into his thoughts and he turned to find the boy’s eyes on him. He spoke haltingly, with the embarrassed reticence of a child confessing to some dreadful misdemeanour. Elliot looked at Ny. ‘What’s he saying?’

There was the faintest smile on Ny’s lips, as if she were secretly amused. ‘He apologize for what happen to you.’

‘It wasn’t his fault.’

‘You give him your charm. He believe he take your luck.’

Elliot smiled and shook his head. ‘No, no. I gave him my luck. My fault.’

‘He give it back to make you well.’

‘Tell him to keep it. I’m doing alright without it.’

‘No, you no understand. He already give it back. The night you shot.’

His hand reached to his neck and found the familiar St Christopher there, and for some reason he felt tears rise in his eyes. He looked away. ‘Tell him, then, that he saved my life. Tell him — tell him I owe him.’

Ny spoke quickly, softly, to her brother. Elliot watched him as, initially, the boy frowned, before grinning broadly. His eyes blurred, and a large tear rolled down his cheek. Elliot grinned back at him. He turned to Ny. ‘Tell him big boys don’t cry.’

Ny returned a quizzical look. ‘Don’ they?’

Elliot closed his eyes to shut out the world, but found it was still there, in the dark. And he wondered how it was that vice could succumb so easily to virtue.

It was night when he woke, startled to discover that he had slept at all. Time had passed, with the shutting and opening of his eyes, in a dreamless slumber. He felt the gentle sway of the sampan as it lay in some secret mooring. The air was filled with the sawing of the cicadas. He was still propped, semi-seated, against his backpack. His legs felt stiff and sore. He tried to move them to ease the ache and felt the pain revive in his shoulder.

A match flared in the dark, and he made out McCue’s face behind it. The American lit two cigarettes and passed one to Elliot. ‘Funny the things you hear in the night,’ he said. ‘A fish jumping to catch flies, something moving through the rushes, some goddam insect whining away in the dark aiming to suck your blood. In the daylight you might not even notice — there’s a rational explanation for everything. But in the dark, well, your imagination gets its turn. Comes up with some damn strange answers.’ He paused. ‘You alright?’

‘Sure.’

‘I used to love the dark. Kinda freed you from thinking about things the way they really are. Then you find yourself crawling along some goddam tunnel. It’s black like pitch. And whatever your imagination comes up with ain’t half as bad as what the gooks got waiting. After that, if you survive, you never trust the dark again — or your imagination.’

Elliot gazed up into the blackness and thought he could see stars through the chinks in the matting. ‘What’s brought this on?’

‘Dunno. Fear, I guess. In the dark you can believe you ain’t never gonna see nothing again. In the daylight it’s hard to believe you’re ever gonna die.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Funny thing is, I never used to be afraid of dying. Didn’t seem to matter much one way or another. But when you got a kid, it’s their life, too. You got responsibilities. You only get scared of dying when there’s some point to living. And what makes it worse is, you know it was always the ones who was scared that got it first.’ He stood on the butt of his cigarette. There was irony in his chuckle. ‘One thing that’s easier in the dark, though.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Baring your soul. I mean, you can’t see my face and I can’t see yours. In the daylight I’d be scared I could see you laughing.’

‘I’m not laughing at you, Billy.’

‘Maybe in the dark you understand a little.’

‘A little.’

‘Ny told me you got a kid, too. It’s hard to think of bastards like us as having kids — counting as someone’s daddy.’

Elliot watched the glow at the tip of his cigarette dying away. He shook his head. ‘That little girl’s got no daddy. He died sixteen years ago. And even if he was still alive she wouldn’t want to know him.’

‘That’s sad, Elliot.’

‘No. It’s history.’

The curtain was drawn aside, and the faint yellow light of an oil lamp spilled through from the other half of the cabin. Serey’s face looked drawn and pale as she crouched in the half-light, but there was a brightness in her dark eyes that Elliot had not seen before. ‘Time,’ she said.

McCue sighed. ‘My watch.’ But he made no attempt to leave. He lit another cigarette and chucked the packet to Elliot. ‘Not many left.’ He took a long draw on it. ‘Tell you a funny story.’

Elliot glanced at Serey, but she remained impassive, waiting patiently.

‘I spent some time upcountry with my unit in Nam before I was in the Rats. Always used to pull night watch. Used to love it. Me and the dark, you know. So anyway, my bunker was next to this lake, full of lungfish — you know, they got lungs and sound like humans breathing. Well, sometimes, in the dark, they would get stranded in the mud. You couldn’t see them, but you could hear them, like horror-movie monsters breathing right in front of you.’

Elliot managed to extract a cigarette and light it.

McCue went on, ‘So one night I was just lying there, thinking and listening, and I hear very clearly, right in my ear, this voice saying, “Fuck you.” Shit! I knew I was a dead man. I grabbed my rifle and all I could see was this lizard, about eight inches long, just sitting there. I looked at it, and it was looking at me. There was this moment of just nothing, then it blew out its gills and said, “Fuck you,” again. Christ, I’m shaking and waking the other guys. “Hey, man, this lizard just told me to go get fucked!” They’re grabbing their rifles, too, and the three of us — three grown men — have this stand-off with an eight-inch lizard. Finally the little bastard said “Fuck you” for them, too.’

Elliot laughed till the laughter caught in his throat and he choked, and lapsed into a fit of coughing that pulled and hurt his shoulder. But the pain didn’t matter. He had forgotten how good it felt to laugh. He saw McCue still grinning as he pushed past Serey to the outer cabin. Her face showed no understanding.

The sampan rolled as McCue clambered out to sit up back. Elliot’s smile faded. Serey turned away. ‘Wait,’ he said. She hesitated, still holding back the curtain. ‘Why are you doing this? You’d have been safe if you’d stayed in Phnom Penh.’

She took a long time to answer. ‘After four years under the Khmer Rouge, I’d forgotten I was still a human being. I just remembered, that’s all.’ And she dropped the curtain and was gone.

Chapter Forty-One

Long Xuyen lay in the heart of the delta. Nature had been generous here. It was the richest, most productive area of Vietnam, the rice bowl of south-east Asia. Its comparative wealth had been almost shocking to the conquerors from the north. It had also been the breeding ground for revolt. The Viet Cong and their cadres had worked tirelessly among the peasants, to turn them against the puppet regime of the Americans. There had been little to choose, back then, between the corruption of capitalism and the harsh and unforgiving dogmas of communism. But the communists possessed the more effective weapon. Fear. And they used it to good effect.

Life had changed little for the people since 1975. They worked in the paddies as long and as hard as before — for as little return. There were more rules and regulations. Enterprise and initiative were frowned upon. What little education existed had been replaced by re-education and indoctrination. The new religion was the atheist state but, as the French had failed to establish Catholicism, so the communists could not exorcize the Buddha, or the dozens of other schisms and sects. The history and essence of the East lay too deeply in the hearts of the people.

Here, as elsewhere in the world, racism and bigotry had always existed. But now it had the blessing of the state. As the Asians in Africa and Europe, and the Jews in Europe and America, are the object of jealousy and hatred, so the ethnic Chinese in south-east Asia are envied and despised — for their flair in commerce and trade, their stubborn refusal to discard an ancient heritage many generations removed. Now, under the communist authorities in Vietnam, hatred of the Chinese had been institutionalized. The Chinese community was harassed and persecuted. They were blamed for the country’s economic ills, driven from their businesses and their homes. Four years after the war had ended, fear still stalked many streets.

Tran Van Heng was one such ethnic Chinese, driven in late middle age to the very edge of despair. It was from this man that McCue hoped to receive help.

The American squatted just beneath the cover of the rush matting, fear fluttering in his belly like butterflies caught in a net. He had exchanged his ragged black pyjamas for a pair of neatly pressed dark trousers and a white, short-sleeved shirt. He had shaved, and his face felt strangely naked. Serey and Ny had returned with the clothes from a market in town shortly before dark. Now they sat in the cabin behind him, boiling up rice over a small stove. But he wasn’t hungry.

They had arrived at Long Xuyen in the late afternoon and berthed near the harbour among dozens of other sampans upon which hundreds of Vietnamese ate and slept, lived and died in a floating ghetto. Their presence there was unremarkable, and went virtually unnoticed. During the last hours of daylight, McCue had stayed out of sight, sitting with Elliot in the rear half of the cabin, waiting, hoping, for Serey and Ny to return.

Lights from the gently bobbing flotilla were reflected now on the dark waters. The smell of cooking rose like hope above the stink of human waste. The murmur of voices and the tinny scratch of transistor radios drifted gently through the night. From the direction of the harbour, the persistent twang of Vietnamese pop music blared from some waterside café. McCue felt a hand touch his arm. He turned to find Ny crouched beside him.

‘When you go?’

‘When I finish this cigarette.’ It was the third he had smoked since he’d made himself the promise.

‘You scared?’

He nodded. ‘Sure am.’ He glanced beyond the sleeping figure of Hau in the bottom of the boat to where Serey was dishing out bowls of rice. Her face bore a serenity, as if she knew that after everything she had been through nothing could harm her now. ‘I wish I was brave like your Mamma.’

Ny smiled. ‘You brave, too. You eat later.’

‘Sure. Later.’ He threw his cigarette into the dark and heard its brief hiss as it hit the water. The last thing he felt, before he clambered across several boats to the wooden landing stage, was the gentle squeeze of her hand on his arm. He carried the touch with him like a lover’s last kiss, not knowing when, or if, he might feel it again.

He felt acutely vulnerable. Unarmed and alone, a strange face in a land where his countrymen had suffered a humiliating defeat. Curious eyes fell upon him as he walked through the lit area of the harbour, then flickered away in feigned indifference. Curiosity was not encouraged by the authorities. Cafés and some shops were still open, their yellow lights burning harshly in the dark. He hurried away from the lights of the harbour, seeking the dim anonymity of the backstreets.

It was nearly ten years since he had last been here, and yet little seemed to have changed. The crumbling French colonial homes with their peeling shutters and broken balconies; the jumble of market stalls and cavernous dark shops; the rusted iron gates and dilapidated signs painted with extravagant Chinese characters; all remained much as memory had preserved them. The narrow streets of broken pavings and pitted tarmac, the evil smells that rose from cracks in the sidewalk. All appeared to have ignored the passage of time. He passed the terrace of a café where three men in his unit had been blown apart when a bomb planted by a shoeshine boy had exploded. It was in darkness now, closed for the day. And although its windows had long since been replaced and its terrace patched, the walls still bore the scars of the explosion.

In the main square the Catholic cathedral still stood, a poignant reminder of another age. In the streets off it, the homeless still slept in doorways and huddled against walls. Sullen-faced boys, and clusters of pasty-faced teenage girls clutching babies, called to him, jostling him as he went by, arms outstretched, begging for alms. A straggling rank of idle trishaw drivers grew suddenly animated, squabbling and fighting among themselves for his business. He shook his head and pushed quickly through, not wishing to attract attention. But suddenly he stopped, reigniting hope of a fare, and the drivers clustered around. Two uniformed and armed policemen stood under a light at the far end of the street. They had seen him, and were looking his way. With no streets off, he could not avoid them without turning back. In his alarm he turned to the nearest of the trishaw drivers. ‘You speak English?’

‘Yes, yes, speak English,’ he said eagerly. ‘You Russian?’

He hesitated. ‘Yes. Can you take me to Chinatown?’

‘Sure. Chinatown. No problem.’

McCue climbed in the back of the trishaw to a cacophony of complaint from the other drivers. His driver just pushed them aside and mounted his cycle. He began pedalling towards the policemen at the end of the street. As the trishaw approached, one of them stepped out with his hand raised. The driver braked and drew up alongside. The policeman looked suspiciously at McCue, then rattled off a series of questions at his driver. Perhaps fearing the loss of his fare, the driver began to argue, waving his arms. There was a lengthy exchange between them before the second policeman, losing patience, stepped up to McCue and spoke to him directly. His eyes were hostile and suspicious.

McCue looked at his watch and shrugged. ‘Skajitay pojalsta gdyeh astanavlivayetsya avtobus numer adin,’ he said with as much authority as he could muster. The policeman looked back at him blankly. For a brief, irrational moment, McCue feared he might be directed to the main square, and told that the number one bus left on the hour every hour. He leaned forward to tap his driver on the shoulder and wave him on. ‘Da svedanya, da svedanya!’ The driver remounted his bike and pedalled away, leaving the two policemen to watch them go, resigned to their impotence. Even the police were afraid of a higher authority. McCue breathed a sigh of relief.

In spite of the persecution, Long Xuyen’s Chinese quarter was still thriving, just coming to life it seemed, as the rest of this provincial town prepared for sleep. The streets were choked with people and traffic — trucks and bicycles — while the alleys spilled over with street markets selling everything from shoelaces to Peking duck. Ancient Confucian and Buddhist temples jostled with down-at-heel cinemas and seedy bars.

‘Let me off here,’ McCue called to his driver. The man, his wiry body sweating in shorts and singlet, drew his trishaw into the pavement and turned, grinning expectantly. McCue took off his watch and held it out. ‘Rolex,’ he said. ‘Best there is. Okay?’

The driver took the watch and examined it gravely. Then his face opened up in a grin, and he nodded vigorously. ‘Okay.’

McCue looked around him, ignoring the stares of the local Chinese. It all looked and smelled so familiar. Somewhere, further down the street, was the House of a Hundred Girls, the brothel he had frequented during his stay here eight years before. But perhaps, in the new morality, it would no longer be there. He took a left, pushing through the crowds of straw-hatted shoppers patronizing one of the less salubrious street markets. A food stall selling sweet buns was crawling with cockroaches. At the far end of the alley he took a right, turning into a quiet, cobbled street. Here the shops, and the factories that contrived to reproduce the vital parts of foreign-made motorcycles, were closed and shuttered.

Halfway down, a light burned above the door to a private apartment. It was a door McCue had passed through many times. But as he stood before it now, he hesitated. What if Heng no longer lived here? He might have moved away, or been put in prison. He could be dead. McCue wiped the sweat from his palms and knocked on the door.

He waited almost a full minute, and was about to knock again when the door opened a crack, and a sliver of light fell out into the street. Dark eyes in a wrinkled, yellow face peered out at him, wisps of silver hair scraped across an otherwise bald pate. ‘Hello, Heng,’ McCue grinned. ‘Is there a game tonight?’ There were several moments of stunned silence before the door opened a little wider, and astonishment shone out from Heng’s shrewd old face.

‘Billee?’ he said.

A ring of curious faces hovered around the edge of the pale light cast by an oil lamp on the table. They watched in grave silence as McCue ate hungrily, washing down rice and fried chicken with warmed rice wine; two boys and a girl, the children of Heng’s younger brother, Lee, Lee’s wife Tuyen, and Heng’s wife Kim. A wizened, white-haired old crone, Kim’s mother, sat somewhere beyond the reach of the light, rocking slowly back and forth, muttering inward imprecations. She no longer existed in their world. From time to time, McCue glanced up to meet Heng’s eye and nod as the old Chinaman exercised his rusted English.

‘For time after seventy-five, Billee, they let us carry on; shop, private trader, factory. Then last year they start clampdown. Many Chinese and Vietnamese taken from town to work in New Economic Zone.’ His chuckle contained no humour. ‘’Nother name for labour camp. Working in field. I lucky. They take my shop, everything I got, and they make me work in co-operative making wheat noodle.’

‘Sounds real lucky, Heng.’

‘Lucky for sure, Billee. I too old to work in field. I die there, maybe. Then war with Cambodia, and now they say China ’bout to invade in the north. Things get real bad for Hoa then.’

McCue nodded. The Hoa was the name the Vietnamese gave to ethnic Chinese living outside China. He knew that if China sent troops into Vietnam’s northern provinces, all Hoa in Vietnam would be regarded as potential fifth columnists.

‘They even start draft for Chinese boys. You know what is draft, Billee?’

‘Heng, I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for the goddam draft.’ McCue finished his wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘My grandfather used say to us, “China is our home. Vietnam is only our second home.” We Chinese don’t want to fight Chinese. And we hate communist, we don’t want to fight for communist.’

‘Shit, the Chinese are communists, too, Heng.’

‘Yes, Billee, but they still Chinese. Is different.’

Billy shook his head. ‘I don’t understand. If the Vietnamese are frightened of a war with China, why would they enlist Chinese in the army?’

‘Because they want rid of Chinese in Vietnam, Billee. They want us killed. Putting our boys in army is one way. I spend twenty taels of gold in last year keeping my boy out of army. You know — bribe. That more than six thousand dollar. It cost nearly three thousand dollar just to live.’ He shrugged. ‘Food very expensive on black market. I no can afford carry on much longer. My son in hiding now.’

‘Where the hell d’you get the money?’

Heng spread his lips in a wide grin, revealing his three remaining front teeth, like tombstones crumbling in a graveyard. ‘Money all in gold, Billee. They no find my gold.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Oh, we got to leave Vietnam, if we gonna stay alive.’

‘When?’

The old Hoa shook his head sadly. ‘Is not so easy, Billee. My cousin work on boat at Rach Gia for six month. We all give him money and he buy gasoline and keep it safe for trip. But not so easy now. At first many people leave Vietnam by boat, and government no worry. Now they make it hard. Shoot you if you try leave. We must wait for good weather, then two day only on South China Sea and we get to Malaysia.’

‘We’re just coming into the better weather now, aren’t we?’

‘Sure. But it cost much money. Many people need pay for boat. Not easy organize such thing.’

‘We got money, Heng. Dollars, gold, some diamonds.’

Heng’s brow furrowed doubtfully. ‘Dangerous try take foreigner, Billee. Take time, too.’

McCue reached across suddenly and grabbed Heng’s bony wrist. It was an act not intended to threaten, but one born of desperation. ‘We haven’t got time, Heng! We can’t tie up in that harbour indefinitely without someone getting curious, sooner or later. They find us, we’re dead, man!’ His eyes burned fiercely into the old Chinaman’s. Then, conscious that he had crossed the line beyond polite Chinese etiquette, he released Heng’s wrist. ‘I’m sorry.’

The Hoa rubbed the bruised flesh on his arm and stared back thoughtfully at McCue. ‘You got gun?’

‘Sure we got guns. Four automatic rifles, two pistols.’ He grinned nervously. ‘Awesome, huh?’

‘Crossing dangerous,’ Heng said. ‘Many pirate.’

‘Pirates?’

‘Thai fishermen. They attack boat people. Steal their money, rape their women, kill many men. Plenty bad story ’bout Thai pirate.’

McCue’s optimism rose like the smoke from the oil lamp. ‘Then you’re going to need us along for protection.’

Heng nodded solemnly. ‘Sure Billee.’ He paused. ‘How much money you got?’

The sampans rose and fell silently in the dark, like the shallow breathing of sleeping bodies. There were no lights anywhere along the harbour. McCue stepped carefully across the boats. From one of them, the muffled voice of a man cursed him for disturbing his sleep. Ny’s face appeared in the shadowed margin of the mat roof above their sampan, one half of her face caught pale in the moonlight. McCue crouched down, pushing past her to enter the cabin. He saw pinpoints of light reflected in Serey’s eyes, and a movement behind her told him the boy was awake, too.

‘What happen?’ Ny whispered.

‘Is Elliot awake?’

‘He is awake.’ Serey’s voice seemed strained and brittle.

McCue pulled back the curtain and saw the glow from Elliot’s cigarette.

‘You want food now?’ Ny asked, and he felt a stab of guilt. He had eaten and drunk well, and they had made do with rice and dried fish.

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Well?’ There was impatience in Elliot’s tone that annoyed McCue.

‘They was going anyway,’ he said. ‘His family and some others. They’ve got a boat at Rach Gia and they been saving fuel.’

‘When?’ It was Serey’s voice this time that carried a hint of impatience.

‘Not for another month.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Elliot hissed. ‘We can’t hang about here for a month!’

‘I talked them into going early.’

‘How long?’

‘A week — at the most. Someone’ll come for us.’

He heard Elliot expelling air through his teeth.

‘Even that’s pushing it, Billy.’

McCue was angry. ‘Fuck sake, Elliot, what d’you want — club-class tickets on the first flight out?’

‘That’ll do nicely.’

Serey’s hand touched McCue’s arm. He turned towards her. ‘How much?’ she asked.

He hesitated. ‘A lot. Probably just about everything we... everything you got.’

Chapter Forty-Two

The winter sun washed the room with its pale morning light. Outside a cold wind rattled the empty branches of the trees. Lisa sat in front of the mirror on the dressing table, and raised an arm slowly to brush her hair. Despite the heavy strapping, the pain from her broken ribs was still intense. It hurt just to breathe. The worst of the swelling on her face had subsided, bruises faded to the colour of jaundice yellow. The red slash of her lips heightened the chalky white of her skin. She looked ugly and tired. She felt like death.

After four days in the hospital in Hong Kong, and the thirteen-hour flight home, she had been exhausted and slept for eighteen hours, waking to a strange bed and a numbing disorientation. Only when a drawn-looking Blair had come in with a cup of tea did she remember where she was. The strain of his concern showed around his eyes.

‘How are you?’

She shrugged. ‘Alright.’ She pulled herself up to lean against the headboard.

He handed her the cup. ‘Do you feel up to a visitor?’

‘Who?’

He sensed her alarm and his face clouded with guilt. ‘I’m sorry, lass. Perhaps I should have waited. I called your boyfriend to let him know you were safe. He insisted on coming.’

‘Here?’

He nodded.

‘When?’

He looked at his watch. ‘About an hour. If you don’t want to see him...’

She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll have to see him sometime.’ She made it sound like a dental appointment.

Now, as she stared at the stranger in the mirror, she heard a car draw up in the road outside, a door slam shut. She did not know how to be with him. He belonged to another life, as different and remote as a butterfly’s former larval existence. The sound of his feet crunching on the gravel path filled her with dread. But there was a lack of urgency in his step, a secret reluctance, almost as if he too were afraid.

The murmur of voices in the hall, tones and cadences indistinguishable as words, rose and fell like mumbled prayers. But she detected anger in them. Then footsteps receded towards the back of the house and she felt relief at the postponement of their meeting. A drowning man will grasp at anything to delay the moment of death. And yet, surely, death itself could not be worse than the fear of it? She sat for long minutes of patient anxiety, listening for a footfall in the hall. When, eventually, it came, she felt herself stiffen, a chill spreading through her from an icy core. She turned her head as the door opened and he walked into the small front bedroom.

He seemed taller than she remembered, his hair redder, his skin paler. Whatever he had prepared himself for, whatever he had expected, he could not disguise his shock. His lips moved, but no words came. He took a moment to regain his composure.

‘How are you?’ The banality of his question, the strained politeness in his voice, spared her the burden of having to play a role.

‘As you see.’

He stared at her for a long time. ‘Why didn’t you call?’

She sighed and turned back to the mirror. His reproach was like the memory of a bad dream. ‘What do you want, David?’

A gasp of exasperation escaped his lips. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’

‘Have you?’

‘Yes, I have! If I hadn’t called Blair...’

‘What has he told you?’

‘Enough.’

She remembered that he had once wanted to marry her, and tried to imagine what that would be like. A semi-detached existence somewhere in the commuter belt; keeping his house, raising his children, barbecues in the garden with the neighbours on summer evenings. She had no idea, now, what she wanted from life. But it wasn’t that. Perhaps it never had been. She shook her head. ‘Then you know that I’m not who I was.’ She turned to meet his eye but found him staring at a spot on the floor. Perhaps he had already realized that. Perhaps, after what Blair had told him, he was simply going through the motions ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘not to have lived up to your expectations.’

He darted her a look, and she saw real pain behind his eyes, though she could never have been certain it wasn’t just the pain of failure.

‘But thank you for your concern,’ she added cruelly.

Blair heard the front door closing, and shortly after a car started and drove off down the street. The slow, tick of the clock grew thunderous in the silence that followed. He was surprised at the boy leaving so soon, and wondered if he should go through to her. But he did not stir from his armchair. She would need time and space to recover, if such scars as she must carry inside would ever heal. He let his head fall back on the rest and felt a kind of despair. It seemed that everything in Elliot’s life was destined to be touched by tragedy.

The room was warm and bright, filled with the reflected light of the sun on the river. He closed his eyes and flirted with sleep, drifting in a netherworld of waking dreams, not quite asleep, not quite awake. A sound came to him from the conscious world and he opened his eyes with a start. Lisa stood by the window, staring out across the river. He had not heard her come in. She turned as he stirred.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

‘You didn’t. I just — I’m tired, I guess.’

She nodded. ‘He’s gone.’

‘I heard. He didn’t stay long.’

‘There wasn’t much point.’

‘What happened? What did you say to him?’

She shrugged. ‘I told him it was over, that’s all.’

‘He didn’t strike me as the type to give up so easily.’

She moved away from the window and eased herself into a chair. ‘What did you tell him — about what happened in Bangkok?’

‘Not much. That you’d fallen foul of some unscrupulous individuals who had tried to harm you. He wasn’t very sympathetic, then?’

‘David has never sympathized with anything or anyone in his life, except himself. He never really knew or understood me. I took his fancy, an object to be desired and possessed. I think he’d begun to realize, even before I left, that I wasn’t really up for sale. And now that the goods are shop-soiled...’ Her voice trailed away.

‘I didn’t go into detail.’

‘You didn’t have to. And, anyway, I don’t think he’d have wanted to know.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be. To be honest, I’m relieved. I might have felt in his debt. He was there for me when my mother died and I needed a shoulder to cry on.’

Blair raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘And now you don’t?’

‘I don’t need anyone.’ Her voice was defiant — the defiance, Blair thought, of disillusion. She would recoil from warmth, as a puppy which has been beaten shrinks from the approach of even a friendly hand. She had lost her trust, along with her innocence. And mistrust was always a crude defence against further hurt. It precluded the possibility of love.

‘You make me think of your father,’ he said.

‘My father’s dead,’ she said dully. She looked up to meet his gaze. ‘Isn’t he?’

His mouth set in a grim line. It was something he had not admitted, even to himself. ‘Yes. I suppose he is.’ He reached for his pipe and lit it. He did not feel like smoking, but it was something to do. Blue ribbons rose in the still air. The silence lay uneasily between them. Finally he said, ‘I never told you what happened. At the end, when we got you out of that place.’

‘We?’

‘I’d never have found you if it hadn’t been for her. You’d be dead.’

She frowned. ‘If it hadn’t been for who?’

‘Grace.’

She looked away quickly and he was unprepared for the venom in her voice. ‘I hated her!’

‘Maybe you had good reason, I don’t know. I don’t want to know. But she died saving your life.’

He was unprepared, now, for the pain he saw in the look she turned on him. ‘Grace is dead?’ She remembered the velvet touch of her fingers, cool lips on her skin.

‘They shot her as we escaped from the warehouse. There was nothing I could do.’

A shudder seemed to run through Lisa’s body, like the shock waves of an explosion. She closed her eyes and put her fingers to her temple, pressing it as if there were a great pain there. ‘But why? I don’t understand. Why would she want to save me?’

Blair’s mouth was dry. ‘She said — she just said to tell you that she was sorry.’

Lisa sat for what seemed like a very long time before she drew in her lower lip and tears came to her eyes. Then she wept, painfully, like a child, and Blair knew that there was hope for her in her pain.

Chapter Forty-Three

The sound of raised voices from the quayside filtered through Elliot’s uneasy slumber. He opened his eyes to find McCue crouched beside him, his M16 raised vertically by his side. His face was a mask of sweat and strain.

‘What’s going on?’ Elliot manoeuvred himself on to one elbow and the sampan rocked. He felt giddy, and found it hard to focus in the fading light. The combined effects of his wound, the fever, the unrelenting heat, and more than a week spent lying on his back, had robbed him of his strength.

McCue raised a finger to his lips and whispered, ‘Army. They’re checking papers, looking for draft dodgers.’

Elliot swallowed hard. He felt weak and vulnerable, and fear lay like poison in his belly.

‘What can we do?’

‘Nothing. Just sit tight and hope they don’t search the boat.’

Elliot reached behind him to grope for his holster, and drew out his pistol. He said, ‘I’d almost begun to think we might just make it.’

They had waited five long days, through the heat and rain, virtual prisoners in the sampan, for word from Heng. But none had come. Serey and Ny had made several trips into the town, trading in the still thriving black market for food. But the strain of the interminable waiting in cramped and unsanitary conditions was beginning to tell. In the heat, the stink of human waste hung in the air, and thick clouds of flies swarmed around them, infesting their food, getting in their mouths. Through the endless hours, McCue had been like a caged animal, his patience and his nerve gradually disintegrating. He had growled and snapped at everyone, insisting on sitting out back at the open end of the boat as soon as it got dark, in spite of the risk of being seen. Twice, Elliot had dissuaded him from repeating his perilous trip across town to the Chinese quarter in search of Heng. Now, he crouched in rigid concentration, listening intently to the sound of soldiers searching the sampans around them. Elliot guessed that the American would relish an end — any end — to this prison sentence: even death in a firefight with the Vietnamese.

Elliot wondered why he felt fear, before it struck him that it was not for himself, but for Serey and Ny and the boy. After all they had been through, they didn’t deserve to die like this. But he knew, also, that he had no power over the events that would unfold, and no strength with which to meet them.

The clatter of boots on wooden boards drew nearer. Their sampan rocked, and McCue had to steady himself with his free hand. A shrill male voice reeled off a series of demands, and Elliot recognized the voice that responded as Ny’s — a brave medley of stuttering Vietnamese and Cambodian. He tried to peer through chinks in the matting, but it was already almost dark and he could see only the lights of the harbour across the water. The soldier’s voice grew less shrill in response to Ny, adopting instead a tone of confident superiority. Elliot could almost see the leer on his face.

The curtain was drawn quickly aside and Hau scuttled through, clutching an AK-47. His face was sickly pale with fear. In the seconds before the curtain fell again to obscure the view, Elliot saw, beyond the squatting Serey, Ny’s bare legs framed in the curve of the canopy, and the soldier’s in khaki fatigues tucked into army boots. At first her voice was insistent, argumentative, before finally falling in pitch to adopt a friendlier tone. She talked quickly, with growing confidence, drawing eventually, to Elliot’s consternation, a laugh from the soldier. It was an odious laugh, laced with lust. Elliot watched Hau’s face, hoping to discern something from the boy’s expression, but there was no clue in his studied intensity.

At length, Ny and the soldier left the sampan, stepping out across the other boats. The sound of their voices, and those of other soldiers who had been conducting the search, drifted away into the night. The silence that ensued within their cabin was laden with disquiet. Elliot and McCue exchanged glances, fearing the worst. Hau, head bowed, stared unblinking at his feet. McCue leaned forward to pull back the curtain. Serey sat as before, squatting by the small stove where she cooked their food. Her face had a waxen quality about it, but was otherwise expressionless. She was staring off into the middle distance.

McCue said, ‘What happened?’

She didn’t turn. Her voice was dull, mechanical. ‘She told him that we were refugees and had no papers. He wanted to search. She said that her little brother was very sick and must not be disturbed.’ She paused, and McCue saw a nerve quivering at her temple, like a butterfly trapped beneath the skin. ‘She pointed out that there is an empty sampan beyond the landing stage, and suggested that if they went and searched it together he might find something more interesting than an old woman and a sick boy.’

McCue let the curtain fall and slumped back into the cabin. Shame prevented him from raising his eyes to meet the boy’s. Elliot lay back and screwed his eyes closed. Anger and frustration welled up like vomit inside him. There was nothing to be done.

Gradually, after the soldiers had gone, normality returned to the floating community around them; the sounds of voices, hushed at first, gained in confidence; transistor radios scratched the hot surface of the night; the smell of woodsmoke and cooking rose above the stench of sewage. Oil lamps were lit, their yellow reflections flickering across the gently undulating surface of the river. At one point Elliot thought he heard a girl’s voice raised in a cry, coming from somewhere beyond the landing stage. But he could not be certain he had not imagined it.

It was almost an hour before they heard Ny’s soft step returning across the boats. McCue drew the curtain aside as she stooped to enter the outer cabin. Her face showed nothing, but he saw, as she squatted silently beside her mother, that her hands were trembling, and there was the hint of bruising around her lower lip. Hau pushed past the American and went out to join them. McCue let the curtain fall, and studied the dirt that drew black lines under his fingernails. Elliot stared at the rush matting overhead for a long time, before he closed his stinging eyes and gave himself up again to the strange dreams that haunted his hours of shallow sleep.

A vast expanse of desert stretched before him, the sand rising and falling in great dunes. The sky was black and starless, and a large yellow crescent moon, lying on its back, rose slowly out of the horizon. He shivered, realizing that he was cold and wet. When he looked up again the horizon was see-sawing up and down and the sand had turned to water, the dunes transformed into great black white-topped waves looming overhead. Above the roar of the water he now heard the baying of a dog, or was it a wolf? Desolate howls in the night. He opened his eyes and heard Ny sobbing on the other side of the curtain. Outside, a heavy downpour dropped rain the size of marbles on to their awning. A fine wet spray showered through the matting. Everything was soaked. McCue still sat by the curtain, his hand cupped around a cigarette.

Elliot forced himself up into a seated position, and pulled the curtain slightly to one side. He could make out Serey’s silhouette, squatting still by the stove, cradling her daughter’s head in her lap, muttering words of comfort like some religious incantation. He looked at McCue. ‘How long’s she been like that?’

McCue shrugged. ‘Difficult to say. Feels like a lifetime.’ He raised his head slowly towards the heavens. ‘I guess even the gods are weeping for her.’

‘Shhhh! What’s that?’ Elliot raised his hand, suddenly, straining to hear above the roar of the rain.

McCue listened. ‘I don’t hear anything.’

‘I’m sure I heard... There it is again!’

This time McCue heard it, too. A voice calling softly in the dark from beyond the awning. ‘Mistah Billee... Mistah Billee.’ McCue grabbed his automatic and scrambled through the cabin, past Serey and Ny and Hau, towards the back of the sampan. A small, frightened figure crouched there in the dark. McCue recognized Heng’s young nephew, Lac. Ny had stopped sobbing now and was sitting upright, clinging to her mother’s arm. Hau moved forward, Kalashnikov primed for use. McCue raised a warning hand to stop him.

‘What is it, Lac?’

‘You come, Mistah Billee. Come now. We leave for Rach Gia tonight.’

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Half-filled cardboard boxes stood around the living room. Clothes lay draped over chairs. Piled in twos and threes, drawers containing the letters, jewellery, diaries and bric-a-brac that one collects over nearly forty years were stacked in the middle of the floor. Lisa sat cross-legged in front of the fire sifting through her mother’s things, deciding what should go to Oxfam and what should be consigned to the cardboard boxes.

The house was haunted by memories, and these were the last tangible reminders; mother-of-pearl hair clasps with strands of her hair still caught between the teeth; a pile of scratched Elvis Presley singles; a box of black and white photographs of her mother as a child during the war years. These were all that remained of an unremarkable and unhappy life. A sad and meaningless legacy, to be wrapped in newspaper and packed away in boxes, as her mother had packed away all memories of her husband in an attic trunk.

Lisa heard the sound of hammering from the front garden. She crossed to the window. A young man from the estate agent was knocking a FOR SALE sign on a pole into soft earth on the garden side of the wall. A light drizzle blurred the glass. She turned from the window and winced a little as the pain in her ribs reminded her of things she would rather forget. She was comforted by the thought that this memory, too, would fade with the pain.

She picked her way across the floor and sat at the table. Before her, spread out on the cloth, were all the cuttings of the court-martial, and her parents’ wedding photographs. She had read and reread every word, examined every detail of every picture. She looked again at the press photographs of her father, and traced the line of the scar on his cheek lightly with her fingers, smearing the newsprint.

However hard she tried, she found she could not recall with any clarity the features of the woman who had died for her in Bangkok in the damp basement of a dockland warehouse. Even the face of her mother had receded to the backwaters of her memory. There were, she supposed, always photographs to remind her, but these she could hide away in boxes in the attic. It was her father’s face that remained etched on her memory. It was his face she saw when she closed her eyes at night, though she had glimpsed him only once, sheltering beneath a tree at her mother’s funeral.

Bangkok was a million miles away. It belonged to another existence, to a person she had been only briefly. Soon London, too, would be just a memory, along with the house. It was possible to put everything away, or behind you. It was possible to be someone else, the sum total of all those people you had been, but different from any one of them. It was possible to start again, to build a new life. If only...

Her gaze rested again on the photograph of the young man in dress uniform grinning shyly by her mother’s side on the church steps. She wished she could hate him for what he had done to her. She wished she could have met him, if only to dislike him. She wished at least she had got somewhere near the truth. Perhaps then she could have forgotten.

She sat for a long time gazing into the flames of the gas fire, before reaching a decision. She drew the phone towards her and dialled for a taxi.

Blair led her through to the room at the back, and the view over the river. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,’ he said. It had been less than a week since the doctor had declared her fit enough to return home. He took her coat.

‘I didn’t mean to disturb you. I needed to talk.’ She touched the back of the chair she had sat in for so many hours, talking, listening, learning to trust again, and feeling scar tissue grow over mental wounds. ‘May I?’

‘Of course.’ He waved her into the seat. ‘I’d have thought we’d done enough talking to last a lifetime.’ He settled back into his armchair and lit his pipe. It was true, he thought. They had talked a great deal. Mostly about her father, feeding her longing for detail — about his life, where he had been, what he had done. But his instinct told him that she had returned now to ask the questions he had hoped she never would. ‘What have you been up to?’ Perhaps he hoped he could deflect her.

She shrugged. ‘I’ve put the house up for sale, and I’ve applied for a job. In Edinburgh.’

‘Nice city. Doing what?’

‘Secretarial. A lawyer’s office.’

‘Seems a bit of a waste. I thought you were going back to college.’

She toyed with the buckle on her belt, avoiding his eyes. ‘I changed my mind. It just seemed like a step back. Anyway, I don’t think I was cut out to be a journalist.’

He watched her for a few moments, until the silence forced her to look up. ‘Know anyone there? In Edinburgh?’ She shook her head. He nodded. ‘Running away, then.’

She was stung to defend herself. ‘I’ve got nothing to run away from.’

‘Except the past.’ He tamped down the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. ‘Only you can never do that. You carry your past with you always. Wherever you run, you’ll only find yourself, waiting there for you when you arrive, like an old friend — or enemy — you can’t get rid of.’

‘You always have all the answers, don’t you, Sam?’

‘If I’d had all the answers at your age, I wouldn’t be where I am now. I suppose you’ve got to find your own answers.’

She tutted with irritation. ‘Maybe when I’m your age I’ll be as smug as you.’

He grinned. ‘Coffee?’

‘No thank you.’ She was still annoyed.

‘Well, I’m making some anyway. If you change your mind give me a holler.’ He eased himself out of his chair.

‘I want to know about the massacre in Aden.’

He hesitated for only a moment. ‘I already told you about that. A long time ago. Milk, no sugar, isn’t it?’ He headed for the kitchen.

‘You told me a version of it,’ she called after him. ‘I want to know the truth.’

He stopped and turned, sudden anger in his eyes. ‘Do you? Why? So you can hate him? Consign him to the past, like another bad memory? No, no, that would be too easy, Lisa. It’s far easier to hate than it is to love. If you’re going to feel anything for him it should be pity. And you should carry that pity around with you for the rest of your life, and maybe one day you’ll be able to forgive him!’

Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted me to pity him.’

‘No, he wouldn’t. He’d have hated it. And he’d have rather you’d hated him. You’re just like him, you know. He always wanted the easy way out, too.’ He put his hand to his forehead. ‘No, that’s not true. I’m being unfair to him. He took it all on himself. All the responsibility, all the guilt. But his way of coping with that was by shutting everything and everyone else out. He just died inside, emotionally.’

He turned and stared out across the river. ‘We all died a little.’ His laugh was without humour. ‘They talk about the innocent victims of war. But sometimes the real victims are the ones who survive.

‘Oh, yes, we walked into that village and killed all those people. It was no accident, and I’m not going to try and excuse it. We lost control. A moment of madness. It happens. But, you see, what happened, happened as much to us as it did to them. They died, but we had to live with it, and I think dying was the easier of the two.’

A small boat drifted by, a young couple in winter coats and scarves laughing at some shared intimacy.

Blair turned towards Lisa. ‘What I told you before, about what happened — it was our defence at the court martial. It’s what we told our wives and our girlfriends and our parents. It’s what we wanted the world to believe, what we wanted to believe ourselves. How could you tell anyone, or even admit to yourself, what it was you’d found inside? Something dark and evil that you’d never even suspected was there. Something so rotten you can’t ever wash the taste of it from your mouth. Like coming face to face with the devil, only to realize you’ve seen the face before, looking back at you from the mirror when you shave in the morning.’

The tension in the room was electric. Lisa sat rigid, her look of horror quickly replaced by one of guilt. She felt as if she had desecrated a grave, uncovered a body it had taken years to bury. And the corpse was still alive. She said feebly, ‘I’m sorry,’ and couldn’t bring herself to meet his eye.

As if to deflect his own pain, he said, ‘Most of us learned to live with it, one way or another. But it was Jack’s name in the headlines, his life that could never be picked up on. When your mother disowned and divorced him there was no way back. Whatever capacity he’d had for love turned to hate, most of it directed towards himself. I said before, it’s easier to hate than to love. It’s also easier to be hated than to be loved. He lost his humanity. He cared for no one, least of all himself, and that way expected nothing in return. He was a lost soul, Lisa, lost and lonely. So don’t ever hate him.’

She stared at the floor, and he stood for a long time without speaking. He felt old and tired. Fat drops of rain began to fall outside.

‘I’ll make that coffee now,’ he said.

Chapter Forty-Six

A slight breeze stirred the freshly starched tablecloths on the dining terrace of the Batu Beach Hotel. The guests were seating themselves for lunch at their usual tables, overlooking the clear blue waters of the South China Sea. A middle-aged American couple, some Australians, a small party of Japanese, a group of English on a four-centre tour of the Far East.

‘Would you look at them!’ the American said, his voice rasping with irritation. The Japanese chattered animatedly at their table, cameras still dangling from necks, or laid next to plates.

‘What about them, George?’ said his wife. She smiled in their direction but got no response.

‘You’d think they’d won the goddam war the way they behave.’ It annoyed him that they had ignored his overtures of friendship. They were completely wrapped up in their own company. They ate together, went to the beach together, all went in the swimming pool at the same time, and they never stopped taking photographs of one another. It was as if the rest of the world did not exist.

‘The war was a long time ago, George,’ Yvonne said.

The babble of Japanese voices two tables away rose suddenly in pitch. George glowered in their direction, and saw that something out at sea had caught their attention. Yvonne put a hand on his arm. ‘George, look! What’s that?’

He craned round and saw, just clearing the headland, a big wooden trawler listing severely to starboard. The vessel was clearly in trouble, shipping water, and limping towards their beach. The forward deck appeared to be crowded with people waving towards the shore.

The waiter arrived at their table with pieces of barbecued marinaded chicken on bamboo skewers, and two bowls of spicy peanut sauce. ‘Hey, fella, what the hell’s that out there?’ George asked him.

The waiter looked up and frowned. ‘Boat people,’ he said. ‘Damn nuisance.’

‘Boat people? What, you mean people who’ve escaped from Vietnam? Refugees?’

‘Refugee, yes,’ said the waiter. ‘Bad news. Very bad news.’ And he hurried away.

‘Refugees?’ Yvonne said. ‘Oh, George, how dreadful.’

George stood up and dropped his napkin on the table. ‘I’m gonna take a closer look.’

But the Japanese had beaten him to it. They were flocking down the steps to the beach. Several other guests followed.

The trawler ran aground in shallow water two hundred metres offshore, and tipped precariously on its side. Some of the sixty or so refugees who had survived the journey jumped overboard and began swimming for shore. Others, clutching all their worldly possessions, slithered down ropes into the water. Guests, and some staff from the hotel, gathered on the beach to watch. Japanese cameras whirred and clicked. Yvonne caught up with her husband and held his arm. ‘These poor, wretched people,’ she gasped. ‘We must do something for them.’

‘It’s not up to us, dear. The authorities’ll deal with it. Anyway, God knows what kind of diseases they might be carrying.’

‘Do you think so?’

The first refugees made it to the beach and stood gasping, looking in wonder at the curious stares of these affluent holidaymakers. An odd silence settled on the sand. Yvonne’s grip suddenly tightened around her husband’s arm. ‘George, there’s a white man with them!’

‘Where?’ He followed her pointing finger and saw a tall, dark-haired European in a white shirt and ragged black pyjama trousers, staggering through the shallows, supported by two Asian women and a small boy. ‘Goddam!’ he said. ‘He could be an American.’

Behind them, a jeep pulled up in the car park overlooking the beach, and two policemen stepped out.

From his comfortable bamboo armchair, in the air-conditioned lounge overlooking the ocean, George could see the white man sitting in the hotel lobby, where he had remained most of the afternoon. He made a curious figure in his ragged pyjama trousers and bare feet. He had a thick growth on his face slashed through by a livid scar on his cheek where the hair refused to grow. His patience, it seemed to George, was infinite.

By inclining his head a little, the American could see down to the beach, where the Asian refugees squatted in family groups in the sand, watched over by an armed Malay policeman. His attention was caught by the arrival of a thirty-foot launch, which had appeared round the headland a few minutes earlier. It passed the wreck of the trawler, and dropped anchor a little closer to shore. A Malaysian flag fluttered on the bows of the launch, and he could just make out the figures of half a dozen armed policemen standing, smoking, on the rear deck.

The excitement of it all had been too much for Yvonne, and she had retired for an afternoon nap. But George’s curiosity was aroused. At last he could contain it no longer. He eased himself out of his chair and sauntered through to the lobby. Another policeman stood just outside the main door. George wandered casually through the tropical pot plants. The downdraught from the ceiling fan scattered his cigar smoke. He nodded at the seated figure. ‘American?’

Elliot looked up. ‘English.’

‘Ah.’ He tried not to show his disappointment, but his curiosity was not dulled. ‘Must have been quite a journey.’

‘Yes,’ Elliot said. He leaned forward on his knees and examined his hands.

‘I mean, uh, you hear about these boat people.’ He laughed. ‘I guess there’s not many Englishmen among them.’

‘I don’t suppose there are.’

The American stood smiling awkwardly for a few moments, then he thrust his hand out towards Elliot. ‘Calvin. George Calvin. San Diego, California.’

Elliot glanced up, hesitated, then gave the outstretched hand a cursory shake. ‘Elliot.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Elliot. You must have been right glad to make land.’

Elliot nodded.

‘If there’s anything I can do...’

The door of the manager’s office opened, and the captain of police appeared in the doorway. ‘Would you come this way, please, Mistah Elliot.’

Elliot rose. ‘Excuse me.’

‘Sure.’ George stepped back and watched Elliot shuffle into the office.

Captain Ghazali closed the door, and left Elliot standing in the middle of the room as he crossed to the desk and picked up two passports. He examined them briefly, then dropped them back on the desk and sat down. His eyes were hidden behind dark glasses. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Your passport seems genuine enough. Perhaps you would like to tell me how you came to be travelling on fishing boat PK 709, registered to the Vietnamese port of Rach Gia.’

‘I’m very tired, Captain. I’ve told the story several times already.’

‘One more time.’ Ghazali smiled. ‘For me.’

Elliot sighed. ‘I’ve been on holiday in Thailand.’

‘Where?’

‘Bangkok, then Pattaya Beach.’

Ghazali grinned. ‘Lots of pretty women at Pattaya, they tell me.’

‘Yes. Lots.’

‘Go on.’

‘I was sailing in the Gulf of Thailand.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes, alone. I got caught in a storm, lost my rudder and my outboard. I was drifting for several days before these people picked me up.’

‘Which explains why there is no exit stamp from Thailand on your passport.’ Ghazali removed his sunglasses and sucked the end of one of the legs thoughtfully. ‘You must be very grateful to them.’

‘I am. I injured my shoulder during the storm. They patched me up.’

Ghazali gazed at him with shrewd eyes. The story was plausible enough. It was Elliot who didn’t ring quite true. There was something about him. He didn’t look like a holidaymaker out for a sail. The weapons and kit that lay on the seabed a mile offshore might have told him more, had he known of their existence.

‘Is that why you are so keen to help this...’ He glanced at one of the passports. ‘This Ang woman and her family? Gratitude?’

‘That’s right. She told me her husband is in Bangkok. He escaped from Phnom Penh before the Khmer Rouge victory and now has US citizenship.’

‘Of course.’ Ghazali made no attempt to hide his sarcasm. ‘She has no doubt been in constant touch with him.’ He shook his head and lifted Elliot’s passport. ‘I have heard many such stories, Mistah Elliot. One grows weary of hearing the same tune.’

‘Why don’t you phone Bangkok?’

Ghazali stood up, his patience suddenly worn thin. ‘I would not waste my time, or my government’s money.’ He handed Elliot the passport. ‘You will remain here until immigration officials from Tumpat come to clear your entry into Malaysia and stamp your passport. Then you are free to return to Thailand. The border is only twenty miles from here.’

He moved towards the door. Elliot grabbed his arm. ‘Wait a minute! What about Mrs Ang?’

Ghazali pulled his arm free and glared at the Englishman. ‘Do not touch me again, Mistah Elliot. Mrs Ang and her children will be taken with the other refugees to Bidong.’

‘What’s Bidong?’

‘It is an island some way off the coast. If any country will take them, then it will be arranged by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. They will find many like themselves there. Criminals and drug smugglers. These people have given us very much trouble.’

Elliot watched the captain of police climb into his waiting car and drive off. The policeman at the main door touched his arm. ‘You wait here for immigration.’

‘I know.’ He looked down to the beach and saw the first refugees wading out to the waiting launch. Serey was still squatting in the sand clutching her single bag of belongings. Ny was gazing out towards the launch. Hau spotted Elliot and waved.

As he approached them Serey rose to her feet. She knew at once from his face. ‘My passport?’

He shook his head. ‘They kept it. They say you have to go with the others.’

‘And you?’ Ny asked.

‘They’re letting me stay.’

Serey held out her hand. ‘I’ll say goodbye, then, Mistah Elliot. And thank you.’

He took her hand and shook it. ‘For what?’

‘Our lives.’

Ny threw her arms round him and pushed her face into his chest. She clung to him for several moments, long enough for him to feel her stifled sobs. Then she turned away and, taking her mother’s hand, started wading towards the launch without a backward glance. Hau stood uncertainly for a time, then he too held out his hand. Elliot shook it firmly, and the boy turned away to hurry after his mother and sister, fighting hard not to let the tears show.

Those who still remained on the beach came in turn to shake his hand: the doctor who had dressed his wounds, the captain who had saved his life. They all smiled their gratitude. And he watched them head out to the waiting boat. He had done everything he could. He knew that they did not blame him. He would tell Ang that his family were on Bidong Island. His money and his passport would buy their freedom from there. Yet still he could not turn away. The only reason he could stay and they must go was the colour of his skin, the crest on his passport. But his skin colour had not mattered to any of these people when they had saved his life. He remembered how Ny had washed out his wounds with her own urine, how she had lain with him to give him her body warmth when his fever had left him shivering. He remembered that it was Serey who had got them all safely out of Phnom Penh, that it was Hau who, along with McCue, had dragged him, bleeding, halfway across the city. He had come to rescue them, and it was they who had rescued him.

He turned and walked back across the sand and climbed the steps to the hotel. He found the American, Calvin, sitting in the lounge, smoking a cigar and reading a copy of the International Herald Tribune. Calvin turned and smiled as he approached. ‘I hear they’re letting you stay, Mr Elliot.’

‘That’s right. I wonder if you’d do me a favour?’

‘Sure.’ He folded up his paper. ‘How can I help you?’

The last of the refugees clambered aboard the launch, helped by the Malay policemen. The anchor was retrieved and the driver started the motor. The relief of only a few hours before at safely reaching land had turned now to confusion and uncertainty. A warm breeze blew from the land as the sun dipped low in a sky glowing pink in the west.

The driver gunned the motor, and was about to slip the engine into gear when one of his fellow officers tapped him on the shoulder and pointed towards the shore. A single figure was wading towards the launch. The driver released the throttle and let the engine drop back to an idle. Elliot reached the boat and, with the help of outstretched arms, pulled himself aboard. The officers looked at him uncertainly. Elliot waved a hand dismissively. ‘Don’t let me hold you back.’

Serey pushed past the others and stared up at him. ‘What are you doing?’

Elliot shrugged. ‘I guess I’m going with you.’

Chapter Forty-Seven

Bidong Island was a lump of rock that rose three hundred metres out of the sea, its steep flanks choked by jungle sweeping down to narrow coral sand beaches fringed with coconut palms. The light was fading as the Malay police launch chugged past the French ship, Isle de Lumière, which lay anchored in the bay and served as a floating hospital. As they drew closer they could see that the whole of one side of the hill had been stripped of all vegetation. A tropical island slum of three-storey shanties climbed its slopes. The frames of the wretched dwellings had been constructed from the timbers of the trees felled to make way for them. Walls were made of tin and cardboard and bark, roofs from blue plastic sheeting, or bone-coloured waterproof sacks. The smoke of countless fires drifted up in the dusk, like mist.

As the launch drew in at the jetty, they were met by the stink of human excrement and the smell of woodsmoke. A large crowd of several hundred refugees was gathered on the beach among rotting piles of refuse to watch the new arrivals. At the other end, near the jetty, an incinerator was nearing completion, paid for no doubt by meagre sums of money provided to salve the collective Western conscience. Beyond it, on an outcrop of rocks, figures crouched in silhouette, defecating into the sea near the wreck of a twenty-metre boat lying in the shallows.

They were met on the jetty by members of the camp’s administration committee, refugees like themselves, overseen by a group of armed militiamen who stood around smoking. There was a headcount and an arbitrary division of the newcomers into groups of six or eight. A cadaverous young Vietnamese in shorts, a singlet and Ho Chi Minh sandals approached Elliot carrying a clipboard. ‘You with relief agency?’ he asked.

Elliot shook his head. ‘No. I’m with them.’

‘Refugee?’ the Vietnamese asked with incredulity.

‘That’s right. This woman, her daughter and her son are Cambodian. We’re together.’

He looked at them, each in turn, then gave a tiny shrug. On Bidong Island nothing came as much of a surprise any more. ‘I am Duong Van Minh, interpreter for the camp committee. I have been here five months. There are worse places. I need your names, then tomorrow you come to administration centre and register. Tonight I fix you up, temporary accommodation. You follow me, please.’

As darkness fell, he led them through the crowded administrative heart of the camp, just beyond the beach. Here, the buildings were of a superior quality. Yellow-lit faces peered at them from windows illuminated by electric bulbs powered by car batteries. The narrow street opened out into a sort of market square, where all manner of goods were sold from stalls lit by oil lamps and candles: everything from nails and wire and fishing tackle, to curry powder, cigarettes and sewing machines. Craftsmen squatted by campfires peddling their wares or services — watch repairers, woodcutters, artists, acupuncturists. They passed a tailor’s shop, a barber’s, even a pawnbroker’s.

‘We have thriving black market,’ Minh said. ‘Illegal, but necessary. Police look other way. We have restaurant, too, and coffee house. Even library. We are well organized.’ They passed a crowd gathered round a noticeboard. ‘Most important noticeboard on island,’ he said. ‘List arriving mail and departing refugee. Find out if you stay or go.’

‘Do many go?’ Elliot asked.

‘Not many.’ Minh was philosophical. ‘Depend on who you are, if you got money or education, or relative in West. Then maybe some country take you.’

‘What about you?’

‘Oh, I am alright. I leave soon. I have uncle in United States. And I am trained computer programmer.’ He shrugged. ‘But I am lucky, Mistah Elliot. Nearly fifty thousand people come to Bidong since first people arrive a year ago. Only ten thousand leave in that time. Even for lucky ones like me, it take time. Some people maybe never leave.’ Despite the heat and humidity, Elliot felt a chill run through him.

At an intersection of mean ill-lit alleyways, Minh turned up the hill, leading them into the packed suburban heart of Bidong, shanties ranked above them like so many coffins stacked around a graveyard. They climbed for more than ten minutes, up through a maze of crudely terraced streets, until Minh finally stopped by a dilapidated three-storey shanty house on a promontory near the top of the hill. From here they had a clear view across the slope, and down to the jetty and bay below. Elliot gasped for breath, his strength rapidly ebbing. Ny and Hau had had to support their mother for most of the second half of the climb.

Minh pointed to a ladder leading up to a wooden terrace above. ‘You share middle house till we find something else. You get water at beach in morning. Need to queue, though. Water rationed. Only two litre per person per day. You come to centre for UNHCR (he pronounced it ungkah) ration pack every three day. You got money, then is possible to buy more on black market.’ He made a little bow. ‘Goodnight. See you tomorrow.’ And he headed off down the hill.

Elliot looked up at the wooden terrace and smiled wryly. ‘This must be home.’

A curtain of bamboo beads hung across the door to the second level of the shanty house. The interior was dark and thick with the smell of sweat. Eyes peered out of the gloom, and they saw that there were already nine other people, men, women and children, squeezed into a room barely three metres by two. There was no sign of resentment at their intrusion. With the patient resignation of the practised refugee, the existing occupants simply shuffled closer together, to create more space. No one spoke. Elliot, Serey, Ny and the boy settled themselves against a wall and stared back at the incurious faces.

The floor was made of wooden slats, and through them, both above and below, they could see the shadows of the other occupants. Smoke drifted up from the lower level, between the slats, making the already thick air almost unbreathable. A child on the level above them had a fit of coughing. Ny and Hau curled up together, like small animals, and were quickly asleep. Elliot leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. He did not expect to sleep.

A hand on his arm delivered him, abruptly, from a drifting world of jumbled images: vast stretches of sea; McCue’s body sliding into the water, a hand waving through the broken foam; a long stretch of deserted beach broken by a solitary figure that he had realized, suddenly, was himself. He opened his eyes but could see nothing in the dark.

‘Are you asleep?’ It was Serey’s voice, very close, barely a whisper.

‘No.’

She seemed to hesitate. ‘I wanted to apologize.’

‘For what?’

‘I misjudged you.’

‘I don’t think so.’

She took his hand and squeezed it gently. He was almost shocked by the warmth of her touch. ‘I am grateful, anyway.’

‘Don’t be. I’m the one who should be grateful.’

‘For leading you here?’

‘For teaching me something. About myself.’ Confessions, he thought, were easier in the dark. He remembered McCue telling him of his fear.

‘You had no reason to come here with us.’

‘More reason than not to. We all have to live with ourselves.’

He heard her sigh. ‘I wish my husband had felt as you do.’

‘That was a long time ago. He made a mistake. He regrets it.’

‘It was no mistake!’ Her voice was sour and rose in anger at the remembered hurt. ‘And time changes nothing. He showed that he loved himself more than his family. He betrayed us. My children do not fully understand this. But I do. If he regrets anything, it is his conscience.’ She lapsed into an uneasy silence. ‘I do not wish ever to see him again.’

‘Then why come all this way?’

‘I never expected to live,’ she said simply. ‘I always thought, if there is a chance to survive, then I must take it for my children’s sake. Life is an unexpected bonus, but I could never live with betrayal.’

Elliot took a deep, weary breath. ‘Your husband is on his way to Malaysia.’ He felt her tense at his side.

‘It’s not possible!’

‘I asked an American at the hotel to contact him in Bangkok. He has papers, passports. If I can get us off the island, you could be reunited within forty-eight hours and on your way to a new life in America.’

She withdrew her hand abruptly from his. ‘No.’

‘You would prefer to stay here?’ She did not reply. ‘You must go, for your children’s sake. There is no future for them on Bidong.’

Still she made no reply, and then he heard a sob catch her throat in the dark. ‘If he had stayed, Mistah Elliot, then we might have survived, as a family. Others did. We might all have had a future.’

‘You still do.’

‘My children, perhaps,’ she said. He felt a warm tear splash on his arm, and drew the fragile, trembling body to his side.

Two hours queuing in the stifling heat of the administration centre the next morning, to register and collect their UNHCR rations, did little for the morale of the new arrivals. Anger replaced impatience among the refugees at the contents of the ungkah ration pack: nine hundred grams of rice; a tin of condensed milk; three tins of canned meat, fish and vegetables; two packets of noodles; sugar; salt; and two small teabags. There would be no more for three days. ‘Official fresh vegetable only available every two month,’ Minh told them. ‘Can buy on black market, though.’

Elliot drew Minh aside. ‘Who supplies the black market?’

‘Unofficial,’ he said. ‘Not legal.’

‘But a fact. Where does the stuff come from?’

Minh shrugged. ‘Not my business. You speak Fat Bao. He ve-ery rich man. Find him at Vien Du coffee house.’

The Vien Du, or Venture, overlooked the sea at one end of the bay. Little more than a wooden shack, it was crammed with crude tables and chairs, a rudimentary bar and a small stage where live vocalists entertained patrons at night. Elliot left Serey, Ny and Hau to queue for water on the beach, and made his way up to the coffee house.

Fat Bao sat at a table by a window which looked out over the sea. A pantomime Chinaman, like an extra from Aladdin, a long pigtail hung down his back and a brightly coloured silk robe fell in folds across his belly. A wispy black moustache curled down at the corners of his mouth, accentuating the droop of his fat jowls. Piggy eyes peered shrewdly out from slits in the folds of his face. The coffee house was quiet at this hour, and Elliot drew only a few curious glances as he approached the table. ‘Mr Bao?’

Fat Bao looked up from a week-old copy of the Straits Times and his lips parted in a broad smile. He waved a hand expansively at the chair opposite. ‘Sit down Mistah Elliot. You like coffee?’

Elliot sat. ‘Yes.’

Fat Bao snapped his fingers and the barman slipped off his stool to prepare some fresh. ‘You wondering how I know you name?’

‘From what I hear I doubt if there’s much that escapes your attention.’

He grinned. ‘Quite right, Mistah Elliot, quite right. Information is power. Power is money. But whole island know already of Englishman who arrive with refugee from Cambodia. I am expecting you. You want escape from Bidong, yes?’

‘That’s right.’

He leaned confidentially across the table. ‘Cost big money, Mistah Elliot, big money. You got big money?’

The coffee arrived. Elliot took a sip. Real coffee, fresh and strong. It tasted good. He shook his head. ‘I have no money, Mr Bao. We spent it all getting this far.’

Fat Bao sat back, his jowls wobbling as he spread his hands in apology. ‘I am business man, Mistah Elliot. I trade goods from mainland. I buy and sell real estate on island, change currency, lend money. Maybe we can do deal on loan? Very reasonable rate.’

‘I don’t think so. Do you have a cigarette?’

The Chinaman delved among the folds of his robe and produced an unopened pack of Camels. He pushed it across the table. ‘My compliment.’ He watched as Elliot unpeeled the wrapper, then he produced an engraved gold lighter and held out the flame.

Elliot took a deep draw. ‘It is possible, though, to get off the island?’

‘Everything is possible.’

‘How come you’re still here, then?’

He spread his arms. ‘As you see, Mistah Elliot, I have everything I need. Why go?’

Why indeed, Elliot thought, when there was such profit in human suffering. He said, ‘I have a friend on the mainland who will pay whatever it takes to get the four of us off.’

Fat Bao nodded seriously. ‘Of course,’ he said, as if he had known all along.

‘You have contacts on the mainland?’

‘Mistah Elliot...’ His tone reproached the naivety of the question. Then he pulled thoughtfully at the corners of his moustache. ‘Four people? Big risk, Mistah Elliot, very dangerous.’ A precursor, Elliot thought, to hiking up the price. ‘Cost very big money,’ Bao said. ‘How much you willing to pay?’

Elliot watched his cigarette smoke disperse in the hot breeze from the sea, and flicked his ash from the window. ‘You got a pen and paper?’

Fat Bao nodded and leaned over to retrieve a leather-bound writing folder and pen from a bag on the floor. He slid it across the table and Elliot wrote Yuon Ang’s name on a fresh sheet. He pushed it back at Bao. ‘He should be at the Batu Beach Hotel near Tumpat by tonight. You can negotiate a price with him. How will you get us off?’

Bao gazed thoughtfully at the name for some moments. Eventually, he said, ‘Malay fishermen come from mainland with goods for black market. My people have half-dozen small boat. They swim out pushing boat to meet fishermen, ’bout five kilometre offshore. Fill boat with goods then come back. You swim out with boat, but no come back. Go to mainland with fishermen.’ He grinned. ‘Escape.’

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow night, maybe. I let you know.’

Elliot scraped back his chair and stood up to drain the last of his coffee. He put the cup back on the table. ‘I’ll be hearing from you, then.’

‘You come tonight, to Vien Du. Pretty girl sing. Big movie star in south Vietnam before communist come. I fix you up good.’

‘Some other time,’ Elliot said.

The midday sun beat down in the street outside. There was no shade anywhere, and the air was thick with flies. Across the way, on a rocky promontory, stood the remains of a refugee boat converted, by the former moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Vietnam, into a makeshift church and library. From the boat’s cabin, the breeze carried the sounds of a refugee class learning English: ‘Take me to Times Square.’ ‘Where is Buckingham Palace?’

On the long climb back up the hill with the ration packs and water, Elliot told Serey and Ny of his meeting with Fat Bao. They had to stop frequently to rest. Serey squatted, listening in solemn silence, as Ny translated for Hau. The boy greeted the news with the same reserve as his mother. Only Ny seemed cheered at the prospect of seeing her father again. Elliot held her back as they embarked on the last leg of the climb. ‘What’s wrong with Hau? I thought he’d be pleased to get out of here.’

‘We will all be pleased,’ she said, ‘to leave Bidong. But he is little frightened of going America. Khmer Rouge, you know, they tell us many bad things ’bout the West. They say colour people hated there, treated real bad.’

Elliot wondered if it was possible to suffer any more than they had done at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. But he understood the power of indoctrination. He supposed that the God of his childhood still existed in him somewhere, in spite of the rejected belief of his adult intellect. ‘He wants to see his father, surely?’

‘Is long time. He remember very little of our father. Scared, maybe, he a stranger now.’ She stared down at the dusty ground as they walked.

‘And what about you?’

She smiled a little, without lifting her eyes. ‘I scared, too, Mistah Elliot. He leave us before. Maybe he do it again.’

‘I doubt it.’

She looked up at him. ‘I hope not. Mother — daughter love very strong. But girl need father, too.’

He thought of his own daughter who had never known him, and wondered with a stab of guilt if she had suffered for it. Almost as though she had read his thoughts, Ny touched his arm and said, ‘Pity ’bout your daughter, Mistah Elliot. I wish I had father like you.’

Minh was waiting for them when they got back to the shanty house. ‘I got new house for you,’ he said. ‘Nearer beach. Move tomorrow.’ He and Elliot sat out on the shade of the terrace looking down on the island.

‘We’ll stay where we are,’ Elliot said.

The young Chinese scratched his head. ‘I don’t understand. Very desirable property near beach. I pull plenty string to get you new house.’

‘Why? Because I’m white?’

‘You should not be here, Mistah Elliot, with refugee. Make no sense. Plenty sickness here. Hepatitis, typhoid, tuberculosis. Could be on Bidong long time. Not healthy for white man. No resistance. Take house near beach, is better.’

Elliot shook his head. ‘We’re leaving. Tomorrow night, with a bit of luck.’

Minh nodded, understanding. ‘You make deal with Fat Bao.’

‘Yes, I make deal, Minh.’

Minh lowered his voice. ‘You be very careful, Mistah Elliot. Fat Bao dangerous man. He has no honour. You cannot trust.’

‘Thanks for the warning.’

Minh looked at him sadly. ‘You don’t take serious. I tell you, Mistah Elliot, Fat Bao he cut your throat and take your money. Thirty-five people from camp go missing since I arrive. All involve with Fat Bao and black market. They food for fishes now, I think.’

When Minh had gone, Elliot went inside and searched through the bag of their belongings. Masking what he was doing from the other occupants of the room, he lifted out a bundle of rags and unwrapped his Colt.45 automatic pistol. He checked the recoil action and the contents of the seven-round box magazine, in case of water damage. He did not want to be caught short if things went wrong.

The following day came and went under a blistering tropical sun. They went early to queue for water on the beach, but by the time they were climbing the hill again, with their eight litres, the fierce heat of the day was reflecting at them from every surface. As constant as the heat was the babble of voices, raised sometimes in laughter, sometimes in argument. All around them people worked and ate and slept and made love. There was no privacy among the washing lines strung out across the narrow alleys, but many secrets. This was a society fraught with mistrust and petty jealousies. Yet there was, too, a great comradeship. A sense of hunger and hardship shared. It was a microcosm of any slum, anywhere in the world, where optimism prevails over hopelessness. A ticket to freedom, resettlement in the West, was the equivalent of a win on the lottery.

There was no word from Fat Bao, and the day passed slowly, eating, sleeping, a constant search for escape from the heat and the flies. Night brought no relief from the heat, and for Elliot little sleep. His shoulder ached constantly, and he began to fear that the wound had become reinfected. All day, Serey’s mood had been morose. She had spoken little, and through the long hours of the night Elliot was aware that she too slept little, and even then only in restless fits.

In the morning, Elliot went to the tin-roofed medical clinic in the centre of the camp to have his wound examined. He sat waiting for nearly three hours, wide-eyed undernourished children and their mothers staring at him with bleak faces. One man, with a suppurating stump of an arm, arrived after Elliot and sat ashen-faced. The pain expressed by his eyes was past bearing, and yet he sat in silence with a seemingly endless, patient endurance. When it came to Elliot’s turn he let the man go first. But there was no room in those eyes for gratitude, only surprise amid the pain. All it cost Elliot was another twenty minutes.

Dr Nguen Xuan Trieu was a middle-aged man with a pale, educated face. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles and examined Elliot’s wound with a clinical interest. His English was impeccable. ‘A bullet wound,’ he said. ‘I have not seen many of those since the war ended.’ He displayed no curiosity as to how Elliot might have come by it. Nor any sympathy. ‘How have you treated it?’ he asked.

‘It was washed out with urine, and the poison drawn out with poultices.’

‘You are lucky to be alive,’ he said. ‘I have seen men die from a scratch in these conditions. There is a little fungal infection around the new tissue growth.’ He dabbed the wound with some white cream and re-dressed it. ‘It needs proper attention. Unfortunately I do not have the facilities, or the medicines. Children are dying from malnutrition. There is meningitis and typhoid. I cannot spare antibiotics for bullet wounds.’

When Elliot got back to the shanty house, one of Fat Bao’s minions was waiting, a boy who could not have been more than fifteen. He seemed nervous of Elliot, and his eyes flickered over him warily. ‘Tonight,’ he said. ‘Midnight. On beach other side of Religion Hill.’

‘Where the hell’s Religion Hill?’

‘Ask,’ said the boy, and he hurried away down the hill, quickly obscured by the washing lines. Elliot glanced up and saw Serey watching him from the terrace.

Religion Hill turned out to be the rocky promontory where the former Presbyterian Moderator had set up his church in the wreck of a refugee boat. The beach beyond it was deserted. The midnight lights of the Vien Du, on the jetty side of the church, cast a faint glow across the white coral sands. Carried on the night breeze, the nasal voice of a girl singing some Vietnamese hit song had replaced the daytime chants of the English class: ‘Where is Buckingham Palace?’

Elliot stepped cautiously on to the beach, disturbing dozens of crabs that scuttled off into the night chasing their long shadows. Two tiny canoes no more than five feet long, crudely fashioned from fallen trees, lay side by side at the water’s edge. They were not big enough to hold a man, nor stable enough to remain upright if they could. A flashlight shone in his face, and two figures detached themselves from the shadows of the palms. ‘You Elliot?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where others?’

He couldn’t see their faces. ‘Turn that thing off.’

There was a moment’s hesitation before the light went out. Elliot blinked away the circle of black in front of his eyes. Both men were in their twenties. One had close-cropped hair and a scar on his temple. The other had long greasy hair that flopped over his eyes. The one with long hair glanced nervously, several times, in the direction of the Vien Du. ‘Where others?’ he insisted.

Elliot signalled towards the trees, and Ny and Hau emerged, followed by Serey still clutching her bag.

‘Hurry!’ whispered Long Hair. ‘Police patrol regular.’

The women and the boy fell in behind Elliot. He said, ‘What’s the plan?’

‘Hold on back of boats and swim. Straight out. Three kilometre. Boat waiting. You see light long way in dark.’

Cropped Head strode down the sand to the boats. ‘We help you push off.’

Elliot nodded to Long Hair, indicating that they would follow him. The Vietnamese shrugged and moved ahead.

The water was warm around their ankles as they pushed the boats into the shallows. Elliot remained standing at the water’s edge. ‘You go,’ Long Hair urged. ‘Quick.’

‘We’ll go when you’ve gone,’ Elliot said.

The two Vietnamese exchanged glances. ‘Okay,’ said Cropped Head. They moved reluctantly away from the boats, towards the beach. Long Hair grinned at Hau and held out his hand.

‘Good luck.’

Hau took the hand and was jerked suddenly, almost off his feet. The Vietnamese reeled him in like a fish on a line, clamping a hand over his mouth and pulling the back of the boy’s head to his chest. A blade flashed in the dark and pressed into the soft flesh of his neck. A trickle of blood appeared. Elliot stepped quickly back as the other man produced a long, thin-bladed knife from the folds of his tunic. Serey choked back a scream and grasped her daughter’s arm.

‘What do you want?’ Elliot’s voice remained steady and calm.

‘Open the bag.’ Cropped Head’s knife was shaking in his hand.

Elliot snatched the bag from Serey.

Long Hair tensed. His eyes were wild. ‘I kill the boy!’

Elliot threw the bag up on to the sand. ‘Open it yourself.’

Cropped Head moved cautiously past him, keeping a safe distance, then ran up the beach to the bag. ‘I don’t know what you hope to find,’ Elliot said. ‘I told Bao we had nothing.’

Long Hair grinned. ‘Maybe Fat Bao believe you. Maybe not. We not. You Westerner. Got money there, maybe gold.’

Elliot shook his head. ‘And what about the boat waiting out there — if there is a boat?’

‘Boat waiting, okay. You disappear. Drowned maybe. Too bad.’

Elliot’s hand slipped inside his shirt, and pulled the Colt.45 into a two-handed grip. He knew he had only one shot. The bullet punched a hole through Long Hair’s forehead, propelling him backwards on crumpled legs to splash into six inches of foaming brine and turn it briefly pink. Elliot swivelled to face the kneeling Cropped Head, who looked up in stunned surprise from the upended bag and had hardly an instant’s blink of disbelief before Elliot shot him full in the face.

Serey and Ny splashed forward to pick Hau out of the water where he had fallen. He clutched his neck, blood oozing through his fingers. Elliot reached them in three strides and pulled his hand away to look at the wound. ‘Just a cut. He’ll live. We’ve got to get out of here!’

The singing coming from the direction of the Vien Du had stopped. A flashlight raked across Religion Hill, and there came the sound of raised voices. There was no going back now. And if they missed their rendezvous at sea, they were certain to drown.

Elliot threw Serey’s bag into the nearest canoe and they pushed the two boats off into the shallow swell. ‘I can’t swim,’ Serey whispered to him, as they plunged waist-deep through the water.

‘Jesus!’ Elliot said. ‘Now you tell me! Just hang on and kick with your feet. If you keep holding on you won’t sink.’

Ny and Hau had surged ahead, hands grasping the rear lip of their canoe, feet kicking up luminescent foam in the dark. When he was certain Serey had a firm grip, Elliot pushed hard away from shore and their canoe slid through the water in pursuit.

They kicked hard at first, seeming to make little progress, until Elliot glanced back and saw that they were already five or six hundred metres from shore. They had cleared the rocky outcrop, and away to their left they could see the lights of the French hospital ship anchored in the bay. Flashlights twinkled on the shore behind them, wielded by shadowy figures running along the water’s edge. Aimless shots rang out in the dark.

Soon the sound of water breaking on land faded, and the rocky silhouette of Bidong took shape against a night sky brightly lit by the moon rising from behind the island. Ny and Hau were about ten metres ahead, and drifting further away to the left. From time to time they disappeared completely beyond the rise of the swell. Elliot called to them to stay close. They must not lose each other. He glanced at Serey and saw that she was tiring rapidly, the strain in her arms showing on her face. He was, himself, close to exhaustion.

‘Stop!’ he shouted. ‘Stop!’ And he hooked an elbow over the rim of the canoe and hung loose, trying to catch his breath. Ny and Hau worked their canoe back to draw alongside, worried faces peering anxiously in the moonlight.

‘What wrong?’

‘Nothing. We need a rest, that’s all.’

His shoulder had almost seized completely. He looked back, but the swell was so deep now that the island only appeared in glimpses.

‘How far now?’ Ny asked.

‘Don’t know. We must be about halfway.’ But he felt despair rising in his breast. The second fifteen hundred metres would be much tougher going against the rising swell, and how could they hope to make a rendezvous with one small boat in this vast expanse of sea? They could be swept miles off course by the current. And, yet, if this was, indeed, how goods were brought ashore to feed the black market, then it had been done many times before. Perhaps allowances had been made for wind and current, based on months of experience. ‘We’d better go on. Stay close.’

After what Elliot estimated was about fifteen minutes, he ordered another rest. They were all on the point of exhaustion now. It was as much as any of them could do to keep numb fingers hanging on. It would be so much easier, he thought, just to let go, to slip away into the eternity that awaited below. Supporting himself again on the crook of his elbow, he looked around. There was not a glimpse of the island in any direction. Only the sea and, above it, the vast cosmos. Without the moon as a guide, they would not have known which way they were heading. But whatever their bearing, he knew they could not hang on for much longer.

It was Hau who spotted the light. He called out in sudden excitement and pointed away to their left. Elliot strained his eyes and saw nothing. But then, as their boat was lifted again on the swell, he saw it. A bright white light, shining across the water. He lost sight of it almost at once as their tiny craft slid down into another trough, only to spot it again on the next rise. Hope dug reserves of strength from the depths of despair, and they kicked off again in the direction of the light, shouting and calling to the boat.

As they got nearer, their calls were rewarded by the sound of an engine spluttering, then revving hard as the boat turned to head in their direction. Elliot reached across and held the two canoes together, as the wash from the power launch lifted them up, then sucked them in to its side. Light played in fractured patterns across the broken surface of the water, and he saw Yuon’s face looking down from the deck. Helping hands lifted Ny and Hau to safety. Elliot turned to offer Serey his hand, but she was gone.

‘Serey!’ He called again, ‘Serey!’, in sudden panic, and spun the canoe around, hoping to find her clinging to the far side. She wasn’t there.

‘What wrong? Where Mamma?’ Ny’s voice reached him from afar, as if in a dream. He turned this way and that in the water, looking for a glimpse of grey hair breaking the surface.

‘Light!’ he screamed. ‘Give me some fucking light!’ A searchlight swung across the water and he swam frantically back in the direction they had come. Nothing. He stopped and tried to tread water, but felt himself going under, and splashed back towards the boat again, gasping for breath. He reached the canoe and clung to it for several moments, head pressed against the bark in despair. Her words rang in his head: I could never live with betrayal. And he knew what she had done. He struck out at the water in frustration and anguish. They had come so far.

Two crewmen leaned over to pull him aboard, and he slumped back against the rail. He glanced up and saw the pain in Yuon’s eyes. He would never be free of his conscience now. Ny and her brother stood to one side, looking at Elliot with fear and confusion in their faces. They did not yet understand.

‘Where Mamma?’ Ny asked again in a quiet voice.

‘Gone,’ Elliot said. ‘Gone.’

In little under half an hour they saw the dark shadow of the mainland lying along the horizon, occasional lights winking along the shoreline. They sat in the back of the boat, silent except for Hau, who wept unashamedly in his sister’s arms. It had been easy to forget that he was still a child. Only war, and the Khmer Rouge, had made him old before his time. Ny stroked his hair absently, staring off into the middle distance. Yuon sat alone, detached and distraught. A sad and lonely figure.

When they drew, eventually, into the small private jetty, he ushered his family off before him, and Elliot followed wearily at a distance. The launch wheeled off into the night. Yuon turned to Elliot. ‘I have a car waiting, Mistah Elliot. We will drive straight to Kuala Lumpur. Will you come with us?’

Elliot shook his head. ‘The Thai border can’t be more than twenty kilometres away. I’ll cross on foot.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry.’

Yuon nodded, and Elliot wondered if he would ever really understand.

Ny stepped forward and held out a formal hand. Elliot took it, and they shook hands briefly. ‘Goodbye, Mistah Elliot,’ she said. In her eyes was the desire to throw her arms around him and hold on for ever, but such a thing no longer seemed possible. He took the St Christopher from around his neck and handed it to Hau.

‘I think my luck’s all burned out,’ he said.

Hau looked at it for a moment, then turned and threw it into the water, and Elliot knew that, somehow, he’d failed the boy.

He watched Yuon, and the children he did not yet know, walk quickly up the beach towards the road, to the car and the future that awaited them. When they had disappeared from view he turned and looked back across the sea. Somewhere, out there, Serey had at last found peace.

Chapter Forty-Eight

The hang yao passed under a low wooden bridge and Elliot, sitting in the front of the boat, felt its shadow pass over him like the Angel of Death. A shout came from a klong house, and he glanced round anxiously, but the man was shouting to a boy who stood waist-deep in the water brushing his teeth. He heard the sound of laughter, breathed in the smell of cooking drifting on the wind. Life went on. Death, even here, seemed remote, a natural end upon which men and women did not dwell unduly. It would come to them soon enough. After weeks in the field life seemed unreal, normality abnormal.

Here too, a white face — a farang — on the klongs attracted little attention. His presence was unremarkable, a matter of indifference. Another tourist, perhaps. It would take time, he knew, to adjust.

His driver brought the boat to rest at the foot of wooden steps leading up to McCue’s house. ‘Wait for me,’ Elliot said, and climbed the steps with ice in his heart. The rocker still stood on the terrace, but it had an abandoned air, as if it had not been sat in for a long time. The mosquito nets were gone from the windows, and the door stood ajar. The floorboards creaked like snow underfoot as he stepped inside. The emptiness shocked him, like finding somebody naked unexpectedly. A fine film of dust had settled on the floor and the window ledges. The door to the back room, where the baby had lain beneath its protective netting, opened on to more emptiness. Late afternoon sun streamed through the windows, as though trying to shed light on a dark place.

A voice called from the klong, and he stepped back out on to the terrace to find a wizened old lady standing on the bottom step. She smiled to show friendship and revealed gums without teeth. ‘You look for Lotus?’ She held her hand to her eyes, to shield them from the sun, and take a better look at Elliot.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Do you know where she is?’

‘She no live here any more. Take baby, go back to live in town, work in bars.’

‘Do you know where? What bars?’

‘She no say. Her man leave her, no come back. Is normal. You friend of her?’

Elliot shook his head. ‘I knew her man,’ he said. ‘He didn’t leave her.’

As the hang yao sped out from the klong into the choppy waters of the Chao Phraya river, Elliot opened his hand and the torn fragments of the cheque that could have bought a better future for Lotus and her child were whipped away on the edge of the wind. To have searched for her in a city of five million people would have been hopeless. Lotus, he knew, was not her real name. It was a name used by countless girls, in numberless bars. And he was not sure he would even have known her again. Just another bar girl with a fatherless child.

At the Oriental Hotel landing stage, he pushed his way through the crowds queuing to cross the river, and picked up a taxi. His fire was all but extinguished, but somewhere, in all his black emptiness, an ember still smouldered. One remaining score to settle. ‘Sukhumvit Road,’ he told the driver.

All the shutters on Tuk’s villa were closed. The gates were padlocked. Elliot gazed through the bars, and was struck by an all too familiar sense of abandonment. The taxi driver leaned through his open window. ‘You looking for Tuk Than?’

Elliot turned. ‘That’s right.’

‘He dead,’ the driver said cheerfully. And Elliot thought, even revenge is denied me. ‘Newspapers full of it when it happen,’ the driver went on. ‘Some farang shoot him. English or American. They don’t know. But they say La Mère Grace involve, too.’

Elliot frowned. ‘Grace? What happened?’

The driver shrugged. ‘Nobody know. They find her body in river. Ma-any bullet. They kill her good. Where you want go now?’

Elliot stood for a moment, then slid wearily into the back seat. ‘Home,’ he said.

‘Where home?’

‘A long way from here.’

Chapter Forty-Nine

She stood by the window watching for the taxi. It was five minutes late, but her train did not leave for two hours yet. There was plenty of time. Too much. She wanted to be away. Away from this empty house, stripped of its furniture and its memories. Its cold bare rooms seemed unfamiliar to her now, as a dead body seems strangely unconnected with the spirit that once animated it.

Outside, the February wind slapped sleet against the window and flapped the end of the SOLD sticker on the FOR SALE sign in the garden. A car drew up at the gate. She stooped to pick up her case, all that she would carry from an unhappy past to an uncertain future, and went into the hall. The bell rang as she reached the door, and she opened it to find Blair sheltering on the doorstep, collar turned up against the sleet.

She looked at him with surprise. ‘I thought you were the taxi.’

‘Can I come in?’ She held the door open, and he hurried in out of the cold. He looked at the case still in her hand. ‘I just caught you, then.’

‘My train’s at five.’ She put it down again.

He seemed unusually hesitant. ‘I didn’t realize you were going so soon.’

‘I start on Monday.’ He nodded, but said nothing. She added, ‘I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything.’

‘That’s alright.’

‘Not even a seat.’

He stood awkwardly. ‘It’s not important.’

‘Why are you here, Sam?’

He avoided her eyes. ‘I didn’t know whether to come or not. I’m still not sure it’s the right thing.’ He glanced at her uncertainly, but she offered him no help. He reached into an inside pocket and held out a folded slip of paper. ‘It came yesterday.’

She unfolded the paper. It was an international telegram from Bangkok. It read: STILL IN ONE PIECE STOP HOME TOMORROW STOP J. She frowned and looked searchingly at him. ‘J?’

‘Jack.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘It’s from your father, Lisa.’

She drank the last of her coffee and wiped the condensation from the window. The traffic in the King’s Road was building already towards rush hour. Through the archway opposite, the street lights reflected on wet cobbles. She could not see his window from here, but there were lights along that side of the mews. She felt sick, and as she looked at her watch she noticed that her hand was shaking. An hour and fifteen, still, before her train left. It would take her forty to get to King’s Cross, which left her thirty-five to prolong her indecision.

The reasons which had impelled her to travel halfway across the world in search of her father seemed obscure now. She had been someone else then. Devastated by the death of her mother, confused and bewildered by the discovery that her father was still alive. On that day, just before Christmas (was it really only six weeks ago?), that she had summoned the courage to knock on his door, she had feared that he would reject her. Now she was afraid that it was she who could not accept him. For the second time in her life she had accepted his death. Easier, surely, to persist with that acceptance than to acknowledge a stranger as her father. She dropped ten pence on the table, stood up and lifted her suitcase. The tube would be quicker than a taxi.

As she reached the door, a cab pulled up opposite, and a man carrying a leather holdall bag stepped out on to the pavement. Her suitcase slipped from her hand. The scar on his cheek was a livid slash in the suntanned face. He was leaner than she remembered at the funeral. He seemed older, greyer. He paid the cabbie and hurried into the mews, pulling his collar up against the icy February blast.

A fat, middle-aged man tried to squeeze past her where she blocked the doorway. ‘Excuse me, miss, are you coming or going?’

Elliot shut the door behind him and scuffed through a pile of mail lying on the carpet, mostly bills and circulars. He opened the cupboard at the foot of the stairs, turned on the heating and set the thermostat, then climbed the stairs and shivered as he switched on the light in the sitting room. The air was chill and the flat smelled damp and unlived in. He threw his bag into an armchair and tossed his coat over it. At the drinks cabinet he poured himself a large whisky. He retrieved the newspapers he had bought at the airport from his coat pocket, and sank into the settee to catch up on the world. He did not immediately notice the light winking on the telephone answering machine, indicating that a message awaited him.

On the foreign pages of The Times there was a story about a call from the United Nations for an international conference in Geneva to discuss the ‘increasing problem’ of the Boat People. He remembered Bidong, the crowds of bleak, malnourished faces that gathered around the noticeboard at the centre of the camp, more out of habit than with any real hope. Vietnam, the story said, would be asked to put a halt to the exodus. But it was as much, Elliot thought, a denial of the rights of these people to make them stay, as it was to force them to leave. The real problem was that no one wanted them.

Another story outlined the UN’s refusal to recognize the Heng Samrin regime installed in Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese. The international community, it seemed, preferred to recognize the murderers of the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia.

Elliot threw the paper aside in disgust and took a stiff pull at his whisky. He wondered why he should feel such anger and realized, with a sense of shock, that it was because he cared. He stood up and dropped the other newspapers on the coffee table. He didn’t need to catch up on the world. Nothing had changed — except in him.

The flashing green light on the answering machine caught his eye. He walked round the settee, rewound the tape and pressed the PLAY button, then slipped back over the settee and lay along its length to listen to the message. His head was pounding still after the long flight. Above the background hiss, he recognized Sam Blair’s voice. ‘If she hasn’t found you before you get this message, Jack, your daughter knows you’re alive and she’s looking for you.’

Lisa was passing under the arch when the blast ripped through the windows of Elliot’s apartment, sending debris and lethal splinters of glass hurtling out across the mews. The shockwave hit her in the face like a slap. For several long moments she stood stunned. Her suitcase slipped from her hand and tipped over on the cobbles. Shouts sounded from the street and footsteps ran past her. The mews seemed suddenly full of people. Tiny flames licked around the edges of the shattered windows, dancing in the wind. She saw the dark blue uniform of a policeman. Someone was asking, ‘What happened? Another voice said, ‘There’s someone in there, I saw a light.’

Lisa picked her way slowly through the debris, as if in a dream, glass crunching beneath her feet. There was a crowd at Elliot’s door. The policeman and two other men, one in shirtsleeves, hammered shoulders against wood to break it down. A cloud of dust billowed out into the mews. Lisa’s panic redoubled. She pushed through the gathering crowd to follow the men inside.

‘I wouldn’t go in there, love.’ A hand caught her arm, but she wrenched free. It was almost pitch black beyond the door, the air thick with dust. She choked and covered her face with her hand and ran up the stairs. The room was wrecked, debris and dust strewn everywhere, walls scorched black. Flames flickered around the window frame, sizzling now as sleet drove in on the wind. Shadows stirred in the gloom.

‘Here, under the settee,’ one of the men said.

She took a step into the room and saw a hand protruding from beneath the wreck of an upturned settee. The three men pulled it aside and crouched over the figure lying beneath it. Blood had trickled across the face from the left ear, where the force of the explosion had burst an eardrum.

‘Someone call an ambulance!’ It was the policeman who spoke. One of the men broke away from the others to brush past Lisa and clatter down the stairs.

‘Is he dead?’ She heard her own voice reach her from somewhere far away.

The policeman looked up. ‘The settee must have taken the full force of the blast. Do you know him?’

Elliot’s eyes flickered open as Lisa knelt beside him. He felt the warmth of her hand clasping his. As the dust settled he saw her face clearly for the first time.

‘He’s my father,’ she said.