LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘S21.’ He said. ‘The torture garden. Absolutely. I know the history. Horrific. But maybe I missed . . . some details.’

      She gazed across the cafe seats. The market was closing up; dried rats lollipopped on wooden sticks were being piled in cardboard boxes. Then she spoke:

      ‘I have read two accounts of some experiments there. Accounts verified by the guy who ran the camp.’

      ‘Comrade Duch.’

      ‘Yes. Comrade Duch. Apparently, in Tuol Sleng they used to tie prisoners to iron beds, and they would attach pumps to them, and then drain every . . . drop of blood from their bodies. They wanted the blood for Khmer Rouge soldiers, but they turned it into, ah, a form of torture, a sadistic game.’

      Jake was sweating, the sun was directly overhead, the hard plateau sun. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, as she elaborated.

      ‘They drained all the blood from these chained prisoners, just to see what would happen. Over many hours they took out all the blood until not a drop was left, the prisoners would writhe and gasp, someone described them as sounding like rasping crickets at the end, gasping, stridulating, croaking like insects as they died.’

      Chemda looked briefly away, gazing at two barefoot boys sucking on the bloodstained ice from the fish counters; then she turned her dark serious eyes on him.

      Jake spoke:

      ‘Grotesque. Truly grotesque. But why repeat that experiment on Samnang?’

      ‘It’s a message. Someone is giving me, us, ah, a message. To scare us or warn us, or remind us of the horrors of Pol Pot. I don’t know. But Tou wouldn’t know any of this, and anyway if he wanted to kill Samnang he wouldn’t do it so bizarrely. But it surely cannot be coincidence: no one dies like that, as horribly as that, for no good reason. They are trying to scare me away. Ah. Because they know what I do – investigate the Khmer Rouge and their barbarities. They want me to give up. But I’m not giving up.’

      Her expression was dark.

      Jake felt a need to move:

      ‘OK. Let’s go for a walk, Chemda. Somewhere with fewer rats.’

      They stood and stepped from the market, paced through a busy side road, into the main street. It was more crowded and hectic than ever. And it was obviously full of Hmong people now: many of the women were dressed in the most splendid finery.

      For several moments Jake and Chemda observed, together and silent and alone. They stared at the passing people: the cavalcade of girls, twirling delicate silken umbrellas, escorted by proud young men in ill-fitting suits. She answered his question before he asked.

      ‘No, they don’t always dress like this. It’s the Hmong New Year. The most important three days, when people meet their future husbands.’

      ‘So . . .’ ‘They are fiercely traditional. Animist . . . but – wait – is that – over there?’

      She was pointing, and trying not to point. Jake scanned the scene: the parasols and the pick ups, the Chinese potnoodle trucks and the silver jangling coins on summery dresses.

      A small figure was discreetly waving at them, down the road, half hidden between two large jeeps:

      ‘It’s Tou.’

      Jake marvelled. This was Tou? He was barely more than a boy. And this was the crucial figure? Their all-important guide? This was the chief suspect in the homicide of Samnang? It was indeed a ludicrous concept: this boy looked more street urchin than murdering villain.

      Tou’s smile was broken; his shirt was grubby and worn; his face was young and brave and eager and frightened.

      Glancing either way, Tou slipped into the shadows, then seconds later he reappeared, directly behind them, speaking quick, anxious, and fairly articulate English:

      ‘Come, please, quick, Chemda – Come!!’

      His nervous glance flickered over Jake.

      ‘It’s OK,’ said Chemda. ‘It’s OK. He’s a friend, he’s with me. What is it? Are you alright? I know the police are –’

      ‘Chemda I have seen what they were looking for.’

      ‘What?’

      Tou gave his anxious reply. ‘The stripe Hmong! One of them come to me yesterday, old Hmong man. And he told me – he told me stories of the Khmer Rouge came here, in the 1970s. And others. That’s what I tell Doctor Samnang last night. That’s what I try to tell you on the phone. Then Samnang he got sad, crying, and I ran away –’

      ‘What? What stories?’

      ‘Chemda. I show you. We must to be quick, but . . .’ He lifted a finger, invoking their silence, and their discretion. ‘I can show you.’

      ‘What do you mean? Show me what??’

      ‘I can show you what the Khmer Rouge found. Many many years ago. On the Plain of Jars.’

      Chapter 6

      ‘Chemda, why are you taking this risk? Why not just give up? And go home?’

      She didn’t answer. Jake wondered whether to try again. They were speeding south, jeeping into the heart of the Plain, with Tou and the old Hmong man, Yeng. They were taking a terrible risk, disobeying the cops, quitting Ponsavanh, going to see what Tou had discovered.

      Yeng had swiftly agreed to help them, as he had already helped Tou: he apparently hated the Pathet Lao, the Khmer Rouge, all the communists; he was a wiry determined old guy, maybe an ex fighter, Jake suspected – certainly he was toughly contemptuous of everyone and everything. Yet likeable.

      Jake had been told Yeng was Hmong Bai, Striped Hmong, one of the most rebellious and warlike of Hmong tribes. Jake could see his motivation.

      But why would Chemda be so audacious, so foolhardly? The cops in Ponsavanh were truly menacing; rustic and clumsy, but definitely menacing. If he and Chemda got caught doing this, with the prime suspect for the murder – Tou – they would of course be immediately deported, if not arrested and imprisoned. And very probably they would be beaten. Badly.

      Yet Chemda’s dark and serene Khmer face was impassive; only the tiniest tic of nerves showed in the corner of her eyes. Nothing else.

      Frustrated, Jake looked out of the window, wary and nervy.

      The old jeep was rumbling along lanes which were little better than cattle-tracks. Wooden houses of Hmong villagers lined the way, large wooden rice barns stood beside the laurel trees and the elephant grass. Some of the barns had strange metal struts supporting their thatched or iron roofs, fat pillars of steel curving to a point.

      With a jolt – a physical jolt as the ancient American jeep vaulted a crack in the sunbaked muddy track – Jake realized the pillars in the rice barns were bomb cases. The Hmong were using bomb cases to construct their barns: there was obviously so much unexploded ordnance around here, so many old bombs and shells and grenades providing so much metal, the swidden-farming Hmong were scavenging the stuff for buildings.

      And now Jake looked closer he could see American hardware everywhere: rusty shell-cases used as flower pots. Metres of corrugated tank tracks utilized for fences. Huge bombs sliced in half and employed as water troughs for oxen.

      ‘Why don’t you tell me? Why are you taking this risk?’

      It was Chemda, at last. She had spoken. Her brown eyes secured his gaze; her expression was demure, clever, and opaque.

      ‘’Cause I want the story,’ he said. ‘I want to get a decent story for once in my life.’

      ‘You want it that badly?’

      ‘That badly.’

      ‘And that’s it? Just that?’

      Jake

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