Those Who Feel Nothing by Peter Guttridge

she’s not going to come back,’ Watts called.
    The overweight man snorted. The barman turned to Watts and shook his head.
    â€˜I wish she would. Waste of a good pint. Plus it might do her good – she looks so miserable.’
    â€˜She’s done it before?’ Watts said.
    â€˜She’s been doing it for months,’ the barman said. ‘Same day every week. She buys a pint, sits there for a bit muttering to herself, then leaves without touching it.’
    â€˜Same seat?’
    â€˜Exact same seat. If it’s taken she loiters and puts the pint down on the table when she leaves.’
    Watts frowned and thought about that. ‘All sorts,’ he finally said.
    The barman gives you the name of a nightclub Sal Paradise may or may not own. He is occasionally seen there. In the evening you search it out. It’s more bar than nightclub. The few bored women scattered around are there for business purposes only. Various desperadoes are sitting around the room, in groups or alone.
    The women assess you as you walk to the bar, dismiss you as a potential client. The desperadoes watch for longer.
    â€˜Sal Paradise?’ you say at the bar.
    The barman looks at you but says nothing.
    â€˜Doesn’t he own this place?’ you say.
    The barman shrugs thick shoulders.
    You ask for a bottle of Polish vodka and examine the seal before you hand over your money. It’s cold enough. You take it to a table in the corner by the window. For the next hour you drink steadily, watching the street outside and the action in the bar, trying to ignore the rattle of the old fan above your head as it makes its wobbly rotations.
    The drinking is unwise. This is not like you when you’re on an operation. But then you’re not like you and you haven’t been for a long time.
    Sal Paradise always had his fingers in a lot of pies. Prostitution, of course. He brought in girls from Vietnam. Doubtless he is now into people trafficking in a much bigger way. You’ve heard he is in the illegal organ trade. His people are skilled at filleting for all saleable organs some dope they’ve drugged in a bar and left bleeding out in a cheap hotel room. He is also heavily involved in the heroin trade. The fact he smuggles antiquities, either fake or real, seems almost benign, except that he uses the same distribution routes.
    The custom in bars in Cambodia is that the waiter doesn’t remove the old bottles from the table when he brings the new because he will count them up when it comes time to pay the bill. He sticks a paper napkin in the dead ones. There is a table in your line of sight with probably twenty bottles on it.
    A western man in a sweaty T-shirt and stained shorts, his thick, hairy legs stretched out into the aisle between the tables, has his tongue down the throat of the tiny local woman in a red polka dot dress sitting beside him. He is pawing at her breast none too gently.
    You look away to check on the three men in the street who turned up ten minutes ago. One of them is Neal, the mean man you glassed yesterday. Here on his own account or doing a job for Sal Paradise?
    The sour taste of vodka comes up in your mouth. For a moment you think you are going to vomit. You breathe heavily through your nostrils.
    Neal is lounging directly opposite the bar, the other two are at either end of the street. But is there someone round the back too?
    Your plan, such as it is, involves getting behind them, letting them think they’ve lost you then following them to Paradise. Of course, if Neal is here on his own account, they’ll just lead you back to the bar where you first met him.
    You’re pretty certain you can beat the bejesus out of any of them one on one and with the advantage of surprise. You’re pretty sure they’ll be carrying, but whether it will be knives or guns you don’t know. You’ve got your own little helper in your pocket.
    As you get up to go to the bathroom