Kathmandu

by Luke Richardson

  A truck, sixteen wheels fully laden, pulled out into the empty lane behind Green’s BMW and started to accelerate.

  Stockwell, if Green had him right, was equally powerful and equally dangerous. Building the case around him would have to be done carefully.

  The truck driver, thick hands on the wheel, shifted a gear and held the truck straight as the traffic started to drift forwards again.

  Green knew a threat could come from anywhere; he would have to be vigilant.

  The deep rumbling of a horn shook the car. Green’s eyes darted to the rear-view mirror as it filled with light.

  He saw the chrome grill of the truck bearing down on him.

  Just in time, Green pushed down on the accelerator and his car sprung forward.

  He knew he would have to be careful. Stockwell wouldn’t go down without a fight.

  Chapter 33

  Opening her eyes and taking her first waking breath of the muggy Kathmandu morning, Allissa knew the day would be special. It was to be the day everything fell together, the planets aligned, and things just worked out to make her dream come true.

  The guesthouse had not been a dream she’d had for long. In fact she’d known nothing of Kathmandu before she’d arrived, hot and frustrated on one of the brightly-coloured buses, like many other tourists, just months before. She’d known nothing of the plight of women like Chimini and Fuli, women who had been lied to, imprisoned and abused for the sake of cruel and greedy men. She’d just been travelling the world with no real plan, no purpose. Just to see and experience and not go home.

  In those early Kathmandu days, she’d wandered the dusty streets, seeing little to separate the manic city from many others across Asia. Sure, it had nice sights – temples, bazaars and the visible, heady curve of the mountain ridges, but there was nothing to persuade her to stay. On what was supposed to be her final day she met a group of charity workers in a restaurant. The place was busy, and they invited her to join their table. They spoke of countries visited and adventures had, in the way travellers do wherever they meet the world over. Then one young lady from Australia, her name was Kate, had told Allissa of the work they were doing.

  They would visit remote villages, high in the mountains, days of travel from anywhere else. There they would tell of the gangs of men who also made the journey. Gangs who would promise their daughters jobs in the big city, jobs which disappeared as soon as they agreed. Kate talked of the women they met, some of whom now worked as their interpreters, helping them communicate with the villagers and sharing their own stories.

  Listening to the work Kate and the team were doing, the restaurant bustling around them, Allissa realised she’d been doing it all wrong. She’d been travelling the world looking for something she needed. Something she felt she was missing. But what she was looking for was a way in which the world needed her. In Kate and the others around that table, Allissa started to find it.

  The conversations, continuing late into the night, enthralled Allissa so much she asked if she could join them on their next trip. She left Kathmandu two days later, with three others, Kate, a young man from Canada and a Nepalese girl called Chimini. For nearly a month they travelled to some of the remotest parts of the country, visiting some of the poorest and most basic villages. By the time they returned to Kathmandu, Allissa knew what she was doing – she had her dream formed.

  Hearing a knock on the door, she got out of bed. It was a dream which, with the arrival of the furniture for the guesthouse today, would be complete.

  Chapter 34

  Leo tried not to wince as he stepped out into the Kathmandu morning. The traffic growled past, kicking up dust and fumes in the thin air which stung his eyes and lungs. Leo knew he would have to get used to it, he was here for a few days yet.

  Standing next to the surging traffic, Leo waited until he saw the white and pink body of a taxi. As he held up an arm in signal, the taxi pulled to a stop, small wheels crunching over the loose asphalt.

  Learning from his experience of the taxi from the airport, without a word, Leo gave the driver a carefully-written slip of paper detailing the destination he required. He had in his pocket a number of the hotel’s business cards with the address on them for getting back.

  Ten minutes later, the taxi stopped outside the SNC Everest Bank in Kathmandu. It didn’t look like the sort of place where you could withdraw a small fortune in an afternoon. It didn’t really look like they knew anything about money at all.

  Like many of the businesses in Kathmandu, the bank occupied one unit on the ground floor of a four-storey concrete building. It was indistinguishable from the shops on either side, except for the faded red and green sign, two letters dulled by broken bulbs. Sun-bleached posters taped to the inside of the glass advertised the services the bank offered: ATM, International Money Transfer and Safety Deposit Boxes.

  Crossing the busy road and receiving a scolding honk from a mini-bus crammed with children in smart school uniform, many leaning from wide open windows, Leo looked up at the building. This is where Allissa withdrew thirty-five-thousand dollars two weeks ago. She was here. She’d stood on the same pavement and looked up at the same sign. The thought gave Leo mixed feelings of success and failure. He’d come so far but was still chasing a ghost. One thing he knew for certain was that they would have taken an address when she collected the money. That was the address he needed.

  Taking a deep breath and trying to ignore the rising sense of panic building inside him, Leo climbed the steps, pulled open the door and stepped inside.

  The bank itself was nothing more than a small room, gloomy in comparison to the harsh, muggy daylight. The tiled floor was streaked with dust from the street and a faded ATM blinked from the shadows. Behind a desk in the back corner sat a Nepalese lady talking into a phone.

  Swallowing hard, Leo walked up to the desk and waited for the lady to finish her call. Up close, she looked older than he first thought. The full colour of her hair beguiling her late middle age.

  Putting the phone down, she looked up at Leo and said something to him in Nepalese. He couldn’t even decipher where one word ended and the next began, let alone understand any meaning.

  “Do you speak English?” Leo said, not waiting for a reply before continuing. “I’m looking for my sister.”

  Eliciting nothing but a blank look from the lady, Leo pulled his phone from his pocket and showed her the most recent picture of Allissa. Reaching out, the lady took the phone, put on a pair of dark-rimmed glasses and peered intently at it. Leo thought he saw a flicker of recognition. Allissa was the sort of person people would remember, he was sure of it.

  The lady started to speak again at speed. Leo stared blankly.

  “I don’t understand, I’m sorry,” Leo said, attempting a smile. The lady seemed to repeat herself. Still Leo could understand nothing.

  “Manu,” the lady shouted after a pause.

  Was she shouting at Leo? What did she mean? Did she think Leo was here to cause trouble?

  “Manu,” she shouted again.

  The woman stood, walked to a curtain of plastic strips which obscured the view of a back room, pulled them aside.

  “Manu!” she shouted, her voice echoing.

  This time there was a reply. A distant male voice. The woman replied with another string of words. The voice was silent. Then the noise of movement came through the curtain.

  Leo felt his anxiety rise as the gruff voice moved towards them. Turning for a moment, he checked the door behind him, outside the traffic continued.

  “Hello, can I help?” said a man, pushing through the curtain into the room. “My wife said,” the man indicated to the woman who had taken her seat again behind the desk, “you are looking for someone. How can I help?”

  “Yes,” Leo said, taking a deep breath of the thin air. “My sister. I have a picture. She withdrew some money from here two weeks ago.”

  The man leaned over and peered at the phone without touching it. Leo watched for a
ny sign of recognition but saw none.

  The woman started to speak, and the man replied.

  “My wife,” the man said finally, “says that yes, she was here. She didn’t think we should tell you that, but I don’t see the harm. But I’m sorry to say we are not able to tell you any more.”

  “I’ll pay,” Leo said, pulling fifty dollars from his pocket, “if you can tell me the address she gave you.”

  The woman interjected with a torrent of words, pointing at the money. She was excited or insulted, but Leo was unable to tell which.

  “No,” the man said, holding his hand out to indicate the door, “we have a responsibility of secrecy to our clients. I have already said too much.”

  Walking back out into the street, Leo had to squint against the morning sun. He heard the door close behind him and looked right and then left.

  That had been his only lead. The only thing he knew about Allissa in Kathmandu. She would have had to give an address, Leo knew it, but how could he get it? He couldn’t just demand it. He couldn’t steal it – firstly he was not a thief and secondly, he had no idea where the information would be kept.

  Allissa had stood right where he was. She had turned either right or left with thirty-thousand-dollars in cash. But which way it was, Leo had no way of telling.

  Turning to look back through the dirty windows of the bank, Leo felt dejection rise. He wasn’t some kind of detective, and now he had no idea what to do.

  Chapter 35

  Allissa stood behind the guesthouse’s small reception desk, the noise of activity echoing up and down the stairs as the two men started to unload the furniture from their overladen truck. In this first load they had brought only the frames of the beds – they would return later with the mattresses and finally the dressing tables and wardrobes. It was to be a full day’s work for the men who were already taking directions from Chimini about what was to go where.

  Looking around, Allissa realised she’d not seen Fuli for some time; perhaps she’d not yet got up. Crossing to the door of the room Fuli had been sleeping in, Allissa pushed it open and looked inside. The bed, blankets piled on one side, was empty.

  Remembering the day before, Fuli running from the building, Allissa felt a moment of alarm. What if she’d done that again? What if she’d slipped out while they were dealing with the delivery men? She could be anywhere by now.

  At the other end of the reception area the kitchen door stood open. Allissa rushed across the room, hoping Fuli would be there.

  Stepping into the kitchen, Allissa saw her, on the floor in the back corner, hands covering her face.

  Turning back to the reception area, Allissa called to Chimini who had positioned herself at the top of the stairs to instruct each man about where to go as they reached her. As Chimini looked, Allissa beckoned her over.

  Quietly, Chimini sat beside Fuli and started to talk soothingly. Allissa, watching from the door, couldn’t hear what the two women said. After a few minutes, Chimini helped Fuli to her feet and they crossed, hand-in-hand to the door. There they stood, Fuli’s expression downcast and her knuckles whitening as she gripped Chimini’s hand.

  “Look,” Chimini said as the men lumbered up the stairs, “not all men are horrible.”

  Chapter 36

  Back in his hotel room, Leo ran over the events of the afternoon. He felt he had done everything he could to get the address from the man and woman in the bank. He supposed if he really was Allissa’s brother, knowing that she was alive and well would be reassuring. But he knew that wasn’t enough – he had a job to do. He needed to find her, to see her and report back.

  If only the man and woman in the tiny branch of the SNC Everest Bank had shared the scruples of some of the British banks he’d read about, Leo thought, then bribing them would be easy.

  The language barrier had also proved to be a problem, as Leo knew it would be. Tomorrow he needed to look for the help of some local people. He needed people who could speak the language and be his eyes around the city.

  Leo blinked hard, his eyes and neck aching from two hours of research on his laptop via the hotel’s frustrating Wi-Fi. He now had, scrawled on his pad on the desk, the addresses of ten hotels and guesthouses within a mile of the bank. They would be his first stop tomorrow, with or without help.

  Without thinking, Leo pulled up the system which continued in his absence to search for images of Mya online. Dismissing five straight away, he leaned in and stared for a while at the sixth.

  Leo felt his stomach rumble, reminding him he’d hardly eaten in the last few days. Putting the laptop on the bed, getting up and stretching, Leo crossed the room to the darkened window and looked out at the restless city. He hadn’t noticed the light fade, but now an orange haze drifted past.

  The weather had seemed turn in the afternoon. The clouds had thickened on all sides by the time Leo’s taxi cut through the busy streets on the way back to his hotel. Now, through the window, the city seemed turbulent. The moisture in the air was promising rain that, so far, hadn’t arrived. By the orange glow from the occasional street light and the misty swish of passing cars, Leo looked at the unfinished building behind The Best Kathmandu Guesthouse. Skeletal against the orange sky, its steel ribs poked through some kind of plastic covering on which light danced up from the base. Looking down for the light’s source, his face almost against the streaky glass, Leo saw lines of swaying Chinese lanterns. They were suspended on cables above what looked like, from the sixth floor, a restaurant.

  Conceding to the grumbles of his empty stomach, Leo turned towards the door.

  Chapter 37

  Above chattering diners, scurrying waiters and the tumbling smell of spice and ginger, the Chinese lanterns Leo had seen from his room shimmered. Crossing to an empty table at the back, he heard a multitude of languages. Travellers meeting anew, or friends meeting again.

  Sliding into one of the four chairs, Leo looked around. The casual noise of chatter was calming, as was the idea he didn’t need to be part of it. Solitude was good.

  “Don’t eat too much,” Leo heard a lady with a New York accent say from the next table. “I wanna go to that restaurant later.”

  “Well yeah, but we might not find it and I’m hungry now…” replied the man sitting opposite her and tearing into the flatbread the waiter had just delivered.

  Noticing the beers on the next table, Leo considered his drink options. Instinctively he thought to steer clear of alcohol – surely keeping his wits about him while he had a job to do was the right thing. But he had been working all day and had nothing to do now until the morning. What harm could it do?

  He was just about to order from the passing waiter when he again changed his mind. What if the beer disturbed his sleep? He hadn’t eaten much, and Kathmandu was at altitude. It was safer to stay off it for now, he decided, ordering a bottle of water and starting to flick through the menu. Many dishes, it seemed, must have been named for the benefit of the tourists – Sherpa chicken, Gurkha chulo, Everest stew.

  As Leo was trying and struggling to decode one of the menu’s awkwardly translated descriptions, a beer appeared on the table. The waiter who placed it was already taking an order from the American couple nearby. Picking up the bottle, mottled with the moisture of the humid night, Leo changed his mind again. One wouldn’t hurt.

  Deciding on the dishes he wanted and catching the waiter’s eye, Leo ordered. He knew it would be far too much, but it was cheap, and he was hungry.

  Somewhere above the hanging lanterns, across the orange strip of sky, lightning rippled. Dampened by the layers of heavy clouds shrouding the city, it was far enough away to be over the mountains, but there was no doubt it would come. Sipping at the cold beer, Leo wondered about the rain. It was raining in Brighton when he’d left and now electricity in the air was promising the same. Would he ever escape it? Leo knew the story of God flooding the world in punishment. On an international scale that seemed impossible, but on a personal level he was less con
fident. Maybe Leo had upset the Almighty and was now his target the world over.

  “Hey, do you mind if we join you?” An American, female voice punctured his daydream. Its owner standing across the table, short, skinny with aggressive red hair. Leo signalled to the three empty spaces. The newcomer waved over her friends who waited by the door.

  The beer is good, maybe company will be too, he thought reluctantly.

  “I’m Jem, this is Katelyn and this is Jack,” the girl said, pointing out her friends as they crossed the restaurant. Leo introduced himself.

  “Thanks for that, mate,” said Jack, the last to sit down opposite Leo. “Really didn’t fancy going back out on the street looking for somewhere else. Just need to eat!” He reached over and picked up the menu.

  “You had lunch not that long ago,” said Jem, the American.

  “Yeah, like, two hours or something,” Jack replied. “I’m a growing lad.” He rubbed his stomach, then frowned as he tried to make sense of the menu.

  “You been here before?” Leo asked.

  “We’ve only just arrived,” Jack said, looking at him over the top of the menu. “Came over on the bus from Pokhara today. Incredible journey, but so long.”

  “Yeah, I swear that driver was pissed,” said Jem. “We were wobbling about all over the place.”

  Leo knew Pokhara was Nepal’s second largest city, a couple of hundred miles from Kathmandu, but could take over ten hours by bus. Doing his research, he’d figured that if Allissa wasn’t in Kathmandu, Pokhara would be the second place to look.

  “What’s it like?” Leo asked.

  “It’s great,” said Jack. “Very cool city. Lakes and mountains. Loads of places to eat and drink. What you drinking here?” Jack asked, picking up Leo’s beer. “How is it?”

  Jem and Kaitlyn, sitting opposite each other, started their own conversation.