Free The Darkest Little Room by Patrick Holland Page A

busy.’
    â€˜You know I think of you as a younger brother. Who was that man?’
    â€˜I’m alright.’
    â€˜Well, there is something other than theatre I would like to talk to you about.’
    â€˜I am truly busy, Zhuan. Perhaps tomorrow.’
    â€˜But your girl–’
    â€˜My what?’
    Zhuan looked at me with bemusement.
    â€˜The girl who washed up in the outskirts.’
    â€˜Yes, of course. Go on.’
    â€˜I thought you should know that she was shot by two different revolvers. The police found blood on the bank for one hundred metres, stones dislodged. She wasn’t dumped in the river. She was running along the bank and then shot and then left there.’
    â€˜Thank you, Zhuan.’
    â€˜I’m trying to say that it is likely the girl was running from somewhere and someone very near the place where she died. That the place you are looking for may be right there on the river instead of the city.’
    â€˜But there is nothing out there, Zhuan.’
    â€˜There must be. I tell you this because you asked me to tell you what I knew and because I assume you are still trying to find out what got the girl killed. But I would also ask you not to– ’
    â€˜I know. Again, thank you.’
    He furrowed his brow.
    â€˜Please talk to me. I can help you.’
    I wondered how much I should say.
    â€˜If I do, you must not pass what I tell you on to anyone.’
    â€˜Please, Joe.’
    So I told him about Thuy: about the mystery of her wounds and her drug habit.
    â€˜Don’t let her persuade you to buy the drug yourself. There are bored police in this city just itching to take down an unprotected foreigner like you.’
    â€˜So what do I do?’
    â€˜How bad is she?’
    â€˜Three tenths of a gram a day. Being Saigon I suppose it’s cut with sugar and quinine – about ten percent pure. That’s not so bad, is it?’
    â€˜Bad enough. But if you really must buy this girl drugs, then let me arrange it for you.’
    â€˜I could not ask you.’
    â€˜I’ll have a courier deliver it to you here tomorrow. Upstairs. Not on the balcony. Enough for the week. Say half-past seven? The police are still in bed then.’
    â€˜Thank you.’
    â€˜In the meantime, what on earth do you mean to achieve by keeping a prostitute in your house?’
    I told him I meant to go north with the girl to uncover a network of slave traders.
    â€˜I think there is a trading house this side of the border.’
    â€˜Does she know what you’re up to?’
    â€˜Not yet.’
    â€˜And why would you do this?’
    â€˜Redemption.’
    â€˜I understand that. We all require it, even if I do not approve of your methods. But, Joe– ’
    â€˜And because there is a chance that girl who was shot on the river and Thuy are owned by the same people. Because such people and such places exist. Because the people I write for only ever get those wistful cri de cœur stories correspondents write, about how pretty the girls are and how sad it all is, so the readers can click their tongues and shake their heads at breakfast and the women go away and donate a few dollars to a Christian charity and the men secretly wonder how they might justify a business trip. I want to write something that shakes the seats of powerful men.’
    â€˜She told you a slave market exists?’
    â€˜More or less. There is more I need to ask her.’
    â€˜Bar girls will tell you anything, Joe. She may be trying to protect her dignity, and to deceive you.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜You’ve lived here more than a year already. Do you really need to ask that? For money of course! These bar girls are born liars. It’s the job description in short: pretending feelings they don’t have; pretending to be what they aren’t.’ Zhuan sighed. ‘Listen, there may still be slave markets, but I think not. There was one on the