The Solitary Man (2 page)

They were followed by two Thai men, friends of Park with virtually unpronounceable names who'd met them at Chiang Mai airport. They smiled a lot but the Irishman didn't trust them. But then he didn't trust anybody in Thailand, not since he'd given money to a beggar with no arms as he'd left his hotel in Bangkok. The beggar had been sitting cross-legged at the bottom of a footbridge over one of the city's perpetually congested roads. He had been in his early twenties, dirty and dishevelled and holding a polystyrene cup in his teeth, the empty sleeves of his T-shirt dangling at his sides. The Irishman had dropped two ten-baht coins into the cup and Park had roared with laughter. It was only then that the Irishman had noticed the bulges and realised that the beggar had his arms folded behind his back. He had reached towards the cup to take back his money, but Park had restrained him, laughing and explaining that the beggar was simply like everyone else in the city, trying to make a living. Since then, he had taken nothing at face value.

He stepped aside to allow three saffron-robed monks to walk by. The monk bringing up the rear was a young boy who smiled up at the Irishman. It was a guileless smile and the boy's eyes were bright and friendly. The Irishman grinned back. It seemed as though everyone he met in Thailand smiled, no matter what their circumstances.

Park took them around the side of the building to a loading ramp. The four men walked up the ramp to a steel shutter which Park banged on with the flat of his hand, three short raps followed by two more in quick succession. A door set into the shutter opened a couple of inches and someone inside muttered a few words in Thai. Park replied and the door opened wide. He motioned for the Irishman to go in first.

It was dark inside and the Irishman blinked as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. The warehouse was hot and airless. The area around the door was bare except for a small steel table and two wooden stools, but the rest of the building was packed with wooden crates and cardboard boxes which reached almost to the ceiling. A line of bare lightbulbs provided the only illumination in the warehouse, but there were so many crates and boxes that much of the interior was in shadow, adding to the Irishman's feeling of claustrophobia. He wiped his damp forehead with his sleeve.

Park smiled sympathetically. 'We check, then we go,' he said.

The Irishman nodded. 'Let's get on with it, then.'

The man who'd opened the door was short and squat with a tattoo of a tiger on his left forearm and a handgun stuck into the belt of his pants. He had a frog-like face with bulging eyes, and around his neck was a thick gold chain from which dangled a small circular piece of jade. He grinned at Park and nodded towards the far end of the warehouse. Three more Thais in T-shirts and jeans with guns in their belts materialised from the shadows. The Irishman looked at Park, and the Thai gave him a reassuring smile. Together they walked down an aisle between the towering boxes, following the man with the tiger tattoo. They turned to the left down another aisle where a large space had been cleared. A cardboard box had been opened and half a dozen Panasonic video recorders taken out. The man with the tattoo spoke to Park in rapid Thai.

'He wants you to choose one,' Park explained.

THE SOLITARY MAN V The Irishman shrugged carelessly. 'You choose,' he said.

Park squatted down and tapped one of the machines with his finger. The man with the tiger tattoo picked up a screwdriver and quickly removed a panel from the bottom of the video recorder. He pulled out three polythene-covered packages containing white powder and handed one to the Irishman.

The Irishman walked over to a stack of boxes. He indicated the cardboard box at the bottom of the stack. 'That one,' he said.

The man with the tiger tattoo began to talk quickly but Park silenced him with a wave of his hand. Park said something in Thai but the man continued to protest. 'He says it's too much work,' Park translated. 'He says they're all the same.'

The Irishman's eyes hardened. 'Tell him I want to see one from that box.'

Park turned to the man with the tattoo and spoke to him again. There was something pleading about Park's voice, as if he didn't want to cause offence. Eventually the man with the tattoo shrugged and smiled at the Irishman. He waved his two colleagues over and they helped him take down the upper boxes until they had uncovered the one on the bottom. They dragged it into the centre of the space. The man with the tattoo handed a crowbar to the Irishman and pointed at the box.

'He wants you to--'

'I know what he wants,' said the Irishman, weighing the crowbar in his hand. The metal was warm and his palms were damp with sweat. He stared at the man with the tattoo as if daring him to argue, but the Thai just smiled good-naturedly as if his earlier protests had never occurred. The Irishman inserted the end of the crowbar into the top of the box and pushed down. There was a crashing sound from the far end of the warehouse followed by shouts. He looked across at Park.

The man with the tiger tattoo pulled his gun from his belt and ran towards the entrance to the warehouse. His two companions followed. Park yelled at his own two men to go with them.

'What's happening?' shouted the Irishman.

'Maybe nothing,' said Park.

'Maybe nothing, my arse,' the Irishman shouted. 'This is a fucking set-up.' He jumped as a gun went off, the sound deafening in 10 STEPHEN LEATHER the confines of the building. There were more shots, louder than the first. The Irishman glared at Park. 'Maybe nothing?' he yelled.

Park looked left and right, then grabbed the Irishman by the arm. 'This way,' he said, pulling him down the aisle. They ran between the stacks of boxes.

'Is it the cops?' asked the Irishman, gasping for breath.

'Maybe,' said Park. 'I don't know.'

A bullet thwacked into a cardboard box above the Irishman's head and he ducked down. 'The cops wouldn't just shoot, would they?' he asked.

'This is Thailand,' said Park. 'The police can do anything they want.' He kicked an emergency door and it crashed open. Sunlight streamed in, so bright that the Irishman flinched. Park seized him by the belt of his jeans and pulled him across the threshold, then stopped dead.

It took the Irishman a second or two to realise that the once noisy street was now totally silent. He blinked and shielded his eyes from the blinding sun. The stall-owners had gone, and so had the crowds. Khaki Land-rovers had been arranged haphazardly around the building and red and white barriers had been erected across the alley. Behind the vehicles and the barriers crouched men with rifles, in dark brown uniforms and sunglasses. The Irishman whirled around but immediately knew that there was no escape. They were surrounded. Three rugged Thais with assault rifles stood at the emergency exit, their fingers on the triggers of their weapons.

A megaphone-amplified Thai voice echoed off the walls of the alley.

'Drop the crowbar,' said Park calmly. 'Drop the crowbar and put your hands above your head. Very slowly.'

The Irishman did as he was told.

THE PANELS PROTECTING THE CD player swished open as the young man brought his hand close to the controls. He slotted in the CD and pressed the select button until he got the track he THE SOLITARY MAN 11 wanted. A few seconds later the mournful tones of Leonard Cohen filled the apartment: 'Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye'. The smoked glass panels whispered shut again. He stood with his eyes closed and let the music flow over him, swaying backwards and forwards like a sailor trying to maintain his equilibrium on a gently rocking boat, breathing softly through his nose.

He didn't open his eyes until the track had finished, and then he went over to a low coffee table and picked up the remote control unit. He aimed it at the stereo as if it were a loaded gun and selected the same track again.

The sliding glass door leading to the balcony was open and the night breeze blew in, chilled by the East River. The young man was wearing only a white T-shirt and blue jeans but he showed no sign of noticing the cold. He stood looking over the water, its glistening black surface speckled by moonlight. He stretched his arms out in front of himself and breathed deeply, like a high diver preparing to leave his board. He closed his eyes, then after a few seconds opened them again.

'Damn you, Charlie,' he whispered. 'Get the hell out of my mind.'

He went back into the lounge and grabbed the telephone off the sideboard. He tapped out her number and paced up and down in front of the stereo as he waited for her to answer. Her machine kicked in. The young man didn't wait for the beeps. He cut the connection. She was there, he was sure she was there. It was three o'clock in the morning, where else would she be? He pressed the redial button again and got the engaged tone. For a second his heart leaped as he thought that maybe she was calling him, but then he realised that it was probably her answering machine resetting itself.

The stereo went quiet but before the CD player could move on to the next track, he pressed the replay button. There was only one song on the album that he wanted to hear. He hit the phone's redial button again. 'Hi, this is Charlotte . . .' He clicked the phone off. The answer machine was by her bed and he knew that Charlie was a light sleeper. How dare she ignore him like this? It wasn't fair, he thought angrily. She had no right to do this to him.

He took the phone out on to the balcony. He wondered if there was somebody with her, somebody else lying under the thick 12 STEPHEN LEATHER feather-filled duvet. He stabbed savagely at the redial button. 'Hi, this is Charlotte . . .'

He glared at the phone and for a moment considered throwing it away. He pictured it arcing over the river, twisting in the night air like the bone thrown by the ape in 2001 just before it turned into the spaceship. He smiled at the image. It was a great movie, he thought. Maybe he'd put Charlotte in a screenplay, have her be the victim of a knife-wielding maniac, stalked and terrified and eventually butchered. That was the great thing about being a writer: nothing was wasted. Every experience, every emotion, it could all be put to use. Even being dumped.

His word processor sat on a desk by the kitchen door, stuck in the corner so that he wouldn't be distracted by the view from his window. He switched it on, but immediately realised that he wouldn't be able to write. He'd barely written anything since Charlie had told him that she needed time alone. Space, she said. She needed space. That had been two weeks ago, and now he was behind on two assignments and his tutor was breathing down his neck wanting to see his work in progress. It was all Charlie's fault, he thought. She'd given him writer's block.

He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a small leather bag that had once contained a shoeshine kit. He weighed the bag in his hand, then tapped it against his cheek. The leather was soft and supple and he could still smell shoe polish. He thought about ringing her one last time, but he couldn't face listening to her perky message again. He dropped down on to the sofa, unzipped the bag and laid out the contents on the coffee table, then took a small polythene bag of white powder from the back pocket of his jeans. He'd bought the drug the previous day from his regular supplier, a small, weaselly thirty-something man who lived on 77th Street and who delivered as promptly as a pizza company, promising a twenty per cent discount if he didn't arrive within an hour.

The young man hummed along with the CD as he prepared the heroin. It was one of the reasons that Charlie had said she wanted some time on her own. She'd said that he was crazy using the stuff and that only addicts injected. He'd told her that it was safe, that he never, ever shared his needles or syringes, and that it was more cost-effective to inject. And when he'd said that she THE SOLITARY MAN 13 didn't appear to have any reservations about smoking pot or sniffing cocaine she'd lost her temper and accused him of being obtuse. He smiled to himself as he drew the heroin up into the syringe. Obtuse, he thought. She didn't get it and she thought he was obtuse.

He took the leather belt from around his waist, deftly wound it around his left upper arm and tightened it. He'd only been injecting for two weeks or so but he had no trouble in raising a vein and injecting the contents of the syringe. His supplier had shown him how to do it, had even thrown in the first few hits free of charge. Not that he couldn't afford to buy his own: the drug was cheaper than it had ever been. As he'd told Charlie, it was almost cheaper getting high on heroin than it was getting a buzz from beer. And without the calories. He put the empty syringe down on the coffee table and loosened the belt, then settled back on the sofa, his eyes closed, a lazy smile on his face as he waited for the rush. The telephone began to ring, but to the young man it sounded as if it was a million miles away. He tried to open his eyes but the effort was too much for him; it was as if his eyelids had been sewn shut. Something felt wrong, but he couldn't work out what it was, then the feeling passed and his jaw dropped open and a thin dribble of frothy spittle oozed from between his lips. His breathing grew slower and slower and then stopped altogether.

The telephone continued to ring out, then it too stopped and the only sound in the apartment was the humming of the word processor.

THE YOUNG GIRL KNELT down and pulled a spinach plant out of the ground. She shook the reddish soil from its roots and put it in the large wicker basket with the ones she'd already picked. She hated gathering vegetables from among the poppy plants. It was back-breaking work, made all the harder because she had to take care not to damage any of the poppy plants as she moved across the field. Her father had explained to her how important the vegetables were, how the beans and spinach helped keep the field clear of weeds, and how they added nutrients to the soil,

nutrients that would enhance the poppy crop. The better the crop, the more opium the poppies produced, the more money her father would make. The girl stood up and arched her back. Something clicked, like a small twig snapping. She wiped her hands on her black trousers then rubbed the base of her spine with her knuckles.