Behind the Night Bazaar

by Angela Savage

  The department did not distribute mobile phones to officers of Pornsak’s rank but he’d bought his own. Ratratarn picked up the receiver after the first ring and heard Pornsak’s voice through the static.

  ‘You wanted to speak to me, Sir?’

  ‘Yes. Pornsak, I want you to go back to the bar behind the Night Bazaar and question the owner again. See if he remembers anything else about the farang woman who was there on the night of the murder.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Any details at all, especially where she might be staying in Chiang Mai. I want you to track down the kid whose statement Tanin took, too…’ he leafed through the file, ‘Khun Mana Traisophon. Lives at 4/17 Soi Wat Chiang Yeun. Ask him for the same information. I need a name.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘And Pornsak, you are to report back directly to me on this. Understand?’

  ‘Perfectly, Sir.’

  Ratratarn terminated the call. His key chain was by the phone and he picked it up, weighing it in the palm of his hand. He walked across the room and unlocked a large filing cupboard.

  The door opened on the material he’d taken from the dead foreigner’s house: computer, disks, files, folders full of documents and a bundle of personal effects, including letters. Ratratarn had checked all of the computer stuff and while he’d found plenty relating to the foreigner’s work on AIDS and prostitution, there was nothing that fingered him or Kelly in any way. Either Kelly got it wrong, in which case there’d been no point getting the Canadian out of the way, or the guy had seen them coming and passed on the evidence to someone else. Ratratarn was confident the foreigner’s Thai colleagues weren’t in on it, which suggested that information had been leaked to another farang. He found colleagues’ names among the computer files, but nothing that raised his suspicions.

  He picked up the bundle of letters. Although the foreigner was Canadian, none of the envelopes bore stamps from Canada. There were a few from Australia, some from European countries and a large number from within Thailand.

  Closing the cupboard, Ratratarn took the letters to his desk. He dreaded going through them, but it was another task he couldn’t delegate. Sorting them into piles by country, he lit another Krung Thep, inhaled deeply and opened the first of the envelopes.

  Jayne patted the document on her desk—lovingly, as if she could touch Didier by association—and looked at the familiar handwriting at the top of the page. Didier’s impatient scrawl was at odds with his nature. It made his letters difficult to read, though it pleased Jayne that he never resorted to typing them.

  She shook her head and focused. The document was printed from a computer file. Didier had written in the top margin: Background notes as requested: will discuss on 6/5.

  The paper, ‘The Impacts of the AIDS Epidemic on the Demographics of the Sex Industry in Northern Thailand’, was dated April 1996. It opened with a brief history of how AIDS, once a disease of injecting drug users and homosexuals in Bangkok in the mid-1980s, exploded into a national epidemic affecting one per cent of the Thai population— some 500,000 people—by 1992. HIV had quickly spread through the community via the sex industry, with rural areas the worst affected, particularly those in the north.

  ‘A survey of nearly 3000 sex workers in Chiang Mai last year found 40 per cent infected,’ Jayne read. ‘Infection rates are even higher among the city’s poorest sex workers: an estimated 72 per cent of women who charge fifty baht or less per customer are HIV-positive. Such women average ten to twenty clients per day, the majority of whom do not use condoms.’

  Jayne shook her head at the implications: for a sex worker to service twenty clients per day meant, somewhere in the town, women were being fucked by a different man more than once every hour for less than two dollars a time.

  Most of the sex workers Jayne had met were like Nalissa, working in up-market establishments catering to foreigners. There was no way she could get inside a brothel patronised by the poorest locals.

  She rubbed her temples and returned to the report. It described how the successful implementation of public health activities such as a ‘100 per cent condom campaign’ was complicated by the fact that prostitution remained illegal in Thailand—a perplexing situation, given the industry’s high profile, and a testament to the Thai capacity for polite disregard.

  ‘Last year, as part of the national AIDS response, the government introduced a bill proposing to decriminalise prostitution,’ Jayne read, ‘arguing that if prostitution were no longer illegal, more sex workers would be encouraged to come forward for testing and counselling and the industry would be easier to regulate. However, the bill is yet to be enacted—’

  The remainder of the sentence had been scribbled out, possibly by Moira O’Halloran, the lines in black ink rather than the blue Didier had used. Scowling, Jayne held the page up to the light and gradually made out the words beneath the lines: ‘nor is it ever likely to be enacted, so long as the military and police continue to profit as they do from the illegal trade.’ The words were significant and Jayne wondered why anyone would delete them.

  She found the answer under a subheading ‘Shifts in Procurement Patterns’ in the local sex industry. In the north in particular, men were demanding greater access to non-Thai sex workers—such as women from the hill tribes and from neighbouring countries Burma and Laos. Demand had also increased for ‘virgins’ (younger women and children) in the belief that they were more likely to be ‘AIDS-free’. But in fact, the paper said these groups were at great risk of HIV infection, especially the children. And because of their status as minors, lack of family support and inability to speak Thai, most did not know how to access health services.

  ‘These shifts in demand have been well documented by the Zero Tolerance for Child Prostitution (ZTCP) Agency,’ Jayne read, ‘and are noted among both Thais and foreign sex tourists. Thai patrons favour underage, albeit post-pubescent girls. However, at least one expatriate entrepreneur in Chiang Mai is known to offer foreigners pre-pubescent children—a situation that could not exist without the collusion of the local police.’

  Jayne paused to light a cigarette. Echoes of a conversation with Didier came back to her from a couple of months ago. They’d met to talk books, but Didier was preoccupied, his mood bleak. He told her that in villages around Chiang Mai where he worked, not a week went by without a funeral for someone who’d died of AIDS.

  ‘Last week, it was a sixteen-year-old girl,’ he told Jayne. ‘Given how long it takes AIDS to develop, she couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve when she got infected.’

  Jayne flicked the ash from her cigarette, kicking herself for not having thought of it before. Didier was looking into a child sex racket—possibly involving the ‘expatriate entrepreneur’ referred to in his notes. An operation like that would be worth a fortune, both to whoever ran it and to the cops paid to turn a blind eye. He must have found out who was behind it, and they’d killed him to keep it quiet. That would explain why he’d been framed for Nou’s murder, too: if his findings surfaced after his death, they could be dismissed as the ravings of a man unhinged, the amphetamines further evidence of an unbalanced mind.

  Jayne forced herself to finish reading the document. ‘The conditions of vulnerability are clear,’ Didier had written. ‘They consist of poverty, gender, youth, ethnicity and illegality of status as a prostitute and/or illegal immigrant. The key is to enact legislation and develop projects that will have a real impact on changing such conditions.’

  Jayne assumed it was Moira O’Halloran who’d put a single, black line through the text, from the subheading to the end of the document. Moira had told Jayne that her proposed study would ‘identify conditions of vulnerability’. Didier believed the conditions of vulnerability were already clear.

  Her cigarette still smouldering in the ashtray, Jayne rose to her feet and started pacing the room. Didier had given Moira highly sensitive information—information that may have cost him his life—and she intended to do nothi
ng with it. Jayne cursed again, searching for a way to both exonerate Didier and show the bitch up.

  An awful thought stopped her in her tracks. Didier had entrusted this material not to Jayne, but to Moira. He’d brought that stupid academic into his confidence—a woman with no understanding of Thailand—over a close friend who lived there.

  Jayne slumped back into her chair, angry tears stinging her eyes. Why would Didier do this to her? She thought he admired her intelligence.

  ‘Shit!’ she groaned, pressing her palms into her eye sockets. Surely he knew Jayne wasn’t the gung-ho type. Despite her predilection for hard-boiled crime fiction, she preferred her real-life cases to be challenging rather than deadly—like the heroes of the ‘cosy’ books Didier read.

  If the knife wound had opened Jayne’s eyes to the dangers of her work, learning of Didier’s lack of trust had now shaken her confidence. Max was right to warn her against staying in Chiang Mai. Perhaps Moira was right to erase the incriminating passages. Paedophile rackets, police corruption, cold-blooded murder—it was as if the whole mess had a sign over it saying DO NOT ENTER in luminous, red letters.

  But how could she abandon her investigation? Of all people, Didier would have known what he was up against, yet he was prepared to take the risk. There was nothing reckless in his motivation; it was there in his paper. Those children mattered to Didier. And it mattered to Jayne that her friend had been killed and vilified for trying to do something to help them.

  ‘So, what would you have me do, Didi?’ she said aloud.

  She reached to butt out her cigarette, knocking his document to the floor. It fell face down, revealing a note on the reverse side of the back page. It resembled a shopping list, written in French: jus de citron, allumettes, bougie.

  Why would Didier write a shopping list on the back of an official document? And why lemon juice, matches and a candle? It didn’t make sense. It sounded more like the sort of implausible clue someone like Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple would stumble across— ‘Oh, shit!’

  She put the paper back on the desk and opened the drawer beneath it. Room service menu, hotel stationery, tourist magazine. She searched the bedside cupboards and, alongside the Gideon Bible, found what she was looking for. Chiang Mai’s hotels weren’t immune to power failures and provided their guests with candles. Jayne melted the end of one, emptied the ashtray into the bin, and converted it into a candleholder. She lit the wick and picked up the document again.

  If her instincts were correct, Didier’s shopping list was a set of instructions for reading and writing in invisible ink. It was a plot device in one of the novels he’d loaned her: Holmes, detecting the scent of citrus fruit and knowing what he did about ciphers, applied the heat of a naked flame to reveal the hidden message.

  Jayne scrutinised the three-page document until she found an area where the texture of the paper was slightly irregular as if liquid had dried on its surface. Holding the page in both hands, she passed it slowly back and forth over the flame.

  Just as she was beginning to feel stupid, the flame leapt up and as she snatched the page away, Jayne noticed a distinctive, dark-brown line against a smudge left by the candle. Trembling, she lowered it again, closer this time, allowing the flame to lick the paper. One by one, the letters appeared. D-O-U-G-K-E-L-L-Y. She blew out the candle and sat back in her chair.

  Doug Kelly. The name meant nothing to her. But there was no mistaking what Didier meant by it: he’d written it alongside the mention of the expatriate entrepreneur in Chiang Mai known to offer pre-pubescent children to foreigners.

  Jayne hugged the piece of paper to her chest. Didier had trusted her. He must have known he was in danger and slipped the Chiang Mai Plaza Hotel card into her handbag to pass on the details of his appointment with Moira O’Halloran. He knew he could rely on Jayne to ask the right questions and follow the trail of clues he’d left. And there was no doubt those clues were intended for her.

  Heart racing, she used the hotel stationery to rush off an urgent, confidential fax to her friend Gavan at the Bangkok Post, asking him to send whatever he could find on Doug Kelly. She waited downstairs to ensure it went through, then shredded it into the bin once back in her room.

  By the time she slid between the sheets, her heart rate had returned to normal, allowing a sense of dread to return. Hoisting herself back out of bed, she grabbed the copy of Nemesis she’d rescued from Didier’s place, hoping to take her mind off what lay ahead. Instead, in a case that rang with eerie familiarity, she found Miss Marple confronted by an entreaty in a letter from a deceased friend:

  You, my dear, if I may call you that, have a natural flair for justice, and that had led to your having a natural flair for crime. I want you to investigate a certain crime…

  Lieutenant Colonel Ratratarn was back in his office six hours after leaving it. He glanced at the paperwork that had appeared on his desk, a report from Komet on top of the pile. Ratratarn scanned the account of the officer’s observations during his watch. It was written in excruciating detail, but contained nothing significant. Ratratarn snorted and as he tossed it into the filing tray, saw a fax from the Canadian Embassy advising him to expect a delegation that afternoon.

  There was a knock on the door. Ratratarn lit his sixth Krung Thep for the morning. ‘Enter!’ he barked.

  Sergeant Pornsak strode towards his commander.

  ‘Reporting directly to you as instructed, Sir.’

  Ratratarn knew Pornsak looked up to him as a mentor, and he was reliable, but the young man’s vanity riled him.

  ‘What do you have for me?’ he said.

  ‘Sir, I conducted those interviews you ordered,’ Pornsak said. ‘The bar owner couldn’t shed much light on the identity of the farang woman. To the best of my knowledge, the subject had never met the woman before that night and knew nothing of her background. By that, Sir, I mean I interrogated him thoroughly and I’m confident he was telling the truth.’

  Ratratarn nodded for him to continue.

  ‘As for my interview with Khun Mana, I obtained a physical description matching the one given by Khun Deng and ascertained that the farang is an Australian who lives in Bangkok.’

  ‘There must be hundreds of Australian women in Bangkok,’ Ratratarn said. ‘What about a name, Sergeant, or an address?’

  Pornsak straightened his stance. ‘No one could remember her name, but I was able to jog Khun Deng’s memory sufficiently for him to recall that the dead Canadian was friendly with the manager at the Chiang Mai Plaza Hotel. She might have stayed there. But…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I went to the hotel and they have five Australian women registered: three elderly women on a package tour, one on her honeymoon and a professor. None of them fit the description of the woman we’re looking for.’ He paused. ‘Perhaps she’s already left town, Sir.’

  Ratratarn inhaled thoughtfully on his cigarette. ‘What about the professor?’

  Pornsak extracted a notepad from his shirt pocket. ‘She’s older, Sir, nearly fifty according to her registration details. Address in Menbon.’

  Ratratarn snatched the sergeant’s notebook. Moira O’Halloran had listed her address as the University of Melbourne. He walked to the cupboard containing the dead foreigner’s files. Rummaging through a folder marked Correspondence, he extracted a fax with the University of Melbourne letterhead.

  ‘Sergeant, the dead Canadian also worked as a university professor. Did it occur to you there might be a connection?’

  ‘Ah, Sir, I—’

  ‘Here is a fax addressed to Khun Didier and signed by Professor Moira O’Halloran,’ Ratratarn said, waving the piece of paper in the man’s face. ‘Didn’t you even think to interview her?’

  ‘Sir, I—’ Pornsak swallowed hard, all smugness gone. ‘Sir, the receptionist said the woman doesn’t speak Thai.’

  Still holding the fax, Ratratarn sighed. ‘Right, fine, I guess I’ll have to interview her myself.’

  ‘Ah, Sir, sh
-she was due to check out this morning.’

  ‘Damn it, Pornsak!’ The lieutenant colonel picked up his cap. ‘Why the hell didn’t you say so?’

  It was 9.45 by the time Jayne got out of the shower. She dressed quickly, only noticing the envelope slipped under the door as she left. She didn’t open the message until she was in the back of a tuk-tuk on her way to the Somphet cafe. It contained a return fax from Gavan.

  Dear Jayne,

  Lucky you caught me on night shift. The guy who does the entertainment column here says Douglas Kelly was a well-known Bangkok (and Pattaya) identity before he left for Chiang Mai two years ago. He’s a fellow Aussie who used to run a bar in Soi Cowboy, co-owned another in Pattaya, and had interests in a tour company that ferried clients between the two. Rumour has it he worked as a mercenary for the Americans in Laos in the early 70s, but it’s likely he spread the story himself. More reliable sources say he fled a financial scandal in Australia in the 80s. He’s maintained a low profile in Chiang Mai, but if you do get wind of anything nasty (i.e. newsworthy) going on, I know I don’t have to remind you that you owe me.

  Yours,

  Gavan

  P.S. Don’t know if the photo will fax through. I pulled it out of the archives at the Post from an article on tourism in Pattaya. GB.

  Jayne flattened the lower half of the page. The man identified as Doug Kelly was standing behind a bar, his hands raised in a gesture of welcome. In front of the bar, perched on stools, were three Thai women in bikinis holding elaborately garnished cocktails. Kelly looked broad-shouldered and didn’t have much hair, but the fax wasn’t clear enough to show his face.

  As the tuk-tuk approached the Tha Pae Gate in the remains of the old citadel wall, Jayne stuffed the pieces of paper into her day-pack and directed the driver to stop. She checked her watch. She’d made the appointment with two minutes to spare.

  She almost didn’t recognise Nalissa. The woman’s oval-shaped face was clean, making her look several years younger. She wore a modest floral print dress with a lace collar and white rubber sandals.