Jake tried to make out Anna, but she was hidden in the dusky light and the dense forest ahead. Jake hated not being able to see her. She was being led by Toad. Saw had nineteen men altogether but three of them were his deputies. They had given them nicknames. Ditaka was the oldest. He was short and broad shouldered, battle-scarred. His skin was sagged and wrinkled like old leather. He was always muttering under his breath, always bad tempered. He was the one Saw turned to for advice—he was the wise one. The five had named him Toad because he had a wide, downturned mouth and boggle eyes.
Anna looked behind her, as if she knew he was thinking of her, and she smiled. Her face was dirty, she was hot and tired, they were in a living hell, but she still smiled for him. Jake had realised in this last two weeks that he had always been in love with Anna. He had known her a long time but he had never realised what that feeling was in the pit of his stomach, every time he saw her. One morning, in the refugee camp, he watched her walk towards him, her laugh as clear as church bells—he realised that feeling was love.
Behind him he could hear Thomas wheezing as he struggled to keep up. He was the youngest: he had just had his eighteenth birthday. Silke, his sister, was the oldest at twenty. With his goatee beard and his big limbs, Thomas always looked like the baby amongst them. He was a sci-fi enthusiast, always on the PC playing games when he was at home; he was a DJ in his spare time. That’s what he wanted to be when he finished college. Jake didn’t really know what career he wanted yet. He would be going back to study history and economics at university. He thought he wanted to be a businessman of some description, the next Bill Gates. He wanted to make a lot of money and travel and he wanted to marry Anna. She was his first love and he hoped she’d be his last. That thought sent a pain that shot through his heart and caught in his stomach, making him catch his breath as he realised that it might be the only love he would ever know if they were to die in this jungle. If so, he hoped he could die in Anna’s arms.
Jake looked behind.
‘Come on, Thomas.’ Thomas was lagging behind again.
Weasel was making pig noises at him. Weasel’s real name was Jao. He was stupid, cruel and warped. He was tall and thin and laughed like a girl. His teeth were spikes. In the evenings, when they stopped and the drink came out, he was the one who tortured the porters and instigated the trouble. On drunken nights he wrapped himself in the women’s sarongs and danced for the others. The other deputy and the most worrying of them all was Kanda or Handsome. He was vain and cruel. He looked at himself in the mirror that he wore on his belt. He was the one Jake feared most after Saw. He was always after the girls. He loved to watch them squirm.
‘Ignore him, Thomas,’ Jake called back. ‘He’ll keep doing it unless you pretend it doesn’t hurt.’
Weasel often tormented Thomas as they trudged along. Now Weasel was alongside him, hitting him with a stick. The more Thomas cried out, the more Weasel did it. Jake had learned to pretend it didn’t hurt, not to flinch. Weasel enjoyed watching pain. If Jake ignored him he usually went away. But Thomas couldn’t do it. He had to cry out. Jake could hear it now. He turned to see Thomas stumbling as Weasel hit him every time he tried to get up.
‘I’m trying.’ Jake could hear that Thomas was close to tears, breathless from the effort. Now Jake heard the whir of Weasel’s bamboo cane coming down harder, faster, and more viciously. The men laughed as Thomas screamed out in pain.
‘Stop it,’ Jake shouted back. Thomas couldn’t hide his distress. He was crying and yelping with the pain and fear and Weasel’s demonic giggling grew more manic and shriller as he chased him with the stick and its movement became harder and quicker as it sang in the air.
Handsome came alongside and Jake said, ‘Make him stop.’
But Handsome only grinned at Jake as the noise of Weasel’s cane and the sound of Thomas’s crying suddenly stopped, only the grunting of the men continued. Jake turned to see if Thomas was all right. But he was gone and so was Weasel.
Magda sat with her head in her hands, scanning the table as if she was too scared to keep looking at it but too scared to look away. She had taken off her long wig and now had a silk scarf wrapped around her bald head. She leant forward, resting her elbows on the table as she thought.
‘But we want to help,’ she said as she looked from Alfie to Mann.
‘You will be more help to me here,’ said Mann. ‘You have to trust me on this, Magda. I will do everything that is humanly possible to get Jake home.’
Magda looked spent, overwhelmed by the hundreds of sticky notes, maps and other pieces of paper scattered around.
Alfie thought hard and then nodded. ‘I understand what you are saying, Johnny. We each have a part to play. We must work as a team.’ He got up, opened the fridge, and pulled out three beers. ‘First we need to tell Johnny what we know, before we get all these maps out.’ He came back over and gently moved the maps to one side.
Magda took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes and spoke quietly.
‘It was supposed to be a fantastic trip for Jake. He has had a hard time in the last year, with my illness and everything. I didn’t want it to stop him going. I was in remission when he left. This week I found out I have secondary and I can’t have any more chemotherapy. I just have weeks left.’
Alfie took the tops off the beers and set them on the table, careful not to touch the map; then he placed his hand on Magda’s shoulder and gave her a supportive squeeze before sitting back down.
‘We live for today and today you are still here and Jake is still in the jungle. And today we have new help. We have Johnny Mann. We have hope.’
‘Tell me from the beginning, Magda. How did it all come about?’ asked Mann.
Magda looked down at her hands, gripping the edge of the table without realising she was doing it. ‘They wanted to do something fantastic together before going to university.’
‘Why did they choose a volunteer project inland? Usually the kids head to a beach somewhere like Koh Samui, just lie around and smoke weed for a few months.’
Alfie answered for her. ‘Jake didn’t want to go to the usual places, to the south, the beaches. They all agreed that they wanted to help someone. We researched it—found out about the Karen people who have been displaced from Burma. There’s been a civil war going on there for sixty years. The hill tribes are forced out of their villages, they end up in refugee camps along the Thai/Burma border…They were going to help build a school there. We thought it would be a great opportunity for him.’
Magda held up her hand. Alfie paused.
‘I thought it best to go there.’ Magda closed her eyes and clenched her hands in mid-air as she shook her head emphatically. ‘It was my idea. I was so wrong.’
‘It’s not your fault, Magda.’ Alfie placed his hand over hers. ‘You are not the one to blame.’ Magda smiled gratefully at him and sighed deeply.
‘So, what have you been told?’ asked Mann.
‘We got a phone call from the people at NAP to tell us that the camp had been attacked.’
‘Is that the company that sent them out?’
‘Yes. Netherlands Adventure Project. We got a call from Katrien—I call her the Bitch—who runs it. She told us there was likely to be a ransom demand. She didn’t know how much then. But she said we should get our homes on the market, look at taking out loans, anything we could, as the Dutch government were definitely not going to pay.’ Alfie gave a grunt of disgust as he swigged his beer. ‘I tell you.’ He shook his head with disbelief. ‘She