by John Burdett
“Yes,” I confess.
“You do know that when he is in Krung Thep officially he stays at the Oriental in the Somerset Maugham Suite with all its charming nostalgia and river view, and that when he is not here officially he stays somewhere quite different?”
“I did guess he might have two different preferences, as far as official and unofficial business is concerned.”
“Then you did guess that in return for generous donations to the Police Widows and Orphans Fund by the great Khun, quite a lot of effort is expended by your superiors to help the Khun keep his little unofficial pleasures from the notice of the media?”
“It probably crossed my mind.”
“And did it further cross your mind that any interview of the Khun by you would have to be witnessed by those qualified to deny anything incriminating he might say, in the unlikely event he says anything of importance to you at all?”
“No, I never thought of that because I never thought you’d let me talk to him.”
The Colonel grunts. “Didn’t you? Not even after you mentioned to your friends at the American embassy that you had made an official request to interview Warren which you expected to be turned down.”
“Damn.”
“Thus precipitating one of those reverse domino effects, you know the kind that makes all the pieces stand up again just when we all thought they were finally knocked flat and lying in peace?”
“There’s been trouble before?”
“The Khun’s a dangerous asshole. There’s a whole section of our noble force assigned to making sure he doesn’t go too far when he’s over here. He’s one of those farangs who think our country is a playpen for rich Western psychos who’ve been unfairly repressed by their First World cultures and need to reexperience humanity’s primordial roots out here in the exotic Orient. How would there not have been trouble before?”
“What sort of trouble?”
“None of your business.”
“I’m an investigating officer—”
“You’re an investigating dickhead who will get your death wish granted while the rest of us have to clean up with our hands in the shit. You’re worse than my brother. Have you any idea what a pain it is to have a fucking saint for a brother?” He turns away from me to look out a side window. “Anything went wrong was always my fault. It’s going to be the same with you, I can see it coming. The media will get hold of it after your spectacularly violent death, they’ll build a shrine to you, you’ll be the first Thai cop ever to be martyrized for his love of truth, justice and the rule of law and I’ll spend the rest of my life telling people what an honor it was to have you on the force and how difficult it is for a poor fallen wretch like me to live up to the high standard you set. Don’t you think I get enough of that with having an abbot for a brother?”
“Was it whores?”
“Was what whores?”
“The trouble. He hurt one? It must have been pretty bad for anyone to even notice.”
A sigh. “It was bad, okay?”
“Even so, must have been a foreign whore,” I muse. “Even if he killed a Thai girl, there wouldn’t have been the kind of heat you’re talking about.”
“No comment, and what the fuck’s it got to do with Bradley? Warren didn’t kill Bradley.”
“I know. But that doesn’t mean Warren’s not the culprit, karmically speaking.”
As we turn into Asok, a shake of the head: “Just like my fucking brother.”
The traffic coagulates halfway down Asok. I’m pretty sure I know where we’re going now, and of course the Colonel knows I know. He glances up to look at me in the rearview mirror. “Just out of interest, what were you doing at that hospital?”
“None of your business.”
“Did Warren ever use it?”
“Not that I know of.”
He shifts his eyes from the mirror. “Why do I not like that answer?”
38
Just as I suspected, we are heading for the Rachada Strip. Think Las Vegas with a different vice at its center. Think also neo-Oriental wedding cake architecture of blinding vulgarity. Think about wearing sunglasses after dark. In daylight the neon competes with the sun and most of the signs include the word MASSAGE. We slink into the forecourt of the Emerald Hotel where each of the Lexus’s four doors is opened simultaneously by lackeys who have been trained to do that for little Japanese guys with towering bank accounts, for this is not normally a Western haunt at all. But then, I have begun to wonder if Sylvester Warren is really a Western man.
I watch and wait with my two minders while the Colonel crosses the vast lobby to speak to one of about twelve receptionists, who wais to him. Even over the distance one can sense the reverence when Warren’s name is mentioned. A jerk of the Colonel’s head brings us across the floor to the bank of lifts. We choose the one which reaches the penthouse suite, and when the LED flashes 33, we step out into another lobby. A young woman in a blue and gold silk sarong wais to us and leads us into a room the size of a school hall with floor-to-ceiling windows, five-seater sofas, an undergrowth of orchids in cut-glass vases and a tall slim man standing in profile to us with his hands thrust into a twenties-style padded smoking jacket. We lost the minders at the ground floor so it’s just the Colonel and I who wai to the Khun, who to my surprise wais elegantly back, with the proper moment of mindfulness. Under the rules a man of his exalted status is not supposed to wai to minions like us at all, but the gesture has a charm which is not lost on the Colonel. For all his cursing in the car, Colonel Vikorn is all smiles and deference before this unique source of wealth and power.
“Welcome to Shangri-la,” Warren says with a generous smile which contains many things, self-mockery being one of them. I feel my spirits sink at such impenetrable subtlety. His perfect poise also is intimidating, and seems to go with his perfect tan, the filigree gold chain on his left wrist which I remember from the presidential photographs, the nuance of an expensive cologne—and those implacable gray-blue eyes which seem to acknowledge that all affectation is merely a means to an end, adornment a form of jungle camouflage. We are so enthralled by the Khun’s aura it takes both the Colonel and me more than a minute to realize there is someone else in the room. “You know Colonel Suvit of course, superintendent of District 15?”
I wai dutifully to the stocky man with shaved head in police colonel uniform while Colonel Vikorn, not entirely surprised, gives him a nod. Colonel Suvit’s presence here is deeply shocking to me, not least because it amounts to an insolent confirmation of my worst fears: I will never be permitted to progress beyond this moment, professionally, even personally. I will be the bird flying against the window until I fall from exhaustion and join all the other bird corpses lying on the floor. I feel more than a little dizzy.
“I asked Colonel Suvit to come because I understand his beat covers the spot where the late William Bradley was found. The Colonel and I have known each other many years so it’s also an opportunity to enjoy his company.” The sentence is a little flowery because he has spoken in Thai and we’re like that. At the same time I know that Warren has taken me in, absorbed the entirety of what I am, and relaxed. As he expected, I’m no threat at all. Now he looks me in the eye. “Unfortunately, my time here on this trip is very limited.” He pauses and seems genuinely to hesitate between a number of options. His eyes flicker across to Colonel Suvit, who remains inscrutable. I have no intuitive grasp of this American at all, even his vibrations are carefully, masterfully controlled, like those of one who lives behind a protective shield. “I wonder therefore if it would be in everyone’s interests if I spoke, and then if I’ve left anything out, Detective Jitpleecheep can ask anything he likes?”
“I’m sure you won’t leave anything out, Khun Warren, and the detective won’t want to ask a single thing.” Colonel Suvit does not trouble to look at me. He raises half an eyebrow at Vikorn instead, who leans his head to one side, dubiously. The hostility between these two men is my only source of comfort in
this palace of privilege.
“First, I must apologize to you, Detective, I really should have contacted you directly instead of putting you to the trouble of seeking me out.”
The biggest surprise here, after the apology, is that Warren has switched to English, neatly cutting out the two colonels, who are reduced to dumb observers. His accent is soft and almost British. While I’m trying to think of an elegant reply to his elegant opening, he carries elegantly on. “I heard about Bradley’s death probably not long after you found him. Let me be frank and admit I have many friends in your country, many of them in high positions, and, being Thai, they look after me. They knew that Bradley and I were friends of a kind, brought together by our quite irrational passion for jade.” He pauses to search my face before continuing. “As Hemingway said about big-game hunting, either you understand it or you don’t. To those who don’t, the jade craze must seem ridiculous in this modern world where silicon rules. To those who do, a friendship between a marine sergeant and a jeweler is not unthinkable; on the contrary. Hobbies bring people of different walks of life together—wine, horses, pigeons, falcons—gems. When people find a common passion they overlook social barriers. Not that a jeweler is necessarily an exalted personage. My trade obliges me to cultivate the truly exalted. Who will buy gems if not the rich? My friends and clients are the movers and shakers of this world, I myself am no more than a humble merchant.”
This last sentence, delivered without a trace of humility, but without irony either, marks the end of the beginning. He takes a cigarette holder out of a pocket of his smoking jacket and walks to one of the coffee tables where a packet of cigarettes awaits. Ignoring the colonels, he offers me one. I refuse, speechless. I think I am receiving the kind of special treatment a condemned man receives the night before his execution. He resumes whilst fitting the cigarette, waving it to make his points. The cigarette holder is jade.
“I’ll cut to the chase. The best nephrite and jadeite in the world come from an area in the Kachin Mountains in Burma and have for thousands of years. During every one of those thousands of years, the political situation in Burma has been volatile, the human cost of mining the jade appalling, the greed of the Chinese middlemen—they have always been Chinese—outrageous. This is no less the case today than it was in the warring states period. At the present time a corrupt and probably insane military junta, desperate for hard currency, sells the jade in parallel with opium and methedrine. The miners are encouraged to shoot up on heroin to help them endure the disgusting conditions, and there is a high incidence of HIV, often developing into full-blown AIDS. The mortality rate amongst the miners is extremely high, which suits the junta, who don’t want the miners returning to Rangoon to gossip. Word has got out, however, and a few Western journalists have published accounts of the situation, along with the usual sort of photographs showing destitute Third World people dying in conditions of extreme squalor. Everyone has their own views about political correctness. Is it a sign of a new high-mindedness in humanity, or has it produced a society of blamers, second-guessers and tiny-minded, self-righteous bigots? You can guess where my own answer lies. In any event, as a merchant whose customers need to be seen to adhere to the highest public morality, I have to be careful. I cannot afford for it to be obvious where my jade is coming from. In a nutshell, I have not been able to visit Rangoon for nearly a decade.” He shrugs. “If I cannot be seen to sell new jade, I must sell old jade. Fortunately, there is some around. Not all the stone plundered from the Forbidden City was of the highest workmanship. One can take a piece and improve it, according to demand. One can also disguise the new jade by making it look like something that has been around a long time. By imitating a piece from the imperial collection, for example. There is no fraud involved. The customer knows very well what she is buying and is delighted to be able to dodge the pseudomorality of these strange times. If she doesn’t really like the design of the piece, she can always ask me to have it reworked by my craftsmen. We’re not talking about whales or baby seals, after all, jade is not about to become extinct. Nor is the Burmese government about to stop selling it, so if I don’t buy it while the price is really quite reasonable, my Chinese competitors certainly will. As I say, there has never been a time when a person of delicate conscience could purchase jade from Burma. I can’t afford to have a delicate conscience. I made a decision early in my career that I wasn’t going to try to compete with people like De Beers, Boucheron, the whole Vendôme clique. My bag was going to be East Asia and I have spent a lot of my time and money protecting my territory. The media might pretend to follow the rules of heaven, down on the ground nothing has changed since the turf wars between Neanderthals and Sapiens. The Sapiens won because we know how to fight dirty.”
He lights the cigarette and there is just the slightest shaking in his hand as he does so, a flaw probably imperceptible to a mind not sharpened by meditation and paranoia.
“A jeweler is a salesman, and all good salesmen are opportunists. When I came across Bradley’s web page, I saw an opportunity. When I looked him up over here, I saw that I had not been mistaken. The symbiosis was impressive. He had already made a trip to Laos, and up into the jungle near the Burmese border, where he had purchased some lumps of jadeite for experimental purposes. His experiment was a failure. It is simply not possible to become a buyer of jadeite overnight. It is the apprenticeship of a lifetime. On the other hand, he was in desperate straits financially. His somewhat luxurious lifestyle had left him in debt. I think I do not need to explain what that word can mean in this country. The Chiu Chow loan sharks to whom he owed hardly more than a pittance were getting restless. Naturally, I paid off his loan and undertook to pay the expenses for his web page. You could say I saved his life. Later on I personally loaned him enough to buy the teak house he was renting, at a very reasonable rate of interest. I also helped him furnish it with bits and pieces from my collection. I taught him a great deal about the jade trade and introduced him to close associates of mine, all of them Chinese, who have been doing business with me for three generations. They are on the ground in Burma, Laos and Cambodia and I never make a move without seeking their advice. Part of that advice includes the best way to anonymously bring the stone into Thailand. With the border problems between Thailand and Burma the advice has sometimes been to move the stone through Laos and Cambodia and into Thailand from the east. Through Khmer country. At other times we bring it in from the northwest, through Karen country.” A pause to inhale. “Bradley became my agent here, a secret agent if you like, who arranged for the stone to be deposited in one of my warehouses. He also arranged for some of the pieces from my own collection to be copied by local craftsmen. I then arranged for the finished articles to be offered to the more discerning and discreet of my customers. A good detective like you would have had no trouble tracing the lineage of the pieces, but I was confident it would have been beyond the resources of the average muckraking journalist.” A shrug. “Was I Bradley’s financial salvation? Not entirely or permanently. I got him out of a nasty hole and through me he supplemented his income while he was still a marine, but his services could never have earned him the kind of money he needed after retirement. Did I realize that the contacts I was providing him with could also be used for whatever illicit trade he might choose to invest in? I would have been a fool not to see that from the start. My only stipulation was that my stone should never travel in the same shipment as his own imports. A stipulation which, I fear, was not always honored.” A smile. “Not that such a minor betrayal of trust would have induced me to have him killed.”
I have listened enthralled while he has destroyed my case piece by piece. It has been a brilliant speech, full of cryptic references to an unspoken indictment, like that of a lawyer who confesses to a traffic violation by way of blocking a murder charge. I understand now that it was Warren who insisted on seeing me against the advice of both colonels, who have remained silent and silently offended throughout the oration. With such
a thorough explanation of his conduct, I have lost the moral as well as the legal right to pursue any line of inquiry involving him; a far more effective way of neutralizing me than to have me silenced by force of authority. I have never before had the honor of meeting such an accomplished gangster who makes even my Colonel Vikorn look like an amateur. I switch to Thai to thank him for his time and beg him to forgive me if I have caused him any anxiety, which was unintended and I hope forgiven.
Relief from the two colonels when they hear this. A smile from Warren, who is nevertheless studying me for signs of insincerity. As the four of us make for the door, I see that he is not entirely convinced that I am entirely convinced. A pause while he seems to search for a way to dot the last i, then a shrug as we say goodbye.
Silence in the lift on the way down. Eventually, Vikorn says: “What did he say?” A question which turns Colonel Suvit’s eyes to rivets. I tell them. “So you’re satisfied? No more written requests to meet friends of our movers and shakers?”
“Satisfied,” I say. I do not have the heart to mention Fatima, or that her presence in Warren’s shop seems to make a mockery of everything Warren has said this morning, although I could not begin to explain why that should be so.
In the lobby I sense a reluctance on the part of the two colonels to let me go, an impression fortified by Vikorn’s two minders, who stroll over to join us and block me front and back.