The Tsunami File

by Michael E. Rose

  “The containers are all locked, I would imagine,” Delaney said.

  “Yes, but just padlocked. The locks aren’t heavy ones. They’re just on there for form’s sake, because police like to lock things up as a matter of procedure. They would never expect anyone to actually try to break in to one of those containers.”

  “The fence?” Delaney said.

  “Easy to get over that.”

  “For guys like us.” Smith smiled broadly at Delaney. “Easy,” he said.

  “Bolt cutters? For the lock,” Delaney said.

  “We’ll need them, but I can find one of those. The lock won’t be a problem.”

  “It might be a problem the next morning when they see the lock’s broken, though.”

  “Yes. True. But I would imagine if we take it away with us the Thai policeman who opens the container doors in the morning will just think someone forgot to lock up properly the night before. From what I can see, those young constables just want to avoid getting shouted at by their superiors these days. I would imagine whoever opens up in the morning will just think someone forgot to lock up properly, and he’ll go find another lock to use at the end of the day and say nothing.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “They don’t want problems, Frank. They’ve got enough problems. No one is panicking about a missing file. Do you think they’ll worry just because someone forgot one night to lock up a container full of unidentified dead bodies?”

  “We’ll see, I suppose. If they do, and if word gets back to Braithwaite, he will immediately think it’s something to do with you.”

  “Braithwaite won’t ever hear anything about it.

  You’ll see.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Delaney said.

  “I’ll assemble what we need, Frank. Bolt cutters, flashlights, as you North Americans like to call them. My fingerprinting gear.”

  They grinned at each other—schoolboys planning pranks. They raised their beers.

  “You will need a jumper, Frank. It is minus eighteen degrees Celsius in those containers at all times.”

  “Like Canada.”

  “Godforsaken place,” Smith said, drinking beer. “So. When do we break in?” “Soon, as soon as possible. After your wife leaves?

  You can’t be sneaking out of the hotel in the middle of the night with her around.”

  “My dear Frank, I regret to report that Mrs. Smith has arranged for her own very comfortable room, on another floor. To allow dear husband to get the sleep he needs after his unfortunate accident.”

  “I see. It’s like that, is it?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. Here, in London, everywhere. It’s like that. Marital bedrooms. Plural.”

  “I see.”

  Madame was in fact resting in her room as they spoke on the balcony. Delaney had not seen her since the first day she arrived. He had expected her to hover around her bruised husband, if only to keep up appearances. Smith told him not to be naïve.

  Before they planned their break-in, Smith had told him a little more about the night he got beaten up. It was much as he had described it when Brajkovic was in his hospital room. Three Thai men, late twenties, early thirties. Standard shirts and light trousers and sandals, nothing to distinguish them from thousands of other youngish Thais around Phuket.

  They had set upon him with sticks, but Smith said he really didn’t think they were trying to hurt him badly. The blows rained down for a few minutes, there was some shouting at him and some kicks, but if they had wanted to really hurt him or kill him they would have done it differently, or so Smith thought. He thought they had actually taken his wallet, but he couldn’t be sure. Perhaps that had been lost in the attack. He thought they had raced off afterward on two motorbikes, but couldn’t be sure. He thought it had happened around 1 a.m., perhaps 2 a.m., but couldn’t be sure.

  “It would be easier for us to figure this out if they were speaking German, Jonah,” Delaney said eventually.

  “Precisely,” Smith said.

  “What do you think? Becker, maybe? Hires a couple of local guys to give you a little beating.”

  “Maybe. Yes.”

  “Becker sounded very mad, the way you describe him that night he came up to your room. An upset cop who isn’t above arranging a beating for someone who has pissed him off.”

  “He’s not a copper, Frank. He’s a pathologist. A good one apparently. Civilian. Very well respected, from a military hospital in Frankfurt or somewhere.”

  “Whatever. You have pissed someone off in this town, and you got a warning note. And then you got beaten up.”

  “I seem to have upset more than one person in this town. Becker’s just one.”

  “Braithwaite would never have you beaten up, would he?”

  Smith paused for a moment.

  “No. Probably not. But the pressure’s on out here, especially for the UK teams. The government back home is pushing them hard to get all the British bodies back home as soon as possible. There are families back home calling the Foreign Office hotline every day asking for updates. Braithwaite’s under a lot of pressure. I suppose he could have just decided to send me a little message.”

  “Not very likely.”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Well, in any case, you’d better watch your back after this.”

  “I shall, Frank. Have no fear.”

  Delaney had been summoned to Braithwaite’s office the day after they bumped into each other on the steps of the management centre.

  “Jonah Smith is getting himself in a lot of trouble out here,” Braithwaite said, blowing as much cigar smoke in Delaney’s face as he could from across his battered desk.

  “Apparently,” Delaney said.

  “I blame you,” Braithwaite said.

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, I fucking do. You are looking for some kind of scoop like all hack journalists and you’ve got Smith thinking conspiracy theories and bullshit. It’s clouding his judgment. He used to be a good fingerprint man, well liked, good at what he does. A civilian, but a good Scotland Yard man. Now, he’s fouling up. I’m this close, this close, to sending him back to his little sinecure in Lyon with those Interpol types. And sending that little bit of Spanish crumpet back home too.”

  “I would imagine that will only draw more attention to this missing file business, Superintendent,” Delaney said. “Won’t it?”

  Braithwaite glared at him and said nothing. He studied the end of his cigar the way Smith studied the ends of his fingertips while concentrating on a problem.

  “I don’t like it when one of my people gets hurt on the job, Delaney. Even if he has stepped out of line. I don’t like it when people beat up my people.”

  “So you don’t think it was a robbery?”

  “I wouldn’t tell you what I thought about it under any circumstances,” Braithwaite said. “All I’m telling you is that you’ve got a good man off track over here, on a very important operation, and I want you out of it. I want you to leave all these officers alone to do their work. I’m this close to pulling your media accreditation and putting you on a plane for Bangkok.”

  Delaney waited a moment before replying, letting Braithwaite smoke for a little.

  “Well, that would be unfortunate, Superintendent. But whether I have a press pass or not, you can’t stop me from staying on in Phuket, unless you charge me with something and have me arrested and deported. I wouldn’t be able to go to the press conferences without a press pass, maybe, and I wouldn’t be able to interview anyone officially, but there is no way you can stop me from staying on here in Phuket. You know that and I know that.” Even as the sweating, sun-reddened policeman studied the glowing end of his cigar for a solution to this conundrum, Delaney knew he knew that.

  “I won’t authorize you to interview any more people around here
, then. I want you to finish up your work and get the hell out of my hair. And if you write anything crazy about missing files, if you write one thing that is inaccurate or damaging to us or defamatory in any way, I’ll have your ass.”

  “I’ll send you a copy of the article as soon as it is published, Superintendent.”

  “I’m going to be in touch with your editors well before that.” “OK,” Delaney said.

  Braithwaite glared at him from his chair. “I’m actually still due to interview someone from the DNA team,” Delaney said. “Your press officer has organized that for me. I take it you won’t authorize that now? Officer Connolly seems to want that angle in my story for balance.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Delaney, get out of my office, will you just get out of my office? You know what I’m saying to you. OK, interview the damn DNA man, fine, fine, and then do us all a favour and get on a plane after that. But I won’t stand for any more bullshit about missing files, now or in your article, do you understand? And no more bullshit from Smith either. I’m going over to see him at the hospital and tell him personally. If he wasn’t getting over a beating I’d send the bastard back to Lyon tonight. I would, I swear I would. And now his damn wife is over here to boot. I don’t need any of this nonsense.”

  Mrs. Smith, as Ruth Connolly had warned, was a harridan indeed. Delaney had gone out to the airport, at Jonah Smith’s request, to greet her when she came in to Phuket on a flight from Bangkok. Connolly was to be the official Interpol greeter.

  Delaney was to be the concerned friend.

  “This is your classic shit assignment,” Connolly said as they waited in the international arrivals area. She was ignoring the No Smoking signs. The Thai police driver with them did not attempt to enforce the rules in this regard. “They did nothing at all to prepare us for this sort of thing in the academy,” she said, blowing a perfect smoke ring ceilingward.

  When Mrs. Smith came through, pushing a luggage trolley, she looked very much like she would prefer to be pushing a shopping trolley through a tidy Tesco supermarket in southern England. She was a woman in her early forties, wearing a matching pastel blue skirt and blouse combination, and a yellow cardigan, and pearls. A wide-brimmed sunhat was perched atop her luggage. No hint of a smile escaped her lips as she surveyed the crowded terminal for what she clearly expected would be an appropriate reception committee.

  “That’s got to be her,” Connolly said to Delaney. “A home counties lass, no doubt about it.

  Poster girl. Love the cardigan. Handy in the tropics.”

  Connolly went over, flashing a giant smile, offering her hand.

  “Mrs. Smith? Ruth Connolly, from Interpol.

  Welcome to Phuket.”

  Mrs. Smith shook Connolly’s hand weakly.

  “How was the flight?” Connolly asked.

  “Dreadful, Officer. It was dreadful. Interminably long, smelly, noisy, a trial.”

  “It is a very long haul, London to Bangkok.”

  “Via Dubai, for some reason. British Airways never told me there would be a stop in Dubai.”

  Smith had told Delaney that his wife was the only daughter of a Royal Air Force wing commander with a hyphenated name of some kind. She was, Smith said, a woman who had spent many years before marrying in the presence of ramrod straight military people and their wives and children. She liked order, hierarchy, politesse, doing the right thing. She disliked untidy homes, disobedient dogs, civilian rabble and, it seemed, most aspects of her life with Jonah Smith. Delaney wondered how long it would be before she inquired after her husband’s health.

  He went over as well and offered her his hand. “I’m Francis Delaney, Mrs. Smith. A friend of Jonah’s.”

  She looked him up and down.

  “From London?” she asked. “We’ve not met. One of Jonah’s Lyon friends perhaps.”

  She said the word Lyon as if it denoted some sort of bodily excretion.

  “No, I’m from Canada. Jonah and I met here.”

  “He’s a journalist, Mrs. Smith,” Connolly said.

  “A famous one, or so they say.”

  “Oh, I see, well, I certainly hope you are not going to make too much of this unfortunate business of Jonah having been robbed out here,” Mrs. Smith said. “One does always run the risk of robbery in countries like this.” “One does,” Delaney said.

  He hoped Mrs. Smith’s next question would be about her husband’s well-being, or, he thought, the marriage was truly over, with no hope of reconciliation whatsoever.

  “Jonah is well?” she said.

  “Yes, fine now,” Connolly said. “A nasty thing, and he got some cuts and bruises, but he wasn’t too badly hurt. They got his wallet . . .”

  “I see,” Mrs. Smith said. She placed her sun hat firmly on her perfectly waved hair. “Can we go to the hotel now? I would like to freshen up.”

  “Yes, of course,” Connolly said, motioning to the Thai police driver, who took over pushing Mrs. Smith’s luggage trolley. “We’ll get you to the hotel and then over to the hospital. Jonah is due to be released tomorrow.” “I see,” said Mrs. Smith.

  Connolly very wisely sat in front with the driver on the way to the hotel, but turned around often to flash big smiles at Mrs. Smith, who sat beside Delaney in the back. Delaney started to wonder why Smith had asked him to come along to the airport at all, except, possibly, to see very early in the game what his wife was like.

  At the Bay Hotel, Delaney stayed discreetly back as Mrs. Smith checked in to her room on the eighth floor. Jonah Smith’s room was on six. Connolly bought Delaney lunch and several Singha beers in the hotel restaurant as they killed an hour before Mrs. Smith reappeared, apparently ready at last to shoulder her wifely burden and go to the hospital. She had changed her blouse. The cardigan now rested loosely on her shoulders, as a concession to the local weather.

  “Not sure you’ll need a sweater out there today,” Delaney said.

  “The air conditioning in these places and in all the cars is absolutely freezing, don’t you think?” she said.

  “True,” Connolly said.

  At the hospital, Mrs. Smith dutifully kissed her husband on his cheek.

  “Goodness me, you do look a sight,” she said, sitting in the sole visitor’s chair, purse positioned in her lap. “And that mustache. I wouldn’t have recognized you.”

  “I’m all right, Fiona,” Smith said. “On the mend now.”

  “They got your wallet, I’m told. Dreadful story,” she said. “Yes,” Smith said.

  Delaney could already feel the silence starting to build. It billowed like a thundercloud on a sultry Thai afternoon. He did the right thing, and made his exit. Connolly was not far behind.

  Delaney had found over the years that police officers and spies, or those who work closely with police officers and spies, are very good at break-ins and other extralegal activities. Smith had prepared everything, had prepared for every imaginable problem or eventuality. They met in a small street behind the Bay Hotel at precisely 3 a.m. on a hot moonlit night. Smith was driving a car borrowed from Zalm, whose DVI team, apparently, believed that all members should be assigned rental vehicles while in Thailand.

  Delaney had taken a taxi from the Metropole. His driver seemed to think nothing of dropping off a foreigner in the middle of the night in a darkened back street, the Phuket brothel scene being what it is. Smith said the watchman in the parking lot of his hotel had been similarly nonchalant as he waved Zalm’s car through the gate on the way out.

  In the trunk of the car was a small rucksack that Smith had crammed with the tools of the trade. Flashlights for each of them, bolt cutters, a length of nylon rope, a notebook, camera, bottled water, and a smaller bag containing what he said was fingerprinting gear. In the back seat he had stowed a small folding stepladder he had liberated from a cleaner’s cupboard at his hotel.

  Smit
h wore an Interpol baseball cap, in navy blue, and darker blue crime-scene overalls, emblazoned on the back, unfortunately, with the words: Interpol Incident Response Team. Delaney also wore a ball cap, an ancient maroon Loyola College number that had outlasted all of his adult relationships put together, including his now long-defunct marriage. He had chosen a black T-shirt and jeans for his freelance break-in work and had tied a grey Montreal Amateur Athletic Association sweatshirt around his waist.

  They drove slowly out to the mortuary compound. There was little traffic at that time of night. What there was consisted mainly of taxis ferrying tourists, and presumably visiting international police, back to hotels from the always crowded bars in Phuket Town. Occasionally they saw sleepy-looking Thai hotel workers in uniform, resolutely pedalling homeward or workward on battered bicycles.

  Smith had done excellent preparatory work in all other regards as well. He had pulled from the DVI computer system the serial number of the container that held the Deutschland body and the approximate place in the compound where that container sat. He also had a printout of the body roster for that particular container. It showed five columns, corresponding to the five wooden racks that would be inside, and nine spaces per column, corresponding to the shelves in each rack that could hold bodies.

  Container CRL0912863 would be sitting well toward the back of the compound, luckily for them, not far from the two-metre-high fence in prefabricated concrete sections that had been installed in the weeks after the tsunami disaster. It would hold, Smith’s papers showed, 29 numbered bodies, so not all available shelves would be filled. Five bag numbers had been highlighted in pink, indicating that the bodies in those bags had been identified but not yet released for transport home. All the rest were so far unidentified.

  The Deutschland body, the papers showed, was numbered PM68-TA0386 and would be on the top shelf of Rack 4, one rack from the back. If, as Delaney pointed out on the drive over, the body was actually still in there. Smith looked troubled by this prospect. The body being missing altogether was one of the very few eventualities he had apparently not considered.