‘You see what you can achieve with a little clarity?’
‘Can I go home now, to the prison?’
The Laotian held the razor to the kitten’s throat, as it peered into the light it mewed at its owner. ‘Yes. But just to make sure you keep off the junk I’m going to hold onto your little friend as an insurance policy.’
‘Please, no.’ He felt his fingertips for the first time in years, the humid air on his skin weighing him down. It was as if he’d been dragged from his druggy slumber into the nightmare of yesterday. He couldn’t go back into that prison hell without her. ‘If I remember some more will you let me take her?’ He implored,
‘That depends on the quality of your recollection. Do you know who you are?’
‘Prisoner 4234, sir.’
‘And your real name?’
He hadn’t spoken it in over a decade. It sounded unnatural as it came out of his mouth, ‘Lucan Maybury.’
‘Tell me about your trip to the jungle, Mr Maybury. Was it in the north or south of Laos?’
The fucker knows it was Laos, I never said that. He’s playing me, thought 4234. And I know him… I’m sure I do.
That voice, treacherous and calm, it wanted to be his friend. It wouldn’t hurt to give a little more away if they gave him the kitten back. ‘Jacques had an obligation to guard something, something special I think. He wouldn’t tell me you see.’ Said Maybury.
The Westerner lit another cigarette and motioned to the Lao to remove the razor from the kitten’s throat. Then he picked her up and withdrew her to the shadows. Maybury leant forward an inch in protest, ‘Please sir, that cat’s all I know.’
‘You’ve had no communication with his family since?’
‘Deschamps? No. He’s dead isn’t he?’
‘His son?’ said the stranger,
‘I know Jacques had a little boy, I guess…’ he tried to think back in time, figures on a calendar blurring past his eyelids, ‘He’d be about forty by now. His name is Alain.’
- 8 -
I woke to the sound of the cleaning lady rapping on my door with her broom handle,
‘Mistah, mistah you get up now, creen room!’ she chattered.
When I opened my eyes my sockets felt as if they’d been scored out. I’d barely slept an hour; by the time I’d limped back from the Police station it had gone 6.30a.m. Added to that some Germans had woken me banging about the corridor with their rucksacks as they set off for some faraway island. I know this because repeatedly I heard the same voice saying, ‘Yah come on, ve gat to get to Krabi tonight, Krabi tonight.’
I wouldn’t be going anywhere near turquoise water and powder-fine beaches. Nor would my friend. Strange how your life can turn in an evening; or had the events of last night been waiting for me all along before I even climbed on the Thai Airways Boeing? As they say in the fellowship, hand it over to the higher power.
I’d showered away the puke and gone straight to my room. The Police asked me to return in a few hours time. I needed some sleep, even just an hour’s worth, but it wasn’t happening. The fan was rattling on its axle as if it might spin off and I seemed to focus on every noise but the soothing hand of sleep. I kept thinking about how Skip’s murderer had planted the Luckies business card to lead the Police straight to me. I tried very hard to concentrate on this and blank out the butchery his body had suffered but all I could envision was the gaping red cavity of his chest, minus a heart.
A thousand thoughts were racing through my head, some of them so impossibly ridiculous I would have laughed at them had they been someone else’s. One was that this might blow into an international scandal. Then I figured Thaksin’s redshirts lighting the streets on fire were more newsworthy than a man from Devon being expertly filleted like a slab of meat. Whoever opened him up had done so before with other bodies. From midriff to pecs, a single fluid slice, then the ribs had been prized open.
‘You alive… mistah?’ said the maid.
‘Please, just fuck off.’ I said burying my head under the pillow.
My first morning in Bangkok in five years and I felt like a veteran of its dark side. Forget the pussy bars of Patpong, the scams; the stolen wallet from the whore under the bed while the other one pleasured you; the fake gems racket, the tuk-tuk driver who accidentally took you to the silk or gold shops where you were extorted… this was something stronger. What kind of animals preyed on these streets?
Khao San was busy with hawkers and shop assistants trying to persuade people to buy a bespoke suit. The video bars were filling up too; travellers who looked as if they hadn’t moved since last night, draped over sofas and scatter cushions too strung-out to focus. Despite the sunlight the shadows of last night remained with me. Yesterday my friend was alive, today he was gone. Cut and dry.
An hour to kill before going back to that interview room of Styrofoam cups and questions - I got myself something to eat at a street café. The sun was high above Banglamphu, I was in a sweat within minutes. How did these people ever get used to it, carrying loads on their backs, sitting in smoke-ridden traffic for half the day to go a few blocks? It made rush hour in London look like a provincial pile-up.
I was halfway through playing with a bowl of phad thai noodles when I realised I was crying and the travellers on the next table were talking about me. One of them, a thin hippie with a bald patch and ponytail, patted me on the arm. ‘You ok? Anysing ve can help you wis?’
‘Thank you,’ I tried to smile, left a hundred baht note on the table and stumbled out of the café. As I walked down the street a group of travellers pointed at me sheepishly and looked at the floor as I passed. Maybe it was my imagination, but I’m sure I could hear them whispering about the dead ‘farang’. I hated the word. You’ve got to do it - now or in a few hours… I told myself. I went to an internet café with a telephone exchange to face the music. It would still be pre-dawn in Devon and Richmond.
‘What do you mean he’s dead? No, that’s not possible.’ They all said in different turns. The first was Mum - I needed to speak to someone who wouldn’t immediately judge me. I felt like a boy who’s misplaced something he’s been entrusted with. ‘He was murdered…’
‘What?’ she implored. It was the middle of the night in London.
‘I feel as if it was my fault… I shouldn’t have let him go out on his own.’
‘But Al, how did it happen?’ She was crying herself, ‘Oh darling, what do you want me to do?’
‘They’ve got my passport, I don’t think I’m a suspect though.’
‘Of course you’re not, how could you be?’
The travellers in the telephone exchange were looking at me out of the corners of their eyes. Even the attendant had stopped talking to a customer who couldn’t operate her Skype headphones.
‘Alain, just tell me, what happened?’
I told her all I knew, tried to keep the tears back; not because I gave a shit about the other people in the room, I just didn’t want her to think I was cracking up, unable to help me on the other side of the world. I could hear her strangled sobs, she was trying to be calm but it wasn’t working.
‘When can you come home?’
‘I can’t leave yet… I have to go back to the Police Station… they’ve got my passport.’
‘Jesus, I hate that fucking continent! Right, I’m coming out, I’ll be with you, maybe as early as tomorrow night. Who shall I fly with, Al?’ she asked.
‘No, it’s okay. I’m coming home in a few days. I can sort this.’
In desperation she blurted. ‘You poor thing, first your Nana and now Skip.’ She paused and I could read the acrobatic leaps her mind was taking, clutching at straws. ‘Call Sammy Casbaron, he gave you his number, didn’t he? You’ve still got it?’
‘Yes, I think so.’ I wasn’t sure I did. First Nana, now Skip
. I shook away the possibility from my mind but I couldn’t disengage from the business card from Luckies left inside his body and the business card from Vientiane placed on the fire escape in Paris. Someone was leaving breadcrumbs to lead me to the next part of the trail. What if I just packed my bag and returned to England? That would throw a spanner in their plans wouldn’t it?
I focused on her voice. ‘I know he’s weird,’ she said, ‘but maybe you can stay with him until you get your passport back tomorrow? He was a friend of Dad’s wasn’t he?’ she said.
‘I love you Mum.’
When I called Skip’s parents his dad answered. The sound of him crying, a plate falling to the floor and him mumbling something like ‘my beautiful boy’ in the background as Skip’s stepmother took the phone, was too much. I felt as if I was on fire. I hung up and headed back to my box cell.
I braved the gauntlet of Khao San Rd an hour later, so tired I was ready for anything. Mum had called the British Embassy in Bangkok, a little middle-aged man with a cheap suit and sweep-over haircut was waiting for me in the Police station reception. He looked like an accidental spy in a Graham Greene novel. Hard to tell if he was sixty or fifty, for despite their suntans Westerners who live in the tropics always age before their time.
‘Alain, I’m Timothy Jeffries from the British Embassy. First of all let me say how very sorry we are about what’s happened, very sorry indeed. The Police have promised to co-operate with all their information so we can bring this matter to as swift a conclusion as possible.’
I tried to speak. ‘They’re too busy firing at the army. Skip’s dead, that’s your conclusion.’
‘Well yes, obviously it’s a bad time right now for the Police. Now, I’ve been on the phone to Mr Martin’s parents in Devon, obviously they’re very upset. I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you?’
‘He’s dead!’ I screamed.’ Smashing the wall with my fist.
‘Please, I know you’re upset, but calm down.’
A Thai in a short-sleeved shirt and rip-off Ray Ban Aviators started barking at me. Jeffries snapped at him in the same language and he disappeared back into the Police station cursing. My fist was throbbing.
We sat opposite one another in another sickly green room, Jeffries poured a glass of water for me and repeated his question. ‘You’re sure no-one gave any impression of hostility to you and Skip between you leaving the airport and,’ he coughed apologetically, ‘the crime itself?’
I groaned back at him. ‘I’ve already told you - we caught a cab, came to the Khao San Rd and went for a beer.’
Then I decided to come clean. ‘There was something fishy. We were approached in a bar by a Thai guy who wanted to take us to a sex bar, but we said no, we were too tired.’
‘That’s not unusual, Alain, they always prey on newcomers. Did you notice anything strange about them?’
I tried to remember the Silver Lotus, ‘No, I don’t think so. One of them had a tattoo though,’
He looked away despondently. ‘So does half of Bangkok, it’s part of their culture.’ I must have balled my fists for he looked at them then said as if to humour me, ‘What was it like this tattoo, anything distinctive?’
I described the two-headed snake on the man’s wrist. Jeffries nodded politely. As far as the Police were concerned, he said, it was probably a gang killing. They kept asking if Skip smoked drugs and maybe he’d gone out to score some gear and got in an altercation. That didn’t any make sense. ‘He was a surfer, very fit. He kicked weed years ago.’ I said, realising I was already using the past tense to describe him.
Jeffries said they needed to hang on to my passport for another day or so, that I should try and see some of the city to take my mind off it. We stood in the shade of the porch outside the Station. ‘I don’t think I’m interested in seeing Jim Thomson’s house, Mr Jeffries. With respect I want to know what they’re doing now? What leads have they found?’
He regarded his watch, ‘Give them a chance. Look, I’m ever so sorry but I have to go to a prison in another district now - an English man has been caught with a kilo of heroin. He’s probably going to get life.’
‘Then he probably deserves it. But what about Skip?’ I said, squinting into the sunlight, ‘How will he get home?’
Jeffries patted me on the shoulder with his clerk’s hand, ‘It’s all taken care of Alain. The body will fly out tomorrow. If you like you can go with him to the airport, but I’m afraid you won’t be able to leave yet. They want you to stick around.’
He gave me his card, swept the remnant strands of hair across his pink skull and walked into the blaze of the afternoon sun, leaving me stood numbly on the steps of the Police station. I looked at the impression I’d made in the powdery wall. I couldn’t care less about government troops at war with protesters, the dealer going to the firing squad or however they executed people here; if they were too busy to find out what happened to Skip I’d see for myself. You didn’t need to be a brain surgeon to realize all roads led back to the Silver Lotus.
When I got there it was shut, the blinds drawn. I kept rapping on the door till the woman I’d seen the night before, peeked through the bamboo Venetian blind. ‘Yes?’ she mouthed.
I continued banging on the door till she opened it and stuck her head out. ‘Sorry to bother you - can I come in?’ She looked less inviting in the sunlight, bags under her eyes, coal-black hair in disarray. ‘We shut now.’
I gave her ten pounds worth of Thai baht, which she eagerly took. ‘Can you tell me who the men at the bar were last night?’
‘Which men?’
‘-the men who told you to change the music? You know, two tough guys with t-shirts on and one with a suit?’
She tried to remember, evidently not very hard. ‘Oh. No, I never seen them before.’
I placed another note in her hand and held onto its tail, ‘But you remember them? Are you sure you’ve never seen them before?’ I made to take it away.
‘Maybe I seen them, I don’t know…’ she said with a sly smile. I wanted to shake her and tell her the reason I was giving her my grandmother’s money. I took out another crisp note, put it in her hand and closed her fist around it, ‘Do you remember now?’
She looked at me carefully and the smile vanished from her face, ‘You want to come in?’
People will do anything for twenty pounds. ‘No. Just tell me here.’
She looked left and right. ‘Chattuchack Market, weekend only. I see them there before. Animal section. Please, our secret, yes? I have a baby boy.’
‘Our secret,’ I said.
The thought of spending another night in my wooden hooch made me want to keep moving, but I had to stay in a place the Police could find me. The last thing I needed was to be a suspect, and right now they didn’t seem to have completely graduated from that possibility. But the idea of upgrading to more comfort while my best friend lay in the morgue seemed perverse.
Jeffries said Skip had been dragged into a disused ground floor shop a block away from Khao San – I probably walked right past him. Traces of heroin were found in his bloodstream during the autopsy performed that morning. But to what end? To knock him out so he made little protest as they removed his heart. I closed my eyes when I pictured the fear on his face… he probably called my name. Then another consideration entered my thick skull – whoever did this would be watching me right now. But I didn’t care any more. I just wanted to do something.
I looked through an out of date country guide in an internet shop, and all it kept raging on about was bloody ‘wats’, the Thai equivalent of the local house of worship. But then I found what I was looking for - Chattuchack Market, otherwise known as ‘weekend market’, on the other side of the city. For a change I was in the right place at the right time, it was Friday. I went to Luckies guesthouse to avoid the sun; if I could just get a little m
ore sleep I’d go to the market later. The monkey-faced girl on the desk caught my attention as I sloped in, the news about the city being on fire rattling away on an overhead TV. ‘Herro mistah, I worried about you… so sad for your friend, he nice man.’
‘Yes,’ I said, remembering how quickly she had avoided my gaze in the presence of the Policeman, ‘He was.’
Then I had an idea - or rather my mother’s idea re-represented itself - Sammy Casbaron. Maybe he was just the person I needed right now, for if the Police produced nothing perhaps Sammy could do better. He said he knew people – good - then maybe they could help me, whoever they were.
‘Bangkok not like this usually.’ She said breaking my thoughts.
‘Somehow I doubt that. Can I use your phone please?’
She pushed it over to me, and put her hands over her enlarged ears, ‘I no listen, I promise.’
I dialled the number on the business card - no response, just an answer machine, so I left a message. ‘Sammy, it’s Alain Deschamps… I’m in Bangkok and I’m in a lot of trouble.’ My eyes started welling. I felt her brown hand stroking my forearm, more like seduction than comfort. I smiled politely and removed my hand. ‘I’m staying at a Guest House called Luckies on Khao San Rd, please call me, here’s the number…’
I needed a friend, someone connected to me, not a little man from the Embassy. Desperately clutching at straws I decided to try one of the veterans in Dad’s notebook. I went upstairs and lay on my bed; outside in the corridor, people were arriving for their first or final night in Bangkok. Some of them would head down to Indonesia, others would thread upward to India and Nepal, Vietnam, Laos and China. Some were returning home. I was neither - I was starting and finishing my trip at the same time.
I felt ready to combat the humidity by the time I’d slept a few hours, shaved and taken my second cold shower. I’d wanted to find out the real story of my father, write some interesting articles and come back with the rough research notes for a second book. Instead Skip was dead I was going to have to go back to London with a sense of shame I would probably wear for the rest of my life. I felt as if I was walking around with a hex painted on my back. I called Skip’s parents again. They sounded very quiet, almost numb.
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