White Crocodile (24 page)

Alex turned the Land Cruiser on to the main road. The potholed tarmac felt smooth after the rigid hammering of the track. In the distance Tess could see the white prefabricated terminal building at Battambang airport, shrouded by the trees ringing the runway. She rested her head against the seat and closed her eyes. Chanthou’s words came into her mind:
And your Bob MacSween, of course. He gives us what money he can.

She opened her eyes. ‘Alex, Chanthou told us MacSween gives money to the orphanage. Why would he do that?’

Alex shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t you give them money if you had any to give?’

‘That’s not the point. MacSween is obsessed about mine clearing and he’s always complaining that we don’t have enough money to do the things he wants to do. So why is he giving money away, even if it is for a great cause?’

‘Because he has been there and seen the place. He’s seen the place and he’s human.’

‘But in his mind mine clearing is the most important cause of all. Lots of those kids in the orphanage are only there because their parents have been killed by land mines. It . . . it—’ She tailed off as she remembered more of Chanthou’s words –
the Land Cruiser, the MCT logo
– and with them rose, unbidden,
an image of
a little girl standing by a minefield in the fading light, the curtain of her hair falling across her face, whispering something about the Crocodile.

She twisted around to face Alex. ‘The little girl that was killed by the butterfly mine, the one who tried to warn me about the White Crocodile. She was talking about the Crocodile and night-time. But she also used another word that I didn’t understand. I just dismissed her. I said that I was a mine clearer and that I knew what I was doing. But now, I don’t know. She could see that I was a mine clearer because I had my kit on and I arrived in an MCT Land Cruiser. She would have seen MCT mine clearers in that field and would have known that we know about the White Crocodile. She must have been trying to tell me something else.’

Alex glanced across. ‘What word didn’t you understand?’

‘I, uh . . . oh God, let me think.’ Shutting her eyes, she pressed the tips of her fingers to her forehead, physically willing the word to come. The little girl whispering: Whie Crocodil, night-night. The curtain of her hair falling across her face. The scars on her upper arm ridged and ugly like elastic. Tess dropped her hands to her lap. ‘
Laan
something.’

‘
Laan ch’nual
?
’

Tess closed her eyes again, focusing her whole being on an image of the little girl, her lips moving, her voice as quiet as the whisper of wind. ‘Say that word again, Alex.’

‘
Laan ch’nual
?
’

‘Yes, that was it.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes. Yes, definitely. What does it mean?’

‘It means bus.’

‘Bus?’

‘Bus. A large vehicle that carries people.’

‘Yes, all right, ha, ha. White Crocodile – night-time – bus.’ She said the words slowly, fighting for clear thought. They were drawing close to the airport. Just ahead and to the right the thin black line of the runway cut through the trees. ‘White Crocodile bus came in the night-time.’ On either side of the runway the military hardware was rippling in the intense heat, which had not dissipated with the onset of evening. At the end of the line were the two civilian helicopters.
Came to do what?
– she thought, then a second after –
oh, Christ
– as clarity flooded the places where a moment ago there had been none.

‘
Stop at the airport, Alex.
’

‘What?’

‘Stop at the airport. It’s Sunday afternoon. The guy who flies the MCT helicopter got back from holiday last night. I need to speak to him because he answered our radio transmission requesting the emergency helicopter to evacuate Johnny, and he also must have taken the transmission from whoever cancelled it. And the bus, it must be a Land Cruiser. For a child, a Land Cruiser would seem huge.’

He glanced across and she saw the understanding in his eyes. ‘No, Tess. He can’t be the Crocodile.’

The man grabbed the little boy’s arm and dragged him towards the sofa.

‘Hello kitten.’ His mother smiled. She was lolling back on the sofa, naked. There was sticky gunk on her thighs. ‘Were you spying on us?’

The little boy looked up at her, frozen with shock. Tears had made white tracks through the dirt on his cheeks.

‘No, Mummy.’

‘You’re as good a liar as your mum, you are,’ the man said.

‘Mummy,’ he sobbed. ‘Please Mummy—’

The man was very angry and the little boy knew he was also drunk, could smell it on his breath. He knew that drink made people angrier, made them hit harder. The man held him tight by the arm and punched him in the mouth. The little boy’s head slammed backwards and he tasted blood. The man punched him hard in the side of the head, and once more in the stomach. The little boy doubled up, sobbing.

The man was very matter-of-fact about his violence, as if he was used to doing it and it was no big deal. He let the boy drop to the floor, and disappeared from the room. The little boy was on his hands and knees, and he was shaking and crying and trying to crawl to his mother.

‘Mummy—’

His mother reached over and her hands fluttered over his cheeks where the man had hit him. Then she gently smoothed his hair back with one hand. She wasn’t looking at him, the little boy realised, but past him, into the shadows in the hallway, gaze unfocused.

When the man came back in he was carrying the broom handle. He walked over and smacked the little boy in the ribs with it, knocking him flat.

‘Mummy, help me,’ he said, trying to get up, but the man hit him again, knocking him back down, and through his tears he saw her watching, an odd little smile on her face.

Those voices. They were ghosts’ voices.

‘You’re going to die,’ they whispered.

Johnny sat up. It had been day, but now it was dark. Night had come. He thought he’d been awake, but he must have drifted off. He was imagining the voices, he knew he was imagining them.

Sitting on the floor, his back to the sofa, he couldn’t keep himself quite upright. He was aware of the smell of vomit and he thought it must have come from him, that he had thrown up, but he wasn’t sure, couldn’t remember. He felt feverishly hot. He couldn’t feel his hand, but his arm throbbed.

‘What do you think happens next?’ the ghosts whispered.

His gaze snapped around him. He felt his lips moving, trying to form words, to answer. Sounds came from his mouth, but something in his brain must have been broken because he couldn’t seem to assemble the sounds into anything sensible.

‘. . . leavemealoneImeanitleavemealone . . .’

He tried to stand but his good leg wouldn’t respond. Didn’t matter, he could still get to the door, check the door was locked. Pressing his throbbing bandaged hand to the floor, biting back the pain, he dragged himself forward. He felt the flesh tearing in his palm, heard the pop of scabs, noticed, in some small part of his rational brain, the stench of decaying meat, but in three pathetic lunges he was there, grasping the door handle, tugging it, checking the lock, drawing the curtain tight. He dragged himself around the rest of the room, reaching up to pull the shutters closed, locking them, lurching from one to the next, checking, checking, frantically checking.

‘We’re already here,’ the ghosts whispered.

Johnny jammed his eyes closed, the darkness in his head flashing and flickering.
I’m imagining it. It’s a dream. For God’s sake, leave me alone.
Scrabbling for purchase, his good leg cycling manically, trying to get a foothold on the wooden boards, he flung himself blindly back against the sofa. He could hear panting, whimpering. Fumbling around on the floor, he found his pistol, closed his hand around it, felt the pain in his hand, almost unbearable, but didn’t let go, couldn’t let go.

Had to protect himself . . .

Close by someone started screaming something in a thick voice he couldn’t understand. ‘LeavemeleavemealoneImeanitpleasepleaseleavemealone.’

He wrenched in a breath and this time he heard the words clearly. The voice. His voice.

‘Leave me alone, I don’t deserve this, I don’t,
please
, Jesus have mercy.’

As he turned the Land Cruiser into the airport car park, Alex’s mobile rang. Cutting the engine, he pulled it from his pocket. Tess watched his face darken as he listened to the voice – a man’s voice, she could hear from the muffled tone. She could also hear from the pace and the rise and fall in timbre that whoever was speaking was very upset.

‘That was Johnny,’ he said, tossing his phone on to the dashboard. ‘He’s shot his next-door neighbour’s dog. He’s lost it. I have to go.’

MacSween sat at his desk in silence, staring blankly at his computer screen, a bottle of Glenfiddich at his elbow. The heat was intense, the pressure in the air made his head throb and he couldn’t get rid of the feeling, no matter how many shots he downed – or maybe, he pondered with a sick dry chuckle, because of them. His gaze drifted down to his blotter, to the note laid on top of it.

Had an email from Huan. Going to meet him. Wasn’t time to radio you, so went alone. Will report back.

It hadn’t been Huan.

‘You’ve got to call the police in,’ Tess had told him. And she had been right, of course. Irrefutable logic. A logic that he had denied for too long, because he had known what would happen to MCT if he acknowledged it.

But after Jakkleson’s suspected murder, he knew that he didn’t have a choice. He had hardly left his desk since making the call and suspending clearing, speaking to no one, just sitting, thinking.

He took a slug of Glenfiddich, winced as the acid liquid scorched down his throat. As he raised the glass to his lips for another, it slipped from his fingers, and although he made a grab for it, his co-ordination seemed to be off, and instead of catching it he just knocked it sideways. MacSween watched dully as the copper-coloured liquid spread over the desktop, soaking Jakkleson’s note.

It hadn’t been Huan.

Suddenly he swept the computer screen from the desk, sending it crashing to the floor. He had expected it to shatter, but it just bounced a couple of times and then lay there, intact, as if it was laughing at him for believing he could wipe away history, the White Crocodile, with one sweep of his arm.

Slumping forward in the chair, he dropped his head to his hands. For several seconds he remained like that, rocking backwards and forwards, grating his fingers across his scalp. Staggering to his feet, he grabbed the whisky bottle, stumbled over to the window and threw it open. He stood quite still, feeling the cool swell of unsettled air, listening to the thunder rumbling in the distance.

A light was on in the clapboard hut. As Tess neared it, the door swung open and a middle-aged man wearing an oil-stained vest and shorts emerged. His mop of blond hair was tied back from a tanned, lined face, and a smoking roll-up hung from the corner of his mouth. He squinted sullenly at her as she approached, with her hand outstretched.

‘Hi, I’m Tess Hardy, from MCT.’

He took a drag from the roll-up, blowing a cloud of smoke over her, and shook her hand briefly. ‘Dick Seymour.’

Tess took a step back. ‘I wanted to ask you about an emergency call we made to you on Monday morning. Monday just gone.’

He nodded slowly, his expression non-committal.

‘Early, around half past eight. You received a radio transmission from MCT asking you to evacuate a casualty from Koh Kroneg minefield.’

‘Yeah, I received the transmission.’

‘But the helicopter never came.’

‘I got another call cancelling the helicopter less than a minute after the first one. I hadn’t even started the rotors.’

‘But we didn’t cancel it. We needed it.’

He squinted past her, out across the runway. ‘You may not have cancelled it, love, but it was cancelled by MCT nonetheless.’

‘But we radioed again about ten minutes later, and there was no answer.’

‘I was in the air by then, answering an emergency call from Médecins Sans Frontières which came in a few minutes after your first one, so I wouldn’t have got the second call.’

‘Can you check?’

‘Check what?’

‘Your paperwork. Just to confirm.’

‘I don’t need to check any paperwork, love. I’ve got it all stored right here.’ He tapped a nicotine-stained finger to his temple. ‘I got a call from MCT House saying that the casualty wasn’t bad and that you’d take him to hospital by road instead.’

‘From MCT House? Not from the field, then? The call cancelling the helicopter wasn’t from the field?’

She saw a look of fraying patience cross his face. ‘From MCT House.’

She stared at him incredulously, her mind accelerating. ‘Who was it, sorry? Who phoned?’

Hawking some phlegm into his mouth, he spat on to the tarmac.

‘Your boss.’

Tess thought she hadn’t heard him right. ‘Who, sorry?’

‘Your boss. MacSween.’

‘Bob MacSween?’

‘That’s right.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Or if it wasn’t him, it was someone who can put on a bloody good Scottish accent.’

He could have taken any of the Land Cruisers: they were all his in the end, paid for with his sweat.

But he chose this one.
Jakkleson’s.
Returned this morning by the police, minus its wing mirrors, a perfect round coffee-coloured stain on the passenger seat where they had tossed Jakkleson’s baseball cap.

Penance.

For letting it get this far. He had put MCT, the clearance operation, above everything. Above Johnny, above Jakkleson, above those women and their babies. Been obsessive in his belief that nothing –
nothing
– was more important. Would lives have been saved if he had capitulated and called in the police earlier? If he had sat at his desk, like he had for the past twenty-four hours, and just thought – worked step by step through the possibilities – worked out who the White Crocodile could be? He knew what the answer was.

He twisted the key in the ignition and the engine fired with a boom so loud that it made him flinch. He felt like shit: headachy, sweat pooling in the cleft of his neck and ballooning under his arms despite the air conditioning which rattled and spat lukewarm air at him. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, where he was going to go. To the police first, to tell them what he had worked out. And then? Home? Did he have a home any more?

All he knew was that he needed to escape from here, from the collapsing edifice of his life. But escape to where, to what?

He stared blankly ahead through the windscreen. He didn’t notice the pale figure standing in the middle of the drive until it was too late.