White Crocodile (22 page)

The Municipal Hospital, the hospital for the indigent, was a crumbling concrete block with glassless windowframes, filling one side of a narrow street on the outskirts of Battambang, where the town gave way to patches of farmland. Opposite was a string of run-down guesthouses. There seemed to be no door facing the road, so Tess edged around the facade, looking for a way in. She followed an alleyway between the flank of the building and a rusty wire fence. It led into a concrete courtyard which smelt of urine. A couple of bicycles leaned against one of the walls, and propped in a corner was an old but well-maintained moped, its rear wheel secured with a heavy chain. Open concrete stairs snaked from the courtyard up the outside of the building. She looked around, and when she couldn’t find a door on the ground floor, walked over to the staircase and started to climb.

The stairs opened from the first-floor landing into one enormous room. Fifty or more patients dressed in ragged scraps of clothing were lying side by side on mattresses without sheets or blankets. A few others were curled immobile on the stone floor. The air seethed and flickered with flies, and the room stank of sweat and iodine. There were no doctors or nurses to be seen.

Pressing her hand to her mouth, Tess made her way through the ward, trying not to breathe or stare. Most of the patients were unmoving, looking blankly up at the ceiling. Others watched her, faces lifeless as masks. At the far end of the ward children occupied a bed, four little bodies layered horizontally across a foam mattress. Slipping the bottle of water she had been carrying from the pocket of her shorts, she laid it on the bed, but none of them acknowledged it was there, let alone moved to take it.

The ward on the second floor was identical to the first, crammed with bodies, the air thick with the smell of infection. A man in a white knee-length coat leaned over a bed in the near corner of the room. He must have heard her approach because he straightened and turned. He was unusually tall and lanky for a Khmer, with greying hair and mahogany eyes. His face was hollow and gaunt. He looked as she felt – knackered, taut to breaking point, then ratcheted a few notches tighter.

Tess held out her hand. He gave a curt nod, but made no move to take it.

‘One of my friends, a local man, was shot early this morning, close to the Balcony Bar,’ she said. ‘I was told he would have been brought here.’

‘Shot dead?’ He spoke English slowly, with a heavy French accent.

She nodded.

‘I spoke to the police. They said he had been brought here.’

He nodded slowly, then turned back to the bed. The figure lying on it was almost unrecognisable as a human being.

‘I found ’im lying at the bottom of the stairs when I came into work two days ago. ’E was covered in sores, crawling with maggots.’ The doctor bent down and began to peel the bandage away from the man’s face. ‘The ’ospital does not provide medicine or food. If a patient ’as no family to bring them what they need they will die.’ The bandage came away soaked with pus; the face underneath was a patchwork of bloody sores. The doctor pulled a clean bandage from his pocket and began to unwrap it.

‘Your friend was brought in this morning at about two a.m. The police said that ’e ’ad been attacked for money. Mugged. ’E was dead on arrival. There was nothing I could do for ’im.’ He leaned forward and began wrapping the new bandage gently around the patient’s head.

‘Where is he?’

‘In the morgue.’

‘Can I see him?’

He shook his head dismissively. ‘
Non
.’ Then after a studied pause, and in a softer tone, he said, ‘Believe me, you don’t want to see ’im. Are you a tourist?’

‘I’m a mine clearer. I work in Battambang.’

‘Ah.’ He finished what he was doing and unpeeled himself from his crouch. ‘So you are used to the realities of life in Cambodia?’

Tess nodded. She felt sick. The lack of sleep and the smell. She rubbed her hand across her eyes and her head started to spin. Dropping her hand, she steadied herself on the bedstead.

‘Are you ill?’

‘No.’

‘Sure?’

She nodded.

‘It is not easy to lose a friend, even if you are a tough mine clearer.’ He smiled, a tight-lipped smile. ‘The police, they said mugger. Myself, I feel that muggers are using very sophisticated weapons these days. Come with me.’ He turned and went out the door to the stairs. She followed, grateful for the fresh air that engulfed her as the door swung closed behind her.

‘’E was a real mess, an ’ole the size of a fist in ’is chest,’ he said back over his shoulder, as he picked his way down the stairs. ‘Much blood lost.’

‘Was it a pistol wound?’

‘
Non
.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course. I ’ave seen plenty of pistol wounds.’

She stared at his back and bit her lip. If it wasn’t a pistol wound, then it wasn’t from Alex’s Browning. Though she hadn’t even realised she was holding her breath, she felt a balloon of air empty from her lungs.

‘What was it then?’

‘Rifle, I imagine, though the ’ole was big enough to ’ave come from a bazooka. I ’ave never seen a bullet wound like it.’

He reached the bottom of the stairs and crossed the courtyard to the other, smaller building. The door into this building led to a short, dimly lit corridor. Dirty grey laminated tiles covered the floor and peeling cream paint the walls. The doctor stopped halfway down the corridor, pulled a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked a door.

‘This is my office. Come in for a moment, please.’

The office was small and cramped, a desk piled with papers and twin metal filing cabinets taking up most of the space. Above the desk was a photograph, yellowed with age, of the doctor wearing medical scrubs, standing in front of one of the Sorbonne university buildings in central Paris. There was no glass in the office’s one window, but a double layer of metal mosquito netting had been tacked untidily to its frame with sturdy U-shaped nails. The doctor went over to his desk, opened the top drawer and rummaged around in it.

Straightening, he turned and held out his hand. A large, gold-coloured bullet nestled in his palm.

‘It spinned,’ he said matter-of-factly.

‘
Spinned?
Spun? You mean spun?’

‘Certainly. It looks like it started spinning when it ’it ’is chest. The entry wound was in ’is chest, the bullet finished in ’is lower back. The bullet did not go straight through, but it
spun
. . .’ He emphasised the word. ‘Changed direction many times. This left a very big mess of ’is insides. A special bullet, I would say. One shot, no chance to survive. Here.’ He held it out to her. ‘Take it.’

Alex lived in a small, white-painted wooden house on a corner plot near the river, surrounded by a mess of untended garden. It reminded Tess of a fairy-tale cottage hidden deep in an enchanted forest. Flowering vines had scaled the walls and crept over the roof.

He was sitting on the sofa, reading, and the sight looked incongruously domestic and peaceful, given the circumstances the last time she’d seen him. He didn’t realise she was there until she had been standing in the open doorway for a few moments, and then he seemed to sense rather than hear her because he glanced up suddenly, startled. She reached out and grasped the doorframe to steady herself. He looked terrible. Wounded, totally beaten.

‘Tess.’

‘Alex.’

‘I didn’t expect you.’

He was naked except for a pair of white boxer shorts, and had a bandage wrapped around his left arm, from wrist to elbow. Patches of blood had soaked through the bandage.

‘You’re not asleep,’ she said. ‘After last night – this morning – I thought you’d still be asleep.’

‘No.’

‘Have you slept?’

‘No.’ Dropping the book, he rose from the sofa and padded over the rug towards her. She held up a staying hand.

‘Stop, Alex. Stop there.’

He stopped walking.

‘I just want to talk.’

‘Come and sit down then. Let’s talk.’ He indicated the chair on the other side of the table and retreated back to the sofa.

Tess sat down in the chair, tucking herself deep in its sagging cushions. The room was comfortable, personal. She hadn’t expected it to be. The linen-covered sofa and two chairs ringed an old teak coffee table, piled with books and a half-finished mug of coffee. A bookshelf leaned against the far wall, crammed with more books, some English, some Khmer, others with Cyrillic text. One of the shelves held a jumble of assorted objects: photographs, a dark, serious family, arms around each other, father, mother, daughter, son – the son younger, softer-looking but unmistakably Alex – a large, white house in extensive grounds, photographed from the air, a knife, a pot plant, its leaves curled and brown.

‘What have you been doing today?’ she asked.

‘Nothing much. How about you?’

‘I went to the Municipal Hospital to try to see Huan’s body.’ She paused. ‘It wasn’t a pistol wound.’

He looked at her silently.

‘But you knew that already, didn’t you?’

He continued to watch her across the table in silence, his face expressionless. She sat forward, tried to keep her voice steady.

‘I’m sorry about my behaviour last night. But what did you mean when you said, “I’ll tell you everything”?’

He spread his hands. ‘You’re right to have your doubts about me. I have killed someone. But it was in another life, Tess. Not in this one. In Bosnia, not here in Cambodia. It’s not relevant to anything here.’

‘I still want to know. I
need
to know, Alex. I have to be able to trust you.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll tell you. I wanted to tell you anyway.’ He leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest and stared up at the ceiling.

‘He was an aid worker,’ he said finally, looking back to her. ‘With one of the agencies in Bosnia. One of the humanitarian agencies that moved in after the war, to hand out kindness and sort our problems out for us. It was a short while after I found out that my family had been killed. My sister and I had been sent away to live with my aunt in Greece when the war started, to keep us safe. I hadn’t wanted to go. I wanted to stay with my parents. I was twelve, old enough to fight I thought, but they wouldn’t hear of it.’ He was speaking quietly, dark eyes fixed on hers. ‘They were killed when I was in Greece. The Serbs shot all the men in our village. All of them – even the little boys. The older women were also killed, the younger ones taken away. I don’t know where.’ A pause. ‘But I can guess why. My mother was young, and beautiful. Really beautiful. When the war was over, I came back and tried to find her, but I couldn’t. I spent months and months looking. I’m pretty sure, now, she was killed . . . once they’d grown tired of her.’ He broke off, looked down at his hands, his expression blank. ‘It was while I was looking for her that I killed the aid worker. I was sleeping in the open, in a forest. He was raping a young girl, twelve or thirteen. She was screaming. So much fucking . . . pity in that sound. I saw everything bad you can think of when I was young, but that was the moment that it hit me somehow. This girl. Some mother’s baby. Someone’s precious daughter who only wanted to live and be happy. And this fuck has her pinned down on the floor of his Land Cruiser, with the tailgate open. He jumped when he heard me, climbed off her and slid out of the back, stuffing his dick inside his trousers. He was fully clothed, in some fucking aid-agency uniform, I can’t even remember which now. The girl was naked. She crawled away, pressed herself against the back of the seats, shaking and crying, trying to cover herself up. She was . . . bleeding.’

He stopped talking and glanced over towards the balcony doors. Tess followed his gaze, and for a brief moment their eyes locked.

‘He asked me if I spoke English. I told him that I did and he said it was OK, that he owned her. “I just bought her,” he said. “Seventeen hundred dollars. Not cheap, but she’s a virgin. She would have been forced to work as a prostitute if I hadn’t bought her.” He was jumpy. He kept glancing over his shoulder at the girl and at his handgun, which he had left on the dashboard. “From your lot,” he said. “I bought her from one of your lot.” Your lot – like we were all the same.’ Alex sat forward and put his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. ‘We committed huge atrocities in our countries. The international community watched and sent people to save us from ourselves. Many of the people they sent committed atrocities themselves. They think they’re doing us such a big favour and because we’re all savages they can leave their morals at home. Countries like ours are easy to betray. We’re so fucking grateful that we put up with anything.’ He shook his head, suppressed fury in the movement.

‘How did you kill him?’

‘I hit him.’ He sat back, put his feet on the coffee table and knotted his hands behind his head.

‘Once?’

‘No. At least I doubt it. I don’t really remember, but I broke my hand while I was hitting him.’ A grim smile touched his mouth. ‘I thought it would sort everything out, make it all fine, for her and for me. But it didn’t. Afterwards, I felt as if I was the one who had died.’

‘What about the girl?’

‘She was terrified. Terrified of me. I crawled into the Land Cruiser to try to pull her out and she started screaming, lashed out at me with a piece of metal and cut my hand.’

‘Did it hurt?’

‘Yeah, it hurt.’

‘But it helped?’

He didn’t say anything. Just watched her.

‘Why do you do it? Why do you harm yourself?’

‘Because it’s
easy
. Physical pain is an easy distraction. It takes everything away. All the pain, all the anger,
everything
.’

‘You’ve got to stop doing that to yourself.’

‘Pain’s . . . so much easier than pleasure. You have to work hard to make someone feel good. Pain . . .’ he shrugged. ‘Just a flick of a knife, or a twist of a cigarette.’

‘Look, I know it’s not simple. That you can’t just—’ She broke off with a distressed shrug. ‘I want to say that I understand, but I don’t. And I don’t know what else to say, how to help.’

‘It’s my problem, Tess.’

‘No. It’s—’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

They lapsed into an uneasy silence; eventually, Tess broke it.

‘Would you do it again?’

‘What?’

‘Kill him.’

He nodded. They sat looking at each other across the table, wary, uncertain.

‘You can go if you want,’ he said quietly. ‘Obviously you can go.’

She shook her head. ‘I travelled through Europe with a friend when I was sixteen. We caught a train from Vienna to Athens, through the former Yugoslavia. We had a carriage for eight to ourselves for most of the way, then in Croatia the train stopped and some Croatian soldiers and sailors boarded. Six of them came into our carriage. They were young, some about the same age as us, some a bit older. We talked all day, and when it was night they insisted on sitting on the floor so that my friend and I could lie down flat on the seats and sleep. We would have been happy just to sit, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer.’ She smiled. ‘I remember them so well. How polite they were. How shy and funny and gentle.’ She stood up, padded around the table and sat down next to him on the sofa. ‘Circumstances can drive people to do terrible things, Alex. You had the chance to help someone who couldn’t help herself and you did.’

‘I couldn’t help her enough.’

‘You tried.’ She reached out and stroked her hand across his cheek, then dropped it to his chest. ‘At least you tried. And we need to try again now.’ Her hand, on his heart, felt the beat of a jackhammer.

Taking her hand, he raised it to his lips, as he had done by the river. She felt the warmth of his kiss and shivered. This time, she didn’t pull away.