Murder!
I came back into the current time with a bit of a jolt and was covered in a smelly cold sweat. It was morning again. I was losing track of time, not just the hours, but the days. I didn’t know if I had been in the police cell for two or three days now. I would like to tell you now about what I had for my breakfast. I would like to tell you, but I can’t, because I didn’t have anything. I hadn’t eaten for a few days now and I really was starving and I couldn’t think properly.
I was very happy to see Sawat sitting waiting for me in the interview room. He greeted me with a big wide smile as soon as the guard took me into the room. It was so nice to see a friendly face and hear an English accent.
“Hi Steve. Have you had breakfast mate?”
“No. I haven’t eaten for days. I’m starving.”
Sawat snapped something in Thai at my escort and I could see by his expression that he was angry with the man. The guard wai’d to him and dashed off. A few minutes later he brought in some chicken and rice in a plastic bag and another guard brought in two cups of very sweet coffee. I thought that one of them was for Sawat, but they were both for me. I ate the chicken and rice with my fingers straight from the plastic bag. It was warm and delicious, in some kind of soy and chilli sauce. I licked my fingers clean and then turned the bag inside out and licked that clean too. Sawat just watched me and waited until I had finished before he spoke.
“Steve, I’m so sorry you haven’t been fed properly. You have to speak up for yourself, make some noise and get their attention if you have a problem. If you are quiet then they think you are happy.”
“Oh” I said. “I didn’t want to make a fuss. I thought that they must be very busy.”
Sawat just smiled at me. I really felt a connection with him. I just looked back at him and waited for him to start another interview. He didn’t. We just looked at each other and then he shrugged his shoulders and took a Thai newspaper from his briefcase and opened it out on the table to read.
“Are you not going to interview me?”
“I really can’t be bothered Steve. I think we have said everything that needed to be said and they will be charging you later today, anyway” smiled Sawat.
“Detective Deewat, why are you so disinterested in your job?”
“Oh Steve, just call me Sawat.”
“Sawat. Why don’t you have more interest in this case?”
“It’s not the case Steve. I am happy that I met you. I like you. I think you are crackers, but I am happy that I met you. I already told you Steve, I have problems of my own. You are right though, I am not happy. Not happy at all. My life is a mess.”
“Why? How can it be? You look like you have everything; good looks, money, good job, a great personality and a great sense of humour. How can someone like you have problems?”
“Women, Steve. Women.”
“You don’t look like the sort of man who would have a problem meeting women.”
“It’s not a problem meeting them Steve. There are just too many and they have the knack of messing up my life, over and over again. I’m a good looking bloke. I’m good with women, and I’m good at sex. I know the secret of women and, once you know the secret, you can always pull women. I see myself as a sort of ‘Fanny Whisperer’. That is how and why I ended up back here in Thailand and doing this job to make things up to my family. I was a police officer in England for just over a year and hated it. Now I’m a police officer here and I hate it. Life was better when I was working for my dad. Well, I was employed by him. I didn’t actually do much work. Women and work Steve, that’s what has ruined my life. I just want to be happy, but I don’t know what I need to be happy. So I don’t know how to be happy.”
“Wow! I don’t know what to say. You look so perfect and seem so in control. You just need to decide what it is that will make you happy.”
“Easier said than done Steve. I am half Thai and half English. I am torn between East and West. Between my Buddhist heart and my Western desires. I was cursed with good looks that have brought me nothing but trouble all of my life and cost me a lot, both financially and emotionally. I was spoilt by an older English father, who thought that he would never have a child and punished by my beautiful Thai mother, who went from bar girl to housewife to a rich man, then divorced and back to bar girl again. Now she lives a humble existence in Bangkok, but she is happy. Somehow I have shamed and embarrassed both of my parents. My dad thinks that I am a loser, a waster and a womaniser, while my mother thinks I am just like my dad, which is pretty much the same thing. So you see, Steve, I am doing a sort of penance by being here. I have to show them both that I can hold down a job, stop sleeping with anything that moves, stop drinking and partying my life away and spending my father’s money.”
“I’m sorry Sawat. I didn’t realise that you had so much on your plate.”
“Thanks Steve.”
“I think you just need a good woman.”
“I have too many women. That’s the problem.”
“You have too many of the wrong sort of women. You only need one good one and that is the key to happiness and a perfect future.”
“You really believe that Steve?”
“Yes I do. I think if you get the right woman, a good woman, it will be the making of you.”
“And how do I find the perfect woman?”
“Well, you don’t look for ‘The Perfect Woman’ because she doesn’t exist. But you have to look for a good woman who can be perfect for you. You can be perfect together. You just have to find a woman who can understand you and who has the qualities that you need her to have. Just make a list of what you really want and then find the right lady.”
“How do I do that Steve?”
“I don’t know. Just advertise.”
“Like one of these WLTM (Would Love To Meet) adverts?”
“Yes. Why not? What have you got to lose?”
“Thanks Steve. I’ll think about it. Look, do you want to admit anything? I can put in another interview with you, if you want me to!”
“I don’t want to admit anything, but I have thought about things that I forgot to tell you on the first interview.”
“What things?”
“Things which might help my defence. Things that are relevant.”
“OK Steve. I like you and I want to help. You can tell me whatever you want and I really hope that it does help you.” Sawat smiled at me, unwrapped some tapes and dropped them into the tape recording machine. He pressed the record button and it buzzed and then started recording. The red light glowed from the box.
“I’m Detective Sawat Deewat, blah blah blah, all the usual stuff applies about caution, blah blah blah, and I’m interviewing Steven West. OK Steve. What do you want to say, matey?”
“Erm! I didn’t murder The Flower Girl.”
“It’s not the best defence I’ve ever heard Steve!”
“But I can prove it.”
“Go on then, I’m listening.”
“Well, somebody called Dean is the murderer.”
“And how can you prove this?”
“I can’t. I was hoping that you would find him.”
“So your defence is…… ‘I didn’t do it, it was someone else’?”
“Yes. But I have also thought about some other things that I wanted to say in the first interview.”
“OK” said Sawat, nodding slowly as if he was considering my defence statement.
“Well, first of all, this is the first time that I have ever been in Thailand. I have never been here before. In fact, I have never been out of the UK before and my passport is brand new. It’s just been issued and I have never had a passport before. I simply couldn’t have murdered The Flower Girl last year, because I was in England at the time. So I think that’s a pretty goo
d alibi. I was over 6000 miles away.” I couldn’t help but smile. I was very proud of myself.
Sawat carried on nodding in silence for a moment or two before he responded.
“Well, it’s the first passport you have had in your own real name Steve, but how do we know that you didn’t come here before with a different passport under a different name, like Dean for example. We all know you are a bit of an expert when it comes to changing your name and nationality at the drop of a hat. Steve or Dean or Steejon East or whatever your name is. I’m on your side Steve. I’m just saying what the prosecution are going to say in court about your defence. Is there anyone in England who can say that you were in England at the time of the murder? The factory where you work? Do you have to clock on and off from work Steve?”
“Yes. Yes I do. Good thinking. Yes I would have been working at the time, so it will be easy to check my clocking on card for the relevant time. When was the relevant time?”
“27th July, last year.”
“Oh!”
“Oh what?”
“The factory closes down for two weeks every year from last week in July to second week in August.”
“That’s very convenient Steve…….the prosecution would say. Can anyone else vouch for you? Mum, Dad, girlfriend?”
“Mum is dead and I haven’t had a girlfriend for years.”
“What about your Dad?”
“We don’t see much of each other really. We live in the same house, but dad spends most of his time in his bedroom or in the garden shed. To be honest, he wouldn’t know exactly where I was on any particular day, but he would just say that I was with him just to protect me.”
“So, not really a credible alibi witness then Steve?”
“No, I guess not. But he would know that I have never left the country before.”
“Like I say Steve, not really a credible witness. Anyone else?”
“No. Sorry.”
“What about friends or relatives?”
“I haven’t really got any friends and I haven’t got any relatives. Well, I might have some in Scotland, but I don’t know them.”
“Oh! Well, as we say in police terms Steve ‘You’re Fucked!’”
“But I didn’t murder The Flower Girl, Sawat. Someone called Dean did it. She told me.”
“So you want me to believe that you only met The Flower Girl a year after she was murdered. You met her when she was a ghost and she told you about the murder?”
“Yes I do, because that is exactly how it happened.”
Sawat checked the time on his Rolex watch. He thought for a moment and sighed.
“OK Steve. Tell me about your ghost.”
“She was the most beautiful woman who I have ever seen, Sawat. I came to Thailand for the very first time last week. I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to come, but I had seen a book on Thailand in a second hand shop in England. I bought it and read it cover to cover and something just pulled me to The Land of Smiles. When I saw Pin, or The Flower Girl for the first time, I suddenly knew why I had come to Thailand. I had come to meet The Flower Girl. She walked towards me carrying some red roses and then she smiled and my heart just melted.”
“Could you see through her?”
“No. Why?”
“I thought you might be able to. You know, with her being a spirit and all!”
“She looked as real and alive as me and you. I had no idea she was anything other than a very beautiful girl. She looked normal and talked and felt like anyone else and she always smelt of sweet perfume. Anyway, I was sitting at some tables outside a bar just off Patak Road when I first saw The Flower Girl and she came up to me. She had the most wonderful smile and she told me her name was Pin. She was dressed in rags and I could see that she was pregnant, maybe about six or seven months pregnant I would guess. She sat with me for a while at the table, but as I was talking to her we got funny looks from the girls who worked in the bars. Pin said that they might be getting jealous and thinking that she was stealing their customer, so she didn’t want to stay very long. I bought all the roses from her, but I never actually paid her. She said that she would meet me the next day and I could pay her then, but I never actually did pay her for the roses. Anyway, when Pin walked off I just finished my drink and left the flowers on the table. The next day Pin was waiting outside my hotel. She was sitting on my motorbike.”
“How did she know which was your hotel?”
“That’s the funny thing. I did go to tell her the night before, but she told me that she already knew and anyway, there she was waiting for me and we had a wonderful day out on my motorbike. I saw Pin day and night for the next two days.”
“Day and night?”
“Yes. She slept with me.”
“You made love to her?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to believe that you made love to a ghost!”
“Sawat, it is true. But that’s not the important part.”
“So, what was the important part Steve?”
“Over the next couple of days she told me about the ex-boyfriend; the one who got her pregnant. His name was Dean and he was married with a couple of grown up boys back in England. He promised Pin that he would marry her, but she didn’t know that he was already married. Well, at least not at first. He told her that he loved her and promised to sell his house in England and come and live in Thailand and marry Pin.”
“So what happened?”
“Well it all went wrong when she started to suspect that he was already married. He got very aggressive towards her when she tried to ask him anything about it. He came back to see her a couple of times and during one of these trips he got her pregnant. He was sending her money so she wouldn’t have to work in a bar, but he wasn’t very happy when she told him that she was pregnant. He came to see her and his aggression was even worse. He was violent towards her and his behaviour became worse and worse. He started beating her and getting drunk a lot. Anyway, one day he was drunk and asleep and his mobile rang. Pin answered it and it was his wife in England. She shouted and screamed at Pin, called her lots of terrible names and even threatened to kill her. Pin was very scared and ran away, scared about what Dean would do to her when he woke up and found out that his wife now knew about Pin and knew that Pin was carrying her husband’s baby. It was all a mess.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, Dean went looking for Pin and he found her. He was very angry and he took her back to his room and raped her. The next day he told her he was sorry and promised that he would divorce his wife and marry her, but Pin had realised by now what a horrible man he really was and she was very scared of him. They went to Pin’s special place, the place by the cliff, the murder scene and, as Pin was sitting there, he hit her with the rock and then threw her off the cliff.”
“So, she told you that Dean had murdered her?”
“No, not exactly. She had taken me to her special place to show me how beautiful it was there and that is when she finished the story about Dean. She showed me the actual rock he used to hit her on the head before he threw her into the sea, but she never said that he had killed her. I didn’t realise because I didn’t know she was dead. I was talking to her for God’s sake. She told me about the attack and I just assumed that she had survived to tell the tale. It was only the next day, when Pin never came to meet me as usual, that I started looking for her. I thought that she had dumped me, but I needed to find her and find out why she didn’t want to see me anymore. I started asking questions about her and then I saw the Wanted Posters. That is when I found out that Pin had been murdered nearly 12 months before I had even met her. I was shocked beyond belief, shocked and heartbroken, because I had fallen in love with her. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, but I had fallen in love with an angel. The Flower Girl was a
ghost Sawat and she had been murdered by Dean a year before I ever met her. I know that she told me the story so that he can be caught for the crime he committed. That’s it Sawat. That’s my story.”
Sawat sighed again and sat thinking for a minute before he said anything.
“Yeah Steve. It’s not much of a story if you take the whole ghost thing out of it. Without the ghost story, it is no story at all; just you, her ex-boyfriend, returning to the scene of the crime and pointing out the murder weapon to the police. You are going to be charged today Steve.”
“What! You are still going to charge me with murder?”
“Yes mate. Nothing has changed. You’re still saying that you haven’t done it, but you know everything about the murder and your defence is that the dead victim told you all about it. Not really a great defence Steve. If you were going to be tried up country in the north of Thailand then some people would be more likely to believe you, but not down here Steve. We don’t believe in spirits in quite the same way, but the newspapers and TV are going to love your defence story.”
“So what is going to happen to me if I get charged?”
“When you get charged.”
“Sorry. When I get charged?”
“You’ll be found guilty and executed, I would imagine.”
“Oh my God!”
“Yeah. I can imagine it’s not the best holiday that you have ever had Steve, but there will be appeals and negotiations with the British Government, so it will probably be dragged out for years.”
“Oh! That’s a relief.”
“You might not think that once you have been in the prison.”
“Is it bad?”
“Yeah.”
“Very bad?”
“Worse than that.”
“Sawat, do you believe me?”
“No Steve, I don’t. I like you and I think it’s a great story and I wish it was true. But no, I don’t believe you. I think you are a window licker.”
The Flower Girl Page 11