The Order of Things by Graham Hurley Page A

about dates and locations. The first trip, back last year, had been to Brazil, Bentner’s idea. In a full page of jottings, evidently done on the flight over, she admitted that she’d had mixed feelings about the trip. Ali wanted to take her to the tropical rainforest, wanted her to see for herself what uncontrolled logging was doing to the planet and its people, wanted to put flesh on the evenings back home when they sank a decent bottle of wine, and he banged on about arboreal respiration rates and the miracles of the carbon cycle. ‘This stuff obviously matters hugely to A.,’ she’d written, ‘so I’m guessing it must matter to me.’
    To Suttle this sounded more like duty than conviction, but the moment they hit Brazil her feelings changed. They’d landed in Rio, where their three-week journey would begin and end, and the city blew her away. The energy. The colour. The beach. The beauty of the people. Even the grimmest of the favelas . ‘These people seem to make light of poverty,’ she wrote. ‘Is that a state of mind? Or should we be looking for a Brazilian gene? A. tells me that these people play football to die for, and judging by the kids on the beach that has to be true. Viva Brazil!’
    Three days later they flew up to Manaus. Here the journey was to start in earnest, and once again Suttle detected a hint of foreboding. ‘Hot!’ she recorded. ‘The sweat’s pouring off me. If I was some horrible virus, then this is where I’d live.’The following morning they took a riverboat upstream. The sheer breadth of the Amazon she found hard to cope with. Not a river at all. More like a big brown sea pleated with submerged currents that frightened her. Huge freshwater turtles. Crocodiles. Dugout canoes. Indians. A script written in Hollywood, except it was true. ‘A. talks about the lungs of the planet and here they are. Back home you can have no conception of the vastness of this place, which probably makes A. more right than even he knows. Rip this lot out and we’re talking global post-mortem. RIP. Flowers lashed to railings. God help us all.’
    They made a landing at a riverside settlement called Tefe. To Reilly this was the Wild West. Bars full of native loggers, American oil men and local hookers. Much drinking. Noise in the small hours like you wouldn’t believe. A little violence, possibly recreational but scary nonetheless. Not a place you’d necessarily choose for peace and quiet.
    These entries in the diary married with photos in her album, which Suttle had also brought home. As they pushed deeper into the interior of the country, he paused from time to time, trying to read from their faces in the album more than Reilly’s journal might be prepared to admit.
    The first real clue came towards the end of the second week. They seemed to have hired a local guide to take them into an area where logging had yet to start. This was virgin forest. The side trip was scheduled to last a couple of days, and they’d be living under canvas on the forest floor. ‘Normally I’d have run a mile,’ Reilly had written, ‘but camping and A. are made for each other. He’s really really good at it and a total genius at improvisation. He never complains, never despairs, just gets on with it. Even our guide is impressed. Practice, I suppose, plus A.’s usual contempt for the easy way.’
    A.’s usual contempt for the easy way. It was a telling phrase, and Suttle sat back, reaching for the remains of his first Stella, trying to picture Bentner camped out in some secluded spot, living on his wits and maybe fuelled by the knowledge that the days of this wilderness were probably numbered. Was this man really on the run? Was he really aware of the way the manhunt was developing? Or was the real story behind Reilly’s death more complex than the guiding lights on Buzzard were prepared to admit?
    Suttle didn’t know. Back in the text, back in the rainforest, another entry caught his eye. ‘A. bad this morning.