Death in the Rainy Season Page 22

  He had tried again to reach Bruno. Bruno had warned Thierry about Morel. Thierry had signed in to the chat room at the usual time and waited, but Bruno seemed to have vanished into thin air.

  He glanced at the fat white woman with the fresh-painted black nails, sitting with her legs apart. She’d been giving him a funny look. Or was he imagining it? He had to remind himself that it was likely in his head, the product of his fear and paranoia. He swallowed hard and stared at the article in front of him, but sweat was getting in his eyes.

  ‘How much longer?’ he asked the man behind the counter, attempting a smile.

  ‘Now, now. One minute only.’

  He really needed to relax. And he knew exactly what would do the trick. He pictured her coming straight from school, a thin layer of sweat across her back and under her armpits, where sparse hairs were beginning to grow. In the room, he would sit on the bed and ask her to take off her clothes. She would be reluctant, at first.

  He would take more photographs. And this time he would send one to Bruno, who would be pleased. Maybe this was why Bruno hadn’t responded over the past couple of days. He was probably tired of sharing when Thierry gave nothing in return. It was time for Thierry to reciprocate.

  Today he wouldn’t wait till she came to him. He was too impatient. He would pick her up, not at the school, of course, but somewhere he knew she would be walking to get to him. She would sit next to him in the car and he would caress her thigh, run his finger inside the white sock pulled up to her knee. With her hands folded on her lap she would look straight ahead or out of her window, anywhere except at him. He pictured it vividly and it made him think of the hours in between as a lifetime of waiting and yearning.

  ‘OK, you can come now,’ the girl in the salon said, inviting him to sit before her. With a practised gesture, she took his fingers and placed them in a container filled with lukewarm water. He closed his eyes and gave himself over to her capable, indifferent hands.

  Outside, Sarit finished his cigarette and flicked it onto the road. He glanced at the salon’s dingy facade and at the tourists trudging past in their baggy trousers and sandals, water bottles at the ready. There were fewer of them at this time of year. The small shops around here, selling locally made textiles, silk shirts and scarves and bags, were mostly empty. These tourists were the cheap ones. They spent their money on ‘happy’ pizzas, got drunk on cheap alcohol and made the most of the city’s least salubrious brothels. They took what they could and gave very little back.

  Sarit thought about the man inside the salon, whose scalp was now being massaged by a young woman. Then he thought about his small daughter and wondered what she would make of herself, what her options might be.

  He called a number from his mobile phone and gave brief instructions.

  Then he lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply, before slowly releasing the smoke from his lungs.

  Should he call Lila and ask her for Mathilde’s number? What would he do with it? Morel couldn’t picture picking up the phone and calling her. He wouldn’t know where to start. Then again, he reminded himself, she was the one who had tried to get in touch with him.

  Morel lingered by the phone for a while longer. It would be too early to call France, but he sat there anyway, wishing there was something he could do to subdue this urgent, irrational need.

  Every moment of intimacy with a woman seemed to lead him back to Mathilde. It was even true of Solange, though he hadn’t seen it straight away. Solange was a beautiful, generous woman who had been his mistress – with her husband’s blessing – for two years, and remained a good friend even now.

  For the past six months, he had convinced himself that he was over his obsession with Mathilde. In his methodical manner, he had stored his feelings away, locked the door on them. Lila’s call had thrown him off guard.

  He dialled another number instead. The phone rang ten, eleven times before Morel hung up. Sam wasn’t there, or wasn’t picking up.

  He swore out loud. This wouldn’t do. He was wasting his time. He got up, quickly showered and dressed. Downstairs, he got into a tuk-tuk and asked the driver to take him to the Paradise Hotel.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Paul took a step back. There were seven shoeboxes in total, jam-packed with photographs that Mariko kept promising to organize into albums. There were photos from the time before they had known each other, and from their life together, too; hundreds of snapshots of Nora, a whole box of these, the numbers tapering off as she grew older. At a certain point, somewhere around her seventh birthday, Nora had begun systematically to avert her face or scowl whenever the lens was pointed her way. A sign, already, of things to come.

  Paul had never once thought to look inside these boxes. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for when he arrived at the hotel and unloaded the shoeboxes in his office. He closed the door, telling the reception staff he didn’t want to be disturbed. He noticed how the girls at the desk hesitated, wanting to update him on what was happening at the hotel, wanting to ask questions, yet holding back because these days he was tetchy and unresponsive. He knew they had started calling Mariko out of sheer desperation, seeking advice from his wife whenever an issue arose. Mariko didn’t tell him about these calls in any detail, but he knew from her face, her expression veering between impatience and worry.

  Outside his office, he heard people come and go. Feeling uncomfortably warm, he pointed the remote towards the air-con unit and turned it to a cool nineteen degrees. Then he sat down and flicked through the photographs, quickly discarding those he wasn’t interested in. After a while, he found the ones he’d been looking for.

  Back then, it was always Mariko taking the pictures. In most of the shots, Hugo looked the same. He smiled easily, his body language indicating how unselfconscious he was. Paul, on the other hand, always looked constipated. He couldn’t ever manage a genuine smile on camera.

  ‘Lighten up,’ Mariko would say. That tended to have the opposite effect.

  Paul studied a rare photograph in which they all appeared. They were standing on the Pont des Arts in Paris, and the sun was shining. Mariko and Hugo were laughing as though someone had just told a funny joke. Paul was watching them, grinning. This was perhaps the best shot of the three of them. Even he looked relaxed, Paul thought. They looked so young. Then, Nora had come along. Later on, Hugo had met Florence. Here were photos of the two of them, Florence’s head resting on his shoulder, her face glowing with happiness.

  So many happy memories. Hugo had been more confident, more gregarious, but it was actually Paul with his dry humour who set them off, great peals of laughter that had Mariko and Hugo convulsing for minutes on end. Florence, once she and Hugo got together, would often watch them with a wide grin on her face. She didn’t know what was so funny but didn’t care, she was there for Hugo.

  Paul leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He felt worn out. After a while, he raised himself with difficulty and opened the door.

  ‘Could you get me a coffee?’ he asked the girl at reception.

  Back in the quiet of his office, cold air raising goose bumps across his skin, he thought about the first time he’d met Hugo, in the university foyer after class. As a rule, Paul never hung around. Immediately after class, he headed straight out of the building, to a cafe nearby where he could read and study without any interruptions. The faculty wasn’t the sort of place where you wanted to linger. Peeling paint on the walls, a rancid smell like no one had bothered to properly clean the place in a long time. Unless you ended up at Sciences Po or the Sorbonne, or got into one of the elite Grandes Écoles, university education in Paris meant broken furniture, neglected buildings and overcrowded lecture halls.

  He was crouching, sliding his lecture notes into his cart-able, a relic from his last year of high school, before walking out into the courtyard. He felt someone draw near, and he looked up to see a boy with a mop of blond hair looking down at him with a tragic expression.

  ‘You don�
�t happen to have any spare change, do you? I’m desperate for a coffee.’ He gestured towards the hot drinks machine. ‘I’ve been waiting to see whether anyone forgets to collect their change. No one ever does. What sort of students are these?’

  Paul stood up and slung his bag over his shoulder. He looked at the blond student to see whether he was joking. The boy stretched out his hand and grinned.

  ‘Hugo Quercy.’

  From the way he dressed, it was easy to guess Hugo’s background. Good family, cushy upbringing. Hugo would have gone to a fancy school. He probably played tennis and went skiing in Megève or Courchevel in the winter. There was nothing singular about Hugo except for the fact that he seemed not to care that he stood out like a sore thumb here amongst all these students who were doing their best to look unwashed and dispossessed. It took a certain amount of courage, or indifference, to walk in here wearing a pair of suede moccasins, a polo shirt and a pale blue pullover tied around your shoulders.

  Paul wanted to find him obnoxious, to send him on his way. But he was bored and suddenly reluctant to leave on his own, as he normally did. Instead of dismissing the other boy, he found himself returning Hugo’s smile.

  ‘You’re not seriously thinking of getting a coffee from that machine, are you?’ he said.

  ‘Is it that bad?’

  ‘One sip and you’ll be writhing on the floor, longing for a quick death.’

  Paul had then taken him to the cafe in Clichy where he spent most of his afternoons, reading or working on his assignments. It was a no-frills, shabby sort of place, the smells of cold tobacco and bitter coffee etched into the bar counter. At a nearby table, a girl with long black hair was taking notes from a hefty tome. Paul saw her at the cafe often and he recognized her from university. They’d never spoken.

  Paul saw what the place must look like through Hugo’s eyes and assumed he would not want to stay long, but he started talking at length about the lecture he’d just sat through, how it had stunned him, made him reconsider the way he thought about life. Though Paul hadn’t asked, Hugo began to summarize the professor’s words for Paul. He spoke loudly, and Paul wondered whether it was for his benefit or for the girl with the long black hair.

  What exactly was it he was so excited about that day? Paul couldn’t remember. All he knew was that at some point, when he was wondering how he might be able to shut Hugo up, someone else did it for him.

  ‘You sure do like the sound of your own voice.’ They both turned to find the girl addressing them. She looked Japanese, he saw now, with fine features and almond-shaped eyes.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Hugo asked.

  ‘You know, I came in here to get some work done,’ she said. ‘Instead, for the past twenty minutes I’ve had to listen to your bullshit.’ She closed her book and stood up. ‘You seem to have an opinion on just about everything. But given how much you talk, I wonder how much time you spend actually thinking?’

  Paul expected Hugo to get angry but instead he grinned at the girl.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, looking sheepish.

  She shook her head and, without a word, picked up her books and left. Hugo turned to Paul with a look of regret.

  ‘I really like her,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, she seemed to like you too,’ Paul said.

  From that day on the two of them met regularly after classes. They stopped in cafes for lengthy discussions, or caught the Métro to St-Germain-des-Prés, which was where Hugo lived. Of course, Paul thought, when he first stepped into his friend’s large, fashionable apartment on Rue de Lille, with its high ceilings, gilt-edged mirrors and creaking parquet floors.

  Downstairs, a Vietnamese restaurant had just opened. Not the sort of Vietnamese restaurant Paul might find in his own neighbourhood, serving cheap pho, and spring rolls that were ninety-nine per cent pastry. This restaurant had two Michelin stars. Hugo’s mother took her son and Paul there one night and the food was like nothing Paul had ever tasted. The young Vietnamese waiters in their neat black outfits, Ho Chi Minh style, could have been fashion models on a catwalk. When Hugo’s mother asked Paul whether he’d enjoyed the meal, he replied yes, but in truth he wasn’t sure what to make of the nuanced flavours, none of which he could have described.

  Most of the time, and much to Paul’s relief, they did things other students did, things that didn’t cost a whole lot of money. They walked along the quays and talked – well, Hugo did most of the talking, and Paul listened. It was comfortable, to be able to remain silent. Hugo said his father had died when he was ten. Now it was just Hugo and his mother sharing that enormous flat. Paul, who lived with his own mother in a two-bedroom apartment in the northern suburb of Noisy-le-Sec, never invited Hugo back to his. He hadn’t invited a friend over once in the past six years, not since his mother’s sudden and inexplicable breakdown.

  By the end of the second term, Paul and Hugo were best friends. And when Hugo announced he was going to drop out and go to Sciences Po, Paul decided to follow. Paul had the higher grades, but Hugo had the confidence, and for both of them the transfer was easy.

  The office door opened and Paul looked up to see the young Khmer receptionist, holding the cup of coffee he’d asked for. He took it and thanked her. Once she’d gone he turned on the computer and waited for it to boot up.

  Years later, when Paul and Mariko were married, Hugo would stay with them when he visited Paris. Sometimes he came alone and sometimes he brought Florence. The four of them would meet for dinner or lunch. Mariko was working for UNESCO and Paul had a government job. He dreamed, though, of working for himself.

  ‘If you want to run your own business, come and do it in Phnom Penh. It’s much easier there, believe me,’ Hugo said one day over lunch. He was passing through Paris, raving about his life in Cambodia.

  Paul couldn’t even remember when he and Mariko had decided to make the move. Had it been his decision or hers?

  In Phnom Penh, he and Hugo lived in different worlds. One morning, though, Hugo had pulled him into his.

  ‘We’ve got a tip-off. About a paedo. The police are on their way. Want to come?’ A broad grin on his face, his hair flat against his skull from the motorcycle helmet. ‘Come on. What else have you got to do?’

  Paul was trying his best not to show how nervous he was. Hugo, on the other hand, was so excited he couldn’t keep still.

  ‘Are you sure it’s OK for me to tag along? Are you sure the others won’t mind?’ Paul said. He was wondering why Hugo wanted him there.

  ‘It’s just you and me and the police. But you know the only thing they care about is whether they get the credit for this. They won’t ever investigate, but they’re happy to make the arrest.’ He gave his friend a long, hard look. ‘We’ve got to go now. Before the bastard scoots. Are you coming or not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They took Chhun’s motorbike and Hugo insisted on driving.

  ‘I thought you didn’t drive?’ Paul said.

  ‘It’s a bike, it’s different,’ Hugo said. Bullshit, Paul thought. He found himself wondering about Hugo’s driving phobia.

  They took Norodom Boulevard, heading for the Independence Monument. The roundabout was sealed at one end but rather than take a detour, Hugo dived in and headed straight into oncoming traffic. Then they were on the other side, heading for the quays.

  ‘Who called it in?’ Paul shouted, to distract himself from his fear of imminent death. Hugo mumbled something about a kid.

  ‘He’s one of ours, training to be a mechanic. He called it in.’

  The sun was setting by the time they reached the river. Moments later, two local police officers pulled up in a car. The older one, whose uniform was covered in medals, beamed at Hugo and shook his hand. They exchanged a few words in Khmer.

  ‘He loves us,’ Hugo told Paul when the officers were a few feet away. ‘You know why? He’s a general now. He owes us his rank.’

  Paul and Hugo climbed into the back of the police car. Hugo began talking rapidly in Khme
r and one of the men laughed.

  They drove along the embankment until Hugo asked them to stop. He and one of the officers got out and searched the tall grass along the riverbank. They did the same thing a couple more times. The fourth time they got lucky.

  ‘There he is. We’ve got him.’ Hugo began scrambling down the bank, the two officers ahead of him. Paul followed, thinking that maybe four was a crowd and he should have stayed in the car, but he was curious to see what would happen next.

  He caught a glimpse of flesh and there was a scuffle. Someone was lying on the ground, trying to get up. The officers were both in there, holding him back or trying to pull him up, it wasn’t clear. He could hear grunting. ‘Put some clothes on,’ one of the officers was saying. Hugo repeated this in English, his voice unrecognizable. Then Paul saw him: a naked white man getting to his feet, the wobble of pale flesh as he lunged for his clothes, strewn among the reeds. It wasn’t anyone he knew. He’d half expected to recognize the man; Phnom Penh was such a small place after all. There were three boys by Hugo, standing to the side. Two of them were naked from the waist down and the third had nothing on. At a glance, they couldn’t have been older than ten.

  ‘Help me get them dressed,’ Hugo told Paul. His voice was hard. Paul looked at him, expecting anger. But instead Hugo looked gleeful.

  ‘Where the fuck would they be without me?’ he said.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  ‘I’d like to speak with Nora,’ Morel said.

  ‘She didn’t come home last night.’

  Mariko’s face was drawn. He was shocked by how unwell she seemed. Nothing like the first time they’d met. He wanted to reach out to her, say something reassuring.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me?’ Morel said.

  ‘She texted yesterday to say she was staying elsewhere and not to worry.’ She gave Morel a cold look. ‘We let her take this week off school, because of what happened to Hugo. Maybe we should have made her go, but she was upset. Yesterday she went out without saying where she was going. I think she’s angry, about Hugo’s death, angry at us too.’