The orderly left, and Dr Ung held out his arm to shepherd Alex out of the room.
Alex hesitated. ‘Give me a minute.’
‘He will sleep all night with the ketamine.’
Alex nodded. ‘Just a minute. Please.’
Dr Ung looked irritated. ‘A minute.’ He laid a hand on Alex’s arm, the grip stronger than Alex would have expected given his slight frame. ‘But then I insist that you go home and get some sleep. And make sure that you put some proper disinfectant on that bullet wound.’ Turning, he left the room.
*
Tess placed the phone silently back into its cradle, looking at the doorway. There was nobody there. Slowly, she raised herself from the chair, sliding the legs back fraction by fraction so as not to make a sound. She had nothing to defend herself with, so she grabbed Jakkleson’s envelope opener, a gilded knife, five centimetres long, the national emblem of Sweden, three gold crowns, inlaid into its handle. It looked as if it wouldn’t be able to cut through butter, but it made her feel infinitesimally more secure.
She moved silently towards the doorway. Out on the landing, the air was cooler than in Jakkleson’s office, so that she shivered slightly. She had been right – the light in the hallway downstairs was on. Easing forward, she leaned over the banister.
Quiet.
‘MacSween?’
She stood motionless, counting to fifty.
‘MacSween?’
Still no answer. Only the blood pulsing in her ears. Cautiously, she made her way down the first few steps. Rounding the staircase on to the landing, she paused beneath the huge picture window. The moon hung low over the garden, casting her in a faint wash of light. The hallway below was empty, all the doors off it closed. She carried on down, one step at a time, walking at the very edge of each stair to minimise the potential for creaking, clutching Jakkleson’s letter opener in front of her. At the bottom of the stairs, she stopped and backed against the wall. She could hear a low humming sound.
‘MacSween?’ Her voice was threaded with panic and she hated herself for it. ‘Is that you?’
No reply. Just that rhythmic hum. She realised it was coming from the team room. The light was switched off, she could see that from the crack under the door.
‘MacSween?’
Oh, Christ.
As she pushed the door open, her heart was beating so hard in her chest that it hurt. She couldn’t see anything. The room was dark, but the hum was intense. And the smell was almost overpowering. Pressing her sleeve to her mouth, she fumbled blindly for the light switch. Found it and flicked it on.
Why the hell isn’t the light—
Something brushed against her face in the dark, and she jumped.
A fly, it’s only a fly.
Then there was another, and another.
*
Johnny looked dead. Alex stared down at his supine body, laid out on the bed. He was too wrecked, mentally and emotionally, to think clearly, but there was one question he still needed answering. Who had Johnny been talking about? Had he been talking about MacSween? Was Bob MacSween the White Crocodile?
Leaning over the bed, he shook Johnny by the shoulder.
‘Wake up.’
Johnny’s brow furrowed and he gave a little moue of dissatisfaction, but his eyes remained closed.
‘Johnny! For fuck’s sake
wake up!
’
His eyes opened a crack, fluttered closed, opened again, his pupils rolling around in his head as he focused blearily on Alex’s face.
‘Mate.’
‘Who did you mean when you said “he” back in your house? I need to know now
.
’
‘He?’ His lips formed the word but no sound came out.
‘You said: “He said it wasn’t so bad because their lives were shit anyway.”’
Johnny shook his head feebly and closed his eyes.
‘Johnny.
Johnny!
’
Alex straightened, trying to swallow his anger because he knew that if he lost his temper now he would annihilate any chance he had of dragging the truth out of Johnny. Suddenly he registered the clear sac at his eye level across the bed, its translucent hose trailing into Johnny’s arm. Still pumping Ketamine.
Shit.
Vaulting over the bed, he tore off the plaster and yanked the IV needle from Johnny’s forearm.
Johnny’s eyes snapped open.
Alex met his gaze. ‘I need to know,
now
.’
*
MacSween was there, sitting in the middle of the team room, on one of the stiff-backed chairs. He was facing her, she thought, could tell by the domes of his knees, and his shirt, the front of his black shirt – it was the front, because she could see his collar and the top button, but it was moving – why was it moving?
Oh, Jesus.
The front of his shirt was moving; a black, crawling mass of flies.
She couldn’t see his face,
because it’s too dark
, she thought.
Or maybe his head is tilted to the side
. She tried to take a step forward, but her body wasn’t obeying orders, and she just stood there, rooted to the spot, swaying on unsteady legs.
There
was
no face, she realised. There was a body – a body of rippling, feasting flies and nothing – nothing above.
And now she felt it.
The fear.
MacSween was dead.
He had been tied to a chair and someone had blown his head off with that gun, that P90, she recognised it now – the P90 that was lying near him, but not so near that he had shot himself and dropped it there. The same P90 that had killed Huan.
A bullet that spun, a very sophisticated weapon, I would say.
But if MacSween really was the White Crocodile, then who had killed him?
A noise behind her and the light in the hallway went out.
55
‘Someone hated you enough to try to kill you, Johnny. Who was it, and why?’
‘I’m not involved,’ Johnny hissed. ‘Not any more.’
‘Not involved in what?’
Silence.
‘Not involved in what, Johnny?’
‘Trafficking,’ he muttered through clenched teeth.
Alex didn’t move. ‘Trafficking?’
Johnny gave an almost imperceptible nod.
‘Of women?’ Alex demanded. ‘You’re telling me that you were involved in human trafficking?’
Johnny nodded feebly.
Alex slammed his hands on the bed’s metal footboard. ‘Trafficking them where? To do what?’
‘Prostitution,’ he whispered. ‘We provided prostitutes to a criminal gang in Europe.’
‘
Prostitution?
’
Johnny squeezed his eyes closed.
‘
You sell those women as slaves?
’
‘I’m not involved any more. Couldn’t do it.’
Alex could feel his stomach knotting itself. The girl in the Land Cruiser, years ago now, but not one day went past without him thinking about her – he had the evidence scrawled over his arm.
I bought her from one of your lot. Seventeen hundred dollars. Not cheap, but she’s a virgin.
Jesus. He turned away, fighting to keep calm. ‘And you haven’t tried to stop it?’
‘I’m not involved any more. Keav. Keav was one of the first. I saved her.’
‘Keav’s dead, and you killed her, you fuck.’ Alex spun around and slammed his boot against the base of the bed, ricocheting it into the wall. Johnny cowered against the headboard. ‘Why did you do it?’ Alex yelled.
‘For the money.’
‘But you . . . you told me that your parents have millions. How much fucking money do you need?’
Johnny didn’t answer. He had started to sob quietly. Alex knew he would hurt Johnny badly if he stayed where he was, so he retreated, shaking, to the window.
‘They had miserable fucking lives, in a miserable fucking country,’ he heard Johnny croak. ‘It’s not as if they left anything behind. They’re probably better off where they are.’
‘They left their children, their babies, behind. Without even having the chance to say goodbye.’ The mosquito netting was right in front of him, hard and thin. He placed his hand on the cheese-wire mesh. ‘You are fucking scum, Johnny.’ Clenching his hands, he scraped his fingertips down the mesh, grazing their ends. He imagined slamming his fist through it, and the jagged hole that would leave, the sharp metal ends scoring into his flesh. He imagined dragging his wrist against them so they would cut into him, tearing them up the soft flesh of his forearm, still slashed and bloody from the last time. ‘Is it MacSween? Is that who you’re working with? Is he running things?’
‘MacSween?’
He forced himself to turn from the window to stop imagining harming himself, but he couldn’t get the picture out of his mind. His whole body was trembling with rage.
‘Did MacSween sell these women to fund MCT?’
He looked down at the scars on his forearm, realised he’d been scraping them with the nails of his other hand, had ripped some of the scars open. Blood was dripping on to the floor.
‘MacSween? No. Not MacSween. Dr Ung. Dr Ung sold those women to fund this hospital.’
*
Tess held her breath. Someone seemed to be breathing in and out with her. No, not someone. An animal?
All her senses had been on high alert, quivering with the effort of listening, straining to see in the dark, feeling any change in temperature, but the breathing sounded so close. How could it have got so close to her without making any noise?
She spun around, slashing the letter opener wildly in front of her. Aiming for a wall to press herself against so that at least her back would be covered, she stumbled backwards in the dark, felt something behind her, solid and unyielding. Grateful for that small mercy, she grasped it.
Pulpy under her fingers –
pulpy?
Her brain, expecting rigid plaster, struggled to comprehend what she was feeling. Something pappy and moist, and it was undulating under her fingers, rippling against her skin, and suddenly that humming sound that had become background noise filled her ears and the air was alive with flies. The stench of opened flesh was so intense she felt she would drown in it.
Rigid with fear, she stumbled away from the body. All sound had gone except for that mad ceaseless humming – she couldn’t even hear her own breathing – the animal she’d heard could be an arm’s reach away from her and she wouldn’t even know.
A pale blue stripe of moonlight cut suddenly across the boards to her left, a window, and she blundered for it, falling to her knees, clambering on all fours to the edge of the room, squatting against the skirting board, trembling and panting. A hand surged out of the darkness – the fingers huge and very white. She struck out blindly with Jakkleson’s letter opener, felt it slice into something soft, a grunt, and then something hit her on the head so hard she felt as if her skull had been cleaved in two. Blood ran into her eyes, blinding her. She didn’t register the second blow, but from the sound her head made as it bounced off the rough wooden floor, she realised that it must have knocked her flat. She felt the weight of something pinning her down, warm breath on her neck.
And all she could think was:
It is real.
*
He was sitting at his desk, his back to the door, doing some paperwork. Alex pulled out his Browning. Though he made no noise, Dr Ung must have sensed his presence. He turned. Their eyes met.
‘So Johnny has remembered?’
‘Is it true?’
Dr Ung half-shrugged; there was something almost apologetic in the movement.
‘Why?’ Alex croaked.
‘Because I am fighting a war, Alexander. And in war people are sacrificed for the greater good.’
‘A war?’
‘Against the suffering caused by land mines. The human suffering they cause in this country is incalculable.’ Slipping off his glasses, he rubbed at the elliptical imprints they had left in his nose. ‘We are the only hospital in this region that saves the lives of land-mine victims, gives them back a future.’
‘People trust you. You’re a fucking doctor.’
‘What do you think I’m doing?’ Anger flared in Dr Ung’s voice. ‘How do you think I pay for all this year after year?’ He spread his arms irritably. ‘I tried to get funding from legitimate sources and it was
impossible
. Western governments and most charities see mines as a way of life for countries like Cambodia. I had to make this hospital happen by myself. All of it.’
‘By sacrificing those women?’
‘This is bigger than they are. Those women had nothing to live for.’
Alex stared back at him, his finger frozen on the trigger.
‘They had their babies.’
‘What future did their children have, born out of wedlock in a place like this?’
Alex felt the solid butt of the Browning in his hand. It would be easy and quick. There were no ballistics tests out here. They could never link Dr Ung’s murder to his gun.
‘Kill me and all this,’ Dr Ung spread his hands, ‘all this crumbles to dust. The land-mine victims in this region will have nowhere to go. No one to save them.’
‘What about Johnny?’
‘He threatened to expose me. Johnny is a restless man. Never satisfied with his cut.’
‘But why did you then save him, when the mine failed to kill him?’
‘I made my point. And I’m a doctor, Alexander. It’s my business to save lives.’
‘What about those women who were found dead in the White Crocodile minefield? The ones who fought. What about Huan and Jakkleson?’
‘I have taken the Hippocratic oath.’ Dr Ung’s face was patient, unperturbed. ‘I save lives. I don’t kill.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. You might have saved Johnny in a fit of misplaced conscience, but you’ve murdered—’ He broke off. Dr Ung was always in the hospital working. When would he have had the opportunity?
‘I didn’t murder anybody. And I didn’t plant the mine for Johnny.’
Alex lowered the Browning. Whatever Dr Ung had done, he couldn’t kill him in cold blood. He met Dr Ung’s gaze, and saw that he knew the same.
‘Where is Tess, Alexander? At MCT House? Alone?’ With a faint smile, Dr Ung slipped his glasses back on. ‘I am not the White Crocodile, Alexander. I only pull the strings.’
*
I’m not going to die. Not now. Not like this.
Pressing her hands flat to the floor to give herself leverage, she slammed the sole of her combat boot backwards, blindly, as hard as she could. The crunching sound and the howl of pain told her she’d connected with bone and muscle. The weight on top of her shifted slightly, and it was enough.
She scrambled away, tipping and weaving in the dark like a drunk, hoping she was moving towards the door. Luck was with her and she felt the frame of the doorway in her hands. She plunged through it, aiming left – the front door was left out of the team room – and in the hallway there was a faint light from the moon shining in the picture window above her. She stumbled again, found her balance and ran for the front door.
She yanked the door handle. Nothing. She heard herself yell, desperate, heard the sound of feet approaching – slowly – grabbed at the handle and pulled and kicked, but it was no good because the door wasn’t stiff, it was locked. Locked not only with the bolt, but also with a key.
The Crocodile’s voice was a whisper in her ear: ‘My beautiful wife. How nice of you to come all this way, just for me.’