'Mon Dieu, I didn't know that.'
'Sonchai, why don't you check upstairs to see if the cleaners did their job properly today?' Nong says, avoiding Marly's eyes and casting a furious glance at the backs of Greg and Henri.
I go upstairs to lie down on one of the beds to let my mind wander. Musing: prostitutes were the world's first capitalists. The ancients understood very well that men need sex more urgently than women. It was natural, therefore, that this imbalance should be redressed by means of cash, which hitherto nobody had had any use for. Later, of course, whores found other things to sell, and many were reincarnated as lawyers, doctors, dentists, merchant bankers, presidents, sweetshop owners, mayors, et cetera. Commerce was born, and war became just a tad less fashionable. Hey, if it wasn't for prostitution, the human race would never have got beyond the siege of Troy. Many haven't, of course.
I didn't intend to do anything more tonight-I was in lazy-Thai mode-but Henri and Greg have stirred up a gut full of bile, and now I'm restless. When I check my watch, I see it's only eight in the evening. There won't be any airplanes flying to that part of the Cambodian border where they are holding Baker, but there will be plenty of buses. I don't think I can quite stand a long, hot, uncomfortable bus ride tonight, though, so I make a call to Hualamphong railway station and manage to book a first-class overnight sleeper. It's one of those third-world treats I like to accord myself from time to time, and I'm quite excited when the train starts and the uniformed orderly comes around with his crisp white sheets to make up my bunk. Suddenly I'm a boy again taking a first-class trip up north with Nong, who is flush with dough from our sojourn in Paris with the ancient Monsieur Truffaut. Clickety-click, clickety-click, I might not have the most respectable mum in the world, but I definitely have one of the smartest. Clickety-click, clickety-click, we have money in the bank and medicine for Granma's eyes, and we've paid the rent- nothing to worry about for at least a month. Clickety-click. To know how to cheer oneself up is a first step to enlightenment. It's fun to be disobeying Vikorn, who thinks I'm checking out Yammy at this very moment.
I wake up to a dawn in cleaner air. It's a two-track, two-platform country station, but there are a few cabs waiting for passengers. I agree on a day price with a driver, and off we go for a picnic in the country.
13
Sleepy Elephant village is a large hamlet with no municipal buildings at all. You distinguish it from the countryside because there is a slight increase in the density of population. The police station where they are holding Baker is hardly more than a large shophouse with a five-cell jail attached and a half acre of land, where a silver buffalo is inexplicably tethered. The young cop behind the desk is feeding a pet monkey when I walk in. I flash my ID and tell him I'm investigating the murder of one Damrong Baker, which doesn't ring a bell with him at all. I tell him the farang Baker, her ex-husband, is a key suspect in my investigation. He blinks at me: So what?
'Immigration,' I explain. 'You are holding a farang who tried to cross the border illegally yesterday. They don't have any holding cells-that's why Baker is in one of yours.' His brow is like a piece of wood with fixed furrows. It occurs to me that stupidity can be exaggerated for strategic reasons.
The problem with rural policing is that there is no such thing as a rural policeman: the best you can hope for is boys and girls who can wear the uniform without getting themselves into too much trouble. 'heir loyalties are always local, however, and I'm from the despised big city. By all the rules I ought to bribe him, but I resent the idea. Anyway, he's too young to help. I decide to concentrate on the monkey for a moment. It's a baby and emotionally dependent on the young cop. It looks at me with big moist eyes, then scuttles away to cling to his neck, then climb up on his head, holding his hair in bunches in its tiny hands.
Now the cop with the monkey on his head is finally looking directly at me. He's not at all sure I'm safe to talk to, and I'm not at all sure he can speak standard Thai; all I've got out of him so far is a few mumbles in the local Khmer dialect. I've got his attention, though. 'Get the boss,' I say softly. He nods and picks up a telephone to say a few words.
Just as I thought, the boss was on the other side of a door, listening. Now he appears, doing up the buttons on his sergeant's uniform, wiping his lips. He's in his midforties and looking at me with drunken belligerence.
'Are you holding a farang in this station, a farang named Baker?'
He is at the point of shaking his head, so I intervene with a narrowing of the eyes and a concentration of the sixth chakra. When that doesn't get his attention, I say, 'Colonel Vikorn, Chief of District Eight, Bangkok, is going to be very angry with you if you took his money and then double-crossed him. Did you let Baker bribe you last night?'
The sergeant was not expecting to be put on the spot in this lifetime. His survival strategy in this body has been to take money and then kick the can a little farther down the road for someone else to pick up-or kick. His police station is ten miles from the smallest, most obscure, least used, and technologically most backward immigration post in all Thailand, so he's had plenty of opportunity to develop this MO into an art form. Now he's having trouble with the sudden delivery of the karmic bill about two hundred years before he expected it.
'You never heard of Colonel Vikorn before yesterday?' He shakes his head. 'And you thought he was just some fancy-pants city slicker who would throw money at you, then let you resell Baker back to Baker, or Immigration, or whoever, and come up with some flimsy excuse like he broke out of his cell last night and managed somehow to cross the border, and isn't it terrible how insecure these rickety little country holding cells can be. Right?'
The idiot blinks and nods: Isn't that what everyone does? I also nod thoughtfully. There is really nothing for it but to call Vikorn and confess that I'm not masterminding his pornography venture right now but rather moonlighting on police business. The sergeant watches with slow, frightened eyes while I fish out my cell phone.
To Vikorn, I gloss over my dereliction of duty and come to the main point: the local cops are making a fool out of my Colonel. They've taken his money and then allowed Baker to bribe them to let him go, probably in cahoots with Immigration, whom Baker would also have had to bribe. I figure the pressure on the line has reached about a thousand pounds per square inch when I hand the phone over to the sergeant. I watch with interest while his face turns red, then white, then gray. He is blubbering Yes, yes, yes, and the hand holding the cell is shaking violently when he gives it back to me. Now he grabs the desk telephone and dials a number that seems to consist of three digits. He starts yammering down the line in Khmer and very quickly ratchets himself up to a full-throated scream. I have no Khmer at all, but I'm willing to bet Fort Knox against a jackfruit he's saying, 'Fucking get him fucking back or we're all fucking finished.' Or words to that effect. Now he's beckoning me to follow him with an impatient gesture, as if I'm the cause of delay. I follow him out the back of the police station to a carport, where a four-by- four is parked. It's not a battered old police Toyota, though, such as we have to put up with in Krung Thep; no sir, this is a Range Rover Sport TDV6 4WD in metallic russet. Five minutes later I can see why he might need a real off-road four-by-four. The brand-new, metaled road leading to the border post is for wimps, obviously; this guy charges down a well-worn set of ruts that cut through dense jungle. In less than five minutes we have passed through a broken razor-wire fence and ignored a skull-and-crossbones warning about illegal border crossing, and we seem to be heading toward the border post on the Khmer side. Just as we draw up, an officer of the Thai Immigration service arrives in his Range Rover Sport (in metallic gray). He immediately identifies me as the source of his problem and scowls. On the other hand, he dashes into the Khmer border post. When the sergeant and I arrive inside the small building, we see the Immigration officer leaning over a desk and yelling in Khmer at one of the Cambodian officers. Once again I am reliant on intuition to interpret.
Thai Immigration official: Give him back immediately. We have a problem.
Cambodian Immigration official: Go fuck yourself. We've been paid, and we've stamped his passport.
Thai: It's a false passport.
Cambodian: Well, I know that. Why else would he have bribed us?
Thai: Do you realize this could sink the whole scam?
Cambodian: Only for you, bud. Your successors aren't going to be any more honest than you are.
Thai: Please.
The Cambodian looks out the window at the two Range Rovers.
Thai: Which one do you want?
Cambodian: Both of them.
