Death in the Kingdom

by Andrew Grant

  ‘Thought I’d stay a couple of days and then head back to Phuket for a while. I’ve got some leave coming up,’ I replied, trying to focus on something, anything other than my ex-wife.

  ‘The apartment’s yours as long as you need it. Maybe we can catch a drink or a meal later?’ Don Don gave me a sheepish grin. ‘Janice would probably come with us if we do the meal thing. We’re sort of involved,’ he admitted.

  I feigned surprise and wondered if Babs was as on for dinner as she was for sex. I also wondered if Don Don and Janice knew Babs’s old man. It was a sure thing they did, given the small expat community centred around the embassy. Maybe asking her would be too much of a risk. I decided I would do it solo. Anyway, I told Don Don okay to a meal, and we arranged to meet at the apartments at seven.

  I watched the activity in the security office for a moment or two as the new team got ready to enter the inner sanctum. Carter and his men had been relegated back to the role of hired gunslingers. I waved him farewell and got a casual salute in return. I would head back to the apartment, have a shower and catch up on a few winks. I wondered if Babs had woken up and made it to work. If not, I could rule out sleep.

  23

  I called Sami as I walked back to Soi Chitlom but only got his voice mail. He was still out of range. I’d try again later. I doubled back a few times but no one was following me. I entered the foyer of the apartment block without stopping. The same bored security guard as before was at the podium. I still wanted to kick the bastard’s arse. I strangled that impulse and took the lift up to my floor.

  The door to number eleven was ajar and the lights were on. Babs was either still in the place, or she had gone and left it open or, third alternative, someone else was in there. I slipped the Walther into my right hand and eased the door open with my left. I went in fast and low, moving left as I did so in case someone was waiting behind the door. They weren’t, and Babs was still there.

  My beautiful playmate was lying naked in the middle of the floor. The tiles under and around her had caught her body’s supply of blood and created a huge dark puddle. ‘Oh, Christ!’ I physically stumbled. ‘Oh, God!’ I was calling on all the deities from my Catholic upbringing, but none could help Babs and I doubted they could help me anymore either.

  Babs’s head sat upright on its severed stump on the glass-topped coffee table. The beautiful green eyes were wide and blank and there was blood on her lips and trickling down her chin. Someone had repositioned the table so it sat right where the ceiling light could best illuminate the macabre centrepiece.

  I can’t remember how long I was locked there off balance but I forced myself to do what I had to. There was the taste of sour bile in my throat and sinuses, but the charge of pure adrenaline followed closely behind. I hit each room in the apartment in sequence, fast and eager to stitch whoever I found full of holes, knowing in my gut that the killer was long gone. But I had to check, had to hope, because I knew the implications of the ghastly tableaux in the lounge were going to spin me right out when I stopped moving and shock set in.

  When my circuit of the apartment brought me back to the lounge I closed the door, locked it and went back to squat in front of the coffee table.

  Babs’s face was the colour of blue-tinged chalk. Her eyes were impossibly wide open. Her lips were pulled back to show her teeth in a ghastly death grin. Whoever had killed her had positioned a Bangkok telephone book behind the head to keep it from falling over. I stood and turned to look at the body.

  The wound that severed the head had been clean. A razor-sharp blade, heavy enough and used with practised skill, had sliced through muscle and vertebrae with equal ease. Bone gleamed white amidst the deep red of the severed neck muscles. The blood pooled like black oil on the white tiles. There was so much blood.

  I looked beyond the body. There was a blood spray up the wall beside the door leading into the main bedroom. The door was open. The killer had perhaps been pressed against that wall when Babs had walked into the lounge. He had grabbed her from behind and done the business, pivoting her as he grabbed her and slashed her throat, one hand tangled in her hair, the other pulling his blade right to left through her neck, front to back. He must have been left-handed. Killing stroke made, he had then simply pushed the body away from him and left it to bleed on the floor while he arranged the head in its macabre display.

  I got to my feet and went to the bathroom, this time to check on other things. The tiled floor panel which hid the safe seemed undisturbed. In the main bedroom nothing that I could see had been touched. My bag sat in the bottom of the wardrobe where I had left it. The computer was still in its padded side pocket. This most certainly hadn’t been a robbery. I looked around the room. Babs’s clothes were draped over the back of the chair by the bed, just as she had left them.

  ‘Who and why?’ I muttered. ‘Why?’ I slid the wardrobe door closed and went back into the lounge. I sank into one of the two-seaters and just sat. I didn’t look at the head on the table—I would see that forever. I’d turned my mind inwards and was trying to find the invisible and decipher the unknown. Why Babs? It wasn’t the CIA way to extract cheap revenge using an innocent. They could play the roughest game in town, but not like this.

  I retrieved my phone and tried Sami again. I left an urgent message on his answering machine. I was going to need his help to clean up this mess. Then I was going to have to find whoever did it and exact total and absolute revenge, not only for Babs’s sake but also for my own.

  Revenge was a noble concept, or in this case, a noble emotion. I remembered people telling me it was a negative emotion, a waste of energy, bad karma, blah, blah. It might have been so in the world they lived in, but in my world of shadows and demons there was nothing sweeter.

  Avoiding looking at Babs I got up off the couch and went into the kitchen. If ever I needed a drink it was now. I opened the fridge door and reached for a ‘beer, wishing I had something stronger.

  Geezer’s head sat on the top shelf of the refrigerator, propped up by a container of margarine and a small block of cheese. Strange how little details like that etched themselves into my mind when my brain hit overload. The eyes, thankfully, were closed and his mouth was shut. There was a smear of dried blood at the corner of his lips. Apart from that, the old bugger could have been asleep but for the fact his tanned face was now purple and green. The late Raymond ‘Geezer’ Terrant had been dead for some time. He had been subjected to hell before the moment of his release to the next world. I let the refrigerator door swing shut and staggered into the bathroom. I puked up everything that was in my tortured gut. I sluiced water over my face. It didn’t help. My brain spun between denial and rage and my heart was thumping hard enough to burst out of my chest. ‘Fuck,’ I whispered. ‘Why? Who?’

  The sound of distant police sirens snapped me out of my funk. Were these guys coming for me? Given time I could get Sami to provide a clean-up crew and make it all go away. I didn’t have time if those sirens were for me. I could find myself caught up in Thai sticky paper for the next ten years. I went into the bathroom and opened the safe, grabbing my passports and cash. I retrieved the holdall from the wardrobe and dumped everything I owned into it. Then I headed for the door.

  ‘Sorry.’ I whispered a collective apology to Babs and Geezer as I went out into the corridor. If she and I hadn’t got it together she’d still be alive, beautiful and vibrant, screwing her beautiful arse all the way to a comfortable old age. If I hadn’t been to Geezer’s, he might still be alive. The fucking world was one big ‘if’ at that moment in time.

  The sirens were louder. Had the motherfucker who had done this been watching for my return to the apartment and anonymously called the cops the moment I had appeared? I guessed he had. Tuk Tuk? That thought crossed my mind as I hit the emergency stairs and went straight to the basement. I didn’t think so. A shudder ran down my spin as I crossed the car park. What if he or they had got to Sami as well?

  I stepped out into the street
through the car park as the first police car pulled up at the main entrance forty feet further down the street. Another car followed close behind. I turned left and headed for the nearest entrance of CDS at a steady walk. Once inside I went through the department store and emerged out on Ploenchit. There were more sirens cutting through the city din. They were going to try and head me off at the pass. Fortunately I had a head start, pun not at all intended. I was on home soil at the embassy before the first car came into view on Wireless Road. I was safe for the moment. I needed Don Don and fast.

  Don Don was in an office on the first floor of the main administration block. He would be there for the duration while the party continued downstairs in his own corner of the world. He was completely stunned when I told him about Babs and Geezer.

  He didn’t need any convincing that I was clean. As far as Babs was concerned, anyway, he and I could prove where I had been virtually every second of the last few hours since I had left her in my bed. Even the fucking keystone cops would figure out that I had a big bad enemy out there who was fucking my friends as he tried to fuck my mind.

  As it turned out, Don Don had police contacts high up in the scheme of things.

  He made a call and five minutes later the guy at the other end came back to him. Yes, there had been a tip-off that a girl had been killed at the apartment. Yes, it had been anonymous. Yes, they had already found the other head in the refrigerator. Yes, they were about to put out a warrant for Daniel Swann. Yes, they would hold that for the moment, and yes, they would send the detective in charge to the embassy.

  When Don Don hung up he opened a desk drawer and produced a bottle of reasonable whisky, not that it would have mattered. I’d have drunk anything at that moment. He poured two glasses and mine contained a quarter of the contents of the bottle. The detective would come and take a statement. If he were convinced I was innocent, I walked. If not, I stayed where I was. I sure as hell wasn’t hitting the street until I had absolution. Sitting in a Thai prison on indefinite remand was not an option in my book. Diplomatic immunity was a last resort, but I would use it as a trump card only if I had to. I tried Sami again, and again there was no response. I was getting scared for him and I knew I needed to speak to him more than anything else in the fucking world right then. What the hell had happened to him?

  It was 20:40 when the detective in charge of the case arrived in response to Don Don’s call. Inspector Tipayakesorn was a dapper little guy in an expensive suit. A suit that I would hazard probably cost a normal Bangkok detective three months’ salary. This guy was either on the take or he was very, very high up in the food chain. Don Don had made the introductions and vouched for my presence at the time of Babs’s murder. Tipayakesorn didn’t need to interview any of the hundred witnesses Don Don said he could produce. ‘I have your word, Mr Wisehart, that is sufficient,’ the inspector said in accented but precise English. ‘You may call me Kit,’ Tipayakesorn said focusing on me. ‘Kit Carson,’ he added with a chuckle.

  ‘Are you a cowboy?’ I asked in Thai.

  ‘In my youth, perhaps,’ he replied with a smile. ‘If you will excuse us, Donald, we will talk in Thai as Mr Swann is obviously fluent. The tape I will make may be transcribed by someone who does not speak good English and we want to be precise.’

  Don Don agreed. Kit removed a small Sony dictaphone from his briefcase, set it upon the table between us and began the interview. Don Don, who had admitted to having only a basic knowledge of Thai, sat to one side and tried to follow our discussion as I gave Kit my cover details and explained exactly what had happened when I had entered the apartment. I omitted details relating to the gun, of course, and didn’t tell him about Sami Somsak. Bringing him into the picture would cloud the waters. I did recommend that the security guard at the apartments be given a real working over. My bet was the prick would have let the killer into the building. ‘Who do you think would bear you ill will enough to do these terrible things?’ Kit asked for the recorder.

  ‘I have made a lot of enemies,’ I replied. ‘Trade is more and more cut-throat every day.’ Yeah, I was aware of another bad and very unintentional pun. Kit didn’t seem to pick up on it. ‘Maybe I have stepped on one set of toes too many,’ I continued.

  ‘Gangster enemies?’ Kit wanted to know.

  ‘I have had bad dealings with one gangster in particular,’ I said. I figured that if I pointed a finger it might as well be at Tuk Tuk as anyone else. Given his record, having him as an enemy would possibly help prove that I was a seriously wronged innocent.

  ‘Who is that?’ Kit wanted to know.

  ‘Tuk Tuk Song,’ I replied.

  The name produced an immediate reaction in the inspector. Kit sat back in his seat with a look of consternation on his face. ‘Tuk Tuk Song is a very bad enemy to have,’ he said at last. ‘Very bad!’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘But perhaps it was not him. It may have been this woman’s fiancé, but I think not. My old friend lived in Patong Beach. His death is linked to me and to causing me much pain and regret. It is the same with the girl, I think.’ Kit was nodding. I could almost see the thought processes taking place behind his eyes. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to fit the pieces together. They, whoever they were, had their reasons for wanting to rattle and roll me to hell and back. Kit didn’t know that for a fact, but he was no fool. What he did know was that whatever business I was really in, my knowledge and perhaps relationship with Tuk Tuk put a whole different slant on things. He knew I wasn’t a civilian and this hadn’t been a nice little social killing spree.

  ‘I think we can rule out a jealous boyfriend,’ Kit said at last. ‘Whoever did this thing wanted you to pay a very, very high price. As you said, someone is out to hurt you very badly. Perhaps it is Tuk Tuk Song. If so, I would advise you to leave Thailand immediately. There will be no charges for you to answer.’ Kit stood and scooped his recorder off the desk and then, almost as an afterthought, he paused and held the Sony towards me. ‘If you will give me the details of your late friend, we will have people look for the rest of him.’

  That was it. Kit and I shook hands and Don Don escorted him out, leaving me alone with the whisky bottle. I poured another solid belt and tried Sami again. Still nothing! Don Don was back. He tipped more whisky into his own glass and sank into his seat. ‘What are you going to do?’ he was asking. I shrugged and finished my drink in one long swallow. I had to find out what the hell was happening to Sami. I was getting a really bad feeling about him. Sami Somsak could look after himself. That had been proven many times before, but this was a new game. Who the fuck was the mystery player? Something was niggling way back in my brain but it stayed just out of reach.

  Don Don asked if I wanted another place to stay, a legitimate safe house perhaps? I rejected that. I looked at my watch. It was 22:34. I knew what I was going to do. I was going to go to Sami’s and find out what the hell was happening. Then I stood up and the effects of the whisky hit me. I’d emptied my gut of food and the alcohol had gone straight to my head. I staggered a little and almost fell. Don Don, bless his little cotton socks, steadied me. ‘I think you’d better get some sleep,’ he suggested and for once I couldn’t summon an argument. ‘Couch next door, toilet at the end of the hall. I’ll organise a blanket or two.’ I didn’t argue. A few minutes later I spiralled into the blackness of a deep and thankfully dreamless sleep.

  I awoke long before dawn and felt like total crap. I used the toilet and splashed water on my face to try and make myself feel better. It didn’t. There was instant coffee in a kitchen alcove. I made a strong one and loaded sugar into it. The lights in this part of the building were mostly off. I felt totally alone. I took my brew and my cigarettes, cracked a balcony door and went out into the muggy pre-dawn. There was a patio table containing an overflowing ashtray. I pulled up a chair. It was time to try and put everything in focus. I was tempted to phone and speak to the security types at the US Embassy. Should I apologise to the CIA operative in charge for being sort of r
esponsible for killing off a dozen of his people and for slamming a big helping of egg on their collective face with my decoy plan? I could just imagine his reaction.

  ‘Not them,’ I said aloud. Killing Babs and Geezer in that way wasn’t their style, nor was it Tuk Tuk’s. I instinctively knew it hadn’t been him. ‘Who?’ There were maybe a dozen arms and drug lords and the like in northern Thailand, Cambodia and Laos who would gladly pour petrol on me and set me alight if they had the chance, but that was business. This was a hell of a lot more personal.

  I knew there was only one choice. I had to make some calls. Sami still wasn’t answering his phone. I needed a phone book for the next one on my list so I went indoors. The battery light of my mobile was on, so I killed it and used the desk phone. It was a local call. I was going to speak to the guys in the white hats before I did anything else.

  ‘I could say you’ve got a hell of a cheek,’ Karl Isbaider said as he stirred the last of six lumps of sugar into his coffee. Then he gave me a hard grin. ‘But then you always did.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agreed and took a sip of my own brew. Karl was CIA, the number two or three man in Thailand. He hadn’t told me which and I hadn’t asked.

  It was now 08:30 and Karl and I were having breakfast indoors at the former Hilton in Nai Lert Park. It had been changed to a Swissôtel. Whatever, the food looked delicious but I wasn’t eating. Karl and I shared an alcove as far from the rest of the diners as it was possible to get.

  ‘Categorically, Danny, we have not been playing any games with you.’ Karl reached for one of my cigarettes. I did the same and lit them both. He was trying to give up smoking he’d told me. It wasn’t working. Through a cloud of blue haze he continued. ‘We didn’t have any team out in the Andaman, let alone lose one. We didn’t tail you and we didn’t stake out the British Embassy. It wasn’t a CIA operation, Dan. End of story.’

  ‘Karl, I saw an ID from one of the dead guys in the water. It was State Department issue.’