Free Bible of the Dead by Tom Knox

little living room. Phone in hand, she stood under a wallposter of the Cougnac paintings. Julia tuned out from the overheard dialogue, not wishing to intrude. It looked like Annika was having a slightly painful conversation: whispering, white faced, nodding tersely.
    ‘Oui . . . oui . . . bien sur. Merci.’
    The phone receiver carefully replaced, the older woman came back to the coffee table, wrapping her cardigan even tighter – as if the wind was blowing down from the werewolf-haunted steppes of the Margeride and directly through the room. Picking up her cup Annika drank some tea and cursed:
    ‘ Merde . The tea is cold.’ Then she looked at Julia. ‘That was the police. Ghislaine has been murdered.’

Chapter 8
    Gaining. The police were gaining.
    ‘Faster,’ said Chemda. Her hand gripped Jake’s momentarily, unconsciously maybe. ‘Faster. Quicker. Please.’ Then she spoke in French, and then Khmer. Urging on the driver.
    Jake doubted Yeng knew any of these languages. He spoke Hmong. But the meaning was plain.
    Faster. Quicker. Please.
    But no matter how fast they went, the noises behind them proved how swiftly they were losing. The roar of the big police Toyotas was drowning the growl of their own wheezing vehicle.
    ‘Faster!’ said Jake, helplessly. He saw images of the blood-drained Cambodian man in his mind: did the cops really do that? Why not? Who else? Perhaps it was that thin unsmiling Ponsavanh officer. Jake could easily envisage him: briskly slashing a neck, like severing the arteries of a suspended hog, watching the blood drain and belch. Nodding. Job done.
    The jeep accelerated into a desperate turn.
    They had no choice but to escape. Even if they surrendered to the Ponsavanh police and Chemda used her grandfather’s high profile, again, to save them – and there was no guarantee that this technique would work a second time, indeed Jake was sure it wouldn’t – that still meant surrendering Tou, who would certainly be beaten and imprisoned and convicted and possibly executed. And what would those clumsy and brutal police do to old man Yeng? The openly rebellious Hmong?
    But their vehicle was old, asthmatic and rusty; the police SUVs, however dirty, were fast and new.
    Yeng spun the wheel, racing them along the soft earthen banks of rice paddies, ducking the car under the slapping branches of oak, bamboo and glossy evergreens; the jeep slid and groaned in the mud – then sped on, grinding, desperate, and churning – but the cars were overtaking them. It was happening. They were being overtaken.
    Jake swore; Tou shouted; Yeng accelerated. Jake thought of the thin police officer, his repressed anger and hatred, maybe he would happily hoist them by their ankles, cut a throat –
    An explosion blossomed in gold .
    A huge and sudden explosion flayed the windscreen with mud and water and leaves; the jeep toppled left and further left, nearly flipping over; but then the driverside tyres found some purchase and surged forward and they crashed back onto level ground, and somehow they sped onwards.
    Unharmed?
    Smoke . There was smoke behind them. And wild flames of black and orange and billowing grey. Jake guessed at once: it must have been a bombie: an unexploded shell. The cars behind had surely hit some UXO. Jake stared, quite stunned, watching men falling out of one flaming vehicle, men on fire, screams. Muffled screams.
    Tou was whooping.
    Jake gazed in horror.
    ‘We have to stop.’ He grasped Tou’s shoulder. ‘We must stop, they could be hurt –’
    ‘No!’ Tou said. ‘Crazy! They kill us. They kill Samnang they kill you and Chemda we go –’
    Chemda looked Jake’s way:
    ‘We have to. He’s right –’
    ‘But – But Jesus –’
    ‘No. No no no! We escape!’ said Tou. ‘We escape now! See they are stopping!’
    It was true . All the police cars had been halted by the lead vehicle’s disaster. The cops were stuck in the smoke and the mud. They had all been saved by the American