Chemda frowned. Jake continued:
‘Think about it. Tou comes to him, and says, We’ve found the jars, rediscovered the jars – and then – you see??’
‘OK…’ Chemda nodded. ‘And then, ah, Samnang realizes something terrible is about to be revealed – something he was involved in, all those years ago. He sees no way out. But he wants to leave a note, that no one can erase -’ She hesitated, pensively, then said: ‘But still, suicide. How can we be sure?’
‘The knife,’ said Jake, almost triumphant. ‘The knife was just lying on the floor. Would a cold blooded killer do that? Leave the weapon lying by the body? We know Tou didn’t do it. He has absolutely no motive. If it was the cops, they would have taken the knife and used it, to frame Tou -’
A brief silence ensued, the pilot was talking quietly and cheerily in Lao, via the cockpit radio. Jake stiffened with renewed tension; he may have solved the puzzle of Samnang’s death, but their situation remained precarious. Exceptionally precarious. Who was the pilot talking to? And what was he saying? Jake realized he hasn’t asked a question, of Chemda, a question that had been ripening in his thoughts for a while.
‘Why aren’t we flying straight to Phnom Penh? It’s just an hour or two.’
Chemda’s oval face was smudged with dirt and tiredness.
‘They will know if we try and fly straight across the frontier. International air traffic control. That could cause very big problems. But if we go to Luang there are other ways out of the country… Much more discreet exits. Roads, ah, through the jungle.’
‘And there are lots of tourists in Luang.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It will be safer for you there. You won’t be quite so visible.’ She twisted in the painfully small cabin, looking down at the ruched green pelt of the countryside: the forests already were thinning, the hills mellowing and softening:
‘That is the Mekong. We are nearly there.’
‘Where shall we stay? I know some hotels.’
She shook her head:
‘My family has very good friends in Luang. A French couple. A little hotel by the river, hidden away. Good place to hide for one night… Sleep, we need to sleep. No? Then we work out a way to get out of Laos.’
Already they were descending, Jake saw roads and a truck, the metal roofs of rice barns and farmhouses, sugarcane fields. Moments later they bumped to a halt on a brown dirt airstrip. It was another random airport in the bush, even more ramshackle than the Secret City. Just a hut at the side of a broad boulevard of mud and a man in the hut who nodded, knowingly, at the pilot, when they walked from the plane to the perimeter gate.
‘Luang Prabang,’ said the pilot, pointing beyond the wall at a sunlit road. ‘Sabaydee.’ The pilot slapped Jake on the back, and then did an elegant wai – the hands-pressed-together, all purpose, praying-and-bowing gesture of Indochina – to Chemda. She wai’d him in return.
The pilot, Jake noted, still smelled of laolao whisky. Maybe he had been drinking on the plane. But they had made it. Jake and Chemda grabbed their bags, their pathetic remnants of luggage, and walked out onto the road. The traffic was light, bordering on non-existent: a few farm trucks, then nothing, then a Honda motorcycle carrying an entire family – father, mother, two infant children, piglet. Then nothing. But a few minutes later a yellow metal tuk-tuk coughed into view, rounding the lush bamboo stands, the tuk-tuk was decorated with stencils of Australian and British flags.
They hailed the tuk-tuk and climbed aboard. They were heading into Luang. Jake felt his spirits rise and his nerves subside, for a moment, as the warm air breezed his face. He had loved Luang Prabang when he had first seen it, just a week ago – though it felt like a year ago. Luang Prabang: the ancient capital of the kingdom. Half French colonial resort, half glittering Buddhist citadel, royal and sacred Louangphrabang.
And here he was again, where girls with orient smiles bicycyled quietly by the boulangerie. Where old Laotian men played petanque by the water tamarinds. Where the orange-robed monks walked from temple to temple every morning, past a hundred Buddhist shrines, and teakwood bars, and rambling Chinese shops.
Street vendors were hawking pyramids of tangerines, arrayed on wicker baskets. Barefoot men slept on rushes in the shade of papaya trees. The mighty Mekong river slid past unnoticed, like a great and famous actor, forgotten in his dotage.
‘Here,’ said Chemda.
The hotel was indeed discreet, beyond the royal palace and the tall scruffy stupa: so discreet the road gave up before it reached the building.
They climbed out of the tuk-tuk and paced the last hundred metres of dirt. The hotel door was closed. Le Gauguin, said a sign. Chemda pushed a door and they slipped into the coolness of a wooden lobby scented with teak and cedar and incense – expensive, private, tranquil; Jake yearned immediately for a shower. Sleep. Then escape.
‘Chemda! Cherie! Bonjour!’
A late-middle aged French woman strode into the Reception. She was introduced: Madame Agnes Marconnet. She hugged Chemda and smiled warily at Jake. The two women talked quickly in French, too fast for Jake to begin to understand; before he could say please or merci they were escorted by a girl in a silk cheongsam to a couple of guest rooms and Jake struggled through a couple of merci beaucoups and kharb jais and Chemda said she would see him later and then he fell straight into his bed without even showering and he slept immediately, hungrily, like a starveling famished of sleep for a century: he slept so hard he didn’t dream, at first, but then something in the darkness of his subconscious disturbed him and he woke with a vague but ungraspable sense of panic.
For a few moments he lay there, perplexed, collating his wits. He didn’t know what time it was. Dawn maybe. The thin filter of blue light, through the slats of the shutters, pierced the darkness of the room.
Then he stared. Hard.
Something was hanging from the door. Three metres away.
He wished he was dreaming; but he was awake.
This was something truly and purely terrible, something beyond hellish.
Jake’s mind swarmed with the horror.
Please No.
Chapter 10
The French policemen arrived at Annika’s cottage an hour later. The sleek Peugeot oiled into the drive with an authoritative scrunch; red and blue police lights flashed exotically across the dark and drizzly wastes of the Cham.
The Belgian woman was needed to identify the body; Julia immediately offered to accompany her friend for this grisly task – though Annika’s composure was so superb, Julia wondered if any help was truly required.
The same blue and red lights shone briefly on Annika’s impassive face as she climbed into the back of the police car, and sat, almost rigid, staring ahead. Julia followed; the car started; they drove the moorland miles up onto the Causse, heading for Mende.
Ghislaine Quoinelles had lived in a large isolated villa near Marvejols – but his body had already been moved.
Annika shared a few words in French with the fifty-something officer, his hair brindled grey. Officer Rouvier had arrived with a suitably dignified demeanour, and a junior officer behind the steering wheel, for the sombre task of escorting them to the morgue at Mende hospital. After a few minutes, Julia added her own halting comment to the conversation.
Her interruption silenced the car. The officer turned in the front passenger seat, and briefly smiled at Julia. And then he said in perfect and very educated English, his words punctuated by the melancholy percussion of the windscreen wipers: