The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (learn to read books .TXT) 📕

pulled away across the cobbles, he saw, in the rearview mirror, the girl’s tears shining wet on her cheeks, and he was glad that someone, at least, would cry for Grace.

*

A lamp burned in the dark by the bed. The doctor fluttered over her, nervous and sweating, frameless spectacles magnifying myopic eyes.

‘Well?’ Blair’s impatience increased the doctor’s agitation. He would be well paid for this illegal night call, but he was still scared.

‘She has a broken nose, concussion. Two, maybe three, broken ribs. It is impossible to say what internal injuries there might be. You must get her to a hospital.’

‘Not in Bangkok. Can you give her something to kill the pain?’

He opened his bag. ‘I can give her some sedatives.’

‘I don’t want her falling asleep. She needs to walk out of here.’

The doctor pushed his spectacles up on the bridge of his nose and turned wide eyes on the big Scotsman. ‘I do not think this would be wise.’

‘I’m not asking you to think. I’m asking you to patch her up as best you can.’ Blair’s voice was tight with restraint, clipped short by the rage he fought to control. The stink of dirty socks and sweat in the airless heat of this tiny bedroom was choking him. He went out to the smell of stale curry and cigarette smoke that permeated Sarit’s apartment. Sarit glanced up from the telephone and nodded. After a further exchange he replaced the receiver and turned towards him, the ubiquitous cigarette dangling from his lips.

‘Is done, Mistah Blaih. Eight-thirty in morning. First flight to Hong Kong.’

‘Hong Kong? Couldn’t you do better than that?’

Sarit shrugged and mopped the sweat from his brow with a damp handkerchief. ‘Sorry Mistah Blaih. First seats on London flight not before end of week.’ He nodded towards a bag lying near the door. ‘La Mère Grace girl, she bring Miss Lisa’s stuff. You want her get dressed?’

Blair looked at his watch. It was a little after four a.m. ‘In a couple of hours, when the doctor’s finished.’

‘She gonna be alright, Mistah Blaih?’

‘I hope so, Sarit. I hope so.’

*

The towers and turrets of the Grand Palace caught the rose-coloured light of the early morning sun across the river. In the foreground the concrete and steel constructions of the twentieth century jutted skyward, obscuring the view, until they turned away north, leaving the river behind. The traffic was already brisk: taxis, trams, buses, private cars, samlors – this great south-east Asian metropolis awaking after the dark hours of curfew.

Blair sat in the back of the taxi behind Sarit, rigid with tension. Beside him Lisa’s glazed eyes gazed out from behind dark glasses at the receding city. Her sense of pain was vague, somewhere far away, as if her body and her mind resided in separate places. She had no clear idea of what was happening. The sights that spooled by the window were like flickering images on a screen, remote and unreal. She had an urgent longing to close her swollen eyes and sleep, but the man who sat beside her seemed ever-present, his fingers closed tightly around her arm, urging her to stay awake, to move with him, walk with him, carry the pain.

Blair glanced at her and felt the burden of responsibility. ‘I suppose they’ll have found the body by now.’

Sarit turned and breathed smoke through his yellow teeth. ‘Tuk? His servants will have phone police last night. They look for you for sure.’

‘And Grace?’

Sarit chuckled. ‘Hah! You no worry about her. She never be seen again, that certain.’

Blair was little comforted. He examined himself in the rearview mirror. At a glance the black hair dye took years off him. But it seemed, too, to emphasize the lines on a face which appeared paler, more drawn. The man who stared back at him made him feel older inside. He felt trapped in his neatly pressed suit, prisoner of an image that was not him. He reached into an inside pocket and took out a British passport in the name of Robert Wilson. The face of the man in the rearview mirror looked back at him from page three. His heart skipped a beat. The glasses! He’d forgotten the glasses. He drew them out from his breast pocket and slipped them on, heavy tortoiseshell-framed spectacles.

Sarit grinned. ‘No worries, Mistah Blaih. Even I don’t recognize you.’ And he turned around, still chuckling, to face the front, smoke rising as he lit another cigarette.

The airport terminal was relatively quiet, and the Scotsman cursed the early hour of the flight. Airport security men, carrying small sub-machine guns, cast inscrutable eyes over the comings and goings. Blair knew the girl would attract attention. Her dark glasses could not disguise her bruised and swollen face, and she could barely walk.

Sarit collected their tickets from the Cathay Pacific reservations desk. He was anxious to pass them on to Blair and be gone. ‘Dangerous to be seen together,’ he said with a little nervous laugh. ‘Goodbye, Mistah Blaih, good luck.’ He hurried away, leaving a trail of cigarette smoke in his wake.

The girl at the check-in desk took their luggage and gave them two adjacent seats in non-smoking. She looked doubtfully at Lisa. ‘I hope you enjoyed your stay in Bangkok.’

Blair smiled. ‘Very much.’

She handed him the boarding cards. ‘Gate five. Boarding in ten minutes.’

Lisa was rapidly losing her grip on consciousness. Blair held her firmly round the waist, whispering constant encouragement. They passed through security, where officers insisted on searching her handbag. Blair waited patiently, aware all the time of curious eyes upon them. A stolid middle-aged woman, hair drawn tightly back from her face, scanned each of their passports thoroughly before waving them through immigration without a word. Blair breathed an inner sigh of relief, and looked along the signs for gate five.

‘Stop!’ The voice came like a blow to the back of his head. Blair turned to find a blue-uniformed security man advancing towards them. ‘Passports, please.’

Blair quelled his instinct to react physically –