Bangkok Burn - A Thriller

by Simon Royle

  “Thanks. I’ll leave the Benz with you as payment for the disposal. Papers are in the car.”

  “No need. He’s on the house.” On my earpiece I heard Chai tell the guys to come down and clear the body.

  “All the same, here take the keys.”

  I took the keys. He gave me a little two-fingered salute and, hands in pockets, walked out of the car park. I watched him in the light of the street lamps, fading in and out of the shadows. He disappeared as I looked. Some trick. One of the boys came out of the 7-11 with four large ten-liter water bottles. The body was loaded onto a pick-up and taken off to the farm. The farm was a slow five minute drive away. Everyone was relaxed. This was our turf. RCA guy’s last stand was washed down with the water.

  I sat in the Maserati. Time to go home. An image of Pim on the bed stroking herself and grinning popped into my mind. RCA guy slipped in next, a surprise in his dead eyes, looking at his brains on the floor of the car park.

  I wound down the window and lit a joint, exhaling through the window, the purring throb of the V8, a theme tune for the thoughts playing in my head. Late morning call, time enough, but it all ended at the 11th Infantry barracks. Getting any information out of there would be unlikely and too dangerous.

  Sins of the Fathers

  24 May 2010 Pak Nam 1:55 am

  Security had been stepped up because of the Yakuza threat. Until that got resolved we were ‘mobbed up’, as Uncle Mike called it. Coming out of the kitchen with a beer in his hand, he said, “Wow, you look damn serious, dude. Everything okay?”

  I had to smile. He’d been saying that to me since I was six. “Yeah, just a heavy night, morning. How are you?”

  “I’m cool, man. Want to go sit down by the river?”

  “Sure, that’d be cool.”

  We went through the French doors, onto the patio, a couple of the boys sitting in chairs by the pool. At the fork of the path to the sala, Uncle Mike suddenly stopped. Held up his hand.

  “Shush,” he whispered. I stopped. He turned.

  “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both.” Grinning now, he’d got me. I chuckled. Frost, I should have known. His favorite. He kept walking and reciting over his shoulder, as we weaved our way down to the sala. When we came up the steps, he stopped on the top step and turned, put his hand on his heart and dropping his voice.

  “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by … and that has made all the difference.”

  “Bravo, bravo!” I clapped.

  He took a bow then we went and sat by the side of the river. He handed me a Ziploc plastic bag filled with weed and papers. I took out a bit of weed and started stripping the leaves from the stem. I like the night. I like how sound travels differently when there’s less interference. I like how its shadows are never the same. Chai appeared, carrying a tray: Chivas, soda and an ice bucket. He set the tray down near us and went in search of the ‘yaa gan yeung’. As Chai was lighting the coils, Uncle Mike started putting ice in the glasses.

  “You know, Chance, why I didn’t bring you to live with me in Phuket? I could have. If I’d insisted I could have laid out all the good reasons why you should be there, but I didn’t. You know why?”

  “No. I always just thought it was normal. You had your life.”

  “Oh no. We talked about it. You and Chai. Bringing you to both to Phuket and letting you live there, away from this.” He waved a hand at the house, but his wave meant everything in Bangkok. Our life. I looked over at Chai pouring the whiskey into the glasses.

  “I’ll tell you why…ah, thanks.” He took the joint I handed him and cupping his hand around my lighter against the slight breeze, sucked in, getting the end glowing. Chai had moved onto popping the tops off the soda bottles. He turned to Chai.

  “This is some great weed you got. Can you get more?”

  “Can.”

  “Cool, we’ll talk.” He took a couple of quick hits and passed me the joint.

  “So, where was I? Oh yeah, after your parents were killed, it was a crazy time. I was still a kid, half your age now, your mother was younger than Pim, and Por was young and tough as they come. He already had the aunts by then and, with the exception of Aunt Dao, all were beautiful and young. Thing is, all they’d produced by then were the four daughters. Your parents planned to leave you at their apartment. With money, they said. Shit I can’t believe it, even today. Anyway, Por and I said we’d take you with us. Two days later they left and ten days after we got the news they’d been killed.”

  “Por’s told me this before. So have you.”

  “Yeah, I know but what I haven’t told you, not because I never thought about it, but, because I felt guilty about it, was what happened after your parents were killed. Por had supplied the boat and the connection to get the smack to your parents. Usually he didn’t deal in smack but times were tough. The farm wasn’t getting visitors, the whole of Pak Nam was at war with each other and every other province – times were tough. You’d be sitting having dinner and someone would fire a couple of shots into the house. That kind of thing. Anyway, I’d already moved to Phuket. It was a real paradise back then. No one knew about it. I was living in a shack of Kata beach, where Club Med is now. Back then it was just a little fishing village.

  “Por went after the Germans. Took him eight months to track them all down, but he got them: two in New York and two in West Berlin. He was wounded in West Berlin and came back by ship.”

  I took a sip of the whiskey Chai had poured. I had heard all of this before, but if Uncle Mike wanted to talk I was comfortable to listen.

  “While Por was away, you lived here. I visited on and off. Joom looked after you. Chai arrived during that time.” He slapped Chai on the knee. “You got here about a month before Por’s return. You were about as tall as my knee then.” Chai smiled, waving off the joint Uncle Mike passed his way. I took it instead. Chai is cool with smoking a joint now and then, but not when things were hot.

  “Joom collected Por from Klong Toey. He was still very weak; he’d been badly shot up. Things here in Pak Nam were hot too. The house wasn’t like this back then, just a simple wooden Thai house on stilts. You’ve seen the photos. The crew was a lot smaller back then as well, just a few guys. Bank and Red, of course, they’d been with him since the beginning, but only a couple of others. Por asked me to take you to Phuket. Joom was dead set against it. According to her, you were given to her by Buddha and that was that. But Por was worried. You stuck out like a sore thumb, and were easy to snatch. I didn’t have any jobs planned for a while, waiting for the new crops. Against Joom’s wishes I took you to Phuket.”

  I handed him the joint, he took a couple of hits and put it in the ashtray. The lid of the tin the mosquito coils came in.

  “When Por came back from Germany. He had a hundred thousand dollars. He took it off the Germans, their payout for the smack. It doesn’t sound like much today, but back then you could buy a good chunk of downtown Sukhumvit for that kind of money. Two months after I took you to Phuket, one of the Germans kidnapped you. Por missed one, the brother of the guy who killed your parents. We still don’t know how he found me or you, but he did. Course we didn’t know that right away. All I knew was that you were gone.”

  I had never heard this before, neither had Chai. We’d been smoking and drinking but the buzz fell away. Even the river seemed to pause. Like Uncle Mike’s soft voice was the only sound in the world.

  “Joom hated me. I could tell she was going to kill me. Not for the ransom money, that didn’t matter. For losing you. She fucking hated me. Would have killed me but Por ordered her not to. They’d left a ransom note when they took you, for a hundred thousand. Por and Joom brought it with them from Bangkok.

  “I was truly freaked out losing you. Only time I ever heard Joom swear, 'fucking useless Farang' she called me. I felt it too. Por, he was my best friend, still is, and he never said a word, just went about the business of finding you. Lik
e I said I was useless, freaked out. You know me and the whole violence thing just never met. I was lucky. And then I’d lost a little kid. It freaked me out. I got stoned, really stoned and dropped some acid. Then I went for a sail. I swam out to my yacht, hauled up the anchor and the sails. I have no idea even now what I was thinking. I’ve tried to remember, but it’s all a bit of a blur. It was past midnight but there was a full moon. I remember the moon perfectly. Lit up the sea like it was day.

  “I hadn’t been sailing long but it felt like years, and then I saw another yacht moored off a few bays up. And I don’t know, man, I just got this whole feeling of evil about the boat. I swear the rest of the sea shone silver but the sea around the yacht was all back. I looked for a cloud and saw none. And the sea talked to me, whispering, telling me that you were being held in the yacht. I wasn’t so out of my gourd that I did anything except turn the boat around and sail back to Por and Joom. It turned out a few bays over was Patong beach. They saw the yacht in the morning. The next day we were supposed to deliver the money. Por and Joom went that night. Used a rubber dinghy. Rowed it in after darkness. I held the dinghy steady while Por lifted Joom onto the bow. The fore hatch was cracked halfway open. Joom is small and light. She was in and out with you in less than a minute. She whispered to us that there were two men on board. We guessed the German’s brother and a friend.” Uncle Mike picked the joint up and I relit for him. He took a long drag, holding the smoke in.

  “Joom whispered that the guys in the boat seemed to be drunk, Mekhong whiskey bottles over the floor of the yacht. Por climbed back on the boat, put the spinnaker pole over the fore hatch and shoved a screwdriver into the latch of the rear hatch. He called down to Joom in Thai, my Thai wasn’t that good back then, but I knew the words for petrol. I handed Joom the twenty liter spare tank. She passed it up to Por and he doused the boat with it. He climbed off bringing the can with him.

  “We could hear someone had woken up inside because the rear hatch rattled. Por lit the ransom note they’d left and tossed it into the cockpit. Within seconds the boat was on fire from bow to stern. I started the outboard and drove off, but Por put his hand on mine and twisted the throttle back down as soon as we were out of the light. He said, ‘no one will come’. I stopped the engine. We could hear banging and then screams. None of us said anything. You were still asleep. We think they’d drugged you to keep you quiet. We watched. Por was right. No one came. After a while the banging stopped, the screams stopped. The flames worked their way into the boat, the deck peeled off. The mast came down and smashed a section of the burning deck and hull open. The fire burnt the yacht to the waterline and she slipped under, stern first.

  “When we got back to Kata. Joom took you back to my hut. I sat on the beach with Por. Later Joom came out, sat with us. She reached over, put her hand on my neck, and pulled me to her. Gave me a kiss the like of which I’d never had. I can still feel it. Told me she forgave me and she would love me forever for what I’d done. And then she said they were leaving in the morning, taking you with them.”

  A mist hung low on the river. A dog barked, setting off others on the far bank. An ice cube rolled over in a glass. Apart from that it was silent.

  “Why did you decide to tell me this now?”

  “I was talking with Pim earlier today. She told me about your talk with the Farang who kidnapped me. When you told me about it, you didn’t mention the bit about ‘Leon’. You know, when a woman came into the room and said, ‘Leon’?”

  “Yes.” The hairs on my neck stood up.

  “That was the name of the guy who kidnapped you when you were a kid. The one we burned to death.”

  Truth Will Out

  24 May 2010 Pak Nam 6:15 am

  My eyes flicked open. Pim had left. I hadn’t woken her when I finally got to bed at four-thirty. Chai handed me the phone, mouthed ‘Sankit’ at me. I took the phone.

  “Still sleeping, eh? It’s Monday, you know, weekend’s over. Anyway, I’ve got some information for you. Came from a friend of mine in Crime Suppression. I’d prefer to meet in person and it is important you come alone. Meet me at the VIP breakfast lounge at the Dusit in an hour. Alone. Don’t bring your shadow.”

  “All right. I’ll see you there.”

  As the crow flies, it’s eighteen and a half kilometers to the Dusit. But crows don’t have to deal with Bangkok’s roads and traffic. I was half an hour late. Leaving Chai with the Maserati, I went up to the VIP breakfast lounge. Sankit was sitting with a cop. There were a couple of other tables occupied but those around Sankit and the cop were empty. I went over, gave Sankit a wai, for forms sake. The cop raised himself out of his seat a little and waied me. I waied him back and sat down. Now that we’d sorted out the pecking order we could order breakfast. Sankit looked at his watch and raised his bushy eyebrows at me. I wasn’t in the mood. I just ignored him. He waved a hand at the cop, wiping his mouth with the other.

  “Khun Oh, this is Sarawak Khumthong.” Inspector Khumthong, to you Farang. “He’s with Crime Suppression, based at Hua Mark. Sarawak, you can talk freely with Khun Oh. He is my future son-in-law.”

  The Inspector swallowed nervously, all smiles, nodding his head.

  “Sor Sor Sankit had requested some colleagues to assist in finding out about the bombing that took place on Ratchada, concerning Mr. Samuel Harper, and your father.” I noticed he was careful not to mention it was a massage joint. Polite.

  “My superior asked me to investigate. We didn’t learn anything new about the bombing other than what forensics told us. However, one of my detectives saw the video of you - sorry, Mr. Harper - and his bodyguard after the explosion. It is from the tape of the CCTV. He recognized your bodyguard from another investigation. I asked him to bring me anything he had. He brought me these.” Khumthong passed me an A4 brown paper envelope. Just then the waitress arrived to take my order. Just coffee, thanks.

  “What was your detective investigating?” I asked him, opening the envelope. Inside, a thick sheaf of large photographs in color.

  “A gang of Cambodians were dealing yaa baa in Lad Krabang. They killed a couple of the local dealers and took over the rest. We got onto them from another dealer, who was scared he was next.”

  I waited while the waitress poured the coffee and left, then I took out the photos. My blood ran cold. It was Chai talking to the three gunmen from the hospital. The date time stamp in the bottom corner of the photos said the tenth of May. They were sitting at a table next to a food stall on a sidewalk. In the middle of the stack, a photo of Chai’s hand reaching into an inside pocket, a glimpse of paper and passing it to the fat guy, the amulet easy to recognize. I went through all of them. Right to where Chai gets into the Lexus he was driving that day. I remember it. Two days before the explosion, and the attack at the hospital. Chai had said he was going to a temple. He’d just finished a long chat with Por on the cell phone. I wanted to puke but I held it together.

  “Thanks for this Sarawak Khumthong. If there is any way that I may be able to assist you in future, do not hesitate to call on me.” He waied me, I waied him back, I waied Sankit. “Father, thank you for breakfast. I have to go. I have business to attend to.” I got up and walked out of the restaurant. I managed not to bump into anything, even though my legs were wobbly. ‘Weak at the knees’, I believe is the expression you Farangs use.

  I used the washroom on the ground floor, near the lifts. Went into one of the stalls, I wiped the seat, and sat down. I was shaking. I breathed out, had to get a grip. I took the photos out of the envelope. There was no mistaking it for anyone other than Chai. I tried to think of reasons why and came up dry. I breathed out hard, the ache in my chest swelling. I squeezed my eyes shut and something broke inside me.

  I washed my face and left the washroom. Walking past the sparsely filled cafeteria on the ground floor, the doors to the car park were opened by a smiling bell boy. Chai waiting outside, moving for the car the second he saw me. He looked the same, moved the same, but ev
erything was different.

  Fortunately, we don’t talk much, so silence was normal. I couldn’t trust myself to talk, the envelope on my lap. It took an hour to get to the Dusit from home. It took a lifetime to get back. I glanced at the cell phone. It was only nine-thirty in the morning. I got out and went straight into the house. Mother wasn’t around in the main room.

  Beckham was sitting cross-legged on the deck by the door to the guesthouse. He got up and opened the door for me. Mother was perched next to Por. She turned to me, a big smile on her face.

  “He woke up just a short while ago. Said your name and went back to sleep. I spoke to Thomas. He said it is a sure sign that Por is recovering fast now.”

  “I need to talk to you.” I flicked my eyes at the nurse on the other side of Por’s bed. Mother asked her to take care of some things upstairs. I pulled a chair over from the dining table and sat down next to Mother. Her face serious as she read mine.