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

‘I was educated there, and in my teens was trained as a ballet dancer. I still do the exercises to keep me supple and fit. The body is like a musical instrument, Mr Elliot. It requires care and fine tuning for it to perform at its best.’ She ran her hands down over her breasts and the flatness of her stomach as if to illustrate her point. ‘I am very proud of my body. I am forty-five years old, but I have the body of a woman half that age. And I have the benefit of age and experience to make me a better lover than any twenty-year-old.’

She took the pink tin box and shut it away in the trunk with the rest of her jewellery. ‘I cannot keep calling you Mr Elliot. You have a name, I suppose?’

‘Jack.’

‘Ah, Jacques. It was the name of my mother’s lover. My father.’ She pulled a bell cord by the bed. And almost immediately the double doors of the room were opened by the girl who had admitted them earlier. She bowed and Grace spoke to her briskly in Thai. Then she turned to Elliot. ‘If you will follow my girl she will take you to your room.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Do not worry, Jacques. This is not goodbye. Only au revoir.’

Elliot followed the girl down a long hallway, through an arch, and she opened the door to a large bedroom all in white – white carpet, white walls, white furniture, white silk sheets on the bed. Another door led off to a shower room. She left him, and he wandered around the room touching things, wondering about Grace. This was not what he had expected. He turned as the door to the bedroom opened. Two young women in long white robes padded in. One was slightly taller than the other, with long dark hair. The smaller girl had her hair cut short. They were both pretty. They bowed, and the shorter one giggled. ‘We undress you,’ she said. Elliot shrugged. He wasn’t about to protest.

They undressed him slowly and with care, hands drifting caressingly over his chest and stomach, his buttocks and thighs. He allowed them to lead him into the shower room, where they both disrobed to reveal their nakedness. The shorter one turned on the shower, testing the water until the temperature was just right. They all stepped in together, and the girls began to lather him with scented soap from coloured bottles. Their hands slid over him with an effortless professionalism, leaving no part of him untouched.

Then somewhere in the depths of the house he heard a bell ring, and the girls drew away leaving him breathless and aching for fulfilment. ‘La Mère Grace want you now,’ said the smaller one. They slipped him into a towelling robe before taking a hand each and leading him from the shower. ‘You come with us.’

He was stung by a sense of shock as they swung the doors open. Grace lay naked, stretched out on the red sheets, a girl rising from between her legs to stand by the side of the bed. Grace’s eyes were closed. ‘Come to me, Jacques. Come to me now, quickly,’ she called.

As he approached the bed, the girl moved aside and melted away. Slowly he stepped from his robe and lowered himself between Grace’s thighs, her dancer’s body lean and perfect.

Afterwards they lay for a long time, bodies tangled, sweating and breathless. She kissed him gently all over his face, his nose, his eyes, his mouth, before taking his hand and rising from the bed to lead him to the shower.

When they had washed and dressed a girl brought in a tray from which she served them sweet-scented tea in tiny bone china cups. ‘Tea is always so refreshing,’ Grace said. ‘Don’t you think?’ She had a glow about her now and, if anything, looked even more beautiful. Elliot shrugged. He would have preferred whisky.

She emptied her cup and rose to take a wooden box, inlaid with ivory, from a cabinet at the far end of the room. She brought it back to the table and opened it. Inside were several rings and a pendant necklace, each set with the same large, translucent purple stones. She handed him one of the rings. ‘Alexandrite,’ she said. ‘Hold it up to the light and turn it slowly.’ Elliot did as she asked. The stone changed from purple to red, to green and then blue, as its cut surface refracted the changing light source. One colour bleeding subtly into the next. ‘I had them cut for me in Phnom Penh. They are not very expensive, but they are very beautiful.’ She paused. ‘Do you like the ring?’

Elliot turned it again in the light. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.’

‘Keep it,’ she said. He looked at her, surprised. ‘To remember me by.’

‘But I will see you again.’

She shook her head solemnly. ‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because, Mr Elliot, it would never be the same a second time.’

*

It was some hours later that Elliot closed the door of his hotel room and switched on the bedside lamp. He lay back on the bed and felt strangely empty as he fingered the cold cut surface of the alexandrite ring in his jacket pocket. As though she had stolen something from him, something from deep inside. The memory of her face still filled his eyes, the warmth of her skin against his still burned. Of course, he knew, she was right. It could never be the same again. The telephone rang and he reached out absently and picked up the receiver.

‘Where the hell you been, chief? I been trying to get you for hours.’

Something in Slattery’s voice rang an alarm bell. Elliot sat up, suddenly alert. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘You mean you ain’t heard?’

‘For Christ’s sake, Mike . . .!’

‘Bloody Vietnamese have just invaded Cambodia.’

PART TWO

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I

The road was pitch black as the tyres of their