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

no king-sized bed, just long hot months of lonely boredom stretching ahead, leading inexorably towards the inevitable.

‘Well, I reckon you can count me in, chief,’ he said brightly. ‘You know me. Try anything once. Suck it and see, eh?’

Elliot smiled. Slattery had a habit of picking up odd clichés, using one till he had burned it out, and then picking up another. On their last outing it had been bite on the bullet, the time before, the nature of the beast. Everything had been the goddamned nature of the beast! Now he was sucking it and seeing. But Elliot had also detected a false bravura in the Australian, a chill behind his grey eyes that the grin could not hide. It worried him a little, but he said nothing.

They drove the rest of the way in a silence punctuated by Slattery’s curses, down Rajadamri Road, past the Royal Sports Club on the right and Lumpini Park a little further down on the left. The traffic was still heavy, buses, trucks, private cars, taxis and tuk-tuks – small three-wheeler samlors, extended motor-scooters with two seats at the back for passengers. Great multi-storey blocks rose up now on either side of them, cheek by jowl with the mean little rows of Chinese and Muslim shops, multicoloured, multilingual signs hanging out over shambolic broken pavements from which rose the stench of the sewers below.

They crossed Rama IV Road at a busy junction and turned into Silom Road, where the nightlife was gathering momentum in the sticky heat. Past Patpong Road with its noisy clubs and bars, sexual floorshows and hundreds of bar girls who were little more than children. Slattery pulled in outside the Narai Hotel. It towered above them, rising into the inky black of the south-east Asian night. Elliot got out and Slattery pushed his case at him. ‘You check in, chief. I’ll park the car then come and find you.’

The chill of the air conditioning beyond the sliding glass doors was delicious after the humidity outside. Tourists sat drinking coffee in a pizzeria coffee shop while young girls, white robes glowing in the ultraviolet of the Don Juan bar, smiled alluringly as he passed. An incongruous Christmas tree sat in the lobby, erected no doubt to make Western tourists feel at home. It seemed peculiarly out of place in this deeply Buddhist country. Elliot filled out the paperwork at the reception desk, feeling tired for the first time. It was almost ten o’clock, though it was not yet three back in London, and he had been in the air for more than thirteen hours. He never slept on aeroplanes.

It was a relief to get to his room. He sank back on the bed and closed his eyes, the drone of aircraft engines still in his ears. A scraping noise at his door made him sit up abruptly. A small card had been slipped beneath it from the corridor. Elliot picked it up and smiled wearily. A massage parlour somewhere in Chinatown. They didn’t waste any time. A sharp knock at the door startled him. Slattery stood there grinning. ‘Saw some greaseball slip a card under your door.’ He took the card from Elliot and examined it. ‘We could go see McCue tomorrow.’

Elliot shook his head. ‘Don’t you ever give up?’

The grin again. ‘Only kidding. Got a tuk-tuk waiting downstairs. Ready when you are, chief.’

The tuk-tuk spluttered and bumped its way perilously through the traffic in Silom Road, taking a right into Charoen Krung Road and then sharp left down to the Oriental Hotel landing stage. The jetty was ablaze with light, crowded with all manner of people – children with mothers in black pyjamas, men in smart evening wear, monks in saffron robes – all coming and going on a variety of craft, large and small, that bobbed gently on the slow-moving waters of the Chao Phraya river. A hubbub of voices competed with the noise of the traffic on this east bank, haggling over the price of a cross-river trip on a waterborne taxi.

‘Back in a sec, chief.’ Slattery slipped off through the crowds to do his own haggling. Elliot was content to leave him to it. Slattery was an old Bangkok hand, knew his way about. Elliot let the city night wash over him. He had forgotten how many people in this sprawling river port lived on or over water, along the hundreds of klongs that ran like veins off the main artery of the river. He had read somewhere that Bangkok was sinking at the rate of half an inch a year. The incredible sinking city. In the rainy season you had to wade hip-deep through some of the streets. Perhaps, he thought, most of its people would one day be living on or over water – and some of them under it.

Slattery re-emerged from the crowd, wearing his habitual grin. ‘Alright, chief. Got us a ride and saved us a few baht.’

The ride Slattery had got them turned out to be in a sleek yellow hang yao canoe. The propeller that powered it was fixed at the end of a long driveshaft which the toothless Thai driver used as a rudder. The driver showed his gums in what was clearly meant as a friendly grin. His eyes were glazed, and he babbled something incoherent as Elliot climbed in. Elliot turned to Slattery. ‘He’s pissed!’

‘’Course he is. These guys don’t function without at least a half-bottle of Thai whisky inside them.’

Still showing his gums, the driver gunned his engine and they powered away from the landing stage, knifing through the wash from the overladen rice barges that trafficked up and down the river. They headed south, the hot breeze and cool spray in their faces, exhilarating. Under the Krungthep Bridge, then turning in a wide arc into the Dao Khanong Canal, their progress shattered city lights reflected on dark waters. Tall lamp-posts rose from the water on either side, wooden poles linked by a confusion of arcing