past their sell-by date and I owed my maid last month’s salary.
By Friday afternoon I was all set. Knight was on a three o’clock Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong so he left his house at just before midday, sitting in the back of a. large Mercedes. I was in a rental car, an inconspicuous Honda Civic, down the road. He didn’t see me. As a rule, guys in the back of big Mercs didn’t notice men in small Japanese cars.
Further down the road were three motorcycle taxis that I’d booked for the day. Two thousand baht each. They sat under the shade of an advertising hoarding promoting a shampoo that blackened, thickened and strengthened, all in one. The Thais love black hair and white skin and spend a fortune on products that promise either. The motorcycle riders had short-cropped hair and skin the colour of burnt mahogany, blackened from years ferrying passengers around the city under the unforgiving sun. They were smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and kept looking over towards the Honda, waiting for my signal. I’d lent them mobile phones so that they could stay in touch once we were on the lovely Miss Ying’s trail.
Following someone is a difficult business at the best of times, but in Bangkok it can be a nightmare. For a start, there’s the congestion. At rush hour many of the city’s major intersections hit gridlock. And the traffic lights can sometimes take up to fifteen minutes to change. So you might sit in slow-moving traffic for an hour or so, only to see your quarry skip through a light just as it changes to red. Even if you can keep up with your quarry, following them as they change lanes means taking your life into your hands because Bangkok traffic is the most unforgiving in the world. All pretence of politeness goes out of the window when a Thai gets behind the wheel of a car. That’s where the motorcycle taxi drivers come in handy. There are tens of thousands of them around the city, whizzing through the traffic, delivering officer workers to their desks, hookers to the go-go bars and students to their classrooms. They used to wear coloured vests denoting the soi they worked in, but the Government changed the regulations and made them all wear orange vests which makes using them as chasers even easier.
Using bikes doesn’t solve all your problems though because the city is crisscrossed with expressways and motorcycles and aren’t allowed to use them. Still, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, right?
At one o’clock Gung called my mobile to say that Ying was packing a bag and that she’d asked him to go down to the carpark to make sure that her car airconditioner was running. It must be nice to have money, I said to Gung. I was going to ask him if he warmed the toilet seat for her as well as cooling her car but the boys in the Thahan Phran aren’t renowned for their sense of humour.
I waved over at the three motorcycle riders and they climbed onto their bikes. They were all under 100cc- small bikes that could nip in and out of the traffic. When a farang buys a bike he usually goes for a big Harley or a 1000cc Yamaha and sits there with all that power throbbing between his legs feeling like he’s lord of the jungle. But as soon as the traffic locks up the big bikes are locked up too and the farang sits there sweating like a pig and breathing in diesel fumes as the Thais on their little bikes whiz by. Big isn’t always best. That’s what I tell the girls anyway.
The BMW rolled out of the underground carpark and I let a couple of cars go before following her. Two of the bikes roared past her and then slowed a hundred yards or so ahead of her. If she was going to Pattaya she’d probably use the expressway which meant that I’d be following her most of the way on my own with the bikes making their way along the regular road. But at least once she was on the expressway I’d be able to hang back because I’d know where she was going. The bikes could pick her up at the Pattaya end. Easy peasy.
The BMW took a left turn and that had me frowning because that meant she was heading away from the expressway. The bikes kept her in sight so I dropped back. I lost her ten minutes later but after a phone call to one of the motorcycle riders I was back on track. They saw her park outside a restaurant. One of Knight’s restaurants. I left the rental a short walk from the restaurant.
I told the motorcycle boys to hang around while I went inside. On the ground floor there was a large circular bar with half a dozen customers, mainly expats. There were ten circular dining tables but the lunch crowd had gone and it was too early for the evening session. There was no sign of the lovely Ying.
I sat at the bar and ordered a Jack Daniels and waited. One JD became two and two became three and there was still no sign of her. The men’s room was upstairs so I grinned at the barman and said that I had to take a leak and headed up. There was a pool table and another dozen tables, but the place was empty. There was a small locked door leading up to the top floor and a note in Thai and English that said ‘Staff Only’.
It was getting late, too late to make it to Pattaya in time for a sales conference. I made a call to the company where Ying worked and in my very best Thai explained that my girlfriend was attending a sales conference in Pattaya and that she’d forgotten her make-up bag and that I wanted to get it to her but I didn’t know where the conference was being held. The conference was at the Ambassador Jomtien, a very helpful young switchboard girl explained, but that the conference finished at five so there was no need to get the bag to my girlfriend because she’d be back in Bangkok later tonight. I thanked her. So, I’d caught her out in one lie, and in my experience lies are like cockroaches. If you find one, there’ll be hundreds of others behind the skirting board. At least in the sort of places that I stay in.
I went back downstairs and paid my bill, then took a walk outside. There were lights up on the top floor so I figured that was where Ying was holed up. Next door to the restaurant was a ten-storey office block. Sitting on a deckchair at the entrance was a dark-skinned security guard in a uniform several sizes too big for him. I wandered over and started chatting to him in Laos. He was a nice guy, his wife was back in Udon Thani taking care of their five kids and he sent back most of his wages each month. Down the road from the office block I’d seen a street vendor selling a variety of fried insects, much loved by the people of Isaan. I asked him how he liked his grasshoppers and then went and bought him a bag of well-salted insects. I shared them with him as we talked. They taste a lot better than they sound, really. A bit like pork scratchings, it’s the crunch and the salt you’re aware of rather than a definite taste. Fried maggots are okay, too. I’ve never really had a problem eating insects. There’s no difference between a grasshopper and a prawn, really. So we shared the goodies and then I gave him a 500-baht note and asked him if he’d take me up the building stairwell so that I could take a look into the windows of the top floor of the restaurant. I spunhim a story about my girlfriend being inside with another farang but he was only interested in the money and he was more than happy to let me go upstairs on my own.
I found a grimy window in the stairwell on the fifth floor which gave me a reasonable view of the restaurant. There were lights on in one of the offices and I could see half a dozen teenage girls sitting on a couple of sofas, laughing and playing with their mobile phones. They were all wearing the traditional Thai students’ uniform of white shirt and black skirt. I couldn’t see Ying at first but after about fifteen minutes I saw her walk into view and drop down onto one of the sofas. She opened her Chanel bag and took something out. The students started clapping and leaned forward in anticipation.
Ying folded a piece of silver foil into a small crucible and then she flicked a cigarette lighter and I knew exactly what I was seeing. Yah ba being smoked. Amphetamines, the drug of choice for everyone from students at the country’s top universities wanting to stay up studying all night to go-go dancers needing the chemical stimulus to ply their trade all night. It used to be called yah ma, or horse drug, because it gave you the strength and stamina of a horse. The cops started calling it yah ba, the literal translation being Crazy Drug. The spin didn’t work. By the look of things, Ying was supplying the stuff. I hadn’t seen any money change hands so it looked as if she was giving them the stuff free of charge. So in just a few hours I’d caught Knight’s live-in lover in an outright lie and found her giving drugs to students. It wasn’t looking good, not if Knight figured she was the love of his life.
I went back downstairs, thanked my new-found friend, and went over to brief the motorcycle riders. It looked as if we were in for a long night; if Ying and her friends were fired up on amphetamines it could well be that they might go on somewhere else.
I sat in the rental car, keeping the engine running and the airconditioning going, sipping from a bottle of water that I always take with me on surveillance operations. Ying didn’t appear until two o’clock in the morning. There was a teenage boy with her, one of the restaurant workers I figured, with a designer hair cut and baggy jeans. They went to her BMW and a few minutes later I was following them across the city towards Ratchada. There are lots of late-night eating places Ratchada-way so I figured she was taking her friend for a meal. I was wrong. They pulled in front of a dingy apartment block, a far cry from Knight’s palatial accommodation.
I watched them go in. The young guy had a keycard to open the main door so it was probably his place. I waited in the car until four o’clock in the morning by which time it was obvious that they weren’t going anywhere. Lies, drugs, and a toy boy. Young miss Ying was a piece of work, all right.
I asked one of the motorcycle riders to stay outside the block with instructions to phone me as soon as they reappeared. If Ying was like every other Thai girl I knew, that would probably be after midday.
