‘Mr Martin, Nick... You know I wish it was me and not him.’
‘I know… we just don’t understand why it happened. We’ve been watching the news, all the trouble with the riots in Bangkok.’ His voice became angry, ‘BBC News barely mentioned what happened to Skip.’
I didn’t know what to say, I couldn’t believe it was already on the news.
‘Alain, we spoke to the Embassy man, they told us our boy’s coming home tomorrow.’
‘I’d like to come with him but they’ve kept my passport. I have to stay here for questioning, but I’ll be back for the funeral.’
His voice changed, softened, ‘You musn’t blame yourself for what happened. I mean it. We don’t hold any grudges. Skip regarded you like a brother, you kept an eye on him in London and I’m always thankful for that - I worried about him up there. And at School, I know you looked out for him. We just don’t understand why, why he...’ he started to break down, ‘Why would anyone do that to our boy?’
I closed my eyes. When I opened them the face of the guy with the dreads and the dragon tattoos I’d seen the day before was pushed on the glass, glowering at me to hurry up so he could use the phone; all bicep and no tricep, a weight lifter.
‘I promise I’ll find out who did this to him,’ I said, ignoring him.
‘You take care of yourself out there and keep in touch.’ said Skip’s father before hanging up. I listened to the dial as it went dead, ignoring the traveller knocking on the glass. For a long time I held the phone as if it was a lifeline to Skip and his family, then I swiftly exited the booth and hit the traveller with a left hook to the right temple. He fell flat on the floor in my peripheral vision. I wanted to go back and vent the anger and fear that had become my new state of being, but instead I went to a shop, bought a local sim card for my phone and ten quid’s worth of credit. I was sorry, but not that sorry. Besides, I didn’t hit him hard.
Sitting beneath the fan in the lobby, I scrolled down the Moleskine notebook’s list of six names marked with Bangkok codes. It took a while to realize there was a new city code. After the fifth number came back with an obsolete drone, I was ready to give up. On the sixth I made a little progress. A woman answered, her accent clearly Oriental but she understood me well enough. ‘Hello, is Lucan Maybury there?’
‘This a joke?’ she said lazily.
‘No it’s not a joke, can I speak to him?’
‘Not live here, he not lived here long time.’
Of course, he was dead. Another fried lead, but I pressed on until I heard it from her. ‘Do you have a forwarding address or know of anyone who knew him?’
There was a pause. ‘You din know? Who is this?’ Her voice sharpened, the background music switched off abruptly,
‘My name’s Alain Deschamps.’
I heard her gasp, just a little but that’s what it sounded like; an intake of breath, a hand clutched over her mouth. ‘Scarecrow? But you died, I know… Lucan told me.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. Is Mr Maybury still alive?’
‘Who are you?’ she snapped suddenly, as if I was tormenting her,
Look, I think my father fought with Lucan Maybury in the Vietnam War and I want to get in touch with him. I need his help… I’m in trouble.’
‘You Scarecrow son?’
I didn’t know who the hell Scarecrow was, then it dawned on me it was probably some sort of codename, so I said, ‘Yes. I’m Scarecrow’s son, you know where Maybury is don’t you?’
‘Oh I know where Cockroach is - he in Bang Kwang, and that the place he die in.’
‘Bang Kwang, what is it?’
‘Bangkok Hilton. You go see him, tell him Lim sent you, and take him something… he like English poetry and Mars Bar.’ She hung up.
I’d heard of the Bangkok Hilton in those silly conversations you used to have when you were coming down off something after a club, your mind taking a turn for the worse – what ‘if’ conversations. You start talking about what it would be like to end up inside, safe in the knowledge you’re a middle-class kid and it’s not going to happen. Bangkok Hilton, we’d talked about it.
I went to a bar and pondered my first leads: Skip was possibly murdered by the men in the bar and I might find them in the Weekend market; my father’s old buddy, Lucan Maybury was now in jail, so he couldn’t help. I wasn’t exactly making progress, the role of sleuth didn’t fit well with me, but if I was going to be stuck in Bangkok like some low-security prisoner, then I might as well try the best I could. I’d visit Maybury, Cockroach, or whatever he was called and see what he had to say about my father. And with that decided, a self-loathing in my stomach, I took myself off to the nearest house of shadows.
After three cold beers and double whisky chasers things began to soften at the edges, and I was about ready to make a fool of myself. A Westerner appeared next to me at the bar and started mumbling about an article he’d read in the morning’s Bangkok Post, ‘Another kid has disappeared in Laos … vanished, just like that.’ he kept saying.
Neither myself, nor the barkeep was interested. ‘Look,’ he said showing me the second page of the newspaper again, the typeface beginning to blur, ‘Three kids gone now. One of them found half eaten in Luang Prabang province. It’s disgusting… I’ve got kids myself.’
‘Then I suggest you go and spend time with them instead of wasting your day in here.’
‘What?’ he said squaring up to me.
‘Leave me alone, please,’ I said evenly, my gaze dead ahead on my half-full glass. He weighed up the insult and possible outcome of challenging it, then sloped away like a bit player in a movie.
I was semi-loaded by the time I caught a tuk-tuk at the North Bus terminal heading for the Weekend market. I felt disgusted with myself for not being more organized before I left; wherever I went on assignment I always checked out where the local AA meeting would be - that way I often felt okay without it. I wanted to call my sponsor but it was too late, the deed was done. And besides, it was the middle of the day back home and my sponsor worked nights and slept days.
The roads were clogged with commuters in Japanese cars, on mopeds and buses. Most of them were wearing anti-pollutant masks over their faces that made them look like something out of Mortal Kombat. My driver didn’t talk much, he was too busy chain-smoking and throwing the tuk-tuk round corners at such frightening speeds I spent most of the time looking at the floor. Beneath an underpass, even he couldn’t get through the congestion; we were jammed tight as fish in a net. I felt as if I was being slowly cooked in an open-air oven. Then just as two men were arguing and one brandished an oversized spanner from his boot, the traffic eased up again and we were moving, past waterways dotted with shantytowns and stray dogs at roadside.
I kept imagining Skip’s spirit floating in the pollution over the Khao San Road desperately looking for home. Then something occurred to me with bitter clarity: You’ve just ruined seven months sobriety and now you’re going to hunt the men who ripped him open. What are you going to do if you find them?
‘We be in Weekend Market five minutes,’ said the driver breaking my thoughts, ‘how you like Bangkok so far?’
- 9 -
The light was fading from gothic purple to black as Chattuchack Market appeared. I walked through narrow corridors between the stalls, every one hawking a different product: lampshades, opium pipes, herbal remedies, plastic flowers, goldfish, camping gear, aphrodisiacs – the deeper I ventured, the more exotic seemed the products. Each stall was laced with a string of fairy lights and each seemed to have a different radio station playing. Disoriented, I looked for the men in every stall. Half an hour later I found myself slap bang in the animal section staring at a St Bernard puppy with sores on his nose gasping for air in a perforated glass cage. I noticed a cobra snake in another cabinet. The owner appeared as if from a lamp, �
�Snake blood. Very good for potent penis sah. You American?’
‘No.’
‘In Thailand we eat snake’s body, eyes and blood… very good for sex life.’ He laughed at me.
I pointed to the St Bernard, it was looking at me in the vain hope I might take it back to some air-conditioned pad in the suburbs. ‘These belong in the snow.’ I fished in my wallet for my press card and waved it at him, ‘Next time I come here and catch you selling dogs in this condition I’ll go to The Bangkok Post and they’ll have you shut down.’
Oh the empty words of a humble travel journalist.
He smiled at me deadly, ‘Sometimes we eat them.’
I walked on, past cages of marmoset babies and spider monkeys racing around like dervishes. I’d been here less than an hour and I was ready to leave, the stink of fish and animal feed was unbearable. And besides, my head was clearing and with it my nerve - what the hell had I been thinking? This wasn’t a Charles Bronson film; I was a stranger in a dark city whose best friend had just been murdered. Beyond the menagerie I spotted a man combing his hair, behind him pots of pomade. He beckoned me over as soon as he saw my curiosity. ‘You recede a little hair sah. I can make it grow back for you. Look, watch this sah, it the cure for balding pattern in all men.’
He dipped his hand into one of the pots, produced some black paste then rubbed it into his hairline, ‘No probrem see!’
It was then I noticed a figure out of the corner of my eye watching me from beside a stall. I’d seen those snakes before, twisting darkly up his arm around a triangle. I heard the Thai shout something and instinctively started running in the nearest direction – the opposite direction, my tank still swishing with alcohol. As I ran blindly down an alley of rattan baskets I heard the hair charlatan shouting playfully behind me, ‘We have brown sah, your colour… good for ladies saaaah!’
I was fighting for breath by the time I reached the end of the alleyway. I looked about frantically for fellow tourists but it was deserted. Stall-vendors sat sleepily watching me from hammocks and chairs - just another farang who got lost. I didn’t stop running until I reached a section full of mirrors and found a shop big enough to hide in. The stallholder looked up helpfully, ‘Mistah, you look for something special?’
I was sweating heavily and wishing I’d responded to my moment of crisis differently - I barely remembered the bar I’d taken my first drink in. Nobody likes running, but it gave me time to figure out what to do next. I’d been a fool to think I could walk into this without a weapon or an ally. I had neither, and now I was asking for the same treatment as my friend. I tried to sound normal. ‘No, no… just looking, thank you.’ But I had to do something - why the hell was I running?
For god’s sake, they killed your friend, aren’t you going to stand up for him? My legs were wobbling, it wasn’t just the booze - I was scared, my body like rubber. Fight or flight? Perhaps for the first time in my life I was in the second department. The voices came closer, I watched the Thai thug sprint past the shop with another close behind. They ran like chickens.
I saw my terrified reflection a hundred different mirrors. I must have been in there two minutes before I decided to come out. My best bet was creep out of the market and go and see Sammy Casbaron then maybe I could come back. I wanted to reach out and ask for help but I trusted no one. I headed to the back of the market, the guide book said it was about a mile in diameter so I had a good chance of getting free without being spotted.
Just as I reached the perimeter and was beginning to feel like I might make it out in one piece, I saw them. The Thai with the snake tattoo stepped from the light of the market onto the perimeter wasteground toward me. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about him was the absolute lack of emotion on his angular face; we were gong to fight and that was the end of it. I backed further into the darkness, fenced in by a high cement wall. I had nowhere to run and no one would witness what was about to happen.
‘Why did you kill him?’ I said quietly, doubting he even understood me.
He came closer, without haste, the other man guarding the end of the alleyway. Then I saw his eyes, glazed and vacant. Yaa Baa, I figured; a cocktail of crack and methamphetamine. It made you stronger, veiled pain and heightened your aggression levels.
The lights of Banglamphu seemed a long way away and I wished I were back in London drinking coffee beneath Mum’s dinosaurs. He said nothing as he drew closer. I wondered in the event I was killed whether Matilde would come to my funeral. Would my friends remember to invite her? I hoped so.
I held up my hands in submission, waited till he was within five foot of me and flew at him. You don’t remember these things clearly, even when you’re in the ring and you’re supposed to be running through combinations you’ve finessed hundreds of times in sparring sessions. Something primitive takes charge. I surprised him with a left hook to the temple, followed with a right uppercut and then a left jab. As he staggered back I hit him again with a shot to the kidney. I was lucky. When he hit the ground, against all my ethics of right and wrong, I kicked him hard in the face with the toe of my trainer and felt his cheekbone implode. Thank God I wasn’t wearing sandals. ‘That’s for Skip, you bastard!’
The man guarding the alley was pulling a pistol out of his pocket. Not wanting to push my luck any further, with the guy on the ground shaking his head and readying himself for another assault, I raced away along the edge of the market, my heels light with the adrenaline of triumph, the drink now evaporated; my mind clear as a bell. On I ran, past the animal noises, past the vendors, the weekend shoppers whose lives were untroubled as mine had been two days before. I felt full of air and blood there was so much nervous energy pulsing through me. Then finally I was at the other side of Chattuchak Market. I pushed past some Japanese people queuing for a taxi and dived in, giving the cabbie a fistful of cash and screaming at him to drive.
We sat gridlocked in traffic. Perhaps I should have caught a tuk-tuk, for at the next set of lights when we’d covered no more than a hundred yards I heard the rough voice of the Thai I’d beaten and the sharp accent of the guy with the grey suit. Amid the honking of horns, they went from car to car peering through the tinted windows. Most cars in Bangkok seemed to have them and it was buying me a little time. I slid down the fake leather seat, my t-shirt sticking to it like paste.
‘How long do these lights take?’ I growled to myself,
‘If we lucky we make it through the change… Too much vehicle on road, too many tuk-tuk, see? You got bad stomach friend? Thailand shits?’
I saw him smiling at me in the mirror, then he registered my panic and his smile disappeared. ‘Hey, no probrem, no trouble okay?’
I wheeled around in my seat, looked through the slatted visor in the rear window; they were almost upon us, a few cars away. The driver looked in his side view, rolled up his window and pressed the central locking, ‘You in big trouble sah, they looking for you?’
I wouldn’t get away a second time it was against the law of averages. The Thai thug knocked on the driver’s window, and through the smoked glass I saw his tattooed wrist. His mouth was bleeding, his eyes feral with yaa baa. The driver was wailing in prayer trying to ignore the knocking and looking anxiously at the traffic lights. Then thug put a hand inside his trousers and brandished a gun to the window, shouting as he did so to the others following behind.
As the lights changed the pale Asian in the grey suit peered in and clocked me. Then we slid off. As I looked back there was no trace of panic on his face, more like impatience as if I were a mosquito he was having a problem locating. We pulled away and he stood there smiling, his bleeding minion racing after us through the lights. The driver clapped his hands together and laughed. ‘We go special route. They no find us! I know all the best ways. Me called King Kong,’ he added, ‘because I have big penis. You looking for girls?’
Kong took a left turn
and headed down a track bordered by a stream full of rubbish. More beggars, this time on homemade trolleys, eyes illuminated in the headlamps like wild dogs. But I was safe, the second of my nine lives definitely spent as we headed back into the city.
I said goodbye to the lights of the Khao San Rd and took my chances in another part of the city that night. I have this theory you can’t test your luck too much, it eventually runs out like credit. Actually it’s not my theory, it’s an old saying among the French Foreign Legion - something I read up on in an attempt to get to know Dad. In fact I devoured a couple of books on the fabled regiment, and the more I read, the less I seemed to be able to understand about the gentle man who’d spent so little time in my life.
I went to the Police Station in Banglamphu and told them what had happened at the market. The plain-clothes detective I’d met before smiled wearily and shook my hand. He looked rested, ready for another night in this stinking city. ‘You shouldn’t play Policeman mistah. Bangkok dangerous place, especially for foreigner.’
‘Have you made any progress? Do you know who killed my friend?’
‘We looking into it.’
‘Will you check the market for these men tonight? Can I have my passport back now?’ The answer to both was negative.
That evening, with their permission, I checked in to a huge monolith called The Asia Hotel. It wasn’t cheap and it certainly wasn’t attractive or memorable. The lobby was full of American package types dressed in white trainers and over-obsequious staff who kept trying to carry my bag for me. I didn’t want to pay fifty quid for a room but one night wouldn’t hurt. Maybe I should have blagged my way into something better, but I hate blagging - it catches up with you in the end.
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