The Solitary Man (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  ‘You saved my life,’ she replied. ‘Now you’re responsible for me for evermore.’ He frowned, confused. Jennifer had yet to meet an American with a sense of irony. She patted him on the knee. ‘Joke,’ she said, smiling sweetly.

  The taxi lurched to a halt. ‘This is it,’ said Millett. He paid the fare as Jennifer climbed out of the taxi. They’d stopped in front of a rundown, nondescript building in a bustling side street. ‘This way,’ said Millett. He led her through an archway, across a passageway and through a second archway where a small shop sold cigarettes, soft drinks and soap. Millett showed his Press credentials to a uniformed receptionist and spoke to her in Thai. The receptionist looked at Jennifer, said something to the American journalist, and Millett replied. The receptionist nodded and made a waving motion with her hand.

  Millett took Jennifer along a passageway to a large room where there were already more than two dozen Thai journalists standing around. They were facing a long wooden table behind which was ranged a line of five empty chairs. Technicians were setting up television cameras and microphones. As Millett and Jennifer sat down a door opened at the far end of the room and two Thai men in T-shirts and jeans walked in. They had badges pinned to their shirts, the only sign that they were policemen. One of the men was carrying a black holdall. They were followed by the Brit, his hands manacled and his legs in chains. He stumbled as he entered the room and the policeman carrying the bag steadied him.

  The Brit was in his early thirties with short mousy-brown hair and wearing steel-framed spectacles with round lenses. He had the build of a runner, tall and thin, wiry rather than well muscled. He kept his head lowered so Jennifer couldn’t see his features clearly. Camera flashes were going off in quick succession like a strobe light and he turned away. He was wearing a light green shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, black Levis and Reeboks. The policemen forced him to sit in the middle of the five chairs. As he dropped into his seat, Jennifer saw his face clearly for the first time. He had brown eyes with long black lashes either side of a long, thin nose and his forehead was lined with deep creases as if he spent a lot of time frowning. There were dark patches under his eyes, a sign of the strain he was under. His mouth was set in a nervous half-smile as if he was trying to reassure himself that everything was going to be all right. The strain was evident in his face and his hands were trembling. He clasped them together on the table and bowed his head so that his features were hidden once more. The uniformed policemen sat down either side of him. They had large handguns in black leather holsters on their hips and transceivers clipped to their belts.

  The policeman with the holdall put it on to the table and unzipped it. He took out a plastic-wrapped package of white powder about the size of a housebrick. He held up the package and the flashes started again. The policeman grinned and slowly twisted around so that all the photographers could get a good shot. When the flashes had subsided he put the package down next to the bag and took out a passport which he put on the table and then sat down. An older uniformed officer with hair as grey and shiny as burnished steel began to speak to the reporters in Thai. At one point he held up a sheet of paper and there was another flurry of photographic flashes.

  Millett put his head on one side as he listened intently, and from time to time he wrote in his notebook. Jennifer craned her neck to see what he was writing. Among his shorthand she saw the name ‘Warren Hastings’ and ‘Hong Kong’.

  There was a flurry of questions, all in Thai, which the grey-haired policeman answered. Jennifer tapped Millett on the shoulder. ‘What are they saying?’ she whispered.

  ‘Just giving us the basics. Who he is, how much heroin there was, where’s he from. I’ll give you the details later.’

  ‘Can I ask a question?’

  ‘Sure, go ahead,’ said Millett. ‘The head cop there understands English. Just speak slowly.’

  Jennifer raised a hand and the officer nodded at her. ‘I’d like to know what Mr Hastings has to say for himself,’ she said. ‘How does he explain the drugs in his bag?’

  Hastings kept his head down.

  ‘Does he plan to plead guilty?’ Jennifer pressed. Still there was no reaction from Hastings.

  The door behind the table opened again and another uniformed officer appeared carrying a sheaf of papers. He began to hand them out to the reporters.

  ‘What about your family, Mr Hastings? Are you married? Are your parents still in England?’ She knew that she needed a local angle for her paper to give the story a decent show. It was a good start that Hastings had a British passport, but what she really needed was a mother and father back in the UK able to give her a quote along the lines of ‘he was always such a good boy, we don’t know where he went wrong’.

  Hastings said nothing. One of the Thai reporters began to ask a question in Thai. Jennifer sat back in her seat, frowning. If he intended to plead not guilty, then now was the time to be protesting his innocence.

  Millett leaned closer to her. ‘He’s already signed a confession, of sorts,’ he whispered. ‘That sheet of paper the older cop was holding up, it’s an inventory of what was in his bag when he was detained. He signed to say that he was in possession of the drugs. Even if he does say he’s innocent, his signature on that form is enough to convict him.’

  There were more questions from the Thai reporters. A photocopy of the inside pages of Hastings’ passport was thrust in front of Jennifer and she took it. His date of birth made him thirty-two. She looked at the photograph of the man who was sitting at the table, head bowed. He didn’t look like a drug smuggler, more like a university lecturer. She wanted to ask him for personal details but it was clear that Hastings wasn’t saying anything and that she’d be wasting her time.

  ‘What do you think?’ Millett asked her.

  ‘Ten pars. Maybe more if I could get some background on recent drugs cases here.’

  ‘I’m your man,’ said Millett, grinning widely.

  Jennifer slid her notebook into her handbag. ‘Why don’t you come back to my hotel, Rick? We can both file our stories and have a drink at the same time.’

  Millett jumped to his feet as if he were spring-loaded and Jennifer resisted the urge to laugh.

  CHAU-LING SAT ON THE sofa with her feet curled up underneath her. She was wearing just a T-shirt and bikini pants and had the windows open. She hated air-conditioning, and even on the hottest nights she preferred to rely on the fan mounted in the ceiling to keep her cool and the netting across the windows to keep the mosquitoes out. Mickey and Minnie were sprawled on the floor, tongues lolling out of the sides of their mouths as they panted. Occasionally Mickey would raise his head off his paws in a silent plea for her to switch on the air-conditioner but Chau-ling pretended not to notice. Like her, they were natives of Hong Kong, but Warren had spoiled them.

  The television was on but she had the sound muted. She flicked through the cable channels with the remote control, only half-watching. She was hoping to find a decent movie, but all she could find were Australian soap operas, sports events and cartoons, par for the course in Hong Kong; it wasn’t a city where people regarded an evening in front of the television as decent entertainment.

  Suddenly she saw something that grabbed her attention. She sat bolt upright. The dogs realised something was wrong and they sat up, ears erect. Chau-ling fumbled with the remote. She missed the volume control with her thumb and accidentally switched channels. She cursed and frantically tried to find the original channel: a football match; a music video; Warren, sitting behind a desk, flanked by two men in uniforms. She looked down at the remote, this time making sure she pressed the volume button. An American voice was saying that Warren Hastings had been arrested at Bangkok International Airport with a kilo of heroin in his possession. Chau-ling’s mouth fell open. ‘What?’ she said, out loud.

  Mickey growled. The reporter went on to say that he was the fourth drug courier apprehended in the last month by Thai police as part of the country’s ongoing crac
kdown on heroin smugglers. The camera went in close on Warren. Chau-ling slid down off the sofa and crawled over to the television until she was only a few feet away from the screen. He looked terrible, his eyes were ringed with dark patches as if he hadn’t slept and his hair was in disarray. The clothes he was wearing were the same ones he’d had on when she last saw him. ‘Warren?’ she whispered.

  Minnie padded over to Chau-ling and licked her face. Chau-ling pushed the dog away, her eyes fixed on the screen. It didn’t make any sense. As far as she knew, Warren had never had anything to do with drugs. He didn’t even smoke. She sat back on her heels. The news broadcast went on to cover an inquiry into a ferry collision in the harbour. She tapped the remote control against her cheek as her mind raced. Warren was in trouble. She had no doubt that there had been a terrible mistake.

  She got to her feet and went over to the phone. She tapped in a number and muted the television volume as she waited for the phone to be answered. It took three rings.

  ‘Daddy,’ she said, her voice trembling, ‘I need your help.’

  THE BUFFALO BOY SMACKED one of the slower buffaloes on the rump with his stick. There were a dozen animals, and only the Buffalo Boy, his father and his older brother to keep them moving. The boy’s father was talking to two uniformed border guards, laughing and offering them cigarettes. They had made the crossing many times. Sometimes three times a week. There were good profits to be made selling the buffaloes in Thailand; they fetched a much higher price than in Burma. The Buffalo Boy was only fifteen years old, but he’d been working with his father since he was eight and he knew that the profit they could make from the sale of just one buffalo was enough to feed their family for a month. There was a tax to be paid, and bribes of cigarettes, brandy and money to be given to the officials on both sides of the border, but the journey was still worth making, even without the heroin.

  The Buffalo Boy was twelve before he’d been told about the heroin, except then it hadn’t been heroin but opium that had been hidden inside the buffaloes. The Buffalo Boy’s father had explained that heroin was much more expensive than opium, and that the man they worked for, Zhou Yuanyi, wanted to make as much profit as possible. The boy knew about profit. Profit was the difference between living in a hut without electricity and a big house; profit meant good food, clothes, maybe one day a car. A Mercedes, perhaps. He’d seen a picture of a Mercedes in a magazine one of his cousins had bought in Bangkok and he’d decided that one day he’d own one of his own. Life was all about profit, and in Burma it was heroin that made the biggest profit.

  The drugs were put into condoms, tied several times so that they wouldn’t come undone accidentally, and forced down the throats of the animals. Each condom contained about four ounces of heroin, and it was possible to get a single buffalo to swallow fifty. Two hundred ounces in every buffalo, and there were twelve buffaloes. The Buffalo Boy did the multiplication in his head: twelve times two hundred was two thousand four hundred. How many pounds was that? The boy frowned as he tried to divide by sixteen, but before he could do it, his father jolted him out of his reverie.

  ‘Somsak, what are you doing? Keep them together!’

  The Buffalo Boy ran to catch an errant buffalo and slapped it on its rump until it rejoined the herd. His brother laughed and waved his stick and the Buffalo Boy looked away, embarrassed. He beat another buffalo, harder than was necessary. The animal snorted as if it realised the treatment was unjust.

  The Buffalo Boy’s father brought up the rear as they crossed the border into Thailand. More guards were there, this time wearing Thai uniforms. The guards waved the animals across. They never inspected the buffaloes. The Buffalo Boy knew why. They were paid by Zhou Yuanyi, paid more each month than they earned from their salary. Paid not to ask questions. That was something else that profit bought you, thought the Buffalo Boy. Power over others. If you had enough money, you could get people to do what you wanted. Profit meant power, and the most powerful man in the Golden Triangle was the warlord Zhou Yuanyi. The Buffalo Boy had seen him once, astride a huge white horse.

  The herd crossed into Thailand. A man in an Isuzu pickup truck watched them walk down the road. The Buffalo Boy pretended not to notice him, exactly as his father had instructed. The man in the Isuzu worked for Zhou Yuanyi – once the heroin-filled condoms had passed through the water buffaloes, he would take the condoms to Chiang Rai, and from there to Bangkok. Meanwhile it was the Buffalo Boy’s job to watch the buffaloes and to fish out the condoms from the shit they left behind. It would be at least another day before the condoms began to appear. Sometimes it took as long as four days for all of them to come out. The Buffalo Boy had to poke through the shit with his stick until he had all two hundred, then he had to wash them clean in stream water. He hated doing it, but he did the job thoroughly. One day, in a few years perhaps, the Buffalo Boy would try to join the warlord’s army. He wouldn’t be like his father, content to make a small profit from selling buffaloes and smuggling drugs. The Buffalo Boy wanted to be near the source of the power, at the centre. He wanted to serve Zhou Yuanyi, and to profit from that service.

  He jumped up and sat on one of the smaller buffaloes, his legs either side of the animal’s neck, imagining for a moment that he was Zhou Yuanyi, master of all he surveyed. He kicked the buffalo with his heels, the way he’d seen the warlord spur on his horse. The buffalo ignored him; it barely felt the kicks from his spindly legs.

  THERE WERE EIGHT OF them in the tiny cell and it was all Hutch could do to stop himself from screaming. He’d been inside half a dozen prisons in Britain but he’d never experienced anything as primitive as the conditions in the cell the police had put him in. It was barely fifteen feet square, three of the walls were bare brick and the fourth was composed of floor-to-ceiling bars and overlooked a narrow corridor. There was no furniture, and the sanitary facilities consisted of a metal bucket. A red plastic bucket was half-filled with drinking water in which there floated a polystyrene cup. Four of the prisoners were Thai and they had all managed to get hold of sleeping mats. Hutch and the three other Westerners had to sit or lie on the bare concrete floor. The only consolation was that at least the guards had taken off the handcuffs and leg irons with which they’d constrained him for the Press conference.

  The Press conference had come as a complete surprise, and not a pleasant one. He’d tried to keep his head down to avoid the photographers and the cameramen, but he wasn’t sure how successful he’d been. And he had a bad feeling about the English woman who’d started asking questions. He hoped that she worked for one of the Bangkok English-language newspapers and that she wasn’t planning to file the story back to Hong Kong or the United Kingdom.

  When they’d loaded him in a police van at the airport he’d assumed that they were taking him to Klong Prem prison, but they’d continued along the expressway towards the city. The van had eventually driven down a bustling side street and into a car park in front of a single-storey building.

  There had still been no interrogation. Other than to be asked if his name was Warren Hastings, he hadn’t faced a single question since he’d been arrested at the airport. In fact, he wasn’t even sure if he’d actually been arrested. He certainly hadn’t been cautioned, unless it had been in Thai and he hadn’t realised it.

  ‘My name is Toine,’ said a voice at Hutch’s side. ‘Toine Altink.’ Hutch turned to face a tall, well-muscled man in his early twenties. ‘I am from Holland.’

  His smile seemed genuine, though Hutch had been in enough prisons to know that appearances could always be deceptive and that an easy smile could just as easily be followed by a knife in the ribs.

  ‘Warren,’ said Hutch. ‘From Hong Kong.’

  Toine slid his arms through the bars and leaned his forehead against the metal. ‘This is a nightmare,’ he said in his heavy Dutch accent. ‘How much were you carrying?’

  ‘I wasn’t carrying anything,’ said Hutch. He had no way of knowing whether or not Toine was trying to earn a
reduced sentence by informing on his fellow prisoners. Until it was over, Hutch would give away as little as possible.

  ‘Yeah? I wasn’t carrying five kilos,’ said Toine. He banged his forehead against the bars making a dull ringing sound. ‘How could I have been so stupid?’ The question was clearly rhetorical so Hutch didn’t reply. ‘I only wanted to earn enough to be able to come back and take care of my girlfriend,’ continued Toine. ‘She wants to stop working in the bars, but her father’s sick and they need money for the farm. One trip, that’s all, she said, one trip and we’d get married.’ Hutch didn’t know what to say. ‘They shoot drug smugglers, you know,’ said Toine. He sounded as if he was close to tears.

  ‘Not any more, they don’t,’ said Hutch. ‘It’s always commuted to life imprisonment.’

  ‘Great,’ said Toine bitterly. He banged his head harder against the bars.

  The Dutchman’s mouth was set tight as if he was grinding his teeth and he had a faraway look in his eyes. Hutch had seen the same look on a thousand faces before, the faces of first-timers who had still to get used to the fact that they were going to spend a good part of their lives behind bars.

  ‘What is this place?’ asked Hutch.

  ‘Narcotics Suppression Division,’ said Toine.

  ‘How long have you been here?’

  Toine snorted. ‘Five days,’ he said. ‘Five days and they haven’t let me shower once.’

  ‘Five days?’ repeated Hutch. ‘Are you sure?’ Billy had said that he’d be transferred to the main prison almost immediately.

  Toine stopped banging his head. ‘What do you mean, am I sure?’

  ‘I mean, how long do they keep us here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Toine. ‘They only speak Thai. Or they pretend to only speak Thai. You can’t tell with them.’