Within minutes he was back in her flat. Nothing had changed. Everything was in the same immaculate state. Bed made, silk knickers left on the top. Maybe she was expecting company, thought Alfie. It would take more than silk knickers to make her attractive to him. He touched the mouse and the screen sprang into life. He clicked on the other accounts on the screen and saw that she was offline. He followed the ‘forgotten password’ link and prepared to answer the questions.

Place of birth? He typed in ‘Burma’.

Favourite colour? He typed in ‘black’.

A new message came up for katcream69. It was her password reminder: bitch.

Now Alfie knew her password and he had access to all her accounts.

33

Mann spent the rest of the day chasing up anyone who had had contact with the five but found out very little he didn’t already know. He was ready to head south to Mae Sot the following morning, making this his one and only night in Chiang Mai. Now he was sitting at a portable bar in the centre of town. It reminded him of the burger vans outside a football match in the UK. It was parked up on a broad piece of pavement, just a few feet away from the busy main road and the River Ping. It was almost like Europe, with pavement cafés on cobbled streets, except it was as hot as a furnace: at forty degrees, the evening was no cooler than the day had been. He cradled his ice-cold glass and waited for cooler air from the circulating fan to reach him as it came by every thirty seconds on its rotation. It was plugged into a series of extension leads that disappeared out of sight around the corner of a building.

In the middle of the mobile bar was a pretty woman in her fifties. She looked like Imelda Marcos. She had dyed black hair and a puffy, pretty, made-up face. Her chubby hands moved at a measured pace across the bottles as she made the drinks slowly, deliberately. She did not have the luxury of space and one wild swing of her arm would have taken out most of her stock. Outside the kiosk, there were the other three members of staff—two men and Imelda’s beautiful, quirky-looking daughter.

Mann looked up to see Louis walking towards him. He was dressed in jeans this time but he had on the same cotton shirt.

Louis sat down opposite Mann and waited for Imelda’s daughter to acknowledge his existence. She didn’t. She picked up the dirty glasses, refreshed the bowls of peanuts and kept up a constant conversation on her mobile, making sure that she made as little contact with the customers as possible. One of the others took his order. Imelda inclined her head in a slow Geisha bow and Louis returned it. She giggled; her teeth were tiny pins. ‘How did you get on today? Did you talk to everyone you needed to?’

‘I think so. I leave for Mae Sot tomorrow.’

‘How are you getting there?’

‘Don’t know yet. Are you headed that way?’

‘No, but I know a man—Gee. He goes back and forth. I’ll ring him and tell him to pick you up outside your hotel. Don’t give him more than five thousand baht and don’t pay him till you get there. He’s a likeable rogue but you can’t trust him.’

‘Thought you might consider helping; I could use a handy guy with a gun.’

Louis rested his keys on the table and pulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights. He slouched over the table and tapped a cigarette out of the pack. Imelda’s daughter appeared from nowhere, lit it for him, and disappeared again. He turned his head and grinned at Mann.

‘You had me checked out?’ He sat back in his chair and studied Mann.

‘I had you checked before I came. Although there wasn’t a lot to uncover in the last fifteen years. Except…you are an ex-marine and you never mentioned you were once a mercenary and that you fought on the side of the Karen National Liberation Army.’

Louis took a drag of his cigarette and nodded.

‘Well done, big respect, man. That took some digging.’

‘Actually, I didn’t know that last bit. I presumed you were out here for that long you probably got paid when the Opium King was handing out big money to foreign mercenaries, right?’

Louis realised he had walked straight into Mann’s trap. He smiled and then shook his head sadly. ‘That was when the KNLA had a chance of winning. Now they are screwed.’ Imelda’s daughter brought their drinks over. ‘Now there are twenty thousand KNLA with little or no equipment against five hundred thousand fully armed Burmese. The villagers don’t stand a chance. No one does in Burma. The kids are as good as dead. The Burmese do whatever the fuck they like and no one stops them—it’s the teak, the resources. The world might be appalled but it’s also a consumer. It still does business with Burma. The villagers won’t be able to help the kids, they won’t just face the Burmese army, they will face organised paid gangs of murderers. They’re called Shwit. It’s the sound of a throat being cut. They kill anyone with links to the KNLA, past or present.’ Louis looked up from his beer and gave a faint smile. ‘Now, I’m a man who likes a cause but I also like to feel I can win.’

‘So, will you help me?’

Louis laughed gently. ‘You don’t give up do you? Mercenaries are ten a penny in this part of the world. Some of them don’t even want any money—they do it to get target practice. The hills have at least more than one crazy white mercenary in them at any one time. Seems Rambo is alive and well and living in the Shan State.’ He shrugged and shook his head. ‘They always go mad in the end, or they get killed. Sometimes they find God. Mercenaries and missionaries seem to go together. Mae Sot is everything a good border town on the edge of hell should be; it exists for darkness and misery and blood and fear, where the wealthy and the poor meet across the poker tables of life and bet on one another’s souls.’

‘Is that what you did?’

‘Yes. But not any more. I am hoping the Buddhism will save my soul, but, if not, it’s been a calming influence—one I needed. Us crazy whites can have a lust for blood once we kill; we cannot forgive ourselves and we cannot stop.’

Mann smiled ruefully. ‘Yes, it warps the brain.’

‘That’s because we don’t have a cause like they do. The Karen kill only to defend. They don’t take a life unnecessarily because they are all on the same side really. They are all fighting the Burmese military junta, whether they are Karen or poor Burmese farmers. They should fight together, but they don’t, of course. Buddhist Karen kill Christian Karen and so on. They are splintered. What’s that old saying—“divided we fall”?’

‘Yes. Something like that. So you’re not interested in the reward money?’

‘How much?’

‘Two million US.’

‘Jesus! Who put that up?’

‘Anonymous. You interested now?’

Louis shook his head. ‘I turned over a new leaf, remember?’

Mann smiled. ‘I have to meet up with a man named Riley, he’s the NAP contact at Mae Klaw. You know him?’

‘I know him well. He’s a good guy. He runs the whole NGO side of things at Mae Sot. Go to King’s bar. He’s there every evening. You can trust Riley,’ said Louis before drinking the dregs of his beer.

‘Trust means something different to everyone,’ Mann said. ‘It depends on what’s important to you. Some people you could trust with your life but not with your wallet or your wife. Everyone has their Achilles’ heel. I trust no one, it’s easier that way.’

34

Alfie had spent the day looking at Katrien’s emails. She had been in charge of setting up the volunteers’ programme and questions were being asked as to where exactly the money had gone. One question was leading to another by the look of it, and she was finding herself in hot water—she was now being asked to account for the money raised for the tsunami and told to submit detailed reports on all the projects she had managed in the last eighteen months. She was fending them off with demands for more time to compile them.