by Lee Weeks
‘I tried to find her in time. She was very sick. She was a schizophrenic. She needed her medication but she hadn’t been taking it. Katrien told her not to. She was easy to manipulate then.’ Mann could see that he was bleeding from his amputated stump.
‘There was nothing you could have done, Riley. Katrien had been planning this a long time. Let’s get you back to the hospital.’
‘Gee’s outside. Sue stabbed him. We need to get him to hospital fast.’
‘I’ll do it.’ Shrimp went outside to look after Gee.
Mann walked over to Jake and knelt down beside him. Jake stared into his eyes and shook his head, he couldn’t speak. He looked across at Anna and his eyes filled. He looked back at Mann. Mann nodded and smiled sadly.
‘We will wait here with Anna until we can make arrangements for her.’ Mann stood. Jake looked up at him in panic as if he were about to leave him. Mann put his arm around Jake’s shoulders. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere, not until I get you home.’
121
Mo was waiting for them, dressed all in black, a rifle over the crook of her arm.
‘Thank you for agreeing to see us.’ Mann greeted her as the boatman steered towards the jetty. ‘I wanted my brother to meet one of the greatest soldiers in the longest civil war in history, and to thank her.’
The boat came to a stop. Mo nodded and smiled as she held up her hand.
‘I am not alone,’ she said, glancing to her right. Mann looked at the dense undergrowth. A shadowy figure was lurking there. Someone stepped out.
‘Wassup, dude.’
Jake nearly fell out of the boat with the shock of seeing Lucas.
He looked at his friend, pale, sick, but very much alive.
‘I found him near to death.’ Mo squeezed Lucas’s shoulders. ‘He needs feeding up, but he will live.’
Lucas and Jake hugged whilst Mann shook Mo’s hand.
‘I hope we meet again one day, Mo.’
She shook her head. ‘There is nothing left of my village.’
‘I am sorry, Mo. Where will you go?’
She shrugged and turned her eyes to the distant hills. ‘Somewhere. The days of the Karen are numbered, deals will be struck between the Thai government and the Burmese junta and we will be wiped out.’ Mann nodded his head sadly. ‘But for me, there is only one way to live and to die. “Never give up, never surrender”…Churchill was a good man.’ She turned and disappeared into the jungle. Mann looked up and on the bank he saw Phara, waiting. She raised her hand and waved a sad farewell.
122
‘You okay, Riley?’ Mann had gone to visit him at the hospital. Gee was sleeping in the next bed.
Riley nodded. But his eyes said otherwise.
‘I should have stopped Sue years ago. I always thought I contained it in her. She was diagnosed in her late teens.’
‘She must have had some serious religious issues to have used a sharpened crucifix.’
‘Yes, her paranoia was always based on religion. Something to do with her parents. She heard voices. Sometimes imaginary, other times they were real. Katrien—she could make Sue do anything. I am sorry I didn’t speak out sooner, I might have saved Louis, and the murdered soldier at Mo’s camp. She liked to flirt and turn men on, but she killed them when they tried to touch her. But I loved her, she listened to me—most of the time. When did you suspect she was involved?’
‘When I met with Hillary at Mary’s. She told me it was Sue who told her not to pick the kids up from the camp that day. I knew you were over-protective—I figured you were covering for Sue, but I didn’t know the rest of it.’
Riley lay back exhausted.
‘Will you be okay?’ asked Mann.
‘The refugees need me more than ever. We have to rebuild and we won’t be getting any more money for a while.’
There was a knock on the door. Shrimp came in.
‘Hey, boss. I wanted to see you before I go. What do you want me to do with this?’ Shrimp held the case with the two million dollars in his hand.
‘Give it to Riley here. He’ll put it to good use.’
For a moment Mann thought Riley was going to cry. But instead he reached over and shook Mann’s hand.
‘I’m grateful, mate. Really grateful.’ Mann could see his resolve returning.
‘Shrimp and I are going now, but we’ll see you next time we’re in Thailand.’
‘Uhh…boss. That’s what I wanted to say. I’m going back down to Phuket. I have loads of leave owed to me and I am going to help a few friends in need of my legal expertise.’
‘Would that be Summer?’
‘Summer, June and July.’
‘Sounds like some girls I used to know,’ said Gee, opening his eyes and grinning sleepily. It was the first time Mann had seen him without his hat. He was as bald as a baby.
‘Glad to have you back with us, Gee.’ Mann went to sit on his bed. ‘You’re a man of many secrets. Shrimp told me you felt indebted to Deming.’
He nodded. ‘I have been waiting for my chance to repay my debt. I knew you would come when your brother was kidnapped. I told my cousins in the Chinese dragon shop to watch over Magda. They told me they had seen you at Casa Roso. Then I made sure to be in Chiang Mai for when you arrived.’
‘He must have meant a lot to you.’
‘Yes, Deming was my friend. I didn’t tell you before because I felt I could serve you best if you didn’t know my history. The past is not always welcome in the present.’
‘How did you know him?’
‘Deming gave me hope when I had none. I was nothing. He gave me the Golden Orchid so that I could take over for him. We stopped heroin production and moved back into village crafts. He gave me the lock-up at Mae Sot. He kept the refinery and the land. He said it would never be used for anything but destruction. It was a place of ghosts and he said, in years to come his sons would decide its fate.’
‘Whatever you feel you owed Deming it is definitely repaid now.’
Gee nodded his head thoughtfully. ‘Ah ha. I agree. But I will never stop being grateful.’ He looked at Mann curiously. ‘I know you have learned much that you did not want to know about your father on this journey. I understand your mistrust but in one thing you can believe—your father tried to change. He tried to make amends for his bad ways. It was Deming who wrote the inscription on the Buddha outside the lock-up. We are what we think. What we think, we become.
‘He tried to become someone better.’
123
Mann sat in King’s bar and ordered a vodka. He played with the phone in his hand and stared at the screen. He finally rang Ng.
‘Tell me it straight.’
‘Okay, Genghis…Your father was one of a syndicate, the Golden Orchid. They had business concerns in Burma and Thailand. They traded in teak, artefacts, toys, anything…’
‘And opium.’
‘Yes, and opium. Deming handled the distribution at the Amsterdam end. He was responsible for getting it out to the rest of Europe.’
‘Who else was in the syndicate?’
‘The only one left alive is Split-lip Lok. He said that when the books started not adding up and the money dried up they realised what he’d done. He’d been giving the money away, turning the company back to selling locally-made produce: toys, baskets, you know the kind of thing. Split-lip said something happened to Deming in Amsterdam. That’s when it all changed.’
‘Shit, Ng. Who the hell was he? I feel sick to my stomach when I think of my father.’
Ng paused at the other end of the phone. ‘He was a Hong Kong businessman who got in too deep. Getting out cost him his life. He was naïve.’
‘He was a triad,’ said Mann. ‘Once a triad always a triad. He should have known that. No one leaves a society. They killed him because he went against orders. They killed him because he tried to get out.’
Mann closed his phone, finished his drink, and asked Eric to call him a cab. He had one last place to go.
/> 124
Mann took off his shoes and entered the temple in the grounds of the Enlightenment Centre. The monk smiled at him as he entered and greeted him with a small bow of the head. Mann bowed low.
‘I have come to say thank you.’ The monk studied Mann and smiled.
‘You have come far on your journey.’
‘Yes.’
‘Walk with me.’ The monk got slowly up from his seat and walked out of the temple. Mann followed. The sun beat down on them, the sky was azure blue.
‘Remember, Johnny Mann.’ The monk turned to him and smiled. ‘Holding on to anger is like holding on to a hot coal—you are the one who is burned.’
The old woman was there again, with the baskets of birds. She stepped into Mann’s path and held up a basket with a dusty sparrow, flapping its wings in distress.
Mann looked at her and nodded. She opened the cage and the bird flew up and away into the cloudless sky.
‘Free bird, free soul.’
125
‘How is she?’
Mann waited with Alfie in the kitchen as Jake went into the bedroom to see his mum. He had been in there for over an hour.
‘She has hung on just long enough. It was as if the minute she knew he was safe, she let go. She has only a few days left now.’
‘I’m sorry, Alfie.’
Alfie took a deep breath and nodded. His eyes were red-rimmed. His shoulders rose and fell as he began to cry and then he stopped himself. He stood and went to the window to look out. The trees had all come into blossom on the street outside.
Jake appeared in the doorway. His face was stained with tears.
‘Mum wants to see you, Johnny.’
Mann gave Jake a hug as he passed him.
Magda was in her bed. She had lost a lot of weight. Her cheeks were hollowed, her eyes sunken and dark.
She smiled at him. He sat beside her on the bed.
‘Thank you, Johnny. Are you okay?’ He had a lump in his throat and couldn’t answer. Her face was ashen. The silk scarf around her head was pale blue like her eyes. They seemed to reflect a sky in some distant world. He nodded and tried a smile. She wasn’t buying it. She put her hand on his. ‘This has been so difficult for you, I know. To find out so many things about your father, a lot of them not good. I understand how you must feel. I have felt it too. I have thought about it over and over. Who was Deming? Who was he really? I wanted to make sense of it before I die.’ She thought for a few seconds before continuing. ‘I realised that I only knew a part of him. But that part was good. And maybe you can’t ask to know everything about everyone. You can’t and you shouldn’t. Everyone needs their secrets. Do you think you will be able to forgive him?’
Mann looked down as he thought about the answer and he shook his head.
‘I just don’t know, Magda. I despise triads with every bone in my body. To find that Deming was one, albeit one who tried to change, it’s going to take time for me to get my head around it.’
‘Please try for Jake’s sake and for mine.’
He nodded and looked into her eyes, cloudy as the early morning mist veiling a blue summer’s day. ‘The one thing I am certain about, Magda, is that Deming loved you. You are the reason why he wanted to change. You and the boys were the reason why he wanted to stop being a triad.’
‘And the reason he was killed?’
Mann shrugged. ‘It was his choice, Magda, he played with fire and he got burned. But then we wouldn’t be sat here now if he hadn’t, would we?’ He smiled at her concerned face. ‘And I am very glad to have known you and proud to have Jake as my brother.’
She squeezed his hand and she sighed and her eyes went to the open window; the scent of spring was in the air.
‘I am so scared of dying, Johnny.’
He shook his head. He fought hard to stay in control of his emotions. He took a deep breath and took her hand in both of his as he smiled at her.
‘Let me tell you something, Magda. When I was dying in the jungle I had a dream. I saw Daniel in that dream. He came to bring me back to the living. He wanted to show me that he was content, he was happy. He will be watching and waiting for you. Don’t be scared.’
Magda turned away as a tear trickled from the corner of her eye and she listened to the sound of children playing on the street below. Then she turned back and smiled.
‘Thank you, Johnny.’
Mann got up to leave. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead as he whispered: ‘Bye, Magda.’
Magda looked up at him, her eyes swimming with tears. ‘Jake’s going to need you when I’m gone, Johnny.’
Mann nodded and swallowed hard.
‘And I will always be there for him, Magda; he’s my brother.’
Acknowledgements
Thanks to my agent Darley Anderson for your support and friendship and to Maxine Hitchcock, a great editor who knows how to bring out the best in me. Thanks as always to my family and friends and to all the people who read my books.
About the Author
Lee Weeks left school at sixteen and, armed with a notebook and very little cash, spent seven years working her way around Europe and Southeast Asia. She returned to settle in London, marry and raise two children. She has worked as a cocktail waitress, chef, model, English teacher and personal fitness trainer. She now lives in Devon. Her debut novel, The Trophy Taker, was a Sunday Times bestseller as was her next, The Trafficked.
Please go to www.leeweeks.co.uk for more information on Lee.
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By the same author:
The Trophy Taker
The Trafficked
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2009
Copyright © Lee Weeks 2009
Lee Weeks asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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EPub Edition © AUGUST 2009 ISBN: 978-0-007-33460-5
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