“OK, I know how. Highway 2. My name is Lek. Thank you for rescue me.”
“My name is Danny and you’re welcome. Jesus, I’m in a mess here.”
“You need Doctor. I have friend can help you.”
“Is he a Doctor?”
“Yes, same same Doctor nearly.”
“Nearly a Doctor?”
“Yes same same, Doctor for animal.”
“A vet?”
“Yes nearly same same vet.”
“Nearly a vet?”
“Yes. When he finish training he be vet. He can help you. He my friend and not speak to any person.”
Danny looked at his wounds. He was in a lot of pain and knew he needed help.
“OK. We can go to your friend, but first I have to look for my friend.”
They got through Nong Khai and onto Highway 2. Danny recognised the roadside café and directed Lek to the dirt track road that led up to the little wooden house. He was feeling weak and faint from the loss of blood. When they got to the house the stolen car was still parked at the side of the house where they had left it. Everything was still as it was inside the house. There was no sign of Nok. Danny staggered inside and collapsed.
Lek checked for a pulse and heartbeat. They were there but faint. She padded his wounds with his clothes. She found his wallet in the pocket of his jeans. She took it and got back into the BMW and drove back down the track.
Danny had dreams, many dreams. He dreamed about old work colleagues chasing him and shooting at him. He dreamed about trying to run, but his feet were so heavy he could not move them. He dreamed of danger. He dreamed of being sown into a straightjacket; his skin stitched to the material. He dreamed of dying in a desert under a baking sun, but then his dreams changed and he had the recurring dream that he had had so many times over the last year. It was Ying, the beautiful Thai detective who had meant so much to him. It was the same dream that he was so familiar with, Ying coming to him carrying a baby. Whenever he had had this dream before Ying always faded away before he could reach her, but now she stayed and waited for him. He walked towards her. She did not fade and, as he got closer, he could see her beautiful face again. But it was not Ying, it was Ling. Even in his dreams he realised that he had been dreaming of Ling, even before he met her in life. It was Ling and she was holding his baby. She smiled and he knew she was waiting for him. He was not dying in the desert anymore, but he was thirsty. He felt cool water on his face.
Danny opened his eyes and saw Lek, pretty and smiling. She was mopping his face with a cool wet towel. It was dark outside.
“Hello Danny. You have been asleep two days, but you are better now. You fall down, so I bring my friend here to take care.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten o’clock.”
Danny looked down his body and saw that his chest and leg were strapped.
“Your vet friend fixed me?”
“Yes. He have to sow your skin and wrap you. He also have to get blood from hospital and morphine. I pay him with money from your wallet. I also have to buy new clothes for me, because I look silly in traditional dress all the time. I buy you new clothes same same. I buy food and water. I keep giving you tom yam (soup) and water. You not have much money left now in wallet, but I not steal. I just spend. OK?”
“OK.”
“I was going to go home, but I wait for you to wake up. I not want to leave you on your own.”
“Has anybody been looking for me?”
“No. Nobody know where we are. I have to go my home in Bangkok. I cannot stay here. Do you want to come with me?”
“I need to get to Pattaya.”
“No problem. I can take you. I have sister in Pattaya.”
“How long will it take us to get there?”
“Maybe 12 hour drive. You can sleep in car. Feel better tomorrow.”
“I think I have had enough sleep.”
Danny got up off the floor. He was stiff and his body ached but everything eased as he moved. He drank some water and dressed with the help of Lek. They packed what they wanted into the BMW. Danny put the machine gun in the boot of the car.
“I need another gun. The machine gun is a bit too obvious.”
“Look in glove compartment. I think have.”
Danny looked and, sure enough, there was a loaded handgun.
“All Wong’s cars have gun in glove compartment, in case of emergency.”
The air conditioning in the car felt good to Danny. The seats were comfortable and the ride was smooth. He drifted in and out of pleasant sleep as Lek drove south through the night to Pattaya.
Chapter 52: Back to Pattaya/Jack Morgan
Lek drove through the night. She stopped twice for coffee and to eat, leaving Danny asleep in the car. At 6:30am it got light and four hours later they were entering Pattaya. Danny awoke as they were stopped by traffic lights. He watched the red counter counting down the seconds until the lights would change. A hundred or more motorbikes surrounded their car as they all waited for the lights to change. Then the lights changed and, like a shoal of fish, the bikes all moved off.
“Good morning” said Lek. “We are in Pattaya now.”
“Morning. What time is it?”
“Now 10:30am. You want breakfast?”
“That would be grand. I’m starving.” Danny knew it was too early to find Jack Morgan at Charlie Brown’s bar.
Danny was surprised when Lek pulled onto the McDonalds car park but, as soon as she did, it was exactly what he wanted to eat. He limped heavily when he walked and his body still hurt when he moved, but he was feeling better. A Big Mac and fries, a large coke with no ice and two cigarettes later, Danny suddenly felt a lot better.
“Lek, I want to thank you for looking after me the way you did. You were grand.”
“No problem. You are a good man. Thank you for rescue me.”
“Where are you going to go now?”
“I have sister live here. I stay here for a little bit and see if I can get job. Then I go back to Bangkok see my family. Where you go now?”
“I have to go and see a man in a bar. Then I have to go to Surat Thani to make sure my friend Nok has got home OK. Then I have to go up to Udon Thani. I have somebody there who is waiting for me.”
“Ling?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“You speak about her all the times in your dream when you have fever.”
“Will you be able to take me to a bar called Charlie Brown’s? I don’t know the name of the road that it’s on, but I can direct you there.”
“Yes, can do. Will you be able to give me money for tuk-tuk to house sister me?”
“You have the BMW.”
“No cannot. It is not mine.”
“Yes it is. You can keep it. I give it to you. Wong isn’t going to need it.”
“Jing jing?” (Really?)
“Jesus, yes. Keep it. You deserve it.”
“Khob khun mak ka, Khun Danny.” (Thank you very much Mr. Danny)
“I just need the machine gun out of the boot, but I need something to carry it in.”
“No problem I can get a holdall from the market. Very cheap.”
Danny gave Lek 500 (£10) baht. He waited at the table while Lek walked to the market and returned 20 minutes later with a big Nike holdall.
“This genuine copy. Very good price. I get for you 200 baht.” Lek smiled and held out 300 baht change for Danny.
“Lek, you are a lovely lady. Keep it.”
Lek held the money between her fingers and wai’d to Danny.
Danny directed Lek to Charlie Brown’s Bar and got her to stop short of the bar. Danny tucked the hand gun into his belt and carried the machine gun in the Nike holdall over his shou
lder. Lek smiled and waved and drove away in her new BMW. Danny limped along the road towards the bar. He could see Jack Morgan busy counting money and stocking up the till. He had his back to Danny.
The till drawer was slammed shut with the full force of a man’s weight behind it, trapping his fingers. Jack Morgan screamed out in pain. He felt a powerful hand grab the back of his neck and, with a swiftness that he had no power to resist, his face was pushed forward and smashed into the top of the till. The pain shot through his body like an electric shock to his brain. His body was going into shock and he did not know that he was still screaming. He was pulled back up and turned around and then a hand lifted him by the throat and pushed him backwards along the bar, slamming him into the wall before he slid down onto a bar stool. His mind stopped spinning and he started to make sense of what was happening. The Irish man, Danny O’Brien was standing in front of him and he was snarling something. He was smacked hard around the face and it focused his mind.
“Jesus! Will you shut the feck up. You’re screaming like a girl” shouted Danny.
“What the hell do you think you are doing? You‘ve broken my fucking fingers.”
“Do you remember me?”
“You have broken my fucking nose.”
Danny pulled the gun from his waistband and shoved the barrel into Jack Morgan’s groin.
“You’re not listening to me.”
“Oh my God! Don’t shoot me. I’m listening. I’m listening. Please don’t hurt me anymore.”
“Do you remember me?”
“Yes, I remember you. Danny O’Brien.”
“Good. And what’s your name?”
“Charlie Brown.”
Danny grabbed Morgan’s broken fingers, squeezed and twisted them. Morgan screamed again.
“Don’t treat me like a feckin eejit. I already know you are Jack Morgan. If you don’t want me to hurt you, then don’t tell me any more lies. I haven’t got time to feck around with a little shite like you. My friend is missing and I want to find her. I already know nearly everything, but you are going to tell me the bits that I don’t know. Since I last saw you, people have tried to blow me up. I have been shot at. I have been framed for a murder I didn’t commit. A big Chinaman called Wong tried to carve me up like a Sunday roast. My friend Nok is missing and I want to find her. I will fecking kill you if I have too. Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Do you remember me?”
“Yes. Danny O’Brien.”
“That’s good. Now what’s your name?”
“Jack Morgan.”
“So you knew that people wanted you dead and you got them to believe that Charlie Brown was you?”
“Yes.”
“Why Charlie Brown?”
“Because he was easy. He was a nice guy. Too nice.”
“And you knew him from when he was a policeman in Birmingham?”
“Yes. He arrested me a few times, but he was always a nice guy. He cared about the people he arrested. He tried to put them back on the straight and narrow. He even got me a job in a garage once, but they sacked me for stealing. Charlie gave the garage the money to replace what I had stolen out of his own pocket.”
“So, why have him killed?”
“It was him or me. I was scared. I bumped into Charlie by accident a few months ago. We were on the same flight into Bangkok and we just got chatting. He was happy to see me doing so well in life. I told him about the bar I had bought in Patong. I told him that Captain Morgan’s Bar was doing great business, but it wasn’t. I was losing a lot of money, I was going under. He told me that he had this bar and that he was doing really well too, but he really was. We swapped phone numbers and arranged to visit each other’s bar.”
“But all the time you were already planning to have him killed in your place?”
“No. No, it wasn’t like that. I didn’t plan to have him killed. Well, not then anyway. I just thought that he was still a soft touch and I thought that I would be able to get some money out of him.”
“So what happened?”
“Maybe he had wised up in his old age, but he wouldn’t give me any. I had been to his bar and he was doing good business. He had been to my bar and he had seen that I wasn’t doing anything, so maybe he just didn’t want to invest in a bad business. But I wasn’t planning to kill him. That all came about by chance and it was my only chance to stay alive.”
“Tell me about it.”
“My bar was going down the pan. I tried to sell it but couldn’t.”
“You sold it to Fon.”
“Fon. I have never heard of Fon. I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“You tried to sell your bar?”
“I put the word around and put a For Sale sign up, but nobody even asked about it.”
“So you didn’t sell the bar?”
“No I didn’t. I just left it one day and I haven’t been back since. It’s not safe.”
“So you just left the bar and went. If you don’t explain to me quickly, I’m going to get pissed off with you and you are going to lose a testicle”
“I’m telling the truth. I was losing money hand over fist. Then, one day, an old guy came into the bar, sat at the end and started drinking. It was the start of everything. He was a nice old guy. His name was Norman Walker. I can tell you his date of birth, his address and everything.”
“You got to know him well?”
“Yes, after he died.”
“How did he die?”
“He died that day in my bar. I didn’t do anything. He just died. He came in and sat at the bar and he was just so sad. He was drinking and telling me his life story. He was 70 years old, he had four kids and all of them had died before they reached the age of 25. I mean, blimey! How tragic is that? He was telling me that he and his wife, Mary, had never got over it. They had no grandkids, no other family. Just each other. He told me that they had booked this holiday to Phuket, a bit of a holiday of a lifetime. But then Mary died a month before they were due to fly out. He came out on his own, but he was a broken hearted man. He was walking and talking, but he was already dead inside. I have never seen anyone so sad before. He carried on drinking and talking and I listened. He told me that the only thing he wanted to do was to die and be back with Mary and his kids. And then he just did.”
“What! He feckin died?”
“Yes. Right there at the bar in front of my very eyes. He just closed his eyes and put his head down on the bar and he was dead. I checked his pulse. Nothing. I left him there for over an hour and checked again. He was dead alright.”
“So, what did you do?”
“I searched him and took his wallet. He was fucking loaded, cash and cards. He wasn’t going to need it anymore and he had already told me he had no family. I had just listened to his whole life story before he died. I figured he owed me something, so I took it and I left. There was more money in his wallet than I had in my bank. There was a list of PIN numbers and he had cards. I walked out of the bar and took a bus to Bangkok. I decided that I was going to disappear and start a new life as Norman Walker.”
“Jesus! You left a dead man sitting at your bar?”
“I already owed some money to people and had no way of paying it back. I couldn’t get any money out of Charlie Brown and now I was standing there with my future contained in a dead man’s wallet. So yes, I left him there and went to Bangkok.”
“So why did you set Charlie Brown up to be fed to the crocodiles?”
“Blimey! They fed him to crocodiles?”
“You didn’t know?”
“No. I knew they would kill him but, like I say, it was either him or me, and I wasn’t going to let it be me………fucking hell! Crocodiles!” Jack shuddered at the thought.
“So, why did you know they would kill him, and who are ‘They’?”
“It all started in Bangkok. Can I have some water?”
Chapter 53: It started in Bangkok
Danny tucked the gun back into his waistband. He went to the fridge behind the bar counter and tossed a bottle of water to Jack Morgan. Jack tried to catch it, but his broken fingers did not work and the bottle hit his hands causing him to cry out in pain. The bottle dropped to the floor.
Danny took another one from the fridge and opened it. He dropped a straw into the top and wedged it between Jacks forearm and chest, so he could suck through the straw.
“Thanks” said Jack.
Danny grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels from the shelf, poured himself a large glass and lit up a cigarette.
“OK, Jack Morgan. So tell me, what all started in Bangkok?”
“My life. I was suddenly living the dream. Thanks to Norman Walker I had money and lots of it. I had adopted his identity. It was easy. I had his passport, his bank cards and everything. I was having a wild time and spending lots of money on lots of girls. My life had never been so good.”
“So how did Charlie Brown come back into the equation?”
“I was in a posh club one night having a great time, as usual, and I got in with some local business men. I soon realised that they were gangsters. I gave them a load of bullshit about buying drugs and just generally bigging myself up.”
“Why?”
“Mr. O’Brien, I am a crook. A scam artist. I con money out of people. As far as I am concerned, if people are stupid enough to give me their money, then I am clever enough to take it. As far as I am concerned, it’s not a crime, I am teaching them a life lesson.”
“So what lesson did you teach Sak Wannadee?”
“Wow! You know his name. I’m impressed.”
“What happened at the club?”
The Kiss of the Dragon Page 23