Death in the Rainy Season Read online

  She looked awful, Florence thought. Her clothes were mismatched and made her look fat. Her hair looked unwashed. When she looked up, Florence saw dark circles under her eyes.

  ‘I had to see you,’ Kate said, her voice muffled.

  All of a sudden, Florence was overcome by nausea and she realized why. Her pleasure in Kate’s shabby appearance and discomfiture was ugly. She would not be unkind.

  ‘Come.’

  Kate looked astonished as she walked in. Florence saw the house through her eyes, the finality of it. The walls were bare. Everything she was taking with her was packed up. She and Mariko had written across the cardboard boxes in permanent marker. Bathroom, books, clothes. Hers and Hugo’s. She couldn’t bring herself to part with them yet.

  The remains of her breakfast were still on the kitchen counter. A plate with half a piece of toast, a mango skin. Scattered across the bench were functional things she didn’t want to take with her. A set of knives, a toaster and a blender. An ironing board, leaning against the wall.

  ‘I’m going to leave these here. There was going to be a garage sale but in the end I decided I’d just give everything away. Less hassle. If you need a toaster, or an ironing board . . . please help yourself,’ she said, and Kate looked surprised.

  ‘My place is so small, I wouldn’t know where to put more stuff,’ she said finally. ‘But thanks.’

  Florence pictured a poky room. A lonely existence. But then she pictured Hugo in that room with Kate and found herself wishing she hadn’t invited the other woman in.

  ‘I won’t offer you anything to drink. I’ve packed the cups and everything,’ she said, though she’d just washed two and they were drying by the sink. She stood in the middle of the living room with her hands on her hips, hoping the message was clear.

  ‘You must have been working incredibly hard, to manage all this in such a short time,’ Kate said. She was either pretending not to notice that she wasn’t welcome, or she didn’t care. She had clearly come here to say something. Suddenly Florence felt afraid of what Kate would tell her.

  ‘I didn’t have to do it alone.’

  ‘Still,’ Kate said.

  ‘What do you want?’ Florence asked.

  Kate took a deep breath. Florence could see now that she was struggling. She took a step back, bracing herself for the words she would have to hear.

  ‘I wanted to say how sorry I am.’

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘For your loss,’ Kate said.

  Florence didn’t reply.

  ‘I also wanted to say that anything you’ve heard about Hugo and me is untrue,’ she said, blurting it out. What she’d really come to say. ‘There was never anything between us. Nothing. He loved you a great deal; he told me so numerous times. We worked well together and we were friends. I know what people are saying. But you have to believe me. He had no interest in me. Not in that way.’

  ‘What about you? Did you feel anything for him?’ Florence forced herself to stand still, to look the other woman in the eye.

  ‘No,’ Kate said.

  Florence blinked. ‘Thank you for coming and telling me this. Now please get out of my house.’

  When Kate was gone, Florence closed the door and leaned against it. She stayed like that for a very long time.

  Half an hour later, when the bell rang a second time, Florence jumped. She walked through the house and opened the door tentatively, worried that Kate might have returned. She’d left the gate open, but there didn’t seem to be anyone outside. She went down the steps anyway and stood on the footpath, looking out at the street.

  On her way back in, she nearly tripped on something on her doorstep.

  She stared at the object on the ground for a long time, half afraid to pick it up. This unexplained gift could mean only one thing: whoever had left the footprints on her floors had come back. It was a frightening thought; though Commandant Morel had said he was confident that the person who’d walked through her house the night of Hugo’s death was not the person who had killed him.

  She looked down the street once more, to see whether anyone was about. A couple of boys were kicking a ball further down. Next door, her Chinese neighbour’s maid was sitting in the concrete area at the back of the house, outside the kitchen, shelling peas.

  Florence bent down as best she could and retrieved the dark stone from the ground. As she took it, she felt her heart soar. The pebble fit perfectly in the palm of her hand, just as it had all those years ago, when Hugo had placed it there and curled her fingers around it, smiling at her through eyes grown teary from the wind.

  FORTY

  Get out of my house. Kate wasn’t sure what she’d expected but the words had come as a brutal shock. A slap in the face.

  Stuck in heavy traffic, she stared out her window and tried not to think any more about her humiliating encounter with Hugo’s wife. What had she expected? A hug and a long, friendly chat over a cup of coffee? The two of them swapping stories about Hugo, crying and comforting each other?

  Loneliness gnawed at her. She drew no comfort from the surrounding bustle and noise. Street vendors cooking and selling their wares, mechanics and electricians tinkering on engines and television sets outside their repair shops, the parts scattered on the footpath. A young woman emptied a bucket of dirty water on the street, scaring away a scabby, pregnant mutt. Another crossed the street, holding aloft a tray of fried spiders. Kate turned her head away.

  The traffic moved forward and Kate drove on, winding down her window. The air conditioning in her car blew hot air and was useless. The light was uncertain, the horizon smudged with incoming rain. It was muggy and the driver’s seat felt sticky and warm against her back. I’m so sick of this weather, she thought. For the first time in years, she contemplated a holiday. Not New Zealand – it wouldn’t be a holiday if she went home – but why not Australia? It would be interesting to see how Adam would cope without her in the office. Julia was competent enough, but she needed constant hand-holding. Adam would have no patience for that sort of thing.

  And who knows, maybe he’ll even miss me a little, she thought. Would she miss him? And how to describe the way it was between them? Could it even be called affection? Yes, perhaps. Though at times she felt as though they were simply leaning on each other.

  The office was around the corner now and she looked for a place to park the car. She thought back to her encounter with Florence. She too would be alone now. Well, not quite. There was a baby on the way. And Florence had known a great love, hadn’t she? That was something, at least.

  The rain came with a sudden roar, just as she pulled into a parking space. She left the engine running and listened as the water pounded the car roof. Watched the world disappear before her eyes.

  Adam weaved his motorbike through the traffic on Sihanouk Boulevard. His cheap plastic raincoat did little to protect him from the rain and the trip back to work was taking a great deal longer than expected because a tuk-tuk driver had crashed into a truck filled with crates of soft drinks. But he didn’t care. He felt better than he’d felt for months.

  ‘I don’t know what else to do with this stuff.’ He’d handed the contents of the green folder, photocopied before he’d passed it to Morel, over to the person he thought was most likely to use the information. Hugo would have been pleased, he thought. The man, a craggy-faced Australian with an accent so thick Adam struggled to understand a word he said, was in charge of an NGO that had been monitoring the illegal logging in Cambodia for the past twenty years.

  ‘Is it useful?’

  The man skimmed through the folder and glanced at Adam. ‘Honestly? Not really. But thanks all the same.’

  It was somewhat deflating, to think that Hugo had done all that investigating for nothing. Adam could see from the man’s face that he wasn’t interested at all in the folder and its contents; Adam understood, too, the underlying message: that he didn’t think much of Hugo’s investigative efforts. It occurred to Adam that Hugo wou
ld have had the same response once.

  ‘The world is full of well-meaning people thinking that their acts of kindness will change it, when more often than not their involvement is an imposition,’ Hugo had told Adam during his first week at Kids at Risk. ‘As for the NGOs operating here, I can tell you there are two categories. You get the shysters and you get the well-meaning ones. And again, well-meaning isn’t necessarily good.’

  That was the old Hugo, Adam realized. Down-to-earth, practical, looking for solutions to the everyday problems they faced. It was only later, when the NGO took off and his name was on everyone’s lips, that he started talking about their work in grandiose terms. All of a sudden it wasn’t about available beds and teachers, training packages and budgets. Words and expressions like ‘vision’, ‘hope’ and ‘a better world’ kept cropping up in conversation. Often, he’d get a faraway sort of look in his eye, and talk about ‘this country’s future’ as though its shape were up to him. But they too had looked to Hugo for inspiration. His wife, his friends and colleagues, had all admired him. He was twice as energetic as everyone else, twice as committed. At headquarters in London, the younger generation looked to him for guidance and inspiration. He knew how to get results, and he made a name for the NGO, so that funds began to flow.

  They’d all made him feel like he was Jesus walking on water. Who could blame him if he’d got ahead of himself?

  ‘I remember that Quercy bloke,’ the man told Adam as they stood up to leave. When he smiled, Adam saw he was missing a couple of teeth and the rest were stained yellow. ‘He was a pain in the backside, wasn’t he?’ He saw the look of shock on Adam’s face and raised his hands in a gesture of apology. ‘No offence or anything, but he was. Too full of his own importance. But it’s bloody tragic to die like that. I hope they catch the bastard who did this to him.’

  ‘So do I,’ Adam said, dismayed.

  ‘You know, I’ve heard good things about you,’ the Australian continued, to Adam’s surprise. ‘I expect you’ll do a better job than Quercy. I’m not trying to bag the guy, especially when he’s dead. All I’m saying is the job needs a man who’s less self-involved. Whose ego doesn’t take up so much room. Catch my drift?’

  Adam nodded, too stunned to say anything. He was appalled by the other man’s forthrightness. Yet, as he headed back to the car, he felt a great weight lift from his shoulders.

  If Hugo’s findings were nothing new, Adam realized it seemed unlikely that anyone would go to the trouble of killing him to shut him up. Whatever the reason for his death, it wasn’t his personal crusade against land evictions. The Australian fellow had been quite clear in that respect.

  Adam wanted to tell someone about the meeting. He tried to call Kate but the call went straight to voicemail.

  He was so caught up in his thoughts that when the pain started, he didn’t immediately recognize it for what it was. Once he realized what was happening, he pulled over outside a row of shop-houses and parked his motorbike. It was safer to walk. He just needed to get home.

  No. He forced himself to stop. It was obvious, had been obvious all along what he needed. He just needed to summon up the courage.

  He’d heard recently that the old man was dead. Five years ago. Not through his mother or Sabrina. An old school friend had emailed him. It meant nothing to Adam, except to know that his mother and sister were free of the bastard.

  On his eighteenth birthday he’d walked out of the house, vowing never to look back. His father had been a drunk and a bully. They had all lived in fear of the abuse. Not just verbal either. But who was worse? His father, or him, for walking out and leaving his mother and Sabrina to the old man’s mercy? It had been much easier for him to go and never look back. Easier for him, but he imagined it had been hell for them.

  If Kate knew about his past, she would say he’d been a coward, and she would be right. He wasn’t sure why he was thinking of her now, but it helped.

  He dialled his sister’s number.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Adam?’ she said, when no one spoke.

  He was terrified.

  ‘Sabrina?’

  ‘Oh Adam,’ she said.

  FORTY-ONE

  After visiting the Ardas, Morel returned to the hotel and pulled his chair up to the desk. He picked up the phone and dialled Jeremy Nolan’s number in Spain.

  The conversation was brief. Jeremy admitted telling Nora where his parents’ house keys were, confirming what Morel already knew. Nora was staying at the Nolan house. Or had been. Maybe she had gone, Morel told himself. It was better than imagining that something had happened to her, after that visit. A man had come looking for her and then left alone. It didn’t take a great deal of imagination to come up with a few ugly scenarios.

  ‘Please don’t tell my parents,’ Jeremy said.

  ‘That’s fine. But I need you to send her a text. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve got international roaming.’

  ‘Well, tell her you spoke with me. And that I said this has gone on long enough. She is taking this too far. Tell her, Commandant Morel is really pissed off. Can you do that?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Yes, Commandant Morel.’

  ‘She needs to be home. Her mother is worried sick.’

  ‘I’ll do it straight away,’ Jeremy said, sounding scared. He was just a kid, after all, Morel reminded himself.

  ‘Another thing. You told me the last time we spoke that Nora wasn’t at the Paradise Hotel with you on Sunday night.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I wondered whether you’d seen her father?’

  ‘No. Didn’t see him. Why, was he there?’ Jeremy said, then added, ‘I did see her mum, though.’

  Morel’s heart skipped a beat. ‘Mariko Arda?’

  ‘Yeah. I saw her in the hallway. I was getting in the lift. Me and my friends. We were going to the pool. It’s on the top floor. The rooms are pretty lousy but the pool is awesome.’

  ‘What was Mrs Arda doing?’

  ‘No idea. I didn’t speak to her. I told Nora I’d seen her there, though.’

  Morel thought about this. ‘When was that?’

  ‘I mentioned it to her sometime after . . . I mean, after Hugo Quercy was, you know . . .’

  ‘After he was killed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Morel frowned. What had Mariko Arda been doing at the hotel? What would Nora think she was doing there? Would she think her mother was up to no good? Having an affair with Hugo Quercy? The girl’s absence from home suddenly made a lot of sense. She was angry and upset, and she didn’t want to be anywhere near her mother.

  Morel had another thought. What if the man who’d shown up at Jeremy’s, the one mentioned by the construction worker, was Paul Arda? Maybe Nora had summoned him there, saying he should keep it quiet because it was something her mother couldn’t know.

  ‘Is that it?’ Jeremy asked after Morel’s silence had gone on a while.

  ‘For now.’

  ‘I’m really sorry if I caused any trouble.’

  Morel sighed. ‘Don’t worry about it. Just make sure Nora goes home. She’ll listen to you. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes, sure thing.’

  Morel felt that if he could just make contact with Nora, he would have the answer he was looking for. What else could he do?

  Sarit was still at the station with Thierry Gaveaux. Morel wondered whether to go back there, sit down with his Cambodian colleague and map out their next steps.

  Gaveaux had admitted to being attacked by Quercy. Though he hadn’t known at the time that it was him. Quercy had broken his arm. Gaveaux wasn’t sorry the man was dead, but he had nothing to do with his death, he told Morel and Sarit. And they believed him.

  Before Morel on the desk were the sketches he’d done of the musician and his instrument, and a stack of paper. He took one square from the top of the pile and began to fold. He kept his mind focused on what his han
ds were doing. The voices in his head, the stories he’d listened to these past few days receded and he was left with this square of paper, which his fingers gave life to.

  Sok Pran had said that maybe he needed to sit still to help the solution to this murder come to him. It was good advice. Morel needed space; ideally, he needed the calm and solitude of his apartment. For a moment, Morel wished with all his heart that he could be back there.

  It grew dark. He didn’t stop his fingers working. Later he would throw out the fanciful figures he’d made.

  He thought about Chenda, his cousin. She was intelligent and thoughtful, and she worked hard. Maybe her generation could make a difference in the years to come. Morel had listened to her with great interest. Her description of Sihanouk as the Chameleon King had made him pause.

  ‘Everyone who met him thought they knew him but in the end all anyone saw was the part they wanted to see. He had many faces. Imagine walking into a room full of mirrors and seeing multiple reproductions of one’s self. No two are alike. Then imagine being that man. What would it feel like?’

  Quercy had been like that too, Morel reflected. A man with many faces. His friends, colleagues and relatives had seen what they wanted to see.

  What was it Arda had said about his friend? That he was full of life. Fearless. Paul thought Hugo Quercy was everything he failed to be.

  Hugo and I were competitors before we truly became friends. We liked the same girl. We both went out of our way to woo her. She picked Hugo, of course. Paul’s words. Spoken with a measure of admiration – but there had been something else there, too. Regret.

  Morel grew still, his fingers poised in mid-air, holding a blank square of paper. Quercy didn’t fight back. Did he think he deserved a beating? When the phone rang it gave him a fright. It was Sarit.

  ‘Will you be returning to the station?’

  ‘I’ll catch up with you later,’ Morel said. He’d made up his mind. ‘There’s something I have to do first.’