‘You prepared, Genghis?’ Ng turned his chair around to look at Shrimp’s screen. Mann was still staring at the screen.

‘Some things you can never prepare for.’

25

Burma

For three long days Saw marched the five north to the mountains of the Golden Triangle. They crossed the muddy Meekong river and trekked ever upwards until the air became cooler every day. Now they were passing through poppy fields that stretched over hill tops and swayed with the gentle breeze in a wave of red. In the fields the peasants stopped and watched as the strange band of pale hostages and wild men passed by.

On the third evening they marched up a track and passed a field where the poppy heads stood erect, grey and fat. They were dried now and ready for harvesting. A woman was working in the field, cutting fine vertical slashes into the poppy head and releasing the white latex. Her children were harvesting the opium they had left to dry twelve hours before, scraping off the brown gum from the poppy heads. As they passed the woman, she stopped her work to watch them. Saw beckoned to her. She looked nervously around and at her children, then back at Saw and she nodded. She handed her tools to one of her children and followed them.

The sun came down fast and the five sat on an elevated platform outside the woman’s opium farm to watch it setting. The sky dipped from deep turquoise to charcoal.

‘How long has it been, Anna?’ asked Thomas.

‘It’s been sixteen days,’ said Anna without hesitating.

‘Do you think anyone knows we are alive?’ he asked. None of the five answered him. ‘Do you think someone will come looking for us?’

Jake lay on his back and looked at the stars above and wondered which one his mother was looking at right now.

Lucas managed to sit up. He smiled at Jake. ‘Wassup?’ He was shivering.

‘You cold?’ asked Jake, pleased to see his friend awake and smiling, although he could see he was being brave rather than feeling better.

‘Freezing.’

Jake’s feet and hands were tied, but he shuffled on his bottom over towards Lucas and looped his arms around him.

‘What’s happening, Jake?’ Lucas whispered.

‘I don’t know. I don’t think we were meant to still be here. Whatever it is, it doesn’t look good.’

Saw seemed to be brooding and waiting. He rested whilst his men stood guard. The woman and her children prepared food for them all. Pots of rice boiled furiously and the children were sent to get food from neighbours. They returned with parcels wrapped in banana leaf. As the woman was busy cooking she cast a nervous eye over Saw and his men, the rest of the time she stared at the five. She had never seen westerners before. She looked at them all with a mixture of bewilderment and concern. She could see they were in a bad state and that Lucas was very ill. When she thought she wasn’t being watched she brought them over some water. Squatting beside them, she washed Lucas’s face with a cool damp cloth and fed him some herbal tea. When she went back to her cooking, Jake watched her cautiously push a small knife out of her own reach, towards the five. She pushed it behind one of the pots, then she looked at Jake, down to his tied wrists and finally to the knife. He thanked her with a smile.

26

Alfie raced back to the flat. It looked as if a tornado had passed through; the place was turned upside down, pictures smashed, sofas slashed, plant pots tipped upside down. Magda stood in the middle of it, holding the dead cat in her arms. She turned as Alfie came in and his heart broke as he looked at her face.

‘I found it nailed to the door. Who would do that?’ She bowed her head and started sobbing.

He stepped over the debris, glass crunching beneath his feet.

‘Come here, Magda. Come.’ He held on to her and the cat.

He could feel her bones. Every time he held her she felt thinner. He didn’t like it. She had never felt small in his arms before. It didn’t feel like his Magda. She was dying and in so much pain; she missed her sons so much, and now she had all of this too. Alfie was so angry he knew that he would happily kill the person who had done it.

‘It’s all right, Magda, these are only things. We can buy new things. It will give us the chance to get rid of some of this clutter.’

She leaned back to look at Alfie. ‘I can’t find any of my precious things, the mementoes from when the children were small—it’s all gone. They went into the boys’ rooms and wrecked them. They tore Daniel’s surfing posters off the wall. Why did they do that?’

Alfie swallowed hard and held her tightly. She sank into his chest and hid her face as she sobbed. His shirt was soon wet from her tears.

‘You cry as much as you need to, Magda.’ He soothed her and patted her back. ‘We can buy the same poster again. I will put it back as it was.’

‘The poor cat. Jake will be so sad.’

‘We will tell him it stopped coming and we don’t know what happened to it.’

She pulled away and looked at him. ‘We can’t do that, Alfie. I want him to know it never forgot him. I am going to take a photo for Jake. He’ll want proof.’ Magda handed Alfie the cat whilst she went off to look for the radiator sling that Jake had bought for the cat. She returned, picked the cat up and put it in the sling.

‘It just looks as if it’s sleeping now,’ she said as she disappeared again to look for the camera.

Alfie smiled at her. Once she was out of earshot, he phoned in to work.

‘Double the surveillance, but keep it covert—someone broke into the flat. They turned the place upside down but didn’t take things like an expensive camera.’

Magda came back in the room, sniffing and wiping her eyes with her hanky.

‘I tell you how this makes me feel, Alfie.’

Her face was blotchy from crying. Alfie’s heart sank. He didn’t know how much more of this either of them could take. He knew Magda was so afraid of dying, but she didn’t know how terrified he was of losing her. Every day she slipped further from him. He felt powerless.

‘It makes me feel like fighting harder than I ever fought in my life. I am damned if I’m dying till I get my son back and till I put a stop to all this, Alfie. I won’t do it.’

Alfie’s eyes filled with tears for the first time since Daniel’s death.

Magda stared at him. ‘Alfie, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise how much it was all getting to you.’ He put up a hand to stop her.

‘No, Magda, it’s not that. You just made me so happy. I have got my Magda back.’

27

Sometime after they had eaten, Jake saw headlights on the approach to the farm. Saw stood and watched the jeeps approach. He nodded towards Toad who turned and slipped out of sight. Jake and the others sat blinking in the glare of the headlights. The jeeps came to a stop and cut the engines. Four bodyguards jumped out from the first vehicle and then a short bald man in his early sixties stepped out with a younger man from the second.

‘Welcome, Saw. It’s been a long time.’ The older man spoke. Saw nodded.

‘Welcome, Kasem.’

The whole time Saw’s eyes scanned the newcomers.

‘You remember my son, Tai?’ Kasem gestured towards the younger man who stood beside him grinning, his gold teeth flashing and his slicked black hair shining in the glare of the headlights.

‘Turn off the headlights,’ said Saw.