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

unsmiling scrutiny of the immigration officer. He slapped her passport on the desk and waved her through. Baggage reclaim and customs was another trial, encumbered as she was by a large suitcase, her shoulder bag, her anorak and the jumper the heat had compelled her to remove. Flushed and perspiring, exhausted by the journey and the heat, she faced a bewildering confusion of signs and people in the terminal building. Seedy and crowded like some oriental bazaar, it was not at all as she had imagined it. Quite unlike the clinical, ordered efficiency of Heathrow.

‘Excuse me,’ she inquired of anyone in the crowd who would listen. ‘Can someone tell me where I can get a taxi?’ But no one paid any attention, bumping and pushing past, Thai faces flashing occasional curious glances. She was fair-skinned, fair-haired and alone. A curiosity here.

She felt eyes upon her as she struggled through the crowd, but they were eyes that wanted only to help themselves. She felt a panic rising in her breast. She was stumbling at the first hurdle and felt vulnerable and very much alone. Then, to her great relief, she saw a TAXI sign and hurried towards it. Through a doorway to find herself outside. Here, if anything, the night was even hotter and more airless. There was a line of taxis parked at the kerbside. A tout approached and tried to take her case.

‘You want taxi, Miss. I get you taxi.’

She clung grimly to the case and pushed on towards the first in the line of cars. ‘No thank you, I’ll get one myself.’

A wizened old face leered at her from the driver’s side. ‘Bangkok?’

‘The Narai Hotel,’ she said with relief.

The driver pulled a lever inside the car, the boot swung open and she realized she was expected to put the luggage in herself. Trickles of sweat ran into her eyes as she lugged her case round to the back of the car and heaved it into the boot, slamming it shut as a small gesture of annoyance. No tip for you, she thought.

‘You sit in front,’ the driver said, patting the front seat beside him.

‘I’ll sit in the back, thank you.’ She slipped in, sinking into the soft, worn leather of the back seat, leaning back and closing her eyes. God, she thought, on my way at last.

The taxi took off with a jerk and she clung tightly to the door handle. With her free hand she took out a handkerchief to dry her face, careful not to smear her eye make-up, and breathed deeply in a vain attempt to find more oxygen. She watched the city grow up darkly around her as they drove from the airport. Modern blocks of squalid flats, temples, shops and offices, curious ramshackle vehicles among the traffic that belched its black fumes out into the night. Sights and sounds unfamiliar and strange and slightly frightening.

They had been driving almost fifteen minutes when she noticed that there was no reading on the meter. She tapped the driver on the shoulder.

‘You forgot to set the meter.’

His grin revealed a set of crooked brown teeth. ‘Not working. I give you good price.’

She sighed and sat back in the seat. She didn’t suppose there was any point in arguing about it. She would just have to pay whatever he asked. She closed her eyes again and felt a wave of fatigue sweep over her. For a moment she was back home on the rug in front of the fire, warm and slightly drunk, David there, hot hands on her breasts, his soft whisper at her neck, It’ll be alright, Lisa. It’ll be alright. And then she was jerked back to the present as the taxi drew in abruptly at the doors of the Narai, the driver grinning at her from the front.

‘Four hundred baht.’ She did not bother to work out the exchange equivalent, but handed him the notes in the certain knowledge that she was being fleeced. Definitely no tip, she thought. He pulled the lever to release the boot as she got out.

She heaved her case out along with the rest of her bits and pieces and was damned if she was going to close the lid. She turned on the steps as the taxi pulled sharply away, and the lid swung down and snapped shut on its own.

Air conditioning, she decided, when she had passed through the sliding glass doors, was the best thing ever invented. She put down her case and stood for a moment, drinking in the cool sweet air, almost chill after the heat outside. It’s strange, she thought, how when you are hot you cannot believe you could ever be cold again. As when you are cold, being warm is hard to imagine. She smiled to herself, feeling better. She’d got here, hadn’t she? And she picked up her case and walked past the curious, faintly hostile stares of the girls in the Don Juan bar, to the reception desk.

‘Lisa Elliot. I have a reservation.’ The girl pushed her a form to fill out and asked to see her passport. ‘Can you tell me what room Mr Jack or John Elliot is staying in?’

The girl checked through her files and shook her head. ‘I am sorry, Mr Elliot checked out two nights ago.’

*

Lisa lay back in her room numb with disappointment. To have come halfway across the world and miss him by only forty-eight hours! The sergeant had not told her exactly what her father was doing here, though she suspected that she might not want to know. But she had expected him to be here for some time. She took a piece of paper from her shoulder bag and unfolded it. Tuk Than. Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok. She would call in the morning.

She washed and undressed ready for bed, and out of idle curiosity switched on the television set. The previous occupant of the room had left it on the video channel and the late movie was a soft porn