The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller

by Peter May

  ‘Confused,’ she said, and was suddenly aware that the girl in the yellow dress had gone, a glimpse of pale lemon melting into the cool darkness of the house. Tuk pulled out a chair for her and she sat down.

  ‘But of course,’ he said. ‘I understand. You must have many questions.’ He paused. ‘And perhaps a few answers.’ He regarded her speculatively for a moment, then he waved his hand dismissively. ‘But there will be plenty of time for both. First you must have a little breakfast. Juice?’ He sat down, about to pour her some freshly squeezed orange, but stopped, inclined his head a little and reached out to run his fingers lightly down one side of her face. She winced and drew back from his touch. ‘Such a nasty bruise,’ he said. ‘That man must have been an animal. Such beauty as yours should be treated with reverence.’

  She had seen her own face earlier, when the girl in the yellow dress had come to wake her. An ugly purple bruise extending from her swollen upper lip across her cheekbone. One eye, too, was bruised and swollen and almost closed. Her whole body ached, and she was surprised not to find its creamy whiteness covered by bruises. The girl had not spoken to her, only smiling as she led her gently into a lilac-tiled shower room. There, to Lisa’s embarrassment, the girl had washed her down with a large soapy sponge under a stream of steaming hot water that relaxed her so that her legs felt weak and almost buckled. Then she rubbed her down with a big soft towel before holding the silk robe for her to slip into.

  Lisa felt better now, seated in the soft drowsy shade, and only realized how hungry she was when the sharp sweetness of the orange juice nipped her tongue. Over his paper, Tuk watched with a half-smile as she tucked into slices of freshly toasted bread running with melted butter and honey. He sighed with satisfaction when the girl with the yellow dress brought a fresh pot of scented tea and poured them a cup. Lisa flicked uncertain darting glances at him when she thought he wasn’t watching her, building up a series of tiny snapshot impressions to sketch in the detail she had failed to take in at first sight. His freshly starched white shirt and trousers bore creases like razors. You could cut yourself just touching him, she thought. And she smiled to herself as it occurred to her that he brought new meaning to the phrase sharp dresser. And with that, she realized how much better she was feeling.

  His short dark hair was oiled back. Dyed, she guessed. It was too uniformly black for a man of his age. He had a not unpleasant face, brown as a nut, smooth and unlined. But his eyes, she noticed, dark unyielding eyes, never reflected the smile that played constantly about his pale lips. She took in the manicured nails, the three gold rings, and the diamond on his little finger, and smiled up at him from the last of her tea.

  ‘Better?’ he asked.

  She nodded vigorously. ‘Much.’

  He folded his paper and put it aside, clasping his hands over his crossed knees. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Shall we exchange a few confidences?’

  ‘You do know my father?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, I know him well. In fact, he was seated here with me at this very table less than a week ago.’

  Her heart leapt. ‘You know where he is, then?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  She felt both excitement and relief in a single emotional response. She had found him, finally, after all these weeks. And, yet, now that he was within reach, she felt an involuntary drawing back. Fear. Perhaps, after all, he would not want to see her. ‘When will I be able to see him?’

  Tuk smiled. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, I really don’t know.’

  ‘But you said you knew where he was.’

  ‘Oh, I know where he’s gone. But not when, or even if, he’ll be back.’

  She frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  He leaned on the table and put a hand over hers. ‘How well do you know your father?’

  She hesitated, then drew her hand away, and felt herself withdrawing inside, suddenly aware that she knew nothing about this man, or how she came to be in his house.

  ‘Enough,’ she said, and felt clumsily defensive. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Kampuchea.’

  ‘Kampuchea?’ She had heard of it, of course, but her grasp of south-east Asian geography and current affairs was sketchy.

  ‘You have heard of Cambodia?’ Tuk asked.

  ‘He’s gone there, too?’

  Tuk grinned, genuinely amused. ‘They are one and the same, Miss Lisa.’ And he paused long enough for her to feel foolish. ‘Cambodia is bordered on the north by Laos, to the north and west by Thailand and the Gulf of Thailand, and to the east and south by Vietnam. She was a casualty of the war in Vietnam. A bystander caught in the crossfire between the Americans and the communists, and has now fallen prey to a kind of political cannibalism that we call the Khmer Rouge.’

  Lisa knew little of the war in Vietnam, but she had heard of the Khmer Rouge, a vague memory of obscure reports on the evening television news bulletins. They had never seemed relevant and she had never got interested.

  Tuk said, ‘Your father has been paid a great deal of money to go into Cambodia to try to rescue a woman and her children who, like everyone else in the country, are prisoners of the Khmer Rouge. He came to me for’ – he picked his words carefully – ‘equipment and supplies. But of course, you already knew that.’ He raised an eyebrow and she realized it was a question, not a statement.

  She shook her head. ‘No. I had no idea who you were.’

  ‘Your father didn’t say?’

  She avoided his eyes. ‘No. He doesn’t know I’m here.’

  ‘Then who gave you my name?’

  Lisa ran her hands back through her hair. ‘I’m beginning to feel tired, Mr Tuk.’

  ‘Of course, Lisa,’ Tuk said, full of ersatz sincerity. ‘But it is important that we know certain things about each other, don’t you think?’

  ‘I suppose,’ she said reluctantly. She felt herself being inextricably drawn into a question-and-answer session in which she really did not want to participate. ‘But I’m not sure I should say.’

  ‘Oh, come now, my dear, it’s not a secret, is it?’ His patient amiability was very persuasive.

  ‘I suppose not.’ But still she hesitated.

  ‘Well?’ There was just the hint of an edge in his voice now.

  She could see no polite way out. ‘It was Sam Blair.’

  ‘Ah,’ Tuk said, apparently satisfied by this. ‘Mr Blair. Of course.’ He thought for a moment. ‘So your father was not expecting you?’

  She hesitated for a long time before she decided, finally, to tell him the truth. After all, she thought, there could be no harm in it, could there? ‘Mr Tuk, all my life, until just a few weeks ago, I thought my father was dead. As far as he knows, I still do.’

  If Tuk was surprised it registered for no more than a fraction of a second on his smooth, smiling face, and Lisa could not be blamed for missing the gleam of malice that burned briefly in his dark eyes. His smile broadened. ‘Then he has a surprise in store when he returns,’ he said. He rose to his feet and offered her his arm. ‘But now you must get dressed. You have a visitor coming very soon.’

  *

  ‘Do you remember any of the numbers on the plate? Or the licence number of the cab?’ The captain of police asked his questions wearily, as if he wasn’t really interested in the answers.

  Lisa shook her head, frustrated and angry. ‘Why don’t you ask the man outside the hotel? He spoke to him. I’m sure he knew him.’

  Captain Prachak glanced across the room at Tuk. ‘We spoke to several of the touts outside the Narai. No one even remembers you.’ His eyes met Lisa’s briefly, then flickered away.

  ‘You’re not going to get him, are you?’ she said angrily. ‘You don’t care whether you do or not!’

  The police captain had an unpleasant face, streaky brown like a badly stained piece of wood, flat, high cheekbones, with narrow suspicious
eyes. His patience was wearing thin. Tuk intervened. ‘You must understand, Lisa, that Bangkok is a city of five million people. Many cabs operate illegally on the streets without a licence. Without something more for the captain to go on it is very difficult.’

  Lisa was on the edge of tears. ‘I told you! His name is Sivara, and he’s got a brother who . . .’

  The captain cut her off. ‘Yes, you did,’ he agreed. ‘Several times.’

  ‘And what about my passport? He took my passport! How am I supposed to get home?’

  ‘Don’t worry, my dear.’ Tuk put a comforting hand on her arm. ‘I’ve already been in touch with the British Consul. Everything is in hand.’ He turned to Prachak. ‘I think we could finish this another day, Captain. The girl has had a bad time.’

  ‘Of course.’ Prachak looked relieved. ‘I’ll be in touch.’ He opened the door to the hall.

  ‘I’ll see you out,’ Tuk said, and the two men left Lisa sitting in a tearful silence under the downdraught of the ceiling fan. Her throat felt swollen and her head ached. She was depressed and frustrated and afraid.

  When Tuk had led her in from the garden he had sent her upstairs to dress. He’d had her bags sent round from the hotel and paid her bill. As well as her passport, Sivara had also taken her money. She was grateful and embarrassed and a little ashamed of the niggling doubt she’d had about Tuk – a grain of uncertainty that had lodged itself somewhere in her unconscious. She protested when he said that, of course, she must stay – at least until she got things sorted out. He had shrugged and said, ‘Where else would you go?’ And she had known he was right. But she disliked the thought of being so totally dependent upon him. Her brush with Sivara had shaken much of her young faith in her fellow humans, and in herself.

  She wiped the tears from her cheeks and became aware of the murmur of voices from the hall. Tuk and Prachak were still engaged in conversation, hushed and barely audible. The door lay slightly ajar, and through it she could see the dark reflection, in a tall mirror, of the two men standing in the doorway. She saw Prachak hand Tuk something that he slipped into his inside jacket pocket. Her vision of them was still blurred by tears, and she rubbed her eyes and strained in the gloom to see more clearly. She wished that all the shutters were not closed against the heat of the day and that there was more light to see by.

  The two men shook hands now and Prachak left. Tuk moved out of sight but did not come back into the room. She heard soft footsteps above the hum and rattle of the fan, a phone being lifted and a number dialled. Then Tuk’s voice talking softly to someone on the other end. She gave up trying to hear and looked around this large impersonal study with its cold, tiled floor and marble ashtrays on glass tables. Shiny hard surfaces, austere and lacking in comfort or warmth. Even the chairs were unyielding. She wondered what kind of man Tuk really was, and in what way the truth was reflected in the nature of this room. Despite the temperature outside, she shivered. Cold, she thought. In spite of all his smiles and words of comfort, he was cold. Like the room.

  She heard the receiver being replaced and then soft footsteps again. Tuk appeared, smiling, in the doorway. ‘Good news,’ he said. She raised an eyebrow. He came and sat beside her and took her hand in both of his. ‘I know you are uncomfortable with the idea of staying here. A young woman living alone in a house with a man she barely knows . . .’

  She began a half-hearted protest which he brushed aside.

  ‘No, no. I understand. And so a very good friend of mine has agreed to take you in for a few days, just until we get things sorted out. You’ll like her, I’m sure. She knows your father quite well, I believe.’

  After she had gone up to her room to lie down for a few hours, Tuk sat for a long time in satisfied contemplation. From his inside pocket he took out the small black book Captain Prachak had given him. He looked at the elaborate gold crest on the cover and thought how pretentious the British were. Inside, Lisa’s innocence stared back at him from a cheap colour photograph. A very pretty girl, he thought. When the bruising was gone . . .

  He snapped the passport shut, held it for a moment, then crossed the room to lock it away in his desk drawer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Lisa awoke to the gentle touch of fingers on her bruised cheek. The room glowed with the muted light of the early morning sun, shutters still drawn, sunlight burning in bright sharp lines around their edges, trying to insinuate its way inside. She turned, still cloudy with sleep, to look up into Grace’s soft smile.

  ‘The swelling is down a little this morning,’ Grace said.

  And Lisa remembered arriving the night before on Tuk’s arm, delivered into this sumptuous colonial villa in East Bangkok, still bewildered, a little frightened. The gentle warmth in the sympathy and welcome of this woman who knew her father had comforted her. Fear melting with the reassuring touch of her hand, the gentle kiss on her forehead. ‘Poor child,’ she had said, and led her into a soft-cushioned room that seemed heady and seductive after the cold austerity of Tuk’s house.

  ‘It’s very good of you,’ Lisa had mumbled.

  Grace, smiling, had brushed the hair back from Lisa’s face with delicate fingers and tilted her jaw, turning the bruising to the light. Shaking her head, she’d said, ‘Men can be such animals.’ And Lisa had caught the look that flashed darkly in her eyes as she glanced at Tuk.

  When Tuk had gone Grace had given her a hot sweet drink laced with the taste of alcohol, and sat with her for what seemed like a very long time, holding her hand in one of hers, gently stroking the back of it with the fingers of her other. The soft murmur of her voice, the silky quality of her touch, had been reassuring. Lisa had heard the words without listening. Instead she let the alcohol and the gently undulating waves of fatigue wash over her with a grateful relief. And, now, as she gazed up into the delicate oriental beauty in the face of this older woman, she had no recollection of having come to this room, or of falling asleep in this bed. But there was something safe in the smile, comforting after all the uncertainty of the past few weeks and the traumas of the last few days. She returned the smile. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Early. I thought a little waterborne breakfast might restore you. The floating market gets up early. And so must you if we are to catch it at its best.’

  Grace’s car took them to the landing stage at the Oriental Hotel, and Lisa was surprised to find it driven by an attractive young girl in uniform. She glanced at Grace, realizing how little she knew of her. Although clearly many years older than Lisa, old enough possibly to be her mother, her beauty was still startling. She was dressed casually in a long white wraparound skirt and white blouse, cool and radiant in the early morning heat, her skin the colour of milky coffee. Her gleaming dark hair was drawn back in a white-ribboned bow. She caught Lisa looking at her and smiled. ‘We should get you some clothes,’ she said. ‘Perhaps when we get back from the market.’

  ‘I’ve got clothes with me,’ Lisa said, a little uncertainly.

  ‘Hardly a wardrobe for every occasion,’ said Grace. ‘And who knows how long you might have to wait for your father’s return. There are places I should like to take you where you might feel a little out of place in jeans.’

  Lisa found Grace’s self-assurance intimidating. ‘The truth is,’ she said, ‘I don’t have any money. It was all stolen.’

  Grace laughed. ‘That’s no problem, Lisa. You’re my guest.’

  Lisa blushed. ‘I couldn’t possibly let you . . .’

  ‘I insist.’ Grace cut her off. ‘And that’s an end to it.’ Lisa felt like a schoolgirl who has just been rapped on the knuckles for a breach of etiquette, and she lowered her eyes. Grace laughed again and put a hand over hers, giving it a tiny squeeze. ‘My child, forgive me if I bully you, but your father would not be happy with me if I failed to look after his little girl.’

  Lisa met her eyes again and wondered if she detected a hint of mockery
in their laughter. ‘Do you know my father well?’

  ‘Well?’ Grace smiled reflectively into the middle distance. ‘No, I should not say I know him well.’ She turned to meet Lisa’s gaze again. ‘But do I know him intimately.’ Again that sense of mockery in the eyes that left Lisa feeling unsettled. And the deliberate manner in Grace’s choice of words had an ambiguity calculated apparently to leave her guest confused and insecure. Lisa drew her hand away from Grace’s and locked it together firmly with her own in her lap. She felt Grace’s eyes still on her, but kept hers averted, pretending that something on the street had caught her interest. She wanted time to sort out her feelings, to know how to respond. Sivara had shattered her young innocence. She would not be taken in so easily again. ‘You will like the floating market,’ Grace said. ‘It attracts many tourists.’

  ‘I have been before,’ Lisa replied, and she did not need to look to know that Grace was surprised.

  They waited by the car at the landing stage while the chauffeur went to hail a water taxi. Crowds thronged the pier waiting for one of the many motor launches that criss-crossed the river. Pop music blared from the speakers of a ghetto-blaster on the shoulders of a young man dressed in peasant black pyjamas and wearing a reed-woven sunhat. Lisa searched vainly among the many faces for one that might be familiar. Eyes full of mischief that had turned to lust. But one in five million, she knew, was long odds. A small boy in shorts and a khaki-green shirt several sizes two large for him pushed through the crowd with a large, circular bamboo tray on his head. Coloured ribbons hung down around its edges. He turned this way and that, arms up holding his tray steady, appealing to each face he encountered.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘Selling jasmine-blossom garlands,’ Grace said. ‘The blossoms are associated with good fortune. They can be left at temples as offerings, or kept by the purchaser for good luck – or presented to friends as gifts.’ She waved her hand and called him over. He ran up to them eagerly. Grace haggled over the price. Several exchanges in bursts of staccato Thai. At last the boy shrugged and handed her one of the garlands in return for a few coins. He melted away into the crowd again, disgruntled with his sale. Grace crushed the blossoms gently in her hand and inhaled the heady fragrance with satisfaction. Then she turned to Lisa, smiling, and placed the garland around her neck. ‘For good luck,’ she said. ‘And such a pretty child as you deserves a pretty fragrance.’ Her fingers brushed Lisa’s bruised cheek. ‘Such a shame,’ she said. ‘But it won’t last long – like the blossom.’