LITMIR.BIZ

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he could be trusted with these truths. He said:

      ‘Go on.’

      ‘He is a powerful man, my grandfather. Sovirom Sen.’

      ‘Sovirom Sen?’ Jake had heard of him. A businessman. In Phnom Penh. Fiercely anti communist. Rich. Powerful. Connected. ‘He’s your grandfather?’

      ‘He is my grandfather. He is the man the police spoke to in Ponsavanh.’

      ‘You said it was the UN.’

      Chemda shook her head. ‘They tried the UN first, of course, but it was my grandfather who really pulled their stupid strings. Got us released. I didn’t want to say it out loud, at the police station, not so bluntly as that.’

      It all made sense. Jake sat back. It made a lot of sense. That’s why Chemda felt able to take these risks. She had a powerful man in her family. That counted for a lot in Southeast Asia: a patriarchal culture. That was almost everything. Face and money and masculine power. Sovirom Sen. First name Sen, surname Sovirom, a regal name, a rich Cambodian surname. Most Cambodian surnames were short, perfunctory, monosyllabic, the rolling polysyllables meant money and class.

      ‘He’s involved in import and export, right?’

      Chemda shrugged.

      ‘Business with China. His family is . . . or we were . . . upper class. It sounds absurd but that is the case. We were friends of Prince Sihanouk. Nearly all the bourgeoisie and the upper classes were slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge, as soon as they got the chance. But grandfather didn’t die. He survived. I have always admired him for that, loved him.’

      ‘So it was his idea you came here. To find out what happened to his wife?’

      ‘No, ’said Chemda. ‘It was my idea. But he was proud of me.’

      Jake fell silent. The track was now so rough, so barely there, so narrow and unused, trees and bushes were reaching in through the windows, clawing. They all shut the windows of the rattling, scraping, Vietnam War era jeep; conversation was stifled by the crackle of the undergrowth, the squelch of the tyres, the jerk of the car slapping from rut to rut, then up onto the rattling craquelure of sunbaked mud. He was still trying to solve the sombre puzzle of Samnang’s murder: he didn’t believe Tou did it, for a moment. The boy was incapable, he had no motive; but then, what? Who? Why?

      ‘Here.’

      They had emerged from the woodland onto another flat meadow. And there were the large stone jars, in direct view.

      The jeep parked. Yeng climbed out, smiling, proudly: pointing. Jake looked at the fields and the shining rice paddies stretching to hills; a waterbuffalo, tethered to a wild magnolia, stared back at them, pugnaciously bored.

      ‘Is it safe?’

      Tou nodded, leading the way. ‘No bomb here. Yeng say no bomb.’ The young Hmong man was almost running. ‘The Khmer Rouge took most of the remain in other place, but here you can still see some. In here. And here. And here. Soon this will be gone. They want to destroy this. But they wait because Yeng say people come here, last year. Still looking. American.’

      Jake stepped closer:

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘He say . . .’ Tou turned to the Hmong man, his dark face lined with a smile. Tou asked the question again, and Yeng repeated his narrative; then Tou interpreted: ‘Yeng say he was driver for them. Many days. He know the area, the bomb. So they hire him. Last year. American. Fishhook. Fishwork? Don’t know.’

      ‘They came here to examine the jars.’

      ‘Yes!’ Tou said. ‘Last year. See. Here. Look. Yeng say this is what they find. And this is what I tell Mister Samnang. He sad then, scared.’

      He was pointing inside one of the nearest jars. The large, two metre high, very crudely carved vessels were made of some prickly stone, rough to the touch; Jake leaned over and stared into the foetid darkness of the jar indicated by Tou. His eyes adjusted.

      Several human skulls stared back at him, sitting forlornly on the stone floor. Next to them lay a small pyre of burned bones, ribs or femurs, pelvic bones maybe: with the appearance of old, charred wood.

      The skulls had holes in them. Like the skulls at Cheung Ek, smashed by the cudgels of the Khmer Rouge. But the holes here were at the front, smaller. And of course the skulls were much much older. Jake was no scientist, but he could tell these skulls were ancient – by the mouldering. Yet they were also preserved somehow. By lids, maybe? Some of the jars had until recently possessed lids – he had read that. The lids may only have been wrenched away, in the last few decades: by the Khmer Rouge, or by this mysterious American. Exposing the archaic remains within.

      It was intriguing. But even so, these were just old bones and skulls. Why would the rediscovery of these bones provoke such emotion in Samnang, and how did it cause his murder?

      Chemda was obviously working the same mystery. She was peering into the jars, talking quickly with Tou, in English and French. Maybe Khmer. Jake couldn’t quite follow.

      ‘Many people have speculated,’ she said, coming over to Jake, a little breathless. ‘Speculated that the jars were urns, funeral urns, for a civilization we do not understand, but this is nothing amazing. I don’t see why the communists got so excited by this. Or Samnang. It merely proves an existing theory – Tou – Tou –’ She swivelled on the young man. He was smiling, shyly. Anxiously. In the silent countryside with the solitary waterbuffalo still gazing their way.

      ‘Tou, ask Yeng what the Khmer Rouge found, why they were so drawn to this site – more than others?’

      Tou shrugged. ‘I already know: I ask him that. He heard the American talking, he know some English.’

      ‘So?’

      ‘Thousand year ago. Many people here, Khmer people, black Khmer. They have . . . much war, many killing, many war. And then . . . then they . . . suicide themselves, kill themself. And they put each other in the jar. Like tombs, hide themselves. Kill each other and burn the bone.’

      Jake intervened.

      ‘How did they establish this? The Khmer Rouge? The American?’

      Tou pouted his ignorance, then turned, and asked in Khmer a question of the Hmong man – who was now glancing anxiously at the horizon. The old man shrugged and muttered. Tou interpreted.

      ‘We not know. But he know the people in the jar were Khmer. And the hole in the head . . . the skulls. They were . . . in the story I think. There is the Khmer curse . . . The Black Khmer?’

      Yeng interrupted, unprompted, gesturing, and very agitated. A frown of real fear on his face.

      Jake turned.

      Noises.

      The silent countryside was silent no more. The trees bent, the sun glared, the noises grew. The waterbuffalo was straining on his tether. Loud car noises were coming towards them. Jake strained to see: then he saw. Rolling over a hill, maybe five kilometres away. Big white 4 by 4s. Like the ones that had arrived in the hotel, dirty but new.

      The police. Surely the police.

      Tou said:

      ‘Now we run.’

      Chapter 7

      The cold winds moaned and wailed right outside Annika’s cottage. The sound was distressing, like anguished mothers were wandering along the derelict lanes of Vayssieres, battering on the ancient doors, searching for their murdered children. Here in the very middle of the Cham des Bondons.

      This was Julia’s first visit to the Cham since she had been dismissed by Ghislaine last week. She was glad to be with Annika again, with her friend. Yet she was also, as always, unsettled by the surroundings. She couldn’t understand why Annika lived quite so close to the stones. The Cham was wonderfully atmospheric, but why choose to live in the only habitable cottage,

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