The Half-Child

by Angela Savage

  ‘Please don’t hesitate to visit me in my consulting rooms if you have any further questions,’ he said, ‘or any problems with your own health.’

  ‘There is one other thing, Doctor,’ Jayne piped up. ‘The Australian girl who worked here last year, Maryanne: do you think it was the dying children that got to her? Could that be why she took her own life?’

  The question startled Frank, but Somsri took it in his stride.

  ‘No one can be sure. Khun Maryanne had a lot of problems. You, Khun Jayne, strike me as a more mature person. As I say, my door is open if you would like to see me.’

  He took leave of them with a wai.

  Frank turned to the group. He took the hands of Jayne and Marion who were standing either side of him. ‘How about we say a prayer?’

  They all joined hands and bowed their heads.

  ‘Lord, bless our baby brother Kamolsert,’ Frank began.

  Kamolsert. So that was Kob’s official name, the one the monks had given him, taking into account the day of the week he was born and configuring the vowels and consonants to bring out the best prospects in his horoscope.

  But sometimes the monks got it wrong. Jayne knew because her friend Ying, previously known as Sasathorn had petitioned an expert to review the composition of her name, believing a mistake might account for her life’s difficulties.

  After analysing her horoscope, the monk renamed her Nonthathorn, meaning ‘a better life’. Though she remained known by her nickname, the change seemed to do her good.

  Jayne attributed it to the power of positive thinking. She wasn’t superstitious enough to believe Kob—Kamolsert Apornsuwanna—might have fared better with a different name.

  The briefing with Doctor Somsri did little to answer Jayne’s questions. She recognised his name from the police report as the expert witness whose diagnosis of depression was crucial to the finding of Maryanne Delbeck’s death as suicide. His tongue was as silver as his hair, and Jayne couldn’t help feeling he was trying to confuse rather than enlighten her. One minute he was talking about AIDS, the next some other disease. His explanations seemed to rely more on prejudice than science.

  As for that platitudinous, self-righteous prick Frank Harding, the thought that he’d told Mayuree that her son had gone to a better place made Jayne’s blood boil. When he took her hand and started to pray, it required a Herculean effort not to slap the condescending smile from his face.

  She eluded the rest of the volunteers by pretending to need the bathroom and scuttled out the gate into the laneway for a cigarette. She inhaled deeply and paused to take stock.

  Kob hadn’t seemed ill when she saw him on Monday and Mayuree had said nothing about him being sick. So what happened? Could his death have been an accident that the centre was trying to cover up? It was possible, but not likely. The childcare facility appeared to be well run, there were few hazards that Jayne could see, and the Thai staff were competent.

  Perhaps it was a cot death. But if that was the case, why cremate the body with such haste? In fact, why rush both the autopsy and cremation unless there was something to hide?

  Stories circulated in the Thai press from time to time about street children in towns like Pattaya being killed so their vital organs could be harvested and sold to rich, ailing farangs. Likely as not, these were urban myths, expressing the anxiety people felt about the encroachment of Western culture on Thai society, or about the dark side of their own corrupt elites. Besides, whatever her misgivings about Christian evangelists, Jayne couldn’t imagine Frank Harding being involved in something as grotesque as organ farming.

  She lit a second cigarette with the butt of the first and punched Rajiv’s number into her mobile phone. He answered before she had time to exhale.

  ‘Hi Rajiv.’

  He liked everything about her, even the sound of her voice.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine.’

  He could tell that she was smoking and wondered if the children were getting on her nerves. It amused him to imagine Jayne working in an orphanage.

  ‘You don’t sound fine.’

  ‘I’m…confused,’ she said. ‘One of the babies in the orphanage died last night. Actually, he wasn’t in the orphanage. He was in another section where poor Thais leave their children to be cared for. I know his mother.’

  ‘Oh my goodness, that’s dreadful,’ Rajiv said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, I’m not sure. You don’t happen to know anything about sickle cell anaemia, do you?’

  Rajiv thought for a moment. ‘You are talking about a blood disorder mostly found in people from parts of sub-Saharan Africa?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘A fascinating disease,’ he said. ‘The sickle cells are abnormally-shaped red blood vessels, which the malaria parasite does not like one little bit. This makes the carrier of sickle-cell disease resistant to malaria.’

  ‘That sounds like a good thing. I thought the disease was fatal.’

  ‘Please wait a moment, Jayne.’

  He put down the phone and hurried to the non-fiction section of Uncle’s bookstore, where there was a decadeold medical encyclopaedia among the stock. He brought it back to the counter and leafed through to the relevant information.

  ‘“The disease is chronic and lifelong,”’ he read over the phone. ‘“Sufferers can stay well for years, but they are subject to painful spells and risk complications that greatly shorten their life expectancy to just over forty years”.’

  ‘Forty years?’ Jayne said. ‘I knew there was something suss about all this. There’s a doctor here trying to convince me that’s what this baby died of—’

  ‘Hold on a moment.’ His eyes skimmed down the page as he spoke. ‘There’s something here about children. It is saying there are potentially lethal complications of sickle-cell disease, which includes strokes in children. Also—and I am quoting—“from the age of birth up to five years, children born with sickle cell disease should take daily doses of folic acid and penicillin to protect them from a range of early childhood illnesses to which they are more prone by virtue of this genetic condition”.’

  ‘So it is possible the baby could have died from complications of sickle cell disease,’ she said.

  Rajiv could almost hear her mind ticking through the phone.

  ‘Jayne, you weren’t there when the baby died, were you?’

  ‘No, it happened overnight and volunteers only do day shifts.’

  ‘So you weren’t working last night.’ The words tumbled out before he could stop them. ‘Not that it is a problem,’ he added quickly. ‘It is just that when I couldn’t reach you, I’m afraid my imagination got the better of me. I started noticing all the articles in the Bangkok Post about criminal activity in Pattaya—the scams and rackets, the foreign gang activity, the tourists getting drugged and robbed. And yet even as I am saying this, I know my Jayne is too clever to be fooled by any local tricksters and—’

  ‘Nice save, Rajiv,’ she muttered. ‘I was out playing pool.

  I left my mobile at the hotel by mistake. Sorry to worry you.’

  ‘No, no, I’m sorry,’ he said.

  It was the last thing she needed, him acting like a jealous boyfriend.

  ‘I’m sorry about the baby…passing away.’

  ‘It’s not like we were close.’

  He waited in case she wanted to add more. She didn’t.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Just tired. Working with kids is exhausting and the early mornings are nearly killing me.’

  Rajiv smiled. That sounded more like the woman he knew.

  ‘There’s just one thing bugging me,’ she said. ‘You said sickle cell disease was a genetic condition, right?’

  ‘That is correct,’ Rajiv said, scanning the text. ‘You can be an affected or unaffected carrier. If both parents are carriers, the risk of passing it on to the child is one in four.’

 
‘So it’s not infectious?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You can’t catch sickle cell disease from someone else, living or dead.’

  ‘No, no, no. That is what I am telling you.’

  ‘So why would they need to destroy the body?’ she muttered.

  ‘What do you mean, destroy the body? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Nothing. Look, I have to go. Let’s talk soon about when you might come and join me here. And Rajiv?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thanks for the information. You’re a legend.’

  Rajiv thought he was far too young, alive and ordinary to be a legend, but he accepted her compliment in the spirit in which it was intended. It gave him the courage to go through with the idea that came to him during the call. He dialled his cousin Rohit who ran a travel agency in Pahurat.

  ‘Greetings, cousin-brother,’ he said when Rohit answered. ‘What information can you be giving me on buses leaving this afternoon for Pattaya?’

  23

  Jayne shed her work clothes and headed for what the brochure referred to as the garden pool at the Bayview Hotel. Lake-like and shaded by large trees, it wasn’t conducive to swimming so much as floating, frolicking and sipping cocktails from submerged barstools around a central island bar. The pool on the rooftop of the Tower Wing would be quieter, but it was hardly a place where Jayne could relax given its association with Maryanne’s death. So she dropped her towel on a white plastic sunlounge and, leaving her sunglasses on, waded through a sea of holiday makers to a quiet spot in the water.

  At the bar a man with acne on his back was sipping beer and shooting glances at a couple of topless women sunbathing. An Asian couple next to him—honeymooners, Jayne guessed—took turns at photographing each other drinking the juice of whole green coconuts. Over by the steps, a small Indian-looking girl floated in an inflatable pink ring, protesting at the attempts of a blond man to fish her out of the pool.

  The man signalled for help and was joined by an equally fair woman, who succeeded in cajoling the child into her arms. The woman cuddled the child while the man retrieved the ring and ran ahead to get a towel. The child grizzled as they wrapped her in the towel, bundled up their belongings and joined the exodus of families heading back to their rooms as dinnertime approached. They stood out only because the little girl, being so physically different from her parents, was clearly adopted.

  Perhaps because she’d spent the previous three days looking after other people’s children, Jayne felt a surge of respect for the adoptive parents. At the same time she wondered about their decision to adopt a child so wholly different from themselves. Was it gutsy or showy? Did they even have a choice?

  Jayne floated on her back, allowing water to fill her ears and block out the noise. She recalled her conversation with Tommy about his cousin adopting a baby, and Tommy’s comment that the child’s father ‘looked like one of us’. She supposed adoption agencies tried to match parents and children where possible: in Tommy’s cousin’s case, allocating to an African-American couple a Thai child most likely fathered by an African-American man.

  A child like Kob.

  Despite her best efforts to unwind, Jayne’s mind kicked into overdrive. It was one hell of a coincidence that on the same night Doctor Somsri had pronounced Kob dead from a rare illness, a child matching his description was adopted in Pattaya by an American couple. And if it wasn’t a coincidence, then what? Were the staff at the New Life Children’s Centre involved in adoption fraud? Could this be linked to Maryanne Delbeck’s death? Or was Jayne’s mistrust of religious zealots clouding her judgment?

  She gave up on the swim, picked up her towel and headed back to her room. She showered and dressed, all the while turning the case over in her mind. She took her cigarettes, phone and notebook out to the balcony and wrote down everything she remembered about Tommy’s cousin Leroy, his wife Alicia, and the adoption. Then she wrote down what was nagging at her: ‘No one believes Maryanne was suicidal apart from Doctor Somsri. Doctor Somsri says he cremated Kob’s body for infection control, but the disease he says killed Kob isn’t infectious. Doctor Somsri is lying.’

  She lit a cigarette and called Major General Wichit.

  ‘What is required for foreigners to adopt a Thai baby?’ she asked.

  ‘It depends in part on the country.’

  ‘What about the USA?’

  ‘Proof the child has no parents due to the death or disappearance of, abandonment or desertion by, separation from, or loss of both parents,’ the Police Major General said, ‘or written evidence that any surviving parent has irrevocably released the orphan for emigration and adoption.’

  ‘You sound like you’re reading from the manual.’

  ‘I’ve committed it to memory. You’d be surprised how many tourists drift into my office with the idea that a Thai baby would make the perfect holiday souvenir.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Jayne muttered in English, adding in a louder voice, ‘What does all that mean in terms of paperwork?’

  ‘Baby’s birth certificate, maternal death certificate and/ or written evidence of relinquishment.’

  ‘Could such documents be forged?’

  ‘The Thai government has strict rules in place to protect children from adoption-related trafficking,’ he said. ‘Thanks to the work we have done over the past few decades in improving access to institutional care for poor families, we have effectively stamped out baby selling.’

  Jayne knew Wichit was obliged to give her the official line, though she doubted he believed it any more than she did.

  ‘Jing reu?’ she said, a useful Thai expression that could mean either ‘is that so’ or ‘bullshit’, depending on the context.

  ‘I’m not talking about baby selling. I’m talking about baby laundering: taking children placed in institutional care and transforming them into orphans without consent.’

  She paused to let it sink in.

  ‘So, notwithstanding the Thai government’s excellent policies and safeguards, is it possible that criminal elements could arrange for the necessary paperwork to be forged?’

  Another pause.

  ‘Very difficult,’ Wichit said slowly, ‘but not impossible.

  What evidence do you have for this baby laundering?’

  ‘No evidence yet, just a hunch. I’m working on it.’

  ‘Be careful, Jayne. For an operation like that to succeed it would need the support of powerful people with connections both inside and out of official channels. Make sure you don’t tread on any toes.’

  She liked the way the Police Major General translated English idioms into Thai.

  ‘I’ll do my best. One last thing, what sort of time is involved in taking a child out of the country once it’s been adopted?’

  ‘Again, it varies. For American citizens, assuming all the paperwork is in order, there’s a wait of about a week while the immigration visa is issued.’

  ‘And that can only be done at the US Embassy in Bangkok?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Mai pen rai,’ Wichit said. ‘And, Jayne, if you do find any evidence of adoption fraud, I urge you to contact me immediately.’

  ‘Very well, Major General.’

  ‘I mean it,’ he said.

  Jayne read back over her notes. Conjecture. Guesswork.

  Pure speculation. She wasn’t lying when she told Police Major General Wichit all she had was a hunch. She lit a cigarette and started jotting down ideas for evidence.

  Signed confessions from Frank Harding and Doctor Somsri: strike that. Copy of the baby’s medical records: might be useful, worth considering, not sure how she’d get her hands on them. Copy of birth and death certificates: perhaps she could get these from Mayuree. Jayne could take a statement from Mayuree, too, about Kob’s health prior to his being pronounced dead. Then again, no one would believe the word of a bar girl over Doctor Somsri. And was it fair to involve Mayuree in her investigation
when there was still a possibility Kob was in fact dead?

  She tapped the ash from her cigarette and closed her notebook labelled ‘Maryanne Delbeck Case’. She was working on Jim Delbeck’s time. Could she justify pursuing an investigation that seemed tangential, at best, to his daughter’s death? She flicked through her earlier notes and found her hastily scrawled reminder to follow up with Mayuree about Maryanne. Finding out what happened to Kob gave her the chance to get close to Mayuree, and she was sure Mayuree knew more about Maryanne than she was letting on.

  Jayne took another drag of her cigarette and returned her thoughts to the conversation with the Marines. Tommy had taken pictures with his camera at the ceremony where Leroy and Alicia collected their baby. If Jayne could get her hands on those photos, at least she’d know if she was on to something.

  24

  Tommy and Mitch were not at the B-52 Bar. She recognised Jerry and Earl from the previous evening, but they failed to recognise her. She nursed a beer for nearly an hour. When there was still no sign of Tommy and Mitch, Jayne tapped the redhead on the shoulder.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Remember me?’

  Jerry grunted.

  ‘The other guys who were here last night, Mitch and Tommy, you wouldn’t happen to know where they are?’

  Both men frowned.

  ‘M’am?’

  ‘The Marines,’ she tried again, ‘the other guys whose asses I whipped on the pool table? Do you know where I might find them?’

  ‘Darn, you mean Mitch and Tommy!’

  He pronounced Mitch as if it had two syllables, and Tommy to rhyme with army.

  ‘Blue Lagoon A-Go-Go.’ He jerked his thumb northwards.

  ‘Thanks,’ Jayne said.

  ‘Say, m’am, where’re you from?’ the redhead asked.

  ‘Australia.’

  ‘Australia? —Man, you got the strangest German accent I ever heard.’

  Jayne mulled over this surreal exchange as she went in search of the go-go bar. She hoped for her country’s sake the redheaded Marine was never at the receiving end of an order to bomb Austria.