by Ken Austin
In another part of the lobby, a Japanese tourist sat in a plush chair with a young Thai prostitute next to him. He was trying to negotiate an evening of pleasure but was running into fierce opposition from the girl he had chosen.
“You Japanese crazy!” she said as she started raising her voice, growing weary of the persistence of the pervert who had convinced her to come back to his hotel. He had appeared relatively normal when he had started chatting to her at the bar she worked at. When they had arrived at the hotel and the talk had turned to the raw fish he had waiting in the hotel room refrigerator she had started to leave and the cajoling from him had started. She had the price up to 10, 000 baht but was still ready to bolt because this wacko had that crazed and determined look in his eyes that she had seen before.
So this is Bangkok, thought Veneer.
The next six months were hectic and exhilarating and surpassed anything that Veneer could have imagined. Veneer tried to follow up on some of the information that Streeter had provided, but it seemed as though the passage of time had rendered those cryptic tales meaningless.
Still, Veneer set about establishing a connection to people who had information about crimes committed in Bangkok and the justice system. He lucked out one evening as he sat in a bar on Sukhumvit Road. A group of Thai men were in the same bar drinking and celebrating something. One of the men saw Veneer sitting alone and motioned him over to their table. Veneer ambled over, not yet over the novelty stage of being a foreigner in Thailand, and not realizing that he was offering himself up as a temporary clown. But Veneer was feeling like he had made a mistake in traveling to Thailand at that point, and had not made any friends since Mac Grifton at the airport. The drunken Thais presented a way to alleviate the feelings of depression.
The Thai men turned out to be police officers. Veneer decided that he would not leave until he had the name and phone number of at least one of them. He succeeded in doing just that, and as a result, his dream started to come into focus, framed by the blood and seediness of the violent lives and deaths of foreigners in Thailand.
Six Months Later
When the phone rang in Veneer’s Bangkok apartment at 3 a.m. on a Friday, night, it meant that someone else’s broken life was about to enter his world.
“Mr. Sal? This is Primchai. Something happened tonight. If you are interested, come to this address in the next hour,” the man said.
Primchai was the Thai police officer Veneer had met that fateful night six months earlier. Thai police officers saw mutilated corpses most days of the week. Gangland slayings, horrific traffic accidents, and suicides from one side of the steaming city of 10 million to the other. His call usually yielded a decent harvest of misery.
“Foreigner?” Veneer asked.
“Yes, foreigner.”
By foreigner they both meant the same thing: a Caucasian. Living in Bangkok and caught up in some bit of nastiness.
Veneer was pleased. When a foreigner was involved, it was always more lucrative. And more intriguing for him personally.
Veneer could see Primchai’s gaunt face on the other side of the phone. Gripping his mobile phone and swiveling his head to watch the other officers milling about the destruction. Probably in some serviced apartment down on Sukhumvit road. A street that seemed to be the unofficial gathering place for the doomed foreigners of Bangkok. Probably a corpse on the floor, the surreal details of a fresh crime scene taking shape.
Veneer copied down the address and rang off. He stood in his 21st floor apartment and stared out at the city. Somewhere out there something bad had happened to a Brit, an American, perhaps a Scandinavian, or maybe one of those strange Canadians.
Veneer stood up quickly and shouted out in shock. He forgot that he had been sitting naked on the cheap vinyl covered couch that was part of his furnished apartment. It felt like a giant band-aid was just ripped off the back of his arse and balls.
He gingerly strode to the bar in his sitting room and opened the stainless steel ice bucket that he kept filled at all times. He dropped a few cubes into a crystal tumbler, splashed some whiskey into the glass and poured in some soda water. He took a gulp and braced for whatever the night had to offer.
Veneer paid the cab driver, got out and surveyed the building in front of him. A few police cars parked outside. The humid air of Bangkok clung to him, even at this early hour. Veneer looked around some more. High, white-washed concrete walls. Round the clock security. Expensive cars parked in the parking area under the condos. The people who stayed here had money.
He phoned Primchai’s number.
“I’m here.”
A few minutes later Primchai exited the building closest to the front gates and walked toward Veneer.
Primchai’s lean, whippet body, high cheekbones and dark skin came into focus in the light from the condominium gate. Primchai reminded Veneer of a darker Bruce Lee with a scar down the right side of his face. Someone you wanted on your side.
“Mr. Sal,” Primchai offered as greeting. “We go with the usual story?”
“Yes, I’m a visiting crime reporter from Canada. Doing some research for a novel that I’m writing.”
Not too far from the truth either.
They walked up to the entrance of the building that Primchai had come from. Veneer glanced up. About 20 floors in each building. Sliding doors that led out onto spacious balconies.
Primchai took out a swipe card and opened the door to the building. They headed for the elevator. Primchai stabbed the button for the 16th floor.
Veneer started moving his head from side to side, getting jacked up about what he was about to witness. He was about to get a look at the results of some mayhem. He wondered if the scene that preceded the killing would rise up in his imagination like it often did. A surreal patina of almost-reality drawing him in and providing the kind of motivation and temporary obsession that would turn him into a machine for the coming weeks until he milked the situation for whatever it was worth. Veneer looked at Primchai as he kept rocking his head from side to side, a freakish grin on his face.
The elevator door opened and they walked into the corridor. White tiles and fluorescent lights gave the corridor an unnatural glow. It reminded Veneer of the Bangkok morgue.
Two police officers stood outside the door to room 1604. Primchai nodded at them and motioned towards Veneer. Stone faces on the police gave nothing away as Primchai and Veneer walked through the door.
A coppery smell hit Veneer in the face as he entered. He scrunched up his face and ran his hand through his lank mop of hair. A short entryway opened into a kitchen on the right. The entryway led to a small corridor at the end of which was a bedroom door that was opened. To the right of the bedroom door was the main living area. A well-lived in apartment thought Veneer. On the bedroom door was a poster with a scantily clad woman and a look that said she made a career out of staring blankly at cameras in hopes of offering up some kind of simplistic fantasy to the fools who stared back.
Veneer followed Primchai as they rounded the corner into the living area. Blood was splattered around a lifeless body on the floor. Blood. That was the smell that hit Veneer when he first walked into the place. The average-sized human body contains about five and a half to six pints of blood. It looked as though every last drop had been blown out of the carcass on the floor.
A man in civilian clothes was crouched in front of the corpse. He was examining the body and writing notes in a small notebook. He prodded the face of the corpse with some kind of instrument. He pried up the eyelids. He was immersed in his work and was not likely to look around. Veneer loudly shifted his feet on the tile floor. The man glanced quickly behind and looked at Veneer and then looked back at the corpse.
“Who is the foreigner Prim?” he asked as he continued to work on the corpse.
“He is a writer from the Canada He is taking notes for a book that he is writing,” Primchai said.
The man with the notebook scrunched up his face as if to say, “Who t
he hell are you trying to fool?”
Veneer stuck out his hand and held it there. Both Veneer and the man looked at Veneer’s hands and then at the rubber gloves that the man was wearing. Veneer withdrew his hand.
Veneer now looked closely at the body on the floor for the first time. The man turned away and went back to his work.
Veneer took out his camera, flicked off the flash, and started taking photos of the scene. After he returned to his apartment later that night, he would upload the photos to his computer and select the best of the lot. Then he would start putting together a narrative about the life and demise of the corpse that lay twisted on the floor.
He would then reach out to the contacts he had made in the last year or so. A second tier newspaper in Hong Kong, another rag in Korea, and a couple right here in Bangkok. All on the lookout for gruesome photos of bloody crime scenes. And crime scenes with Caucasian bodies brought an even higher premium.
The hardest part for Veneer was contacting the family of the dead foreigner. They were often angry and abusive towards Veneer. He didn’t blame them. But he still had to do it. Still had to see if there was something there that he could run with. Veneer truly believed that something good could come out of a book that looked at the details surrounding a foreigner killed in Thailand. And if the individual had died in strange circumstances, then his research could potentially bring the criminals to justice.
Veneer discovered later that night that the dead foreigner was a young Canadian named John Faledon. With the help of Primchai, he got a hold of the telephone number of Faledon’s mother in Canada. When Veneer talked to her, she had already been informed of the news by the Canadian embassy in Bangkok. She sounded empty, as if the news had left her numb. She advised Veneer that she would be travelling to Bangkok three days from now. Veneer arranged to meet her at the airport. He thought of the fact that in many ways he was exploiting the death of Faledon but he also knew that with the right approach, he could honour his life and perhaps shed some light on exactly how he had died.
He didn’t know if this would become the story he had been looking for. But he was chasing down leads, gaining access to crime scenes, and writing about the filth and seediness of foreigners living in Thailand—a strange subculture indeed. He was on his way.
The Embassy Thug
He thought that other people didn’t have to deal with the same clutter in their heads as he did. He hated the self-help culture of books and talk shows where the poor little victims were trotted out for all to see. The tears and the assurances that it wasn’t their fault. There were always some people who gained some satisfaction out of the fact that it wasn’t them who had suffered. It was other people who were damaged. These idiots who unburdened themselves were only cheap entertainment for the masses.
He noticed that he was gripping the edge of the table where he was sitting. He quickly glanced around, took his hands away from the table and adjusted his tie.
Gant Pimlock answered the phone on his desk. The receptionist told him someone had come in. walked up to the emergency help section of the British consulate and asked to see someone who could help her with a serious situation. Pimlock told the receptionist to tell the woman to have a seat.
Perhaps a relative of the corpse they found on Saturday night? He picked his teeth with the end of a letter opener, used his other hand to move the mouse on his desk and pull up a website devoted to the latest football scores. Probably wants help transporting the corpse back home for a proper funeral.
Pimlock thought of the reams of freaks, wackos and assorted deadbeats whose lives he had seen the aftermath of during his time in Bangkok. You couldn’t’ make up the details of some of the detritus he had helped to ship back home after things had gone pear-shaped. Strangely enough, the family members were often pretty decent. It often seemed as though there were little connection between the filth whose lives had been cut short and the people who had spawned them.
Pimlock flicked through the list of contacts on his mobile phone and wrote down the number of Somchai Funeral Arrangements. A nice little connection Pimlock formed about two years ago and which resulted in a kickback for every Brit corpse he tossed Somchai’s way.
Embalming the corpse, having it sent back home, a makeshift casket for the transport. The family often wanted to change the casket at the last minute when they realized what shoddy quality it was. It was always too late at that point though. Everything paid up front before the body was released to the family.
Six was the total number of bodies over the last three years. Six families who had actually balked at the cost and never claimed the body after it had gone to the funeral home. The Home Office always picked up the tab in such cases and the body eventually found its way home. But to consciously analyze what it would cost to bring your dead adult child home and then decide against it.
But Pimlock understood perfectly.
Pimlock grimaced as he looked at the messages in his inbox. Subject line: quarterly report from Thailand embassy due on Friday. Sender: Nixon Grundwald. Grundwald. The sound of the name sent a spasm of rage through Pimlock. Grundwald had made sure that Pimlock was sent to the Bangkok office a few years ago. One of the least desirable of all foreign postings. And a sure mark that one’s career in the embassy was going to stall, perhaps permanently.
“I will be right out,” Pimlock said into the phone to the receptionist. He pulled himself up and strode over to the mahogany wardrobe that was in the corner of his office. He opened one of the doors and looked at himself in the mirror that hung on the back of the door. He straightened his tie, ran his hand through his hair, sneered, and closed the door.
“Good morning Ms. Shevton,” Pimlock said as he opened the locked security door that led into the secondary waiting room, the room ostensibly reserved for those who were involved in some kind of emergency.
“Shelton,” the woman said.
He saw a middle-aged woman, hair shoulder length. Held herself with some kind of pride. The sense of pride can’t be about her dead son, surely, Pimlock thought to himself. Had that drawn look of middle aged people who take up exercise and take it to obsessive levels. He moved towards her tentatively, thinking of his Yank counterparts who always mentioned the hugs they offered to complete strangers.
“I’m Grant Pimlock,” Pimlock said, thrusting his hand out.
The Shelton woman gripped Pimlock’s hand as she looked into his eyes. He pulled his hand back quicker than he should have. Clammy.
“I want to find out what happened to my son,” the woman said.
“Let’s go into my office,” Pimlock said.
He opened the door with a flourish and motioned her to sit in the chair in front of his desk. Pimlock moved behind his desk, pulled out his leather upholstered chair, and sat down, folded his hands on the desk and looked at the woman in front of him. The smell of air-conditioning and a particular Bangkok office scent filled the room.
“So, I take it that your son was John Faledon.”
“Yes. I remarried. That’s why we don’t share the same surname.”
“How long had he been in Thailand?”
“I’m not sure exactly,” she said. “I believe about three years. I was only in touch with him sporadically.”
Pimlock saw an image rising in his mind of a feckless drifter who paid no heed to his family.
“He wasn’t close with his family?” Pimlock said, tilting his head back.
“We went through periods where we were in frequent contact,” she looked through the window to her right that opened out into the garden of the embassy. The dull white noise whirr of the air conditioner filled the room. “And other times we didn’t hear from him for stretches of six months to a year.”
“Was he working in Bangkok?” Pimlock always enjoyed the voyeuristic aspect of probing the last few years of the dead expat’s life vis a vis the relative who flew in to pick up the final pieces. Very few actually broke down while talking to him. But when the questions he
asked inevitably led the parent or brother or friend to get up their hopes that the embassy would somehow take an active role in “getting to the bottom of things,” Pimlock also enjoyed the speech he gave in which he informed the individual that there “isn’t much we can really do.”
“I assume so. He seemed to do all right with regard to money,” she said. Pimlock noticed that she had a faraway look in her eyes. “But money is a bit of an issue now,” she said as she turned and looked directly at Pimlock for the first time since she had entered the office.
“We can only provide assistance in making arrangements for getting your son home. And some translation assistance if you need to deal with any Thai officials.”
“I want more than that,” she said.
“What exactly?” Pimlock asked, curious as to what she thought the embassy owed her.
“Help in determining what my son did with a large wire transfer that was sent out here two weeks ago.”
“Did he receive the transfer?”
“Yes, that’s easy enough to confirm. But to find out what he did with the money. If he transferred it to a bank account here, we have to make arrangements for retrieving that money. He has no will.”
“No bank book or ATM card in his possessions?”
“No. I didn’t find any in his flat nor in the contents of his pockets that they let me look through last night.”
“Then, not much we can do really,” Pimlock said. “If you want to hire a lawyer and make enquiries at the various banks that is up to you.”
“No. I would like your assistance,” she said. “Before I left London, I sent a letter to the Minister of Foreign Affairs asking for help in tracking down the money.”
A letter to the Minister, Pimlock thought. No guarantee that her request would result in any action. But it was a certainty that they would follow up on at least contacting the embassy in Bangkok.