The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (electronic book reader .TXT) 📗

we were digging would never carry water. I said nothing, my children said nothing. We just kept digging.’

From somewhere, perhaps a mile away in the direction of the city centre, came the crackle of automatic fire. A short single burst that was smothered by the night, leaving the silence to be broken again only by the screeching of the cicadas. They sat for so long in the quiet after Serey had finished speaking, that Elliot thought she must have drifted off to sleep. McCue had never stirred. The fire was virtually dead. The brief flare of a match momentarily illuminated the room, sending undefined shadows dancing around the bare walls as Elliot lit a cigarette.

McCue inclined his head a little and turned to look at him. His voice was a hoarse, broken whisper. ‘Whatya gonna tell her old man?’

‘Tell him what I told you.’ Serey’s voice drifted softly across the room, and Elliot peered blindly in the dark in a vain attempt to catch the outline of her face. ‘I don’t expect to see him again.’

McCue’s head drooped forward and he shook it slowly. ‘Guess you win, Elliot.’

But Elliot felt no satisfaction. Only an emptiness. And a desire to sleep.

*

The sound of voices pierced his restless slumber. Shrill, insistent, argumentative. His eyes flickered open to the hard, painful glare of daylight. He blinked away the grit, but they still stung from the smoke that had filled the room the night before. McCue was sitting back against the wall below the window, the smoke from his cigarette drifting in lazy blue ribbons in the still light.

‘What’s going on?’

McCue’s expressionless glance across the room reflected his indifference. ‘Who knows? They’re all in the garden.’

Elliot rolled over and climbed stiffly to his feet to pick his way through the debris to the back door. Serey and Ny were on their knees, digging with calloused hands in the soft damp earth of what had once been a carefully tended flower bed. Now it was overgrown with weeds and creepers that snagged on their arms and wrists. The boy, Hau, stood defiantly before them, hands on his hips, brows furrowed, anxious and intense, speaking rapidly in a husky high voice. His thin brown legs poked out like sticks from the green canvas of the shorts McCue had made. McCue’s T-shirt hung voluminously from his narrow shoulders, gathered at the waist and tucked into the shorts. He bore little resemblance to the pathetic creature they had found huddled in the back room only twenty-four hours earlier. Children, Elliot thought, had the most extraordinary resilience. And, yet, for all his lack of height, and his meagre twelve years, they were old and knowing eyes that he flicked darkly towards Elliot as he appeared in the doorway. Even more incongruous was the Kalashnikov slung casually across his shoulder. A hand slipped instinctively towards the barrel and held it firm. Ny glanced back over her shoulder, but her mother paid no attention and kept digging.

‘What is it?’ Elliot asked.

Ny said, ‘He want guide you through city tonight, put you on road west. My mamma forbid it.’

‘We could do with a bit of help,’ Elliot said. ‘If the boy knows the way . . .’

‘You can find your own way!’ Serey’s voice was sharp and hostile, but she did not stop digging.

‘Now that’s what I call gratitude.’ Elliot hawked a gob of phlegm up from his throat and spat it into the bushes.

‘Why would you need my gratitude?’ Serey asked. ‘Is my husband’s money not enough?’

Elliot glanced at the boy who was watching him intently. The boy averted his eyes towards his sister and there was a brief exchange between them. Then he turned again to his mother, uttered a few short words, and strode past Elliot into the house, the Kalashnikov rattling at his side.

‘What did he say?’

Ny opened her mouth to speak, but Serey cut in. ‘He said he is doing it anyway and that I cannot stop him.’

Elliot shrugged. ‘I guess you can’t.’

Serey stopped digging for the first time, and she turned on him a stare leaden with hatred. Steam rose around her from the sodden earth, the rain of yesterday evaporating with the heat of the sun. With the slightest shake of her head she turned back to her digging. Elliot inclined his head to meet Ny’s gaze. It wasn’t hatred in her eyes. It was sadness. Or something more. Pity perhaps. He looked away. Hate was easier.

A single harsh word from her mother recalled Ny to the task of digging. They had made a hole nearly half a metre deep. Elliot trod through soft earth towards them.

‘What are you digging for? Gold?’

‘As good as,’ Serey said. And he heard the sound of her fingernails scratching on metal. He crouched down to watch as both pairs of hands intensified their digging, scrabbling hard to uncover a rusty metal box about a foot square and six or eight inches deep. Serey muttered something in her native tongue as they lifted it out and dragged it on to the mound of earth they had dug out. Burrowing insects scuttled away from the sudden light. She fumbled with the clasp, but it was rusted solid.

Elliot took out his knife. ‘Here, let me.’ After several attempts he broke the clasp and prised back the lid. Inside lay a heavy-duty black plastic bag gathered and tied securely at the neck. Serey held her hand out for Elliot’s knife. He handed it to her and watched as she slit open the bag to reveal its hidden treasure: gold and silver jewellery; necklaces and bracelets, earrings, brooches; diamonds, rubies, emeralds glinting in the slanting sunlight. Thousands of dollars’ worth. Elliot stared in amazement.

Serey kept her eyes lowered. ‘We were once very wealthy, Mistah Elliot. When one had no need to worry about food, one spent one’s money on the luxuries of life, the beautiful things, the expensive things. One would have needed ten thousand bowls of rice to buy a single diamond. But you