Death Trip

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Mae Klaw Refugee Camp, Thai/Burma border, April 3rd 2006

‘Down on your knees!’

Saw Wah Say forced Anna to kneel as he pulled her head back by her blonde ponytail and held a knife to her throat. All around them, bamboo houses burst into flames, sending plumes of sparks up into the night sky.

Saw’s bare chest rose and fell, wet from blood and sweat, glistening in the hellish glare of the napalm. He stood over Anna and twisted her hair in his hand. He watched it fall like liquid gold through his gnarled fingers as he stretched her neck up.

Anna squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath as he ran the blade along her throat. Saw grinned at the other four young volunteers, dragged out from their hiding place and now held at gunpoint. All around them people ran screaming, trapped within the barbed wire walls of the refugee camp, whilst Saw’s men picked them off.

‘What do you want from us?’ Jake cried out. ‘We have no money.’

Saw grinned at Jake; his teeth were stained dark red from betel berries; his eyes were black as a rattlesnake’s. Saw’s head was shaved like a monk’s but Saw was no priest. His soul had long since dropped into some place dark. Anna gasped and a trickle of blood ran down her neck.

‘Stop, you bastard.’ Jake lashed out. But Saw’s deputy Ditaka was strong and he held Jake’s face down in the dirt. Jake could smell the napalm gasoline on his hands. Saw tilted his head to the side to look at Jake. He grinned.

‘You came into my kingdom. I did not invite you. Here I am God.’ Ditaka pushed Jake’s face further into the dirt. Saw’s men began closing in on the five like hungry wolves. Saw threw his head back and howled to the burning sky as Anna whimpered and the blade cut deeper into her neck. Then his black eyes came back to stare coldly at Jake. ‘Your parents will pay, or you will die. The world will know the name…Saw Wah Say.’

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Amsterdam, April 17th 2006

Johnny Mann was bathed in the pink warm glow of Casa Roso before he got anywhere near it. Two-metre-high photos of flushed-faced couples threw off an oozy glow.

‘With drinks,’ Mann said as he collected his tokens before taking a left and climbing the illuminated stairwell into the bar and small upper viewing area.

In exchange for one of his tokens he got a large vodka on the rocks from the golden-haired cherub behind the bar. Mann looked around. The place was empty except for a handful of bored-looking American lads who occupied the front two rows.

He took his seat and sat back to watch the show. On the stage below, a pink circular bed was beginning its slow rotation and a man, a woman and a bottle of baby oil were in position.

Mann suddenly felt the full weight of tiredness hit him. He’d just come off a thirteen-hour KLM flight from Hong Kong to Schiphol airport, Amsterdam. It was a long way to come for the weekend and he hadn’t been able to sleep. His mind was a jumble of questions but no answers. Now, he needed sleep badly, or he needed a hard, punishing workout. But he wasn’t going to get either. Instead he was sitting in Casa Roso watching one of the eight shows an hour, audience participation welcomed, and he was waiting to meet the person who had asked him to come all this way.

He rolled the iced vodka glass around in his hands and took a good slug of it whilst he watched the couple dispense with the oil and move into position. He glanced over at the American lads. They were trying to make conversation and ignore the act. Mann smiled to himself. He knew that if there was one sure way of spoiling their evening it was seeing a big black guy with a huge cock showing them how it’s done to a white girl.

From his seat on the left side of the auditorium, back against the side wall, Mann watched two men emerge from the top of the stairs. They were short, dark-skinned Asians, wearing black puffer jackets. They bypassed the bar and sat down on the opposite side to Mann and stared at him. Either, thought Mann, they had been in the Casa Roso too often and had seen the same eight shows an hour too many times, or they found Mann more interesting. He stared back. Nestled against the underside of his forearm Mann felt the reassuring coldness of his favourite shuriken, Delilah. Shuriken meant ‘sword hidden in the hand’. He had several such throwing stars: some were no bigger than a coin, individually scored along the edges and made razor sharp. Mann had firsthand knowledge of what they could do. It had been such a coin that had turned his boy’s face into a man’s as it sliced a crescent moon into his high cheekbone; a scar which now always stayed a few shades lighter than his tanned face.

Mann looked across at the men in puffer jackets. One of them was texting; the other was now pretending to watch the show. The black guy was getting a well-deserved round of applause from a stag party in the main auditorium below as he managed to do the splits whilst still continuing to thrust. The Asians hadn’t bought drinks, which struck Mann as odd. The bar was the only reason for coming up to the smaller viewing area.

Just as the act on stage was reaching its truly acrobatic climax, Mann saw a woman emerge from the top of the stairwell. She had long brown hair. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt under a cream-coloured fleece. Mann looked and then looked away. It couldn’t be her—the woman on the stairs was too young, only a few years older than him, forty, he reckoned. But, as he turned back to find her staring at him, he knew it must be her. She went straight for the bar. Leaning across, she kissed the golden-haired cherub on the cheek as he knocked the top off a beer and handed it to her. Mann watched her move; she was solid, armyish—she could have doubled for a policewoman the way she held herself, filling up the space around her with her no-nonsense presence. She picked up the bottle and walked straight over to Mann. The Asians in the puffer jackets got up and left.

‘Thank you for coming.’ Her English was good with only a slight Dutch accent. ‘I am Magda.’

She sat down in the seat next to him. In the gloom of the auditorium the one thing he was sure of was that her eyes were the colour of bleached denim, beautiful but hard.

From the stage came different music. The curtains rolled back. The black guy had been replaced by an equally muscly white guy who was shagging so fast and furiously to the loud techno beat, it was as if the continuation of the human race depended on him, and he only had ten seconds to save the earth.

‘Is it okay to meet here?’ Magda asked as she looked down at the antics below. ‘Have you been to Amsterdam before?’

‘First time here. But…’ He shrugged and then smiled. ‘…I didn’t come to see a sex show. I can see plenty of those at home. Your email said you needed to see me?’

The email had come to him via ‘customer relations’ in Police Headquarters. It had said just as much as it needed to to get him on a plane: no more, no less. It said that Magda had been his father’s mistress and that she needed to speak to him in person.

‘It must have been a shock, finding out about me.’

‘It was,’ Mann replied. ‘Why did you choose to tell me now and why did you need to see me urgently? What is it about?’

‘Can I ask you…have you ever been to Thailand?’

Mann looked perplexed. ‘I have, a few times, why?’

‘Did you hear about the five Dutch kids who were kidnapped recently from a refugee camp there?’

Mann nodded. ‘It was a couple of weeks ago, wasn’t it? They were working on a volunteer programme on the Burma border.’ He shook his head. ‘The world is full of teenage kids travelling the globe like it’s just one big Disney ride. It was bound to happen sooner or later. But something like that is every parent’s nightmare.’

‘Yes, it is.’ Her eyes fixed on his, the strain showed on her face as she fought back tears. ‘One of them was my son. Your brother.’

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Despite himself, Mann felt a pang of something new twist his stomach. No one had ever said ‘your brother’ to him.

Mann looked down towards the stage. A female dancer had come on in stockings and suspenders and was laying out her props: a riding whip, a bunch of bananas and a large pink dildo. She moved energetically between and around the poles at either end of the stage, stripping as she went. The Americans leant over the balcony, they had fallen predictably quiet.

‘Jake is eighteen. He and the other four kids were helping to build a school when the camp was attacked and they were taken across the border to the Burmese jungle. We have not been able to raise a ransom and we have heard nothing for over a week now. Please help us.’

Mann was reeling. To find his father had a mistress on the other side of the world was one thing, but to find he had a whole family was quite another.

‘Believe me, I am deeply sorry for your situation but I am not sure I can help,’ Mann said.

Magda looked away and stared down towards the stage. But Magda didn’t see the dancer. Downstairs the audience was rowdy—the stag party was queuing up to take part in the audience participation slot. Magda’s eyes were watery when she turned back to him.

‘Someone has to do something,’ she said, desperation in her voice as she fought to stop herself from crying. ‘We are going out there, my partner Alfie and I, he is a policeman like you. We will do everything we can, but…but…’ She looked at him as she shook her head in despair and a tear broke free. ‘We have no idea what we are doing.’ She wiped her eyes, angrily.

He waited for her to compose herself. ‘What do you think I can do?’

She turned sharply back to him, steeliness in her eyes. ‘You do not know me, but I know you. Alfie and I have followed your career. We have seen that you are a man who takes risks.’ She hesitated. ‘I know that you are not afraid to cross the line. I know that you were involved in a case where western women died in snuff movies.’ Magda searched his face. ‘I know that one of those women was someone you loved. I am sorry, Johnny. I understand your pain. That is why I asked you to come here. That is why I think you are the only one who can help me. We share some of the same pain. We both lost your father.’

It had been nineteen years since he had witnessed his father’s execution and two years since his girlfriend Helen’s lifeless body had been found. She had been tortured to death. The more Mann tried to make sense of his life, the more hollow he felt inside. He was haunted by memories. Sometimes he felt buried with the dead.

‘That might be so…’ Mann shook his head ‘…but I don’t know anything about jungle warfare. If you have the Dutch government negotiating there’s little else you can do.’

‘The whole region is politically unstable, who knows what deals they are making? You have contacts all over Asia. You can find out what has happened to Jake—I know you can. You can get my son back. There is no one else who cares. He is just a boy and he is your brother.’ Magda looked close to breaking. She shook her head miserably. ‘I’m sorry. I would not have troubled you if I did not have to. Believe me.’ She looked up at him, her eyes imploring. He did believe her. She was a mother who would do anything for her child and Mann was her last hope. And he knew she was right. Now he knew about Jake, there was nothing left for him to do. He had to help.