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

‘The General paid well.’

‘As will many others.’ Tuk emptied his glass and crossed the room, still holding it. He smiled down at her and reached out with his other hand to hold her jaw, gently squeezing her cheeks between his thumb and forefinger. Grace resisted the temptation to recoil from his clammy touch. ‘You are a very beautiful women, Grace.’ He shook his head. ‘You like girls, don’t you?’

‘Not exclusively.’ Grace’s voice was steady. ‘Unlike you and your boys.’

His pincer grip tightened at once and his smile curled into a sneer. ‘You know what I think?’

‘No, Than. What do you think?’

‘I think you’ve gone soft in your old age, Grace. I think you’ve fallen for that girl.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Than!’

He snapped her head back in a sudden, vicious movement and leaned to push his face very close to hers. She made no attempt to struggle, but held herself rigid and still. ‘Don’t ever call me that!’ She smelled the whisky and opium on his breath. ‘You didn’t think I was ridiculous when I set you up here in Bangkok! When all you had was a reputation and a few thousand baht! I made you, I can break you.’ And he smashed the top of his glass on the arm of her chair and thrust the jagged edge at her face. He felt her trembling in his grip and was pleased by her fear. ‘And I could mark that pretty face of yours so that no man’ – he chuckled – ‘or woman, would ever want to look at you again.’ The light in his eyes reflected the exultation in his power.

‘I’m sorry, Than. I didn’t mean any disrespect.’ She heard the shake in her own voice.

He jerked her head free and stepped back. ‘Good,’ he said.

She raised a hand to her cheek and felt blood oozing from the wound where the glass had pierced her skin. He strode back to his desk and banged down the remains of his glass.

‘Anyway, I have no choice now. I must dispose of her.’

Grace felt sick. ‘Why?’

‘That call.’ He gestured towards the hall. ‘It was from an associate of Elliot’s. He was the one who gave the wretched girl my address. I told him I hadn’t seen her.’ He shrugged and held out his hands. ‘So there you have it. If I let her go he’ll know I lied. I can’t take that risk.’ He seemed annoyed that the decision should be forced upon him.

Grace sought desperately for some kind of reprieve. ‘But surely, she’s still worth preserving as insurance – against Elliot’s return?’

‘Elliot’s dead,’ he snapped. ‘We both know that.’ Then he relaxed again into his habitual humourless smile. She could not raise her eyes to meet his. He watched with satisfaction as tears fell in dark splashes on the white cotton of her dress.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The embers of the fire glowed faintly in the dark, gathered in the small ring of stones McCue had arranged in the centre of the floor to form a makeshift hearth. He squatted cross-legged in front of it, working his needle by the dying light, a crude pattern cut out of canvas with his hunting knife. A pair of shorts for the boy who lay sleeping curled up with his mother and sister.

Elliot glanced at the sleeping bodies of mother and children lying as one, arms and legs entwined. Their first physical contact in nearly five years. Hau’s face was buried in his mother’s withered breast, McCue’s sweat-stained T-shirt drowning his nakedness. Tears had dried, bellies were full. They were at peace, even if only for a few hours. Serey seemed to have drawn strength from the tearful frailty of her son, a rediscovered sense of purpose. Just as Elliot had lost his. She had taken charge of boiling the rice in a pot she had salvaged from the wreckage of her kitchen. She was a mother again, all her maternal instincts driving her to feed and protect her family.

Throughout the day they had heard the distant sound of sporadic gunfire, as Vo Nguyen Giap’s Vietnamese army secured the city. Closer, they had heard the rumble of trucks carrying troops toward the city centre, the roar of tanks moving into strategic positions. It was not a time to be on the streets, and they had stayed hidden and secure in the wreckage of the Angs’ once elegant villa. Elliot knew, however, it would not be long before the people from the countryside, freed from the Khmer Rouge yoke, would start drifting into the city in search of food, families, friends. The situation would be confused, the Vietnamese as yet without controls, or any kind of temporary administration. The fighting would continue in the north. If there was to be any escape it would have to be soon, while the country was still in a state of chaos.

Escape, Elliot reflected, was all that was left. An admission of failure. He wondered what there was to escape to. The life he had known? Hadn’t the acceptance of this job been an escape in itself – from a life that was going nowhere, a past that had effectively destroyed the future? Escape had become a way of life, a mechanical act, accompanied always by the one person he liked least in the world – himself. And always, as a snowball gathers snow, the burden of his past had grown with the years; a burden that was becoming intolerable.

He shifted his focus back to McCue’s needle as it worked dexterously back and forth through the tough canvas. There was something incongruous in his gentle domesticity. ‘You’re full of surprises, Billy.’

‘Like life,’ McCue said without raising his eyes from the needle. ‘Like finding the kid. Like you killing Mikey in cold blood.’ He raised his eyes slowly to meet Elliot’s. ‘Like any of us still being alive.’

Elliot nodded toward the canvas that was beginning to take shape as