‘Honey, you’re always right,’ I said, snuggling up to her and kissing the back of her neck.
Afterwards, she lay in my arms, her hand on my chest. She has perfect hands, the nails beautifully manicured, the fingertips soft, the skin unblemished. ‘Do you want to know what I was really thinking?’ I asked.
‘Oh my Buddha, there’s more? Haven’t you ravaged me enough?’
I smiled. ‘I was wondering why I’m so lucky. Why do you stay with me?’
‘Because I’m your wife, Bob. That’s what wives do. Through thick and thin.’
‘Let me rephrase the question,’ I said. ‘Why did you marry me?’
‘You’re asking me that now?’
‘It’s as good a time as any. The warm afterglow and all.’
She prodded me in the ribs. ‘Because I love you.’
‘It’s as simple as that?’
‘And as complicated,’ she said.
‘Wow,’ I said.
‘And I love the way you make coffee for me first thing in the morning.’
‘You do?’
‘And the way you warm the milk first. And serve it with one of those Italian biscuits we got from the Emporium.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She sighed like a cat making itself comfortable. ‘So what are you waiting for?’
I made her coffee, warming the milk and serving it with a biscuit, and then spent another hour in bed with her during which time I forgot all about next door’s cockatoos.
After I’d showered and dressed I tried Jon Junior’s cellphone again but it was still unavailable. Then I checked my email. There were a dozen or so work-related emails and one from a tourist wanting to know if I could recommend a good hotel near Patpong, but no reply from Jon Junior.
I emailed the two scanned photographs of Jon Junior to half a dozen guys who run Thai-related websites. I asked them to put Jon Junior’s pictures and details online and to get back to me if anyone knew where he was. It was a long shot but some of the sites had upwards of twenty thousand visitors a week. I also put the photographs on my site. I sold antiques online at Bangkokbob. biz and had most of my stock on the website. Over the years I’d expanded the website to include advice on living and working in Thailand, and I’d started a question and answer service, more as a hobby than anything else. Now I was getting a couple of hundred hits a day and a reputation as the man who knew all there was to know about the Land of Smiles. I was selling a lot of antiques, too.
It was the website that had got me started as a part-time private eye. A woman in Seattle who’d bought a couple of Khmer statues from me sent me an email asking if I’d go around to her husband’s hotel and check that he was okay. He’d gone to Thailand on a golfing holiday with half a dozen of his buddies and she hadn’t heard from him for three days.
She’d imagined all sorts of scenarios, most of which involved her husband running off with a sloe-eyed beauty.
There was no great mystery. He’d gone down with food poisoning and was in hospital. His buddies had headed off to Pattaya after the doctors had said that he’d be back on his feet in a day or two. They’d assumed that he’d phone his wife, he’d assumed that they’d done it.
I called her, put her mind at rest, and a week later I received a cheque for five hundred dollars that I hadn’t asked for. I hadn’t even thought about money. The guy ran a computer business and a few months after he got back to Seattle he called me and me to check out a Thai software firm that he was planning to do business with. I made a few calls and discovered that the two guys running the software company had a history of ripping off Western investors. The Seattle guy was so grateful that he sent me a cheque for five thousand dollars and passed on my name to all his friends.
Now I probably got half a dozen requests for help every week. Most are through the website or word of mouth. A few get pointed in my direction from the Western embassies. I don’t take on every case. Just the ones that I find interesting, or where I know that I’ll make a difference. I liked Mr and Mrs Clare and I wanted to help.
I wanted to reunite them with their son.
And I wanted to lose the feeling I had that something bad had happened to him.
I looked at my watch. It was time to visit the Kube.
Or at least what was left of it.
CHAPTER 6
The Kube was in Sukhumvit Soi 71, also known as Pridi Banomyong, named after the seventh prime minister of Thailand who ordered it to be built. He also founded Thammasat University, the country’s second oldest. He did a lot of good things for Thailand, and I don’t think he would have been impressed with what had happened in the street that bore his name. Two hundred and twenty three young people dead. Many more injured. And all because some Thai wannabe rock star thought it would be a good idea to let off fireworks in the middle of his show.
I paid the taxi driver and waited until a stream of motorcycles had passed by on the inside before opening the door and getting out. The air was stiflingly hot after the blisteringly cold aircon and within seconds my face was bathed in sweat. Panels of corrugated iron had been erected on a scaffold frame to shield the burnt carcass of the building from the road. Two uniformed policemen were standing by their Tiger Boxer motorcycles. One of them was drinking a can of Red Bull.
‘I’m here to see Colonel Somsak,’ I said in my most polite Thai. ‘He’s expecting me.’
One of them pointed at a gap in the corrugated iron and I went through. I could smell the ash and seared wood before I saw the building, or what was left of it. It had once been a two-storey building, the lower part built of concrete blocks and clad with wood, and the upper storey made of teak. Only the blocks remained, the grey concrete stained with black soot. The window frames had been reduced to ash and there was broken glass all around.
Somsak was standing in front of a concrete arch on which the name of the club was spelt out in yellow metal letters which had buckled in the heat of the fire. He was wearing his brown uniform that looked as if it had been spray-painted onto his athletic body, a peaked cap with gold insignia and gleaming black boots. His Glock was in its nylon holster on his hip and he was holding a transceiver as he spoke to a pretty woman in a black suit who was carrying a Louis Vuitton briefcase. Standing close by were two more uniformed officers.
Somsak grinned when he saw me and waved his transceiver. ‘Khun Bob, come and meet the Public Prosecutor,’ he said. ‘Khun Jintana, this is the Khun Bob I was telling you about.’
Khun Jintana smiled and managed to wai me which was no mean feat considering she was holding the briefcase. It was a nice wai, too, with eye contact before and after. I figured the wai was more out of respect for my wife than for me but I gave her a wai back anyway.
Somsak grinned again and hugged me and patted me on the back with his transceiver. ‘Good to see you, my friend.’
‘Terrible business,’ I said, nodding at the carnage behind him.
Somsak nodded. ‘You should have been here on the night,’ he said. ‘It was bad.’
Somsak was based at the Thonglor station, not far from my apartment, and the Kube was on his patch.
‘Will there be prosecutions, Khun Jintana?’ I asked.
She smiled, showing perfect teeth. ‘That remains to be seen, Khun Bob,’ she said. ‘The investigation is on- going.’ She smiled again.
I had spoken to her in Thai and she had replied in English. Perfect English, but then my Thai is perfect, too.
‘Two hundred and twenty-three dead,’ I said. ‘That’s terrible.’
‘Most of them teenagers,’ said Somsak. ‘And a lot of them underage. It doesn’t look as if they were checking IDs. And it’s two hundred and twenty-five. Two more died overnight.’
