Winner Kills All

by RJ Bailey

  He was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt under a loosely tied waffle robe that looked like it had been lifted from a hotel. He gave off a pungent aroma of fish sauce and was big enough to make me think he could overload the boat all by himself. He tried to hustle me for a ‘desert-island picnic’ until I showed him the picture of Matt.

  He shook his head. But his eyes had betrayed him, almost disappearing into his fleshy cheeks with recognition. ‘Come on. You know him. He runs boats like you.’

  ‘Not know,’ he insisted. ‘No farang run boats.’ He grabbed a handful of rice from a bowl, worked it into a ball and stuffed it into his mouth.

  I had chosen my words badly. It wasn’t powerboats Matt was running out to Koh Phangan. All those Moondancers needed – demanded – stimulants. I could imagine Matt telling himself he was just supplying a need: if he didn’t do it, somebody else would . . . all the old shit.

  I looked out at the prostrate bodies on the sand; the massage women fanning themselves under their umbrellas; the hawkers patrolling the edge of the surf; the sun sparkling off the waves; a kite surfer blasting along parallel to the shoreline, and beyond him a brace of angry-bee jet skis, the thin stream of their watery exhausts making it look like a pissing contest. Beyond them, a couple of gloomy, careworn bulk carriers rode at anchor.

  As I scanned the scene, I slipped fifty US dollars on the table.

  ‘He not here,’ he said as he palmed the money. ‘That one, he hang around Sanam Marina. No run boats. Crew.’

  ‘Where’s Sanam Marina?’

  ‘By Big Buddha.’

  Close to the airport then, for we came in directly over that temple. Big Buddha was one of the island’s prime attractions, although, dating from 1972, it was hardly some ancient relic. But judging by the photographs, it was large and very shiny and very popular, even if it did look like it might have ‘Made in China’ stamped into its base.

  I retrieved my shoes and had begun to walk off the beach when he called me. ‘Hey. Lady.’

  I turned. He was standing at the edge of the sala, his robe flapping open to show his grubby boxers beneath. ‘You should stay away from that boy.’

  A warning that was about sixteen years too late.

  The Sanam Marina was a new development. Billboards advertised berths and the building of a hotel. The approach road was freshly tarmacked, the clapperboard huts clustered around the entrance freshly painted in bright pastels, more Caribbean than Thai. There was the inevitable moped rental place, a boat excursion office and a couple of food shacks. A signpost announced the development of a Miami-style beach club, which appeared, in the illustration at least, to be a clone of a Nikki Beach. It all looked sleepy and underused as yet, peaceful, except for the whine of the Airbuses and Boeings on their final approach to the airport.

  There was a uniformed security guard on duty at the barrier, but he hardly looked up from his magazine as I skirted the striped pole. I raised a hand in greeting and he flashed a smile before going back to Nation Weekend.

  The three piers here were wide, substantial and robust, a trident thrusting out into a newly dredged channel, pointing directly at the green humps of distant islands. There were a couple of decent-sized yachts, three RIBs – rigid inflatable boats – and two powerboats occupying berths. Many more slots awaited custom.

  And then, there he was, at the base of the central prong of the trident, talking to two young women, both blonde and in their twenties. Just his type.

  Matt.

  I had imagined seeing him for so many months but, at first, he didn’t seem real.

  Like I was watching a hologram or a projection.

  It was as if he had been Photoshopped in. And my reaction was puzzling.

  I thought I’d be overwhelmed by anger or hatred. But a strange numbness crept over me. I had finally caught up with him, yet I was rooted to the spot. My limbs were concrete. Then I heard his laughter float over on the breeze – a lascivious chuckle – and the spell was broken. In that instant, he became solid flesh and bone.

  He was dressed in cut-off jeans, flip-flops and a T-shirt with ‘Ebola’ written on it. I guessed it was the name of a bar or a band, rather than an announcement of an infection. His hair was longer than the last time I’d seen him; tousled, and bleached by the sun. He sported a straggly beard, his skin tone a deep, even brown.

  Bastard looked good. It almost reminded me why I married him in the first place.

  But that moment of warmth was soon chilled by the thought of what he had done to me. And by the fact that Jess was nowhere to be seen, while he chatted up the local, albeit transitory, talent.

  I took a step forward into the hundred metres of clear space that separated us.

  The thing about Matt is, he always did have a cockroach’s instinct for survival. I had barely taken two more strides when he turned and looked at me, his eyes squinting in disbelief. I could see the cogs turning even from that distance.

  And he did what his instincts always told him to do.

  He ran.

  Matt sprinted off towards my right and I did what my instincts always told me to do: I took out my gun.

  I almost had to rip the words from my throat. This wasn’t what I had wanted. ‘Matt, stop or I’ll shoot.’

  Actually, it should have been stop and I’ll shoot. Because that was the only way I would be able to hit him. It was difficult to clip a running figure, even one in flip-flops, and particularly tricky with the popgun I had. Besides, I didn’t want to kill him. Just slow him down.

  I let off a warning shot way over his head. It was disappointingly quiet. I could hear Freddie’s voice in my skull: I can fart louder than that. Indeed she could, and the feeble snap of the bullet was swallowed by sea and sky. The girl’s screams were louder.

  ‘Matt, I just want to talk. About Jess.’

  But he knew that. Why else would I come halfway across the world?

  My eyes followed the path he was on and I saw where he was aiming: a black motorbike in the shadow of one of the new, freshly painted huts.

  I started to jog towards it. As I did so, I caught some movement to my right. Nate Segal had emerged from between two of the other empty units. In his hand, he had a long wooden pole, part of a mast perhaps, and it was clear what he intended to do: stop Matt.

  Matt didn’t slow as Nate took up position, ready to wield the pole like a baseball bat. I considered shooting at the motorbike, then thought better of it. Ricochets, petrol, that sort of thing.

  Matt leapt on the bike like John Wayne onto his horse, vaulting over the rear and landing with a thump that would make most men’s eyes water. Maybe that would come later.

  Segal was only a few metres away from him, closing fast. Matt hit the electric start button.

  And that triggered the bomb.

  THIRTY-THREE

  I wish I had one of those clocks in my head that told me how long I was out. I don’t. But not long, I would reckon. I woke up to find myself pushed into a corner where a wooden wall met concrete. Judging by the pain in my shoulder, I had been flung against one of the huts. I didn’t move immediately. I let my vision come into focus, making sure that the reason the scene was fuzzy was because of smoke. My ears buzzed, whistled and popped. I slowly levered myself to sitting and took stock.

  The skeletal framework of the motorbike was embedded in the splintered side of a hut, the rest of it spread across the ground before me. Matt had been blown back towards the pier, on the way to where the girls had been standing. No sign of them now. His arms were outstretched, as if he had been crucified. One leg was twitching, but that didn’t mean he was alive. I couldn’t see Segal from where I was sitting.

  I pushed my back against the wall to help me stand upright and found myself keeling over to my left as my knee gave way. I steadied myself and looked down. No visible injury, but something had clumped me good and proper because little squirts of very fine pain – like toothache – were firing out from the joint.

  I moved stiff-leg
ged and bent from the waist to pick up my bag. I found the pistol among a tangle of parts that had come from the bike. It was possible one of them had hit my knee. Maybe the wheel. I swung my right arm back and tossed the weapon out to sea. When the cops turned up I could say the girls were imagining things. Gun? What gun? Then slowly, painfully, I hobbled over to Matt.

  It was a long time, I realised, since I had seen the injuries a bomb could cause to a human body. No two are alike. An explosion is a strange, capricious thing. You can analyse the physics of them all you like, but no two IEDs were ever identical, in my experience. You couldn’t predict who would live and who would die in the vicinity.

  Matt hadn’t died. At least, not yet.

  He had, though, lost a hand.

  There was just a stump at the end of his left arm, terminating in a tangle of bone and tendons. Blood was leaking out onto the concrete, although not as much as I expected – it looked like a clean sever, rather than a mangled one caused by blast alone. A piece of metal had excised it, was my guess, acting like a hot knife through butter. I felt like an octogenarian as I knelt down on my good knee and used one of my plastic restraining ties as a tourniquet on his arm. I could smell that desert dust again and I spat to one side, as if that would help.

  His face was peppered with small fragments of metal and glass. Nothing I could do about that. His breathing was fast and shallow, but that was shock. Again, I didn’t have the gear to deal with it.

  The skin on his lower legs, unprotected by jeans, was hanging off in blackened ribbons, showing the glistening connective tissue underneath. One flip-flop had gone, taking a toe with it. The other looked as if it was fused to his foot.

  I felt like weeping. I had no morphine, nothing I could help him with. I pushed myself to my feet and went searching for his hand. I found it on the edge of the pier, looking as if it were about to crawl over and drop into the sea of its own accord. I picked it up. The pinkie was missing. I looked down at the water, at the fish darting among the pillars of the jetty. I reckon they’d got it.

  I limped back over, rummaged in my bag and gaffer-taped the severed hand into his forearm. When I spoke, my voice was unfamiliar, distorted by the compression blast that had boxed my ears.

  ‘Matt? Matt? Can you hear me?’

  He groaned.

  ‘Matt, I need to find Jess. She’s in danger. Where is she?’

  What came out might have been a word, or maybe a sentence, but not a human one. I tried again and got a low groan. He was beyond answering any of my questions.

  ‘There’ll be an ambulance on the way,’ I said. Surely the girls or the security guy would have called one? ‘You’ll be fine.’ I took off my jacket and put it under his head. Drops of blood appeared on his forehead. I wiped them away with my sleeve, careful to navigate around two shiny horns of metal that had penetrated his skin.

  I heard a babble of voices and looked up. Some of the Thais from the moped shop were peering round the edge of the far hut, too frightened to approach.

  ‘Ambulance!’ I shouted in a voice that reminded me of a stroke victim, and then made the international phone sign. There was lots of nodding and they disappeared.

  I got back up. It was getting more difficult each time. My limbs felt like they needed lubricating.

  I found Segal about twenty metres from the blast. He had skidded on his back, propelled by the explosion. There was a snail’s trail of blood along the pristine concrete.

  I knelt down next to him. He was breathing, but the sound was wet, bubbly. The headlamp assembly of the bike had flown off and embedded itself in his chest. With its umbilical of wires, he looked as if he were a robot whose ribcage had exploded. The concrete around was sprayed with tubercular crimson globules.

  ‘Nate,’ I said.

  There was no reply. Just a horrible sucking sound from his chest. It was followed by a whistle, then a bubbling noise.

  I leaned over his face. It was relatively unmarked. ‘Nate. Ambulance on the way. Fuck. Bojan, eh? You said he liked to play games.’ His eyes moved under closed lids, but his lips stayed still.

  I examined him to see if there was anything I could do, albeit with no drugs and no trauma kit. His trousers were ripped to shreds, the skin beneath cut and grazed. But nothing I could see compared to that chest wound. The chances were he had internal injuries too.

  If I were in Iraq I knew what I would do. I’d give him morphine, write the dose administered on his forehead and go on to treat someone I might actually have a chance of saving.

  I leaned over him again, hoping he could hear me. ‘Nate, I’m sorry.’ Just as with Matt, small blooms of blood appeared on his face. It was then I realised it wasn’t Nate’s blood, just as it hadn’t been Matt’s.

  It was mine.

  I managed to pull back from him, to avoid collapsing on his chest wound, the second before I fainted.

  There are several hospitals on Samui, more than you would expect for an island of that size. All have one speciality: putting together foreigners who have fallen off motorbikes. We were a little more serious than that. The two ambulances took us to the green-roofed, low-rise Thai International Hospital.

  I was sick in the ambulance and, upon arrival, was taken to a private room, where I was stripped, washed, treated and put into bed by two nurses. All my questions were met with a polite smile.

  Thailand: Land of Smiles, even when what you really want is an answer to your fucking questions.

  I was visited by a man in a smart suit who asked me about insurance. I handed over a credit card and he seemed satisfied. I was insured – nearly all PPOs have an annual policy in case last-minute work abroad comes up – but I would worry about that later.

  The blood that had dripped on Matt and Nate’s faces came from a gash on my forehead. It wasn’t bad, but all injuries up there bled a lot – it’s just skin, blood vessels and bone, with no meat. It had been closed by the nurses with butterfly strips. My knee had swollen and was throbbing – it would need an X-ray. I’d been given painkillers and they had filled my head with Fuzzy Felt.

  After an hour of sitting up and trying not to sleep – they were worried about concussion – someone finally came to answer my questions. But not a doctor. A policeman. Well, they were always going to show up some time.

  Captain Sarit Sangkamantorn was in his thirties, well turned out in his uniform, with thick black hair and the whitest of smiles, which suggested excessive tooth bleaching. His English was excellent, albeit inflected with an American twang.

  He introduced himself and asked if he could sit. I said yes, and he positioned himself in a chair to the right of my bed, down towards the foot, as if he wanted to be out of my reach. Or perhaps he thought whatever I had was infectious.

  ‘How are you feeling, Miss Wylde?’

  Blurred around the edges was the real answer. ‘A little banged up. How is Matt? The one who lost a hand.’

  ‘He has been transferred.’

  ‘To where?’

  ‘To the Government Hospital. There is a specialist micro-surgery unit there.’ He held up his hand and examined it. ‘Apparently, they are one of the best in Thailand. We have a long history of farangs losing limbs . . . but not in this way. A bomb. Unusual for Westerners to be involved with bombs here.’

  ‘And Nate Segal? The other one?’

  ‘Being operated on as we speak.’ I analysed his words for any hidden meaning, but there was none. I knew Segal had been injured the most, even though he hadn’t been on the bike. ‘I assume he was not the target.’

  ‘No. I can explain . . .’ I gave him an edited account of Matt, Jess and the role of Bojan. I realised it came across scrambled and not a little deranged. Perhaps I was concussed.

  He frowned the whole way through my speech. ‘You know this man Bojan is on Koh Samui then?’

  ‘Well, no,’ I admitted. ‘Not for certain.’

  ‘You last saw him where?’

  ‘Bali.’

  ‘His full name?�
� he asked, flipping open his notebook.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, feeling foolish. I tried to recall if Segal had mentioned it. I didn’t think so. And I hadn’t read the files he had left me. But I did recall one thing from our conversation. ‘It was Saša Stanic originally. But he’ll have changed that . . . sorry.’

  ‘You think the bomb was planted by this man who is after your daughter?’

  ‘Yes. Which is why I need to talk to Matt.’

  He closed his notebook. ‘You are mistaken, Miss Wylde.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About who is responsible for this situation. This is not the first assassination attempt by rival gangs.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Forget this Serbian nonsense.’ He bent forward, an intense look on his face. ‘This is what you call a turf war. Drugs. Always drugs or sex. There is a battle for who supplies drugs across this island as well as Koh Phangan and Koh Tao. Your husband fell in with some Australians and their Thai partners. But he chose the wrong side. The newcomers. The original guys, Chai Po, objected.’

  I shook my head to try to clear it. That only got me a little hammer whacking at my left temple. ‘Chai Po?’

  ‘You say, perhaps, godfathers. From Han, originally. Some Burmese. Most start in Koh Tao working for the Five Families, and they send some here. They run protection, gambling, motorbike scams. And drugs. The Five Families control all here, Koh Phangan, as well as Koh Tao. They don’t want a sixth family. There have been shootings, stabbings. Last week a restaurant was firebombed. I think what happened to your husband was in response. Tit-for-tit,’ he said.

  ‘Tat,’ I corrected. ‘But it could still be Bojan. Your turf wars aren’t the only possible explanation.’

  He shook his head. ‘But the most likely. Drugs are mainly behind all incidents like this. I do not know your Bojan. And you do not even know his full name. And to me, this fits a pattern of the Five Families.’ I felt something like relief. A local gangster hit I could handle. It meant it wasn’t Bojan’s work.