The Half-Child

by Angela Savage

  Jayne ordered a juice from the waitress shadowing them.

  ‘You won’t join me in a beer?’ Jim said.

  ‘Normally, yes,’ she said. ‘But I’m driving.’

  ‘In this traffic? Bloody hell. You’re a brave girl.’

  Jayne didn’t know whether to feel flattered or offended.

  While she liked to think of herself as brave, it was a while since she’d thought of herself as a girl.

  ‘Probably a good thing, given your line of work, eh?’ Jim continued. ‘Speaking of which…’

  He cleared his throat. ‘My daughter Maryanne allegedly committed suicide in Pattaya last year. It was in all the papers. You might have read about it?’

  He handed her a plastic sleeve containing a newspaper article from The Bangkok Post. It featured a photograph of a wide-eyed young woman with a smile not even newsprint could dull. Fair hair in a ponytail and daypack slung over one shoulder, she wore a T-shirt with the logo ‘Young Christian Volunteers’ on her chest and carried a boarding pass, held out for the benefit of the photographer, for Qantas Flight 01 to London via Bangkok on Saturday 18 May 1996. Less than five months later, according to the article, twenty-one-year-old Maryanne Delbeck jumped from a hotel rooftop in Pattaya, falling fourteen storeys to her death.

  Even without the T-shirt, Jayne would’ve taken the young woman for a Christian. Unlike Jayne whose skin showed the signs of regular, often excessive, alcohol consumption and a fifteen-year smoking habit, Maryanne had the wholesome air of the clean-living. A look in her eyes suggested she had her sights set on something further away from her home in rural Queensland than the seedy Thai coastal town of Pattaya.

  Jayne skimmed the article, raised her head. ‘I remember seeing something.’

  ‘Maryanne couldn’t have committed suicide,’ Jim said.

  ‘I don’t care what the Thai cops say. She was a good girl.

  Didn’t drink, didn’t smoke. Never gave her mother and me a moment’s trouble.’

  The drinks arrived. Jim waved away the glass and took a swig from his bottle of Tiger beer.

  ‘No way was Maryanne the type to…to do that to herself.’

  ‘The article said something about your daughter being clinically depressed—’

  ‘I don’t believe that,’ Jim interrupted her. ‘She was always so bloody cheerful. Too cheerful. Used to drive me crazy.’

  He grunted, the sound of a man choking on emotion, and upended the bottle too quickly; beer spilled from the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Bugger.’

  Jayne looked away as he wiped his face with a serviette.

  ‘There are some conditions where people swing between excessive cheerfulness and depression,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘Is there any history of mental illness in the family?’

  ‘No there bloody well isn’t,’ Jim said. ‘We’re fourth generation Queensland farmers. We don’t have time to get depressed. We work for a living.’

  Jayne toyed with the swizzle stick in her drink.

  ‘Besides, she’d have told Sarah if anything was wrong.

  Maryanne and my sister were as thick as thieves. Told her she was going overseas long before her mother and I knew about it. Not that we could’ve stopped her. Maryanne was too bloody headstrong. Guess she got that from me.’

  Jayne stirred her juice, taking a moment to choose her words. ‘Some people are very good at hiding their depression, even from people closest to them—’

  ‘I know where you’re going with this,’ Jim said. ‘I’m in denial, right? I’m only her father. What would I know?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to imply—’

  ‘I got the same response from those useless bastards at the Australian Embassy. As for the Thai cops, they pretend they can’t speak English when they don’t want to answer my questions. And the YCV won’t cooperate. They’re shitscared of the investigation being re-opened ’cause it means more bad press for them.’

  ‘YCV?’

  ‘Young Christian Volunteers.’

  He pointed at Maryanne’s T-shirt in the photo, then took a swig of beer as if washing a bad taste from his mouth.

  ‘So if I’m going to find out what really happened to Maryanne, I have to do it myself. That’s where you come in. You’re a private contractor. I’m a paying customer. I’ve a job that needs doing and I’m prepared to pay you to do it.’

  ‘You want me to investigate a case both the Thai police and Australian Embassy consider closed?’ Jayne met his gaze. ‘I won’t bullshit you. It’s a long shot.’

  Jim smiled. ‘And I won’t bullshit you either. I was planning to hire a professional out of Australia. Then I met with this guy at the embassy—a bit of a poof, but he seemed to know what he was talking about—and he suggested I try someone who speaks the language, knows the place. He gave me your card.’

  Her friend Max Parker, Second Secretary at the Australian Embassy. Jayne made a mental note to call and thank him.

  ‘Find out what happened to Maryanne,’ Jim said. ‘I don’t care what it costs.’

  Jayne raised her eyebrows. She wanted the job, but she didn’t want to dupe a grief-stricken father to get it.

  ‘Say I agree to take the case. Are you prepared for the possibility that I might not come up with anything new?’

  ‘I just want someone I can trust.’ He reached into his briefcase. ‘I had my lawyer draw up a contract. It’s the company standard—unless of course you’d prefer to use your own.’

  Jayne shrugged as though she signed contracts all the time. Her usual arrangement rarely involved more than a handshake—a wai for her Thai clients—a cash advance and more cash on completion.

  She scanned the text. There were sections on the responsibilities of Mr James H. Delbeck (‘the client’) and the responsibilities of Miss Jayne Keeney (‘the contractor’), together with a timeline (‘one month, subject to review’).

  His proposed budget allowed for an advance that, like the price of the drinks at the Dusit Thani, was five times what she was used to.

  ‘This looks fine.’

  ‘I’ll get another copy made—’ Jim signalled for a waitress

  ‘—and we can sign before you leave.’

  ‘Do you have any background information that might help?’ Jayne asked.

  He dipped into his briefcase and handed Jayne a large envelope. ‘I made copies of Maryanne’s letters. I don’t know if they’re useful, but they give you an idea of what she was like and the work she was doing. There’s a photo in there, too. Might help. And there’s this.’ He handed her a document. ‘The embassy report, though I’m not sure how useful that is.’

  She glanced at it, recognised the author’s name. He was a staffer at the embassy whom Max described as ‘ballast’, code for one who never rocked the boat. Jayne thought he was an arse-licker.

  She scanned the text, a testament to the minutiae of bureaucratic procedures, both Thai and Australian. She added this and the other material to her daypack, wedging them amongst her camera, maps, drink bottle, and the crime novel she was reading, and took out a notebook and pen.

  ‘When are you leaving Bangkok?’ she said, testing the pen.

  ‘I’m flying back to Brisbane tonight.’

  ‘Mind if I ask you a couple of questions while we wait for the photocopy?’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Did Maryanne know anyone in Thailand before coming here as a volunteer?’

  He shook his head. ‘Far as I know, she applied to YCV and they came up with the job in Thailand. I thought she should have finished her degree first, then gone somewhere more civilised, like America.’

  For some reason a quote popped into Jayne’s head:

  Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilisation. It sounds like a good idea.

  ‘What was Maryanne studying?’

  ‘Social work. Said she wanted to work with children.

  I told her there was no money in it. But that’s what she wanted
to do and like I told you, once she put her mind to something, she was bloody well determined to do it.’

  ‘And she hadn’t been to Thailand before at all? On holiday?’

  He frowned and shook his head.

  ‘What about Maryanne’s Christian beliefs, was she…’ Jayne searched for the right words. ‘Was she very religious?’

  ‘She didn’t ram her beliefs down other people’s throats if that’s what you mean. We’re a church-going family. Nothing unusual in that.’

  Jayne made a note to find out more about the YCV.

  ‘The article mentioned a brother.’

  ‘Ian, two years older.’

  ‘Were they close?’

  ‘Not particularly. Like I said, Maryanne was close to her aunt Sarah, my younger sister. Sarah’s the black sheep of the family, and I think Maryanne favoured her just to piss me off.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Maryanne and I didn’t always see eye to eye.’

  ‘Can you give me an example?’

  ‘She wanted to help those less fortunate than her, though she’d say it was patronising of me to put it that way. We argued about it a lot. In my experience, if you’re prepared to work hard, you can be anything in this world. Maryanne believed in handouts, or a “hand up”—’ he drew inverted commas in the air ‘—as she put it. Said I was a cynic. I thought she was naïve, trying to change the bloody world.’

  He leaned forward across the table.

  ‘She was too confident. She trusted people too easily. It’d make her a sitting duck in a place like this.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He made a sweeping gesture with his hands. ‘Bloody Asian hellhole.’

  Jayne thought the Dusit Thani Hotel failed to qualify as any kind of hellhole, but the death of his only daughter was bound to colour Jim Delbeck’s view.

  She closed her notebook.

  ‘Jim, what do you think happened to Maryanne?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘Accident?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Foul play?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said again, shaking his head.

  ‘You must suspect something or you wouldn’t be hiring me.’

  He drained his beer.

  ‘You hear a lot of stories about the shit that goes down in a place like this and—’ He stared for a moment at the lotus floating in the bowl in front of him. ‘I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt Maryanne. I just know that if they did, she wouldn’t have seen it coming.’

  His shoulders slumped, and Jayne resisted the urge to take his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ she said.

  His sad smile was short-lived. ‘You know, you’re the first person to say that since I arrived in this place. One bastard even had a stupid bloody grin on his face the whole time he was talking about Maryanne’s death. If he hadn’t been a cop, I would’ve bloody well decked him.’

  Again Jayne held her tongue. Smiling in the face of tragedy was a form of stoicism in Thailand, but this wasn’t the time to give Jim Delbeck a lesson in cultural sensitivity.

  The waitress reappeared with the contract. They signed both copies and took one each. Jim signed the tab for their drinks, too.

  ‘You can contact me on my mobile number any time,’ he said as they walked back towards the entrance.

  He extended his hand. ‘Good luck.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ she found herself saying.

  ‘One other thing,’ Jim said, still holding her hand. ‘If you do find out there was foul play involved, I want you to come to me first, not the cops. I don’t trust those bastards.’

  Again Jayne bit back the impulse to point out that there were good cops and bad cops wherever you went in the world. She didn’t want to know whether Jim Delbeck was angry with the Thais because of his daughter’s death or if his antipathy ran deeper. She wanted to accept what he offered at face value: an intriguing case that got her out of the demolition site that was downtown Bangkok.

  She zigzagged back along the rubble of Silom Road. The meeting made Jayne think of her own father. She wondered how he would describe her to a stranger. Would he highlight their differences, as Jim Delbeck had done with Maryanne?

  Or would he persist as he always did in finding common ground, no matter how hard he had to scratch around for it?

  As far as her parents were concerned, Jayne was an enigma. Once she’d been a normal girl with a nice fiancé and a good job at a Melbourne girls’ school. Then she’d tossed it all in and run off to Europe with a visiting French teacher.

  Somehow she’d ended up alone in Bangkok and for reasons they couldn’t understand, insisted on staying there. She hadn’t told them about her work as a private investigator.

  They still thought she taught English for a living and since her father was a teacher, she let them believe it. He loved to think she’d followed in his footsteps; she couldn’t break it to him that she’d strayed from the path.

  Jim Delbeck seemed to take it personally that his daughter’s values differed from his own. To their credit, Jayne’s parents never felt that way. They might not understand her, but they respected her right to be different. Once she did get around to telling them she’s a PI, she had no doubt they’d take it in their stride.

  It rarely happened, but meeting Jim Delbeck left Jayne feeling homesick.

  2

  Max stood to kiss Jayne European style before resuming his seat. The weather was cool by Bangkok’s standards—a balmy thirty degrees by day, mild nights just below twenty. They made the most of it by sitting outside. Max had chosen their rendezvous: the patio at the Sphinx Bar, a little corner of Ancient Egypt in the middle of the Thai capital. Tucked down the end of Soi 4 off Silom Road, the exterior was rendered to look like sandstone, the entrance guarded by a replica of Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus. The interior walls were a royal-blue honeycomb of niches containing faux Egyptian artefacts backlit in blue light, and the bar boys wore gold and blue kilts and matching headdresses inspired by the acolytes in the Temple Karnak. A classy joint compared with some of the venues in a lane affectionately known as ‘Gay Soi’.

  ‘Long time, no see,’ he said as Jayne sat down.

  ‘Too long.’

  She pointed to his gin and tonic and signalled for a barechested waiter to bring another.

  ‘You look good, Jayne.’

  ‘Thanks Max. I feel good.’

  She took a packet of Krung Thip out of her pack.

  ‘Still haven’t given up that filthy habit I see.’ He pushed the ashtray towards her. ‘Is that wise, smoking the local brand?’

  ‘Are you kidding? Using a filter is the only way to get a breath of fresh air in this city.’

  She drew on her cigarette with exaggerated pleasure and Max smiled. It was a relief to see her looking so relaxed.

  He was fond of Jayne, but she risked becoming one of those embittered expatriate women who complain about being passed over by expat men in favour of the locals, persist with living in Bangkok, but won’t date Thai men. Khan thong, literally ‘golden bowl’, the Thai term for spinster. Too precious to put anything inside. For Max, dating Thai men was the only thing that made Bangkok life bearable.

  They chatted for a while, before Jayne brought up the Delbeck case. Max knew what was coming. Three years earlier, she’d used her detective skills to expose the affair Max’s then-boyfriend was having with the Australian Defence Attaché. She refused payment at the time, saying she’d done it as a favour. Ever since, she regularly provided Max with opportunities to return the favour. And she had the uncanny ability to make him feel pleased to show off his generosity.

  ‘Jim Delbeck’s employed me to look into the circumstances of his daughter’s death. Thanks for putting in a good word.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘He gave me a copy of the embassy’s report into Maryanne’s death.’ She put the document on the table between them. ‘It has all the hallmarks of Mist
er Ballast’s style: dull bureaucratic language, conservative analysis. But I digress.’

  She opened the cover and leafed through a couple of pages. ‘It says Maryanne Delbeck came to Thailand as a volunteer in May last year—’

  She looked up.

  ‘May last year,’ Max repeated, reaching over to touch her arm. ‘We were in Chiang Mai.’

  Nine months earlier, a friend they’d both loved had died in violent circumstances. Jayne had risked her own life to pursue his killers and clear their friend’s name of falsified charges. For this, too, Max owed her.

  ‘I miss him,’ Jayne said.

  ‘Me too.’

  They raised their glasses and drank a silent toast.

  Jayne spoke first. ‘What can you tell me about the Young Christian Volunteers?’

  ‘They’re a non-government organisation that sends young people on volunteer placements in Asia and the Pacific. Most of their funding comes from churches, but they get a bit of AusAID money.’

  ‘Are they fundamentalists?’

  ‘They wouldn’t qualify for AusAID funding if they were.

  It’s in the guidelines. NGOs aren’t allowed to use Australian taxpayers’ funds for proselytising.’

  Jayne raised her eyebrows. ‘What, even under the Liberals?’

  Max smiled, though she’d hit a raw nerve. Since the election of the conservatives in Australia the previous year, unwelcome policy changes were coming thick and fast.

  In the latest, Foreign Affairs had issued advice that funds from the Australian Agency for International Development were not to be used to provide information or services related to abortion or emergency contraception. For Max, who oversaw several sexual health projects funded by the Australian government, the directive was causing major headaches. He dreaded what they might come up with next.

  No more funding for AIDS projects that worked with gay men and drug users?

  ‘So how does the YCV identify placements?’ Jayne said, lighting another cigarette.

  ‘Through church networks, I think. But hang on…’ He took a diary from the inner pocket of his beige linen jacket. ‘If I’m not mistaken, YCV’s Asian program coordinator is due here for a monitoring visit. Yes, here it is. Kate Murchison.