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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.