Behind the Night Bazaar

by Angela Savage

  Ratratarn was on top of him. Komet could smell the smoke on his breath.

  ‘You little shithead!’ he spat. ‘Do you really think you can fuck with me?’

  The kick to his lower back was swift and accurate. Komet cried out as pain shot the length of his body, bile mixing with the blood in his mouth.

  ‘You have no fucking idea.’

  Another kick. This time to his stomach. Komet recoiled in agony, lying in the mud of his own vomit.

  ‘You with your self-righteous little rebellion. Striking a blow for the rural underdog, are we?’

  Ratratarn used his fist this time, delivering a punch to the side of Komet’s head ‘Don’t you go cold on me,’ he said. ‘I haven’t finished. Listen, you little fuck, you know firsthand what it’s like to live in a lost country. Politicians talk of Thailand as a nation. But we know better, don’t we?’

  Komet felt a boot to his shin, a blow designed as much to rouse him as to cause more pain.

  ‘We know there’s Bangkok, and then there’s everyone else. There’s no nation. Just a parasite of a capital, sucking the blood of the rest of us for its own survival.’

  Ratratarn grabbed Komet by the hair and twisted his battered head so they were eye to eye.

  ‘They’re killing us, Komet. Slowly, but surely. We’re being sacrificed. A once glorious country for the sake of one shithole of a city. Does that seem fair to you?’ He jerked Komet’s head around further. ‘Because it doesn’t seem fair to me.’

  He let go and Komet hit the dirt, gravel digging into his cheeks.

  ‘I’m not prepared to sit back and take it.’ The lieutenant colonel’s voice now sounded calm, almost reasonable. ‘It’s no use playing by the rules. They make rules in Bangkok for their own sake, not ours. We need to make our own rules, Komet, our own order. Don’t you see? We have to do it to survive.’

  Komet spat the blood and bile from his mouth and, with enormous effort, raised his head from the ground.

  ‘L-Lieutenant C-Colonel,’ he whispered hoarsely.

  ‘Yes, boy.’ Ratratarn crouched down and tilted his head.

  ‘Tell me,’ Komet said.

  His voice sounded far away, as if it were coming from the bottom of the canal.

  ‘How…does it help us to survive, letting f-foreigners pay money to fuck our children?’

  He closed his eyes, this time anticipating the blow. He thought of Arunee, of his unborn baby, of his father and, strangely, of Khun Di, the dead Canadian.

  And then came the sweet relief of darkness.

  Jayne strode to the Nawarat Bridge then down the steps to the promenade along the river. Though the path was lined with streetlamps, only a few worked, and she chose to sit in the shadows where she wouldn’t be seen. Mark had wanted her to stay but, pleading exhaustion, she’d left him at his hotel. Still smarting from his outburst at dinner, she didn’t feel like sleeping with him that night. She wasn’t sure she wanted to sleep with him ever again.

  She lit a cigarette. It was unlikely their relationship had a future, certainly not while Mark thought she was someone else. But coming clean at this point would be messy and required a level of risk she wasn’t prepared to take. She had to keep him on side. Her desire to see Didier exonerated depended on it. But Mark was jealous of Didier—she could tell—and she also had to placate him. When he’d barely glanced at her press release, she’d resorted to flattery and emotional blackmail. Jayne needed to ensure that in the aftermath of his big-time operation, her case against Kelly and the cops wouldn’t be forgotten.

  And it wasn’t only their relationship that made her uneasy. Jayne also had doubts about Mark’s management of the case. He insisted there was a straight line between the problem and its solution. Paedophilia was a crime and those who perpetrated it were criminals. Solution: arrest those responsible and put them on trial. In this, he had both the letter of the law and common sense behind him. What made Jayne sceptical was that Mark clung to this belief despite his experience in Cambodia.

  Didier would say such responses failed to take into account the complexity of the problem. ‘They’re missing the point,’ he’d told her when they’d talked about the Sullivan case. ‘For every paedophile put behind bars, there’s at least one other to take his place. For every child rescued from a brothel, the ratio is much higher. In the poorer areas, there’ll be five, maybe ten others. And those in power will keep turning a blind eye, because they benefit the most from maintaining the status quo. It’s not about individuals. It’s about the whole, rotten system.’

  ‘So what’s the solution?’

  Didier shrugged. ‘We must find a way to eradicate poverty.’

  ‘Oh, great!’ she had snorted. ‘It’s good to see you setting realistic goals.’

  ‘But it’s true, mon amie,’ he said with a sad smile. ‘The arrest of one Australian paedophile might keep people in your country happy, make them feel good because their government looks like it’s doing something. But it won’t change anything.’

  ‘Surely it’s better to do something rather than nothing?’

  Didier looked so disappointed she regretted her words.

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’m not realistic. But for me…well, it’s like wearing glasses. I can take them off—’ he removed his spectacles and waved them in the air ‘—but I can never look at the world again without knowing what I see is out of focus.’

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Meaning I cannot support doing something when I know it will not work.’

  In that, along with everything else, Didier set his sights on the biggest possible picture. The path he plotted between the problem and its solution was as circuitous as Mark’s was direct. Caught between the two, Jayne saw merit in both but was satisfied by neither.

  This dissatisfaction was symptomatic of her life. She’d believed Didier would have been her ideal partner if only he was straight. Yet when he’d started making love to her— removing what she’d thought of as the only obstacle to her happiness—he called her bluff. What made a credible fantasy didn’t work at all in reality. By contrast, Mark turned her on—her body couldn’t get enough of him—but he failed to engage her in other ways. He didn’t read, he baulked in the face of an argument and, although he’d deny it, he was homophobic.

  Jayne stared at the neons of nearby buildings reflected in reverse on the water. She’d have to keep playing along, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  The sound of voices caused her to look back towards the bridge. A group of children clustered around a working streetlamp, using tiny lassoes on the end of bamboo poles to trap the insects that swarmed to the light. The same light illuminated an elderly woman, her silver headdress and indigo leggings identifying her as Akha. She paused, mid-shuffle, to spit a scarlet jet of betel nut juice into the brown river. It was a difference so subtle you could miss it: in Australia, you didn’t see the very young and very old on the streets this late at night.

  In search of other subtleties she might have overlooked, Jayne went back over events from last Friday. One thing for certain was that Didier had identified Kelly. Did this mean he’d had a change of heart—decided there was value to pursuing individual offenders after all? Or did it mean something else entirely?

  She checked the time. It occurred to her to pass by the Kitten Club—on her way home, more or less—to reassure herself that it was business as usual. She stood up, brushing the grass from her jeans as she walked back to the road. Checking on the club gave her something to do. And anything was better than sitting around, mulling over questions that had no answers.

  Among the strip of bars behind the Royal Princess Hotel, she guessed she’d find a tuk-tuk driver willing to take her to Loh Kroh. Within fifteen minutes she was back at her surveillance post in the abandoned police box. She set up her camera out of habit and, checking her watch, decided to give herself an hour—until midnight—to scope out the place.

  She could hear music playing inside the club
whenever the door opened, but there was none of the rowdiness of earlier in the week, nothing that might bring Kelly to the door.

  After almost three-quarters of an hour, feeling tired, Jayne was about to pack it in when a motorbike pulled up, driven by a uniformed police officer. For a moment she thought it was Komet. But as the man dismounted, facing her as he adjusted his belt, she saw with alarm that it was Sergeant Pornsak.

  Finger hovering over the camera, she released the shutter. In the stillness, the click was unusually loud. Pornsak looked up and, frowning, began walking across the road in her direction.

  Jayne froze, aware that she was totally defenceless. She didn’t even have the protection of her Christian charity worker disguise. She pressed herself into the darkest corner of the booth, kicking instinctively as something brushed her foot. When she saw what it was, she had to bite her hand to stop herself from crying out. Landing with a thud near the entrance to the sentry box was a large, ginger-coloured rat.

  It quickly recovered from the fall and paused to sniff the air. Jayne broke into a cold sweat, aware from the sound of footsteps that Pornsak was getting closer. Both cop and rat seemed poised to pounce and she couldn’t decide which would be worse. But then the creature pivoted in a half-circle and scuttled out into the street.

  The footsteps came to a halt. Slowly turning her head so she could see through the slats, Jayne’s gaze fell on Pornsak’s gunbelt. He was so close that he’d see her if he peered over the edge of the police booth. Holding her breath, she heard him snigger and watched him turn and retrace his steps.

  She exhaled and reached for her camera, trembling so much she released the shutter again. But Pornsak had already made it to the Kitten Club, and the noise was drowned out by music as he opened the door and disappeared inside.

  Almost dizzy with relief, Jayne shoved the camera in her backpack. With only a cursory glance to make sure the coast was clear, she leapt out of her hiding place and sprinted several blocks before stopping to catch her breath. Waving down a passing tuk-tuk with a 100 baht note, she mumbled directions to her hotel, still shaking as the driver took off.

  Jayne might have missed the story altogether, had she not checked the forecast to see when the storm might break. The report was tucked away on page 14 of the midday edition of the Chiang Mai Daily. Both the placement and brevity of the article spoke volumes where its content did not: Ratratarn had found out Komet was working to undermine him and, with Pornsak’s help, got him out of the way.

  Jayne had been right to worry about the young man’s safety. But that was no consolation. Perhaps if she’d told Mark, he might have been able to offer Komet some form of protection. But it was immaterial. Komet was dead. Ratratarn had sent a message, loud and clear. If you fuck with the Chiang Mai police, you die.

  Jayne stared out from the cafe across the garden to the sky. The clouds hung low as if threatening to smother the city. She was seized by an urge to jump on the first available flight out of Chiang Mai, to get away from all that had happened in the past week. She rubbed the scar on her arm and remembered the blood and the pain, fearful that something like that could happen again. Or worse.

  The thought gnawed at her that if Didier had let her in on his investigation into Doug Kelly, she might have been able to save him, shown him how to cover his tracks. Or would she have tried to talk him out of it, told him to walk away as she was now poised to do?

  Jayne couldn’t let him down. The sky above remained the same, grey and menacing. But it was as if a cloud had lifted in her mind. She saw with perfect clarity what she had to do and, despite the implications, she felt calm at the prospect.

  She returned to her room and clipped the column on Komet’s death from the paper. She then glued the article inside the back cover of her report and added her own note on the event. Satisfied all was in order, she wound off the film in her camera and slipped the canister into her purse.

  On her way out, she left a message at Mark’s hotel to say she’d call him later. After dropping off the film for processing, she made her way to the post office to make a long overdue call to Max in Bangkok.

  ‘Jayne?’ he gasped. ‘Oh, thank God. Where are you? No, don’t tell me—you’re still in Chiang Mai.’

  ‘Don’t be cross with me, Max.’ He sounded far away beneath the static. ‘I’m OK. Really. I’ve teamed up with a cop from the AFP, teamed up in more ways than one, and—’

  As soon as she spoke, she regretted it. She should have left her relationship with Mark out of it. Max, though, seemed to have missed the innuendo.

  ‘What are you talking about? David had some crazy story about you taking a document of his by mistake and both of us tried to track you down at the Silver Star.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ she said lightly. ‘I’d better go back and settle my account.’

  ‘It’s taken care of,’ Max said impatiently. ‘Why didn’t you leave me a forwarding address?’

  ‘Look, I haven’t got much time,’ she said. ‘I’ll explain it all later, I promise. What you need to know is that I’ve solved the case.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nou’s murder, and Didier’s,’ she said. ‘I’ve got proof, Max. A whole wad of evidence to show how the Chiang Mai cops conspired with an Australian, Doug Kelly, to kill Nou and frame Didier. They were trying to discredit him because he was going to expose a child sex racket that Kelly operates with police protection.’

  There was a moment of what Jayne took to be stunned silence on the end of the line.

  ‘God, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,’ Max said finally. ‘I mean, it sounds absurd, but that’s precisely the sort of thing Didier would stumble into. So he’s innocent!’

  ‘I’m glad we see eye to eye on that at last.’ She sensed him squirm.

  ‘Of course I’m relieved,’ he said quickly, ‘but it’s almost too much to take in. I mean, where does this leave you?’

  ‘I’m going to send you a parcel with all the details,’ she said. ‘Mark—that’s the AFP officer—is poised to arrest Kelly tomorrow morning. He wants to bring the cops down, too, by leaking the story to the press, including the stuff about Didier.’

  ‘Going after the Thai police doesn’t sound like the sort of thing the AFP would condone.’

  Max’s comment confirmed her suspicions.

  ‘I don’t know much about the official side of things,’ she said. ‘Let’s just say I have my doubts. That’s why I want to send you this parcel, Max. You’re the only person I can trust.’

  ‘You might think flattery will get you everywhere, my dear,’ he said tersely, ‘but I don’t like the sound of this one bit. You promised to come back once you’d spoken with David.’

  She muttered a profanity about his Canadian counterpart that made Max laugh in spite of himself.

  ‘Look, I’m sending this parcel to you as one friend to another, but if anything should happen to me, I need you to promise you’ll pass it on to Gavan at the Bangkok Post. Will you do that?’

  Max made no effort to conceal his alarm. ‘What do you mean, if anything should happen to you?’ he cried. ‘For heaven’s sake, Jayne! You broke your promise to return to Bangkok and now you expect me to—’

  ‘I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.’ She kept her tone calm. ‘But I need you to promise. Do it for Didier.’

  Her words had the desired effect.

  ‘Is there nothing I can say to dissuade you from doing whatever it is you’re planning to do?’ he said feebly.

  ‘Frankly, no.’

  ‘Jayne, I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. Look, I’m running out of coins. I’m at the post office now and I’ll send this parcel express. You should get it tomorrow morning. Please don’t reveal the contents to anyone unless…I’ll call again tomorrow at midday, OK?’

  ‘Good luck, my dear,’ he cried as the warning beeps sounded.

  ‘Thanks—’ The line went dead.

  Ratratarn
frowned into the receiver and asked the secretary to repeat what she’d just said. He’d heard correctly. A farang woman by the name of Jayne Keeney was waiting to see him. Hanging up the phone, Ratratarn reached for his pistol and placed it on the desk behind a pile of papers. Then he sat back and waited for her to enter.

  Her hair colour no longer matched their official description. She wasn’t tall for a farang and apart from her green eyes, there was nothing striking in her appearance. She looked ordinary, able to pass for a tourist in the street. Ratratarn supposed that was how she’d succeeded in evading them.

  She paused inside the doorway. Folding his arms, he waited for her to speak. After a lengthy silence, he cleared his throat.

  ‘Please, Khun—Jayne, wasn’t it?’

  She bowed her head.

  ‘Please close the door behind you and take a seat.’ He gestured to a chair in front of his desk and forced a smile as she took her place. ‘You wanted to see me?’

  ‘Kor thort ka, Sir,’ she said, ‘I thought you wanted to see me.’

  Ratratarn eyed her sharply. Her Thai was near perfect. She used the courteous form of address, referring to herself as ‘little sister’, and kept her eyes downcast as she spoke. He couldn’t tell whether she was nervous or impertinent.

  ‘It’s true we wanted to interview you,’ he said, ‘a routine matter. We were gathering background information on the Canadian who murdered Khun Sanga Siamprakorn last weekend. But the investigation is now closed. I’m afraid your visit was unnecessary. I apologise for any inconvenience.’

  ‘It’s no inconvenience, Sir,’ she said.

  ‘Well, then…’ Ratratarn waved his hand, giving her an excuse to leave. She remained in her seat.

  ‘Is there something you wanted to tell me?’ he said.

  ‘Well, yes, Sir,’ she said. ‘I wanted to tell you a story.’

  Ratratarn snorted, sat back and lit a Krung Thep.

  ‘May I join you?’ The woman held up a packet of her own.

  He pushed his ashtray, half-filled with butts, across the table. Jayne lit a cigarette and, still averting her gaze, began to speak.