looked up and down the road, and then back to me. She smiled again, showing me a flash of her braces.
‘I wanted to ask you about Tukkata,’ I said. ‘She goes to your school, doesn’t she?’
Kai nodded.
‘Was she at school today?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t see her,’ she said. ‘But we’re not in the same class.’ She giggled. ‘We’re not in the same year.’
‘Do you know when she was last at school?’
Kai ran a hand through her shampoo-commercial hair. ‘Is she in trouble?’
‘No, I wanted to talk to her about Khun Jon. I thought she might know where he is.’
‘Why?’ she asked, which was a good question.
I didn’t like lying to a kid who thought I was a teacher, but telling her why I was trying to find Jon Junior would be way too complicated. And would involve me explaining why an antiques dealer had been trying to teach English.
‘I found some personal stuff in his locker,’ I said. ‘I wanted to send it to him.’
She pouted and looked at her watch again.
‘When was she last at school?’ I asked.
Kai shrugged. ‘A week ago, maybe. Like I said, we’re not in the same class so I don’t always see her. I’m year nine, she’s year twelve.’
‘You’re only fifteen?’ In her designer shoes and carrying her Gucci bag she looked older, but now I was looking carefully at her unblemished skin and slim figure I realised that she was just a kid. And that Tukkata wasn’t much older.
‘Do you think Tukkata might know where Jon is?’ I asked.
‘Perhaps,’ she said. She frowned and ran a hand through her hair. Her nails were a deep red, the colour of blood. ‘I think he might be a janitor now.’
‘A janitor? Why would you think that?’
‘The last time I saw him, he was talking on the phone. He said something about working in a boiler room.’
A top-of-the-range black BMW came down the road towards the school. Kai stiffened when she saw it and clutched her bag to her chest. ‘I have to go,’ she said.
I figured it was probably her father, come to collect his darling daughter. I wanted to ask her more about the boiler room but she was already walking towards the car. ‘Hey, Kai, wait,’ I said. I took a pen from my pocket and scribbled down my cellphone number on an old Emporium receipt. I gave her the piece of paper. ‘If you see Tukkata, get her to give me a call.’
She took the number and as she drew level with the car, the back door opened. I caught a glimpse of a large Thai man in a suit and then she got in and the door closed.
As the car drove by all I could see was my own reflection in the tinted windows. Then it was gone.
A janitor?
That didn’t make any sense.
But a boiler room. That definitely did.
CHAPTER 25
People come to live in Thailand for a host of reasons. Retired people come for the climate and the relatively low cost of living, men come because it’s easier for them to get a girlfriend even if more often than not have to pay by the hour, others come because they’re fed up with what has happened to their own countries and hope that they’ll have better lives in the Land of Smiles. There are Vietnam vets living around Washington Square who never wanted to go back to the States after their tours were over, and criminals in Pattaya who would be arrested if they ever set foot in their own countries. But almost everyone is in Thailand by choice. They want to be there.
Not Brent Whittington.
He was practically forced onto the plane at gunpoint, kicking and screaming all the way to Bangkok.
Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But Brent never wanted to come to Thailand, and neither did his wife and two sons. They were perfectly happy in London, where Brent headed up a hugely profitable stockbroking operation for one of the big banks, one of the ones that didn’t nearly go belly-up in the financial crisis that hit Europe and the States. There are those who say that Brent had a lot to do with the fact that his bank did well while so many others almost went to the wall. Brent is far too modest to ever say as much, but he is pretty contemptuous of most of the UK’s banks and says that they deserved what happened to them.
Back in 2005, Brent’s bank went into partnership with a stockbroking firm in Thailand, owned by a wealthy family with Royal connections. Try as they might the joint venture just couldn’t make money, and Brent’s bosses decided that the only way to salvage the situation was if he went out to run it.
At first Brent point-blank refused, but eventually his bosses made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, which is why he now has a seven-figure salary, a luxury villa in a gated community, a Bentley and driver on call twenty-four hours a day, unlimited first class travel between London and Bangkok, and places in one of Thailand’s top schools for his boys. It was one hell of a good deal and one that made him the envy of the rest of the stockbroking community. Brent still wasn’t happy to be in Thailand, though, and had a cast-iron guarantee that after five years he and his family would be back in England.
I met Brent through his wife, Samantha, who wandered into my shop one day and walked out with a nineteenth-century fifty-thousand baht reclining Buddha. She came back with Brent a couple of weeks later and we hit it off and he’s been a friend ever since. He’s still counting the days before he gets back to London but he seems happier than when he first arrived. Brent and I don’t agree about much, as it happens. He thinks cricket is the best game in the world and I know for a fact that it’s baseball. He thinks Thailand is a Third World hellhole and I can’t think of anywhere that I’d rather live. And he’s sure that the best steaks in Bangkok are served in the Rib Room on the thirty-first floor of the Landmark Hotel while I’m sure they’re only available in the New York Steakhouse of the JW Marriott Hotel on Sukhumvit Soi 2. I was the one who wanted something so I arranged to meet him at the Rib Room and told him that the evening was on me.
‘Are you playing poker on Friday?’ he asked as he sat down and took the menu from one of the Rib Room’s many pretty waitresses.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘You?’
‘Probably not,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go to Singapore and probably won’t get back until late. At least I’ll save money, I’ve lost pretty badly the last few weeks.’
‘Yeah, Somsak’s been on a bit of a winning streak. And Tim.’
‘You don’t think they’re cheating, do you?’
I laughed. ‘A Thai policeman less than honest? Perish the thought.’ I shook my head. ‘Somsak plays for fun, he doesn’t care if he wins or loses. And Tim’s just a good player. ‘
‘And we’re on losing streaks.’
I waved over a waitress and ordered a bottle of red wine that I know he likes, and we spent the next hour eating perfect steaks and chatting. I waited until we’d finished our meal before getting around to the reason that I’d invited him. It seemed only fair.
‘I could do with some advice,’ I said as he stirred brown sugar into his coffee.
‘Buy cheap, sell high,’ he said.
I grinned. ‘I knew I was doing something wrong.’ I put a spoonful of sugar into my coffee, even though Noy is always nagging me to give up on the sweet stuff. ‘I want to pick your brains about the boiler room situation.’
‘Are you looking for another job? Because I have to warn you it’s a young man’s game.’
‘It’s a young man that I’m looking for,’ I said. ‘And before you say what I know you’re going to say, it’s a missing person case. A young American, a Mormon. His parents are frantic and I’m trying to help.’
‘A young American in Bangkok?’ He raised his glass of red wine. ‘Try Soi Cowboy, then Nana Plaza, then Patpong. If that fails then try the Khao San Road.’
‘He’s a Mormon, Brent. Doesn’t drink, doesn’t go out with girls, wouldn’t say boo to a goose.’
‘And you think he’s working in a boiler room? I don’t think so, my friend.’
