Opium (31 page)

“No, son. Never had the time.”

“You do not know what you're missing.”

“You want my advice? Watch your ass. I do believe Rocky intends to hang it on the line to dry.”

Gates reversed onto the road and the three Americans drove back to Vientiane.

***

It was a long walk back to town, but Baptiste had a lot to think about. He felt like a chess player who had nearly been checkmated in his third move. He had been stupid. What had Gates called him? A sucker.

Well, it would be the last time anyone made him a sucker. And certainly the last time for Rocco Bonaventure.

Chapter 55

T
AO KOO was flustered. He whispered urgently in the
monsieur's
ear. Bonaventure flushed and threw a piercing glance over the top of his
pince nez
.

“Monsieur Dale. He's here?'

“He says he wants to see Madame Crocé,” Tao Koo answered. “I told him she is not here, but he says he will not leave until he has seen her.”

Bonaventure uttered a growl of indignation and got to his feet. He huffed down the steps from his study and threw open the door.

Dale towered over him. The first time Bonaventure had met him, at his birthday party, Dale's height had made him seem angular and ill at ease. Angry, he cut a far more arresting figure.

“You are not welcome here,” Bonaventure said, in English.

“I have to see Noelle.”

“She is not here.”

At that moment Noelle walked out onto the veranda from the dining room. Both men turned to stare at her. She looked pale, but resolute.

“Noelle,” Dale said.

She ignored her father and looked up at the big American, searching his face as if he was he was a friend from school whose name she had long since forgotten.

“I have only one thing I must ask you. Are you married?'

“It's not as simple as that,” he said, and his destiny was decided. “I wanted to tell you. Let me explain.”

She drew back and hit him. Bonaventure was sure the sound of the slap must have echoed right across the Mekong into Thailand. Dale didn't flinch.

Noelle turned and went back into the house.

Bonaventure felt a glow of satisfaction, but his face remained stern. “You have your answer,” he said. “Please leave now.”

“If I had some time I could have worked this out,” Dale said to him, as if he would have understood, or sympathised. He walked away and got in behind the wheel of his jeep. Bonaventure watched him splash back through the orange mud in the direction of the city.

***

The hold of the DC-3 was crowded; boy
bonzes
in their orange robes; mothers with betel-blackened teeth nursing squalling infants; Lao government officials; an army captain asleep on some piles of grain. The CAT warhorse had been fitted out for any transfiguration, there was an overhead wire for paratroops leading to the door, stretchers secured against the bulkheads, and outlets marked 'troop oxygen' on the ceiling. There were even some ancient bullet holes in the fuselage, partly concealed with typhoon tape.

Gates and Dale squatted side by side near the rear in combat fatigues. They had to shout to make themselves heard over the din of the engines as the DC-3 taxied to take-off across Wattay field. “This is your last trip, Jack,” Gates yelled, over the din of the engines.

“My last trip?'

“After Sam Neua, you go back to Saigon.”

Dale closed his eyes and swore softly under his breath.

“It's what you wanted, isn't it?'

“I thought I did.”

“Well, you can't stay here for Christ's sake.”

“I changed my mind. I'm not going!'

“The fuck you're not! This may have started out as a request, Major, but now it's an order. You don't have any choice.”

Dale wished he had been able to explain it to her. He would have liked her to remember him fondly, at least. But now she would never know the truth of it. Well, what was the point of going over it in his head anymore? He had always known it could not last. Besides it was a little late in life to fall in love with a woman for the first time.

But whether it was too late or not, that was what had happened. He supposed, looking back, he had loved her from the moment he had first set eyes on her. There was just nothing he could do about it anymore.

***

Lucien was asleep, his dark curls damp against the pillow. She curled up on the bed beside him, drawing comfort from the soft breathing. I won't look out there for love anymore, she thought. Her father, Baptiste, Jack, they had all let her down.

“But you will be my hero,” she whispered to Lucien. “I will make at least one good man in the world.”

She was sure there were good men somewhere out there, but not in Laos. You didn't have to smoke opium to be corrupted by it. A little taste of it, of money, or of power, and they forget what was right and what was wrong.

But if this is what she had to show for love, then it had been worth it. She had her son and that would be enough. The father might be the devil but she would make a better man out of the son. She fell asleep, smiling.

Chapter 56

B
ONAVENTURE was asleep on the veranda, his head lolling over the back of the rattan chair. He looks so old, Baptiste thought, the tobacco coloured skin etched with deep lines, the thinning white hair revealing little patches of white scalp.

I'm doing you a favour, he decided.

He fetched a brocade pillow from the living room, then took a broad belt from his jacket pocket. He laid it gently over the old man's chest, slipped the free end through the buckle behind the chair, and snapped it tight with his left hand. Bonaventure's eyes blinked open and he stared at Baptiste in bewilderment. He tried to move his arms but the belt held them fast to the sides of the chair. Before he could cry out, Baptiste pushed the pillow over his face with his free hand, and held it there.

THE END

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Latest Release by Colin Falconer

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Chapter 1

The Houtman Abrolhos

Forty-three miles west of Geraldton

Western Australia.

the present day

T
HE skull lay uncovered in a shallow grave, grinning at them through the soft white sand. Whoever it was, they had been smiling like that for over three hundred and fifty years.

A man in a frayed white T-shirt, the faded logo of the Fremantle Maritime Museum screen-printed on the back, squatted next to Annemieke at the gravesite, cleaning the sand from the bones with a soft brush. The pit was a metre deep, had been painstakingly excavated with bucket and trowel, each layer of sand removed centimetre by centimetre.

The site was marked out with a string grid. The grave itself was riddled with tree roots and mutton bird nests, making the dig even more difficult.

Two forensic scientists had accompanied the expedition. One of them, wearing latex gloves, bent to examine a skull that had already been removed from the pit, blowing sand from the cavities with a drinking straw. Annamieke crouched down beside him.

“Female,” he said, ‘judging by the teeth, young, no more than six or seven years old when she died.” He frowned. “See, the tooth here has been pushed right back into the socket, perhaps by a blow. It would have caused her excruciating pain but it would not have killed her.” He glanced at the rest of the partial skeleton. “There are no defence wounds on the arms, so perhaps her hands were tied before she was killed. The skull is intact, no obvious fractures to the parts of the skeleton you have here. Wounds to soft tissue leave no trace. Hard to tell, but you'd hope it was quick.”

Silence then, except for the drone of flies and the distant boom of the reef. The small treeless island with its fisherman's huts and bird nests had turned out to be a graveyard. They had already found eight skeletons in this shallow grave: three adults and five children. One of them appeared to have died by a musket shot. Another skull was missing a large piece of bone, dislodged, perhaps, by the blow from an axe. The faces of the archaeologists, a team of five men and three women, were grim.

It was late in the afternoon when Annamieke heard a shout from the far side of the island. She ran over.

It was a new grave, but this one did not look as if it had been quickly buried, like the others. The skeleton had been placed supine before burial, and as the team worked they uncovered a rusted sword, still in its scabbard, placed in what appeared to be a ceremonial position at its side.

It was long and painstaking work. Annamieke joined in to help, sipping from her water bottle in the furnace heat, tormented by the tiny black flies. The young man working beside her stopped and gasped.

“Here it is!’ he said.

He held something in his outstretched palm; it was half a silver guilder, crusted with age. Annamieke fumbled inside her shirt, brought out a tiny velvet pouch from her breast pocket. She tipped out a coin, bright with polishing, and held the ancient relic against it. It was a perfect fit.

“We found him,” she said.

They all stopped working. Only part of the skull and the right femur had been uncovered but already they knew who he was and how he had died.

“Michiel Van Texel,” she murmured.

Also by Colin Falconer

Isabella

She was taught to obey. Now she has learned to rebel.

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“Y
OU will love this man. Do you understand? You will love him, serve him and obey him in all things. This is your duty to me and to France. Am I clear?”

Isabella is twelve years old, pretty, bony and awkward. She keeps her eyes on the floor and nods her head.

Her father, the King of France, is the most handsome man she has ever seen. In the purple, he is magnificent. His eyes are glacial; a nod from him is benediction, one frown can chill her bone-deep.

He puts his hands on the arms of her chair and leans in. A comma of hair falls over one eye. He rewards her now with a rare smile. “He is a great king, Isabella, and a handsome husband. You are fortunate.”

A log cracks in the hearth.

She raises her eyes. He strokes her cheek with the back of his hand. “You will not disgrace me.”