LITMIR.BIZ

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the plane was going to crash? No, that was ridiculous. The pilot didn’t look like a potential suicide. But the mystery was so maze-like he felt trapped by his ignorance.

      ‘Quick please!’

      He climbed the ladder.

      There were no seat belts in the tiny plane. There were barely any seats. The carpet of the cabin had worn away so much the steel of the chassis was visible: bare rivets and bolts.

      A rusty door slid shut and the pilot clicked a switch and slammed a pedal; the old wheels rumbled down the cracking concrete and Jake wondered if this plane had enough life to reach the end of the runway, let alone the royal capital of Laos, and then they were up and away and banking left and up and up and . . . just about over the crest of the surrounding hills.

      The lushly forested peaks were lavishly moustached with white mist: the plane banked left and ascended again and the green and rugged summits of the Cordillera stretched beneath, to a hazy horizon of more hills and blueness.

      ‘Fuck,’ said Jake, resting his head against the tiny perspex window behind. Chemda’s worried and weary smile was about ten inches away. The plane was that small. It was just the two of them, sitting opposite each other, and a hungover pilot, in a plane the size of a dinghy.

      ‘Hmong airforce one?’ said Chemda. And then she suddenly laughed. And Jake laughed too, because he needed to relieve the tension; and because he just liked her laughter: there was something lyrically and infectiously sarcastic in it, pretty yet grounded – and clever. Aware of the absurdity of everything.

      ‘What a night.’ Jake shook his head, the laughter dying on his lips. ‘What a fucking horrible couple of days.’

      ‘Samnang.’ She sighed, and swallowed away some emotion. ‘I still can’t work it out? Aiii. Khoeng koch . . .’

      She was speaking in Khmer, it was incomprehensible.

      But Jake was comprehending. He felt like he had, this instant, flown through the clouds to the dazzling blue of the truth.

      ‘Suicide!’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Samnang wasn’t killed. It was suicide.’

      She gazed at him, perplexed.

      ‘Explain?’

      ‘It must be suicide. No? Otherwise it’s too much coincidence. Think about it. Your other guy just runs into a minefield, knowing the danger? Do you believe that is likely? Why would he do that. Now this other guy dies – slashes himself, hangs himself –’

      ‘But why, why kill himself?’

      The plane banked. Jake raced on:

      ‘Maybe someone is, or was, threatening these men, telling them not to help you – putting on intense pressure, maybe getting to their families?’ Jake was speculating, wildly, un scientifically. But he was sure he was right. ‘And that’s why he killed himself, that way. There is a message in the killing. He did it to himself, like a suicide note no one could erase or steal, knowing someone would see the terrible echo.’

      Chemda frowned. Jake continued:

      ‘Think about it. Tou comes to him, and says, We’ve found the jars, rediscovered the jars – and then – you see??’

      ‘OK . . .’ Chemda nodded. ‘And then, ah, Samnang realizes something terrible is about to be revealed – something he was involved in, all those years ago. He sees no way out. But he wants to leave a note, that no one can erase –’ She hesitated, pensively, then said: ‘But still, suicide. How can we be sure?’

      ‘The knife,’ said Jake, almost triumphant. ‘The knife was just lying on the floor. Would a cold blooded killer do that? Leave the weapon lying by the body? We know Tou didn’t do it. He has absolutely no motive. If it was the cops, they would have taken the knife and used it, to frame Tou –’

      A brief silence ensued, the pilot was talking quietly and cheerily in Lao, via the cockpit radio. Jake stiffened with renewed tension; he may have solved the puzzle of Samnang’s death, but their situation remained precarious. Exceptionally precarious. Who was the pilot talking to? And what was he saying? Jake realized he hasn’t asked a question, of Chemda, a question that had been ripening in his thoughts for a while.

      ‘Why aren’t we flying straight to Phnom Penh? It’s just an hour or two.’

      Chemda’s oval face was smudged with dirt and tiredness.

      ‘They will know if we try and fly straight across the frontier. International air traffic control. That could cause very big problems. But if we go to Luang there are other ways out of the country . . . Much more discreet exits. Roads, ah, through the jungle.’

      ‘And there are lots of tourists in Luang.’

      ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It will be safer for you there. You won’t be quite so visible.’ She twisted in the painfully small cabin, looking down at the ruched green pelt of the countryside: the forests already were thinning, the hills mellowing and softening:

      ‘That is the Mekong. We are nearly there.’

      ‘Where shall we stay? I know some hotels.’

      She shook her head:

      ‘My family has very good friends in Luang. A French couple. A little hotel by the river, hidden away. Good place to hide for one night . . . Sleep, we need to sleep. No? Then we work out a way to get out of Laos.’

      Already they were descending, Jake saw roads and a truck, the metal roofs of rice barns and farmhouses, sugarcane fields. Moments later they bumped to a halt on a brown dirt airstrip. It was another random airport in the bush, even more ramshackle than the Secret City. Just a hut at the side of a broad boulevard of mud and a man in the hut who nodded, knowingly, at the pilot, when they walked from the plane to the perimeter gate.

      ‘Luang Prabang,’ said the pilot, pointing beyond the wall at a sunlit road. ‘Sabaydee.’ The pilot slapped Jake on the back, and then did an elegant wai – the hands-pressed-together, all purpose, praying-and-bowing gesture of Indochina – to Chemda. She wai’d him in return.

      The pilot, Jake noted, still smelled of laolao whisky. Maybe he had been drinking on the plane. But they had made it. Jake and Chemda grabbed their bags, their pathetic remnants of luggage, and walked out onto the road. The traffic was light, bordering on non-existent: a few farm trucks, then nothing, then a Honda motorcycle carrying an entire family – father, mother, two infant children, piglet. Then nothing. But a few minutes later a yellow metal tuk-tuk coughed into view, rounding the lush bamboo stands, the tuk-tuk was decorated with stencils of Australian and British flags.

      They hailed the tuk-tuk and climbed aboard. They were heading into Luang. Jake felt his spirits rise and his nerves subside, for a moment, as the warm air breezed his face. He had loved Luang Prabang when he had first seen it, just a week ago – though it felt like a year ago. Luang Prabang: the ancient capital of the kingdom. Half French colonial resort, half glittering Buddhist citadel, royal and sacred Louangphrabang.

      And here he was again, where girls with orient smiles bicycyled quietly by the boulangerie. Where old Laotian men played petanque by the water tamarinds. Where the orange-robed monks walked from temple to temple every morning, past a hundred Buddhist shrines, and teakwood bars, and rambling Chinese shops.

      Street vendors were hawking pyramids of tangerines, arrayed on wicker baskets. Barefoot men slept on rushes in the shade of papaya trees. The mighty Mekong river slid past unnoticed, like a great and famous actor, forgotten in his dotage.

      ‘Here,’ said Chemda.

      The hotel was indeed discreet, beyond the royal palace and the tall scruffy stupa: so discreet the road gave up before it reached the building.

      They climbed out of the tuk-tuk and paced the last hundred metres of dirt. The hotel door was closed.

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