The Solitary Man (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Seven days,’ said an American voice behind Hutch. The speaker was an anorexically thin man in his mid-to-late twenties who was sitting with his back to the far wall, his legs straight out in front of him. ‘Then they have to put you in front of a judge.’

  ‘A week?’

  ‘That’s the law,’ said the American. ‘But the seven days doesn’t start until you get here.’

  ‘But it could be less than seven, right?’ said Hutch.

  The American shrugged dejectedly. ‘Sure. But I’ve been here six days and they don’t seem in any rush.’

  Hutch’s throat felt dry and swollen. He went over to the water bucket and filled the plastic cup. Small dead flies floated on the surface and he fished them out with his finger before drinking.

  The American smiled grimly. ‘Wait until you see the food,’ he said. ‘A few flies is nothing. My name’s Matt, by the way.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Matt,’ said Hutch. ‘I’m Warren.’

  Hutch dropped the cup back in the plastic bucket. He was dog-tired but the only space large enough to lie down was next to the metal bucket and the smell from it was more than he could bear. He went back over to the bars and stood next to the Dutchman.

  A uniformed guard walked down the corridor and stopped outside the neighbouring cell. He was carrying a clipboard and he ran his finger down it. ‘War-ren,’ said the guard, leaving a gap between the two syllables. When there was no response from the occupants of the cell, he repeated the word, louder the second time as if he was more sure of himself.

  ‘That’s you,’ said Toine.

  ‘Huh?’ said Hutch. He hadn’t been listening, he’d been thinking about Billy Winter and wondering how he’d managed to be so wrong about the Thai police procedures. According to Billy, he should be in Klong Prem prison by now, making contact with Ray Harrigan and putting together an escape plan. If they kept him in the detention centre for seven days, the forensic laboratory would discover the drugs weren’t real and he’d be released without ever having set foot inside the prison.

  ‘That’s your name. Warren. He’s calling your name.’

  Hutch stuck his hand between the bars and waved at the guard. ‘Here!’ he called. ‘I’m Warren Hastings.’

  The guard walked over and held the clipboard up so that Hutch could read the name written there. Hutch nodded eagerly. ‘That’s me,’ he said.

  The guard unlocked the barred door and motioned for Hutch to get out of the cell. Hutch waited impatiently as the guard relocked the door. Maybe this was it, he thought, maybe he was going to court straight away and then off to the prison.

  The guard walked down the corridor and Hutch followed him. The cells were separated from the general office and reception area by more floor-to-ceiling bars, but before they reached the bars the guard opened a wooden door and led Hutch through into a long, narrow room. The right-hand side of the wall was composed of thick vertical steel bars over which was a double layer of chicken wire. It was a visiting room, Hutch realised, and he cursed under his breath. Through the wire, Hutch could see the office area where half a dozen uniformed guards were sitting at desks. Most of them weren’t doing anything, though one was pecking unenthusiastically at a typewriter.

  About a yard away from the bars on the office side was a horizontal metal rail at waist height, presumably to keep visitors at a safe distance so they couldn’t pass across any contraband.

  ‘I want to go back to the cell,’ Hutch said to the guard.

  The guard closed the door and stood with his back to it, the clipboard clutched against his chest.

  ‘Fine,’ muttered Hutch, and he turned back to the chicken wire.

  He heard a scraping sound to his right, out of his vision. It sounded as if something was being dragged along the ground, and it was accompanied by an occasional grunt. A man appeared in a dark suit, walking with the aid of a stick. His legs were strangely disjointed and his head was at an angle to his body as if his neck was causing him pain. He walked by swinging one leg from the hip, then supporting himself on the stick before moving the other leg. It was a laborious way of walking and the man had a pained smile on his face as if apologising in advance for keeping Hutch waiting.

  ‘The name’s Wilkinson,’ he said as he made his way to the rail. ‘Simon Wilkinson. From the British Embassy.’ He had the clipped tones and commanding voice of a former army officer and appeared to be wearing a regimental tie over a rumpled white shirt. He was a good-looking man with a shock of unruly jet black hair and piercing blue eyes. He reached the bar and leaned against it gratefully. When he stopped moving, the stick was the only sign of his disability. ‘Sorry I didn’t get here earlier, the traffic’s hell.’ He hung his stick on the bar and nodded curtly at Hutch. ‘So, got ourselves in a bit of a pickle, haven’t we?’

  ‘We?’ said Hutch.

  ‘Well, you know what I mean,’ said Wilkinson. ‘Have you got a lawyer?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can recommend a few names,’ said Wilkinson.

  ‘I don’t need a lawyer,’ Hutch insisted.

  ‘I’m afraid you will,’ said the Embassy official. ‘All court proceedings and documents will be in Thai and they don’t provide translations. Even if you’re going to plead guilty, you’ll still need a lawyer.’

  ‘I won’t be pleading guilty,’ said Hutch. ‘I won’t be pleading anything. There’s been a mistake.’

  Wilkinson raised his eyebrows. He had an amused smile on his face but his eyes were flat and hard. Hutch had the distinct impression that Simon Wilkinson didn’t care one way or the other what happened to him.

  ‘It’s up to you, of course,’ said Wilkinson. ‘The Thais will quite happily try you without you having a lawyer. Is there anyone you want me to contact?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Wilkinson shrugged. ‘Family, friends, business colleagues.’

  Hutch shook his head. ‘No. No one.’

  Wilkinson pursed his lips, then shrugged again. ‘Up to you,’ he said. ‘But you’re going to need money.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Food. Toilet paper. Soap. The basics. They all have to be paid for. Conditions are pretty Draconian here, as I’m sure you’ve discovered.’

  ‘I have to buy toilet paper?’

  ‘You have to buy everything, Mr Hastings. Life can be unpleasant in a Thai jail, or it can be bearable. The only thing that makes a difference is money. Now if you have someone in Hong Kong or England that I can contact, I can explain what’s happened and arrange for them to transfer funds to the Embassy, which we can then pass to the authorities.’

  ‘No. There’s no one. Is it right they can hold me here for seven days?’

  Wilkinson nodded. He leaned against the horizontal bar and gripped it with his left hand and then shifted his weight as if his hip was troubling him. ‘Seven days then you have to be in front of a judge. The police will run through their evidence, and if the judge is satisfied, you’ll be held in custody.’

  ‘At the prison, right? Klong Prem?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But it might not be seven days, it might be sooner?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re hoping for, Mr Hastings. From what the police have told me, I don’t think you should hold out any hope of an early release. Or bail, for that matter.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ asked Hutch.

  ‘Well, for a start, the confession you signed doesn’t exactly help your position,’ said the Embassy official.

  ‘Confession? What confession?’

  ‘The form you signed. It was a list of everything found in your possession at the airport, but at the tail end of it was a statement that you were trying to take the drugs out of the country.’

  ‘It was in Thai,’ hissed Hutch angrily. ‘How the hell was I supposed to know what it said?’

  ‘You should have waited until you’d received a translation,’ said Wilkinson. He spoke slowly and patiently as if he thought that Hutch w
ould have difficulty understanding him.

  Hutch exploded. ‘You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!’ he shouted. ‘You weren’t there, you didn’t have half a dozen uniformed thugs breathing down your neck!’

  Two guards rushed down the corridor to the visiting area, but Wilkinson waved them away with his walking stick and a few words in Thai.

  ‘There’s no need to shout,’ Wilkinson said to Hutch. ‘One of the things you’re going to have to learn is that you won’t make any progress by losing your temper. That goes for me as well as the Thais.’

  Hutch struggled to control his temper. The Embassy official’s sanctimonious tone had infuriated him, but Hutch knew that there was no point in antagonising the man. He raised his hands in surrender. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m under quite a bit of pressure, as you can imagine.’

  Wilkinson’s smile returned, but there was still no warmth in his eyes. ‘I do think you should consider hiring a lawyer,’ he said.

  Hutch shook his head emphatically. ‘I can handle this myself.’

  ‘I admire your confidence, but I can assure you that it’s misplaced,’ said Wilkinson. He tapped his stick on the floor. ‘But it’s your decision. I’ll come and see you again in a few days.’

  ‘There’s no need to go to any trouble,’ said Hutch.

  ‘It’s no trouble,’ replied Wilkinson. ‘It’s what I’m paid for.’ He pushed himself away from the rail and walked away, the sound of his uneven gait echoing off the walls

  JENNIFER LEIGH TOWELLED HER wet hair and walked over to her hotel room window. Far below, long, thin boats powered along the Chao Phraya River leaving frothy wakes in the murky brown water. Jennifer didn’t know if the colour of the water was due to pollution or silt but she’d have put money on the former. Almost everything she’d seen in Bangkok had been polluted: the air was foul with exhaust fumes, the water that came from the taps was undrinkable, and the food sold by the hawkers on the streets was covered with flies. Not that she’d mention that in the articles that she was going to write for her newspaper’s travel pages, of course: she’d been in the business long enough to have learned that there was no point in biting the hand that fed her. She was a guest of the Thai Tourist Authority, and had flown first class on Thai Airways, and the suite they’d fixed up for her in the Shangri-La was almost as big as her Islington flat. Skipping over the unpalatable facts of life in the Land of Smiles was a small price to pay for a free luxury holiday.

  She tied the towel around her chest, padded over to the television and switched it on. She tuned it to CNN. A copy of the Bangkok Post lay on the floor by her door and she picked it up. There was little of interest on the front page: several convoluted and badly written political articles, a picture of the King meeting hilltribe farmers, and a bus accident which had killed three schoolchildren. The Warren Hastings story was on page three, a photograph across three columns and half a dozen paragraphs. The paper obviously didn’t regard a kilogram of heroin as a big deal. There was nothing in the piece that she hadn’t included in her copy that she’d filed to London. She looked at her wristwatch. London was seven hours behind Bangkok which meant that it would be two o’clock in the morning there. She picked up the phone and dialled the direct line for the news desk.

  It was answered by Neil Morris, a young, thrusting Oxford graduate who’d only been on the paper for eight months. Jennifer had heard that his mother was a close friend of the proprietor, which explained his promotion to night news editor with next to no journalistic experience. ‘Jenn, so nice to hear from you. How’s Bangkok?’

  ‘Hot and sweaty, Neil,’ she said. She had a sudden urge to add that it was just like his armpits, but Morris was touchy about his perspiration problem so she bit her tongue. The way young Morris’ career was progressing, he’d probably be editor before long. ‘I was just calling to see what sort of a show my piece got.’ The presses started running just after midnight, so the first editions should already be on his desk.

  ‘Piece?’ said Morris. ‘What piece?’

  Jennifer mouthed a silent ‘shit’ and took a deep breath. ‘A guy from Hong Kong caught smuggling drugs out of Bangkok airport.’

  ‘Didn’t see it, love. They were expecting it, were they?’

  ‘I checked with Robbie, he said he’d pass it on to foreign. He told me it’d get a good show.’

  ‘A chink caught with dope? It doesn’t set my pants on fire, Jenn.’

  ‘He’s not Chinese, he’s a Brit.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘I don’t know, they just said from Hong Kong. And he wasn’t talking.’ Jennifer heard the sound of pages being turned.

  ‘I don’t see it,’ said Morris. ‘Space is tight tonight, maybe it didn’t make it.’ Jennifer’s heart sank. ‘What was it slugged?’ Morris asked.

  ‘Heroin,’ said Jennifer.

  There was silence for a few seconds. ‘Yeah, I’ve got it. It’s in the foreign hold queue.’

  ‘So it’s not been used?’

  ‘Afraid not. Sorry about that.’

  ‘Do me a favour, Neil, have a word with the foreign desk, will you, see if you can squeeze it in for the second edition?’

  ‘I’ll do my best, Jenn, but I don’t think they’ll have room. What are you doing chasing fire engines anyway? I thought you were there on a freebie.’

  ‘Yeah, I am. But there’s something not right about the guy, he’s not the normal sort of drug courier, you know? I want to run with the story.’

  ‘You’ll have to check with Robbie, I can’t okay that.’

  ‘I’ll call him tomorrow,’ said Jennifer.

  ‘You’re having a good time, though?’ he said. He had a patronising way of talking to all the reporters, especially the ones who hadn’t been to public school.

  ‘Just great, Neil.’

  ‘I thought it was a bit of a waste sending a girlie, myself. I mean, you’re not really able to take full advantage of all the opportunities on offer, are you?’ He chuckled suggestively.

  Jennifer felt a sudden rush of anger. ‘Well, Neil, maybe they just wanted someone who didn’t think with his dick,’ she snapped.

  ‘Hey, there’s no need to snap, Jenn. I just meant—-’

  ‘Yeah, I know what you meant. Go fuck yourself, you sweaty little shit.’ She slammed down the phone, fuming. Her anger faded after a few seconds to be replaced by a sick feeling of impending doom. Morris was too well connected to have as an enemy, especially when she was trying to get back to hard news reporting. She’d tried to be nice to him, she really had, but she loathed his accent, his patronising tone and his perspiration-stained handmade shirts. And the fact that he was fifteen years younger than she was.

  ‘Problems?’ asked Rick Millett, who was sprawled across the bed, his face half-buried in a pillow.

  ‘They’re not using my piece on Hastings.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Millett said, sleepily. He rolled over and looked at her with half-closed eyes. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Why? Are you in a hurry to go?’

  ‘I’ve gotta get to the office some time this morning, that’s all.’

  Jennifer undid her towel and let it fall to the floor, remembering at the last second to tighten her stomach muscles and lift her chin.

  ‘Jennifer, I’ve really gotta go,’ said Millett, raising himself up on one elbow.

  Jennifer knelt on the bed and leaned over him, letting her breasts brush against his chest. She lowered her head slowly and kissed him on the lips. He resisted for about two seconds, then lay back and slipped his arms around her.

  HUTCH LAY ON HIS back, his arms folded behind his head. He stared up at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. He could hear far-off shouts and from time to time a metal door would slam shut, the vibrations travelling up through the concrete floor. Toine had said that a sleeping mat would cost five hundred baht but the police had taken Hutch’s wallet off him when he was arrested. No matter which way he lay he couldn’t get comfortable.
His back ached and his hips burned and his right arm had gone to sleep. A mosquito had bitten him on his neck and he had to fight the urge to keep scratching. There was no window in the cell and none of the prisoners had been allowed to keep their wristwatches, so there was no way of telling what time of day it was. Hutch figured it was probably mid-morning. He’d been in the cell for at least twelve hours.

  Hutch couldn’t stop thinking about Billy Winter, and how he’d managed to get it so wrong. Winter had been so sure that he’d be taken straight to the prison, and every hour that he remained in the detention centre was an hour lost, an hour when he could have been briefing Harrigan and working out how he was going to get him out of the prison.

  He was having to use every ounce of concentration to stop himself banging on the bars with his bare hands and screaming for them to let him out. His stomach growled. All he’d had to eat was rice and fish sauce which had been served in a piece of newspaper, and a plastic bag filled with lukewarm water. He wondered what the food would be like in prison. He doubted it would be up to the standards of British prison fare – he’d put on almost a stone in weight while at Parkhurst and that was despite using the gym as often as possible.

  A guard walked down the corridor, rattling a key chain. Hutch heard his name being called. He sat up, grunting with discomfort, and he massaged his tingling arm. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘That’s me.’

  The guard glowered at Hutch through the bars as if he was a convicted child molester. ‘Visitor,’ he said.

  ‘Is it the guy from the Embassy again?’ Hutch asked as the guard unlocked the barred door.

  The guard said nothing. He escorted Hutch along the corridor to the visiting room. Wilkinson wasn’t waiting for him on the other side of the bars and chicken wire. Standing there was a middle-aged Thai man in a dark suit carrying a leather briefcase.

  ‘Mr Hastings?’ the man said.

  Hutch frowned. The visitor didn’t look like a policeman, and none of the officers he’d come into contact with had called him ‘Mr’. He was tall for a Thai, with greying hair and a slight paunch across which was stretched a gold watch chain.