Behind the Night Bazaar

by Angela Savage

  ‘Oh, that’s a low blow,’ he grinned. ‘Why don’t you come and visit us in Chiang Mai.’

  ‘You mean it?’

  ‘Absolutely. It’s my turn to host the next book club meeting anyway.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’ She drained the last of her cocktail.

  Jayne had enjoyed the night. It was a relief to make light of the Richard/Ralph saga, which had bruised her both personally and professionally. She’d been too embarrassed to talk about it with anyone else, but Didier had given her the freedom to fess up. That night set the tone for their friendship: they could tell each other anything. Or so Jayne thought.

  But why hadn’t Didier told her about the assault on his father? She wondered if that was why he’d left Quebec in the first place, and had never gone back.

  ‘You could have told me, Didi,’ Jayne said.

  With a lump in her throat, she stubbed out her cigarette and picked up the Sherlock Holmes book, stopping at a passage marked in pencil in the margin:

  ‘Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing,’ answered Holmes thoughtfully; ‘it may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different…’

  Was Didier sending her a message? She recalled the Police Lieutenant Colonel’s response when asked if Didier had killed Nou: ‘All evidence points in that direction.’

  ‘And what if you shift your point of view a little?’ she said aloud.

  Jayne returned to the desk and reread her notes from the paper. She added points from the Channel 4 report, together with what Max had told her. The TV stations would still be closed, so she switched on the radio, jotting down more information as it came through.

  She watched the first news bulletins before taking a shower and washing her hair. The bathroom mirror showed the colour had returned to her face. There was determination in her mouth and jaw—an expression Jayne’s mother said made her look stubborn as a child—and her eyes were clear. She dressed quickly, slung a Do Not Disturb sign on her door and sprinted to a nearby 7-Eleven for the morning papers and coffee.

  By 9am, Jayne had mapped out the case against Didier. She considered each piece of evidence on its own then examined how it all fitted together, coming up with as many holes in the case as police claimed to have leads. Jayne was no lawyer, but she knew that in the absence of either eyewitnesses to the murder or a full confession, everything became circumstantial, even the alleged discovery of the murder weapon at Didier’s house. As for the previous assault record, Max was wrong: while it might not look good, the bottom line was the charges were never substantiated.

  If she assumed her friend was not guilty—not even of resisting arrest, let alone murdering his lover—Jayne could conclude Didier had been killed either by accident, the police fabricating a case to cover their own arses, or through some kind of conspiracy.

  She thought of the steely-eyed lieutenant colonel. He didn’t come across as the sort of person who made mistakes. To her mind, the police blunder theory only held if the lieutenant colonel was covering up for someone else—a nervous rookie, for example. But it didn’t explain Nou’s death, which was why the police went to interview Didier in the first place. It all happened too fast and was too seamless to look like damage control.

  That left her with the conspiracy theory: that Didier was set up to get him out of the way. But why not simply kill him? With Chiang Mai a hub for heroin trafficking in the region, it was not unprecedented for foreigners to be killed in drug-related attacks. A few years earlier, three US Drug Enforcement Agency officials had been executed, Mafia-style, in the area. Why go to the trouble of killing Nou as well and framing Didier for the murder?

  Didier must have been considered so dangerous, it wasn’t enough to kill him: his character and his credibility had to be destroyed as well. But how could he have posed such a threat? His friends used to joke that he was more Thai than Thai because he was so respectful of local culture. To Jayne’s knowledge, Didier’s willingness to rock the boat didn’t extend beyond covertly distributing explicit pamphlets on AIDS prevention.

  She picked up the phone and placed another call to Bangkok.

  Max fumbled with the receiver, still groggy after a dose of Valium the night before. A strange voice said something in Thai, before a familiar one took its place.

  ‘Max, it’s Jayne.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Sorry, did I wake you?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s OK.’ He propped himself up on one elbow and checked his clock. 10.30am. He felt guilty for having overslept, even if it was a Sunday. ‘When did you get in?’

  ‘Ah, actually…’

  Max recognised the tone in her voice and prayed he was still dreaming.

  ‘I’ve decided to stay on here,’ she said. ‘So I was wondering if you could arrange for me to participate in the official inquiry into Didier’s death.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ he spluttered, suddenly wide awake. ‘A Canadian has been accused of murdering a Thai national, for heaven’s sake. The Canadian Embassy isn’t about to let an amateur in on the investigation.’

  ‘I may be an amateur,’ she said tersely, ‘but I know a set-up when I see it. You know as well as I do that Didier couldn’t have killed Nou.’

  ‘Which brings me to the second point.’ His head throbbed with the effort of remaining calm. ‘You’re too involved. And I’m not just talking about your desire to see our friend exonerated. I want that as much as you do. But it’s Chiang Mai, Jayne. Normal rules don’t apply. If there’s something going on—and I’m not saying there is—then you could be in danger. It’s fortunate no one’s made a connection between you and Didier yet. And you should get out before someone does.’

  She said nothing, though Max heard papers being shuffled.

  ‘Look,’ he added gently, ‘you’re probably still in shock. Come back to Bangkok. At least then we can help each other get through this.’

  It was an appeal for her support, but Jayne chose to ignore it.

  ‘You know, there was a report in today’s paper claiming police found amphetamines at Didier’s place.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous—’ He stopped short, realising he’d played right into her hands. They both knew Didier was puritanical about drugs. It was absurd to think he’d have any in the house.

  ‘Listen, Max,’ she said quickly, ‘Didier was my best friend. I can’t sit back and let him be remembered as a murderer. You know you’re wasting your time trying to talk me out of it. So do I do it on my own, or are you going to help me?’

  ‘Help you?’ he cried. ‘It’s bad enough losing one friend. Why should I help another who’s hell-bent on ignoring my advice and putting herself in danger?’

  ‘Because I’m going to do it either way.’

  Max hesitated. ‘There’s something you should know.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s about Didier’s attack on his father.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I’ve known about it for some time,’ Max said, pausing for effect. ‘Didier told me.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He’d caught her by surprise and it took her a moment to take this in.

  ‘So why did it happen?’ she said.

  So sure she was of a reason behind Didier’s actions that Max felt ashamed for trying to pull rank on her.

  ‘Didier told his father he thought he might be gay,’ he spoke softly, ‘and the old man took it badly. Cursed the day he was born, called him a depraved sodomite and damned him to hell. Didier knew it would be tough—the old man was a staunch Catholic—but he hadn’t expected that level of contempt. I don’t think he’d have hit him if the old man hadn’t spat in his face.’

  Jayne inhaled sharply. ‘Didier lost it?’

  ‘Sounded like blind rage. Says he doesn’t remember a thing until his father was lying unconscious on the floor.

  ‘The police pressed the
father to lay assault charges but he wouldn’t hear of it, desperate to avoid the publicity of a trial. Needless to say, Didier was wracked with guilt and felt he had to do something to punish himself. So he chose exile.’

  ‘Exile?’ Jayne said.

  ‘He even had criteria to make it as hard as possible,’ Max said. ‘It had to be a Third World country where neither French nor English was spoken, the weather had to be hot and he wouldn’t permit himself to live in the capital—it had to be a remote area. That’s how he ended up in Chiang Mai.’

  ‘But I thought Didier loved Chiang Mai,’ she said.

  ‘He did, and he felt bad about it.’

  There was another pause on the line. ‘Thanks for telling me, Max. I appreciate it.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ he said.

  ‘Now can we get back to the inquiry?’

  He didn’t have the energy to fight her.

  ‘OK,’ he sighed. ‘My Canadian counterpart, David Freeman, will be in Chiang Mai in the next couple of days. I’ll arrange for you to meet—’ ‘Max, you’re the best!’

  ‘—if you promise to return to Bangkok immediately afterwards.’

  ‘What’s Freeman like?’

  ‘He’s a by-the-book bureaucrat. And don’t try to change the topic. Promise to come home once you’ve spoken with David.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ she said. ‘I promise. I’ll call again soon.’

  Head aching more than ever, Max hung up the phone and stumbled into the ensuite in search of painkillers.

  He’d feared Jayne would want to investigate Didier’s death and thought it might take the wind out of her sails to know Didier had confided in him and not her about the assault against his father. But it seemed nothing could tarnish her image of Didier.

  And Max knew something else about Didier. He’d longed to have children and for Jayne to have children with him. But he’d never got as far as asking her because Max had talked him out of it.

  Max had told himself he was doing the right thing by Jayne. But now that Didier was dead, he felt guilty for having sabotaged the idea. More gay men were raising children with female friends—or ‘entering co-parenting arrangements’ as his Sydney friends called it—and there was no reason why Didier and Jayne couldn’t have made a go of it.

  Didier had never seemed entirely comfortable with being gay and Max wondered if this, coupled with his desire to become a father, had become too much for him. Could Didier’s frustration have turned into violent rage like it did with his father, this time directed at Nou? Internalised homophobia, the psychologists called it. Could Max have been so blinded by jealousy that he’d failed to see the signs?

  As he waited for his aspirin to dissolve, Max realised he didn’t want to stop Jayne from conducting her investigation. One of them had to be wrong about Didier. Max could only hope the error of judgment was on his part.

  It was a muggy evening, the kind of night that years before would have seen Komet out in the rice paddies with his brothers and sisters hunting for frogs. His family had tried raising fish in the irrigation canals, but kept losing their stock to the speckled herons that speared the fingerlings with their blade-like beaks. Komet’s mother would have willingly trapped the herons to eat or sell, but his father refused to allow it. He’d seen villages overrun with flies and other pests once the birds were gone. So Komet’s mother raised a few chickens and, when there was rain in the air, the children would hunt for frogs, armed with special baskets that prevented their catch from jumping away. The promise of rain made the frogs sing, and the children would follow the sound, mud oozing between their toes as they waded through the paddy fields. If the frogs stopped singing, the children knew the rain would pass them by. They also knew there was no point in continuing the hunt; when the frogs went silent, it was as if they became invisible.

  The frogs in the garden of the foreigner’s house were still counting on a downpour and their chorus grew louder with each passing moment. Komet checked his watch. Nearly 1.30am—ten minutes since he’d last checked it. He thought he’d been let off lightly for his recent mistakes. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  Komet had dreaded returning to work. The new reports about amphetamines being found in the foreigner’s house made him worry he could be stood down from the force. If he lost his job, he’d have to go back to farming. He’d have no choice, not with the baby coming.

  He arrived at the City Police Station just in time to begin his shift, but his hopes of signing in and slipping off on patrol without being noticed were disappointed as he was summoned to the Lieutenant Colonel’s office.

  ‘Come in, Komet,’ Ratratarn said. ‘We have some serious matters to discuss.’

  Closing the door, Komet stood, eyes downcast, in front of his commanding officer.

  ‘I’ve decided to suspend you from your regular patrol duties,’ Ratratarn began.

  ‘But Sir, I—’

  ‘I want you to work full-time on the investigation into the deaths of Khun Sanga and his foreign murderer.’

  Komet was stunned. Surely he was on the verge of a dishonourable discharge? He almost missed the significance of Ratratarn’s use of the term ‘murderer’ rather than ‘suspect’.

  ‘…and Pornsak and Tanin will continue with their inquiries,’ the commander was saying. ‘We can expect a delegation from the Canadian Embassy soon, and you’re to ensure the information they receive is consistent with what’s in the report. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘I will see to the material we took from the foreigner’s house. The place is already under surveillance during the day, but I want a man there at night, too. You’ll guard the house. No one is to go inside without my authorisation. If anyone approaches, you’re to take down their details and report back to me. But before you go, you’re to familiarise yourself with the official report, which has been brought up-to-date in light of the new evidence.’

  He paused, eyeing Komet squarely. Komet politely lowered his own gaze, but not before he saw the look Ratratarn gave him; not the censure he was expecting, something more conspiratorial.

  ‘Memorise this report,’ Ratratarn added, handing him the document, ‘so if you’re questioned by members of the foreign delegation, you know exactly how to respond.’

  Quivering with relief as he leafed through the pages, Komet could scarcely believe what he read about the discovery of the murder weapon.

  In his search of the rear yard behind the suspect’s house, Officer Komet located a plastic bag behind the water trough. Opened by the senior officer at the scene, Lieutenant Colonel Ratratarn, the contents revealed a cut-throat razor with traces of a dark substance on the blade. The bag and its contents were handed over to the Scientific Crime Detection Division for analysis…

  Komet didn’t know how to react. The report was clearly inaccurate, but it was signed by Ratratarn himself. Ratratarn had been there on the night and knew Komet hadn’t found the murder weapon. Why, then, would he allow Komet to take the credit?

  He should’ve been grateful for being spared the loss of face, but he couldn’t help feeling uneasy. Ratratarn had done him a favour and Komet owed him for it.

  It didn’t help that guard duty gave him so much time to think about it. At first, it was just dull. After checking the doors and windows, he’d assumed a lookout position on the front balcony.

  He watched the people passing by in the street. A small boy dragged his brother by the hand. A woman with a pushcart—a vendor of sweets—trundled home for the evening. A group of teenagers laughed at a joke that was out of Komet’s earshot. And an old man sifted through piles of rubbish, putting anything worth salvaging into a hessian sack. No one came anywhere near the house. Only one or two even glanced in his direction.

  He shifted his focus to the yard. The ground was thick with ferns, liana vines encircled tree-trunks like snakes, and large blood-red and flesh-coloured flowers that looked like body parts were scattered among the greenery. To Komet, the garden was wild, almost frighte
ning.

  As the street emptied, with no sound other than the frogs, Komet’s imagination started to get the better of him. He imagined the phii—the ghost of the foreigner—was lurking somewhere in the jungle-garden, waiting to exact its revenge. That was why none of the passersby lingered, he thought, why none of the neighbours even looked over their fences.

  Komet allowed his gaze to wander down the staircase where the foreigner died and immediately regretted it. The dark stain on the wooden step was unmistakable.

  He began pacing the balcony, desperately wishing someone else was with him. He’d even settle for Sergeant Pornsak. Better to be on the receiving end of his sarcastic jibes than the victim of a vengeful phii farang.

  A noise towards the front of the garden stopped him. Heart racing, Komet strained to hear it over the frogs, releasing his breath as he made out two male voices in the street. Careful not to tread on the bloodstained step, he walked through the yard to take a closer look.

  ‘I saw you with her!’ one of the men was saying. ‘Don’t try and deny it.’

  ‘Well, she asked me to meet her,’ the other said.

  ‘But she’s my girlfriend!’

  Komet cleared his throat. The men looked about his age. Both wore jeans, T-shirts and rubber sandals, one with a baseball cap facing backwards on his head.

  ‘Sawadee krup,’ he greeted them. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘He’s trying to steal my girlfriend,’ the boy in the cap said, jerking his head towards the other man.

  ‘I’m not trying to steal her. Officer, my friend here is upset because his girlfriend asked me to take her on a date.’

  Komet studied them for signs of intoxication.

  ‘That’s not true! Officer, he’s been trying to steal her for months now. She’s very beautiful, you see, and so sweet.’

  ‘Oh, yes, she’s sweet all right!’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ the first boy growled.