“Holy Jesus, Mother of God!” gasped Danny and he downed his drink in one.
“Ying, I had no idea. I mean, you don’t look like you have been through all that. Jesus! I don’t know what to say. How do you cope with life? I had something terrible happen to me and I haven’t been right since.”
“Buddha helps me.”
“Well, I guess after great tragedy in their lives some people discover religion. I discovered ‘Jack Daniels’. Me and God fell out with each other a long, long time ago. Ying, I don‘t know what to say to you. I feel humbled and honoured that you decided to share all that with me. I do feel a sort of closeness to you. Maybe we are more alike than I realised.”
“You don’t have to tell me about your wife. Maybe one day you will want too.”
“Ying, it’s no big deal. I’ll tell you. I have just never told anyone about it before. Just over ten years ago I was working undercover on a big case in London. The target was a gangster called ‘Mad’ Mickey Harrison. I had already infiltrated the gang and the enquiry was moving on at a great speed. Before we close in on a gang and arrest them all, the undercover agent introduces a new person into the gang, another undercover officer. In turn they introduce another and another and so on. So, by the time the bust is done, there might have been 12 or 20 people infiltrated into the gang since the original and nobody in the gang knows what the feck has gone on. It makes it difficult for them to finger you. Anyway, I was handing over to a friend of mine, Bob Malone. What we didn’t know is that one of the junior members of the gang remembered Bob arresting him and letting him off with a caution when he was a kid. Because it was a caution there was no record kept and, when we did the risk assessments, it didn’t show up. Mad Mickey had invited us along to an old disused meat factory in east London. There was nothing unusual about that and we often made meetings in those sorts of places. Mad Mickey didn’t suspect me at all. He just assumed that the police had managed to infiltrate me. Him and one of his men confronted Bob in front of me and these guys don’t feck around. They pulled out their revolvers and Mad Mickey Harrison was going to shoot my friend, so I just ran at him. He got one shot off before I managed to knock him to the ground and I heard Bob screaming. I rolled around on the floor with Mad Mickey, for what seemed like ages but it could only have been seconds. We were both trying to point the gun at each other but he had hold of it. Then it went off again and the bullet went under his chin and blew the top of his head off. I looked around at Bob and he was covered in blood and screaming. The other man was standing over him firing the revolver at him, but it was jammed and it kept clicking, I picked up Mad Mickey’s gun and shot the fella in the back. He lived, but the bullet shattered his spine and he never walked again. Bob had a nasty wound but it missed his vital organs and he lived. About a year later I was awarded a medal for bravery and I had to go to receive it from the Queen. It was all a bit of a laugh really. Afterwards I met some of the lads from work and we went out on the town to celebrate the ‘Hero’. Some fecking hero! I didn’t get home until after 2 o’clock in the morning and, when I did, the road was closed off, filled with police and firemen, blue flashing lights and pouring with fecking rain. Nobody could get hold of me because I had turned the phone off. I didn’t want the wife to nag me to come home. The house had been burnt out. A proper job done on it. They had drilled holes in the windows back and front and poured gallons of Methylated spirits into the house through the windows and the front door and then firebombed it back and front. There was nothing left when I got home, just a blackened shell. My kids were only five and eight, a little boy called George and Emma my little girl. They had to identify them and my wife, Angie, by their teeth. None of them had a chance. They were burnt to a crisp. Everything was destroyed; my wife, my kids, my photos, my fecking life. The only thing I had was the suit that I stood up in and the fecking medal in my pocket. Nobody was ever caught for their murders, but nobody doubts that it was one of Mad Mickey’s lot.”
Ying looked at Danny. He wasn’t sobbing. He was silent, but the tears tricked down his face. She put her hands on his.
“I’ve never told that to anyone before, Ying. You make me feel something that I haven’t felt for a long time…..I don’t know what to say.”
Ying wiped the tears from his face, being careful not to scratch him with her long and perfectly manicured nails, then kissed him gently on the cheek. Danny moved around to face her and held her head in his hands and kissed her soft mouth. Her skin felt so smooth and she smelt so good.
“No Danny. We can’t. You have to stop.” Ying pulled herself away and Danny saw that she too had tears in her eyes.
“I’m sorry Ying, I just thought……I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s not your fault. It’s my fault. I have to tell you something.”
“What?”
There was a long silence as Ying searched for the words.
“Just tell me Ying. Do you already have a boyfriend?”
“No. I have never had a boyfriend. Danny, I’m a Katoey.”
“What’s a Katoey?”
“I’m a ladyboy.”
Danny pushed himself up and stepped away and looked at Ying, a long hard look.
“You can’t be.”
“Yes I am. That first night when we went out with Phong, he wasn’t just teasing you when he was asking if you liked ladyboys. He was teasing me too.”
“Jesus! Yer a fecking man?”
“No I’m a woman.”
“Don’t treat me like a fecking eejit. Have you got a dick or not?”
“I’m sorry Danny. You don’t have to be angry with me. Maybe we can talk tomorrow when you are calm again.” She could sense the growing anger building in Danny. She knew that he was attracted to her. She felt the same way, but she never meant it to get as far as this. She got up from the sofa, turned and wai’d to Danny, then went to bed.
“Holy Jesus! What a fecking eejit I am. Danny O’Brien has become a fifty year old fecking queer.”
Danny went to the kitchen cupboard and took out a new bottle of Jack Daniels. He hadn’t been drunk since the day that Bob Malone had come round to his flat and told him that he was going to Thailand. But now he was going to get drunk. Very drunk. He had to.
Chapter 15 Back to the Embassy.
The Sergeant of the Scots Guards held them at the gate. He wasn’t the sort of man to be either impressed or intimidated by any Police ID badge and, if they were not on the day’s guest list, then they were not going to get inside the Embassy. Danny had hoped for some element of surprise, but realised there was no hope of that now. So he took out his mobile and rang the contact number for Sir Anthony Armstrong. It was answered by one of his personal assistants. Danny told her that he was waiting outside at the gate to the British Embassy and that he wanted to see Sir Anthony straight away.
Danny and Ying had not spoken much all morning. There had been some polite conversation over breakfast, but both had avoided the obvious topic for conversation, even though they both had things to say. By the time they had reached Phuket airport a heavy silence had fallen over them and, the longer it went on, the harder it seemed to break.
They were held at the gate for another 15 minutes before someone came out to them with printed visitors passes. They were escorted inside and once again taken to Sir Anthony’s huge wood panelled office.
Sir Anthony greeted them as before, waiting until they were inside his office before getting up to walk around the oversized desk with an outstretched hand and a beaming smile.
“Detective O’Brien. How nice to see you again. Have you got some news for me?”
Danny shook his hand, but his heart was not in it.
“Sit down will yer. Jesus! Why does everyone in Thailand treat me like a feckin eejit?”
The smile dropped off Sir Anthony’s face.
“I b
eg your pardon?”
“SIT DOWN. I don’t like being lied to, I don’t like wasting my feckin time and I especially don’t like being treated like a feckin eejit.”
Danny opened his brief case and took out the photos he had printed of Sir Anthony making love with Sarah Appleby and threw them down on the table in front of him. Sir Anthony barely glanced at them. He knew what they were and his body flushed with the guilt of being caught out by the Detective.
“Look at them.” Danny spread them out with one hand.
“She wasn’t your niece at all was she? Blackmail was it? Was she blackmailing you? Is that why you killed her? No I think you probably hired someone to do it for you. You haven’t got the balls to do this yourself.”
Danny’s words pounded into Sir Anthony, like punches from a heavy weight boxer, as he realised that the detective thought he was the killer.
“Oh my God! You are so wrong Detective. I did not kill Sarah.”
“Did you go back to her apartment looking for the camera?”
“Yes. Well, I had some people go and search it for me. When the police didn’t have it listed in their exhibit book, I thought that they must have missed it and, of course, I knew what was on it.” Sir Anthony sounded like a broken man, his confidence was gone. He was now in a state of shock.
“That’s another thing I don’t like. People who mess with my crime scene. Who the feck do you think you are?”
Sir Anthony did not answer. Danny and Ying sat down and Danny lowered his tone again.
“Who was Sarah Appleby?”
“She really was my niece and I really did not kill her. I loved her.” Sir Anthony was looking into Danny’s eyes and Danny could see the pain in them.
“You were fucking your niece?”
“It was not like that. I loved her. I have loved her all her life.”
“You have already had your one and only chance with me, so this time I want the truth. All of it.”
“Where do you want me to start?”
“I always like the beginning first.”
“Sarah was always a wild child and she always would have been. In the family they considered her the black sheep. She did not do so well at school and ran away more often than not, but she and I had a bond. I adored her. I think I loved her from the time she could talk. She was funny. As she got older she became too difficult for the family and, as a young teenager, there were rumours and scandal that she was having sex with boys. My sister could not let her bring shame on the family name and asked me to help. I was working in Hong Kong at the time, so I flew her out to live with my wife and I and she went to the best school. She was 14 years old and already a woman. You have to understand Detective, Sarah had a power over men. She was not like any other woman I’d ever met. Even at 14 she was sexy and seductive. I did not have a chance. How could I resist her?”
“You had sex with her when she was 14 years old?”
“We became lovers. Yes.”
“And your wife never knew?”
“She suspected, but we never embarrassed her with our love and I think she just grew to accept it. Nobody else ever knew.”
“Go on then. So she came to live with you at 14 and you became lovers.”
“Yes. As I said, she was a wild child. Everything about her was wild, especially her passion. Even then she had a thing for taking these bloody photographs, I don’t know why. She just downloaded them onto her computer and kept them, thousands of them.”
“Why didn‘t you stop her from taking the photos?”
“Nobody could ever say no to Sarah.”
“Go on then.”
“Anyway, when I got the post in Singapore she came along too. When she left school I got her a job at the Embassy. It was a job in name only, the post did not really exist. But it meant that I could pay her a wage and keep her near to me. She came with us when we took up Malaysia and then finally Thailand. That’s why she worked from home Detective, because basically she had nothing to do. Oh yes, occasionally I would get my PA to email her some letters to type up and send out, but it was usually personal stuff; invites to evening balls and functions, that sort of thing. The apartment in Patong does not belong to the Embassy, it’s mine.”
“So you have been Sarah’s lover for the last seven years, since she was 14 years old?”
“Yes. I knew of course that she had other lovers, many in fact, but that was Sarah. She loved life and loved people. She lived life to the full and she needed excitement and passion in her life. She could never be with just one man. Asking Sarah to lead a normal life would be like asking the sun not to shine, and Sarah really did shine like the sun. I usually went to see Sarah once or twice a week, we would go out to a nice restaurant and then go back to the apartment and make love, usually for most of the night. You could never get enough of Sarah and she could not get enough love.”
“Were you with her the night she was murdered?”
“No. I was not. But I was with her the night before.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Just the usual really. I arrived early evening and we went out into Patong. We went for a meal along the beach front and around midnight we went back to the apartment, stripped naked and got in the Jacuzzi. We drank some vodka and smoked some weed. Sarah liked to dress up and, as I have already told you, she liked to take lots of photos. She got out of the Jacuzzi and when she came back she was dressed up in stockings and a Basque, she started taking photos of the two of us together. She usually put the camera on automatic timer and we played around, but that night she dropped the camera. She was a little bit tipsy I think. Anyway it broke. We carried on making love and I left the apartment at around 7:00am. She was alive and well and sleeping like a baby when I left her.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, it was the next day when the Police called me to tell me that she had been found murdered in her apartment, horribly cut up. I went back to Phuket to identify the body, but they only let me see her face. I knew that these photos were in the camera and on the computer. I told the Police Colonel that I needed these as a matter of security and I asked if anyone had examined them yet. He said no and told me I should take them and keep them at the Embassy, in case the police needed to see them at a later date. I took her mobile as well, because I knew that there were photos on there too”
“And what about the camera?”
“I panicked a bit when it was not in the police exhibits, so I had my people wait until it was safe to go back into the apartment and search for it. I knew that Sarah would not throw it away, so I had them check every single camera shop from Patong to Phuket town, but there was no trace of it. Where did you find it?”
Danny ignored the question.
“I hope for your sake that you still have the laptop and the mobile phone?”
“Yes, I have them.”
Sir Anthony got up and pulled at a bookcase which swung away from the wall. He kneeled down, opened the safe concealed behind it and put the laptop and the phone on the table in front of Danny.
“I’ll be taking these with me” announced Danny as he stood up.
“Yes I know. It might be immoral to have a loving sexual relationship with one’s niece, but it’s not illegal Detective. You don’t need to keep looking at me like that.”
“It is illegal when the kid is only 14 years old.”
“Detective, what’s going to happen to me now?”
“I’ve come here to catch a killer not a pedophile. I’ll submit a separate report when I get back to London. Somebody else will decide what to do about you.”
“Inspector, I can’t afford for this to become public.”
“I’m not an Inspector. I‘m a feckin Detective.”
“You could be an Inspector by the time you get back t
o London.”
“Will yer kop yerself on!”
“Detective, this will ruin me. This just can’t come out in the open. I’d rather kill myself.”
Danny stepped up close to Sir Anthony, pushed his forehead against the Ambassador’s, then pushed until their noses were squashed together and they were eyeball to eyeball. Sir Anthony could feel Danny’s breath. It felt warm and smelt of cigarettes and brandy and evoked a flash of a memory from childhood of an old uncle who smelt the same way.
“Kill yourself is it?” he snarled. “Go on then. I feckin dare yer.”
Danny picked up the laptop and mobile phone and walked out of the office. Ying quickly wai’d to Sir Anthony and trotted after him. Sir Anthony took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away the sweat from his face.
The Thai Dragon Page 8
