67

‘Good evening, sirs.’

Comfort smiled. She looked around the table at the Colonel, Brandon and the Teacher. The Teacher’s blue eyes rolled slowly up her body and settled on her face. He flashed a big sarcastic smile back, which stayed on his mouth as he spoke.

‘Hello! Now bring me a beer and fuck off.’ He turned to the Colonel. ‘Where’s Terry.’

‘Terry is busy. He has a lot of things to coordinate. The end of the world is nigh. We must prepare.’

The Teacher studied him closely, a sneer on his face.

‘You should lay off the stuff. You are beginning to look more than a little crazy.’ He looked at Maya, who was slumped in the crook of the Colonel’s arm. ‘And you should put that little girl down. She looks sick.’

The Colonel leaned forward. His eyes bulged and his breath made the Teacher reel. Brandon sat watching.

‘I will put her down when I please. You may be the big man’s right-hand man, but this is still my world. I am God here, remember that.’

The Teacher shrugged and drank his beer.

The Colonel hadn’t slept for three days. His body was so tired that he could hardly stand upright any more, but his mind raged on Shabu. He drank bottles of brandy and smoked weed, but still his eyes would not close. His leg tapped away involuntarily.

They were sitting outside the Bordello, Maya on the Colonel’s lap. The little girl looked dazed. She had not spoken a word since she had watched her mother die. She hadn’t done anything but stare. She was getting on Brandon’s nerves. But then, Brandon was getting anxious full stop. He had become more of an undertaker than a bouncer recently, and Laurence and Jed had been friends of his. He didn’t see why they had to be wiped out like that. Why couldn’t they just have been moved on? Sure, they had been getting ambitious—Brandon had listened to them talk about their plans late into the night—but they were only dreams; what ifs. They were not realities. But his reality was that he’d had to take their bodies and throw them down the same ravine that he used to throw the women down—the ones that got sick, the ones that were discarded. No one wanted to fuck a sick-looking whore.

Usually it was the small runts. The Colonel liked to finish some of them off himself. He had a penchant for torture. If they were not finished, then Brandon slit the girl’s throat at the edge of the ravine. Sometimes he just pushed them over the side. One or two had actually jumped. Brandon wondered what role he would have when the White Circle took over everything. He hoped that it would be a better one than undertaker. Hopefully Blanco would respect and need him. Blanco was a killer like Brandon, disciplined and clever. Blanco deserved big respect as far as Brandon was concerned. He had planned out the whole operation. He had coordinated Hong Kong, the UK and the whole of the Philippines. He had called in people that they would never have been able to access on their own. Even the government were working for them, and the DDS. The Colonel was fast slipping in Brandon’s esteem. He was getting sloppy. He spent more time off his face than on it, and he was getting harder to reason with. Only Terry knew how to handle him. Terry was the master at it. Brandon watched the way he did it. He never lost control. Everything he said or did was considered first. Brandon saw how he watched the Colonel, letting him hang himself with his own rope, waiting till he was almost dead, then Terry would step in and slide a chair beneath his dangling feet and let him stand on it a while, until the Colonel decided to kick it away again. Terry would turn things around and make the Colonel look almost sane—Terry was fucking good at his job.

Today the Colonel looked a mess. Normally he was a meticulous dresser, he liked his chinos and his polo shirt, but he hadn’t changed his shirt in days and the smell of stale sweat was sour and rank. He was drinking brandy chasers and looking up and down the street continually. His head swung back and forth as his leg jittered.

‘When can we expect Terry, Brandon?’

‘He should be here any time now, sir.’

‘Teacher—is Blanco here yet?’

‘No.’

‘Well, how are we going to coordinate everyone without him here?’ The Colonel was riled.

‘Everyone has their part. They all know what that is. They have been told. We all do our job, Colonel—there shouldn’t be a fucking problem. One of us cocks it up, and he effectively kills us all.’ He sat and waited for Comfort to bring him his beer and leave again before continuing. She stood back, reached over and placed it in front of him. She wasn’t going to make the mistake of standing too close. The Teacher was like the Colonel—never nice. When she had gone he sat back and glared at a group of passing locals who were not passing quick enough for his liking. ‘But, what should I care?’ He continued eyeballing them until they were out of sight. ‘You can all be replaced.’ He picked up his beer and raised it at the Colonel. ‘Cheers. Go ahead and fuck up.’

The Colonel was shaking with anger. Maya squirmed as his grip on her tightened.

‘I am a personal friend of Blanco’s—you are just hired help. Don’t forget that. If anyone is going to get replaced, it won’t be me. Where is fucking Terry?’

The Colonel sat back and downed the last of his brandy. He banged on the table and Comfort appeared beside him with another brandy and two beers.

He caught hold of her as she was turning to go back inside the bar.

‘Wait. Comfort, I need you. Go and wait for me upstairs. I need you to do something for me. You are my favourite, Comfort, always were. You know that, don’t you?’

Comfort smiled and nodded her head. The Colonel watched her until she was out of sight. Reluctantly, she handed over her tasks to another girl at the bar and went up to the top floor, to the Colonel’s apartment.

68

The Colonel sat on his bed in his shorts, his back resting against the rattan headboard. It would not let him sleep. His skin was bathed in old and new sweat. His bony chest rose and fell rapidly. He chewed the inside of his lips and they needed continually wetting. Comfort stood at the end of the bed, waiting. Maya sat in the corner of the room. He stroked his member as he sat watching Maya. It grew hard.

‘What’s the matter, Comfort? You look tense.’

Comfort had worked out who Maya was. After her meeting with Wednesday, her mind had been troubled, and slowly the pieces had fallen into place and she had remembered the face of someone she had called a friend. She had seen Brandon take the wrapped sheet containing Wednesday’s body and she knew he was heading towards the ravine and that Wednesday’s body was destined to feed the animals in the marshes. It would be devoured by the crawling creatures. Sadness consumed her now, sadness and desperation and a screaming anger that made her heart beat furiously. Comfort always had that anger in her, that’s how she had been able to hurt Peanut. Most of the time she could shut her mind to it, but now memories came back of her horrible childhood, of her father who had beaten and molested her, and of the Colonel who had used her as a toy and then discarded her. The only sweetness in her childhood memories were the days when she had played with Wednesday, when the older girl had looked after her until the day she had been rescued and Comfort was left behind. Now she hated the Colonel more than she had ever done before. She looked at Maya and saw herself sitting in that chair all those years ago.

‘You know who came to see me?’ He smiled. ‘You remember Wednesday?’