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Inside the courtyard there was almost no light and Smith stood there for a moment, his heart pounding, trying to make out the shapes before him. Directly in front of him, at the far end of the compound, was a long low building constructed crudely of wooden panels and roofed with corrugated iron. It resembled an old store-house of some kind, but had been crudely converted into a sort of shop-front, with a door in the middle and two large but heavily-curtained windows, one on either side. Above the door was an equally crudely-executed hand-painted sign in the script of the local language. To Smith it was just a series of twirls and squiggles. By the side of this door was parked Chelim's rickshaw, with Chelim still perched on the driver's saddle, waiting patiently, Smith assumed, for his passenger's return. There was no light of any kind escaping from the building but as Smith inched cautiously forward he could hear the unmistakable sound of a man's voice raised in anger. Very muffled, very far-away, yet unmistakable.
Then Smith remembered what Fan had said about the purpose of the building. This was where somebody named Miller made films. Films in which people were put to death. No special effects. One thing you would certainly need to have in order to create films of that kind would be good sound-proofing. Smith tried to imagine what it would sound like where he was now standing on a night when filming was in progress. He decided it might be pleasanter to try imagining something else.
He moved even nearer to the door and acknowledged Chelim with a little wave of his right hand. Chelim shook his head fiercely and gestured for Smith to go back where he had come from, but Smith stood still and continued to listen.
The man inside the building was shouting at the top of his voice, but the actual words were still indistinguishable. All that Smith could say for sure was that the language was English. At least he was almost sure. After a few moments the man's voice stopped. Then he picked-up another sound, much much quieter, but it was a sound to which biology had specially attuned the human ear. The sound of weeping. The sound of abject human misery.
Smith felt wretched. The image of the girl's face as she passed in her rickshaw flashed across his mind once again. He stepped forward and pushed on the door. It was not locked.
"Mr. Miller," he shouted out as he entered, "I want to talk to you!"
There was what Smith took to be a stunned silence. Even the weeping stopped abruptly. Glancing around the dimly-lit interior his first impression was of curtains. Heavy colorless gray curtains hanging all around. Then he managed to make some sense of the internal geography of the place. The battered storehouse was no more than an outer shell to an inner building, an enormous box-shaped structure, mounted on blocks a foot or so off the ground, accessed through an inner door over which burned a small red safety-light. As Smith took in these features he felt a strong pair of hands seize him on each of his arms.
"Don't worry," he said more calmly than he would have thought possible in the circumstances, "I haven't got a gun."
As the hands quickly moved over every inch of his body, squeezing and grasping without regard for his comfort or dignity, the inner-door opened and a tall figure appeared, silhouetted against a powerful inner light.
"He's clean, Mr. Miller," a voice to his right reported, and he felt the grasp of the hands slacken.
"Well holy cow!" said the figure in the doorway. It had a deep voice and a strong Southern States American accent. "Who the hell is this clown?"
"My name's Smith. I'm the person responsible for what's happened to your property. I'm the one you should be talking to, not her."
Miller walked slowly forward to get a better look at his visitor. He was a big man with regular features, probably in his forties, well-dressed in a casual way. There was really nothing about him that was specially remarkable. If Smith had passed him on the pavement he would not have given him a second glance.
Miller's face bore a quizzical, almost amused expression. "What is it tonight," he asked sarcastically, "let-out night at the loony-bin?" He nodded to his bodyguards. "let him go." Smith felt the hands release his arms. He stood facing Miller, eye-to-eye. Millers shoulders trembled with suppressed laughter. The ridiculous side of the situation seemed to have got to him. But it was a mocking, ugly kind of amusement that made Smith shudder.
"I suppose you'd better come in, Mr. Smith. Make yourself at home." He walked back towards the inner door and Smith followed, the catch that he could feel in his breathing the only outward manifestation of the inward terror he was suppressing.
The interior of the cubicle was a perfectly straightforward small film-studio. There were three large cameras, one of them on a special dolly to allow it to be moved smoothly back and forth, sophisticated lighting of various kinds set-up around the walls and ceiling, movable screens and back-drops, and a number of microphones and light-boards and mixers and other pieces of equipment that Smith could not really identify but which obviously had some function connected with the studio's purpose. There was only one other person in the room and that was the girl. The girl who cries. It was a good description. She was doing it again, huddled in a corner, her back against some kind of large metal filing-cabinet: she was standing there and weeping quietly and pitifully, her hands raised to her face in a hopeless gesture of self-protection. On seeing Smith she seemed to draw-in her breath and straighten-up slightly, somewhat as if she had seen a ghost. "You...?" she whispered in disbelief.
Miller rested his backside on the heavy base of one of the cameras and looked coldly at each of them in turn. "Well, isn't this cozy?" he said in a tone so sickly-sweet it made Smith's blood run cold. "I suppose you followed the bitch here. Bitch was too stupid even to know she was being followed. That I can believe. That I can believe, Mr. Smith. Oh yes." He walked menacingly towards the girl and Smith saw her wince. "Have you any idea how much money that bitch has cost me today?" he asked very quietly. "Have you any goddamn idea how much you and the bitch have cost me!!" This time he screamed the question at the top of his voice so that both Smith and the girl almost lost their balance. Immediately he brought his voice back to a near-whisper. "One little thing I ask the bitch to do for me. One simple little job. A child could have done it. Just wiggle your tits at the customs man and walk through the green channel. So what does she do?" He paused for effect. "She hands the drugs to the dumbest-looking half-wit she can find." This time Smith knew he was due for a maximum-volume repeat. It came. "She hands my drugs to some dumb-assed half-wit who hasn't even the brains to walk through with them himself!" He picked up a clip-board that had been sitting on the camera-base and flung it at the girl like a Frisbee. It was a very good shot.
It smashed loudly against the filing-cabinet as she screamed and leapt to one side. It was an ugly and cruel gesture, loaded with contempt, calculated to prise away from her whatever tiny remnant of dignity she might have left.
"Do you know who the bitch's father is," he asked quietly, turning to Smith, "He was the Prime Minister of this country a few years ago. The friggin' Prime Minister. Do you wonder that this country is in the state it's in?"
He began to walk a few steps towards the girl. She shot across the room to another corner and cowered there, holding her hands up to her face, trembling.
"Mr. Miller," said Smith, distracting his attention, "I was the one who handed your drugs over to the authorities. It wasn't her, it was me."
"You think she's dumb?" Miller went on in a conversational tone, ignoring Smith's interjection, "her sister's even dumber still. Oh man! That sister."
He turned to the girl. "I've never seen anyone take to heroin like your sister. She's turned into a goddamn zombie. You know that? She can't talk any more. Can't stand up. Can't get herself to the goddamn John. You know something? Your sister isn't even any use to me as a whore any more. She smells. She's ugly. All she does now is mainline on my heroin. But the trouble with you people," he looked her straight in the eye, "all you political people, is that if I kill you everybody on my payroll wants a bonus. It might still be worth it, just for the pleasure it would give me, but I don't know. I can't make my mind up. It feels a bit like throwing good money after bad. What do you think, Mr. Smith? Do you have an opinion on these things?"
Smith hesitated. "I think you're a sensible man. Mr. Miller. This girl isn't any use to you. You've proved that yourself. Neither is her sister....." He chose his words carefully. "They're just a pair of freeloaders, really aren't they? I... I don't understand why you want to keep them."
Miller seemed to look at Smith with a new respect. "You know, you're right Mr. Smith. Maybe you aren't all that dumb after all. Freeloaders. That's exactly what they are. You take these people in, you give them all the heroin they can pump down their veins, you give them a shot at something really big, you treat them like royalty, nothing is too good for them.... and then what do you get in return? That!" He spat out the final word, flicking his hand in the girl's direction.
Smith could actually hear the girl's teeth chattering. He had never heard a person's teeth chatter with fear before. He tried to think of something more to say, but decided to keep silent.
Miller stood in the middle of the floor for a few seconds, in the exact center of a large "X" that had been marked-out with gaffer-tape, and seemed to think about his options.
"I don't know why I'm wasting my time with you, bitch," he said at last, "I have more important things to do. Things that will earn me money, not cost me money. Get the hell out of here the both of you. Either of you open your mouths about this place or about me and you'll be starring in one of my movies. A long one. That's a promise."
Miller didn't even look around to watch them leave.
"My... my sister?" the girl whispered to Miller as she passed him by.
"I'm throwing that bitch out too. I'll get someone to drop her off with the rest of the garbage behind your house."
Miller said nothing more. The two of them very quietly left, closing the doors behind them. There was no sign of the bodyguards and nobody barred their exit.
Outside, they climbed unsteadily into Chelim's rickshaw and Smith touched him on the shoulder to indicate that the time had come to leave. He started-up the two-stroke and pulled away from the door, out of the gates of hell and up along the canal-side track towards the main road. Fan's rickshaw started-up as they passed, and followed them once again. The girl simply put her arms around Smith's waist and clung to him, trembling, her heart racing so that he could feel its gallop against his own chest. She didn't say anything until they were back on the main road. Then she whispered the words "Thank you" into his ear. Smith returned the embrace, as tenderly as he could and stroked her long, shining black hair.
"What's your name?" he asked politely, feeling her heartbeat slowly return to something resembling normal.
AN END
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