silence.
It isn’t unusual for a pretty young Thai girl to marry an older guy. Like girls all over the Third World they want someone to take care of them and their families and there’s no doubt that a few thousand dollars in the bank can help add to a man’s attractiveness to the opposite sex. But there was no way on earth that the match between the lovely girl we were going to see and the blimp I had in the back of the Mercedes was a marriage made in heaven. He must have known that. Every time he caught a glimpse of the two of them in a mirror it must have hit home that he was simply too big for her. If it had been me, I’d have just been grateful for the fact that I was allowed to sleep with a woman as beautiful as her, and if the downside meant that she had the occasional fling with a man nearer her own age, well then I’d just put that down to the price I had to pay. The Dutch guys hadn’t managed to catch her being unfaithful in Amsterdam, which meant that she was probably only fooling around in Thailand. I wanted to tell the client that he’d be better off turning a blind eye to the occasional indiscretion and that the best thing he could do would be to go straight back to Holland, but I kept quiet.
I had the driver park around the corner from the apartment block, and pulled on a pair of shades and a Singha beer baseball cap before I got out of the car. The client was obviously used to sitting in the back of expensive vehicles because he didn’t make a move to open his door himself, he just sat staring straight ahead until I opened it for him. He wheezed as he hauled himself out of the car, and I swear the suspension sighed with relief. ‘I burn easily,’ I said, explaining away the cap and sunglasses, but the real reason was that I didn’t want to risk being recognised if Machete Man and his gun-wielding buddies were back in the restaurant. They weren’t, and I relaxed a little when I saw that the restaurant was closed.
A receptionist buzzed us into the apartment block and a purple 500-baht note got us the room number. We rode up in the lift in silence to the fourth floor. I looked around to see if there was a weight limit for the lift, and I kept having visions of the cables snapping and us both plummeting to our deaths.
There were a couple of dozen rooms on either side of a long corridor. We walked slowly along to the room. I waited at the side of the door as the client knocked, twice.
The door opened. The girl was there wearing a white T-shirt and blue denim shorts. She stared at him sleepily, then her jaw dropped as she realised who it was.
‘Darling…’ she said, but then the words dried up and her mouth open and closed silently.
‘Don’t “darling” me, you whore!’ hissed the client, and he pushed the door open. It was a studio apartment and the waiter was lying on the double bed, wrapped in a towel. The waiter leapt to his feet as the big guy strode into the room and rushed out, his bare feet slapping on the tiled floor as he bolted down the corridor.
I stayed where I was. The client had left the door open so I could hear everything that was being said. The girl began pleading that there’d been a mistake, that the waiter was just a friend, that she was only staying in the room until she could get a flight to Chiang Mai. The client let her beg and plead, then silenced her with an outburst of expletives that suggested he’d had an army career in his younger, and probably thinner, days.
‘You were a whore when I met you, and you’re a whore now!’ he shouted once he’d finished swearing. ‘I gave you everything. I gave you the clothes on your back, the watch on your wrist. I gave you money for your parents, I paid for your brothers to go to school. Anything you needed, anything you wanted, I gave to you. And you do this to me? You fuck around behind my back.’
She started to cry.
‘You’re dead to me, you bitch!’ he shouted. ‘When I get back home I’m destroying everything of yours. Every dress, every handbag, every shoe; everything I ever gave you, I’m burning. Every photograph of you, I’m destroying. You’re dead to me. I’m divorcing you and you won’t get a penny. The best lawyers in the country work for me, and if I get my way you’ll lose your Dutch citizenship.’
There was a dull thud and I took a quick look into he room just in case she’s beaten him over the head with a blunt object but she was the one on the floor, slumped down next to the bed, her hands over her face, sobbing her heart out.
He waddled over to a dressing table and grabbed her handbag. He pulled out a Dutch passport and ripped it into several places, went over to the toilet and flushed away the pieces. Then he threw the handbag into the toilet for good measure.
‘Please, darling…’ sobbed the girl.
The client sneered at her and walked out of the room, his ham-sized hands clenched into fists. I followed him back to the lift. I saw the waiter in the stairwell, anxiously looking in our direction, his hands clutching the towel around his waist. I waved for him to keep out of the way.
The lift doors opened and we rode down. ‘Bitch,’ said the client, venomously. His face was bathed in sweat and there were damp patches under the arms of his jacket.
I said nothing. I could see his point, but I figured that of the two of them, he’d lost the most. She’d lost a sugar daddy, but then she wouldn’t have to satisfy the sexual urges of a man big enough to crush her if he rolled over in his sleep. And a girl as pretty as her wouldn’t have to look too hard to find another husband. He’d lost a beautiful young gold-digger but now he’d have to sleep with nothing more than his right hand for company. Swings and roundabouts? I didn’t think so. If ever there was a Pyrhic victory, this was it.
We walked out of the block and over to the Mercedes. ‘I don’t need you any more,’ he wheezed. ‘I can take care of myself at the airport. Thank you. For everything.’ He handed me a fistful of euros which I guessed was my cab fare home.
I opened the rear door of the Mercedes and he hauled himself slowly into the back. The suspension groaned in protest. I closed the door behind him and the car moved away from the kerb. I got one last look at the client as the car drove off. There were tears streaming down his fleshy cheeks.
THE CASE OF THE CHRISTIAN CONMAN
Khun Bua was a lovely woman, a decent middle-class Thai lady who kept dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief as she told me her story. She was my first real client. I’d done a few bargirl investigations for friends but Khun Men was to be my first paying customer. She’d read my one and only advertisement in a tourist magazine that was delivered free to Bangkok hotels. I was surprised to be contacted by a Thai because the advert was aimed at tourists and visitors. I’d assumed that any Thai would prefer to deal with a Thai detective. But as Khun Bua told me her story as we sat together in a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet close to her home, it became clear why she wanted a farang.
She had a copy of the magazine with her. Not the one that contained my advert, hers was from almost a year earlier. It was open at a page with an article about a Thai marriage agency. There was a photograph of a man in religious attire conducting a marriage ceremony between a middle-aged farang and a young Thai girl.
As I read the article, Khun Bua sniffed and dabbed at her eyes. She was wearing a small gold crucifix around her neck. It was unusual for a Thai to be Christian. Thailand is a Buddhist country and Christians are a small minority. The man in the picture was the Reverend Marcus Armitage, and he had founded the Canadian-Thai Christian Dating Agency with the aim of finding wives for good Christian men back in Canada.
Between sniffles, Khun Bua explained that she worked for the magazine. A friend of hers, a wealthy politician’s wife, had put up the money for the publishing venture, but Khun Bua had been hired to do most of the work. She sold advertising space, wrote many of the articles, liaised with the printers and arranged to have the magazines delivered to the city’s hotels. Khun Bua had never married and had worked hard all her life, putting all her spare money in a savings account for the day when she retired. There’s no Government pension scheme in Thailand, it’s every man, and woman, for themselves. Thai parents have their children to support them in their old age, but Khun Bua was alone in the world and would have to take care of herself. But she lived frugally, saved every baht she could, and once she was retired she planned to build herself a small house in Phetchabun and spend her time reading and sewing. But the Reverend Armitage had brought Khun Bua’s plans crashing to the ground.
Armitage had met Khun Bua at the magazine’s office. He had agreed to pay for a half-page colour advertisement and in return Khun Bua had agreed to write an editorial, extolling the virtues of the new agency. He had been charming, and impressed Khun Bua with his knowledge of the Bible, often quoting passages at length. He had taken her out for dinner, he had sent her flowers when the article had appeared, he had given her a leather- bound Bible on her birthday. As she dabbed at her eyes, she told me that she had fallen in love with the smooth-
