by John Burdett
“Damn it, I’m going to get her number myself. If I had the right I’d bring her in for questioning. She’s the link for Christ’s sake. You must see that? The link between Bradley, Warren, the jade and the meth. Under the right pressure she could solve the case in five minutes and I could get the hell out of this place. Maybe nail Warren at the same time.”
She has the driver turn around. I wait in the car while she rushes up the escalator to Warren’s shop, close my eyes and meditate. When she returns a few minutes later her clothes are soaked in sweat and a great fury is working her jaw muscles. “The bitch closed the shop and did a runner. We’ve lost her again.”
“Really?”
She practices deep breathing for five minutes. In a controlled voice: “Don’t you have anything new to report? What about your long talk with Elijah last night? Didn’t anything useful come up?”
“Actually, yes, something crucial. William Bradley never mentioned Fatima to his brother. Elijah didn’t know about her until he called William’s mobile after the murder.”
“That’s crucial?” She rubs her jaw with that disbelieving look that Americans do so well when abroad. “Tell me where you want me to drop you off, because what I need right now is a big fix of crass Western culture. I’m gonna go back to the Hilton, order American food to be brought to my big, bland, air-conditioned room and watch CNN until I remember who I am. This is a magic-ravaged land, you know that? Coming here has made me appreciate whoever it was invented logic, because before logic I think the whole world was like this.”
“That’s true,” I agree. “Magic is preindustrial.”
I stand by the curbside and watch Jones’ car drive off to join the jam on Rama IV. I feel a little sorry for the FBI and her belief that there is anything logical about human existence. I suppose it must be the delusion of the West, a cultural defilement caused by all those machines they keep inventing. It’s like choosing the ringing tune on one’s mobile: a logical labyrinth with no meaningful outcome. Logic as distraction. Frankly, I can’t wait for that global power shift the abbot talked about. My mind returns to Fatima. That Khmer, though, he is a puzzle.
The truth about human life is that for most of the time there is nothing to do and therefore the wise man—or woman—cultivates the art of doing nothing. I return to my hovel to meditate. I have to confess to a certain amount of self-love arising from having solved the case (at least in outline), which I need to eradicate in order to progress further on the Path. There are still many loose ends, after all. The snakes and Warren continue to be enveloped in mystery. Likewise it is not apparent to me how I will find the opportunity to kill Warren. And what am I supposed to do about Fatima? I feel very near to understanding the snakes when the telephone bleeps. I have to control my irritation when I observe from the screen that it is the FBI.
“Ah, look, I want to apologize. I was way out of line. I did exactly what they tell us you should never do. I lost it and got arrogant. Guilty. I guess culture shock is more powerful than anyone realizes. I really felt like I was drowning. I’ve never felt like that before, like being in a place with no references. Where what you thought were references are illusions. Am I making sense here?”
“I think you’re making progress. That is a spiritual experience you are describing.” I do not add: Welcome to the world.
“You don’t have to patronize me just because I patronized you. I thought we could have lunch, talk about the case.”
I do not want to talk about the case. I feel a digression is called for. I say: “I have to go to Samutprakan crocodile farm tomorrow. If you like we can go in your car.”
At Bang Kwan that afternoon they told me Fritz had been badly beaten the day before and was in the hospital. They refused to let me see him until I threatened them with a prosecution for obstructing justice. In a ward largely dedicated to the malnourished and terminally ill—AIDS is still a big killer here—he is propped up on a pillow with bandages around his head; his left leg and right arm are in splints. I think that this time he will not recover, that his body was too weak to take such punishment, but as I approach I’m surprised to see him smiling and apparently in good spirits.
“What happened?”
“My pardon came through.”
“That’s great but I meant about the beating.”
“What do I care about that? Didn’t you hear me? My pardon is through. The King’s signed it already, it’s only a matter of days now.”
“I’m really pleased for you. What was it you wanted to see me about?”
He gestured as best he could to his leg and arm. “Can’t tell you. Sorry.”
“Don’t worry, I understand.”
He gestured to me to come closer. “Not because of the beating. The pardon. They said it could still be canceled. I hope you understand.”
I nod vigorously. I wouldn’t want to jeopardize his pardon, not for all the evidence in the world. I leave a pack of cannibalized Marlboro Reds on the table next to his bed.
35
I am lying on my futon waiting for Jones to arrive and listening to the radio on my Walkman. Pisit reports that all the newspapers are reporting that the Supreme Patriarch has approved and blessed two thousand new surnames created by senior monks. The names will be offered under a surname reservation service. Pisit’s guest is a spokesman for Buddhism who clearly expects joy and delight at the news. Pisit is in a skeptical mood and asks if it is appropriate to be living in a medieval theocracy in the twenty-first century when men dressed in robes from the third century B.C., who spend their time chanting in a language which has been dead for over two thousand years, are responsible for people’s names? The spokesman, a monk himself, asks—aghast—how anyone could possibly want a surname that has not been blessed? Pisit quickly gets rid of him and replaces him with a sociologist who explains that we are a superstitious people for whom anything as intimate as a name needs to possess magical powers. Pisit brightens and asks about Western names. “Usually they reflect the Western obsession with money, in that they are a statement about the work an ancestor did: Smith, Woodman, Baker, et cetera.”
“So it’s money with them, magic with us?”
Doubtfully: “You could say that, although it might be an oversimplification.”
Pisit gets rid of him in favor of a psychiatrist who is happy to discuss Pisit’s favorite topic. Why are Thai men risking their health and virility by having their penises enlarged with silicone and gel? The operation is extremely painful with side effects such as swelling and infection, and is illegal. The shrink explains that prior to the invasion of Western advertising it never occurred to Thai men to think much about size, quite rightly since the standard Thai male member is perfectly adapted to the standard Thai vagina, but with Western hard porn and cigarette adverts, there has been a serious loss of self-confidence. Ironically, the effect of this assault from the West has been to cause impotence, either because of the disastrous operation or through chronic self-doubt.
Pisit, laughing: “So on top of everything else, they’re castrating us?”
Laughing: “You could say that.”
On a whim, Pisit calls the monk back to ask what he thinks of all this, and Western culture in general. After his drubbing just now he is in a Zen-ish sort of mood, not to say downright sarcastic: “Actually, the West is a Culture of Emergency: twisters in Texas, earthquakes in California, windchill in Chicago, drought, flood, famine, epidemics, drugs, wars on everything—watch out for that meteor and how much longer does the sun really have? Of course, if you didn’t believe you could control everything, there wouldn’t be an emergency, would there?”
There is a knock on my door. The FBI has arrived.
In the back of the car again I try to explain why meditation can help in the art of detection. I’m not sure if I believe what I’m saying or not, I just happen to be in the mood to say it. I may have fallen prey to the irresistible temptation to wind her up. “To understand why someone suffers a violent death, it
can be helpful to investigate their past lives. These things do not happen by accident. There are no accidents, no coincidences.”
“Uh-huh?”
“For example, in olden days in America, were there many brothels?”
“In the Old West? Sure.”
I nod. “Bradley’s obsession with sex was surely a consequence of having traded in it.” I frown. “That doesn’t explain the snakes, though.”
“Okay, you want to play this game, it’s not so difficult. Maybe he ran a brothel that was built on a rattlesnake nest? Maybe he punished anyone who didn’t pay by putting rattlers in their beds?” She shakes her head. “Can’t believe I’m doing this.”
“You don’t understand. It’s not a question of plausible hypotheses. You have to follow a vibration back through time. Bradley had a very specific vibration, very strong. My problem is his karmic origins are not Asian.”
“How about Central America? Aztec, Inca, Mayan? They all had snake fetishes. They were unbelievably cruel, too.”
A vision immediately flashes before my mind: the snakes, the pit, the plumed priest, the rings on his fingers, the victim’s terror, the ziggurat. I beam at Jones, who turns away with her usual Can’t believe this guy expression of terminal exasperation. After a few minutes she turns back again, having mastered her frustration—not without effort, to judge from her expression. “Okay, give me an example unrelated to the case.”
“An example?”
“Yes, from your own life, a genuine past-life memory that can be corroborated for a button-down nuts-and-bolts type like me.” She sniffs the air. “Your obsession with perfume, for example, I bet you can trace that back a few hundred years. It’s sure got me beat, you can hardly afford to dress yourself but you wear this expensive cologne—or is it a Bangkok fake?”
“Of course it’s not a fake, fake perfume stinks after being on the skin for a couple of minutes. It’s just a perfectly ordinary Polo from Ralph Lauren.”
“Perfectly ordinary Polo from Ralph Lauren,” she mimics. “At about fifty bucks a bottle.” She stares at me, waiting for a story to ridicule.
Her attitude has made me curl up protectively around the memory: the old Pont au Change which connected the Île de la Cité with the Right Bank, four-story buildings loaded the bridge, slap in the middle sat a perfumer’s: a dark and musty workroom populated from floor to roof with chemist’s jars of tincture of musk, castor, neroli, jonquil, cinnamon, tuberose, ambergris, civet, sandalwood, bergamot, vetiver, patchouli, opopanax. Nong was there in the mountainous skirts of a mid-ranking courtesan, Truffaut in his startlingly white horsehair wig. Okay, it might be fantasy and autosuggestion, but how did I know there were buildings on the Pont au Change in the eighteenth century? There are none at all now and it took me days on the Web to corroborate. I’m a Thai cop, I didn’t know there ever were such things as bridges with shops on them.
I decide to tell Jones after all. She stares at me in silence, then shakes her head. “If only you weren’t so damn cute. How come you know all those names of ingredients? I’ve never heard of half of them.”
Farangs are full of surprises. It’s the erudition that impresses her, not the quality of the evidence.
The FBI did not need to ask why we were going to the crocodile farm. It was not often anyone used snakes as a murder weapon, and none of our usual forensic consultants was competent to analyze the blood of reptiles. Jones knew that the python and all the cobras that had not been sent to Quantico had been dispatched to the croc farm for examination by Dr. Bhasra Trakit. The croc farm is out of town, just off the main road to Pattaya. I have allowed four hours for the journey and it is a few minutes before 8 a.m. when we set off. The sun is just visible through the haze, like a rotten orange soggy at the edges. To avoid conversation I pretend to sleep in the car, while secretly meditating.
The driveway to the small administrative building does not disclose any crocodiles or other reptiles, and I think the FBI is hopeful about not having to see any at all. Dr. Trakit wears the white coat of a medical practitioner and could have been a physician except for the pet she is playing with on her desk. “I want you to meet Bill Gates,” she says with a smile in perfect English. Bill Gates looks small and cute enough, almost like a toy. He is about 20 percent mouth, with a crooked grin when the doctor gently squeezes his neck and strokes him. His underbelly is creamy white with a light gray-green coloring on the upper part of his body. Dr. Trakit smiles at Jones like a proud mother, and offers her Bill Gates. “Be careful with him.”
“How old is he?”
“Only three months. They’re so delicate, especially in captivity. Shall we?”
Trakit had looked tiny even behind her desk. Now that she stood, we see she is hardly more than five feet, and very slim. She puts Bill Gates in the pocket of her coat and leads the way down a corridor, out into the heat of the day.
Now we see them, immobile masses of sloping scales half submerged in swampy pools. Jones tenses. Back in the States, of course, every precaution would have been taken, but here in the Third World . . . Just my luck to be the only FBI special agent ever to be eaten alive by a crocodile while on a trip to a forensic lab. “Please walk softly,” the vet says. “They’re very sensitive. If we make too much noise, they panic, and when they panic they pile up on top of each other, especially the younger ones, and the crocs underneath suffocate. They suffer from depression too.”
Jones is almost walking on tiptoe. “Depression?” (As in manic?)
“Yes. And it’s much harder to tell when a croc’s depressed than a human or a dog. Crocs are motionless most of the time, whether they’re depressed or not. You can only tell when they stop eating. Here we are, this is the hospital.”
We enter a long low outhouse with the odor of tropical dampness and something else hard to define which includes nuances of rotting vegetation and putrefying flesh. “Excuse me one moment,” the doctor says. We stand and watch while the doctor goes to a fridge and takes out what looks like a slightly chilled chicken. We follow to a white door which the vet enters with a finger to her lips. On a long table in the center of the room a crocodile is strapped around its center and tail. The reptile is about eight feet long, its short legs held by chains which wrap around protective pads. The animal’s jaws are held open by stout rope and it seems to be asleep. Jones waits in the doorway. “Just one moment,” the doctor says. She goes to a chopping board at the other end of the room and chops up the chicken with a meat cleaver. She places some pieces of the chicken in the croc’s mouth with her tiny hand, moving them around on its tongue, until the tongue begins sluggishly to move. It must be due to a defilement of mine that I’m enjoying Jones so much: she is frozen in terminal horror.
“I want Samantha to get her appetite back. Look, her taste buds are waking up. She got depressed after we drained her pool by mistake. If the pools drain too quickly, they panic. It’s a reflex from the wild. Most crocs who die prematurely do so because their water holes have dried up, so they’re hardwired to panic at the first sign of drought. There, did you think we were going to let you die of exposure? Poor, poor thing. Now let’s see if she’s found something to live for.” Trakit undoes the rope, which passes through a pulley suspended from the ceiling, releasing Samantha’s upper jaw. Jones takes two steps back until she is standing in the corridor. Very very slowly, Samantha begins to munch on the chicken. “There,” Trakit says. “Everything comes down to food in the end.”
She leads us from the room down the corridor to a stainless steel cupboard with trays of different sizes. “Here they are,” the doctor says, pulling out one of the trays. Cobra corpses. Some of them have been neatly dissected, others are whole except for the bullet holes. “They all died of gunshot wounds, of course.” She glares at me. “And as I told you over the telephone, they had all been poisoned with methamphetamine—yaa baa.” She gives the FBI a look of the utmost sincerity. “Very few reptiles are naturally aggressive, except when hungry or protecting their young.
The whole of the animal and reptile kingdom has learned to fear us, they will never attack humans unless panicked, or in this case drugged.”
“What kind of yaa baa?” I ask, trying not to sound too knowledgeable. “Was it laced?”
“With fertilizer.” Trakit shudders. “I can’t think of anything more cruel.”
“No,” I agree.
“Of course, that only means that whoever did it bought the cheapest yaa baa on the black market. The problem is—how was it administered? How do you give a cobra a yaa baa fix? There are techniques for injecting snakes, of course. We usually inject through the anus.”
“A lot of work for the killer,” Jones says. She is standing a pace or so back from the cupboard, but the color has returned to her cheeks. These snakes are unequivocally dead, after all.
“Exactly. And anyway, it could not have been done that way. This is a problem for a detective, I’m afraid, one with which I simply cannot help. It is this: every snake contained a different quantity of the drug, a quantity which exactly corresponded to its body weight.”
“Powdered and put in food?”
“I thought of that, of course. But then you really do have a problem—the drug would have started to work very quickly on the smaller snakes—the perpetrator would have had a severe logistical problem of handling dozens of drug-crazed snakes. And even then, it doesn’t really explain how each snake contained exactly the right proportion of the drug for its body weight. If you sprinkle yaa baa powder over food, you don’t normally get an exact proportion for each piece of food consumed—not unless you are operating in laboratory conditions.” Trakit shrugged. “Anyway, that’s all I can tell you. A mystery, the most vicious I’ve ever come across.” She slides the drawer back, then opens another bigger one further down. This drawer is huge, very deep and runs on wheels with a rumble. The python is curled up in several elongated spirals, one third of its head missing. “He was a beauty, about ten years old, a reticulated python five meters twenty-one centimeters long.” A glance at Jones. “That’s just over seventeen feet. See the splotchy way he’s camouflaged? He’s native to most of Southeast Asia. Funnily enough, he lives in cities as often as the jungle. He loves riverbanks. They’re an endangered species, mostly because of the illegal skin trade with China, and also for food—the Chinese love them in soup. Feel the power that must have been in those muscles.” I heft the python’s iron tail and gesture to Jones, who leans forward from the hips and gives it a single tentative poke with an index finger. “Baffling, truly baffling. You have exactly the same phenomenon: precisely the appropriate amount of yaa baa found in his blood corresponding to body weight. Appropriate, that is to say, for the purpose of getting him aggressively stoned. I’ve never seen a reptile on amphetamine, and I hope I never shall. But it must have been quite a sight.”