love with what Thailand could have been like for him. He had probably fallen in love with pictures of old Siam. Carl’s life was a series of adventures falling in love with things that only existed in books, so that was probably the case. The house may have only been an oasis in the present day chaos that was modern Thailand but an oasis is big enough for one man. Carl dared to dream for a while.
George was suddenly all business-like and he pulled Carl back to reality. Carl didn’t like it.
“Boonchoo and his son were in the noodle shop behind the old office like you asked,” George told him. “Some nasty looking cops showed up, plain clothes boys. They asked lots of questions all round the neighbourhood. Lots of questions about youth gangs and drug parties at that building.”
“And?” Carl asked impatiently.
“After they left, the woman from the dress shop walked around asking everybody what’d been said. Then she went back to her shop and sat talking on her mobile phone for half an hour. What was that all about?”
“She’s the gossip he left behind.”
“I don’t get you.”
“Inman would always have maintained a relationship with the local gossip. A strong relationship with constant contact, presents at Christmas and children’s birthdays. He has a secret in that building so he would monitor the events around it. We can assume he has now been told that the drug squad has an interest in the building.”
“How do you know he would’ve done that?” George asked him.
“Because it’s what I would have done.”
“So what happens now?”
“Now George? Now we eat and drink ourselves silly. I like it here and I intend to be very happy for as long as I can.”
Carl entered the door that led from the deck to the second floor landing and selected a 1953 mono recording of the opera Tosca with Di Stefano and Callas singing their hearts out beautifully. The speakers’ veneers had peeled in the humidity leaving them looking worthless but their sound was excellent.
He went to the kitchen to see what George had brought home in the plastic supermarket bags. There were all sorts of food items including a baguette, walnuts, dried figs, Gorgonzola cheese and spaghetti. He put all of the other items in the fridge. This was going to be very easy, and there were some bottles of Chilean red wine that looked very drinkable.
Carl boiled the pasta al dente and fried the walnuts with a little butter. He would have preferred to use walnut oil but his circumstances required a few small sacrifices. He tossed the spaghetti with the butter and walnuts. Then, as it cooled just slightly, he threw in chopped dried figs and Gorgonzola cheese, tossed the whole lot with some black pepper, and put it all in a serving bowl. He put a bottle of red wine under his arm, grabbed the baguette, plates and two wine glasses, and headed back upstairs. Dinner was served.
Later in the evening they opened a second bottle of wine and George said, “I have just realized something.”
“Pray tell.”
“The worse this situation becomes the more you seem to be enjoying yourself.”
“Other people have said that about me in the past.”
“How does that work?” George asked.
“Buggered if I know.”
They watched the swans majestically manoeuvring around the pond and drank their wine in silence. Carl thought of the life that had brought him here. He thought about the women along the way. But mostly he thought about her. There’s always one.
By eleven o’clock Carl was comfortably numb again. There was nobody within hearing distance so the music had got louder as the empty bottles had accumulated, ceremoniously laid down on the deck like dead soldiers.
When Tosca had thrown herself noisily from the parapet thereby ending the opera Carl decided to stick with Callas and di Stefano and put on La Boheme. The bohemian opera was in its final act by the time the wine was getting difficult to swallow and felt like it was on the verge of coming out of Carl’s ears.
“What is your fascination with Puccini operas?” George slurred.
Carl sat thinking, which was not easy given how drunk he was. “It’s about the real things, the important things; life, love, relationships, loss, death. In real life there are no happy endings George. Happy endings are a con trick. The trick is convincing the audience that the story is over when it isn’t. If you follow any story to its true conclusion it must end badly. All life may begin with a miracle but it must always end with a tragedy. That is the nature of life.”
“You’re a cheerful drinking companion tonight.”
“Sorry George. Don’t ask the question if you think you won’t like the answer.”
Pretty Boy Floyd could be expected to deliver his morning diatribe outside Carl’s bedroom window again so an early night suddenly seemed like a very good idea. Carl stood up and went to the rail where he stood like a latter day Alexander surveying his kingdom. Having committed it to memory he slurred a goodnight to George and left the deck.
Carl went to bed dreaming nostalgic thoughts about spending his future playing a country squire in old Siam. Nostalgic thoughts do not live in a vacuum though so the idyllic country lane became memory lane. Thanks to the vast quantities of wine he had consumed he fell asleep anyway.
Chapter 24
The rising of the sun and arrival of the new day was screeched into Carl’s bedroom by Pretty Boy Floyd. He was perched on the rail of the deck near the bedroom window again, angrily bouncing up and down from the knees with his plumage fully fanned out. Carl was getting rather fond of him and his funny habits.
Carl’s head was fuzzy but he was not unhappy with the early alarm call. The fresh air was having a positive effect on his sense of well-being. It had rained during the night and the air was cool and fresh. Carl went for a walk through the grounds, barefoot on the wet grass. There was life everywhere he looked: small birds, large birds, squirrels, butterflies and bugs. It was good.
Carl returned to the house for an early breakfast with George. He went to the kitchen and made them both what he claimed was a nice health-conscious fry-up. In reality it was a good old-fashioned greasy spoon special. Even the bread was fried. He pointed proudly at a grilled tomato on George’s plate amongst the bacon, sausages, greasy eggs, fried white bread and deep fried potatoes and said, “Vitamin C. That will sort you out.”
After they had finished what was on their plates he asked George if he could check in with the old man sometime in the mid-afternoon, to make sure everybody was doing whatever they were supposed to be doing. There was no room for errors or delays. Everything had to be perfectly synchronized like a circle of white bathing capped Nazi frauleins in a swimming pool. George would supervise all of the teams and technicians personally, so he would be away until the following afternoon.
Carl was planning a lazy day hanging out at his temporary summer palace and doing as little as possible. That would make the day even better. As big as the house was Carl liked it best when it was just occupied by him and the birds. He was still very much a lone wolf.
Carl had two phone calls to make before he took the rest of the day off. The first was to his favourite journalist, Kenny Burns. He used to be Carl’s second favourite but with Mad Mike’s demise he had been promoted. Kenny Burns was from the school of the Cambodian Killing Fields and was totally fearless. Some of his friends had died in Cambodia back in the 1970s and he had survivor’s guilt that manifested itself in blindly walking into danger as long as he felt it newsworthy. He had a partner, Heinz Fogel, a German cameraman with an extremely large newsman’s camera that he had received in 1975 in payment for a debt from a Russian in Phnom Penn. It was the camera Carl wanted most. It would get plenty of attention.
Carl had not told George that he was planning to break their agreement of not switching any phones on at the house. There were things that George didn’t need to know about. He had seen a couple of new SIM cards in the shopping bags in the kitchen the previous night and he had put them on top of the fridge. Now he went and got one. Having inserted it into his phone he made the call. Carl was beginning to be careless but he knew it wasn’t going to
