'Don't,' I said. It seemed like a violation.
'Why not?'
I searched for a justification. 'We should leave the scene alone.'
He gave me a don't-be-stupid look. 'For who? The Nepali police? Somehow I doubt they've got a crack homicide investigator in the district.'
Which was true. Fingerprinting, DNA testing, forensic analysis… there would be none of that here. Just a bunch of minimally-educated Third World policemen here to rescue stranded tourists and fend off Maoist insurgents, not to investigate murders.
Gavin touched the stone wall the corpse slumped against, then its arm again, then the wall. He looked worried.
'What are you doing?' I asked.
'He's still warm,' Gavin said quietly.
'What?'
'Warmer than the stone at any rate. Feel for yourself.'
I paused for a moment, and then I did just that. The arm felt ice-cold and clammy to my touch, but there was no denying that it was noticeably warmer than the ground or the wall. We looked at each other for a moment, then rose to our feet and looked around us uneasily.
'Let's just make sure we're alone here,' I said, very calmly.
'Good idea,' he agreed, equally calm.
We walked through the village again, senses on high alert. I dug into my pocket for my own Swiss Army knife but decided to leave it there. It was a small knife, though sharp as hell, but more to the point, walking around with a bared blade would have seemed like an admission that the world had gone terribly wrong, an admission I wasn't yet ready to make. Far better to pretend this was just another travel encounter, another anecdote for the journal and boozy late-night retellings.
It didn't take long to determine that there was no one else in the village. We returned to the body and stood there for what felt like a long time, staring at it and at each other, trying to work out what the things were that we should do.
'Do you recognize him?' Gavin asked.
I had just been searching my memory. If the man had died today then we had probably seen him before. Trekkers on the Annapurna Circuit moved in packs, all in the same direction at roughly the same speed; the scenery changed, but our neighbours remained the same. But this was high season, with more than two hundred people a day passing along the trail, and it is hard to recognize a frozen and mutilated face. I shook my head. We stood there a little longer.
'We should take pictures,' I said eventually. 'For evidence. Before we disturb anything.'
Gavin nodded and dug into the camera pack he kept with him. He had a serious camera, big as a brick, with lenses and various attachments, and he assembled it into what I presumed was the ideal homicide-evidence configuration and shot a roll of film from various angles. I took a few snaps myself with my cheap point-and-click. I think we were both relieved to have something vaguely constructive to do.
When we were finished we looked at each other and without speaking approached the corpse again. I guess we had decided that we were the best investigators the murdered man was going to get up here. I tried to call fragments of fiction to mind, to remember what real detectives did. They looked for hairs, blood, anything that might give you a DNA sample of the killer. None of those were apparent. The victim's fingernails were dirty but not bloody. He didn't seem to have put up any resistance. Detectives looked for fingerprints, but that was going to be beyond us. The killer's prints might be all over those Swiss Army knives or that blue waterproof jacket but I doubted they had fingerprint powder anywhere in Nepal this side of Kathmandu. Maybe not even there.
Looking at the jacket I saw a familiar red tab on it and shook my head in dismay. 'He's Canadian.'
'How can you tell?' Gavin asked.
I fingered the red tab. MEC, it read. 'Mountain Equipment Co-Op. Canadian travel gear store.' Somehow this made it personally offensive, that the victim and I had bought our jackets at the same store.
'He doesn't have a pack,' Gavin observed. 'Maybe it's back at one of the lodges here.'
'Maybe,' I agreed. 'Let's see if he's got any ID…?'
I looked at him and he nodded. We reached clumsily around the dead man and dug through his pockets. Nothing there but a few Nepali rupees. The body was stiff as a board. We gingerly prodded under his shirt and his jeans to see if he was carrying a travel wallet. Around his waist was a beige Eagle Creek security pouch much like the one I wore. But it was empty.
'His watch is gone,' I pointed out.
'Right,' Gavin said. 'Maybe it was just a theft. Probably a Nepali if so.'
'Maybe… ' I said doubtfully.
'Ja,' he said. 'I don't think so either. Those knives… ' He shook his head. 'That's just sick. I don't think a Nepali would have done that. I work in the Cape Flats, you know, I've seen a fair few murdered men before, but I've never see one done like this.'
'I have,' I said, but so softly that he did not hear me.
Laura, I thought. It's just like Laura. It's just like Cameroon.
Chapter 2 Hear Ye, Hear Ye
We went back to the two Gunsang lodges, rickety wood-and-stone buildings that faced off across the trail like sumo wrestlers waiting for the signal to begin. There was nothing there; no pack, no people, nothing but the bored proprietors waiting for the rest of the day's batch of lodgers. Gavin and I were the first and so far only trekkers to stop here for the night. Gunsang wasn't on the Lonely Planet Trail, so the vast majority went from Manang straight to Letdar without stopping. The only reason we had stopped was because I felt sick and wasn't eager to go up another thousand feet. And because we both appreciated that it wasn't on the Lonely Planet Trail.
We asked the lodge owners, both stout Nepali women with impassive faces, who like all lodge owners spoke enough broken English to communicate. No Canada-man had stayed in Gunsang last night; just a group of Dutch in one lodge, and the usual melange in the other, one German man, one French woman, and a Kiwi couple. Conclusion: either the dead man was coming from the other direction, downhill from Letdar to Manang, or he had left Manang much earlier than Gavin and I. Which was entirely possible. We had begun the day's trek well after first light.
We left the lodges and stood on the trail between them. The midday clouds were thick above Annapurna and its heavenly vista was almost entirely concealed. In the distance we could see a pair of trekkers approaching from below.
'Right,' Gavin said. 'I guess it's pretty obvious what we do.'
'Split up?' I asked.
'Ja,' he said. 'One of us goes to Manang and tells the police. In case they can't identify him, the other goes to Letdar and tries to find out who he was.'
'Sounds good,' I said. 'I'll go to Letdar.' There was no sensible reason for me to be the one to go there; I just didn't want to deal with the police. Besides, in the real world, Gavin was a legal-aid advocate for poor South Africans. This bearer-of-bad-news thing was right up his alley.
He looked at me narrowly. 'You sure? I thought you had AMS.'
I shook my head. 'I feel fine now. Actually I feel great.'
'Izzit?' Gavin asked, a South African expression that basically translated to really? 'Well, it's an ill wind. All right. You think you can get there and back to Manang before sunset?'
I thought it over. If I left my pack here I'd make good time. After nine days of carrying forty pounds on my back, walking unencumbered felt almost like flying. On the other hand, it was already midday, who knew how long I'd have to stay in Letdar, and up here the sun dropped like a stone.
'I can get back to Manang tonight,' I said. 'Probably late night, but that's no problem.'
Gavin shook his head. 'I don't think you should do that.'
