Death Trip

by Lee Weeks

  Alfie opened Katrien’s door and punched in the alarm. He heard voices, muffled. It was like a bad porn movie was playing. And, from his place in the hall he could look into the lounge. The curtains were drawn; the room was dark except for light from the PC monitor. There was the smell of stale perfume, of sex, rancid wine and there was something else, a sweet, rotten smell of meat thrown into a bin and forgotten.

  Alfie walked into the lounge. He could see the back of the monitor and the edge of the chair in front of it and he saw a pale leg, with its knee jutting outwards. The inside of the leg covered in brown dried blood. Beneath the chair was a pool of congealed blood, vivid against the white carpet. He moved slowly to the right and around. As he came from behind the monitor he saw the contorted face of a young woman, blindfolded. Across her mouth was a gag, her hands were tied to a harness that looped around her neck and strapped between her legs. Between her legs was the dildo that Alfie had seen Katrien wearing. The girl was dead. It was the young receptionist from NAP.

  115

  Saw rested his bloodied hands on the table as he leant across Anna’s naked body.

  Then he looked straight into Jake’s eyes.

  ‘Are you ready yet, boy?’

  Jake nodded, mutely. He had reached the bottom of hell and now there was nowhere left to go. He looked at Anna. Her blonde hair was matted with dark blood and her head twisted unnaturally to the side. Through misting eyes she seemed to be watching the dawn as it filtered through the rank air and began its trespass into the long night.

  Saw smiled as he turned his head and spat a glob of sticky black phlegm onto the dirt floor beside the table. Saw had faced death many times. He enjoyed watching others die. He looked down and breathed in the mist of atomised blood and death from Anna. It caught in the back of his throat, he could taste it. He could taste her. Then a shaft of light hit him in the eyes and he turned his head towards the window. The corner of the makeshift curtain had dropped and the sun was beginning to rise. He knew that the game was coming to its end now.

  Saw’s men moved in around Jake like jittery wolves waiting to finish off their prey. Their chests were bare, rank with stale sweat, sticky and thick with smeared blood. Their breath was heavy with stale liquor. Saw had given them a night to remember. Now there was one thing left to do. They edged closer and looked back and forth from Saw to the boy, waiting.

  As Jake looked at Anna, he felt a terrible calm. He glanced up at the hovering men, waiting for his death like vultures, and then he stared hard at Saw’s face. Jake stopped crying. A boy he might be called but he would end his life as a man. He reached out and touched Anna’s cold hand. In the morning light her skin was grey and he knew she was gone. But her screams still rang in his ears. He didn’t want to hear them any more.

  ‘Yes,’ Jake said. ‘I am ready.’

  116

  Katrien checked the room and made sure she hadn’t left anything behind. She wouldn’t be coming back, that was for sure. She was about to start her new life. She was nervous and excited. She couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong now. But, when she was the ringmaster in a circus full of unpredictable animals, she wouldn’t be happy until she was holding the money in her hands and long gone.

  She checked her phone and smiled, reassured, no message from the Big Man, Boon Nam must have got away. She’d be joining him soon enough then they could really kick start their business partnership.

  She texted Mann.

  Wait near the main entrance to the market for my instructions. Bring the money

  She closed her phone, picked up her bag and left the room. The taxi was waiting for her. It dropped her at the far side of the market. From there she made her way furtively, through the side entrance and onto the lane than ran alongside it and came to a standstill outside the lock-up. She looked at the Buddha beside the door, read the inscription and sneered. She knocked lightly on the lock-up door and Weasel opened it a fraction for her to enter. She stood just inside the entrance, hands on hips, and looked around at Saw’s men and at Jake and Anna and she hissed at him:

  ‘Where are the other kids?’

  Jake stared at her as if she had come from another world. She belonged to a different life. He knew her, and yet he didn’t know how, until he realised that it was the woman from NAP. It was the woman who had interviewed him about going away. But she hardly seemed to notice him or the hell that he was in. She barely glanced in his direction. She seemed more annoyed than shocked by what she saw. ‘Is this all that’s left?’ She looked around the room and then looked at Anna. ‘Fucking hell, Saw. Couldn’t you control these animals just once?’

  Handsome came up behind her and held on to her hips and rubbed against her as he licked her neck. She pushed him off. ‘Get your fucking hands off me. You stink.’

  She glared at Saw. ‘We’ll be lucky to get anything now.’ She looked nervously towards the door and then back at Saw. ‘At least the boy is still alive. He’s the only one who really matters. At least I have fulfilled my side of the bargain.’

  ‘Is he here?’

  ‘Yes. He’s waiting for me to text him. And he is bringing the money.’

  ‘I don’t care about the money.’

  ‘Fine. You have your fucking revenge and I will keep the money. I will be starting a new life in the hills, growing opium, getting rich, whilst you are dead and gone. But that’s your choice. I have put two years of planning into this, Saw, I am not about to blow it.’

  ‘They both die here, tonight.’

  ‘Whatever…but I won’t be hanging around. As soon as he gets here with the money, I am going. You can catch up with me if you’re still alive. I will be meeting Boon Nam in the hills.’

  ‘Where are the deeds to the land? Did you get them?’

  ‘Forget that. We have to take what we have and run. We don’t need it.’

  ‘But I want what was promised. All my life I have waited to get back what was mine. And now here we are, in the very place where Deming promised me it.’

  ‘You seem to forget, Deming ruined my life too. He took me away from my home. He put me to live with some weird couple who never really loved me.’

  ‘When the opium lords warred and our village was destroyed Deming took you. I was your brother, they should have given you to me, but they did not listen. Deming had money, they listened to him. He gave you to the missionaries.’

  ‘They hated me. They left me nothing in their will.’

  For a minute Saw’s anger flashed dark and brooding across his face and then he grinned at Katrien. ‘Perhaps they didn’t like you because they knew you were going to kill them.’ Saw grinned and offered her a swig of his rum. Weasel giggled.

  She pushed the bottle away. ‘I didn’t do it.’

  ‘You made someone else do it, the way you always do, hey, little sister?’ Saw stepped close to her and held her chin up to his face. ‘So beautiful, so evil.’

  Her eyes were as cold as his. She pushed him away. Saw made another move to touch her. Weasel was still giggling. He turned towards Handsome and the giggle turned into a noise in his throat as if he had swallowed something that got caught, lodged, something that hurt like hell and had stopped him breathing. His eyes opened wide in panic as he twisted his long neck to turn and see what had hit him and then his throat opened like a shark bite and a bubbling plume of blood jetted out several feet. Mann burst through the window.

  117

  Magda followed Dorothy back along the office corridor.

  ‘Yes, she was from the Lisu tribe. They live in the hills, they’re the opium farmers. She was rescued by Deming when her village was destroyed, caught up in some local drug wars.’

  ‘Do you think he was involved in those drug wars?’ asked Magda, dreading the answer.

  Dorothy shrugged and shook her head.

  ‘Who knows? Maybe. But I seriously think he thought he was doing the best thing bringing her over here. He gave her to a missionary couple. They had just returned from working in
Africa. They were a nice couple, bit strict, they lived very simply. It was a terrible tragedy when they were killed in the fire.’

  They stopped halfway along the corridor just by the orphans of the conflict photo.

  ‘No one knows who started it?’ asked Magda.

  ‘No. They left all their money to the church. You would have thought they would have left it to their other child.’

  ‘What other child?’

  ‘They had a child of their own before they adopted Katrien. That’s what I wanted to show you in this photo.’ Dorothy put on her glasses and scrutinised the photo. ‘Look, here is Katrien standing beside the missionary couple. Here are the survivors from the attack and can you see there is a child hiding there, just behind the man’s leg, you see?’

  Magda moved closer to the photo. ‘The child looks blonde,’ she said, surprised.

  ‘Yes. She was a beautiful little girl. Her name was Sue.’

  118

  Shrimp moved around the market and kept out of sight but never far from the lock-up. He kept his phone on vibrate only and held it tightly in the palm of his hand. He could not afford to miss Mann’s call. He was sure he would need him. He had no trouble blending in, no one gave his Oriental looks or his battered face a second glance, unlike the woman he spied from the corner of his eye. She was blonde, a plait down her back. She was an incongruous sight moving furtively amongst the dark and the dreadful of a Mae Sot night. Shrimp watched her as she came into the market from the lock-up lane. She seemed to be hovering like him…He waited until she had passed him and was out of sight, hidden amongst the stalls, before he slipped out onto the lane where she had come from.

  A man lay on the ground, moaning in agony. Shrimp knelt beside him and looked at his injuries. He was badly hurt from a single stab wound just below the ribs.

  He clutched at Shrimp’s arm.

  ‘My name is Gee.’

  Shrimp recognised the name. Here was the only man trading under the Golden Orchid. He knew enough about him to make him wary, but he had to help him.

  ‘I will carry you out of here,’ said Shrimp.

  ‘No, no…leave me. There is no time. Are you a friend of Johnny Mann’s?’ Shrimp nodded. ‘Good, my friend. So am I. His father, Deming, was my friend; he was very good to me when I was young. He gave me a chance when no one else would. I told him I would repay him one day and I have been looking after Johnny. But I cannot help him any more. I was about to go in when she stabbed me.’

  ‘Was she blonde?’

  ‘Ah ha, you have seen her. Sue her name is; be careful, my friend, she is mad. She will kill again. Quick now, he needs your help. I have heard them fighting, the window is smashed, Johnny is inside.’ He clutched his chest as he whispered. ‘There is a door at the back of the lock-up. Here is the key.’

  119

  Two of Saw’s men turned to look as Mann smashed through the window and fired five, six-inch hardened steel throwing spikes out of his right hand. Their feather tips pierced the air in a volley of red as they found their marks and the men were blinded by the needle tips as they pierced the eyeball. They didn’t see the seven four-inch flying stars that followed the spikes. One cut Weasel’s jugular, the others mortally wounded the blinded men. A star embedded in one man’s throat. He drowned as his lungs filled with his own blood. Another had a star cut deep into his temple and one stuck in his chest. One man was left wounded but alive. Handsome was unhurt, he had used the dying Weasel as a human shield.

  Mann rolled across the dirt floor and came to a stop opposite the table. He saw Jake petrified, thin, his eyes huge with fear, sat in a chair opposite the dead body of Anna. There was a gun at his head. Mann rose slowly, his hands raised, his back to the wall. He looked at Jake, and he felt an instant bond. It was like looking in the mirror. Mann’s emotions took him back to when he was eighteen. Took him back to his father’s execution. Mann’s temper roared inside him as his heart broke to see his brother so abused. He looked at the man holding the gun and he knew it must be Saw Wah Say. He was a wild man, his eyes alight with blood lust and madness. He feared nothing…

  Jake stared at Mann; he knew that he must know him, but he didn’t know how until Saw said his name.

  ‘Johnny Mann. I have waited many years to come to this moment. To have all Deming’s sons here in one room. It is a pity your brother Daniel died before I could kill him.’

  Jake stared at Mann, trying to take it all in. Katrien crawled out from under the table where she had been hiding. She stood and glared at Mann.

  ‘I told you to wait. Now give me the fucking money.’

  ‘You don’t get it till the boy is safe.’ Katrien was fuming as she turned to Saw. ‘Let him go. Let’s get the money and leave,’ she hissed.

  Saw didn’t answer her. He didn’t take his eyes from Mann. They grinned at one another. Mann felt his anger settle into a white heat. Nothing would stop him now. Saw would never leave the room alive.

  ‘I am not finished here,’ said Saw.

  ‘Yes you are. I didn’t do all this work to have you fucking blow it, now let him go.’

  Saw kept his eyes on Mann as he reached across and hit Katrien full in the face. She yelped in pain and surprise as she was knocked sideways.

  ‘I am your sister. Show me some respect,’ she said, clutching her face and looking at the blood on her hand.

  ‘You are my bitch. Shut up or I will kill you.’

  Saw turned his attention back to Mann.

  ‘You stole something from me, you and this boy…’ He tightened his grip on Jake and dug the gun hard into his temple. ‘I want it back. Deming promised me land, he promised me wealth.’

  ‘Deming is dead. His promises died with him,’ said Mann.

  ‘No, the sins of our fathers must be paid for.’

  ‘We have paid enough. Let the boy go or you will die here in this room.’

  Saw laughed, ‘Big words.’

  ‘Let the boy go and we will settle this, you and me.’

  Mann could see out of the corner of his eye that Handsome was on the move, coming up behind him, and the other man was working his way around the side. But then they stopped. Someone was standing in the doorway. Sue stared around the room as if she didn’t understand how she got there or why she was there. She shook her head and looked down at her hand. She was holding a dagger. It was shaped like a crucifix and still dripping with Gee’s blood.

  ‘It’s all right. It will all be okay.’ Katrien said softly when she saw her. ‘Don’t come in here, my love.’ At the sound of Katrien’s voice Sue seemed to come awake. She looked at Saw and at Katrien’s face.

  She looked puzzled. ‘Did Saw hurt you?’

  Katrien shook her head emphatically as she quickly wiped the blood away. ‘No, no, he didn’t mean to. I’m all right.’

  Sue stared coldly at Saw. ‘What’s happening, Saw? We did all this so that we could be together. We are one family: you, me and Katrien.’

  Saw looked at her with contempt. ‘You are not family. Katrien has tricked you all along. She has used you. You will never mean anything to me or to her. She got you to kill your parents. She used you to get close to Mann. She doesn’t love you or anyone else. She is incapable of love. Her heart is twisted even more than mine.’

  Sue’s face took on a pained look of confusion as she shook her head and her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Don’t listen to him, my love,’ Katrien said. ‘I love you. He is lying. He—’ Saw struck her again, harder than the first time, and she lost her balance and gave a cry of pain as she landed hard on the dirt floor.

  Sue let out a roar of anger as she flew forward and lunged her dagger at Saw. But she never made it. Handsome’s blade came singing through the air. Sue stood for a minute swaying, staring at the knife as it protruded from her sternum, and then she looked up at Katrien and at Saw and shook her head, a look of complete bewilderment in her eyes as she fell to the floor dying. Katrien crawled forward to hold her for a few sec
onds as she died and then she crawled back and clung to Saw’s leg.

  ‘Please, Saw. I am your sister. It will be just us. We can be happy. We can have everything. Please…please…’

  Irritated, he tried to shake her off but he couldn’t.

  Shrimp eased himself through the back door and stood behind Handsome. Shrimp knew he would get only one chance to kill Handsome and the other man. He edged closer.

  Katrien was crying.

  ‘No, Saw, don’t forsake me again. You let them take me when I was a child. I cried for weeks. I missed you.’ Saw tried to ignore her but it was a noise he remembered from his distant childhood. The cry of a baby who belonged to him, who needed him. He could not ignore it, its pitch, its tone was designed to penetrate his concentration. And it did. The sound of Katrien’s plaintive cries distracted Saw for two seconds, only two seconds. But two seconds was all it took for Mann to reach inside his shirt, extract the Death Star from its leather pouch, lower his stance, raise and level his arm and send it flying, curving through the air like a boomerang and then coming down to cut Saw’s spine in two. Delilah flashed from her hiding place inside Mann’s palm and she darted straight and powerful and thumped into Saw’s heart. At that second, Shrimp rolled forward into the room to face Handsome and shot him through the heart and the other man through the head.

  Saw’s body juddered as he took his last breath. He lost control of the gun and his hand turned away from Jake’s head. He looked down at Katrien clinging to his leg and staring up at him and his fingers contracted in a death grip. He fired one shot straight between Katrien’s eyes.

  120

  ‘Sue?’

  Mann turned and saw Riley standing in the doorway looking very sick and on his crutches. ‘I’m sorry, Riley, she’s dead.’ Riley looked about to collapse. He leant on the door frame for support.