The Solitary Man (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Who are you?’ Hutch asked.

  ‘Your lawyer,’ said the man. He proffered a business card that was so blindingly white that it appeared to glow. ‘My name is Khun Kriengsak.’

  The lawyer spoke to one of the guards on his side of the bars. The guard took the card, walked around the rail, and poked it through the wire.

  Hutch took it. ‘I don’t need a lawyer,’ he said, reading the card.

  Kriengsak smiled benignly. He had charm, but it was a cold, clinical charm that Hutch felt the man could turn on and off at will. ‘Oh yes you do, Mr Hastings. I don’t think there’s a man in Bangkok right now who needs a lawyer more than you do.’

  Hutch shook his head. ‘Look, there’s been a mistake,’ he said. ‘I haven’t asked for a lawyer. I don’t need a lawyer. I don’t know what sort of ambulance-chaser you are, but I don’t have the money for—-’

  ‘Please don’t misunderstand, Mr Hastings. My fee has already been taken care of. By Mr Tsang Chai-hin.’

  Hutch held out Kriengsak’s card but the guard had already moved away. ‘I don’t know any Mr Tsang,’ said Hutch.

  ‘He’s certainly taken an interest in you. I have been paid a retainer already and told that money is no object in the preparation of your case.’

  Hutch pulled a face. ‘Well, you’ve been paid for nothing, because I don’t need a lawyer. Who is this Tsang? Is he a Thai?’

  ‘He has extensive business interests in Thailand, but Mr Tsang is Hong Kong Chinese. You know his daughter, I believe.’

  Realisation dawned. ‘Chau-ling’s father?’ he said.

  ‘Indeed.’

  Hutch exhaled deeply. ‘The answer’s still no. This has been a mistake, and once the police realise it’s a mistake I’ll be released.’

  Kriengsak smiled thinly. ‘This is Thailand,’ he said. ‘Things are rarely so straightforward. Guilty or innocent, there are procedures that must be followed, and it would be beneficial for you to have a lawyer acting for you. You do not speak Thai, I understand, and the Thai legal system is full of pitfalls that can entrap even an innocent man.’

  Hutch tapped the business card against the chicken wire. ‘I don’t want to keep repeating myself, Khun Kriengsak, but at the risk of appearing to be rude, I really would prefer to be left on my own.’

  Kriengsak bobbed his head. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But please keep my card. Just in case you change your mind.’

  Hutch was about to argue, but decided against it. He slipped the card into the pocket of his jeans. Kriengsak turned to leave.

  ‘You could do one thing for me,’ said Hutch.

  ‘By all means,’ said the lawyer. ‘My bill has been paid in full already.’ He took a slim gold pen and a small leather-bound notebook from the inside of his jacket.

  ‘You could get me something to sleep on. The floor’s murder.’ He scratched the bite on his neck. ‘And cream for mosquito bites.’

  THE GIRL WAS CRYING, curled up on the bed, her legs up tight against her chest, her hands over her face. The mamasan tutted impatiently. It had been a month, and still the girl was crying. They usually stopped crying after the first week, once they realised that there was no point, that tears got them nowhere. She walked over and stood at the bottom of the metal-framed bed.

  ‘Stop your tears,’ she said. The girl’s only reaction was to curl up in a tighter ball. The chain that fastened her left ankle to the bed rattled and then went still.

  There were ten beds in the room, three of them empty. Threadbare curtains hanging from the ceiling separated the beds, offering some privacy. Not much, but then the men who visited the room didn’t stay long. The mamasan heard grunting from the next bed and the squeaking of tortured springs, then a muffled curse.

  ‘Stop crying,’ said the mamasan. ‘Stop crying or I’ll beat you.’ The girl sobbed into her hands.

  She heard the man visiting the next bed zip up his trousers and pad out of the room. As his footsteps echoed down the wooden stairs, a bell rang. The mamasan left the crying girl and went into the hallway. There was a sagging sofa there, a wooden stool and a small desk. A man in his early twenties came upstairs. He was a regular customer, and came to the brothel at least once a day, sometimes twice. He already had his hundred-baht note in his hand and he gave it to the mamasan.

  ‘Ying,’ he said.

  ‘Ying isn’t feeling well,’ said the mamasan. ‘Why don’t you try Bit? Bit is very pretty, very young.’

  The man shook his head emphatically. ‘I want Ying.’

  The mamasan licked her lips. She didn’t want to offend a regular customer, but the girl was in no fit state to entertain anybody. ‘Can you wait?’ she asked.

  The man looked at the plastic watch on his wrist. ‘How long?’

  The mamasan waved at the sofa. At one end was a pile of sexy magazines. ‘Not long,’ she said.

  The man sat down and began leafing through one of the magazines. The mamasan unlocked the cash box in the desk drawer, put away the hundred-baht note, and relocked it.

  The girl was still crying. The mamasan sat down on the edge of the bed and patted the girl on the shoulder. ‘Ying, there is a customer here for you.’ The girl pulled away from the mamasan’s hand and continued to cry.

  The mamasan folded her bony arms and glared at the girl. Four weeks of tears. The other girls had been complaining about the noise. They’d shouted to Ying, imploring her to stop, telling her that there was no point in crying, that she had no choice but to accept her fate. The mamasan had explained to Ying that her parents had accepted the money, and that Ying had to repay the debt in the only way she could. Ying had wailed and begged to be allowed to go home, but the mamasan had told her that she had no home to go to. Even if she could break the chain, even if she could escape from the brothel, even if she could get back to her village in the north, there was no escape. Her parents had accepted the money and they would simply send her back.

  The mamasan stood up. ‘If you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you your medicine,’ she said. When there was no response, the mamasan went back to the hallway. The man looked up expectantly but she shook her head. ‘A little longer,’ she said. The man went back to his magazine, scratching his scrawny neck as he flicked through the pictures.

  In the drawer next to the cashbox was a syringe and the equipment the mamasan needed to prepare the heroin. She sat on the wooden stool as she got the drug ready and filled the syringe. There was a needle in the drawer that had only been used a few times. She wiped it clean with a cloth and screwed it on to the syringe. It was so much easier in the old days, when she would give the girls opium to smoke. The opium pipe was simple to prepare and it didn’t leave ugly marks on the girls’ arms the way the needle did. But opium was almost impossible to get in Chiang Mai; it was only heroin that was now coming out of the Golden Triangle. The warlord Zhou Yuanyi had seen to that. The mamasan had a sister who lived near the border and she’d told her that Zhou wouldn’t even allow the hilltribe people who harvested the poppies to grow their own opium. The warlord’s laboratories took all the opium for processing and even the hilltribe people were being forced to use heroin instead. They had to steal the opium they smoked. The mamasan’s sister said that some of the local farmers had tried to defy Zhou, and they had been killed as a warning to the others. There were rumours that they had been impaled alive. The mamasan doubted that anyone could be so cruel, but there was no denying the fact that there was no opium to be had in Chiang Mai at any price.

  She carried the syringe back into the room and along to the curtained-off bed where the girl still cried. The mamasan kept the needle pointing away from her own body, careful not to prick herself. She sat down on the bed and gripped the girl’s leg, just above the manacle around her ankle. There was a line of sores running along a large vein, sores that didn’t seem to be healing. The mamasan found an untouched section of vein and inserted the tip of the needle. The girl’s leg jerked but the mamasan had a tight grip. She eased the plunger
down. The leg went still in her hand. She pulled out the needle. A dribble of blood ran down the girl’s ankle and stained the sheet.

  The mamasan seized the girl’s shoulder and pulled her on to her back. This time there was no resistance. There was a faraway look in the girl’s eyes. She was a pretty young thing, with soft skin and glossy hair, budding breasts and a narrow waist. The mamasan stroked the girl’s cheek, still damp with tears. She wouldn’t stay fresh for long, the mamasan knew. They wilted like cut flowers once they became addicted. She stood up and went back to the hallway.

  ‘Ying is ready now,’ she said, putting the syringe back in the drawer.

  The man grinned and stood up. As he walked into the room he was already unbuckling his belt.

  TIM CARVER SLAMMED SHUT the car door. His driver had already reclined the front seat and had his eyes closed. Thais seemed to have a natural ability to catnap, no matter how uncomfortable their surroundings. Carver had seen motorcyclists sleeping while sprawled on their bikes parked at the roadside, beggars asleep on crowded streets, and schoolchildren with their eyes closed strap-hanging on buses, dead to the world. Carver ran his hands through his hair as he headed for the entrance to the prison. The Bangkok air was so filthy that even the short time he’d spent walking from the DEA office to the car had left his hair greasy. He tended to shower three times a day, but even that wasn’t enough and he never felt truly clean while he was in the city.

  He showed his credentials to the two guards at the entrance and was waved through. A guard with a large key chain escorted him to the cells where the police interrogated prisoners. The guard’s uniform was several sizes too big for him and the collar of his shirt hung around his collarbone. The guard opened the cell door and nodded for Carver to go through.

  The DEA agent sat down on one of the two wooden chairs that were placed on either side of a white-topped metal table and settled down to wait. He had no way of telling how long it would be before the guards brought the prisoner. Sometimes it was right away, sometimes they made him wait two hours. He pulled his red and white pack of Marlboro from his shirt pocket and tapped out a cigarette. A cockroach scuttled across the concrete floor and up the wall by the door. Carver lit his cigarette and sat back in his chair. If he’d learned nothing else during his four years in Thailand, he’d learned to be patient. Nothing was ever gained by getting angry or demanding that things be done faster. The Thais had their own pace, and they wouldn’t be hurried. Any attempt to spur them along would only result in further delays. Carver practised blowing smoke rings as he waited.

  A guard, older than the one who’d shown him to the cell, appeared carrying a glass of water which he placed in front of Carver. The DEA agent thanked him with a smile. He hadn’t asked for the water, and he’d never been offered a drink on previous visits. Carver had long since stopped being surprised by Thailand – now he just expected the unexpected.

  He was smoking his fifth cigarette when he heard the rattle of leg chains and snuffling sandals in the corridor outside. A Thai in his late twenties, short and stocky with a crew cut, was led into the cell by a guard. The prisoner stood staring sullenly at Carver and scratched his pockmarked right cheek.

  ‘Sawadee krup,’ said the DEA agent.

  The prisoner nodded curtly but didn’t return the greeting.

  Carver smiled at the guard. ‘It’s okay, you can leave him with me,’ he said. Carver’s Thai was virtually perfect: he’d spent a year studying the language at the American University alumni school in Bangkok and had lived with a Thai family outside Chiang Mai for three months, honing his accent and getting his tones just right. He had a natural affinity for the language and had yet to meet a farang who could speak Thai better.

  ‘Shall I wait outside?’ asked the guard.

  ‘If you wish, but I’d like the door closed, please,’ said Carver, smiling.

  The guard left the cell and locked the door behind him.

  ‘What do you want?’ asked the prisoner. He had the mahogany-brown skin and guttural accent of an easterner. According to his file, Park had been born in Surin, a town not far from the border with Cambodia.

  Carver offered Park the pack of cigarettes. The prisoner took the pack, pulled a cigarette out with his lips, and leaned forward so that Carver could light it for him with his Zippo. ‘Keep the pack,’ said Carver.

  Park slipped the pack into the back pocket of his trousers. His wrists were cuffed so he had to put both hands up to his mouth to take the cigarette out. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you,’ he said.

  ‘Sit down, please. I just want to talk.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time.’

  Carver shrugged. ‘The government pays me to waste my time.’

  Park stared at Carver for several seconds, then he grinned. He sat down. ‘Can I have that?’ he asked, nodding at the glass of water.

  ‘I got it for you,’ Carver lied.

  Park drank, using both hands to hold the glass. His nails were bitten to the quick, Carver noticed.

  ‘So, how long’s it been?’ asked Carver.

  ‘Twelve months.’

  ‘So you’ve got forty-nine years to go?’

  Park put down the glass. He shrugged as if the length of his sentence didn’t matter to him one way or the other. ‘It could have been worse,’ he said.

  ‘It could be easier,’ said Carver.

  ‘I’m doing fine.’

  ‘You’ll be an old man by the time you get out.’

  ‘Wisdom comes with age,’ said Park. His voice was devoid of emotion. He might have been discussing the weather and not the fact that he faced a lifetime behind bars.

  ‘So you’ll be a smart old man.’ Carver took a long pull on his cigarette and blew a perfect smoke ring up at the ceiling. ‘Why not be a smart young man?’

  Park’s eyes hardened. He clenched his fists and put them on the table. He had big hands with strong fingers, scarred across the knuckles. Carver had read the man’s files and discovered that in his youth he’d been a champion kickboxer. ‘Why are you here?’ His voice was as hard as his eyes.

  Carver blew another perfect smoke ring before answering. ‘Zhou Yuanyi,’ he said. ‘You worked for him.’ Park said nothing. ‘You were working for him when you got caught. It was his heroin that you were running down from the Triangle.’ Park looked away. Carver leaned forward so that his mouth was only inches from the prisoner’s left ear. There was scar tissue there, the result of years of kicks and punches to the side of the head. ‘You don’t have to do the full fifty years, Park. I can get you out of here. All you have to do is to help me.’

  Park stabbed out his cigarette on the table. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘I can give you a new identity. I can get money for you. A new life.’

  Park snorted softly through a nose that had been broken several times. ‘What about my mother? My father? My grandmother? Her husband? I have five brothers and three sisters. I have twelve nephews and fourteen nieces. Can you protect them all? Can you give us all new identities? Where do you plan to hide us all? Laos? Cambodia? Maybe you can fly us all to Disneyland and we’ll live with Mickey Mouse. Is that what you’re offering? Disneyland?’

  Carver massaged the back of his neck. He could feel the tension building up in the muscles there. He knew that Park was right. There was no way the DEA could protect his whole extended family, and family was everything to a Thai.

  ‘Do you know what happened to the last man who tried to betray Zhou Yuanyi? Park asked quietly.

  Carver knew. ‘I’ll protect you,’ he said, though even he could hear the hesitation in his own voice.

  ‘He died with a pole up his arse,’ said Park. ‘Zhou impaled him. It took him a long time to die, I hear. It’s not too bad here if you’ve got money, and money is sent in regularly. I can buy decent food, I don’t have to sleep near the toilet, I have a mattress, clean clothes, medicine when I get sick. My family gets money. I’m a hero to them. A live hero. That’s got to be better than be
ing a dead informer. What do you think?’

  When Carver didn’t reply, Park stood up. He pulled the cigarettes from out of his back pocket and threw them on to the table, then turned and banged on the cell door with both fists.

  JENNIFER LEIGH WAS CLIMBING out of the shower for the second time when the telephone rang. There was a handset on the wall by the toilet and she picked it up as she pulled back her wet hair. It was Gerry Hunt, the paper’s features editor and her boss.

  ‘Bloody hell, Jenn, what did you say to Neil Morris?’ asked Hunt.

  ‘Good morning, Jenn. How are you, Jenn? Thanks for the two-thousand-word feature you filed, Jenn,’ said Jennifer, juggling the phone as she wrapped a towel around her waist.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, all of the above,’ said Hunt. ‘You sure know how to win friends and influence people, don’t you?’

  ‘He’s a little shit.’

  ‘He’s going to be editor before he’s thirty.’

  ‘He’s still a little shit. Anyway, it was nothing to do with features, it was about a piece I filed for news.’

  ‘It was Robbie Ballantine who asked if I’d give you a call. He’s not a happy bunny, Jenn.’

  Jennifer cursed soundlessly and glared at her reflection in the mirror. If Robbie Ballantine had turned against her, she’d never be able to get back on to hard news reporting. ‘I just wanted to make sure the piece got a good show, that’s all. Hell’s fucking bells, I work my butt off to file and it doesn’t even get in. What’s the point, Gerry?’

  ‘The point, darling, is that you’re there to file features for the travel pages. The arrest of a small-time drug courier they can take off the wires.’

  ‘There’s more to it than that,’ said Jennifer. Water was pooling around her feet on the white marble floor. ‘He doesn’t look like your normal drug courier. And he wouldn’t say anything at the Press conference.’

  ‘So?’