The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 7 Part 34

Luckily, Lloyd knew they had absolutely no forensic evidence. If there had been any, which he doubted, it would have been obliterated by the fire. All he had to do was stick to his story, and they would never be able to prove a thing. Suspicion was all very well, but it wasn't sufficient grounds for a murder charge.

After the funeral, he had lain low in a sublet condominium at Victoria Park and Danforth, opposite Shopper's World. At night the streets were noisy and a little edgy, Lloyd felt, the kind of area where you might easily get mugged if you weren't careful. More than once he had had the disconcerting feeling that he was being followed, but he told himself not to be paranoid. He wouldn't be here for long. After a suitable period of mourning he would go to Vancouver and decide he couldn't face returning to the city where his poor wife met such a terrible death. He still had a few colleagues who would regret his decision to leave, perhaps, but there wasn't really anybody left in Toronto to care that much about Lloyd Francis and what happened to him. At the moment, they all thought he was a bit depressed, "getting over his loss". Soon he would be free to "meet" Anne-Marie and start a new life. The money should be all his by then, too, once the lawyers and accountants had finished with it. Never again would he have to listen to his wife reminding where his wealth and success came from.

The Silver Birch explosion had not only destroyed Lloyd's house and wife, it had also destroyed his car, a silver Toyota SUV, and he wasn't going to bother replacing it until he moved to Vancouver, where he'd probably buy a nice little red sports car. He still popped into the studios occasionally, mostly to see how things were going, and luckily his temporary accommodation was close to the Victoria Park subway. He soon found he didn't mind taking the TTC to work and back. In fact, he rather enjoyed it. They played cla.s.sical music at the station to keep away the hooligans. If he got a seat on the train, he would read a book, and if he didn't, he would drift off into thoughts of his sweet Anne-Marie.

And so life went on, waiting, waiting for the time when he could decently and without arousing suspicion, make his move. The policeman didn't return, obviously realizing that he had absolutely no chance of making a case against Lloyd without a confession, which he knew he wouldn't get. It was late November now, arguably one of the grimmest months in Toronto, but at least the snow hadn't come yet, just one dreary cold grey day after another.

One such day Lloyd stood on the crowded eastbound platform at the St George subway station wondering if he dare make his move as early as next week. At least, he thought, he could "go away for a while", maybe even until after Christmas. Surely that would be acceptable by now? People would understand that he couldn't bear to spend his first Christmas without Laura in Toronto.

He had just decided that he would do it when he saw the train come tearing into the station. In his excitement at the thought of seeing Anne-Marie again so soon, a sort of unconscious sense of urgency had carried him a little closer to the edge of the platform than he should have been, and the crowds jostled behind him. He felt something hard jab into the small of his back, and the next thing he knew, his legs buckled and he pitched forward. He couldn't stop himself. He toppled in front of the oncoming train before the driver could do a thing. His last thought was of Anne-Marie waving goodbye to him at Vancouver International Airport, then the subway train smashed into him and its wheels shredded him to pieces.

Someone in the crowd screamed and people started running back towards the exits. The frail-looking old man with the walking-stick who had been standing directly behind Lloyd turned to walk away calmly through the chaos, but before he could get very far, two scruffy-looking young men emerged from the throng and one took him by each arm. "No you don't," one of them said. "This way." And they led him up to the street.

Detective Bobby Aiken played with the worry beads one of his colleagues had brought him back from a trip to Istanbul. Not that he was worried about anything. It was just a habit, and he found it very calming. It had, in fact, been a very good day.

Not because of Lloyd Francis. Aiken didn't really care one way or another about Francis' death. In his eyes, Francis had been a cold-blooded murderer and he had got no less than he deserved. No, the thing that pleased Aiken was that the undercover detectives he had detailed to keep an eye on Francis had picked up Mickey the Croaker disguised as an old man at the St George subway station, having seen him push Francis with the sharp end of his walking-stick.

Organized Crime had been after Mickey for many years now but had never managed to get anything on him. They knew that he usually worked for one of the big crime families in Montreal, and the way things were looking, he was just about ready to cut a deal: amnesty and the witness relocation plan for everything he knew about the Montreal operation, from the hits he had made to where the bodies were buried. Organized Crime were creaming their jeans over their good luck. It would mean a promotion for Bobby Aiken.

The only thing that puzzled Aiken was why? What had Lloyd Francis done to upset the Mob? There was something missing, and it irked him that he might never uncover it now the main players were dead. Mickey the Croaker knew nothing, of course. He had simply been obeying orders, and killing Lloyd Francis meant nothing more to him than swatting a fly. Francis's murder was more than likely connected with the post-production company, Aiken decided. It was well-known that the Mob had its fingers in the movie business, often for the purpose of money-laundering. A bit of digging around might uncover something more specific, but Aiken didn't have the time. Besides, what did it matter now? Even if he didn't understand how all the pieces fit together, things had worked out the right way. Lanagan and Francis were dead and Mickey the Croaker was about to sing. It was a shame about the wife, Laura. She had been a good-looking woman, from what Aiken had been able to tell from the family photographs, and it was a pity she had died so young. But those were the breaks. If she hadn't being playing the beast with two backs with Lanagan in her own bed, for Christ's sake, then she might still be alive today.

It was definitely a good day, Aiken decided, pushing the papers aside. Even the weather had improved. He looked out of the window. Indian Summer had come to Toronto in November. The sun glinted on the apartment windows at College and Yonge and the office workers were out on the streets, men without jackets and women in sleeveless summer dresses. A streetcar rumbled by, heading for Main station. Main. Out near the Beaches. The boardwalk and the Queen Street cafes would be crowded and the dog-walkers would be out in force. Aiken thought maybe he'd take Jasper out there for a run later. You never knew who you might meet when you were walking your dog on the beach.

THE VELOCITY OF BLAME.

Christopher Fowler.

"THE BEST WAY to get rid of a really big Cambodian c.o.c.kroach is to wrap it in tissue paper, drop it in the toilet and pour Coco de Mer Body b.u.t.ter over it so it can't climb the walls of the bowl, because the b.u.g.g.e.rs have clawed feet and can really shift. Even then, they sometimes manage to shuck off the paper and use it to climb back up out of the toilet into your bathroom." That's what Dorothy's guidebook said. She was always reading me pa.s.sages from the d.a.m.ned thing. It had a bunch of tips for dealing with the kind of problems you encounter over there. When they didn't work, she added her own twists. It was one of those guidebooks obsessed with hygiene and the strength of the dollar, and so paranoid about being ripped off that you lost faith in human nature the longer you kept reading it. I made her throw it away when we decided to stay on.

I'll admit, it took us a while to get used to the bugs in South East Asia, but I thought they'd turn out to be the least of our problems. There would be other issues to deal with. The food, the people, the heat, the past, the politics. I should have added another problem to that list; lack of communication.

We came to Siem Reap to do the tourist thing, hire bikes and see the temples of Angor Wat at sunset, climbing over the temples of Ta Keo and Ta Prohm, where great tree roots entwine the carvings until it's impossible to tell what is hand-carved and what is natural. We wanted to ride elephants, hang out in bars where you could still smoke beneath slow-turning fans, drive along the endless arrow-straight roads to the floodplains of the Tonle Sap Lake, eat fat shrimps in villages that had survived through the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, but no one had told us about the people, how kind, placid and forgiving they were. No other country in the world could have survived so many horrors and still have found such power to forgive. It didn't make sense to me, but then I come from a land that specializes in Christian vengeance.

It was our first visit to South East Asia, and we immediately fell in love with the place.

Siem Reap was little more than a dusty crossroads crowded with ringing bicycles, lined with cafes and little places where you could get a foot and shoulder ma.s.sage. There were covered markets at each end of the town selling intricate wooden carvings, pirated books and gaudy silks, and barns where farmers sat on the floor noisily trading their produce, with their kids running everywhere, laughing and fooling around, the closest definition I'd ever seen of real community. That's a word we're fond of using at home, but there it means something entirely less friendly.

After watching Chinese dealers testing precious stones that had been dug out of the mountains, running little blowtorches over gems to prove their integrity, I bought Dorothy a ruby for thirty dollars.

"I'm not going to have this made into anything," she said happily, "I just want to keep it somewhere in a box so I can look at it and remember.'

Instead of frying ourselves by the hotel pool we wandered around the streets, where every merchant was calling out, trying to lure us into their store with special offers. Not so pushy that they were annoying, just doing business and quickly leaving us alone as soon as they realized we didn't want to buy. Now that Cambodia was finally stable, the Russians and the French were competing to build along the town's main road, and ugly concrete blocks were going up behind the 1930s colonnades. No plumbing, no drainage but plenty of internet access; welcome to the new frontier, where you could use an ATM machine but still had to step over duelling scorpions to do so. A national museum had opened, absurdly high-tech, half the interactive exhibits not functioning, as though some rich outsider had insisted that this was what the town needed to draw tourists. Less than a decade of peace and the nation was embracing its future with a kind of friendly ferocity, but you feared for the transition process, knowing that everything could still be lost overnight.

And I was finally vacationing with my wife. Gail and Redmond had married and left home and were now living in Oakley, Virginia, which left me and Dorothy rattling around the house in Washington with too many bedrooms and memories. I'd been promising Dorothy that we'd eventually travel, but it proved harder to get away from work than I'd expected. After thirty-seven years of marriage, during which time we'd hardly ever left the country, I decided enough was enough and applied for two months' leave, although I eventually had to take it unpaid. Of course, whatever time you pick to go away is never the right time, and this proved to be the case; there was an election pending and everyone was expected to help, but Dorothy put her foot down and told me she'd go by herself if I didn't step away this time and make good on my promise to her. She said: "Politicians are like policemen, the work never stops and they never make much of a difference, so take a vacation."

So I booked the tickets and off we went.

When I first saw the officials at Siem Reap airport emptying their collected visa-cash into leather suitcases right in front of the tourists who paid them, I'll admit I thought the worst, that the corrupting influence of past dictators lived on and maybe it does in other ways but after that day I saw nothing else like it and we had a wonderful time.

On one of our last trips out beyond the river we found ourselves in a town almost completely surrounded by dense jungle. The Tonle Sap lake is tidal. For most of the year it's barely three feet deep, but during the monsoon season it connects with the Mekon River and reverses its flow, flooding the surrounding plains and forests, filling a vast area with breeding fish. The Vietnamese families living in the floating villages at the lake's edge aren't much liked by the Cambodians, but on the whole everyone rubs along. The effluvial soil is rich and the landscape is lush with vegetation. On that day we stopped in a village so small that no one living in it could decide what it was called, and that was when we saw the house.

It was just a white brick box in a small square of cleared gra.s.s, but the surrounding forest canopy glowed emerald even at noon, and it looked like the happiest place on earth. What's more, the little house was available to rent. I mentioned it to Dorothy, who dismissed the idea at once, but I could see she was excited. A light had come into her eyes that I had not seen in years. Dorothy never went out without makeup and jewellery. She cared about appearances, and what people thought of her. She was concerned about making a good impression. It's a Washington habit. But I could tell she relished the thought of not having to bother, even if it was just for a month.

"Well, I guess it wouldn't hurt to take a look," she said finally, so we visited the owner, a tiny little old lady called Madame Nghor, and she showed us around. It was just about as basic as you can get. There was really just one room with a single small window, because the kitchen and toilet were kind of outside. They stood on a half-covered deck with a wood rail that overlooked the fields and the forest. There was also a plank terrace at the front facing the road. Life was lived mainly out of doors.

The monsoon had recently ended, leaving the jungle green but foetid. On its far side, palms had been cleared to build a factory, but the breeze-block building had never been finished. The village was so perfect that it could even keep progress at bay. Madame Nghor agreed to rent us the property for one month. The price seemed absurdly low, but maybe it was extortionate to her. We didn't really care.

We checked out of the Borei Angkor, the fancy hotel where we had only met other Americans, and moved right in to the tiny house. When we got in the taxi to leave, the driver automatically a.s.sumed we were heading to the airport and very nearly dropped us there. He was real surprised when we redirected him into the countryside.

Our tickets home were open so there was nothing else to do but tell our family that we had decided to stay on awhile. Gail thought we were behaving kind of weirdly but Redmond congratulated us when we told him.

"I won't be making many more calls," I warned him. "The charger we brought with us doesn't work out here. But we have our health and our money, and the change is doing Dorothy a world of good."

"Just don't go native on us, Dad," Redmond laughed.

Obviously, staying in the house was very different to being in the hotel. There were no fresh towels or little gifts on the pillow, and there was no room service or air conditioning, but we loved it all the same. Madame Nghor offered to prepare food for us, and we took up her kind offer. On our second day, she called around with the other villagers to formally welcome us. The women peeped shyly around the door and wouldn't come in. The men sat in a circle outside and offered us a strong, sour yellow drink they'd made themselves. I didn't like it much but it wouldn't have been right to refuse it.

We were sad to see so many of their children missing an arm or a leg. They danced about dextrously with just a stick or two to lean on, and Dorothy and I felt compelled to give them a few coins even though we knew we shouldn't. There was this kid called Pran, a skinny little runt about seven years old, who had lost both his legs and one arm. There were still thousands of landmines buried in the countryside around the village, and we were warned about straying from the marked paths when cycling to the next village for provisions. The damage of war always outlives the fighting, sometimes in ways we can never imagine.

The younger villagers spoke some English, and all were anxious to ensure that we would have a happy stay. Madame Nghor was especially thoughtful, and would bring us small gifts a mosquito coil, candles, a hand fan anything she could think of that might make our stay more comfortable. Her husband had died in tragic circ.u.mstances I heard from one of the villagers that he had been murdered by a Khmer resistance unit about fifteen years earlier and pain was etched deeply in her face, but now her life was simple and safe and she made the best of it; her story, we felt, was to have a happy ending. She and the villagers lived by the principles enshrined by their religion, peace and acceptance and harmony, and we found it a humbling contrast to the way we lived at home. You try to do the right thing but life in the West is complicated and hypocritical.

There were times when we felt like disoriented Westerners, not understanding what we were seeing. On a trip into Siem Reap we saw a fight explode out of nowhere between two men who were whisked away so quickly by police that I feared for their survival in the cells. Then, an hour later, we saw them in a cafe together laughing and drinking. Some of the food gave us fiery stomach cramps we weren't used to eating such quant.i.ties of spiced vegetables without any dairy products and the insects particularly plagued Dorothy, who would find herself bitten even though she tightly wrapped herself at sunset from head to foot. One night as I watched this ritual of protection, I found myself fearing for her. She seemed so much more fragile here. Dorothy caught me looking, and told me not to fuss. She always had confidence in me.

The bugs were at their worst after a humid rainstorm broke across our new home one night. They flew into the shutters at such a lick I thought they might crack the wood. The next morning the warm, still pools under our decking were filled with giant centipedes and every type of crawling creature, some with pincers, some with horns and stingers, many as big as an adult fist. I shifted one multi-legged horror from the bedroom with a stick, and it caught me by surprise when its shiny black carapace split open and two vibrating iridescent green wings folded out. It lifted lazily into the air like a cargo plane, and I guided it toward an open window.

The following evening we opened a bottle of warm red wine and sat beside each other on the rickety wooden terrace, watching the sunset, Dorothy and I. Silence fell easily between us, but it was also a time for asking things we had avoided discussing all of our married life.

"Tell me," she said after a long pause for thought. "Do you ever regret working for the doctor?"

It was a question I had asked myself many times. "I was young," I replied. "I was ambitious. We were denied information. We didn't know many of the things we know now."

"But if you had known, would you still have worked for him?"

"Why do you need to know?"

"Because there were others who stood their ground." There was no reproach in her voice.

"They knew more than I ever did. He kept us in the dark."

"You knew about the carpet bombing. Everyone in Washington knew."

"We didn't know what it would lead to. How could we? But to answer your question no, I wouldn't have worked for Kissinger."

As we were dressing, Madame Nghor brought us a ceramic pot and shyly set it on the low dining table. She looked uncomfortable about bringing it. "This for protection for-" and here she rolled one forefinger over the other in an explanation I could not understand. I looked into the pot and found it contained an oily red b.u.t.ter that smelled like copper and petrol.

"How do I use this?" I asked.

"Not for you," she told me gently, "for your wife."

I figured that explained her awkwardness. For the last day or so Dorothy had been suffering from cramps. Madame Nghor held her hand out over the edge of the floor and made a soothing flat-palmed gesture.

"Put it on at night. You rub it like this to stop them from coming," and again she did the finger-rolling thing that I took to be an indication of cramps. "You have no trouble from them after, they stop and die. You must keep lid on pot tight. You want me to show?" I thought she looked mighty uncomfortable with what she regarded to be a personal subject, and by this time her embarra.s.sment had spread to me, so I hastily thanked her and showed her out.

We were planning our first trip into the jungle, but Dorothy had not slept well, and was still in some pain. "We'll postpone it to another time," I told her. "Besides, it's been raining and now it's hot again, so G.o.d knows what kind of insects will be out and about."

"No, we'll go. I feel a lot better now, really. I'm not going to be a killjoy on this trip." I explained to her about rubbing on Madame Nghor's home-made potion but it seemed too oily and liable to stain, so she decided it would be better to use it when we got back. After tucking our shirts and socks tightly into our trousers and boots so that no insect could find a way in, we set off into the woodlands, clambering over great tree roots, stopping to listen to the calling of birds in the jungle canopy. The going was a lot tougher than we had expected, and after an hour we decided to turn back.

We had been hoping to stumble across one of the many overgrown temples that lay almost entirely buried by the returning jungle, and in one patch of cleared ground I rubbed away a layer of thick green moss to find the scarred stone face of an Apsara dancer staring up at me through the soft soil. With her raised eyes appearing above the leaves, it looked like she had been swimming through the gra.s.s and had just broken through the surface. As if she had been waiting for someone to come along and awaken her.

"You've let the sunlight fall on her face again," said Dorothy.

"We could uncover the rest of her," I suggested.

"You don't understand. The moss was protecting her from damage."

We walked on. Dorothy was particularly exhausted by the journey, so we stopped by a stream and listened to the sounds of the forest.

"We should have done this years ago," I said, taking her hand. Dorothy's hair had greyed a little and she had tied it back into a ponytail, but in the yellow light that fell through the branches she looked blonde again.

"The time was never right before, you know that," she replied. "At least we got to do it now."

She looked down at her boots, lost in thought. There was a leathery scuffle of wings, and a bird screamed high above us, then it was silent once more. The stream was so clear that you could count the pebbles on the bottom. Dorothy looked down at her white tube sock and began to rub it. "d.a.m.n."

"What's the matter?'

"Nothing, maybe a scratch." I looked and saw a small crimson stain the size of a penny. "I don't think anything could have got in, these socks are really thick. I'd have felt it."

"Better let me have a look." I rolled down her sock. It was full of blood. "I think you got a leech in there," I told her. "It won't hurt, but we'd better get you back." I knew that leeches produced an anaesthetic in their bite so they could continue to suck their host's blood without being felt. They also have an anticoagulant in their saliva, so they can carry on feeding until they're fully gorged. Then they drop from the body to seek water, through which they can travel to find a new host.

"It could have carried on and on without me knowing it was there," said Dorothy.

"No," I told her. "In the natural world parasites don't kill their hosts, because they'd ultimately kill themselves."

"You mean it's only humans who do that."

Soon the cover thinned out and the jungle opened on to a road that led back to the village. As soon as we reached the house we took off our socks and shoes. I found one leech attached to my ankle, and Dorothy had two. They were small and black, as soft as slugs but far more elastic and lively. They left splattery trails of blood as they twisted about on the bathroom floor. I stamped on their bloated bodies, sacs of blood that burst messily over the cracked white tiles. I had a sudden suspicion that there might be more of them on us.

"Turn around," I told Dorothy. "Take off your shirt." As she peeled off the wet cotton, I saw two more on her back, between her pale shoulder blades.

When she saw the thin streaks of unclotted blood in the mirror, Dorothy yelped. I picked off one of the creatures and examined it. As I did, it stretched and swung around, trying to bite me. I was surprised at the speed with which it moved. I could see two sets of tiny hooks like pinpoints, set on either end of its body. When I dropped it on to the sink it flipped over, end to end, like a slinky. It climbed the sheer sides of the bowl in seconds and disappeared into a wet corner.

"Let me light a cigarette," I told Dorothy, "I think you're supposed to burn them off.'

"No," she said, trying to sound unpanicked, "they bite deeper if you do that and tear the skin when you pull them. I think you're meant to flick them off with a fingernail." She had read about them in her travel guide, and was right. A nail under the leech's body was enough to make it come away. My back was clear I think they found Dorothy's blood sweeter. The harder part was catching them once they fell. You expect anything that looks like a slug to move slowly. I placed my finger above one and watched as it stretched and waved about like an antenna, desperate to reach me. There was something grotesque about its obviousness, as if I was automatic ally expected to forgive its uncontrollable hunger.

The sun was setting and the sky had turned a spectacular shade of crimson. Out on the balcony, the warm moist air was thick with flying insects. I felt as if our environment had subtly turned against us, as if it was saying We've nearly had enough of you tourists now, time to go home. You've pretended to be like us but you really don't belong here.

Dorothy was tired and in unusually low spirits. She hardly ate anything from the tray of pork and noodles Madame Nghor had left for us. She was still suffering from muscle cramps, and opened the pot of oily rust-coloured ointment, patiently rubbing it into the tops of her legs and over her belly until the room stank.

My calves and thigh muscles were sore from the expedition. We were not so young now, I thought, and would have to make adjustments to the way we behaved. It had been foolish of us to just take off into the jungle like that without telling anyone where we were going what if we had gotten lost, what would we have done? Just how quickly could things go wrong here?

I turned out the lights and we went to bed. The blackness was complete, but soon I saw lightning crackle above the treeline. It looked like an electric trolley was running through the forest. The temperature started to climb, and within minutes it was unbearable. Dorothy was twisting and turning in her narrow bed. I was sweating heavily, and could not get comfortable. I went for a smoke on the terrace and stood at the rail, listening to the noises of the night.

Dorothy's questions about my life had bothered me. There were no easy answers. Had Kissinger's illegal bombing of this astonishing country opened the way for everything that followed? We went into other countries and created a vacuum that had to be filled by something. Every day took us further away from being the innocents we had so long pretended to be.

I reached the end of the Marlboro packet. I left the terrace door wide to let some air in and came back inside. It seemed more stifling than ever. I lay down on top of the bed once more.

An hour later, rain broke and fell hard, pounding on the roof of the little house. The temperature began to fall. It rained and rained until the sky wore itself out. Calm returned, and I must have dozed.

Dorothy cried out suddenly, making me start. I tried to find a light, but it seemed the electricity was out, and the candles were somewhere in the other room. I knew at once that something was amiss.

Dorothy was struggling to sit up. She called for me and I grabbed at her wrist, only to find her skin slick with sweat. "What's the matter?" I kept asking. I probably frightened her with my shouting. I found my lighter, flicked it and tore back the thin sheet. Her nightdress was stained scarlet, and the material was shifting as if alive. I could smell something bad, like an infected open wound. She and I scrabbled to tear off the wet material.

As it ripped, I saw what was wrong; the area from her navel to the tops of her thighs was a black squirming ma.s.s of tiny bodies, slick and shiny with her blood. Leeches, it seemed that there were hundreds of them, sucking her life away from her.

I thrust my hand into them and instantly they began to flip on to my wrist and arm, attaching themselves, finding veins and biting hard. Dorothy screamed as I grabbed at them, trying to squeeze whole handfuls at a time, but they slipped through my blood-slick fingers. As fast as I flicked them away they came back, driven by their hunger for blood.

I needed something else. Finding the lighter, I struck it and thrust the flame into the wriggling slimy nest. Too late, I remembered that the ointment contained petrol. There was a soft pop of ignition and she was enveloped in thin blue flames. I grabbed my shirt and threw it over her stomach.

In the moment before the flickering flames were extinguished, I saw the horrific mess on her body, blood and burned leeches writhing everywhere, Dorothy shaking in pain and terror, and I . . .

It shames me to think back to that moment. All I could think about when I saw her was the roaring anger of the blame, someone to blame. Madame Nghor had given us the oil, she had somehow discovered who I was, who I had worked for in Washington, and had made up this concoction to draw the leeches to us. She was taking revenge for the loss of her husband, for the destruction of her country, for me being an American. That was my first reaction, the seeking of blame.

The screams brought Madame Nghor and half the village to our door. She put on the light, and I realized that in my panic I had simply failed to find the switch. I thought she had come to gloat and take pleasure in this bizarre revenge, and I must have rushed at her. I remember grabbing her thin shoulders and shaking her very hard. Two men who turned out to be her sons ran forward and pulled me away from her.

"What did you do to my wife?" I yelled in her face, "What did you do?" I said some other things that it pains me now to remember. When she saw the pulsing ma.s.s of leeches that still quivered and crawled on Dorothy, Madame Nghor ran back down the steps and returned with something that looked like a can of lighter fluid, squeezing it wildly all around until every last one of the leeches had fallen away and shrivelled up.

Chaos. In the exposing glare of the overhead bulb, my wife lay sobbing, b.l.o.o.d.y and naked on the bed before the shocked villagers. I stayed frozen in one place until Madame Nghor had pulled a sheet over her.

"You stupid man," she scolded, wagging a cartoonish finger at me. "This all your fault, not mine! This! This!" She picked up the pot she had given us. "You put it on-" and when she made the smoothing gesture again I realized she meant I should put the oil on the floor, along the edges of the room, to keep the leeches out after the storm. It was not meant to be put on the skin. And the rolling fingers, she was simply showing us how the leeches moved and why it must be applied. I had misinterpreted so blindly, so badly. One of her sons dipped his finger in the mixture to show me. The thick red oil had cattle blood in it. The coppery smell attracted them, and they got stuck.

In shame and shock I started to laugh. I couldn't stop myself. Was this really how things went wrong in the world? Were mistakes always this fundamentally stupid? How could I have thought this tiny village woman might know I once worked for a political oppressor? It was absurd. Guilt, like some barely-visible fish resting in deep water, could surface without warning.

We took Dorothy to the hospital, but the burns themselves were superficial and there was no real damage from them. However, a ragged black patch of discoloured skin was left behind from the burned edges of the unhealed wounds, and her blood could not coagulate over the scratches my fingernails had left as I tried to dig the leeches from her. The doctor told her she would be left with scars.

Dorothy hardly spoke to me that day. We returned to Washington as soon as we could get a flight, slinking out of the village like criminals. The villagers watched us go in silence and embarra.s.sment.

Seven months later my wife became ill and died. To this day I do not believe what the doctor said, and have convinced myself that her death was the result of some kind of blood poisoning, a delayed reaction to what happened that night.

Just before the year ended, I took early retirement. A new phalanx of eager young recruits was entering politics for the first time, and the thought just made me tired. I know at heart that I am a good man. I have made mistakes in my life, but the worst that night was the speed with which I sought to blame.