Description
He continued to drop the photographs, one by one. Eventually, all the bodies were in the shallow pit and an earthmover was poised in one of the last photographs to cover them with the raw red earth.
The dam project, the resort or whatever it was, had required the village to cease to exist: its inhabitants should have known better than to disagree.
All that now remained of these people were these photo- graphs, taken by a boy who was murdered just because he had taken them. Kumar was dead not because of Hyde or because of heroin or Straits Royal, but because he had seen and photographed a routine atrocity.
They'd killed a hundred, maybe more, in a site clearance then killed Kumar because he had the evidence. Jesus Christ it always appalled him, it was insanity.
Who had Kumar threatened to expose? Who was a crash of glass from the passage. His chair clattered to the floor as he was startled to his feet. Then the table followed, spilling the snap shots as he overturned it to shield himself.
Something rolled towards the door of the room, smouldering. Then it exploded . . . .
Fire everywhere, blinding him, smoke suffocating him.
