'What?'
'Oh, who knows? A cup of sugar, isn't that what it always is?'
'Just curious?'
A sleepy shrug. 'This is Bangkok. Boring or not, he could have been anybody over there, just on the other side of the wall. A random silly-nickname generator. Someone who performed human sacrifices.'
'But he wasn't.'
'Not with that furniture. If he was sacrificing anything, it was taste.' She hoists the coffee cup and extends it in his direction. She gives him a lopsided grin. 'You want some? I just made a pot.' She blows coffee steam toward him. 'It's hot.'
'No, thanks,' Rafferty says virtuously. 'I have to get home to my kids.'
Her eyes slide over his face. 'It's hot every morning,' she says.
Rafferty doesn't even make it to the elevator. Instead he drops his bag to the floor and leans heavily against the wall of the corridor.
A wealthy foreigner, committed to a particularly furtive form of sexual expression, settles in Bangkok. So there, at any rate, is the reason for the lack of footprints Rafferty's been wondering about. For good reason the man keeps to himself, except for his erotic partners, who are undoubtedly professionals. He wouldn't find many volunteers. The Thais, overwhelmingly, take a simpler view of sex. They see it as fun.
Then the man disappears. Normally, you'd look for one of the partners. Maybe things went too far; maybe he violated the limits they set before they started the session. Rafferty doesn't know much about S amp;M, but he's certain that some sort of pact exists between the participants, some line that won't be crossed, some magic word to bring things to a halt. There has to be something to protect the one who is being done to.
Perhaps Claus Ulrich crossed the line, turned a deaf ear to the word. The session stopped being sex, however ritualized and however twisted, and became real violence. The partner became a victim. Maybe there was an injury, maybe worse. A grudge was held. The partner, or her pimp, or her friend, came back to settle things. Uncle Claus either fled-in a great hurry, obviously-or was taken. Or was killed there, leaving stains in the grouting of the maid's bathroom.
So what about the maid?
A young girl with modest skills, just down from the thin-dirt farms of Isaan. She gets one job in Bangkok, lasts for a few weeks-long enough to wheedle a reference-and quits. She immediately turns up at Claus Ulrich's, and he hires her because his maid of ten years or so has just been killed in a motorbike accident. Eight weeks later Claus Ulrich is missing.
A thought straightens Rafferty's spine. A really convenient time for the first maid to die, wasn't it?
He goes back and knocks again.
'You came back.' She has brushed her hair so it falls to her shoulders. Rafferty liked it better the other way. She has put the coffee down somewhere, and her arms are crossed loosely across her chest.
'I was thinking about the maid,' he says.
Something like disappointment flickers in her face, but she masters it and gives him a perfunctory smile. 'What about her?'
'The first one, actually. I was thinking it must have upset Claus when she was killed. She'd worked for him for so long.' He knows the answer from her face, even before he stops speaking.
'Noot? Killed? Don't be silly, she quit. Drove Claus up the wall, too. He offered her the world to stay, but she'd had enough. I mean, you've seen the place. Can you imagine cleaning all that every day?'
'Do you have any idea where she is?'
'This very moment, you mean?'
The question surprises him. 'If you know.'
'Sure. She's down in Mr. Choy's apartment-he's a Chinese gentleman? He's in latex. I mean as a business, not a wardrobe. It's 4-B. She's been working there since the day she left Claus.'
The door to 4-B opens a few inches. The woman peering through the crack is small, wiry, and dark-skinned, probably in her early fifties. 'Mr. Choy not here,' she says.
'But you're Noot,' Rafferty says.
She nods, her eyes fixed on him. He is willing to bet she has her foot against the door.
'I was just wondering why you quit your job working for Mr. Ulrich, upstairs.'
Noot ponders the question for a moment and then gives him the brilliant smile Thais often use as a polite way of saying no.
She closes the door in his face and throws the lock.
19
The portable generator, which has been chugging away with a noise like a tethered helicopter, is suddenly silenced. The lights that were wheeled in blink out and give way to early daylight, dim enough in this narrow alley to turn the thing on the ground into something more reassuring, say, a bundle of rags. Sodden, muddy, twisted into heavy ropes and tossed onto the filthy concrete, disquietingly stained and reeking of urine. Just a bundle of rags, nothing worth a second look.
But Rafferty's first look, while the lights were still shining, was enough. It was enough to send him four or five automatic steps backward, enough to make him glad he had not eaten breakfast. The others in the alley, the ones who got here before the sun rose, are not so squeamish. Three uniformed policemen on hands and knees crawl around the bundle of rags, searching for bits of a puzzle that are too small to see from a standing position. One of them is studying the face that emerges from the bundle.
Dead, wet, and dirty, the man still looks surprised.
Rafferty has to turn away. Death and destruction have been too much in his thoughts lately. Faced with the real thing, in the cooling flesh, he wants to gag.
It is only 8:25 A.M.
'You'd better tell me about it, Poke.' Arthit, wrapped in a long overcoat against what he probably thinks is an early-morning chill, has a paper cup half full of coffee in his hand and a stiffness in his face warning Rafferty that their personal relationship is not at the fore-front of the conversation.
'Tell you about what? You called me here, remember?'
'The safecracker. Why were you asking about Cambodian safecrackers?
Rafferty takes another step away from the body and lets his eyes wander over the blank wall opposite, a reassuringly detail-free wall without a single window. 'Well, Arthit, since you ask so nicely, what level of detail would you prefer?'
'Microscopic.'
So he tells it all, beginning with the maid's reference from Madame Wing, right through the hole in the lawn and the empty safe and the missing whatever-it-is.
Arthit listens without so much as a nod. 'And where have you gotten on it?'
'Nowhere. I was going to start after lunch.'
'Well, you've just started.' He lifts the cup in the direction of the body. 'Meet Tam. Not Cambodian, but definitely a safecracker. One of our best.' Arthit's tone is regretful. 'Wasted here, really. Had the kind of skills he could have put to better use in Monaco or Switzerland, someplace with really serious safes.'
'But she said he was a Cambodian.'
'He was probably hired by a Cambodian.'
'You think he's my guy. Why?'
Arthit dips a hand into one of the pockets on his outsize coat and comes up with a steamed dumpling wrapped in paper. 'Hold this,' he says, thrusting the coffee at Rafferty and peeling the paper back from the bun. When his mouth is full, he says, 'See any mud in this alley?'
