As Mac disappeared towards the back of the house, Ginger turned to Nagpal. The argument between him and the man was becoming heated, both gesturing with their hands and talking over one another.
‘What’s the problem?’ said Ginger.
Nagpal gave the man a final admonishment and turned back towards the Land Rover. Giving the villager a last glance over his shoulder, Ginger followed the Sikh.
‘That man’ – Nagpal sounded exasperated – ‘it turns out he did know Said Wali Gul. But Gul is dead. He fell ill a few months back, a tumour in his stomach that couldn’t be treated.’
Ginger wondered what sort of rudimentary healthcare had even been available to Gul. Was it something he would have died of if he’d been in Kabul, or in a western country with advanced healthcare? It was a moot question, anyhow. Gul’s death ruled him out as a suspect in Vinke’s murder.
They reached the Land Rover. There was no sign of Mac. Whoever he’d chased after, it wasn’t Gul and so not someone they’d even be interested in. Just a villager who’d taken fright and probably didn’t speak English.
‘Mac? Hey, Mac, come back.’ Ginger’s shouts cut through the quiet village but elicited no response. He got out his phone and called Mac’s number, but it just rang through.
Nagpal blasted the Land Rover’s horn.
They waited.
Still Mac didn’t come back.
Ginger was growing impatient. ‘Can we go down that road?’ He pointed to a lane leading off in roughly the direction Mac had disappeared. ‘Maybe we can catch up with him.’
‘Sure,’ said Nagpal.
Dusk was falling, and Nagpal switched on the headlights as they bumped along a rutted track out of the village. Ginger scanned the countryside as the mud-walled compounds gave way to fields again, but there weren’t any people around now. The women workers had finished for the day and had taken their children back to their impoverished homesteads.
After going straight for about a mile, the track came to an irrigation canal and took a sharp turn to the left. In every direction, the fields were flat and the crops low – if Mac had still been running around here, surely they would have seen him by now.
‘Come on, let’s go back to the village,’ said Ginger. ‘He’s not out here.’
He’d probably chased the man around the houses without going far, and would now be wondering where they’d got to.
They returned to where they’d stopped originally. The man they’d spoken to had disappeared. There was no sign of the little boy, and even the goat had been tethered for the night.
There was no sign of Mac either.
Ginger got out and roamed between the houses for a few minutes, shouting Mac’s name. Nagpal hit the horn a few more times.
Mac wasn’t in the village, and he hadn’t been out in the fields beyond. Where the hell could he be?
Nagpal was looking round nervously. ‘What do you want to do, Ginger-jan?’
Ginger shrugged. They couldn’t leave without Mac. ‘Let’s drive slowly back towards the main road, see if we find him.’
He tried the phone again. Mac didn’t answer. Ginger couldn’t believe that he was still running after the bloke – it was now more than twenty minutes since they’d taken off. Had he caught the man? Were they tussling somewhere nearby? It was possible that Mac’s phone had fallen out of his pocket while he was running. Or maybe it had run out of power.
They trundled slowly along the track, between more fields, punctuated here and there by the walls of small, isolated compounds. Ginger kept trying the phone and Nagpal sounded the horn regularly. They stared out of the windows at the dwellings they passed.
Nagpal stopped abruptly and jumped out of the vehicle. Ginger watched as he banged aggressively on the doorway of one of the compounds. After a moment, it opened a crack and Nagpal spoke. Ginger couldn’t hear what he said.
Seconds later Nagpal was climbing back into the car, shaking his head.
‘Sorry, it was nothing. I saw a man was watching from the roof of that house, so I asked him if he’d seen people running. He hadn’t.’
‘Do you believe him?’ said Ginger.
‘I think so. He’d have no reason to lie.’
Ginger wasn’t so sure. When it came to the local population, he had no idea who to trust and who not to, so his default setting was to trust no one.
By the time they reached the main road, it was dark. Ginger got out of the Land Rover and walked up and down by the side of the road, calling Mac’s name again and trying his phone.
Nothing.
‘Right, back to the village.’ He wasn’t going to give up. Mac couldn’t have vanished into thin air. ‘We’ll door knock every house until we find him.’
Nagpal nodded his assent, but he didn’t look happy as they drove back down the track.
‘I’ll speak to the villagers, though I doubt they’ll tell me much.’ He fingered his steel bracelet. He was a Sikh, while the villagers were Pashtun.
For a small village, it took longer than Ginger expected to knock on the door of every house and ask the occupants if they’d seen a westerner nearby, or if they knew anything about the man he’d been pursuing. Ginger waited by the Land Rover, while Nagpal spoke with each family. Then he came back and told Ginger what had been said. But apparently nobody had seen or heard anything. Even at the original house, the man they’d spoken to first time around claimed no knowledge of the man Mac had set off in pursuit of.
‘What do you think has happened?’ said Nagpal, as the two of them sat in silence in the Land Rover, wondering what to do next. It was gone ten p.m. and Mac had been missing for more than three hours.
Ginger tried Mac’s phone again, though with no expectation of getting an answer.
He exhaled a long breath. ‘He’s got lost. He tripped and fell, knocked his head. He caught up with the bloke he was chasing and they fought. He lost his phone. He fell in a canal or in the river. I don’t have a fucking clue.’
‘Maybe he chased the man back into Lash,’ said Nagpal. ‘Maybe he’s gone back to the house or the office.’
Ginger shook his head. ‘He would have called us.’ Mac would know they would be searching for him and waiting for him at the village. He could only conclude that something untoward had happened. He guessed Mac was lying in a field or a ditch somewhere nearby – and now it was night, it would be virtually impossible to find him.
‘We need to organise a search party,’ said Ginger. ‘Men and torches.’ They couldn’t afford to wait until the morning – Mac might be injured. His life might be in danger.
‘Where from?’
‘Won’t these villagers help us?’
‘They don’t have torches,’ said Nagpal. ‘We have one torch in the back of the Land Rover. It’s not enough.’
Ginger thought for a moment. ‘Call Logan, the other drivers, the interpreters and the rest of the local staff. Ask them to come here and to bring torches. We’ll search through the night until we find him.’
Nagpal didn’t look particularly convinced, but he got on the phone.
Ginger climbed out of the car. The night was clear, and the air was still warm. That at least was in Mac’s favour. There were no lights in the village, and the only sounds were the cicadas and the occasional bleat from the goats tethered between the houses. He lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, as slowly as he could. Because when he finished it, there was one more call he had to make.
A call he didn’t want to make.
The cigarette tasted like shit anyway, so he dropped it and ground it out with his heel. He got out his phone and located the number.
‘Hey Baz.’
‘Ginger?’ She sounded puzzled.
‘Baz…’ Seconds passed.
‘What is it?’ Her voice was laced with anxiety.
‘It’s Mac. We’ve lost him.’