by James Newman
“Sounds kind of backward.” Joe felt the weight of the gun in his pocket. The weight was both a blessing and a curse. Like a bankroll in a strange town.
“You can’t go steaming in asking questions, Sherlock, especially if that person is higher than you in the rich social fabric of Thai society. And remember one thing; they are all above you in the rich fabric because they invented it. It’s their playground. New kids are allowed to play in the sandbox, but they better bring new shiny toys and be prepared to lose ‘em.”
“So these people have their little rituals. They get sensitive. Frankly, I don’t care.”
“You don’t care? Ok. Why? Let me tell you a story. It’s a true story. Do you like stories, Sherlock? Yeah, sure you do. Last week I came home after a hard day at the meat grinders and I fancied a meal with my Thai-Chinese high society girlfriend. I give her a call. I mention Chinese or Italian. She says up to you. So we get to the restaurant, nice place, only just got the table because I’m in with the Italian chef. Anyway Ploy sits there pushing her food around like it’s a shit sandwich. Without the bread. We pay the bill and get in the taxi. She starts crying. The bitch starts fucking crying. I ask what the matter is and she says she’s hungry, that she needs to eat Thai food. I almost slapped her there and then, Sherlock. God help me I almost punched her fucking lights out. These people drive me fucking insane.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Why didn’t I what?”
“Hit her.”
“For fucking cultural reasons, Sherlock. Greng jai. She didn’t want to hurt my feelings so she told me she wanted to eat the Italian food. Of course there will always be those who will take it to the extreme or use it to their own advantage. She knew my heart was on the Italian so she went with it. She didn’t want to cause a scene. She hates conflict. Thais hate conflict, Sherlock. See it all the time. That’s why they’re always bloody smiling. You do not want to cause a scene down there on the island. Especially over an Italian. Rich people are vulnerable and vulnerable people are sensitive and can make rash decisions. Don’t ever push them into a fucking corner. They’re like snakes, man, they will slither away at the first sign of danger, but if there’s nowhere to slither, then watch out, Sherlock. Watch out. These people bite.”
“I have a job to do.”
“Sure. It’s all about awareness. Be aware that the Thais have many smiles including the I’m-gonna-rip-you-apart-limb-from-limb-smile. It turns you into a basket case if you get sucked into it. Go with the flow, Sherlock. This is too much risk for a bloody insurance policy. You want to die over an insurance policy? You want to be the next dead diver?”
“I’m not giving a killer money to do it. You say I shouldn’t investigate him because it would upset him to be seen with his hand in the cookie jar?”
Hale took a long drink from his beer and changed the subject. “The women were fun at first, but now I need new toys. Singapore was the same, Hong Kong. Bangkok is pulling me down. I owe some people some money and I haven’t got what it takes to pay them.”
“What kind of people?”
“Just people.”
“Are they heavy?”
“Well, let’s just say they have creative repayment plans. The guy who baled me out is a brick shithouse muscleman known as the Shark. He is covered in tattoos and well, I’m doing okay. Sharkey knows I’m good for it. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, Sherlock – but don’t be expecting a picnic,” He waved the waiter over and ordered another drink. Hale noticed two women at the bar. “Mine is in the black, Sherlock. You got the one in the pink.”
“I’m on the straight and narrow.”
“The city is a predatory animal, Sherlock. Bar-dwellers are easy pickings. The one in the pink likes you, Sherl. She’s sending out the vibe, bro. We’re the soft targets. We are the ones dropped out of the sky by the big metal birds. We land on the ground and grow up like fruit trees harvesting more of the bird-shit. Look, she’s smiling. I’m not as bad as you think I am, Sherlock. I’m just doing what I’m doing. Maybe you need to look at yourself and stop being so judgemental. As I say, mine is in the black. She wants it. I can tell these things.”
“I’m leaving,” Joe stood up.
“Hey, we only just got here. What you got to go home to? Watson getting lonely? Stay and have a drink. The Long Island Ice Tea in here is out of this world. You’ve earned it. Let’s see Bangkok.”
“I’ve seen enough of Bangkok city for one day, Hale,” Joe stood. He reached into his pocket and took out a purple five hundred and placed it on the table. “Be lucky.”
“Your loss, Sherlock, your loss.”
SIXTEEN
Turtle Island.
THE CAT looked up at Rang who towered above it.
Rain hammered down on the house as lightning struck somewhere close by lighting up the room and the terrified expression on the cat’s face.
Rang approached, the animal now backed into the corner.
He grabbed at it. The cat’s body stiffened in his grip. One hand gripped the tendons in the cat’s shoulders the other hand gripped the animal’s head.
He twisted the head around anti-clockwise while holding the body tight.
The cat’s hissing was replaced by the cracking sound of the spine being pulled and twisted out of shape, and then, severed, silence.
Rang dropped the cat’s black dead body on the floor.
Thunder cracked, and then lightning.
He returned to the bottle.
To the storm.
SEVENTEEN
Turtle Island
SHOGUN POINTED at the young woman singing into the microphone.
The song she sang was impossibly sad.
She bowed to Shogun and padded towards him.
He drank from a tiny cup of coffee. He asked her if she would like a cup, she nodded to the affirmative. He wondered where she was from, not that it mattered. If she had been any less beautiful she would have been miles out to sea working for days on one of the fishing trawlers. She had been lucky, fate had brought them together, perhaps only for one night.
She drank the coffee and motioned with her head that Shogun should follow her upstairs.
He agreed and stood, his muscular body towering over her.
As she lay down on the bed, her long legs widening, Shogun could have sworn that her cheeks were damp.
EIGHTEEN
LATE AFTERNOON was slipping into a cool tropical evening as inspector Rang’s daughter opened the letter. She could hear the sound of his motorbike approaching. Outside the window a flight of butterflies hovered above a patch of purple flowers. Her father had been digging in the garden, fresh soil had unearthed. Chickens pecked at scraps in the front yard. Dogs barked in the distance. She had planted the flowers years ago. She opened the letter. Her heart leapt with joy as she read the words.
She had been accepted.
A moment later her father pushed open the door and walked into the bungalow. Her father. The policeman. Inspector Rang. He took off his aviator sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. She could smell his afternoon. Beer and whiskey. She stood up and bowed. Her father had often spoke about her beauty. How she reminded him of her mother, before it happened, before the accident. Before their lives were turned upside down. He smiled at his daughter and nodded his head. He looked tired. He often did.
“Father? Are you well today?”
“Yes, I am well.”
“The letter arrived from Boston today, father. I have been accepted. I will be the best I can be. I promise.” She picked up the letter and passed it to her father. The exchange program meant everything to her.
It meant freedom.
“This is wonderful news. Your mother would have loved to see this day, Mintra. I wish that she was still here with us.”
“I do too father. I will study for her and for you. I will make you both proud of me.”
Rang sat down and picked up a copy of the Thai Rath newspaper, he looked at the pages. She searched his face for
a trace of emotion. She found none.
“Father, I have a question.”
“What is it?”
“I have asked you before, but I am still not sure. How did mother die?”
She had asked before, many times, her father sighed. “You were just a small girl. It was when we lived in the larger house, the other side of the island, do you remember?”
“There was a hammock near the beach. I can remember playing on the sand and learning to swim. I loved it there. Why did we move?”
“Money. Time. Change. Things were difficult after your mother died.” He closed the newspaper and looked at her. She sat and smiled with the acceptance letter in her hand.
“I liked it there, it is nice here, and the school is nearby...”
“Listen, Mintra. Nobody really knows what happened. That night we had argued. She was angered about something and I was at home drinking beer. She hated to see me drink.”
“I don’t like it too sometimes,” Mintra said sadly. When her father was upset he created a silent vacuum. It was her duty to fill that silence with the bits and pieces that she remembered from their past lives. Stuff about mom. But the life that she so desperately clung to was like a house of cards. It stood delicately balanced. One wrong word sent it tumbling to the floor like a gust of wind blown through an open window. And then what? She would have to build a new house of cards built on the very same sands of disillusion. A dwelling that all the time in the world and all the words she could muster would end up destroyed; just like the last one. There were only so many houses that she could build. None of them lasted. Mintra knew that her parents weren’t that special. The evidence was overwhelming. One day she would teach her children that some people are interested only in themselves. She would build her own house of cards. A house that would not crumble. A family built on love rather than guilt.
“What were you arguing about?” She asked.
“Money and drinking. She said that my brother would help us if only I could put down the bottle. I couldn’t do it and I knew he wouldn’t help. There are certain things you learn about somebody when you grow up with them. You are lucky in many ways that you are an only child. The truth is your mother wanted all the things that the other women had. The cars and the land and the businesses. She wanted to be seen as somebody on the up and not on the down. I couldn’t provide these things for her. She resented me. Mintra, if you are angry with someone that is above your social station you resent them. If they are on the same level you are angry with them. If they are below you, you feel contempt for them. Shogun was not prepared to help and I resented him. We had a falling out over a piece of business that I tried to help him negotiate.”
“Where did she go that night?”
“She was found up in the mountains. Her bike and her body were found by the side of the road. A foreigner had been seen in a four-wheel-drive. Just before or after the crash. He was motoring away from the scene. We never found who or what caused the accident.”
“But you have been strong father. You have been both a mother and a father, I am proud of you.”
“I did my best. I am glad that you do not see me as a failure, Mintra. I know you would not say so if you did.”
“You are my father,” She smiled.
“Both Shogun and myself were born and raised in a place and time where taking what you could get made more sense than dying in the fruit plantations paying back endless karma. Shogun believes in karma, but he would do, he has everything he could ever want.”
“And does father believe?”
“I am not so sure. Everything for me has always had to be fought for.”
“It is ok, I love you as you are, father.”
“And I love you,” He smiled. Rang then stood up from his chair and went to the window and looked out onto the shabby front yard – all the land that he owned. His eyes felt heavy. She watched him walk out onto his patch of land. He walked to the shop next door. The old woman smiled and got the bottle of white whiskey from the shelf and poured a measure into a glass. She passed it to him. He drank it. The shot burned his throat. He watched a cloud of bats flapping ungracefully in the dusk. He listened to the sounds of the crickets from the jungle. Somewhere in the distance a tookay lizard called. The old woman poured another. Rang picked up the shot and threw it back indicating that she keep filling the glass. The sun could be seen disappearing from behind the mountains. He glanced at the bold white of his brother’s kingdom up in the mountains. The sky darkened.
Rang knew that the next shot wouldn’t burn him. It would make him stronger. And then what? Then he would finish the bottle and decide how to find the money to pay for his daughter’s scholarship. If Shogun would not share the insurance money he would find another way to get to it.
SIXTEEN
THE TWELVE hours from Bangkok had been a chance to rest and clear his mind. A chance that Joe hadn’t taken. He had stayed up all night thinking about the case. He had two dead tourists and a large lump of money at stake. Joe figured that the pistol shots in Bangkok were just little boy’s stuff. That the real action would take place on the island. A man could go missing and never found again in the Far East. He wasn’t scared. He believed that each man had a time and place to go and there was no way trying to cheat oneself out of it. If he was supposed to be blown away on an island then so be it. If he was to die in a train wreck so be it. There was no use in being scared of the dangers outside of the comfort zone. The perverts creeping around the woods. The axe murderer in the dark. The casual poisoner. Joe realised that the most dangerous people in this world were the one’s closet to him. He was statistically more likely to be killed by his mother, his father, sister, brother, or lover than the bushy-haired-man-in-the-night. The most dangerous woman in any man’s life was his mother.
Joe was safe.
His mother was dead.
He had no family. He was single. This was by design. It was all about eliminating danger. Watching your guard. Keeping it real. Strangers were safe. Distance from people was agreeable if you were playing the gig for the long haul.
On the ferry top deck he watched the tropical islands approach. The sea was calm. Turquoise. Inviting. A sea eagle soared in the above distance. Joe watched the bird’s flight as it glided above the waters and disappeared from sight behind the peak of a palm-forested mountain. It appeared again this time with another bird. They both soared above and below each other their talons locked together. The courtship ritual looked dangerous, but then again, all courtship rituals were. The raptors twisted and turned in the sky. He wondered about truth. Why the Finnish girl had died and why the man that should have saved her followed suit. The only one who could tell the story was dead. The cynical answer was too obvious: life insurance in the third world was guaranteed to end in a claim. It was too much for them to resist.
The island grew larger. The ferry approached the pier. Joe picked up his Samsonite and slung the strap over his shoulder. He remembered the gunshot wound the moment the weight came down.
The pier. A herd of backpackers. A line of pick-up trucks converted into taxis. Joe followed them and stepped into the loading bay of a pick-up with two rows of bench seats and a roof. Two female backpackers chattered about their adventures opposite him. The first had streaky blonde braided hair and wore leather sandals that were coming apart at the sole. She smiled painfully as Joe sat down. They probably summed him up for what he was: a middle-aged man with alcohol and sex issues who had been in a bar fight. The second woman was Australian, pretty in a natural windswept way, and did most of the talking.
“First time to Thailand?” she asked.
“Yes” Joe lied, “Just come from Bangkok, long journey.”
“We just came all the way from Chang Mai.” She looked at her friend knowingly and then back at Joe. “Without stopping,” she added.
“No wonder you look like you tired,” he told her, “With all those buses.”
“You don’t look very good yourself. I reckon
we are probably used to the travelling by now,” She said as that knowing look passed between them again. “We did most of India by bus, six months of it.”
“Not to mention Nepal,” Said her friend.
“And how long did it take you to d
o Nepal?” Joe asked.
“India and Nepal together came to seven months and twelve days,” said the Australian.
“That’s a long time on a bus.”
“Yes,” She said seriously, “It was. We spent two months at a retreat, you know, I want to mediate everyday but I just don’t find the time.”
A voice came from the back of the truck. “To mediate you must first remove the concept of time and then remove the concept of want and then remove the concept of I. Our ISMS – I self and Me. Desire is, erm, undesirable,” said a small man with a little beard at the back of the truck. Joe hadn’t noticed the rodent-like man before. Eyes like a pensive squirrel. “It’s only when you realize that there is nothing that you can do to change the situation that you are in that the real knowledge begins.” He nodded slowly and then turned to the attractive girl, “I can teach you some techniques if you want. Free of charge. I don’t believe in receiving money in exchange for the enlightenment of others. It is a fool’s bargain to do so. We must reward each other with our own individual talents and wisdom.” He stroked his wee beard and continued, “You see Gautama Buddha taught us that we must clear the mind in order to find our inner truth. It is very difficult. But it can be done with the right techniques. With a clear mind we can see a tree as a tree a rock as a rock and we can see ourselves as just an image within the whole illusion that is what we call life. All of life, hopes, dreams, inspiration are a simple flicker in a tree frog’s eye. Let me take you to my retreat here on Ko Samui and we can explore these concepts. Why shackle ourselves to hate?”
