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

cables carrying electricity and telephone lines. They slowed suddenly, turning again, this time into the maze of klongs, a shambles of teak houses raised on stilts overhanging the banks, linked here and there by ramshackle wooden bridges that spanned the waters.

Lights shone in most of the houses, many of the stilt-raised shops still trading. A confusion of sounds filled the night air – a babble of voices giving way to the tinny blare of Thai pop music and the Americanized jingles of a million television sets. They passed men and children bathing in the water at the foot of wooden steps leading to their homes, women perched precariously on narrow wooden terraces, peeling potatoes. Myriad small boats gave way to the hang yao, resentful faces briefly glimpsed, raised voices calling after them in the dark. ‘Tell him to slow down,’ Elliot shouted. ‘We’re going to hit someone!’

Slattery called something to the driver, who shrugged and pulled back on the throttle, slowing them down to a walking pace, and reducing the roar of the engine to little more than a throaty idle. They cruised slowly through the maze for another ten minutes or more, turning into increasingly narrow canals, thick vegetation and leaning palms crowding in on either side, choking the gaps between the houses. Slattery leaned forward and spoke to the driver, who pulled over at the foot of a short flight of wooden steps leading up to a narrow drooping teak house that stood in darkness atop its spindly legs. He cut the engine and a silence encroached with the night, broken only by the constant gentle slapping of water against stilts. A rank smell hung in the air. Rotting vegetation, human waste, woodsmoke. Something heavy thudded against the side of the canoe. Slattery leaned over to take a look, shining a small pocket torchlight into the water.

‘Dead dog,’ he said, and grinned. The decaying creature, bloated by putrid gases, drifted away. ‘We’re here.’ He jumped out on to a tiny landing stage and Elliot followed.

‘He lives here?’ Elliot asked incredulously.

‘Sure. Married a Thai girl, a bar girl. I bet she thought she was escaping from all this.’ He laughed softly, ironically. ‘And all the time it was old Billy doing the escaping. Don’t worry about the driver. He’ll wait.’

As they climbed the steps, Elliot glanced back and saw the driver taking a long pull from a murky-looking bottle. A veranda with a rickety rail ran the length of the house at the front. It creaked under their weight, and an old rocking chair tipped slowly back and forth. Mosquito nets hung loosely in open windows. Slattery rapped gently on the door. ‘Hoi, McCue!’ His voice sounded inordinately loud in the whispering silence. ‘Get out yer scratcher. Got a man here wants to see you.’

A light came on somewhere within, then after a moment the door opened and McCue appeared in a dirty white singlet and shorts, barefoot and blinking in the light. ‘Shit! What time of night’s this to come calling?’ He was a small man, no more than five-five. Sinuous, wiry arms and legs, lean-faced with a nose like a blade and a chin with a cutting edge. His eyes were dark and hostile, and his skin tanned a deep, even brown. His black hair was tousled, and had it not been for the Midwest drawl, at a glance you could have taken him for a Thai. He was younger than either of his visitors. Early thirties, Elliot guessed.

‘Hey, Billy boy, that’s no way to greet an old buddy. The chief wanted to meet you.’

McCue eyed Elliot darkly. ‘You’d better come in.’

Inside, the main room was neat and spotless, stone jars lined up against one wall, a wooden dresser with a water bowl and jug. There were no chairs, no table. McCue squatted cross-legged on the floor and indicated that they should do the same. As he sat, Elliot saw, through an open doorway, a half-naked woman slipping into a panung, a large sarong-like garment drawn up between the legs like an Indian dhoti. Beyond her, a mosquito net hung from the ceiling over a big square mattress on the floor. Inside, a baby stirred restlessly. ‘You hungry?’ McCue asked.

‘Starving,’ said Slattery.

McCue called into the back room and the woman appeared in the doorway. She pressed her palms together and bowed solemnly to the strangers. You could see she had once been very beautiful. Thai girls are considered by many to be the most beautiful in the world. But it is a beauty that fades quickly with a life that is hard, features coarsening, skin withering, so that by forty they can often look like old women. This woman – Lotus, McCue had called her – was perhaps thirty. Already well down that road. McCue spoke to her curtly in stuttering, guttural Thai. She nodded, and without a word moved off into another part of the house.

‘This is Jack Elliot,’ Slattery said.

McCue reached out a hand for a cursory handshake. ‘Elliot.’

‘How much has Mike told you?’

‘Enough to know it’s fucking madness.’

‘So why do you want to go?’

‘Because there’s a big fat pay cheque at the other end.’

Elliot glanced around him. ‘Thinking of moving upmarket?’

McCue inclined his head towards the back room. ‘This ain’t no place to bring up a kid. I’m taking him home with me.’ He spoke softly with a voice like Thai silk, his face expressionless, his eyes impenetrable.

‘Shit, Billy, you could have gone home anytime.’

‘I never wanted to before. But then, I never had a kid before.’

Elliot looked at him thoughtfully, taking in the scars on his thighs and calves. ‘What’s your track record?’

‘Three tours in Nam, sixty-nine to seventy-one.’

‘Nobody did three tours.’

‘I volunteered for the other two.’

‘With the Big Red One?’

‘First Engineer Battalion, First Cavalry Division. Sergeant, Tunnel Rats.’

The Tunnel Rats had been an eight-man elite team operating in the Iron Triangle north of Saigon, flushing VC out of the hundreds of kilometres of tunnel networks where the communist guerrillas lived and fought