The touch of cold stone, beneath bare feet, worked slowly through her, until she was consumed by it. The lights that drifted by overhead appeared like frozen pinnacles. Rough brick grazed her arm and felt warm, a heat that grew until it burned, searing through her icy interior.
Slowly, so slowly that she was hardly aware of it, the inner eye was enlarging its perception, focusing her mind first on a sense of her own nakedness. A hand gripped her arm, propelling her forward, though she still felt as though her feet were gliding over the concrete beneath them. She turned her head through a lengthy arc and saw the brown hand that held her white flesh, and the dark pinpoint needle marks below. Cold water dripped from the ceiling and touched her breast like an icy finger, and with a sudden unbearable perception she heard the splashes of a thousand drips echoing off wet stone, the clatter of leather, and metal studs, on concrete.
Another door opened, this time on light and space. A cavernous echoing vault supported on pillars. A distant pool of light grew closer, drawing her into its centre until, at its vortex, she was compelled to stop. The hand that held her arm relaxed its grip and fell away. She was aware simply of standing now, her nakedness bathed by the cold white light. She heard the scuffle of feet, the clearing of nervous throats. Somewhere, behind the growing perception of the inner eye, she heard her own voice screaming. But there was no sound. Her lips did not move.
Time seemed to drift along the edge of consciousness, like a sailboat on the horizon, remote and elusive. There was no way of judging its speed or size or distance, before a gradual clearing of the mist in her eyes dispelled the illusion, and the focus of her horizon drew closer — darkness beyond the ring of light, along whose edge she saw, for the first time, the watching faces. Hands raised glasses to dry lips. Dark eyes consumed her with an inner fear of their own unnatural lust. She stared back blankly at the brown, hungry faces, with only a distant awareness of what it was they wanted of her. A frown crinkled her brow — something familiar in one among the watchers, fat and ugly, a far-off recollection of his mouth, twisted by passion, looming over her, close hot breath against her, the sweet smell of opium. And yet there was something comforting in the familiarity. She tried to smile, but found that she could not.
Suddenly, and yet slowly, fingers grasped her hair and jerked her head around. Dead eyes gazed into hers. A uniformed arm rose with measured intent, a gloved fist at the end of it rising above her, before crashing down and striking her hard across the cheek. She felt no pain, but a wave of weakness ran through her. She felt her legs buckle at the knees, but the hand still grasped her hair, she could not fall. The eyes that stared into hers gleamed now with unspeakable malice. Another blow, this time striking her full in the mouth. Again there was no pain, but as the hand released her and she fell, she saw her own blood, crimson, splash across the white of her legs.
II
Row upon row of dark deserted warehouses drifted by. Blair stared anxiously from the window, searching for light, some sign of human existence. He turned towards the Eurasian woman seated beside him, and wondered at her calm. She was almost serene. It only increased his disquiet.
‘You’re sure you know where we’re going?’ He had surrendered himself to her completely, as had all the lovers she had known. But it was not passion that won his surrender. Like a drowning man, he had been forced to grasp the only hand which held out the hope of survival. Lisa’s survival.
Grace still held, in her mind’s eye, the image of the dead and bloodied Tuk. A frail figure, crumpled in his leather desk chair, his abject terror at the point of death somehow erasing long years of corruption — like a mortal sin forgiven at the confessional. Death had come as a release, for both of them, from the power of his evil. She turned and looked at the red, perspiring face of the Scotsman. ‘My driver will find the place.’ And for the first time she was curious. ‘You were a friend of her father?’
Blair would not accept the past tense. ‘I am a friend of her father — unless you know something I don’t. I heard Tuk tried to have him killed on the border.’
‘And failed. Jacques crossed safely into Cambodia. If anyone can be safe in Cambodia.’
‘You knew him, too, then?’
A faint smile crossed her lips. ‘Once. In another life, it seems.’
‘And Lisa?’
The smile faded. ‘I have done her great harm. I came tonight to plead for her life, though I knew I would fail.’
Blair regarded her with bewilderment and distaste. He guessed this was the woman Sarit had named as La Mère Grace, responsible — if Sarit was to be believed — for what amounted to Lisa’s sexual enslavement. Why should she care whether the girl lived or died? And yet clearly she did.
‘What is this place we’re going to? If Tuk wanted her dead, why not simply kill her?’
‘Tuk never did anything simply. It is his way of avenging himself on Mr Elliot, for having failed to kill him.’ She looked away at the endless dark buildings. ‘You have heard of snuff movies?’
Blair felt a chill run through him. ‘Yes.’
‘In Bangkok there is a live version. If you are rich enough, and sick enough, you can pay to see a girl beaten nearly to death, like a long, lingering foreplay, and then shot dead — like an orgasm.’
Blair found it difficult to speak. ‘And this is what he planned for Lisa?’
‘I told you. We may already be too late.’
He was trembling now. ‘If we are, I’ll kill you.’
‘If we are, I would not want to live.’
His anger was overlaid by confusion, like oil on water. ‘I don’t understand.’
She shook her head. ‘Neither do I.’
‘Madame, we are there.’ The chauffeur’s voice refocused their attention. The car drew to a stop and the engine idled gently in the darkness. They had drawn up in front of a large brick warehouse, devoid of any sign of light or life. It looked to Blair like all the others they had passed, with nothing to mark it out.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Follow me.’ Grace slipped from the car and her heels echoed back off the cobbles. Blair strode after her, down a narrow lane between rising walls that disappeared into the night sky. At the far end they could see lights twinkling on the black waters of the Chao Phraya. The place smelled damp and rotten.
Halfway along, a figure stepped out from the shadows of a small doorway to block their path. His white shirt caught the reflected light from the water beyond. The butt of a revolver glinted in his belt, but his face was still masked by shadow. There was surprise in his voice.
‘La Mère Grace.’
Her voice seemed remarkably calm. ‘Is it over?’
‘Not yet. Soon.’
‘Tuk said we could watch.’
‘I don’t think so.’ He stepped forward so that they saw his face for the first time, a squat, brutish face, a man of about forty. He cast a wary eye over Blair, then grinned dismissively back at Grace. ‘From what I hear you’re next. Who’s the old man?’
Blair listened impatiently to the exchange. ‘What’s he saying?’
‘He’s not going to let us in.’
The Thai did not expect such speed from the silver-haired foreigner. His hand never reached the revolver in his belt, and he barely had time to be surprised when his face smashed hard against the wall. A sharp inhalation drew blood into his throat, and he choked briefly before an arm encircled his head and a swift jerk snapped his spinal cord. His body went limp and Blair slid him gently to the ground.