The fact that Jon Junior had switched rooms suggested that he’d wanted to move closer to the Betta English Language School. But the Betta English Language School had been on the list that Stickman had given me. And they’d denied all knowledge of Jon Clare Junior.
CHAPTER 15
Petrov Shevtsov was a big man who looked as if he worked out a lot. He was wearing a too-tight black t-shirt and khaki chinos and brown suede loafers with tassels on them. He had a couple of days of stubble on his chin, or maybe his hair just grew faster than mine. He wore a thick gold chain on his right wrist, a gold Rolex on his left, and he had a gold chain with three Buddhas on it around his neck. I knew his name was Petrov Shevtsov because that was the name on his office door. He hadn’t introduced himself when I’d walked into his office. ‘So where did you teach before?’ he asked.
‘New Orleans,’ I said. ‘Night school.’
‘You’re qualified?’ There were three cellphones on the desk close to his right hand. All brand new Nokias, the sort that let you surf the internet, take a five megapixel photograph, pinpoint your position to within a few feet and, on a good day, allow you to make a phone call.
‘Sure.’ I handed over a degree certificate showing that I’d got a degree in English from New Orleans University, and a TEFL certificate from a college in New Orleans. A print shop in the Khao San Road had made them up for me for five hundred baht. The owner of the shop had asked for two thousand but I’d bargained him down. It took him five minutes on a computer and I had perfect fake qualifications.
I’d faked the qualifications but I’d used my own name just in case I was asked to show my passport or driving licence.
‘References?’
‘I’m having some sent over.’
‘We pay four hundred baht an hour,’ said Petrov, tossing the certificates back to me. ‘You’ll get a minimum of six hours a day. Most of our classes are early mornings or evenings and weekends. Weekends are our busiest time.’
‘So that’s two thousand four hundred baht a day, right?’
Petrov squinted at me as if he had the start of a headache. ‘I just said, four hundred an hour. If there’s no class, you don’t get paid. If there’s a class, you get paid. Most of our students attend regular schools and use our school to get extra English lessons so most of the classes are early morning, in the evening and at weekends.’
‘How many pupils in each class?’ I asked. I was asking the questions I figured a job applicant would ask, but all I seemed to be doing was annoying the Russian. His frown deepened.
‘A class is a class,’ he said. ‘One, ten, a hundred. You teach, they learn. Do you want the job or not?’
So that was it. Interview over. ‘Sure,’ I said.
Petrov waved at the door. ‘Start the day after tomorrow. Talk to the secretary, she’ll give you a schedule.’
‘What about a work permit?’
‘Teachers fix up their own permits.’ One of his cellphones started to ring.
‘But I’m okay to teach without one?’
‘Immigration don’t bother us,’ said Petrov. ‘If it worries you, wait until you’ve got your permit.’
He answered his phone and spoke a few sentences of rapid Russian. When he cut the connection he glared at me as if he was annoyed that I was still in his office. He waved at the door again and looked at his Rolex.
‘A friend of mine used to work here,’ I said. ‘Jon Clare.’
‘So?’
‘I just wondered if he was still here.’
‘If he is, you’ll see him. If he isn’t, you won’t.’
‘Do you have a number for him?’
‘A number?’
‘A phone number. So I can call him.’
Petrov sighed. ‘I can’t be expected to remember all the teachers who work here,’ he said. ‘Talk to the secretary.’ He picked up one of his cellphones and tapped out a number, then swung his feet up onto his desk. He was barking in Russian as I left his office.
Petrov’s secretary was a Thai woman in her fifties with permed hair and Chanel glasses with pink frames. She was wearing a pink shirt with a fern pattern on it and peach slacks. I told her who I was and she gave me a photocopied sheet of times and classroom numbers and a dog-eared textbook. ‘The book is four hundred baht,’ she said.
‘I have to buy my own book?’
‘All teachers buy their own books,’ she said. ‘It is the company policy.’
I gave her four one hundred baht notes. ‘Does my friend Jon Clare still work here?’ I asked.
‘Is he a teacher?’
‘Sure. He started about three months ago.’
She went over to a filing cabinet by the door and asked me to spell out his name. She pulled out a drawer, ran her fingers over the files, then pushed the drawer closed. ‘No one called Clare,’ she said.
‘I’m sure he worked here,’ I said.
She sat down at her desk again. ‘No file.’
‘He’s an American. Twenty-one, good-looking.’ I took the photograph from my jacket pocket and showed it to her.
She shook her head before she’d even looked at the picture. ‘No file,’ she said.
‘But do you recognise him?’
She shook her head again.
So that was it. The school where Jon Junior had worked for three months didn’t have a file on him.
Interesting.
‘Would you show me around?’ I asked.
She nodded and I followed her out of the office. There wasn’t much to see. Eight classrooms, four on each side of a corridor. There were glass panels in the doors so that anyone walking down the corridor could see inside. I pictured Petrov striding up and down, cracking a whip and urging his underpaid teachers on. There were classes in four of the rooms and two were empty. Each room had a dozen wooden chairs with panels screwed to the side so that the students could take notes. On the wall, a large whiteboard. Two windows with the blinds drawn and fluorescent lights overhead. At the end of the corridor was a staffroom. Two teachers were sitting on a wooden bench, blowing cigarette smoke through an open window. They looked up guiltily as the secretary opened the door and showed me in. There was a no-smoking sign by the window. Along one wall was a line of metal lockers. Half were padlocked. There was a coffee percolator and a microwave and a stack of stained cups in a grubby sink.
Salubrious.
Not.
The teachers nodded at me but said nothing as they made a half-hearted attempt to hide their cigarettes. The secretary blinked amiably at me. The unspoken question hung in the air like the stale smoke: had I seen enough? I nodded. More than enough.
Opposite the school was a shophouse with a few tables on the ground floor and a glass-fronted fridge containing beer and soft drinks. I sat down at one of the tables and ordered a Phuket Beer but they didn’t have any so I said I’d have a Heineken, one from the back of the fridge, and no ice because it didn’t look like the sort of place that bought in ice. There was probably an old man in the back with a sweat-stained t-shirt and a rusty knife hacking away at a big block of the stuff, and while my immune system was well up to speed when it came to dealing with Thai microbes and viruses, there was no point in tempting fate.
At four o’clock a bell sounded from somewhere up on the second floor and a couple of minutes later a stream of boys and girls flowed out of the main entrance. The girls wore the standard Thai uniform of white shirt and black skirt and I was too far away to see the small badges that identified the individual schools. A few had regulation
