The Darkest Little Room by Patrick Holland Read Free Book Online

working here?’
    â€˜Yes,’ said one of them. ‘It is very easy for working here. Very clean.’
    I nodded.
    I stumbled off my stool. I had taken only two drinks, but no one knew I had not been drinking before I arrived. People are not as careful around you when you appear drunk, and then, in a malicious brothel, you may get different offers. Though such offers rarely came on the first visit: another reason Hönicke’s story troubled me. To investigate this place properly I should return at least twice more, never asking explicitly for anything, only dropping hints to the girls and the barman that my tastes varied. Tonight I would wander around the back rooms pretending to be looking for the toilet. More than that would raise suspicion that I was a policeman, and so I would never find out anything. And I was looking for signs of corruption – of evil. Evil is something you sense as much as see. You can sense it behind a closed door; in a girl’s eyes; in the very air of a place. I had once sat at cards with an ex-military man in an outskirts Siem Reap bar where the sense of evil was so thick and close it was nauseating and no matter how much I drank I could not get drunk and on walking out of there I felt like I had been holding my breath for an hour. But I did not sense evil at Club 49 tonight.
    With my third drink in my hand I stood up and walked toward the toilet. I glanced at a table of girls in the dark beneath the stairs. I came to a small black door and walked into a dingy laundry. A path from the laundry led to a derelict outhouse where a trio of girls were applying make-up before a portable mirror. I walked upstairs to the private rooms. Through a window I saw Korean businessmen with girls and beer and a stack of 500 000đ notes that the men were throwing at the girls like playing cards. But as awful as this place was, there was no trace of Hönicke’s story. I walked out into the hem, the narrow alleyway lit by strings of red lanterns. Behind paint-stripped French doors was an old woman burning incense at a tabernacle and a shirtless and pot-bellied men lying drunk on the floor and watching television. A boy sat at a farther doorway in pyjamas with the light of a red lantern on his face …
    I walked back inside the bar and bumped into a girl who had stood up from the table beneath the staircase. My Scotch spilled and the glass broke. The girl knelt to help me collect the shards and she brushed her hair aside and the blue light in the club struck her eyes.
    I grabbed her arm.
    She scowled.
    â€˜What you doing?’
    â€˜You!’
    She reefed her arm from me.
    â€˜Don’t you remember me?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Ny?’
    â€˜You want me get security?’
    â€˜I’ve been looking for you for more than a year.’
    â€˜You have the wrong girl.’
    I scanned her face, her neck. I ran my hand over her shoulders.
    She jumped away. Now she looked truly frightened.
    â€˜What you do?’
    There were no marks. Not a scratch. I looked down at her ankles.
    â€˜Are you alright?’ I said ridiculously, believing Hönicke’s story in spite of my eyes.
    She shook her head.
    â€˜No.’
    I stood staring at her, wondering what that meant. She turned and walked. I followed her. When I grabbed her she slapped me and walked into a dark corner. A girl stood up out of the shadows.
    â€˜If she no want talk wit you then go!’
    The bloated, snake-faced manager jumped the bar and put his arm around my throat.
    â€˜Cut đi!’
    â€˜I’m going, alright. Get the fuck off me!’
    He pushed me to the door and let me go.
    I walked away down the street. I looked back and she was on the steps watching me.
    I waved down a motorbike to take me back to Bui Vien.

10
    â€˜Silence surrounds him, which I’m guessing makes him high CPV, else big business. The reports I got were conflicting. One man said he was a politician, another that