Bangkok Bob and the missing Mormon

by Stephen Leather

  ‘What’s Italian?’ said the Brit, frowning.

  ‘Lingua franca. It’s Italian.’

  His frown deepened. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure.’ I waved for a round of beers. ‘On me,’ I said. ‘Tradition back at my old school was that the new guy buys the beers.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ giggled the Brit. I was giving serious consideration to hitting him over the head with my bottle of Heineken.

  Jai yen.

  ‘So you’re telling me that job satisfaction isn’t high on your list of priorities?’ I said.

  ‘You get bitter and twisted,’ said the Canadian. ‘Some of the kids do want to learn. Some of them work during the day and spend their own money on the courses. But in the main, yeah, it’s rich kids doing what their parents want. If you want job satisfaction, join one of the international schools or the Thai universities.’

  The fresh beers arrived and the teachers toasted me. ‘So what’s your reason for coming to Thailand?’ the Kiwi asked me.

  ‘To teach.’

  The Brit sniggered but didn’t say anything.

  The Kiwi shook his head. ‘You’re not being interviewed now,’ he said. ‘No one comes to Thailand to teach. There’s no money in it. You must have talked money with Petrov, right? You’ll be getting a quarter of what you’d be getting in the States.’

  ‘It’s not about money though, is it?’

  All three of them laughed. ‘No, it’s not,’ said the Kiwi.

  The Canadian took a long pull on his beer and wiped the back of his mouth with his hand. ‘There are three reasons for coming here,’ he said. ‘Sex, sex, and sex.’

  ‘You forgot sex,’ said the Brit.

  ‘You put up with the low wages, the students who don’t give a shit, the cockroach-infested classrooms, because a couple of times a week you can go out and get laid by some of the best looking women in the world,’ said the Canadian, warming to his theme.

  ‘Or men,’ said the Brit. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

  ‘That’s just the way it is,’ said the Canadian. ‘The only ones not here for the sex are the ones running away from something.’

  ‘So which are you, Bob?’ asked the Kiwi.

  I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you guys, but I enjoy teaching. I’ve been doing it almost fifteen years and I wanted to see a bit of the world. And I don’t think Jon came here for sex, either.’

  ‘Born again virgin,’ sneered the Brit.

  ‘Yeah, you could never get Jon Boy into a go-go bar,’ agreed the Kiwi.

  ‘Any sort of bar,’ agreed the Canadian.

  ‘There you go,’ I said. ‘Not everyone’s here for sex. And I don’t see Jon sticking at a job he didn’t like. Do you think that he just found a better job?’

  The Kiwi shrugged. ‘It’s possible. More likely that Petrov sacked him, I’d have thought.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  The Kiwi took a sip from his bottle of Singha. ‘Nothing was good enough for Jon. He argued about the classrooms, the state of the textbooks, the fact that classes were merged if we were a teacher short, the rattle and hum from the air-con. He was never out of Petrov’s office, always in there with one complaint or another.’

  ‘And Petrov didn’t give a damn, right?’

  ‘The school’s a business, that’s all. He doesn’t care if the students come out speaking the Queen’s English or not, so long as the fees are paid. The kids don’t care one way or another. So why should we? I put in the hours, I get paid, end of story.’

  I took a sip of my beer. ‘So do you think Jon quit? Or Petrov sacked him?’

  ‘Either’s a possibility.’

  ‘You’ve all got lockers at the school, right?’

  The Kiwi frowned at the change of subject. ‘So?’

  ‘I’m just wondering if Jon cleaned his out.’

  The frown deepened. ‘Do you think something’s happened to him?’

  ‘I’d feel a lot easier knowing that he’d cleared out his locker, that’s all.’

  The Kiwi put down his beer. ‘You think Petrov did something to him?’

  I put my hands up. ‘I’m just considering all angles, that’s all.’

  ‘You don’t shoot a guy just because he objects to teaching from photocopied text books,’ said the Kiwi.

  ‘Who said anything about shooting?’ I said.

  ‘That’s what you were suggesting.’

  ‘You’re the one who mentioned shooting,’ I said. ‘Is Petrov like that?’

  The Brit screwed up his face as if he’d just swallowed a wasp. ‘We did see him with a gun once. In his office.’

  ‘Once,’ said the Kiwi.

  ‘He was playing with it,’ said the Brit. ‘Looked like he was practising a quick draw.’

  Guns aren’t difficult to get in Thailand, and just because a man has one doesn’t mean he’s going to use it.

  But it wasn’t a good sign.

  ‘Look, we make jokes about it being a school run by the Russian mafia, but the school is a business,’ said the Kiwi. ‘And Petrov is a businessman.’

  ‘A businessman with a gun,’ I said.

  ‘He does hang out with some pretty heavy characters,’ said the Brit.

  ‘So now we’re condemning a man for the friends he’s got,’ said the Kiwi. ‘Look, he pays my wages and leaves me alone. What more can you ask for from a boss? Jon Junior was a pain in the arse and I wouldn’t be surprised if Petrov sacked him.’

  ‘Fine. So if Jon Junior was sacked, where is he?’

  The three teachers shrugged.

  ‘Who knows?’ said the Kiwi. ‘People come, people go. Bangkok’s a city of transients.’

  ‘Who cares?’ said the Brit. ‘He was a stuck-up prick. So where are we going tonight? I fancy Nana Plaza.’

  Jai yen.

  I caught a taxi back to the shop and as I sat in the back I dialled the cellphone number that Jon Junior had called. The answering service kicked in again. This time I left a message.

  CHAPTER 16

  ‘You’re going to what?’ Noy asked me over breakfast. This time I’d cooked for her. A Thai omelette stuffed with pork, boiled rice, and a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice with added salt, just the way she likes it. It’s one the strange things about Thais – they put salt in their orange juice and sugar in their soups. Go figure.

  ‘Just for a day or two,’ I said. I sipped my coffee and tried to look as if teaching English was the most natural thing in the world for me to suggest.

  ‘Would you like to tell me why at this stage in your life you’ve suddenly decided to teach English?’

  ‘It’s a case.’

  ‘Honey, you’re an antiques dealer. You don’t have cases.’

  ‘I’m looking for a boy.’

  Her spoon froze in the air on the way to her lips. ‘Oh my Buddha,’ she said.

  ‘That came out wrong,’ I admitted.

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘There’s an American boy gone missing, his parents have asked me to find him. He taught at an English school and I want to see if his students know where he went.’

  She put down her spoon. ‘And you’re going to do this by pretending to be an English teacher?’

  ‘A teacher of English, yes,’ I said. ‘How hard can that be?’

  ‘You were a policeman,’ she said. ‘And now you sell antiques.’

  ‘It’s English, honey. It’s not rocket science.’

  ‘And when are you going to start this new career?’

  ‘Tomorrow. And it’s not a career, honey.’ I sipped my coffee.

  ‘And what about the medical? How did that go?’

  ‘I get the results this afternoon.’ I patted my stomach. ‘But I feel good. I weigh about five pounds less than the last time I had a medical and I’m playing more tennis.’

  ‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed,’ she said. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘The nurse who
took my blood pressure said I had the heart of a twenty-five year old.’

  ‘Well I just hope he doesn’t ask for it back,’ she said, and giggled at her own joke.

  She has a lovely giggle, my wife.

  We finished breakfast and then I spent the morning in the shop, pricing a consignment of opium pipes that I’d had shipped over from Vietnam. They were copies of Chinese antiques and looked just like the real thing but at a fraction of the price. I didn’t sell them as genuine antiques, of course, but I have competitors who do. I put them on the website with a clear warning that they were decorative and not antiques.

  I had lunch at Fatso’s. Big Ron wasn’t there and a tourist in a Singha Beer sweatshirt and union jack shorts was sitting in the big chair while his wife took a photograph with her cellphone.

  I sat at a stool at the other end of the bar and drank a Phuket Beer and had one of Big Ron’s famous steak and kidney pies with French fries and peas before walking along Soi 3 to the Bumrungrad.

  I was due to see Doctor Duangtip at two o’clock but I got there at one and went up to see Ronnie Marsh in the burns unit. I’d spoken to a Thai lawyer who I sometimes played tennis with and he wanted Marsh to call him but I wasn’t sure if he had access to a phone. I knocked on the door to his room and pushed open the door and then stopped as I saw a teenage girl lying on the bed, an oxygen mask over her face. ‘Sorry,’ I said, and closed the door. I frowned as a looked at the room number. It was definitely the right one.

  A nurse was talking down the corridor pushing a trolley and I asked her what had happened to Khun Ronnie. The look on her face gave it away before she even opened her mouth to speak.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Khun Ronnie passed away.’

  ‘What happened? He was okay when I spoke to him,’ I said.

  ‘He passed away last night.’

  ‘Passed away?’

  ‘He had heart failure.’

  ‘Heart failure?’

  The nurse nodded. ‘Are you a relative?’ she asked.

  ‘Just a friend. Is there somebody who can tell me what happened to him?’

  The nurse took me along to an office and introduced me to a doctor who looked as if he was in his twenties. He shook my hand solemnly and asked me to sit down, then explained that Ronnie had suffered a massive heart attack in the middle of the night.

  ‘Is that usual with burns victims?’ I asked.

  He pushed his spectacles higher up his nose and shifted in his seat. ‘It can happen,’ he said. ‘But Mr Marsh did seem to be recovering. We had a resuscitation team in his room within seconds of the alarm sounding but they were too late.’ He tapped away at his computer terminal and squinted at the screen. ‘We don’t have a next of kin for Mr Marsh,’ he said. ‘Do you know where his family is?’

  ‘I don’t,’ I said.

  The doctor frowned. ‘That’s a pity,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll ask around,’ I said. “Look, I know this might sound a little strange, but it isn’t possible that something caused his heart attack?’

  ‘Such as?’

  I shrugged. Like somebody injecting him with potassium chloride, sodium gluconate, or even a straightforward air bubble, is what I wanted to say.

  But I didn’t.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. There was no point because if someone had killed Ronnie then there’d be no way of proving it. Potassium chloride and sodium gluconate disappeared from the system within hours and an air bubble was almost impossible to spot. ‘It’s just that he seemed fine when I spoke to him last.’

  ‘These things do happen,’ said the doctor. ‘Burns of the sort that Mr Marsh suffered cause a massive shock to the system.’ He leant back in his chair. ‘There will be a post mortem of course. I am sure we will know more then.’

  On the way out I dropped by the nurse’s station. There were three young nurses sharing a box of cookies and I asked them if Khun Ronnie had received any visitors before he died.

  One of the nurses had been working the night shift and she said that yes, two men had come to see Khun Ronnie and brought him some oranges.

  I asked her to describe them and I was pretty sure it was Lek and Tam, the kickboxers.

  Funny that.

  I wouldn’t have pegged either of them as fruit fans.

  CHAPTER 17

  ‘Well, it’s good news, bad news, Khun Bob,’ said Doctor Duangtip, flicking the corner of my file with his thumbnail.

  That wasn’t exactly what I’d been hoping to hear. The last three times I’d been in for the chat about the yearly check-up it had been a beaming smile and a pat on the back and see you next year.

  And this time I was five pounds lighter.

  And I’d been playing a lot of tennis.

  And I’d cut down on my drinking.

  Good news, bad news didn’t sound reassuring.

  The last time I’d had to break good news, bad news to anyone it had been a data processor from Manchester who’d asked me to run a check on his Thai fiancee. I don’t normally get involved with relationship cases because when you tell people something they don’t want to hear about their loved one, they tend to lash out at the messenger. Besides, I also figure that what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms or a short-time hotel is up to them and their consciences. I’d taken Jason’s case, though, mainly because he wasn’t the normal case of a tourist falling head over heels for a bargirl. Jason worked for a website design company in Hua Hin and he’d met the girl of his dreams. Her name was Fun. It means rain. Jason was planning to marry her and then take her to Manchester to meet his parents and introduce them to his new bride. While he was in the UK he planned to sell a flat he had there. With the money he was planning to buy a piece of land near the beach in Hua Hin and build a house where he and Fun could live happily ever after. Under Thai law, foreigners can’t own land, so Jason wanted to be one hundred per cent sure that he was doing the right thing. He’d heard horror stories of expats who’d lost everything after marrying local girls and so he wanted me to check that there wasn’t a Thai husband waiting to come out of the shadows once all Jason’s assets were in Fun’s name. He was a friend of a friend so I agreed to help.

  It was an easy job. Fun was from Udon Thani, in the North East. Jason gave me her full Thai name, her date of birth and her parents address. I drove up to Udon Thani and spent an hour drinking tea with two middle-aged ladies in the local amphur – the district office.

  Good news, bad news.

  The good news was that Fun was totally loyal, totally faithful, loved Jason to bits and would probably make him a great wife.

  The bad news was that Fun was a man.

  Oh yes, it happens. It happens a lot in Thailand. A snip and a tuck and a six-month course of hormones and Mr Fun was Miss Fun.

  Good news, bad news.

  Jason took it quite well, I thought. So far as I know, they’re still together. He’s given up any thoughts about taking her back to Manchester. Tells everyone that she’d hate the rain and the cold but the real reason is that all her legal documents, including Fun’s ID card and passport, show that she’s male. The British Embassy would laugh in his face if he applied for a visa for her. So they live happily ever after, sort of, in Hua Hin. He processes data for a couple of Bangkok companies, and Fun does whatever men who have had their penises surgically removed do. They’re thinking about adopting a baby, apparently.

  ‘The good news,’ said Doctor Duangtip, ‘is that your cholesterol level is on the way down at last. You must be exercising.’

  I shrugged and smiled. ‘A bit of tennis.’

  ‘Your heart is strong, your chest x-ray is clear and your vision and hearing are exceptional.’

  Good news.

  Great.

  Fantastic.

  So what’s the bad news?

  ‘No diabetes, blood pressure normal, your prostate is fine.’

  More good news.

  ‘Your lower abdomen ultrasound shows no problems, your liver is func
tioning exactly as it should.’

  She loves you, Jason. Loves you to bits. There’s just one thing you should know…

  Doctor Duangtip took a deep breath. ‘There is however a slightly raised level of CEA.’

  That’s the bad news. It didn’t sound so bad. But then, I hadn’t a clue what a raised CEA level was.

  Doctor Duangtip looked pained. ‘It’s not hugely high, but it is abnormal and is generally regarded as a red flag.’

  A red flag.

  Now that sounded like bad news.

  It sounded like train crashes and road accidents and bodies lying bleeding in the road.

  ‘It’s what we call a marker,’ said the doctor, looking over my shoulder at a spot somewhere on the wall.

  I nodded. A marker didn’t sound quite as bad as a red flag.

  ‘It can, in certain cases, be an indication of an intestinal tumour,’ he said.

  ‘A tumour? Cancer, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. Cancer of the colon.’

  Right then. There it was, finally out in the open. Definitely bad news.

  Cancer.

  Worse than a red flag.

  A lot worse.

  ‘Wouldn’t that have shown up on the ultrasound?’ I asked. Throw me a lifebelt. Something.

  He looked even more pained and flicked the file again. ‘The ultrasound gives us a view of the outside of the various organs in the abdominal cavity, but we can’t see inside them.’ He leaned forward and clasped his hands together as if about to say a prayer. ‘Khun Bob, it is a marker, that is all. The fact that you have a raised level of CEA is an indication that something might be wrong. That is all. It just means that we have to carry out a few more tests. And you should see a specialist.’

  Something might be wrong.

  That sounds better than a red flag.

  Better than cancer.

  Cancer.

  Shit.

  What the hell am I going to tell my wife?

  CHAPTER 18

  Noy was sitting on the terrace playing something by Bach. I stood in the shadows watching her for the best part of ten minutes. She’s always beautiful, but there was something incredibly sexy about her when she concentrated on her violin. Her eyes half open, a look of rapture on her face as her lithe body swayed in time to the music. I wanted to rip the violin from her, to take her in my arms, to force my lips on her hers and to take her there and then on the terrace. She’d have killed me on the spot, of course. For a start the violin is a Stradivarius and worth almost as much as our apartment. And her playing is as close to perfection as you can get. Interrupting her for something as basic as sex would have been a mortal sin. So I stood and listened and worshipped.