I smiled easily. ‘That is good to hear,’ I said. ‘So there is nothing untoward, nothing that my friend should be concerned about?’
‘I wish that all companies were as diligent as this one in filing their tax returns,’ said Khun Wichit.
‘I wonder if it would be possible to have a copy of that file,’ I said. ‘So that I could give it to my friend. Just to show him how reputable a school his daughter would be attending.’
‘Quite impossible, I’m afraid,’ said Khun Wichit. ‘The Data Protection Act prohibits the sharing of our database with members of the public. The information we collate has to remain confidential.’
‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘But I wonder if perhaps the payment of a fee might facilitate the process. The information would remain confidential, of course. It would only serve to reassure my friend that his daughter’s education is in the hands of reputable people.
‘How much of a fee were you thinking about?’ he asked.
I smiled amiably as I looked him over. Assumption was a private university and while it wasn’t the best in Bangkok it wasn’t the cheapest which meant he came from a reasonably well-off family. His shirt had a Ralph Lauren logo on it and it looked like the genuine article. His watch was gold but not a make that I recognised and was probably plated. He wore a simple gold wedding ring but there was nothing simple about a Thai wife. On the desk was a framed photograph of two small boys in dark blazers. Private education wasn’t cheap in Bangkok. No photograph of the wife but he didn’t look as if he was taking care of himself so maybe there was a minor wife somewhere in the building. Minor wives weren’t cheap.
The trick was not to offer too little so that he wouldn’t be offended. But there was no point in overpaying. There could be a negotiation, but only if my first offer was somewhere in his ballpark.
His smile was as amiable as mine as he looked me over. What did he see? A Rolex Submariner that was scarred and chipped from twenty years of diving. A cheap suit that I’d had knocked up by an Indian tailor in a Sukhumvit backstreet for a couple of thousand baht. The material, a wheat-coloured linen, was fine but the stitching was suspect and I’d had to ask the tailor to redo some of the stitching around one of the buttonholes. Expensive shoes because I never scrimp on footwear but they were under the desk so he couldn’t see them. A hundred baht haircut, a hundred and twenty if you count the tip.
‘I thought perhaps a thousand baht,’ I said, as if I was thinking out loud. Probably equivalent to a day’s salary.
His smile tightened a little.
‘Two thousand?’ I added quickly.
He looked at his wristwatch.
Message received.
‘Three thousand?’
A pained smile. Close, but no cigar.
‘Five thousand?’
‘That sounds satisfactory,’ he said. He opened the top drawer of his desk and passed a pale green file over to me. He looked at me expectantly. I took five one-thousand baht notes from my wallet, slid them inside the file and gave it back to him. The file disappeared back into the drawer. He hit a few keys on the keyboard, then gave me a curt nod. ‘Please, I shall only be a few minutes.’
He left me alone in the office. I looked at the clock on the wall as it ticked off the seconds, wondering if he was going to return with the police and I was going to end up sleeping on the floor of a Thai prison for the next five and a half years. When Khun Wichit returned he didn’t have Bangkok’s finest with him but he did have a computer print-out which he gave me with a knowing smile. ‘If there is anything else I can do for you, don’t hesitate to call, Khun Bob,’ he said. ‘I am at your service.’
I’d overpaid.
You live and learn.
CHAPTER 22
The specialist that Doctor Duangtip sent me to see was a kindly-looking man in his late fifties with greying hair and metal-framed spectacles with round lenses. I waied him as I walked into his office. He seemed momentarily confused at being waied by a farang but he waied me back half-heartedly, then stood up and shook hands. His hand was as dry and cool as a lizard. Mine was bathed in sweat and I wiped it on my trouser leg as I sat down. His name was Doctor Wanlop and he was, according to Doctor Duangtip, one of the most experienced intestinal cancer specialists in Asia.
There was that word again.
Cancer.
Doctor Wanlop had more certificates than Doctor Duangtip, but his were all from Thai institutions. Like Doctor Duangtip he had a computer on his desk and he tapped on the keyboard and studied the screen for several minutes before turning to smile at me.
‘My colleague explained about CEA?’ he said, peering over the top of his spectacles. He spoke in English, which was fine with me.
‘He said it was a marker for…’ I hesitated. I didn’t want to say the word. I wanted to use something less final. Something I could tell my wife.
‘For colorectal carcinoma,’ he said.
Whoa there, hoss. That sounded a hell of a lot worse than cancer. Colorectal carcinoma? Where had that come from?
I took a deep breath. I didn’t want my voice to tremble when I spoke. ‘For cancer, he said.’
There. I’d said that. The world didn’t end. The sky didn’t fall in. But I didn’t feel any better.
Dr Wanlop smiled. It was a reassuring smile, a smile that told me not to worry, that he knew what he was doing, that he would cure me of whatever ailed me. My heart was pounding like a jackhammer. The heart of a twenty-five year old.
‘Carcinoembryonic antigen, to give it its full name, was used as a test for cancer of the colon for a few years, but I’m not convinced that CEA levels are a valid marker for tumours,’ he said.
That sounded hopeful. It sounded a hell of a lot more hopeful than colorectal carcinoma. And he was smiling reassuringly. That had to be a good sign.
Right?
‘In fact, I can say with confidence that of the last twenty people who passed through that door with elevated CEA levels, not one had a tumour.’
I frowned. ‘But Doctor Duangtip said that CEA was an indication that there was a problem.’
‘It can be. And it’s only right and proper that he had you come and see me. But I don’t think you should worry too much. These days we tend to use CEA more as a treatment marker. If after we’ve carried out a procedure we get a sudden elevation in CEA, then we know that our procedure has not been effective.’
Thais aren’t great at breaking bad news. In the old days, when they’re going to execute a criminal, they hid the machine gun behind a sheet. The condemned man didn’t even know that he was going to be shot until the bullets ripped through him.
Doctor Wanlop was certainly making me feel a lot better, but I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure that he was just sugar coating his diagnosis to stop me worrying. Maybe he just wanted me to feel better, right up until the moment that the cancer ripped through my guts.
‘So what happens next?’ I asked.
‘We should have a look inside,’ he said. ‘Reassure ourselves that there isn’t a problem. Assuming that we don’t find anything, we will know that you have a naturally high level of CEA.’
‘An operation, you mean?’
‘Not exactly. We can put a very small camera inside your intestines. We give you a small injection, just to relax you.’
Right.
Fine.
