by Harlan Wolff
“Yes, I’m convinced of it.”
“And they weren’t working for Milos?” George asked.
“No, he’s an evil bastard, but it wasn’t him,” Carl said.
“You’re sure about that?” George asked.
“Yeah, pretty sure.”
Nurse Annie had waited patiently for Carl to stop talking. Thinking he had, was a mistake, and as she moved the needle closer to the open wound on his cheek, he turned his face toward his three friends again. Nurse Annie stood close to the gurney, leaning slightly forward with the needle in her raised hand, like a statue of a darts player in mid-throw.
“But how did Nadia switch the phone off when they left? She was already dead by then,” George said.
“She didn’t,” Carl told him, “for some reason, the killers took her phone, and either they switched it off, or it logged itself off the tower when the boat took it out of range. I’m certain that’s what happened. What I don’t know is why she told them how to find her, or why they took her phone with them when they left?”
“Why would she tell her killers how to find her? Clouseau asked.
“I don’t know,” Carl told him.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Clouseau said.
“None of this makes any sense,” Maria said.
“Maybe not, but it will in time,” Carl said.
“You thought your last theory was correct too,” Maria said.
“As long as every new hypothesis is better than the last,” Carl told her. “That’s how the process works.”
“Is getting your self killed part of the process?” she asked, staring daggers at the nurse. Nurse Annie was young and very pretty. Why did all the women in this country have to be so cute, and so willing?
“Don’t ask me to give up show business, Maria. How else would I get to spend my afternoons chatting up nurses?” Carl said.
“If you had a proper job, maybe women would chat you up instead.”
“Is that an offer,” Carl asked.
“Grow up,” Maria said.
“Too late for that,” Carl said.
“Will you talk to the police now?” Maria asked.
“Yes Maria, of course, I will,” Carl told her, and it wasn’t really a lie, because he planned to go and see Colonel Pornchai, just as soon as he stopped feeling like he was going to throw up. The two thugs had worked him over good. It wasn’t the beating that he objected to; it was how much they had enjoyed giving it. They would pay for that. He took a deep breath, and it was a mistake, he winced as pain shot through his ribs. Maria seemed pleased, and she smiled at him. Dammit, he thought, she’s a good-looking woman. Then the other woman smiled at him as she stuck the sewing needle through his cheek again, and he yelled, “Ouch!”
CHAPTER 28
“A good friend will always stab you in the front.”
– Oscar Wilde
It was evening, and Colonel Pornchai was late, as usual. Carl was sitting, with great difficulty, on a sofa in the Library. He’d already had three whiskies to dull the pain, but without much success, so he ordered another one. The taxi ride back to the hotel had been hell, and the walk from his room to the lift hadn’t been any better. The hospital had sent him home with some painkillers, but so far, they weren’t working. The colonel arrived and laughed when he saw Carl’s injuries.
“Good to see you’ve got everything under control, as usual,” he said and burst out laughing again.
“Have I ever told you that you have a sick sense of humour?”
“Many times,” the colonel said, still laughing.
Although he had put on a plain white shirt to come to the meeting, the colonel always wore his khaki trousers and black shiny police shoes, because somebody thinking he might be a civilian was never going to be allowed to happen; police colonel was not a job, it was who he was.
“Some men zapped me in front of the hotel with a stun gun, and kidnapped me this morning,” Carl told him.
The colonel became severe, and sat up and gave Carl his full attention. He wasn’t happy all of a sudden. “I’m not allowing anybody to think they can kidnap my friends. Who are these people?”
“It’s alright; they changed their mind and let me go.”
“What do you mean, they changed their mind?”
“I reasoned with them while I was duct taped to a chair, and they let me go.”
“You’re a good talker, I’ll give you that. Good thing they didn’t gag you or we’d be having this meeting at the morgue. Let me have their names, and I’ll make sure they’re dealt with harshly.”
“I believe they still have some information I need. I want it, and I will be going to see them soon, and I don’t want them scared off yet.” That was Carl’s story to the colonel, but it wasn’t the truth. The truth was, he didn’t think the colonel could take them on, not with a minister on their side. Plus, he already had a plan to teach Sergey and his friend a lesson they wouldn’t forget.
“You mean you’re going to go and see the people that tied you to a chair and beat you up?”
“I thought it would be a nice surprise for them. Something they won’t be expecting.”
“Why do you do things like this? I don’t understand you, I never have.”
“That’s because you take your power for granted. I am not powerful, and I am a foreigner. So I must use unpredictability and confusion to get what I want.”
“I understand that, but do you really need to get half killed in the process?”
“Sometimes when you gamble, you lose,” Carl told him.
“You haven’t been winning any though, aren’t you supposed to win some too? Let me do it my way,” the colonel told him. “You go away for a while, and I’ll fix these people, negotiate with the major, and then when it’s over, you can come back.”
“It’s a great plan, but if I go, it means the murderers get away with it. It will become another unsolved case,” Carl said.
“Why are you doing this? Were you in love with her?” the colonel asked.
“Yes,” Carl told him, even though he knew it wasn’t true. In Thailand, lies often make more sense than the truth, so the colonel got the soap opera version, instead of the morality play.
“Tell me everything you know so far,” the colonel said, and that was when Carl knew he was going to get the help he needed. Things were looking up.
When Carl finished telling the colonel what he needed to know, he ordered two more drinks and said, “So, what do you think?”
The colonel thought for a while before he spoke. “The Scarface one, I can look for him. If they flew there, we could find him on the airport security cameras.”
“They didn’t fly,” Carl told him.
“Are you sure?”
“I can’t be sure, but they got to the island carrying a gun with a silencer. I doubt they risked going through an airport carrying that.”
“That’s a good point,” the colonel said, “so they probably drove there.”
“That’s my guess,” Carl told him.
The colonel sat thinking for a while. Then he smiled and said, “They arrived on the island before noon, right?”
“Right.”
“If they started off in Bangkok, which they probably did, then they most likely checked into a hotel for the night. It’s at least twelve hours to drive there and the same coming back, so they probably stopped off somewhere. You said the victim was expecting them, so they had fixed an arrival time. Allow an hour to steal a boat, plus the time they would be on the water, and it means they had to plan to be able to get there from where they slept by ten o’clock in the morning. They wouldn’t have checked into the hotel in the town because that’s the first place the police would look for them, so if I select a point two to three hours away, and draw a circle around it, the chances are they stayed in a hotel somewhere in that circle. My guess is they would have picked a hotel in Trang. That’s the right sort of distance, and fortunately, there aren’t many hotels there s
o a search for the passport copy of a foreigner with a big scar across his eye shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“That’s excellent thinking, you might even make a good detective one of these days. Did I ever tell you, the only reason I put up with you is, you’re the cleverest person I know?” Carl said, and the colonel smiled and sipped his whisky.
CHAPTER 29
“Danger is an aphrodisiac.”
– Tobsha Learner
Maria had shown up at Carl’s door to apologise to him, wearing bangles and beads, a little black dress, and high heels. She blamed her earlier scepticism on the jet lag and invited him to dinner, to ‘make it up to him.’ It was after nine o’clock, and the effect of the whisky was wearing off, and now his bruised ribs hurt every time he moved. She’d asked him if he was well enough to go out, and he’d told her it would be fine, as long as she didn’t make him laugh. Putting on a jacket had been agony, but she looked far too sophisticated for him to go out wearing only a Polo shirt. They walked through the hotel lobby together looking like a film star accompanied by a man trying very hard not to breathe.
The restaurant Carl had chosen was a short taxi ride away; it was French and romantic. Maria didn’t seem to mind that it appeared like they were on a date, even though, under the circumstances, it should have felt uncomfortable. They hadn’t had a civil conversation since she’d arrived in Thailand. She had already broken her promise in the taxi and made him laugh, and then she had made him laugh again when they got to the restaurant. By the time they had sat down, he was in agony.
“George came to the pool and explained things to me, and I think I understand now,” she told him as he poured wine into her glass.
“That’s a relief,” he said, wondering what she looked like in a bikini.
“It’s a bureaucracy, right?”
“A very Kafkaesque one, yes,” Carl told her.
“And you,” she paused trying to remember George’s words, and then found them, “make a living lubricating the mechanism?”
“Along those lines, yes, and as self-protection. Throwing yourself at the machine’s mercy isn’t an option unless you like dungeons.”
“And you’ve lived here for forty years, why?” she asked, holding the crystal wine glass against her chest.
“That’s the question I’m always asked,” he said, “and there’s no simple answer. Think of it like this: I know it’s nice in Vienna, but I’m already here. The assumption is that being an expatriate means you can choose to live anywhere, but life doesn’t work like that. Perhaps I’m a coward, just like everybody else. I suffer from an acute fear of leaving home, and this is my home now. Just because I left home once, a long time ago, it doesn’t mean I would be comfortable pulling up sticks again.”
“Don’t you find it strange though?”
“Sure, but not as strange as I find Europe,” he told her.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re all so bloody lonely for a start. You marry a television set, spend your entire lives at work or at home, you hardly know the people you work with, and I bet you don’t talk to your neighbours at all. To me, that’s madness.”
“It sounds like it’s modern living you find objectionable.”
Not objectionable, if it makes you happy I’m all for it. I just wouldn’t know how to do it.”
“So, where do you expect to end up?”
“That’s the other thing; you all believe everything has to be structured and organised, planned well ahead. It’s like you’re all saving up for your old age, preparing responsibly for terminal illness, and death. Here we believe in fate and karma, we don’t spend our lives worrying about how we are going to pay for our own funerals. It doesn’t occur to us.”
“Isn’t that about avoiding responsibility?” Maria asked.
“I don’t think so,” Carl told her, “nobody starves, and old people get looked after here, without being locked away in institutions, they just do it themselves; everybody mucks in and helps. That’s about taking responsibility.”
“Will you be looked after?”
“I very much doubt it. I’m always reminded I don’t belong here.”
“That’s what I mean, doesn’t it worry you that it is unlikely to end well?”
“Life doesn’t end well for anybody, that’s the price we pay for being born. Ending our days living in a shack in Thailand or locked in an anonymous institution that smells like a prison, what’s the difference?”
“That’s just fatalism,” she told him.
“No Maria, that’s just Asia.”
“Haven’t you ever wanted to get married and settle down?”
“I’ve already done that, a few times. Every time I got married I was told it was time to settle down, and every time I got divorced I was told it was time to settle up. My accountant says I can’t afford to settle down anymore.”
“Do you think everything’s funny?”
“None of it’s funny,” he told her, “I never laugh at my own jokes.”
The owner of the restaurant came over and told Carl it was nice to see him again after so long. The Frenchman was clearly impressed by Maria and turned on all his charm. He left them with complimentary Armagnac and insisted they both promise to come back to his restaurant soon. They assured him they would.
Back at the hotel, Carl saw Maria to her room. In front of her door, she touched his arm and said, “That was nice, I think I like you, Carl,” and then stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek, the one without the six stitches. Maria smelt like a forest, all wildflowers and heather, and he wondered if he might have been asked inside if not for his injuries. She smiled at him as she closed the door and, as soon as she was gone, the pain returned.
CHAPTER 30
“Sometimes, getting up in the morning and brushing your teeth is the hardest part of the day - it all just hurts.”
– Tom Brady
Carl had been awake most of the night, because every time he moved, the pain was like being stabbed. It was a long time since he’d been stabbed, but he remembered it felt like this. The news channel on the hotel’s cable was mind-numbingly boring; gossip and politics packaged and sold to people who believe professional wrestling is fair and balanced, so Carl had spent most of the night watching the History channel. Not long after the sun came up, Maria called to say Clouseau was taking her South to organise the paperwork to claim her sister’s body, and she’d be back in a few days. He was a good man, for a policeman. Carl wasn’t meeting George until after the sun went down, so he decided it was a good day for staying in bed, ordering room service, and watching television, and that’s what he did.
At 10pm, Carl and George walked into Bomba and sat at the bar. Anya was sitting at a table with Milos and the government minister but wisely pretended not to know Carl. At another table, Carl spotted a small group of military types. These would be the Serbian crew Bart had told him about. The government minister was watching the dancers on the stage and asking whispered questions. Milos and Anya were helping the minister select a dancer that would take him to bed and give him what he wanted, whatever that was. The two Russian thugs were nowhere to be seen, probably behind the curtain, hiding from the minister so he wouldn’t think his friend Milos was a gangster, as well as a pimp.
Milos walked up to where Carl was sitting and leaned forward so he could be heard over the loud music.
“What are you doing here?” He barked at Carl.
“We need to talk,” Carl told him.
“Do you enjoy pain?” Milos growled.
“Play Tony Soprano with me again, and you’ll have to kill me. Otherwise, I’ll take you and your organisation apart like a clock. You can kill me, or you can talk to me. The alternative is surrender because if you don’t kill me, you can’t win.”
“Is that what you came here to tell me?’
“No,” Carl said, “I came here to talk.”
“After the minister leaves,” Milos said and walked away.
George ordered a beer and Carl ordered a large whisky, for the pain. The minister left half an hour later with an athletic dancer almost a foot taller than he was. It wasn’t long before Milos came over and sat beside Carl.
“What do I have to do to get rid of you, am I going to regret not killing you?”
“You’re not going to kill me. There’s nothing in it for you, even with the minister running interference for you there would be too much heat if you killed me, so let’s move on,” Carl told him. Milos didn’t answer, so Carl continued, “I think it would please you if Nadia’s killer got caught. I suspect you don’t approve of people thinking they can murder your girls and get away with it.”
Milos looked Carl over then did the same to George. He called the bartender and told her to bring three drinks. “So, you and me don’t have a problem?”
“I’ll let Sergey know he shouldn’t kidnap people, but that’s it. There will be no feud between us, as long as you tell me what I need to know.”
“What makes you think I know anything?”
“We don’t have to like each other to want the same thing,” Carl told him.
“Let’s say I buy that,” Milos told him, “that still doesn’t answer why you’re here.”
“I think you know things about Nadia, things that would be useful to me. I am asking you to tell me what you know.”
“And you think I’ll do this because I don’t like people thinking they can murder my girls and get away with it?”
“That’s the theory,” Carl told him.
The two thugs came out from behind the curtain and crossed the floor. Milos waved them away, then spoke to Carl, “You expect me to tell you about my business?”
“Not really,” Carl told him. “I am not expecting a confession, just some help.”
“Like what?”
“I am told she was a blackmailer. Did you know anything about that?”
Milos thought hard on the question before answering. “She was good at her job, and apart from being a great fuck, she ran the office for me. It was of no interest to me what she did on the side.”
