White Crocodile

by Medina, KT

  His face was unmoving. Tess stared back at him, an instinct for self-preservation driving her to hold his gaze steadily. Provincial Officer Prak Long breathed in deeply. His eyes were very black in the darkness of the corridor.

  Suddenly, he laughed – so loudly that she almost jumped.

  ‘Oyster Perpetual Submariner.’ The words were laboured. ‘You know watches?’

  ‘I’ve always wanted a Rolex.’ She smiled and shrugged.

  ‘One day.’ He held out a piece of paper. ‘Municipal Hospital. Hospital for poor. Your friend taken there.’

  43

  December 1990, England

  The little boy was woken by a noise. A brief cry. Silence followed, so complete he wondered if he had dreamed his mother’s voice. But sleep wouldn’t come, even when he tugged the duvet right up to his chin and closed his eyes.

  He could picture Mummy sitting motionless on the sagging faux-leather sofa in the lounge with that empty stare she got in her eyes sometimes, on those afternoons when he would call and call her and she wouldn’t hear. Opening his eyes again, he saw the black night framed in the curtainless square of window above him, a few flakes of snow circling past. It was Christmas in two days’ time.

  Pushing his duvet aside, he climbed out of bed and went out into the corridor. His mother’s bedroom was dark. He tiptoed silently into the room. The moon slid from behind a cloud, lighting the unmade bed, the duvet in a heap on the floor, six cans of Special Brew and four of Stella – he counted them carefully, was proud for a moment that he could count that high – littered on the carpet, a spent wrap of foil and a syringe on the bedside cabinet.

  No Mummy.

  He turned back to the door. The corridor beyond was still and dark.

  ‘Mummy?’ Just a whisper.

  He strained to listen. ‘Mummy?’ There was no answer, but he heard noises coming from the sitting room. Familiar noises. Hugging his arms around himself, the little boy tiptoed towards the sitting-room door.

  Through a crack of the doorway he saw a shirtless man, jeans and Y-fronts around his ankles. His legs were hairy, like the old donkey at the city farm. The man bent forward over the sofa and his bare buttocks twisted. A thick groan. He began to thrust his hips backwards and forwards. From the sofa in front of him protruded a pair of legs spread wide. The boy could only see the soles of the feet, the rail-thin ankles with the damaged, bruised veins. But he knew they were his mother’s legs. And he knew what she was doing. Just like he’d seen in those magazines the men she brought home left lying by the toilet.

  He sank to the floor outside the door and shivered. He felt sick for a moment and then realised it was hunger. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten. Yesterday, he thought. Baked beans yesterday evening. The thought of them made his stomach growl. His pyjamas were too small, the trousers barely past his knees, the sleeves exposing the dimples of his elbows. Though he could hear the old heating system in the tower block creaking and shuddering in the belly of the building at night, the air in the flat was freezing and stale.

  Again and again the man’s buttocks twisted as he thrust. The man was shoving his willy inside her, and she was groaning and gasping like she did just after she had slid one of those needles into her arm.

  He stared through the crack. His lips were moving, though he didn’t know it. Get off her. Get off her. His heart was racing. He let out a sob: ‘No.’ Jammed himself blindly forward into the crack between the door and its frame. ‘Get off her.’

  The man stopped. He turned around and the boy saw his willy bobbing grotesquely in its nest of dark hair, the startled face of his mother beyond, her mouth hanging open, lips wet.

  ‘I mean it,’ he sobbed. ‘Leave her alone or I’ll kill you.’

  Silence. He realised his teeth were chattering.

  The man hauled up his pants and jeans, looked down at his mother, and then walked towards the little boy.

  ‘Well, good evening there, son!’ he said, and his accent was funny – a Scottish accent his mum called it, like the little girl who lived across the hall. ‘Did you ever hear about knocking before you walk into a room?’

  ‘Sweetie . . . baby . . .’ his mum drawled, and the little boy didn’t know whether she was talking to him or the man.

  ‘Because your mum and I were just in the middle of something.’ He was standing right in front of the little boy now. The little boy could smell his foul breath. ‘In fact, it’s probably safe to say –’ the man’s face, which had been smiling, twisted with rage – ‘that you couldn’t have come in at a worse time.’

  The little boy shot back, slammed hard up against the wall. Scrabbling sideways, he tried to find purchase on the threadbare carpet of the corridor. But he wasn’t fast enough, and the man’s hands gripped the lapels of his pyjamas. He struggled to free himself, panicking. The man slapped him around the face, and the back of his head struck the plaster.

  ‘Sor . . . sorry—’ he struggled to say through his tears. ‘P . . . please, no—’

  Day 8

  44

  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 c
ame 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.’

  45

  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 worke
r. 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.