Kathmandu Read online

  “We’ll get it all tied up in the next couple of days, you’ve just got to do as we planned…” the editor said as the judge emerged and the courtroom stood.

  Leo didn’t know what to do. He had to leave. He couldn’t have Callum notice him. The piggish eyes, the fake grin. Leo’s palms felt sweaty, his chest tight.

  Breathe deeply.

  Breathe deeply.

  Using court standing as a distraction, Leo darted for the door.

  What did the editor mean by “do as we planned?” he thought outside in the silent corridor. What have they planned?

  Callum had been given so much trust over the last few months he could write almost anything. Was it going to embarrass the paper? Loyalty and pride bubbled through Leo’s mind.

  Breathe deeply.

  His chest constricted further.

  He needed to decide.

  Leo wasn’t sure, but knew he had to hear the verdict and see what Martins was planning.

  Breathe deeply.

  Sloping back into the courtroom by another door, Leo stood at the back of the public gallery. He was out of sight of Callum and the editor on the other side of the room, but could see them clearly.

  “Over the last few days…” the judge said, beginning to sum up the case, “…we have heard many stories and allegations…”

  Wyatt stood expressionless, his thick knuckles resting on the desk.

  The jury was called and shuffled in. A riot of sound in the tension of the silent room. Eleven sat, one remained standing.

  “Have you reached your verdict?”

  A clock ticked and someone at the back of the room coughed.

  “We have,” said the head juror, a woman in her fifties.

  “How do you find the defendant?”

  They waited. An audible intake of breath.

  Unseen by the judge or the court officials, Callum held his phone. He kept it low down, just below the wooden barrier which penned in the poised journalists. The editor next to him nodded with a smile breeding across his face. The phone was just high enough for the camera to see the head juror and the judge.

  Leo watched helplessly from the public gallery, his sense of panic rising.

  Recording inside the courtroom was tantamount to contempt of court. Callum could be arrested for that. If those images were published, the paper could be fined or even shut down.

  Breathe. Focus.

  “We find the defendant…” All ears listened and one tiny camera recorded. There was nothing Leo could do. His fate was as sealed as Wyatt’s.

  “Guilty.”

  A circus of activity followed. Journalists, who a moment ago stood frozen in anticipation, pushed to leave the room in order to deliver the verdict to newsrooms across the country.

  Leo did the same, pulling his phone from his pocket. He had a notification from Facebook – “The Brighton Echo is now streaming live…”

  Chapter 5

  Sometimes in life you just have to run. Fuli wasn’t sure what made her do it, what made her take that chance, but she did. During the time she’d been kept in the house, she’d walked past the door to the street many times. Its distorted refraction of the outside world hinting through the glass panel.

  She wasn’t sure why, on that morning, she tried the handle. She knew he would be expecting her in the back room, he’d shouted for her to come down only moments ago. He’d be expecting her to come through the curtain soon.

  He’d be having the hushed conversation with the man that had just arrived, they’d be acting like old friends, talking about her and exchanging piles of dirty money. All of that would stop and be replaced by false smiles as she entered.

  She knew what would happen behind the curtain. She’d been there often enough.

  In the beginning she had despised it. The cold, callused touch of the sort of men that arrived made her skin crawl. But then she grew used to it – the idle chatter, the commands, her compliance. A few minutes later, time would be hers again. Some took longer than others, but none took that long.

  Today could be different, she thought, holding the door open, a growing crack of nothing between her and the outside world. The fresh breeze of the Kathmandu afternoon streamed through. She had felt it many times before from behind the bars of her third-floor window, but never this intoxicatingly close.

  “Fuli, get in here!” His voice, rough and rank from smoking and whiskey. She knew the smell. Sometimes when he’d had too much, he kept her for himself. “Don’t keep your visitor waiting,” he said, sounding like he was smiling, probably sharing a joke while counting the visitor’s money. Telling him dirty things about her.

  She teetered with the possibility. She could silently close the door and no one would know that she’d even considered fleeing. Or, looking out at the snarling traffic, she could try her luck out there.

  It isn’t bad here, she thought, high on opportunity but scared of unfamiliarity. She was one of the lucky ones, he’d said, one of the lucky ones. Others forced their girls to do all sorts of things. He had rules, he respected her and made sure her visitors did too.

  Fuli remembered how he’d said that when she’d first been brought here, his breath hot and sour against her face in the back room. Months or was it years ago now? Fuli still remembered it though, as clear as the traffic through the gap in the door. That first night, sitting alone on the stained mattress in the room upstairs after he had finished with her. Feeling the place where he had been. He liked to be the first, that’s what he’d said.

  “You little bitch, get down here now.” His voice again, aggressive, moving closer to the curtain which obscured the back room from where he sat by the door. The only way in and out of the building.

  Fuli peered through the gap. The invigorating possibility. The traffic noise swirling around her, the smell of fumes. Noxious and exciting. A brightly-coloured bus pulled near. Through the smeared windows, enthusiastic people gazed. All of them were going somewhere, leaving the city. Locals visiting family or tourists hiking in the mountains. Wherever they were going, they were excited and free, not confined to a dirty mattress in a dark room, waiting for his call.

  As the bus pulled closer, Fuli noticed a group of Nepali men in the front window speaking with animated expressions. Maybe it was their first journey together. A journey she deserved too.

  There was no way she would have noticed, behind the excited Nepali men, a pair of seats sitting empty.

  Fuli stepped through the door, towards grumbling traffic and the powerful smell of the city. She felt the bright daylight warm her skin. With a nervous glance over her shoulder, Fuli pulled the door closed.

  * * *

  Skilful hands separate skin from flesh, flesh from bone. The men have a lot to prepare before the restaurant opens tonight. They work quietly in the kitchen, each man cutting, splitting, pulling before seasoning with the spices decided by generations past.

  In two hours, the sun will struggle beneath the mountains surrounding the city and the bulb above the door will burn. Neither of the men question how their restaurant is found each night, but they know it will be. Those wanting adventure, wanting to experience something new and secret will seek it out. They need to be ready. The Himalayan Lamb needs to be ready.

  Chapter 6

  The newsroom of The Brighton Echo was quiet as Leo rushed in from the grizzly afternoon. The smell of damp had worsened during the day and a bucket had been placed near the door to catch the intermittent drips which the landlord had assured would be fixed before the weather turned.

  “Boss wants to see you in his office,” Hatton shouted from one of three working computers. Carthy sat at another, typing with two fingers, looking from screen to fingers and back again. Hatton and Carthy made up the newspaper’s team of senior journalists, “senior” referring to length of service rather than responsibility or talent.

  “Now?” Leo said, removing his dripping coat and hanging it by the door. He’d hoped the editor hadn’t seen the Facebook broa
dcast yet.

  Hatton nodded soberly, at which Carthy looked up, drew a long breath, then returned to his percussive typing.

  The door to the editor’s office, at the far end of the main newsroom, was closed as Leo approached. With each step, Leo felt his chest tighten and anxiety build.

  Mike, the editor, couldn’t blame him. Seriously? This wasn’t Leo’s fault, he knew that. It was Callum who needed to answer to this. Leo would have to defend himself, stand up for himself, make the editor see it his way. This was not his fault.

  Inside the office, the editor paced a groove in the carpet behind his desk, his expression darkening with each step.

  “What did you think you were doing?” Mike shouted as Leo appeared at the door, not waiting for him to close it or sit down.

  “This could shut us down! It could bankrupt us!” His words attenuated at the end of each sentence to a high squeal. “What the fuck were you thinking?” he spat, banging the desk.

  Leo, closing the door behind him, which barely muffled the sound for the journalists listening outside, slumped into the chair opposite the editor’s desk.

  “I… I…” he tried.

  “They could close us down, why would you do this to us… to me?” he said, leaning across the desk, his eyes red and bulbous. Leo couldn’t hold his gaze.

  “With all I’ve done for you,” the editor said, his voice becoming a whisper. “All the things I’ve done for you, and this is how you treat me? This is how you pay me back? By fucking things up, again!”

  It wasn’t me, it was Callum, Leo wanted to say. He wanted to get up, to shake Mike by the shoulders until he understood it wasn’t him. Leo had been there, he had seen it, but was powerless. Like he felt now, folded into the chair, listening to the angry words.

  “You’ve been a waste of space since you went away with that girl,” Mike said through gritted teeth. “You left me totally in the shit. It’s pathetic. I shouldn’t have kept you on.” He leaned over the creaking desk again and pointed a chubby finger at Leo. “Then you do this to me? I’ve done everything for you, you shit, and this is how you thank me?”

  It wasn’t me, Leo tried to catch his breath. Tried to scream. Tried to shout. It wasn’t me, it was Callum!

  Nothing. Nothing but the thump of his quickening heartbeat in his ears and the short, exhausted breaths of approaching panic.

  “I… I… I…” He tried between breaths. It wasn’t me!

  “Look at you,” Mike continued, leaning back on his heels. “You’re fucking useless, you have been ever since you came back. Your head’s not in the game. I spend most of my time babysitting you. How am I supposed to run a competitive newspaper like this?”

  Leo fought for breath, he knew he needed to focus, to concentrate, to alleviate the spreading panic, but all he could hear were the editor’s barbed words.

  “I mean, you’re pathetic – look at you. Can’t even look me in the eye to say what you’ve done,” Mike said, glaring at Leo across the desk. “Look at someone like Callum, he’s going places. He’s got the spirit, got the fight. What you got?”

  Where’s Callum now? Leo wanted to scream. Where is he? Look what he has done.

  But he didn’t. He couldn’t. The suffocating claws of panic held his breath.

  “You know what?” Mike said, his voice becoming a low whisper.

  Focus on your breathing. Focus.

  Breathe in. Breathe out.

  Focus.

  “You know what?” Mike said again, “I can’t run a business like this. What you’ve done is not only irresponsible, it’s criminal, and now you can’t even be man enough to talk about it.”

  Leo looked up for a moment and caught the editor’s grey, snake-like gaze.

  “You’re owed a few weeks holiday, take that as your notice and leave. Now.”

  It took Leo a few moments to understand the words, to realise what they meant. His job for almost ten years. Ten years of his life.

  Something dropped from his stomach and he swallowed hard.

  “I… I… It wasn’t me,” he stuttered.

  The editor folded his arms and leaned back.

  “I don’t want to hear it now and I don’t want to see you,” he said with a flick of his hand towards the door.

  Leo didn’t move, he couldn’t move, all he could do was look up at the editor who stood behind the desk. This must be some kind of joke, some kind of misunderstanding. He’d worked here, with this man, as part of this team for so long, too long to just leave.

  “But… wait… you don’t…” Leo tried to say, the control partly returning.

  “I don’t want to hear it now,” Mike said, pulling his chair forward and slumping into it. “Get out of my office.”

  Using the arms of the chair to help him to his feet, Leo stood. From his hunched and dejected height, the editor, seated behind the cheap desk in his damp office, looked small and insignificant.

  For a moment, Leo waited as though some kind of reassurance, some indication of regret was possible, but none came. He thought, in a moment of clarity between the swelling panic and the fear, that the editor looked like something from a different era. Someone who had ignored the changing world, and now didn’t recognise or understand what surrounded him.

  His pulse still thumping in his ears and his eyes watery, Leo turned. Hatton and Carthy, looking up from unwritten articles, said nothing as Leo passed the desk where he’d worked day after day.

  “Hatton,” the editor’s voice roared from his office.

  “Yes, boss,” Hatton replied, as Leo took his still-damp coat from the hanger by the door and started to put it on.

  “Draft some explanation for the video today, something about an ex-employee getting over-excited. Grovel a bit.”

  “Sure, I’ll get right on that.”

  “Oh and Carthy?” the editor shouted, louder than before. “Take Leo off the payroll and give Callum a call, need him to get…”

  Without a backwards glance, Leo opened the door and stepped out into the drizzle.

  As the door closed behind him the editor’s raised voice became dulled. That, at least, Leo thought, pulling up the hood of his coat against the quickening rain, was no longer his problem.

  Chapter 7

  Fuli squinted against the bright afternoon sun as she took her first steps of freedom. The city thronged with bikes, taxis and cars. It felt a million miles from the small village she had grown up in.

  “What are you doing? Get back here!”

  He must have heard the door shut behind her. His voice sounded different outside – distant, but still angry and dangerous. She didn’t want to go back, she couldn’t go back. She ran.

  After a minute, her breath hot and ragged in the thin, polluted air, Fuli turned left. Then right. Each time not daring to look behind, not wanting to see him gaining on her. Outstretched arms ready to grab her and take her back to that house, that room, those men.

  A crowd of people were ahead of her. Fuli sped up, thin shoes no match for the turbulent road, wincing with each awkward step. Overtaking slowing cars, she dived into a market, pushing people left and right, hearing protests only as she passed. One more reason not to stop. She couldn’t stop now.

  Breaths stinging, legs pounding.

  She had to keep going.

  * * *

  “Namaste, how are you?” Allissa said, practising the Nepalese she had been learning, her mouth stumbling over the unfamiliar words.

  The market seller, sitting cross-legged behind a pyramid of tomatoes, smiled in surprise.

  “I’m fine, but hot,” he replied, his eyes turned towards the clear afternoon sky.

  Allissa beamed – she’d been understood, although his answer was lost on her.

  Around them the market bustled. Within this small area, the sprawling concrete of the city was replaced by strips of coloured cloth stacked with spices, vegetables, fruit and flowers.

  Watching the other browsers, Allissa knelt, picked one of the tomat
oes from the pile, brought it close to her face and took in the sweet fragrance. It had taken most of her life and half the world to know how to take her time.

  In England, where she’d grown up, people always wanted to be somewhere else and never actually enjoyed where they were. In the last year she’d realised how that attitude strained the simple pleasures from life. The smell of tomatoes ripening in the sun, each of their waxy skins a different shade of red. The open bags of spices at the next stall, spoonfuls of which the seller would deposit onto a large hollowed rock and crush and mix to the buyer’s specification.

  Time, ultimately, she thought, bringing another tomato to her nose, was all anyone had. It was what you chose to do with it that was important.

  Around the market, traffic continued to grumble, made distant by the sound of negotiation.

  “Just these,” Allissa said, putting six tomatoes in her bag. The seller inhaled, calculating his first price. Agreeing a sale could be the negotiation of some minutes, but it was one Allissa had come to enjoy during her time in Asia.

  Two minutes later, sliding a collection of coins into the seller’s outstretched hand and flashing him a smile, Allissa stepped into the stream of people pushing through the market. Still to get for their meal that evening: onions, spices and yogurt.

  Allissa paused for a moment to breathe in the smell of sandalwood an incense seller had just lit. Noticing she had stopped, the seller smiled up at her and offered her the burning stick.

  “Watch out!” came a shout from somewhere, followed by a movement that caught Allissa’s eye.

  A rush of feet. A crescendo of voices. Then the world blurred and something hard struck her elbow.

  When Allissa realised what had happened, she was sprawled on the concrete, her elbow stinging. Shouts of complaints and concern erupted all around, hands reaching down to steady and help.

  Looking around in a daze, Allissa saw a pile of onions bounce and skitter across the floor as a girl tried to scramble to her feet. She looked back at Allissa, sweat sticking long, dark hair to her forehead. Her dark eyes were tear filled, and a long scratch on her leg began to ooze with blood.