Beyond Year Zero by Lawrence Held

Author:Lawrence Held
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Big Sky Publishing
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Bopha and I were parked across from one another now, still keeping our own counsel, when there was a noise outside the front door. We both sat up and listened. There followed a silence, then a knock.

Bopha put a finger to her lips, got up, looked out the judas hole, turned back to me and mouthed, ‘It’s Wan Dy.’

I was halfway across the floor when there was a deafening bang and the door lock blew off and shot across the room. Bopha let out a terrified scream, then the door itself flew open and Wan Dy stood there, dressed in the loose black suit and holding his weapon, a sawn-off aluminium bat handle clamped to the muzzle.

Somewhere in the building footsteps ran and doors banged, but no-one came into sight.

Wan Dy stepped lightly into the room, for a man of his bulk, and kicked the door shut behind him. He looked at me, then at Bopha, then back at me, and said something to her from the side of his mouth. She said something back to him with a shrill strain to it, even for a language as generally shrill as Khmer.

‘I asked her where Mr Butt is,’ Wan Dy said to me. ‘She said she doesn’t know. Do you know, Mr Meissner?’

‘No. The last time I saw him was when you two dropped around to my apartment,’ I said politely.

Wan Dy’s eyes had a sleepy look now I didn’t much like. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked me.

I shrugged. ‘I thought Bopha might know where I could find Danny Goldman. I’m looking for him.’

‘Did she?’

‘No. She doesn’t know.’

Wan Dy’s eyes flicked around the room. Then he said something else to Bopha and pointed the gun at the kitchen. They were going there when I stepped in front of them.

‘You can’t go in there,’ I said, hoping that whatever I was doing would come to me.

Wan Dy and Bopha had stopped dead in their tracks and were staring at me. Bopha’s face looked suddenly pale and drawn.

‘Why not?’ Wan Dy asked me.

For a moment that had me stumped. ‘There’s a body in there.’

‘Whose body?’

I swallowed the lump in my throat and laughed. Then Bopha began to talk. I watched Wan Dy while she did. Whatever she was selling him he looked as if he might be buying.

Then she laughed and said, ‘Can’t you take a joke, big boy? Come on, look. My father will think it’s very funny when I tell him, but I don’t think he’ll like you damaging his property.’

She took him by the arm, flung me a collusive glance and almost marched him towards the kitchen.

I had no idea what she was up to. I went quickly to my bag, took out the Glock and held it behind my back, waiting for the noise Wan Dy would make when he saw Butt’s body. But all I heard was the sound of quiet conversation. I crept closer to it. Bopha and Wan Dy were chatting like a couple of old friends near the kitchen door.

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