by Rob Brunet
Coach Somchai was at the edge of the group around the police officer and saw Matt walking towards him. Matt waved to him to step towards him so they could talk privately without the police overhearing. Matt gave Coach Somchai a respectful wai, hands clasped together in front of his face.
“Coach, what’s happened? You said this is one of your boys?”
“It is, Matt. You know him. It’s Yod. He was one of the boys from the Metta Home for street kids that we would see at the Muay Thai training camp. Somebody killed him and left his body here last night.”
He nodded towards the pigpens. “He was only fifteen years old. He had no parents or at least none claiming him.”
Matt asked Coach Somchai, “How did you get brought into this?”
“It was Tarn, the head house mom at the Metta Home. The police called her to come and identify the boy as they thought it might be one of her kids. She came down and identified him and then left immediately as she couldn’t stand to see him like this. She phoned me right after and asked me to come down and talk with the police to make sure they treated the case with respect. She was afraid they would just say it was an amphetamine-related drug case and let it go at that. She swears the boy wasn’t doing drugs, either buying or selling.”
Matt nodded, “Well, I understand why the police would think that way, Coach. Even the motorbike guy who drove me over here asked me why I wanted to go anywhere near Jet Sip Rai. He said it was dangerous. He said it was just for people buying and using amphetamines or Ya Ba as he called it.”
The nearby Jet Sip Rai slum was a strip of run-down housing built by squatters on land owned by the Port Authority. The slum was immediately adjacent to the port where truckers from all over Thailand came to pick up goods shipped in from abroad. The drivers brought Ya Ba from suppliers at the port to keep themselves awake for the long hauls up and down country delivering the goods. Pinning the cause of the murder on drugs would be the default mode of the police on any investigation in the port area as drugs were involved in ninety percent of their cases.
Matt looked back towards the crowd watching from the entrance to the slaughterhouse. “What about that guy?” he asked gesturing towards the foreigner up above the ramp who was still talking with the crowd.
“Oh, that’s Father Paul. He’s an American missionary priest who is in charge of the Metta Home. He got the call about the boy and came to see for sure that it was one of the boys from Metta. He’s made his point here and talked to the crowd. He’ll go home soon.”
Sure enough as they watched, the priest stopped talking to the crowd and walked towards the van that had brought him to the slaughterhouse. A man wearing an Australian bush hat who had been recording his activities put away his camera and joined him.
Turning back to the death scene and pointing towards the police, Matt asked, “What do we do here, Coach?”
“Just join me in talking with the police colonel in charge, Matt. I want to let him know we have worked with the boy and haven’t seen him involved in drugs at all. After being yelled at in public by the priest, I’m sure he’s not in a good mood so we don’t argue with him. Let’s just try to plant a seed of doubt in his mind that we can exploit later.”
“Okay, Coach. Lead the way.”
Somchai turned and walked over to the officer and waited politely as the he gave some instructions to the police on the scene. The colonel finally turned to Somchai and Matt.
Somchai gave him a polite wai and started to introduce himself. He was interrupted, “No need to introduce yourself, Coach Somchai. I know who you are. I was a fan of your boxing. When I was younger my dad would take me to the Lumpinee stadium. I saw you fight. You were a great champion. What can I do for you?”
Somchai was surprised and happy to be recognized. “Thank you, Colonel. It makes an old man feel good to be remembered.”
Turning to Matt, Somchai introduced him. “Colonel, this is Kuhn Matt. He and I have been helping Krue Pip of the Penang 96 Muay Thai camp train some of the boys from the slum. This boy, Yod, was one of our boys. We want to find out what happened to him. He was not a Ya Ba boy, Colonel. He didn’t use or sell amphetamines.”
The officer didn’t answer but looked at Matt for minute, studying him. Matt was used to this. As a luuk krung, literally half child, the name given to Thai with a Western parent, his appearance, Thai but not quite Thai, always caused a bit of a pause with a Thai audience.
Matt responded to the once over by showing respect, giving the policeman a wai and a traditional Thai, “Sa wa di krup,” greeting with his hands clasped in front of his face.
The colonel, always conscious of his high position, returned a halfhearted wai and nodded back. After staring at Matt for a moment, the colonel said, “I believe I’ve heard of you, Khun Matt. You have friends in the DSI, I believe.”
“I helped out the DSI last year as a consultant on a case where some American scientists went missing, but only as a consultant.” Matt was playing it low key and humble knowing that anything that indicated that he felt he was important could cause offense.
“I think it was a bit more then consulting. I heard you were with the team that shot it out with the drug runners and finished them off. It was a good job. Well, both of you are welcome here but my officers have the situation in hand. The boy’s throat was cut no more than four or five hours ago. It rained last night but this happened after the rain. As you can see he bled out here so it was done here. We are waiting for the medical examiner to arrive so that she can take charge of the body. Then we will learn more.”
As he said this, a white van followed by a Mercedes coupe pulled up on the street above.
A camera truck from one of the TV stations pulled up at the same time.
“Ah, here she is now. It must have taken her a while to get her make-up and hair right and alert the press.”
A slender woman in her mid-forties, dressed in black slacks and a pink shirt, stepped out of the Mercedes. True to the description, she looked ready for an audience: make-up just right and with a modish, almost punk hairdo, her short black hair mixed with patches tinted blond and swept up. At the same time, she projected a no-nonsense approach, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves as she walked down the ramp and calling behind her for her staff to bring a box of medical equipment down for her. This was the fashion-conscious, very PR-aware, but very competent and strong willed national medical examiner, Khun Wattana. From the second she was on the scene, she clearly considered herself in charge. Matt could tell by the body language of the police officer that he was not comfortable but was also not about to publicly challenge the lady.
The colonel turned for a last word to the Somchai and Matt, but nodded to the coach. “Let my officers perform their investigation. Any information they learn about this boy, whether Ya Ba was involved or not, as well as what this lady has to say, I will share with you. If you learn anything of substance from your contacts, please feel free to call me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I will try to find common ground with this lady.”
He walked towards the body but stopped short and waited for the medical examiner. Both just nodded to each other, no exaggerated formal respect was to be shown by these two. The medical examiner had locked horns with the police before, publicly disagreeing with their theories on murder cases too often. Both were aware that this case could be the occasion for more contention.
Matt turned to the coach. “Come on, Coach, let’s get out of here. We can’t do anything for Yod and these guys will find whatever there is to find here.”
The coach nodded slowly and turned to follow Matt. He found the scene overwhelming. For Matt violent death had been too common a scene yet he found it overwhelming in different ways.
They stopped on the street above the entrance ramp. The crowd was still growing, especially now that a TV van had arrived. Matt took the coach by the arm and led him away from the crowd.
“What do you want me to do, Coach? The police will handle this.”
“Matt, once the TV cameras go away the police will put this on the back burner. You heard what he said about Yod, ‘this boy.’ Yod is not important to them. The case will slowly disappear. You know how to do these things, Matt. You have friends in the Department of Special Investigation. You worked with them last year and helped to track down the yakuza gang. Ask some questions. Don’t let them bury this.”
Matt looked back at the scene, the TV truck and the crowd up above, the police and the medical examiner below. In a few hours the body would be gone, the pigs for the evening slaughter would start arriving on trucks from the countryside and the slaughterhouse would be back to its normal business. Three to four hundred pigs would be slaughtered by early morning and the cycle would go on.
“Okay, Coach. I’ll try. Who do I talk to? Who will know about Yod?”
“Start with Tarn, the house mom at Metta. She should be there now waiting for a report from me. Go talk to her. I can’t do it. This sort of violence is beyond me. You have experienced war and death. She should know about Yod. She is the one who got him off the street and back into school. I’ll phone her and tell her to expect you.”
Chapter 3
The slaughterhouse slum was built between a canal and a main cargo road, and it was a short, five-minute motorbike ride across that road and the adjacent railroad tracks to the Jet Sip Rai area next to the river. Jet Sip Rai slum was on a strip of land owned by the Port Authority. Forty or more years earlier during the Vietnam War, it was a large tract of undeveloped land, mostly swamp, which presented a great opportunity for the poorest of families to move in and squat there. The Port Authority had not fought the squatters much over the years, but now they had plans for development and were slowly pushing them off the land.
The Metta Home was the largest structure on a narrow street or soi. The soi was flanked by a series of rundown Chinese style shophouses. Stray dogs wandered the street. A walkway, too narrow for two people to walk side by side, ran over an open ditch filled with sewage and led to rows of shacks behind the main road.
As Matt arrived at the entrance to the Metta Home, there was a large number of young children, boys and girls aged six to twelve, all dressed in their school uniforms filing out to get into vans and go off to their various schools. All were laughing and joking with one another and peeking in curiosity at the stranger entering their home. It was a scene full of the children’s joy of life and anticipation. A dramatic counterpoint to the vision of death and despair Matt had left behind just minutes before at the slaughterhouse. He felt somehow lighter and more hopeful just seeing the children. Ahead of him the principal building of the Metta Home was three stories tall with walls of concrete block. The exterior was painted a tan color, and it was built around an open courtyard. A slim forty-something woman dressed in black slacks and a white blouse was waiting just above the steps up to the entryway which led to the wide interior court yard of the building. As he walked up the steps she came forward and welcomed him.
“Are you Khun Matt?”
“Yes, and I guess you are Krue Tarn.”
“Yes, Coach Somchai called and said you would be here and let me know what is happening about Yod. Please come inside and sit down.”
Krue Tarn led Matt through a glass door on the side of the entranceway to the courtyard and into an office. There was a window looking out on the courtyard which had several trees, a small grass space and some tropical flower beds. It gave a calming air to the building amidst the bustle of the children heading out to school.
As he sat down and accepted a cup of tea from Krue Tarn, Matt looked around and thought it was like being back at school in the principal’s office. Her office was quite clean and spare with pictures of children and paintings by children on the walls. On her desk was a stack of files Matt presumed to be case files of the children in the home.
Matt was still uncertain what was wanted of him with regard to the boy’s death, so on the way over he had decided to probe a bit first to find out just what, besides the death of one of her wards, were the concerns of Krue Tarn. But first he thought he had best let her know he was acquainted with the boy.
“Krue Tarn, I should let you know I had met Yod and worked with him a few times at the Muay Thai camp at Penang 96. Coach Somchai is my teacher and he and I help out there at times with the coaching of the young boxers. My impression was that Yod was a good boy. He was not a natural at Muay Thai and lacked some confidence, but it seemed important to him so we all wanted to help him. I’m very sorry about his death.”
“Thank you for that, Kuhn Matt, and thank you for coming now. You’re right. Yod was not a confident boy. He had some serious issues like most of our children.” She reached over and patted the top folder on the stack she had on her desktop.
“I can share with you some things about him we don’t normally provide to the public. Now that he is gone, it won’t matter and may help you understand my concern about how the police handle his death.”
She took the top folder, laid it down on her desk, opened it and looked at it for a few seconds. Then she sighed heavily and looked up at Matt again.
“Many people refer to the Metta Home as an orphanage but that is not true. I would guess only about ten percent of our one hundred eighty kids are without any family. Most of our kids are here because they are not safe with whatever family they have come from or the family exists but has fragmented for differing reasons and cannot be found. We spend a lot of time, often years, and effort looking for extended families for the children and when we can we help them to go to that family situation.”
She sat back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest in a way that seemed to emphasize the gravity of her words.
“Most of our kids come from abused or at-risk backgrounds. The court makes them our wards until a safe family situation can be found for them. Sometimes we get children as infants; sometimes they can be fourteen or fifteen years old. Yod came to us when he was ten years old. We found him in the Patpong bar area, he had been sitting outside a gay go-go bar begging, and one of the more responsible bar owners in the area, called us and asked us to come and take care of him. He didn’t know what happened to his family just that he was in Lumpini Park and some bar workers on their way to work in Patpong took him along when he asked them for money for food.”
She leaned forward now, not being dramatic but wanting Matt to listen and understand.
“We found that Yod had been sexually abused for some years, apparently by a male relative, who brought him to Bangkok and sold him to another man. Yod was afraid of the new man, saw a chance and ran away. We haven’t had problems with Yod. He was happy here for the most part and happy to go to school. However, as you might imagine due to his treatment, Yod has had problems with himself. We try hard to control it but this can be a rough place in terms of the kids teasing and taunting each other. Some of the other boys at times called him gay and tried to get him to perform sex acts with them. We do have some gay boys here who band together, but Yod usually didn’t join them. He was trying hard to prove he was a ‘real man.’ The Muay Thai training was part of that.”
Matt felt as if he was swimming under water and couldn’t find the surface. All of this was so far from his experience and reality that he couldn’t find a frame of reference for it. He felt he had to reach out and grip something so he asked a question.
“Krue Tarn, I’m lost. Do you feel this is all somehow related to Yod’s death?”
“I’m not sure. It may be. We understand that recently Yod has formed some kind of relationship with a man. What that relationship is we don’t know, but Yod has had some money in his pocket, five hundred baht notes, that he didn’t get from here. I learned of this from one of the other boys, a member of the gay group, who said Yod had shown him the money and said he had found a new friend. He said he had seen Yod and another boy from the local community talking with the man after school several times recently before coming back to the Metta Home at night. Then last night Yo
d didn’t come home.”
Matt was surprised at this turn, but at the same time felt a bit of relief.
“If that’s the case, the police should be told. I’m sure they can track this man down and see if there is anything there.”
Krue Tarn shook her head at Matt.
“No, you don’t understand, Kuhn Matt. It will be just the opposite. The officers in charge of the port police station have been friendly to us, but the police here are not trained to handle crimes against children. They most probably don’t want to bother with this case already because it’s just one of ‘those people.’ One of our kids, who have no value because everyone believes they must have done something terrible in the last life to be born into such misery in this life. The police, at least those not specially trained to deal with sexually abused or trafficked children, for the most part don’t want to be associated with our kids in any way. Most of the people of Bangkok feel the same way. This belief is one of the little discussed dark sides of our religion that prevents people from caring for poor or abused children except from a great distance. Also, if the police hear about Yod getting money from outside, they will just assume he was hired to run Ya Ba for one of the drug dealers infesting this place, that he took too much of the product himself and got into some crazy fight ending in his death. It’ll be just another reason to write him off.”