Death Trip

Mann smiled. She was right, of course. He was a detective; everything had to be exposed, every layer had to be peeled away for him to examine underneath it.

‘I will answer any questions that you have. I have nothing to hide; all I want is my son back.’

They crossed over the bridge. Lights from the bars reflected in the black water of the canal. The wind picked up again and Magda dug her hands into her jeans pockets. They pushed on at a pace and turned west away from the canal onto a small side road flanked by high-sided narrow canal houses.

‘How often did you see him?’

‘About once a month. He would stay for a few days, sometimes a week.’ She carried on walking and pulled the fleece further up around her ears.

‘Do you want my coat, Magda?’ Mann asked.

She stopped, looked over at him and smiled.

‘Thank you, but no, I never mind the cold and the rain. I wouldn’t live here in Holland if I did.’

‘What business was my father doing here in Amsterdam?’ Mann asked as they crossed the road. She looked over at him and shrugged.

‘He never said what, exactly. There is a strong Chinese community here. Twenty years ago it was even bigger. There were many Chinese-owned businesses then.’

‘In De Wallen?’

‘Yes, some sex clubs, shops. But I am not sure what brought your father here in the beginning. In the end, I think we were the reason he kept coming back. He was a good man. I don’t want you to think badly of him.’

Mann looked across at her; she was striding ahead. He could see what his father saw in her: she was strong, sassy. Just the sort of woman Mann usually went for. Maybe Mann had more of his father in him than he realised. That thought sat uneasily with his conscience. Was he like his father, unable to commit to anyone, always searching, never content? Mann didn’t know the answer, but he knew that his world was too dangerous to bring love into it; people died when they loved him, people got murdered. He knew that only too well.

‘You must have been very young when you met him.’

‘Yes. I was eighteen when I started working as a window prostitute. I met your father about six months after I started. I didn’t feel young. I was a kid with problems. At that time heroin became very big here. It took Amsterdam over for a while and I was hooked. I grew up fast after that. And—despite the way it sounds—I liked being a prostitute. I liked the honesty in it. The window prostitutes are self-employed. No one tells them to work if they don’t want to. They look after each other. If there is any trouble they just press the panic button that’s in every window and the whole street will come running. For me, it was a good life and I earned good money.’ Her eyes were shining in the dark cold night as she stared at him—the streets were less busy now as they got further from De Wallen, only the odd inviting bar tempted Mann in as the chill seeped into his bones. ‘I would have been happy to stay working but your father wanted me to stop; he wanted to look after me.’

‘So what you’re saying is, you gave up a promising career in prostitution for my father?’

Magda looked shocked for a moment, then saw he was teasing her and she laughed, embarrassed as she held up her hands in surrender.

‘Sorry…sorry…It’s so hard for some people to understand, especially when they come from conservative backgrounds. They think prostitute…must be a bad person.’

‘My world is not in the least conservative, Magda. In Hong Kong it doesn’t matter how you get your money as long as you get it. It doesn’t matter whether your father was a peanut seller or a king, as long as you make your millions—everyone is equal in money. What do you do now?’

‘I work behind the bar at the Casa Roso and I help run the PIC—the Prostitute Information Centre. I give tours of De Wallen, show people what it’s like in the girls’ world, plus I go into schools and talk about sexual health, that kind of thing.’

‘Whereabouts is your apartment?’ asked Mann.

‘Not far, the end of the next street.’

‘Okay, I’ll catch you up.’

Magda looked at him curiously.

‘I have to see to something. I’ll be a few minutes. Take a detour; go round the block again.’

‘Okay.’ Magda understood the urgency in his voice. She lived with a policeman, after all; she understood that they thought in ways and at levels that no one else did. She walked across the street, took a left turn at the end. Mann continued on towards Magda’s road but the footsteps which had been following now disappeared. Mann stopped, looked back, then turned to hunt down the men who were following Magda.

6

Mann caught up with Magda, approaching her from the opposite direction. She was standing outside a block of flats that looked like it had been built in the fifties. Its yellow balconies jutted out over the street. Beside the metal-framed front door was a notice:

DON’T PISS HERE—PISS OFF

She looked relieved to see him and punched in the code and pushed the door open. Mann followed her in along with a noisy black cat with a pink collar around its neck. The hall light came on automatically as they made their way up the concrete flight of stairs.

They stopped on the third-floor landing. There were four flats in all. As he watched her find her keys he took the chance to study her in the light. Her ice-blue eyes were piercingly harsh and her square face broad, almost Tahitian-looking. Her toughness, her bare-faced attractiveness, was handsome but not pretty. But, no matter whether she was beautiful or not, Magda had meant enough to his father to keep him flying halfway across the world.

She unlocked the door at the end of the landing; the smell of weed being smoked drifted out. The cat walked straight in.

‘Alfie?’ she called out and looked down at the cat which was meowing and looking up at her expectantly. ‘It’s always hungry and it’s not even my cat. Jake always fed it,’ she said as she pushed the door wide.

‘Here!’ came the heavily accented reply.

A large man appeared in the lounge doorway. He had blond, collar-length tight curls. His face was so scarred by acne it looked like fermenting pizza dough. His eyes were set close together and the colour of burnt caramel, fringed with lashes the colour of straw. There was softness, a kindness and honesty about his big face, Mann thought. He had on sloppy jeans and a large eighties-style, big-shouldered black leather jacket with a shirt that was patterned with indiscriminate blue and cream splodges. In his left hand he held a fat joint. With his right hand he took Mann’s hand, shook it and he looked deep into his eyes the way that policemen always did—always looking beyond, below, never quite believing what they were seeing. He was older than Magda by a few years—Mann guessed mid forties.

‘Was nice?’ He grinned at Mann.

Magda stood between them, hands back in her pockets, looking a little embarrassed.

‘He means the show at Casa Roso. He didn’t think I should meet you there. I told him I knew you would appreciate it—anyway, I had just finished my shift.’

Alfie chortled and nodded his head as he dragged on the joint.

‘Was good?’

‘Was great.’ Mann smiled. There was something instantly likeable about Alfie.

‘Stop smoking that shit.’ Magda scowled at Alfie. ‘We need to talk…’

They walked into the L-shaped lounge, which looked like someone had hidden the mess rather than found a home for it. Alfie walked across the lounge and opened the balcony door. He took a few hard drags before blowing the smoke outwards and flicking the joint out over the side of the railing. Magda rolled her eyes.

‘You could hit someone on the head when you do that.’

Alfie chortled. ‘They expect that kind of behaviour from this house. We are the trashy end of the street, remember?’ Alfie disappeared onto the balcony for a few minutes. He came back in and looked curiously at Mann. ‘The street was busy when you came tonight?’

Mann nodded. Alfie studied him for a minute and then took off his jacket to reveal a still strong-looking man, but one who looked like he was on the cusp of loading on middle-age spread.

Alfie was about to throw his leather jacket over the sofa until a glance from Magda told him that he should hang it up in the hall where it belonged.

‘We will sit in the kitchen. I need to show you some maps.’ She gestured towards the door that led off from the lounge.

Alfie caught them up. The kitchen was organised clutter. Spider plants and saucepans on hooks. A collection of fifties cocoa tins. Kids’ drawings. There was no wall space left. Above the sink was a signed photo of Bob Marley—that had to be Alfie’s, smiled Mann.

The kitchen table itself was covered with maps dotted with sticky notes. On the wall above the table there were photos. ‘Is that Jake?’ Mann asked, pointing to a picture of two lads, one obviously Oriental looking, and the other tall, blond.

‘Yes. Jake and Lucas have been friends forever. They have known one another since kindergarten. They are like brothers. Lucas’s dad is a single parent. He’s had mental health problems, depression. Lucas lives here most of the time.’

Mann tried to make out what the boys were pointing to in the photos. ‘What’s that on their T-shirts?’

‘It’s a joke. When they were younger they loved to play the Super Mario game with the Budweiser advert in it. They say it to one another all the time—“Wassup”. We got some T-shirts done for them to take on the trip, just a joke, just something silly.’

Magda turned away, her face collapsing as she struggled to keep a hold on her emotions. Below the picture of the boys was an article about the kidnap that had been cut from a newspaper, and there were photos of the five kitted out and ready to set off. Mann looked at Jake standing with his friends. They were all smiles. He had his backpack on, jeans, ‘Wassup’ T-shirt—all ready for his journey of a lifetime. Mann moved in closer to study his face—Magda was right, he did look like him. He had the same high cheekbones and Chinese eyes. He looked very young, thought Mann. Too young to die.

Magda excused herself and seconds later Mann could hear her crying in another room. Alfie whispered across to Mann:

‘You had trouble? You left one man wounded on the street below? I saw his friend helping him.’

‘We were followed. Two sets of men. I would say unconnected. The two in Casa Roso were dressed in puffer jackets and jeans and the two who followed us back here wore dark suits, expensive coats. They were all Asian. I took this from one of the smart ones.’ Mann handed Alfie a business card.

Alfie studied it. ‘This is from a shop in the Chinese district. I will check it out.’

‘Magda must have something they want, Alfie.’ Alfie shook his head and drew up his shoulders. ‘It’s got to be something that has to do with Jake’s kidnap.’

‘You lost me.’ Alfie shrugged again.

‘Was this flat Deming’s?’

‘He bought it for Magda.’

‘He used to stay here, right?’

Alfie nodded.

‘When he died, he didn’t exactly have time to tie up loose ends. He was a man with lots of business concerns. Perhaps there’s something here of his. Have someone watch Magda at a distance. We have to find out what they want. And…Alfie, you have to trust me on this…I will go alone to find the kids.’

Alfie nodded, resigned. ‘I understand. Magda wouldn’t make it anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Magda has terminal cancer. We are living on borrowed time.’

7

Jake tried to make out Anna, but she was hidden in the dusky light and the dense forest ahead. Jake hated not being able to see her. She was being led by Toad. Saw had nineteen men altogether but three of them were his deputies. They had given them nicknames. Ditaka was the oldest. He was short and broad shouldered, battle-scarred. His skin was sagged and wrinkled like old leather. He was always muttering under his breath, always bad tempered. He was the one Saw turned to for advice—he was the wise one. The five had named him Toad because he had a wide, downturned mouth and boggle eyes.

Anna looked behind her, as if she knew he was thinking of her, and she smiled. Her face was dirty, she was hot and tired, they were in a living hell, but she still smiled for him. Jake had realised in this last two weeks that he had always been in love with Anna. He had known her a long time but he had never realised what that feeling was in the pit of his stomach, every time he saw her. One morning, in the refugee camp, he watched her walk towards him, her laugh as clear as church bells—he realised that feeling was love.

Behind him he could hear Thomas wheezing as he struggled to keep up. He was the youngest: he had just had his eighteenth birthday. Silke, his sister, was the oldest at twenty. With his goatee beard and his big limbs, Thomas always looked like the baby amongst them. He was a sci-fi enthusiast, always on the PC playing games when he was at home; he was a DJ in his spare time. That’s what he wanted to be when he finished college. Jake didn’t really know what career he wanted yet. He would be going back to study history and economics at university. He thought he wanted to be a businessman of some description, the next Bill Gates. He wanted to make a lot of money and travel and he wanted to marry Anna. She was his first love and he hoped she’d be his last. That thought sent a pain that shot through his heart and caught in his stomach, making him catch his breath as he realised that it might be the only love he would ever know if they were to die in this jungle. If so, he hoped he could die in Anna’s arms.

Jake looked behind.

‘Come on, Thomas.’ Thomas was lagging behind again.

Weasel was making pig noises at him. Weasel’s real name was Jao. He was stupid, cruel and warped. He was tall and thin and laughed like a girl. His teeth were spikes. In the evenings, when they stopped and the drink came out, he was the one who tortured the porters and instigated the trouble. On drunken nights he wrapped himself in the women’s sarongs and danced for the others. The other deputy and the most worrying of them all was Kanda or Handsome. He was vain and cruel. He looked at himself in the mirror that he wore on his belt. He was the one Jake feared most after Saw. He was always after the girls. He loved to watch them squirm.

‘Ignore him, Thomas,’ Jake called back. ‘He’ll keep doing it unless you pretend it doesn’t hurt.’

Weasel often tormented Thomas as they trudged along. Now Weasel was alongside him, hitting him with a stick. The more Thomas cried out, the more Weasel did it. Jake had learned to pretend it didn’t hurt, not to flinch. Weasel enjoyed watching pain. If Jake ignored him he usually went away. But Thomas couldn’t do it. He had to cry out. Jake could hear it now. He turned to see Thomas stumbling as Weasel hit him every time he tried to get up.

‘I’m trying.’ Jake could hear that Thomas was close to tears, breathless from the effort. Now Jake heard the whir of Weasel’s bamboo cane coming down harder, faster, and more viciously. The men laughed as Thomas screamed out in pain.

‘Stop it,’ Jake shouted back. Thomas couldn’t hide his distress. He was crying and yelping with the pain and fear and Weasel’s demonic giggling grew more manic and shriller as he chased him with the stick and its movement became harder and quicker as it sang in the air.

Handsome came alongside and Jake said, ‘Make him stop.’

But Handsome only grinned at Jake as the noise of Weasel’s cane and the sound of Thomas’s crying suddenly stopped, only the grunting of the men continued. Jake turned to see if Thomas was all right. But he was gone and so was Weasel.

8

Magda sat with her head in her hands, scanning the table as if she was too scared to keep looking at it but too scared to look away. She had taken off her long wig and now had a silk scarf wrapped around her bald head. She leant forward, resting her elbows on the table as she thought.

‘But we want to help,’ she said as she looked from Alfie to Mann.

‘You will be more help to me here,’ said Mann. ‘You have to trust me on this, Magda. I will do everything that is humanly possible to get Jake home.’

Magda looked spent, overwhelmed by the hundreds of sticky notes, maps and other pieces of paper scattered around.

Alfie thought hard and then nodded. ‘I understand what you are saying, Johnny. We each have a part to play. We must work as a team.’ He got up, opened the fridge, and pulled out three beers. ‘First we need to tell Johnny what we know, before we get all these maps out.’ He came back over and gently moved the maps to one side.

Magda took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes and spoke quietly.

‘It was supposed to be a fantastic trip for Jake. He has had a hard time in the last year, with my illness and everything. I didn’t want it to stop him going. I was in remission when he left. This week I found out I have secondary and I can’t have any more chemotherapy. I just have weeks left.’

Alfie took the tops off the beers and set them on the table, careful not to touch the map; then he placed his hand on Magda’s shoulder and gave her a supportive squeeze before sitting back down.

‘We live for today and today you are still here and Jake is still in the jungle. And today we have new help. We have Johnny Mann. We have hope.’

‘Tell me from the beginning, Magda. How did it all come about?’ asked Mann.

Magda looked down at her hands, gripping the edge of the table without realising she was doing it. ‘They wanted to do something fantastic together before going to university.’

‘Why did they choose a volunteer project inland? Usually the kids head to a beach somewhere like Koh Samui, just lie around and smoke weed for a few months.’

Alfie answered for her. ‘Jake didn’t want to go to the usual places, to the south, the beaches. They all agreed that they wanted to help someone. We researched it—found out about the Karen people who have been displaced from Burma. There’s been a civil war going on there for sixty years. The hill tribes are forced out of their villages, they end up in refugee camps along the Thai/Burma border…They were going to help build a school there. We thought it would be a great opportunity for him.’

Magda held up her hand. Alfie paused.

‘I thought it best to go there.’ Magda closed her eyes and clenched her hands in mid-air as she shook her head emphatically. ‘It was my idea. I was so wrong.’

‘It’s not your fault, Magda.’ Alfie placed his hand over hers. ‘You are not the one to blame.’ Magda smiled gratefully at him and sighed deeply.

‘So, what have you been told?’ asked Mann.

‘We got a phone call from the people at NAP to tell us that the camp had been attacked.’

‘Is that the company that sent them out?’

‘Yes. Netherlands Adventure Project. We got a call from Katrien—I call her the Bitch—who runs it. She told us there was likely to be a ransom demand. She didn’t know how much then. But she said we should get our homes on the market, look at taking out loans, anything we could, as the Dutch government were definitely not going to pay.’ Alfie gave a grunt of disgust as he swigged his beer. ‘I tell you.’ He shook his head with disbelief. ‘She is the coldest bitch on the earth.’ He slammed his beer down. ‘She talks to us as if Jake being kidnapped is a trivial matter. They are supposed to look after the kids—they take big money from them to send them into this. She is a lying little bitch.’

‘Alfie, please…’ Magda held up her hand.

‘Sorry…sorry…just makes me so mad,’ Alfie said and went back to drinking his beer.

‘What did you tell her?’ Mann asked Magda.

‘I said we did not have any money. All the parents said the same. We are all doing everything we can; we have our homes up for sale, but people are not buying at the moment. We don’t have any savings—even if we did, it would never be enough.’

‘She came to see us,’ added Alfie.‘She walked in here, dressed all in black as if she was coming to a funeral. She looked around the place as if she was trying to see how much we were worth. Then she said they were asking two million US.’ Alfie shook his head. ‘It may as well be fifty million. We don’t have it.’

‘Did she say where the ransom demand came from?’

‘She said it was from a breakaway group of Karen freedom fighters.’

‘Did you talk to anyone in the government?’

‘Yes, some stuffed shirt. They say only that the Burmese are doing everything they can to help. There is a Commander Boon Nam from the Burmese army who is leading the rescue mission. This is him…’ Magda pointed to a photo on the board of a stocky-looking man with a moustache in full military uniform. He looked smug, vain, thought Mann. His eyes looked coldly back into the lens. ‘…but when it’s Burma, who knows?’

‘And then the political situation kicked off,’ said Alfie. ‘Suddenly we stop getting any news. There’s trouble in Thailand, a military coup about to happen, there’s trouble in Burma, it’s politically unstable and they’re killing the monks. Laos has fighting on the borders.’

The room fell silent as the fridge hummed away and the cat ate its food. Laughter drifted up from the street below. Magda held her face in her hands and closed her eyes as she said: ‘We can’t wait any longer. We don’t have the time. I don’t have the time. I must have him home now. Please God, before I die, let me know he is safe. They say we have to be patient. They tell us—it will be all right. They will survive. They will come home. No one will die.’ She shook her head as if suddenly it was all too much, all hope had left her. She stared at her hands for a few seconds before lifting her head and looking straight into Mann’s eyes. Her eyes were glassy like cloudy sapphires. ‘It doesn’t matter what they say. I am so close to my son. We dream the same dreams sometimes.’ She gave a sad smile. Tears fell freely now and landed on the map. ‘Now, every bone in my body, every beat of my heart, tells me my boy needs me, and every day takes him further from me and takes us both closer to death.’

9

Jake knew how much his mum would be missing him right now. He managed to slip his hand into his pocket and pull out the piece of paper. It was a photograph of them together on the beach. He unfolded its corner just enough to glimpse Magda’s smiling face looking back at him. Jake didn’t know what had made him print out the photo when they stopped at an internet café on the way up to Chiang Mai but he was so grateful that he had. Now the photo gave him hope that he would see his mother again. He knew that she would be thinking of him at that exact moment because they were so alike. Silently he told her that he loved her. He folded it back up and eased it into his pocket; he would not be able to open it again many more times; it was deeply creased where it had been folded too many times. From where they lay on a rough mattress of ferns and forest debris Jake could see the distant lights of a town. Across from them, the five porters, four women and an old man, huddled together forlornly. Saw had forced them to come with them from the last village they had stayed in. Jake hadn’t seen them eat anything for days. They were being worked to death, carrying the heavy loads and never allowed to stop for a rest. He looked around at Saw’s men, they were drinking heavily and fights were breaking out. It was always the same when Saw left them.

He had disappeared as soon as they made camp for the evening. From his place by the fire Weasel was watching Jake and the others. Jake looked across at Thomas. He felt terrible for him. He felt frightened for them all. Until today the attacks had just been threats: now they were real.

‘If he comes near me again—I will fucking kill him.’ It was the first time Thomas had spoken all evening.

‘It’s all right, Thomas. It’s all right…’ Silke wrapped her arms around him as Thomas buried his head in his knees and continued rocking. Eventually he went quiet as he lay on his side. Jake could see that his eyes were wide open. Jake wanted to say something to help Thomas but he didn’t know what. Jake had never felt more helpless in all his life as he did now. He looked over at Weasel watching them.