by Lee Weeks
Sudden shrill whistles resounded around the camp and Jake felt the floor reappear beneath his feet as Handsome dropped him. There were intruders.
38
A unit of twelve heavily-armed military men wearing the Burmese army insignia, SPDC, on their arms came into the camp.
Their leader had an air of authority in the way he strode into the camp. He was big, broad shouldered and upright. He was a smart man who took care with his appearance. He had a handsome face and a thin moustache that traced the outline of his mouth. He kept his army cap on his head throughout. He seemed to want to hide his face. On the occasions he looked in the direction of the five, he quickly looked away. He smoothed his moustache with his forefinger: a nervous habit that also served his vanity. Behind him his men stood with their guns at the ready. Saw’s men hovered menacingly.
‘Tell your men to back off, Saw,’ the commander said as he signalled his men to wait where they were as he walked forward. ‘I want to talk man to man, in private. There are things a leader should not share with his men.’
Saw cautiously waved his men back. They reluctantly retreated. Saw looked at the commander as he talked and smoothed his moustache.
‘Everything has changed now,’ the commander said as he looked Saw square in the eyes. If he was afraid, he didn’t show it. ‘You killed some important men in the mountains. Kasem and his son had many friends in the government. You forget the army runs on drug profits. I have to watch my back. I have a good thing going. I don’t want to lose it. The idea was to expand it, not lose it all.’ Jake could see that Saw was nervous. He listened, visibly uncomfortable, whilst the other man talked.
‘We go back a long way, Saw. I have known you for many years. I knew you when you were running this refinery.’
‘I passed a lot of business your way.’
‘Yes. We have been useful to one another over the years, but now…’ He stroked his moustache and looked up at Saw from beneath his cap. ‘You are forgetting what is important. Business is what matters, Saw, not personal vendettas. You have become a liability. You had better hope a new deal comes swiftly.’ His eyes flicked towards Jake and the others.
‘It will come,’ Saw barked, his hackles up.
‘If it doesn’t,’ the commander stood and indicated to his men they would be leaving and then he leant over and whispered, ‘I will have to kill you and the hostages. The Burmese junta doesn’t want the world knowing the truth. They will blame the death of the hostages on the Karen and the world will hate them and the Karen will have no place to hide any more. They will be wiped out…but so, my friend, will you.’
39
Mae Sot
‘Sawat di kha.’
Mary was a pretty-faced woman, a Big Mama type, who looked like she could have come straight off the set of South Pacific. She kept one eye on Mann as she delivered the traditional Thai greeting and pressed her palms together as if in prayer and bowed. ‘This my place.’ She opened her large arms. ‘Next door restaurant…’ She waved her hand at a place behind him. ‘…and here internet.’ She pointed to the far end of the reception area. ‘If you want you can hire bike from me. You want, you ask, okay?’
There was something likeable about Mary; she was the ‘cut-throat with a kind heart’ type.
‘My three daughters help.’ She fixed a look on Mann that he had seen many times before. It said, I have unattractive daughters that I can’t get rid of, I am selling them cheap—interested?
‘Three? How lovely,’ he replied politely.
‘One is marry. Two no.’
As they were talking a young, over-fed, over-preened woman with a pretty face approached the desk. Mann knew it was one of Mary’s daughters, summoned by a discreet whisper through a gap in the door behind the reception desk.
‘My daughter, Cantana.’ The young woman bowed and giggled. ‘She take you to your room.’
Mary had one face for Mann, and the opposite for her daughter, who received nothing but scowls. ‘Best room in hotel—bathroom, shower, very nice, you see.’
‘How many rooms have you got here?’
‘Have ten rooms.’
‘Are they all full?’
She shook her head and her neck fat quivered. ‘These are very hard times. Just have three rooms with guests.’
‘Most of your guests are volunteers?’
She nodded, looking a little worried about Mann’s line of questioning. Mann had read the local police report. After they were kidnapped from the refugee camp the five’s belongings had been removed from Mary’s. It appeared that they either came with very little cash or that someone had removed it after they disappeared. But then, it could have gone into any one of a number of pockets along the way, Mary’s apron pocket was only one possibility.
Cantana beckoned for Mann to follow. She spoke no English but she smiled a lot. He followed her through to the backyard and up a flight of stairs that led to a row of rooms on the left. Mann’s was the first door—the number six hung by one screw from the battered-looking door. They stood on the peeling linoleum just inside the room and Cantana started sweeping her arms around in a ‘how about this then?’ gesture. Mann looked around the room. It certainly was a shit hole to be wondered at, thought Mann, but he smiled dutifully, feigning delight as Cantana stepped backwards, bowing, hands clasped, and backed out of the room. She was still smiling at him through the diminishing gap in the door as he finally managed to close it on her.
He put his bag on the bed. It was hard to believe that this was the best hotel in Mae Sot. The room appeared to be directly over the restaurant, flooded by the smell of food being cooked from underneath. Any stray light found its way in through massive gaps where the curtains didn’t fit. The room was partitioned from the next one by a blocked-out window, covered in cardboard. It blocked out the sight but not the sound of next door’s love-making session. He switched on the ceiling fan and pulled back the cover of the bed to have a look at the state of the sheets. It looked like a couple of sumos had been wrestling in the bed. He took out the trusty kikoy that he always carried; along with Delilah, it was the most useful thing he owned. Ever since his surfing days, he had travelled everywhere with it. It served as a towel, clothing, windbreak, sun shield, and now a sheet. He was tempted to look under his bed but decided it was probably best not to know what lurked there. Plenty of lizards on the walls—that was a good sign as any bugs might be eaten before they could start eating him. A big gap under the door, the perfect size for a snake to come in looking for somewhere cool to lie—not so good. Just as he finished stuffing a rolled towel into the gap, his phone went.
‘Shrimp? How’s it going?’
‘It’s an awesome place. It must have been paradise before the tsunami. Lots of the small businesses have lost everything though. The government hung on to the aid money. They sold off the villagers’ land around the coast and didn’t let them return. Now the place has more highrises going up than homes. It’s the same old story—the little people suffer, the big people cash in.’
‘Who’s there with you?’
‘There are five of us here. The others have been here for ten weeks. They were glad to see me, new blood.’
‘Who are the others?’
‘A bunch of middle-agers “living the dream”—which has turned into a bit of a nightmare. They came over to build this school but now we have all this trouble and unrest. The project manager pulled out, which is why I got the job. They say we’ll all be pulled out if things don’t resolve themselves in a week. Basically, I am organising morale-boosting projects rather than building ones. I have left that to the Thai workmen and am taking the volunteers off for a picnic tomorrow, and tonight I have got a quiz night organised. My two categories are fashion through the ages and the history of guns.’
‘What’s their take on NAP?’
‘They’re a bit reluctant to badmouth it, they paid a lot of money to come here, but they obviously feel it’s all a bit of a con. This school is no way loo
king like it will be finished and it seems to be the same all over.’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t know where the money’s gone, then,’ said Mann. ‘We know that millions were raised to help after the tsunami. Magda told me she was involved with the fundraising. It was going to rebuild small hotels, shops, beach bars. What’s happened to it? Find out exactly what NAP has been doing out there for me—and try not to have too much fun.’
‘Okay, boss, will do. How’s it going with you?’
Mann looked around the room.
‘I’m in Camp Cockroach. It’s forty degrees and I don’t have aircon. And the couple next door are on a shagging marathon. Apart from that, great…I’m off to the refugee camp tomorrow but so far I have a list of possible but no clear suspects…Oh and, Shrimp?’
‘Yes, boss?’
‘I am hiding two million US dollars here.’ Mann looked across at his bag. He’d been carrying it around since Hong Kong. He was keen to find a safe place for it now. ‘I will text you the details when I know where. If something happens to me and there’s any chance of still getting the kids out, I am relying on you to come and do it.’
‘No problemo, boss.’
Mann went to liven himself up with a shower. He wanted to chat to the other inmates along the landing but, as the session next door was still in full swing, he decided now was not a good time. Instead, he headed down and stopped at the front desk on his way out. Mary disappeared suddenly when she saw him coming but soon reappeared, dragging a sullen-faced girl with the traditional crusty yellow sunblock that the local girls liked to smear on their cheeks. It was regarded as a beauty enhancer but as far as Mann could tell it either hid or caused bad skin, because hers looked like the lunar landscape under the yellow crust.
‘Mr Mann—this is my number two daughter, Nissa.’
This girl was obviously the brains of the outfit. Her English was good but her face would have soured milk. She stood blinking at him for a few minutes until her mother nudged her in the ribs, then she smiled reluctantly. Mann could see why she didn’t do it willingly; she had the worst teeth he had seen in a long time.
‘Pleased to meet you.’ Mann smiled and winked. She panicked and remembered that she’d dropped something on the floor behind the counter. She didn’t come back up. Mary flapped her arms and, to judge from her jerky body movements, gave her daughter a few sharp kicks beneath the desk. Mann left: the girl had suffered enough.
He walked out of the front of the guesthouse and crossed over to find some shade and to get a look at Mae Sot. Gee was right, the place had every creed and colour. As he walked down the busy roads, stepping on and off the pavement as it crumbled beneath his feet, a tall black African walked by, his wife in full burka walking behind him. Mann watched him as he shook hands with a man wearing a fez. Sikhs rode by on bicycles with turbans on their heads and Hindus in white robes sat with Burmese, Thai, and Indian men drinking coffee in cafés. Chinese men shared shisha pipes with Africans. The odd pale-faced westerner darted past.
Mann came off the main street and headed towards a covered market area. He was swallowed up by the stalls that touched one another overhead, and a dark wet world of life and death blinked up at him from below as he passed stalls groaning with the weight of butchered pigs, piled high and buzzing with flies. Pink-eyed white rabbits in cages on the floor stared up at him. A crusty-faced woman thrust a live disembowelled frog into his face. It was then that he saw Louis rushing through the market. He wasn’t stopping to buy. Mann slipped in unnoticed behind him. He had tailed him to the end of the first set of stalls, across a small road, and back into darkness when Gee stepped into his path. His face was grave.
‘You are lost, my friend. You do not want to go that way.’
40
Shrimp left the middle-agers to sleep whilst he went in search of a bar and some locals to talk to and find out the truth behind the tsunami rebuild. He came out of his hotel and walked away from the beach towards the town and the sprawling market that sprang up every evening. It was filled with noisy bars and garishly-lit avenues of stalls selling fake bags, sunglasses and Calvin Kleins.
Shrimp was about to sit with some lobster-faced Aussies who were wearing vests and talking about boxing with the Thai barman—all friendly enough but not exactly enticing. Then he heard the familiar strains of Madonna and ‘Like a Virgin’. Out of the corner of his eye he spied a mirrorball. Three girls in sequin hotpants and glittering heels beckoned him over. He gave the Aussies a wide berth and linked arm in arm with two of the girls as they escorted him to the bar. It was a small semi-circular space done out in a glitzy seventies style with an impressive collection of mirrorballs and Kylie memorabilia. Lava lamps decorated the bar. Shrimp felt at home.
‘What can I get you, good-lookin’?’ the tallest of the three girls asked in a clear voice as she moved behind the bar to serve him. She had long thick hair, heavy makeup, but good bone structure, thought Shrimp—and great legs.
‘Do you have Diet Coke?’
‘Sorry, hon, we only have regular. We have a great champagne cocktail, half price and, as it’s happy hour, you get two for one: one for you and one for me.’ She smiled cheekily.
‘Okay.’
‘Fab.’ She gave a giggle before turning on her heel and bending over into the fridge at the end of the bar. She pulled out the bottle of fizz and popped it amidst giggles and mock shrieks from the other girls. Shrimp had seen her give it a little shake before she popped it. He didn’t blame her, from the sound of the girls, a lot was expected of a cheap bottle of fizz. She popped the cork and a plume of fizz obliged, much to the delight of the girls. She poured him out a flute and one for herself.
‘Salut, baby!’ she said.
‘Cheers.’
‘What’s your name, hon?’ she asked as she wet her lips with the fizz.
‘Li,’ Shrimp answered. ‘Yours?’
‘Mine’s Summer. Over there are June and July.’ She motioned to the shrieking girls.
‘Nice place you have, Summer.’
‘Thank you, hon, but I used to have a real smart place before the tsunami.’ Summer retouched her makeup, snapped the compact shut and threw it back in her handbag. ‘I lost everything in that wave.’
‘Didn’t you get help from any charities? Didn’t the government help you rebuild?’
‘Sure, they made promises but the money didn’t come. I made a big mistake and made a private deal with an investor. They promised me money to rebuild it. They made me sign it away—the bar, everything. I had something special then. Now I just have this…’ Summer rolled her eyes around the makeshift bar that she assembled every evening and took down at dawn.
‘Who made you?’
‘The people who run this Thai boxing place. Built a brand new stadium at the end of the beach.’
‘Where did they get the money to build that?’
‘Those Thai boxers have friends in very high places. They muscled in on lots of the small folk. They got the backing of the police, the local government. They took it from me.’
‘How did they manage to do that?’
‘After the tsunami the government just hung on to the money. It wasn’t just people here in the town who lost out. The fishermen all along the coast? They all lost their homes and the government wouldn’t let them come back. They sold off their land to big developers.’ Summer shook her head sadly. ‘I put my heart and soul into making that bar work. Ah well…that’s the way it goes. They did it to a lot of people along this beach.’
‘Have you got the forms that you signed—can I take a look?’
Summer rolled her eyes and shook her head.
‘So dumb—they took it all off me. I never had anything to show in the end. It’s the same with many of us here in the market. We had nice places by the beach but after the tsunami it’s all gone. So, tell me, honey, what’s all this to you? Smart dresser like you? You just on vacation here or what? Why do you care about us?’
‘I am looking i
nto some charities. You say those Thai boxing people have done the same to others?’
‘Yeah. It wasn’t easy after the tsunami. We should have waited. It’s just the government money didn’t come quick enough and we trusted them. People are really scared of them now.’
‘Who else got cheated? Can you take me to them?’
‘Sure.’
They left the bar and walked through the bars and the stalls until they came to a stall on the edge of the lit area. They found a couple with a sleeping baby lying on a piece of cardboard. Their stall was a small one, the usual tat mainly: necklaces, shell ornaments but also some beautifully carved wooden figures. The man was sat on a stool carving one, and the woman was making a silver wire necklace.
They looked up and smiled but looked concerned at the sight of Summer with Shrimp. The man stood to greet them. Summer spoke to him in Thai. Then she turned to Shrimp.
‘This is Yada and his wife. They had a business on the beach before the tsunami.’
Yada nodded furiously. ‘It was a good business, sir. We had a shop, it was my grandfather’s shop. In our family many years. My father too, he was a furniture maker. Very beautiful.’ He pulled out a catalogue with glossy photos of ornately carved pieces of teak furniture. ‘Can make all these things.’
‘What happened?’ Shrimp took the folder and politely turned the laminated pages.
‘We were waiting for the money from the government and two people from NAP came and they said we could get money quicker if we let them help. I trusted them. They said that lots of people from the Netherlands collected money to help.’ Yada looked across at his wife. She looked as if she had lost her faith not just in the world but in her husband. Her silence spoke volumes. ‘I know I should not have. I thought I would get more money. I listened to them…I lost everything. They make me fill in forms. The money comes through and they show me a piece of paper that say I no longer own my shop.’