Cocktails & Dreams

by Lilburne, Guy

  “Thank you for talking to us Khun Lek, I have heard many good things about your restaurant” said a smiling Nok, after giving a very respectful wai.

  “You are police?”

  “No, but we work for the police; actually for Colonel Wattana himself. We want to ask you a few questions about Toy.”

  “She was a good worker and I knew that she earned extra money sometimes, but, as long as she didn’t bring trouble to my restaurant, then it was no problem. She had a good heart.”

  “And did she ever bring any problem to restaurant?”

  “No never. I would never allow it and she knew this.”

  “Did she have any enemies amongst the staff or customers?”

  “No, she was very friendly and popular with everyone.”

  “What about her family or friends? Did she ever discuss anything with you? Did she have any problem with anyone?”

  “I don’t know, but if she had a big problem then she would come to me. Everyone comes to me if they have big problem.”

  “And she never did?”

  “No, not once.”

  “And you never had any problems with any of her ‘extra money’ customers coming to your restaurant?”

  “No, never.”

  “Can I show you a photograph, please, Khun Lek?”

  Lek nodded, now intrigued. So Nok pulled the photo of Mr. P with Daa on the beach from her brown folder and placed it on the counter in front of Lek. Lek picked up a pair of glasses from somewhere under the counter, wiped the lenses slowly and carefully with a cloth before she put them on, wearing them low on her nose. She picked up the photograph, giving her the look of a scientist examining some secret formula. After several moments she started slowly nodding her head, anticipating Nok’s next question, but she still waited until Nok spoke.

  “Have you ever seen this man before?” she asked.

  “Yes I have.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, of course I’m sure. He came in the restaurant twice. Two nights in a row.”

  “When was this?”

  “A few nights before Toy was killed.”

  “Did he speak to Toy at all?”

  “Yes, Toy served him, He ate a lot and spent a lot of money and left big tip. He sounded American. He seemed to be a nice man, and I knew that he liked Toy.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, he came in twice and I had to tell Toy to tell him not to ring the restaurant for her. She said she was sorry. She wasn’t expecting him to ring and that’s why she hadn’t given him her mobile.”

  “When did he ring?”

  “The day after he had been in the night before. Do you want to know his name?”

  “You know his name? How?”

  “When he rang it was me who answered the phone and he asked for Toy. I recognised his American accent straight away. I told him that Toy didn’t work at the restaurant during the day and I refused to give him her mobile number. He asked me to give her a message and tell her that he wanted to see her.”

  “And he gave you his name?”

  “I wasn’t happy with him ringing my restaurant to arrange a date, but I took his message. But then he used stupid name, said to tell Toy that Mr. P wanted to see her. I told him that I wouldn’t take a message from Mr. P, and if he wanted to leave a message then I wanted his name. This is a restaurant, not a dating agency.”

  “Did he give you his real name?”

  “Yes, I took the message.” Lek kneeled down behind the counter and Nok flashed Danny one of her pretty, wide smiles that told Danny she was getting excited about something. Lek stood up again holding a blue A4 size bound book and started flicking backwards through the pages.

  “Here you are.” Lek put the book down and pointed to an entry written in Thai. It was timed and dated and read ‘Toy, Mr. P (crossed out) Peter Lawford rang. He wants to see you. He is coming to the restaurant tonight.’

  “Can I keep this?”

  Lek shrugged her shoulders.

  “If it will help you.”

  “Yes it will help a lot.”

  Lek carefully detached the page from the book and handed it to Nok. Nok took out a statement form from her folder and took a written statement from Lek. On the way back to Patong she told Danny all about Lek’s account of events. She was very happy with her detective work. Now they had a name for Mr. P.

  “Jesus Nok! What a break through. You really are a great detective” smiled Danny. Nok leaned over towards him in the back of the taxi and kissed him on the cheek as she squeezed his arm.

  Danny rang Sharron Haines as soon as they got back to the office of the Great British Detective agency.

  “Hi Danny. No luck yet I’m afraid, but I’m still working on it.” She looked down, tugged down on a gape between the buttons on her blouse and swivelled around in the red leather chair to check herself out in the mirror while she spoke.

  “It might be easier if you try and attach the name Peter Lawford to the face” said Danny.

  Sharron swivelled back towards her desk and wrote the name down on her pad before she opened up the computer screen on her desk and punched in the name.

  “Danny, we’ve got him” she leaned forward and started reading highlights about Peter Lawford from her screen. “He’s an ex-cop out of New York. He’s 60 years old now. He’s been visiting Thailand for over ten years, some quite long stays, but long periods back in the States. It looks like he has been back in Phuket for the last nine months. He has been doing the visa runs to stay here again. He has previously spent a long time in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, going back nearly ten years ago, before going back to the States. Look Danny, I’ll send you an unofficial copy of what I’ve got and I’ll do some more digging and let you know if I can turn up anything else.”

  “Sharron, you’re grand, so you are.”

  “I think you owe me a dinner” said Sharron, pouting in the mirror and flicking her long blond hair out with her pen.

  “I’ll sort something out. Thanks Sharron. Bye for now.” Danny put the phone down.

  “Oh!” said Sharron still holding the phone to her ear.

  Meiwa stood next to the fax machine waiting for it to bleep and burp into life. The office was silent, the three of them just looking at each other. Then the fax machine started and spewed out paper into the tray. The third piece of paper had Peter Lawford’s photo on it. Meiwa looked, smiled, nodded and passed it to Danny, who put it on the desk next to the photo of Mr. P on the beach with Daa.

  “That’s the same fecker alright.”

  “You fecker” said Nok to the photo, and Danny burst out laughing.

  “What?” said Nok. “I great detective same-same you.”

  “Don’t get too excited Nok. It’s just another suspect. But, just like Dieter Westeveld , he is a good suspect and we can associate him to two of the murder victims. Just the same as Westeveld.”

  “Yes, but I like having suspects, tee rak” said Nok.

  “Me too.”

  Danny rang the Chief and updated him. The Chief told him that the others were still interviewing Westeveld and that they thought Westeveld was still a ‘good’ suspect. He told Danny to have an early night and they would hold a de-brief in the conference room at HQ at 8:00am in the morning.

  “Meiwa, can you ring Suzie and tell her to meet us at Sam’s Steakhouse in the Holiday Inn. They have a live band on in there tonight and we are going to celebrate Nok’s good work” smiled Danny.

  “Tee rak, I think you not drink now” said Nok.

  “Haha, don’t worry. I’ll be drinking juice. I’m celebrating with a big steak.”

  Chapter 26 De-brief, HQ.

  The entire murder squad team had started to gather in the conference room at 7:45am
, in readiness for the 8:00am briefing with the Chief. Danny walked into the conference room with Nok and they were greeted with smiles and nods and handshakes. In stark contrast Bee sat in isolation facing the front of the room. She had already decided that she wasn’t going to acknowledge Danny when he came into the room and she didn’t. She was angry with everyone else, especially her partner Pon, for making such a fuss of the farang. She sat alone and immaculate in her French designer skirt and jacket and Italian designer high heeled shoes. The white blouse was tight and did nothing to hide how small her breasts were. Her skirt rode up her thigh slightly when she crossed her shapely legs, while her perfume was expensive and filled the room. She looked more like a high powered business woman then a police detective. Danny made a point of walking in front of her to take up his seat.

  “Good morning Bee. You’re alright, are yer?” he said with a smile.

  Bee had no choice but to look up at him. She didn’t want to but her Thai upbringing made it impossible for her to ignore him.

  “Good morning Khun Danny,” she said without meaning it.

  Danny and Nok took their seats and a few minutes later the Chief, his deputy assistant, his personal secretary and the head of the murder squad walked into the room and took their seats behind the tables laid out at the front of the room. The chatter, coughing and shuffling of seats went quiet and then stopped as Colonel Wattana spoke.

  “Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming and thank you for all the hard work that everyone is putting in. We have been making some good headway in the serial killer case. The reason that I called this meeting this morning is just to thank everyone and bring the whole team up to date with where we are at the moment. Then, as a team, decide the best way forward to bring this case to a successful conclusion.”

  Danny sighed and flicked his eyes to the ceiling. He looked at Nok, raised his eyebrows and slowly shook his head.

  “The police like jumping the gun in Thailand” he whispered.

  Nok didn’t know what gun he was talking about and she didn’t know why jumping on it or over it would make any difference to anything, but she guessed that Danny was saying something negative.

  “Shhh! Tee rak” she whispered.

  “We have two good suspects” continued the Chief. “The first is Dieter Westeveld, a German national, and the second is an unidentified man from a photo that the first victim had in her bag. We know him as Mr. P. In the case of Westeveld, he was arrested while he was trying to leave Phuket. Detectives Bee and Pon have been interviewing him and I believe he has made some admissions. Bee, do you want to tell us about Westeveld?”

  Bee stood up and wai’d to Colonel Wattana and then to the rest of the room before she started to speak.

  “Khun Westeveld has admitted that he is guilty, but denied that he has actually murdered anyone, but he is difficult to talk to. He often talks in riddles and seems to drift off into his own world. This is the first time that he has left Germany and he admitted that he came to Thailand for one reason,” she paused for dramatic effect, “to have sex. He has admitted being with the first two victims, but I believe that he only admitted this because we have witnesses to put him there, and in the case of Toy, the second victim, DNA test have shown that a splash of sperm on her clothing is Westeveld’s. Again, once we could prove it, he admitted that she gave him oral sex. Interestingly, he denies that he knew the first two victims were ladyboys, and he won’t comment on the third victim.”

  “Do you think that he is the killer?” asked Danny.

  Bee hesitated. She wasn’t expecting to be put on the spot and especially by Danny. She only expected to be questioned by the Chief, because that was the Thai way. The Chief wasn’t going to ask awkward questions because he wanted someone charged as much as she did. The silence lasted too long to be comfortable.

  “Do you think he is the killer Bee?” asked Danny again.

  “Yes, I think he is. He will not admit the murders, but he has admitted that he is a guilty person and I think he will plead guilty if he is charged.”

  “What nonsense!” said Danny. Bee’s face flushed red and she quickly sat down.

  “Yer man Westeveld has not admitted killing anyone and we have no evidence to prove that he did. We can prove that he was with the first two victims just prior to their deaths. It’s suspicious and it makes him a ‘good’ suspect, but at the moment no more than that. There is a lot more work to be done.”

  “He has admitted that he is a guilty person. Even to you he admitted this” snapped Bee.

  “Jesus! He admitted that he feels guilty, he has guilty secrets. We all have guilty secrets. Everybody in this room has guilty secrets, even you Detective Bee.”

  Danny’s tone was making everyone uncomfortable and now, by making it into a confrontation with Bee so publicly, he was taking her face, causing her great embarrassment. This was the very worst thing you could do to someone in Thailand and everyone in the room was feeling Bee’s discomfort. Nok tugged at Danny’s sleeve to silence him but he wasn’t finished. The subtleties of Thai culture, politeness and good manners were beyond Danny’s grasp.

  “Westeveld is feeling guilty because he has left his mummy and daddy to travel across the world to have sex. He is feeling guilty because he has had to pay for it. Guilty because he fancied the ladyboys and guilty because he didn’t even know that they weren’t real girls and guilty because he was found out…………”

  “Shhhhh! Tee rak, enough now” said Nok.

  “What?” asked Danny holding his up turned palms out in front of him.

  A silence filled the room again and everyone looked to Colonel Wattana to fill the silence and restore Thai social order. Nobody blamed the farang. He was a good detective, a great detective. He just didn’t understand the Thai way and, in Thailand, confrontation was always to be avoided if at all possible. In Thailand to lose face is devastating to the individual, but to take someone’s face is even worse.

  The Chief took a drink of cold water from the glass in front of him before he spoke again.

  “Khun Danny also thought that the photo from the first victim’s bag made the male in that photograph a suspect. On the back of the photograph he had signed it ‘Mr. P’. I think we have some more news on Mr. P.” The Chief waved his hand towards Danny inviting him to take the floor. Danny stood up slowly from his chair and wai’d to the Chief and then, copying Bee, he turned and wai’d to the rest of the room and it relieved the tension. There was a lot Danny didn’t know about Thai culture and forgiveness was a big part of that culture.

  “Yes, we have some news on Mr. P. Nok and myself have been doing some work on Mr. P and we have witnesses that again can put him in company with the first two victims, albeit, it was not immediately prior to the murders.”

  “Who are these witnesses and how can they associate him to the victims. Nobody knows who Mr. P is” snapped Bee. If she could cut him down in front of everyone then she wanted to do it.

  “They are good witnesses who knew the victims. They have seen the photograph and can identify him as being a man who spent time with the victims before they were murdered.”

  “So, we still don’t know who Mr. P is” said Bee.

  “Yes we do, Mr. P is Peter Lawford. He is a 60 year old American from New York. He is an ex-cop who has spent a lot of time in Thailand over the years and he came back to Thailand again about 9 months ago………”

  Danny’s mobile rang loudly in his pocket, breaking his thoughts. He pulled it out. It was Sharron Haines.

  “Hi Sharron, can I ring you back? I’m in the middle of a briefing with the Chief and the murder squad team.”

  “No, in that case it’s even more important that you know this now, it could be important.”

  “Ok, just give me the quick brief and I’ll ring you back later.”

  “
Peter Lawford was in Bangkok when a ladyboy was murdered there ten years ago, and just over a year later he was in Chiang Mai when another ladyboy was murdered there too. They are different MO’s to the current shooting murders, but it seems too much of a coincidence to me. Just thought that you’d like to know. Oh yes, and after the Chiang Mai murder, Lawford went back to the States for a long period and only came back to Thailand on very short two weeks trips after that, until he arrived in Phuket nine months ago to stay again.”

  “OK Sharron. Thanks. I’ll call you back.” Danny closed the phone.

  “Peter Lawford was in Bangkok nearly ten years ago when a ladyboy was murdered there, and a year or so later he was also in Chiang Mai when there was another ladyboy murder. Colonel Wattana, I think we need to find Mr. P.”

  The Chief nodded as everyone in the room caught their breath.

  “Yes I agree. Now we have a name to put to the face we can step up efforts to trace this man. Detective Bee, will you take charge of that action? Detective Pon, you can keep going with the suspect Westeveld. We still keep an open mind ladies and gentlemen, and we keep in touch and we update each other. Thank you for your time.”

  The Chief got up and walked out followed by the others from the top table.

  “Tee rak, I want you to say sorry to Detective Bee, please” said Nok