Hunters in the Dark (21 page)

The Leader had been right, cities are whores. They put on their gay makeup and forget. Davuth didn't mind; it was the way of the world.

At Colonial Mansions he paused for a moment and glanced up at the cream facade. In the lobby there was no one. The receptionist gave him a cool and unwelcoming stare. It was a barang dormitory, for sure.

“I'd like to see a unit I could rent for a week.”

“We'd need a deposit,” the boy said indifferently.

Davuth agreed to it and they went up and looked at a unit on the fourth floor. He asked if the place was full at that moment.

“Ninety percent,” the boy said.

It was much more comfortable than the Paris. The barang had money. When they had left the unit Davuth stepped to the balcony alcove and looked down at the pool. The windows opposite were lit, comfortable sitting rooms and bedrooms with bright tropical curtains. Around the pool the deck chairs were empty and in it a Chinese woman, as always, swam lengths, making no sound whatsoever. A curious place. The best thing would be to book the unit for a week and take his time. He resolved to do that, then went down with the clerk and sat in the lobby café and ordered an orange juice. It was still quite early and from time to time guests and residents came in and walked up to their apartments through the swimming-pool area. He asked if he could smoke, was told that he could not, then demanded an ashtray and smoked anyway. Two hours passed. Young Korean girls came in and out, employees of some large construction company nearby, and a handful of aging barangs with Khmer girlfriends. The usual trade. He flexed his fingers and thought to himself that his daughter was right and that he really ought to give up smoking. Now was the time.

When it was clear that he was waiting for nothing he booked the unit at the Mansions, paid for it in cash and took the same tuk-tuk back to the Paris. The rain exploded over the streets. The driver asked him if he really wanted to go back to his room.

“You have a place to go?” Davuth said.

It was on Street 282, the driver said. Near the stadium.

All right, Davuth said wearily. A long time since he had enjoyed himself with anyone. Months, maybe. Now was the time for that too.

The downpours always caused the traffic to knot up and paralyze everything. They crawled through chaos toward the stadium and even on the lonely streets leading to it the vehicles were trapped in slow-motion convulsions, the surfaces suddenly turned into water. Down came the plastic wraps on the tuk-tuk but he was soon soaked anyway. He gave in to the moment. One got soaked and there was nothing to be done. At the end of Street 282 there was a darkened corner where it met the main road alongside the stadium and there on the left was a doorway with a group of men huddled under plastic ponchos. There was an entrance with a doorman holding a flashlight and roaring gutters all around.

He ran into the doorway and the doorman shone the light into his face and ushered him into a corridor. At the end of it rose a flight of steps and a single light fixed to the wall. The man told him that the power might go out at any moment but led him all the same to the stairs and swung the beam of the flashlight up them, indicating permission and normality.

Davuth shook off the rain and wiped his face and waited to regain his composure and then went up the steps to a landing plunged in darkness and stagnant heat. At its far end, reassuringly, the pink lights projected their aura of harmony and calm.

He went to the end of the landing and turned into a larger room where the mama-san sat with her pot of steaming tea behind a desk with a good-luck cat and a gold Buddha. The only customer in the rain, he caused a mild stir and the mama-san told him how brave he was to venture out in such filthy weather. She took his ten-dollar entrance fee and told him amicably to just wander down and look at the girls behind the glass window. They only had a dozen in that night, most of them had stayed away because of the difficulty in getting around in tuk-tuks. Take your time, she said, and went back almost immediately to her knitting. He wandered down toward the window, which was lit softly, and he saw the girls sitting on two rows of seats, one higher than the other, texting into their phones and not looking up until they saw him in front of them.

The rain was loud here and he stood there indecisively while some of them smiled at him and waved and made come-on motions with their hands. There was a minder on his side of the glass to help him with his choice. He scanned the faces one by one and he found a girl that he liked and motioned to the minder; she was a slightly plump girl with a glossy fringe. The minder went into the room and pointed to her and she got up.

Davuth went back to the mama-san and asked her how much it was.

“It's between you and the girl,” she said flatly.

He knew it was about twenty dollars for a local for an hour. The mama-san gave him a room key and said the girl would bring towels. He could go to the room now and wait for her.

“You can even take a little more time,” she said. “There's no other customers.”

Davuth took the key with its number tag and went back out onto the landing. His back was still soaked and his hair was dank. I must be repulsive to such a pretty girl, he thought. The rooms were at the other end, arranged around the stairwell, and he went up to the next floor and found the room. It was a stifling, tiny hotel room with a tiled floor and a wooden bed. He turned on the light in the bathroom and then the ancient AC unit above the door and then slowly took off his soaking clothes and laid them over the television. Then he sat on the bed and waited.

While he was doing this, the girl had risen from her chair behind the glass and was about to exit the room when another girl at the end of her row held up her hand and asked her if she could take the client.

“What?” the minder cried.

“I'll give you the fee,” the other girl said to the one Davuth had chosen.

It was such a surprising offer that the girl chosen simply looked at the minder and shrugged.

“Well, all right then,” she laughed.

The minder looked over to the mama-san.

“What if the client is angry?” he whispered to both girls.

The intruder said, “He won't mind. He won't care. There'll be a blackout any moment now anyway.”

There was a general burst of cynical merriment and the girls nodded and one of them said, “Try it and see if he complains. He's probably a cheap bastard anyway.”

The replacement girl had the Thai nickname Pom, a ruse to make the Japanese men think she was Thai. There was little similarity between them and so there was a risk that the client might throw a fit but she was determined to try it anyway. She went into the bathroom and powdered her face and took one of the condoms and a towel and went back out and arranged everything with the mama-san. They were allowed not to tell management how much they obtained from a client and so it was up to them to get the most they thought they could. The Koreans and Japanese overpaid and so they were the most popular clients. Obviously, Khmers paid a lot less and consequently they were much less desirable, though they were more likely to accept a darker-skinned Khmer girl. It was why the chosen girl had relinquished her client so readily. Pom knew what she could get from a Khmer man dressed like this one and as she made her way down the corridor she made that calculation easily. She would ask him for way too much and see what he did. But there were other considerations at work. The reality was that she had recognized him. Her heart was racing and her skin had gone hot all over her face and neck. She had seen him only once before, though it was not a face one could easily forget. She came to the door and she paused and listened. He was sitting quietly in the room doing nothing. She wondered if she should wait until the lights went out, as they surely would. Then, deciding to risk it anyway, she put her hand on the handle of the door and pushed it. At that very moment, as if the gods had been listening all along, the lights did go out and there was an amused groan from the ground floor. She slipped into the room as the air con gave out and closed the door behind her and locked it. The man looked up and saw little more than a shadow carrying a folded towel with a condom placed upon it.

“Blackout,” she said and they sighed together and the mood was not at all bad between them. She put down the towel and went to the bathroom and opened the little window above the sink.

“It's just my luck,” Davuth said, and sat there quite sadly, waiting for his small miracle to come and go.

“The girl you chose,” she said. “She got sick suddenly. Headache. So I came instead. Is it all right?”

As she had expected, he shrugged passively.

“Doesn't make much difference now, does it?”

“I guess not!”

“What's your name?”

“Pom.”

“It's a Thai name.”

“But I'm Khmer. It's just for the Japanese.”

“Everything for the Japanese,” he muttered.

She came onto the bed after a cold shower and rubbed herself dry with the bare towel. He had already done the same. His muscular body lay on the bed expectantly and he did nothing but try to see her face as she came next to him and placed her hand on his chest. He could feel how emotional she was and he tried to figure out why. But there was no explaining it. She asked him where he was from, what his name was. He didn't lie. There was no point lying to a girl like that. They spot a lie in a second or two. They know men better than they know the backs of their own hands.

“What do you do?” she asked as she laid her head on his chest as if listening to his insides.

“I'm a policeman up in the country.”

She asked him if he was down on business and he said, as vaguely as he could, that he was. She asked what town he was from.

“Near Battambang.”

“I guess you need some entertainment,” she said.

“I need some entertainment, as you say.”

Yet he didn't make a move, he just sat there in the dark as if thinking.

“Are you tired?” she asked after a while.

“Sure I'm tired. What does it look like?”

“It's fifty for the hour,” she tried.

“Don't try that with me. It's twenty.”

“It's fifty today. Today is a special day.”

“What's special about today?”

“It's blackout day—didn't you notice?”

It took a while for the heat to come back into the room. About thirty minutes before they began to sweat and feel short of breath. That was the moment he chose to agree to her fifty and pull her on top of him.

It was not as perfunctory as she had been expecting, and she didn't care either way. She wanted to know something about him that could not be obtained in any other way. It had not been that long since she was running alone through the sugarcane and when she had run about half a mile she had stopped and crouched and waited until the unknown figure appeared at the trench where Simon lay and calmly smoked a cigarette. Even from such a distance his face was unforgettable and when she saw it again she felt a nauseating surprise but no real astonishment.

He paid and took his shower and came back to the bed.

She said, “Where are you staying?”

He told her and even gave her his apartment number. The implication was that she could come and visit him any time she liked.

“Maybe I'll come by then,” she said.

“It's better than me coming here. I don't like these places.” The slight disdain in his voice enraged her.

He rose and got dressed and she did the same. She had what she wanted, but she was not sure why she wanted it. She didn't know yet how she was going to use it.

Fifty dollars was left on the bed.

Picking the money up, she escorted him to the stairs, where the rain was now pouring in uncontrollable torrents.

“That was very nice,” he said humbly.

“You're welcome. Do you have a phone number I can call you on?”

“I got a new number yesterday.”

When she had taken it down she kissed him on the cheek and told him to be careful in the flooded streets, making it clear that she wouldn't come down to the pavement with him. Davuth stumbled into the rain and saw that the tuk-tuk had patiently waited for him, the driver huddled between the plastic flaps with a soaked newspaper. That night, he slept beautifully and his dreams were not even the usual nightmares—just the elegant forms of Viking longships and the mountains of stone and wild grass through which the cataracts of Scandinavia fall like those of Hawaii or Java.

The next day he took the unit at Colonial Mansions and passed the morning sitting at the balcony with his smokes. The unit was furnished and there was nothing to worry about. No one remembered him from his previous visit, not even the boy who had shown him around. People were so unobservant; they missed every passing clue. By midday the Englishman had not shown up and Davuth walked instead to Vong.

The tailor was at his table and Davuth had no trouble being affable and quick-talking with him. He gave Vong a facile line about meeting a young Englishman in a bar who had recommended him.

“I'm sure you remember him,” he joked. “Blond and rather good-looking. I'm sure he throws his money around a bit.”

“It could be.”

“He calls himself Beauchamp and gets his clothes made here.”

“There's one by that name who comes here. There are two of them, in fact.”

“I know all about it. Two of them. Were you not a little curious?”

“It's none of my business, now that you mention it. Is it your business?”

“It could be my business.”

“Are you a detective?”

“That I am. One of them has run away—”

“With some money or some drugs?”

Davuth laughed in his homely way.

“I don't know yet. Does our English friend have a lot of money to spend on clothes?”

“Not that much.”

“When was he last in?”

“Last week.”

“Colonial Mansions, isn't it?”

“You know already.”

“But which unit?”

“It's 102. You could always ask them.”

“That wouldn't be very discreet.”

Davuth asked him what Beauchamp had ordered.

“Shirts, trousers. He wasn't very particular.”

“He's a nice young man, isn't he?”

“As nice as they make them. The other one, though…”

“Yes, he's a different kettle of fish. Still, they all look the same, don't they?”

“They certainly do.”

“I feel I should order a shirt—just to say thank you.”

“Shall I measure you up?”

“No time. Maybe next time.”

Davuth looked quickly through the window into the street. His eyes shone a dark mahogany as the blue outer light hit then. The tailor felt that he had done something vile without realizing it, but it was too late. The detective was already on his way, cheerful and smooth. Vong watched him amble down the street without any pressing urgency. An odd bird, and a calculating look in his eye.

Davuth walked back to the Mansions and went up to the first floor. He walked down the line of doors until he was at 102. There he stopped for a moment, looked along the corridor and peered through the patterned lace curtains into a largely invisible room.

Lingering only for a moment, he carried on down the corridor then climbed up to the floor above and circled round to the opposite side, from where he could look down at the same door. His own unit was on the floor above this, the third, and from his own balcony he had a fair view of 102. How easy it had been. He went up to that balcony then and sat there for an hour and saw no one come or leave. But patience was one of his hard-won virtues. He had honed it during years of sadism and war. In soft and comfortable times its power was magnified tenfold. He could sit there for days if he had to, or even weeks. He was crocodilian and he rarely felt tired or bored: those states had been made alien to him long ago. And so he waited for the light in 102 to come on or the door to open or a tall and slender blond to appear on the landing, wearing the clothes of Simon Beauchamp, who was now dead and turned to dust.