The taxi driver’s small, dark hands gripped the wheel. Pulling himself forward on the seat, he fixed his eyes on a slow-moving truck heading towards them. Fifty metres away, it blocked the traffic on the narrow street. Thirty metres, Leo stared into its vast silver grill, surrounded by ornate painted figures of gods and demons. Twenty metres. The driver revved the engine to a furious squeal. Fifteen metres. The taxi lurched forwards, hard to the right. Dust. The sound of horns and tyres slipping on dirt roads.
Leo caught his breath as the car spun forwards. The driver shouted in exhilaration.
The car whirled 180 degrees. Kathmandu spun past the windows. Horns. Shouts. Tyres screaming.
Finally, they settled into a gap between the slow-moving truck and an overloaded minibus just feet ahead.
Leo’s chest stabbed in pain as they started to accelerate back the way they’d come on the wide road of growling traffic.
Lungs scratched for air.
Breathe in.
And out.
Leo had only just started to calm again when, with no indication, the driver pulled to the side of the road and stopped. A deep horn echoing from the lorry behind as it slowed to pass the taxi.
The driver paid no attention. Leaving the car with the engine turning, he ran into the shop they’d stopped outside. Orange-tinged glass doors showed faded pictures of maps and unrecognisable writing.
Leo waited, confused by the scene and nervous about what the driver had planned. Is this where the driver got his friends to come and rob the helpless tourist? The anxiety spread through his mind. He thought of running, grabbing his bag and going, but he didn’t know where he was. There was no way he’d find the hotel from here. He needed to stay, at least to see what was happening.
The door opened, and the driver returned, scuttling with the quick steps of someone frequently the smallest of the group. Behind him walked another man.
A big man.
Leo again felt the panic rise inside him.
This was the biggest Nepalese man he’d seen yet.
Leo felt the tightness in his chest return. He focused on his breathing.
The big man towered over the taxi driver. His hair short and neck thick. His arms, wide and hairy, swung dangerously by his sides. The taxi driver said something to him, and pointed towards the car, and Leo.
Through the panic, the helplessness, Leo watched. In a moment of clarity, he felt it would be a cruel irony if he were to go missing, having come to Kathmandu to find someone.
Breathe in and out, he focused, suppressing the panic.
The rear door opened like it weighed nothing.
Breathe in.
The big man leaned his head in towards Leo.
Breathe out.
He filled the door.
Leo sat helplessly – breathe out.
To the right of the car, the traffic of the road surged past, each bumping vehicle only inches from the passenger door.
Breathe in.
To the left, the big man pushed himself further into the car. Why had Leo come? This was a terrible idea. He thought of home, his life. When his tattered flat and unemployment brought him no reassurance, Leo thought of Mya.
“You, ah, looki, for a ’otel?” the big man said, in raspy, broken English.
“Your ’otel?” he repeated a moment later when Leo didn’t answer.
“Yes,” Leo said, realisation slowly dawning. The big man wasn’t going to rob or kidnap him, just help the taxi driver find his hotel.
Slowly, Leo gave the big man the name of the hotel and the street it was on. The big man barked something to the yapping driver who pulled a mobile phone from his pocket, talked excitedly into it for a minute, and leapt back into the car.
As the big man lumbered back through the orange-tinged glass, Leo made a mental note to always bring a written address of the hotel in future and sunk back into the seat, exhausted. The taxi driver again snapped the flimsy car into gear and revved into the stream of traffic and dust.
Chapter 23
Ten days had elapsed between Leo’s meeting with Stockwell in the Grand Hotel on Brighton seafront and walking through the doors of the Best Kathmandu Guesthouse. The two hotels could not be more different, Leo thought, standing in the gloomy cavernous foyer. One had brass details, crystal chandeliers and thick carpets, and the other an ill-fitting door which let a stream of dust run across the tiles and an old television which fizzed intermittently between two channels.
Leo had booked the Best Kathmandu Guesthouse three days before, thinking it looked good enough, and reasonably priced. Turning down The Splendid Hotel, The Everest Hostel and The Penguin in the process.
Although Stockwell’s cheque now rested in his bank account, Leo wanted to be sparing with money. He didn’t know if Stockwell would be good for the next payment and the fact he didn’t have a job to return to was ever-pressing on his mind.
Leo could have got an earlier flight, but he had wanted time to prepare. He had always been well-prepared. Preparation brought with it security, and Leo liked to know what might be coming and how he might deal with it. He’d also needed Stockwell’s cheque to clear before he could book any flights. He had contacted Stockwell the day after booking, five days after their meeting, and had received a curt reply leaving no assumption that the Lord thought he should be working on things more quickly.
First, Leo had researched Kathmandu. He wanted to know the city and what would draw a twenty-eight-year-old woman here. What would draw anyone here? What he found was a thriving, historic city steeped in Buddhist and Hindu history. A number of sacred temples and monasteries had stood resolute through the change of centuries, empires and earthquakes. Leo made a note to visit these places if he had the chance, it would be a shame to miss the culture, he told himself in a voice which didn’t seem like his. Kathmandu seemed to be a place where people either ended up after a trip around Asia or started out if they were exploring the Himalayas.
Leo also wanted to know who he was working for. Stockwell had been an MP until five years ago when he was appointed to the House of Lords, he was from a wealthy family and attended the most reputable schools and universities. At university he had taken an interest in politics and had changed his mind about following his father into law.
Standing at the reception desk, Leo visualised one of the pictures Stockwell had given him, Allissa on the beach. Why would she give it all up to come to Kathmandu?
“Welcome to The Best Kathmandu Guesthouse,” came a voice from behind the reception desk, “a nice day I am wishing you.” Leo looked up to see a man in a brown uniform smiling at him. He returned the greeting wearily.
After completing the check-in process, involving Leo’s details being entered into a large ledger, the receptionist insisted on carrying Leo’s bag to his room. The room was on the sixth floor and the receptionist reached it without a sweat, although Leo was out of breath. Dropping Leo’s bag on the bed, he turned on the air-conditioner and ceiling fan, mimed the use of the bathroom and let himself out. As his footsteps drew away, Leo sat down and looked about the room. It was a museum piece of eighties design, a picture of green and yellow.
The journey had been long and arduous, but he had made it to Kathmandu. His arrival, however, brought with it little relief, as he knew the work was still to come.
Lying back on the bed, the lumpy mattress creaking beneath him, images of taxi drivers, uneaten plane food and inescapable waiting rooms drifted through his mind.
Ignoring them all, Leo closed his eyes, and was soon asleep.
Chapter 24
“Let me tell you about home,” Allissa’s mother says, looking down over the child she’s just tucked in for the night. Allissa knows there’s no feeling of safety quite like it.
“Home is different for everyone.” Her voice takes on the warm tones of her Kenyan accent. “But for me it’s where I grew up. I’ll take you there one day.”
“What’s it like?” Allissa looks up at her, their eyes lock
.
“I think,” her mother says, her voice slowing, “I think, it’s the most beautiful place in the world. The sky is so big and blue you can’t imagine where it ends, the land stretches for miles in each direction. If you look really closely in the distance, you’ll see mountains.” She stretches out her free hand, points across the room and squints her eyes half-closed. “Right there, just their white peaks above the trees. When I was a child,” she continues, rocking Allissa gently, her voice a sweet whisper, “when I was a child, we would play outside all day. We would go down to the river where fresh strawberries grow from orange earth, they would sprout up, hundreds of them in great bushes, and we would grab fistfuls of them.” Her free hand is alive now, and grabs, squeezes and eats the fruit of the past. “We’d have the juice running from our hands before washing them in the river. By the river, the snails would live, bigger than an adult’s fist.” The free hand constitutes itself into a fist, the right continues to hold Allissa close on the bed beside her. “We would play there all day. One day my love,” she says, looking down at the child, whose eyes have closed in sleep, “one day I’ll take you there and you’ll know where my home is.”
Kissing Allissa gently on the forehead she pulls her arm from underneath the sleeping child and tucks the blanket tight. The night is late and hot, it’s time to get some rest.
“But the thing is,” she says to her sleeping daughter, “as much as I want to share it with you, home is something you have to find for yourself.”
* * *
“Goodnight girls,” Allissa said as Chimini and Fuli left her in the kitchen. They’d offered to help with the clearing up, but Allissa liked the idea of doing it alone. It had been a busy day, fraught and hot, and some time spent on her own would be welcome.
“Allissa,” Fuli said, turning at the door. Allissa turned to face her. “Thank you.”
“No problem, sleep well,” Allissa replied with a smile.
In the now-quiet kitchen, Allissa turned to the sink. From the window, Kathmandu shuffled through the night. In the next building, bright lights shone on a family sitting to eat together. Beginning to fill the sink, the water heater on the wall clunking deep and metallic, Allissa watched them. In the last two years she’d travelled through countless cities in numerous countries, but the smiles she’d seen as families sat to eat together were always the same. A smile like no other, warm and familiar, but with something else, something more.
As the sink filled slowly, bubbles rising, thoughts of Allissa’s own family appeared. Looking down at her hands in the warm water, her mind drifted to her mother. As bubbles from the washing up liquid popped against her skin, Allissa thought of her mother’s hands, the first hands that held her, those that fed and those that comforted, those that first introduced her to the world over which she’d now travelled tens of thousands of miles.
Looking up again at the family through the glass in the next building, Allissa knew that those few feet were a greater distance than she’d ever travelled. A few feet that may, always, be out of reach.
Chapter 25
“There’s more to this than parliamentary expenses,” Marcus Green said, opening the folder he was holding and spreading a number of papers across the desk between him and the editor of The Telegraph. “He’s clearly been fiddling the books for years, that’s obvious, but there’s more to it than that. This goes deeper.”
“What do you think?” the editor asked, scanning the information in front of him.
Green started to speak and then stopped himself. The editor looked up at him.
“You’re in a safe space here Marcus, you don’t need the evidence just to tell me what you think. If you’ve got a theory, let’s work it through, get a couple of researchers on it, see if it has legs. If it doesn’t then we’ve not lost anything.”
“It all started whilst I was investigating that robbery down in Brighton, do you remember?” The editor nodded. “Well there were a number of things stolen and never recovered. I managed to get, don’t ask how, a copy of some of the names the boxes were registered to. Now look at this…” Green said, flicking through the papers to a bank statement. “This is a statement for an account connected with one of those boxes whose contents were stolen and unrecovered.”
“How did…?”
“A contact. Look at this. A payment was made every month, a large payment.” Green slid his finger across the number, impressing its length on the editor. “And guess who that money comes from…”
Green and the editor shared a grin.
“Stockwell?”
“Exactly,” said Green.
“That could be a coincidence?”
“In normal circumstances I’d say yes,” Green admitted. “But then the payments stopped.”
“When?” the editor asked, looking up towards the journalist sat opposite him.
“The week of the robbery.”
Chapter 26
The following morning Leo woke in dark disorientation before the sun rose. At first, he thought he must have shut the curtains before going to sleep, but then realised that he could see the pulse of the city as morning crept into the sky.
Leo estimated it must have been seven in the evening when he arrived at the hotel, but having been awake for over twenty-four hours with only fractions of sleep, he couldn’t be sure. As to what time it was now, he couldn’t even guess.
Crossing the room, he pulled his phone from his bag. Entering the passcode, it lit up. It was just before six in the morning. He had been asleep for nearly twelve hours.
An icon flashed showing the receipt of four text messages. Two network messages detailed how much it would cost him to use his phone in Nepal, in summary, loads. One from Stockwell asking if there was any progress on the investigation. Leo felt a stab of annoyance that he was now in this man’s debt, no concern about his flight or experience, just demands for news. And, one was from his Mum wishing him a good flight.
Reading it made Leo feel guilty – he had only called home two days before to say that he was going. He’d thought about not saying anything at all but decided they should know where he was. He’d made it sound positive, “a great opportunity!” although he wasn’t even sure he’d convinced himself.
“What, you’ve been given the time off work?” she’d asked, reminding him he’d not even told her about the job yet. The lies made him feel bad. He loved his family and didn’t want to deceive them, but he knew that they wouldn’t understand.
Leo drew a deep breath as he looked out the window at the restless city. There was something reassuring about it being behind the glass, but he knew he was going to have to face it. He was going to have to go out there because somewhere in this city, this sprawling expanse of life and love and pain and money was, maybe, the girl he was looking for.
An hour later, after a shower and a change of clothes, Leo descended the six flights of stairs with a small backpack draped over one shoulder. Today he needed to get over the jet lag and orientate himself around the local area. Getting a feeling of the place was going to be important. He’d need to try to know the city if he was going to understand why a young woman would come here. Tomorrow the search would begin in full, starting with a visit to the bank where Allissa had withdrawn the money. Leo knew getting information from a bank teller would be difficult, so planned to pose as Allissa’s brother, anxious for news about his missing little sister.
Standing in the foyer of the hotel, about to step through the door and into the city, the TV sitting silently and the reception desk empty, Leo gulped another deep, calming breath. Behind the door, through the pane of dirt-smeared glass, the traffic rumbled in the morning light.
Releasing the air, relaxing his shoulders, and feeling the calm that came with the oxygen hitting his brain, Leo pushed open the door and stepped through.
Around him traffic seethed – bikes, taxis and cars wrestling for space on the thin road. Ahead, an overloaded lorry squeezed past a man pulling a cart laden with bricks,
his weathered skin tough against the powerful sun.
Looking up at the hotel, an austere building of concrete, like any other in the city, Leo drew a breath of thin air. Filled with the fumes of the passing traffic, the dust of the city and his anxiety of the unknown, it brought on the tightness of his chest.
Breathe. Focus and breathe.
In a moment of panic, Leo looked back at the door while the tightness of his chest passed. His room in the hotel would bring him no peace. The only thing to do was to get out into the city and settle in.
Focusing on the street around him, Leo took a few moments to calm himself as his breathing slowed, each breath drawing rough on his throat. Looking down the road to the right, the traffic a ceaseless procession, he strained his eyes to try to see the market that the map said was a short walk away. That was where he was going to start. He was sure there would be somewhere he could get breakfast and coffee there.
With his head down, counting his breaths to keep them slow, Leo set off along the dusty edge of the road, into the unknown.
Chapter 27
Waking to the sound of Chimini and Fuli chatting, their voices muffled by the closed door and their words tumbling indistinguishably fast, Allissa sat up in bed. She’d slept late. The morning light was already piling in through the window, reminding her they still needed to buy curtains.
With a sudden flurry of contentment, she remembered the alarms which used to ring between five and six A.M. in her family home. There was none of that here. Now she ran on her own time.
Rubbing her eyes, Allissa thought through what they needed to do today. It was essential they sorted furniture for the other rooms. She didn’t want to have to turn people away when they were arriving with money and could circulate word of the guesthouse. Fuli’s unexpected arrival had also demonstrated how essential a place like this was in the city.
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