White Crocodile (27 page)

The little boy clutched the plastic bag containing his spare pair of underpants and his pyjamas, and looked at the black door in front of him, the building it was set into towering over him, so tall he felt as if it might topple over and squash him. He started to cry. He wanted to turn away, run somewhere – he didn’t know where – but it was freezing cold, slushy rain falling hard from a winter sky, and he didn’t have a coat. He was soaked through and shivering.

He was frightened of what was behind the front door but he was more frightened of what was behind him.

‘This is your new home, kitten,’ Mummy had said, twisting around to look at him from the front seat of the man’s car, with that glassy vacant look she had in her eyes almost all the time now. ‘It’s a children’s home. A home for children like you.’

The little boy looked at her without speaking, tears making white tracks through the dirt on his cheeks. He was frightened of her too now, but he still loved her because she was his mummy. He didn’t want to get out of the car.

‘Get out of the fucking car.’ Jonjo leaned over the back of the seat and shouted right in his face.

‘Mummy—’

‘Get out.’

‘Mummy,’ he sobbed.

Jonjo was drunk and angry and his mummy was high. The car was so rusty that the door stuck and he got frightened as he struggled with the handle. Frightened that Jonjo would lose patience and hit him again, like he had hit him every day since he moved in with Mummy. He was so frightened these days that sometimes he wet himself accidentally, which made both Jonjo and Mummy furious.

They drove off as soon as he was out of the car. He watched them through the rear window, thinking that Mummy would look back at him. But she didn’t. Not once.

He began to cry, but then he stopped himself. He took a breath and held on to it, half closing his eyes so that he was looking at the great black door through tiny slits, so that everything around him was dark too and slightly fuzzy. In that way he found that he could imagine it was a black hole in space, and he could step through it into a whole new world of stars and moons and aliens. He was free then. Free to go where he wanted, to be on his own, to fly through space like a rocket ship and find a planet where no one else lived. A new home – just for him. Alone. Alone and safe.

Imagining helped him and he stepped forward. He couldn’t stretch high enough to ring the bell, so he just tapped with his fist on the door, hoping that someone would hear him. It was a long time before anyone did. A grey-haired woman with mild blue eyes, wearing a big brown cardigan, opened the door.

Anna didn’t realise there was anyone on the doorstep for a moment. She had been expecting a delivery of bread and was looking around at head height for a delivery driver in a crisp white coat. Finally, she looked down. The little boy on the doorstep was tiny and shivering. He wore a filthy white sweatshirt and jeans that finished halfway down his calves. His shoulders stood out from the sweatshirt like a wire coat hanger. He had a black eye and she could tell from the angle his left arm was hanging at that it was broken. In his other hand he held a plastic Tesco carrier bag. She looked beyond him, either way down the street. There was no one around. No people. No cars. He was alone.

‘Why are you here, sweetheart?’

No response, no change in his expression. His eyes were alert for any sign of danger.

‘Come inside out of the cold and then we’ll talk.’ She ushered him into the hallway and shut the door. Then she knelt down in front of him. ‘Who brought you here?’

‘Mummy,’ he whispered, his voice so tiny and timid she had to tilt her head towards him to hear. ‘This is my new home.’

The woman looked confused and the little boy felt desperate. Desperate to make her understand him. He dug deep in his brain to find the right words. The words that would make her like him. He knew that it was important for her to like him, but he didn’t know how to make that happen.

‘Mummy said . . .’ He was struggling not to cry. ‘She said that this is my new home.’ It was warm in here and the woman had a kind face. He didn’t want to go back outside. It was beginning to get dark, he could see the light outside the hall changing to grey and he didn’t want to be outside in the dark and the rain. ‘Can I live here? Please.’

‘It doesn’t quite work like that. We’ll need to speak to social services, the police.’

The words were meaningless to the little boy.

‘We’ll sort you out, sweetheart. Let’s get you to bed now and we can sort everything out in the morning. Where are your things?’

The little boy held out his plastic bag. Inside were a pair of grey underpants and a pair of pale yellow girl’s pyjamas with Minnie Mouse on the front, size 3 to 4 she noticed from the label. He looked embarrassed when she took them out of the bag.

Anna knelt down beside him; slipped an arm around his shoulders.

‘How old are you?’

The little boy smiled for the first time at that question. She saw that one of his front teeth was missing. ‘Six,’ he said. ‘I’m six today.’

The woman’s eyes were bright and furious and when he looked up at her, she looked away. He started to shake again, thinking that a smack or a punch was coming.

‘No, sweetheart,’ she said, pulling him against her. ‘It’s OK. We’ll look after you. You’re safe now.’

The warm air in the hall moved over his skin, he could smell food cooking, and the sound of children playing somewhere above him, running feet and their laughter. He could hear laughter. The woman’s arms were soft and he hadn’t been cuddled for longer than he could remember. It felt so good that he started to cry, great shuddering sobs that felt as if they came all the way up from his toes.

‘Shhhh.’ She kissed his cheek and hugged him tighter. ‘Shhh, it’s OK. You’re safe.’ Levering him gently away from her, she stroked a hand over his face. ‘Can you tell me your name?’

He nodded and smiled, knowing that for once he was sure to get something right.

‘Luke.’

She heard the familiar sound of leaves rustling, the creaking of wood, the hiss of rain. The air was cooler, the smell mellow and damp – not the stuffy smell of a closed room. She thought that she must have left her bedroom window open, which was good because she liked to sleep with the outside close by. She opened her eyes a crack. Darkness.

Still night
, she thought, relieved.

She closed her eyes and felt a dull ache in her head, like a hangover. She twisted and shifted. The mattress was hard – hard and cold – a cold that seeped through her skin. She wondered why. Her tongue felt thick and heavy, and she could taste something chalky and metallic. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was so dry . . . and the taste, what was the taste? She just wanted to sleep. Curling herself into a ball, she shut her eyes again.

‘Tess.’

A whisper.

‘Luke?’

She tried to open her eyes, but her lids felt too heavy.

Luke?
Luke was dead. Wasn’t he?

She stretched her arms above her head. She recognised the taste in her mouth –
blood
– and now she was moving the pain in her head was almost unbearable. Lying still, she gulped in air, fighting a tide of nausea.

When the feeling had subsided, she hauled herself to sitting. The surface behind her was rough. She shifted against it, trying to get comfortable, but it was the same wherever she moved – grooved and knotted. She looked up; her head thumped and her vision swam. Holding herself still, she breathed hard, willing the spinning to stop. Slowly her vision refocused and she made out dark shapes above her: branches, a bobbing, twisting mosaic of leaves. A tree, its bark rough against her back. Through the leaves she could see a sliver of moon.

Lowering her gaze, she stared hard into the darkness around her. Muted outlines began to form. An undulating landscape, puddles of water reflecting the moonlight, elephant grass swaying in the wind, and closer to her, the dark sides of a crater, too deep for the moonlight to penetrate.

Further away there was something else, something twisting and fluttering in the darkness. She had heard that sound so many times before in different places around the world, when the wind was up and the red-and-white striped mine tape was lifting and dancing.

Johnny lay back against the pillows and knew that he was dead.

Johnny the joker.

Johnny the dead man.

In some other plane, somewhere else entirely, he recognised that he should feel some guilt, some shame. But he couldn’t bring himself to feel guilty. It hadn’t been like that at the time.

The rain rattled against the mosquito mesh.

It was time. He knew it was time.

Shifting on to his side, he reached to the bedside table for his trousers, which Dr Ung had folded neatly and laid in the drawer. He found what he was looking for in an instant. The penknife was small, but the blade was sharp.

Better to do it now, while he had a choice about the
how
, than to wait.

Blinking, concentrating hard to make sure he didn’t fuck it up, he drew the blade down his wrist, breaking open the tender skin, slicing vertically through veins. Blood bloomed, bright, but instinctively he knew that it wasn’t enough.

Tilting sideways so that he could lay his arm flat on the mattress, he nudged the point of the knife into the wound. He winced as the blade met open flesh. Jamming his eyes shut, his brain fumbled for an image, something to take him away from the abhorrent things he had done.
Something to leave with—

Shropshire: open spaces, grass beneath his feet and a crystal blue sky above.
Home. I’m home—

The image was perfect and he held on to it. Shifting sideways, he leaned the full weight of his body on to the hilt of the knife. The blade slipped smoothly into his wrist, neatly severing the muscles and tendons, the network of veins and artery. He held the image of home in his mind like precious china as he watched his blood jet across the white sheets.

Shropshire. Rolling fields. Late afternoon, he realised. The sun just dipping behind a copse of trees. Bitten, then bisected. Then gone.

Luke smiled at her.

‘I’ve missed you,’ he said. ‘I’ve missed my beautiful wife.’ He leaned forward, and even though there was no one to overhear them, whispered right in her ear. ‘And I’ve missed her tight cunt.’

She struck out, but he had been expecting that because he caught her wrist in the air and twisted her arm up behind her back, so high that she felt her shoulder would pop out of its joint. Shoving her against the tree trunk, he grabbed her hair and smacked her head viciously against the bark.

‘NO.’

Just the one word, but it was enough. She stopped struggling, let her body go floppy, her mind float off, following the familiar tracks she had learned when they were married. He gave her a soft kiss on the cheek and released her.

‘I’m sorry, my darling. But you know how you wind me up. You’ve got to stop winding me up.’ He smiled. ‘I heard you talking to that detective inspector on the phone. I presume that he was talking about my women, was he?’

Her stomach knotted.

‘Jorani, perhaps?’ He smiled. ‘It means radiant jewel.’

He placed a hand lightly on her shoulder. She tensed.

‘So beautiful. Just perfect.’ He tightened his grip. ‘He’s met her, has he? Used her?’

‘Take your hand away,’ she said, with fierce restraint.

Luke dropped his hands and smiled in mock surrender. ‘Sorry.’

‘So it was you who set the mine for Johnny, and murdered Jakkleson and Huan?’

‘Johnny was helping me at the beginning, but he got greedy and threatened to expose me.’ He gave a wry half-smile. ‘Unfortunately for him, he underestimated my commitment.’

‘You didn’t feel the need to finish him off?’

He shrugged. ‘Didn’t need to. I paid him a visit at the hospital, left a souvenir from the White Crocodile, and his own pitiful mind did the job for me. It would have been far less satisfying to kill him.’

‘And Jakkleson? Huan?’

‘Jakkleson didn’t know who the White Crocodile was, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t Huan – that Huan was the scapegoat. He destroyed Huan’s personnel file so I couldn’t find out where he and his family lived. But there’s more than one way to skin a cat. I was always going to get to Huan eventually. Shame that Ret S’Mai disappeared before I got to him too.’

‘Why Ret S’Mai? What the hell did he ever do?’

‘He saw me in Johnny’s room at the hospital one night. He didn’t know who I was because he’d never met me, but he knew that something wasn’t right. He told Huan, and together they worked it out.’

Tess bit her lip. ‘So why have you brought me here?’

‘Why? Because this is the White Crocodile’s hunting ground. My spiritual home, I suppose.’ He shrugged again. ‘The White Crocodile put the fear of God into those women, made the hunting so much easier. They were terrified before I even got to them. Fear makes people compliant. Almost everyone imagines that they’ll be brave in the face of terror, but in the end – it’s always the same.’

‘And I’m next.’

He shook his head. ‘Not you.’

‘What do you want then?’

‘I still love you, Tess. I want to be with you.’

Wrapping her arms around herself, she looked away from him, across the deserted minefield.

‘And to explain.’ His voice cut into her consciousness. ‘Tell you why. I think I owe you that. You’ve had to live with me being dead for six months. It must have been hard. I’m sorry, but I had no choice.’

‘So you weren’t frightened, were you? When you telephoned me from Cambodia. You were just pretending to be.’

‘I’m sorry, but it was necessary.’ His voice was soft. ‘I became very good at pretending as a child. Pretending was the only thing I had.’

‘How did you survive the mine?’

‘I rigged a radio-controlled anti-tank mine at the edge of the jungle, so I could slip away and trigger it remotely, and everyone would think I’d been vaporised.’ He held up his twisted hand, encased in a white leather glove. ‘I wasn’t quick enough. My hand got badly burnt and I lost a couple of fingers.’

‘It’s a shame you weren’t slower.’

A flash of anger crossed his face, and Tess tensed, knowing what was coming. But instead he raised a hand, the undamaged hand, and stroked a finger across her cheek. She winced, repulsed.

‘That’s why I love you, Tess. None of those women were fighters.’

‘Only the ones you killed, you mean? I presume they fought or you wouldn’t have killed them.’

‘Those women were worthless. All of them. Imbecilic whores who got knocked up by some fucking loser, and the kids are the ones who suffer. Those little children, who’ve never done anyone any harm, get shitty lives, barely surviving in some filthy shack without enough food to eat. No prospects. No love.’

She felt his fingers slide over her face and closed her eyes, trying to block him out, his voice, the feel of his fingers on her skin.

‘They were loved. Jorani loved her child. And he loved her. I met him. He was crying for his mummy.’

‘Of course he loved her. Just like I loved my mother. I never told you, did I? I never told you because I just wanted to leave it behind, pretend that it had happened to another little boy.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘But I couldn’t, of course. You can’t just shrug off your past like a coat – because it’s here.’ He planted a fist on his chest. ‘Right here, inside, part of you, just like your heart or your lungs. My cunt of a mother let her boyfriends beat me virtually every day of my childhood. And the more they beat me the more I loved her. I would have done anything to make her love me back.’

Luke was breathing heavily; his voice caught as he spoke.

‘It was my sixth birthday when they dumped me at that children’s home. She drove away with the cruel fuck and didn’t look back. Not once. I stood there on the pavement, in the freezing rain with my shitty girl’s pyjamas in a plastic Tesco bag and the cunt didn’t look back once. Those women are the same as my mother. They can’t keep their fucking legs closed for five minutes. They’ll jump from one man to the next and because the kids aren’t theirs, the men will just abuse them. You have no idea what it is like trapped as a child in a dysfunctional family. You have no escape, no options, and the feeling—’ He paused and the catch in his breath made her eyes snap to his face. There was nothing there – his features blank. His voice was a monotone now.

‘The knowledge that whatever you do, however you behave you will suffer. That there is
nothing
you can do to save yourself. And that it will just go on and on and on and never stop.’

Tears ran down her cheeks: for the women he had killed and trafficked and for their children, but for Luke too, she realised, for his childhood self. For the life he had endured, and for what that life had done to him.

‘These women don’t deserve to have children. It’s always the children who get punished for their whoring. It was time for the mothers to be punished, not the babies.’

Tears strangled her voice. ‘It’s not the same, Luke. They weren’t the same as your mother.’

He didn’t seem to have heard what she said. He continued to talk, as if to himself. ‘I enjoyed it, Tess. Watching those pathetic women cry and beg and grovel, just like I cried and begged when my mother’s boyfriends beat me. And I’ve saved their children, Tess. For once I’ve done something good. I’ve saved their children from the life I had. The children’s home was the best thing that ever happened to me.’ Fury shone in his eyes. ‘When a parent mistreats their child, they plant a seed in that child. Maybe in some kids the seed just dies as they grow, but not in me. I can’t help getting angry, Tess. You know I love you. You know I don’t mean to hit you.’

Tess blinked. The field, his voice, all of this felt unreal.

‘I’ve done what I needed to do now. I’ve found some peace and I’ve done something positive for a change, something that I’m proud of. I’m not stupid – I know you don’t want to be with me, but I need to be with you. You’re the only person who has ever loved me.’ His gnarled hand stroked her face. ‘It meant so much to me, Tess, being loved by you. I can’t let you go. I need to be with you, and I know how I can make that happen.’

Alex left his Land Cruiser skewed across the drive and ran up the stone steps. The front door of MCT House was ajar, the hall in darkness. All the doors opening off it were shut. He stopped and listened, but he couldn’t hear anything over the hoarse sound of his own breathing. Pulling his Browning from his belt, he made for the stairs. The sound of his feet slamming on the wooden boards as he took them two at a time echoed through the house.

It was the sound of an empty house and he knew –
knew
– that he was too late.

He was standing in front of her, so close that his features had blurred. His breath misted warm and wet on to her cheek, mixing with her tears. She felt calm because she had discovered something strange. She wasn’t frightened of him any more. All she could see when she looked at him was the little boy he had been.

‘It’s time,’ he whispered into her ear.

Alex went straight to Jakkleson’s office. The desk lamp was on and the window was open. A wind had picked up and the garden bristled with noise. He went over and shut the window.

He wheeled around, the sudden silence jarring. The chair was slid back from the desk, at a slight angle, and now that he listened, he could hear the purr of Jakkleson’s computer. Tess had been here, for sure.

He sprinted back down the stairs.

He slid his hand into his pocket and when he pulled it out, he was holding a tiny green mine in his palm.

A butterfly mine.

PFM-1. Her brain started churning. An anti-personnel mine intentionally shaped and coloured to look like a toy so that young children would pick it up, thinking that it was a plaything. Luke was holding a mine made specifically to maim and kill children.

‘We won’t feel anything. Except each other.’

I’m not going to die
,
she thought
. Not now. Not like this.
And I’m not going to let him hurt anyone else.

Luke slid his arm around her waist, and she let him, offering no resistance as he pulled her towards him. He held the butterfly mine between them at head height, in that gnarled, burnt hand of his.

‘I love you, Tess.’

He leaned forward and she felt his lips on hers. Digging her blunt, bitten nails hard into her palm to stop herself recoiling, she let him kiss her, let him slide his tongue into her mouth. His lips on hers, arm twisted around her waist, she rocked backwards, taking him with her, just enough so that he was slightly off balance. In one sudden movement, she lunged forward and aimed, slamming her fist into the bridge of his nose, following hard with her elbow, driving it right into his solar plexus. He fell to his knees. She kicked him hard in the stomach and watched him tip sideways, groaning in pain. She had been planning to run: straight down Huan’s lane, which she knew was clear because she’d cleared it herself, and out of this sick damn minefield.

But something was wrong. She felt herself falling with him. Grabbing the tree trunk for support, she staggered, trying to stay on her feet, but the force dragging her down was too strong –
he
was too strong. He had a chunk of her shirt twisted tight in his fist. She squirmed and struggled, kicked out as she fell, catching him hard in the stomach again, watched him double up and retch hot yellow bile, but his grip on her shirt was like iron.

He raised the hand holding the butterfly mine between them.

‘The White Crocodile is fate.’

In the doorway through which he had passed so many times to join team meetings, Alex stood, half stiff with shock. Flies had settled to sip from the bloody gashes on his forearm; he didn’t swat them away.

He stood and stared at MacSween and time stood still. It was only the noise of a moped passing in the street that woke him from the trance.

Tess.
He was here to find Tess.

Batting away the flies, he backed out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

The inside of her head exploded with sound. Her left hand felt as if it had been bathed in fire. She couldn’t see; her vision was clouded blood-red.

She was hurt. Her hand was white-hot with it.
Fuck, her fingers
. She’d lost the index finger, the middle finger. Bending double, she pressed her hand to her stomach, dousing the pulse of blood against her shirt, compressing the pain.

She had taken a risk – a calculated risk. As he had raised his hand between them and tightened his fist around the mine, she had wrapped her hand around his and rammed the butterfly mine up towards his throat. The noise of the explosion was deafening.

She dragged her sleeve across her face, feeling the hot slick of blood on her cheeks, opened her eyes, saw nothing but a red haze. Scrubbing at her face with her sleeve, she blinked. And saw him.

His face was dead white. Blood snaked from the corner of his mouth. The butterfly mine had taken off his hand, left a ragged hole the size of a fist in his throat. His eyes met hers for a brief moment and the reproach in them was intense. She saw straight through to the little boy, covered in bruises, lying shivering and alone.

‘I loved you once,’ she whispered, pressing her hand to his throat, feeling his hot blood pump from between her fingers, the flutter of air against her palm. But she wasn’t sure if he had heard her. Bending her head, she laid her ear against his chest, listening for the beating of his heart. There was nothing.

She heard the sound of a Land Cruiser engine, heard it splutter and stop, a door slam. She stood, wiping her bloody hand down her shirt.

Giving Luke one last look, she turned and walked back down Huan’s lane, out of the White Crocodile minefield, and into Alex’s outstretched arms.