I’d passed the Novotel before on my way to the Ko Tao ferry. It was a vast place with its own nine-hole golf course, behind an ugly fence. Noisy road between it and the sea. No public transport into town. I’d always wondered why anyone would stay there. I parked in the car park and sought out Administration. There was one person at the front desk, who told me the manager was away. It was mid-week. There were no guests. The words “money laundering” passed through my mind. But the receptionist, Doy, was perfectly sweet. She was pretty and delicate as a hibiscus—the way I’d always appeared in my own dreams. When she found out I was inquiring about conference facilities, she wai’d me respectfully and asked how she could help. I suppose I could have told her I was an unemployed journalist looking for an old doctor I wasn’t particularly interested to find, but that wouldn’t have got me anywhere, would it now? So I leaned across the marble counter, took hold of her arm, and said, “Doy, I’m at my wit’s end. You’re my last hope.”
“Me? Why?” she said. “I mean, what can I do to help?”
“My mother,” I said. “She suffers from dementia. We can’t find her.”
“Oh, my word.”
“The last time anyone saw her was here at your hotel at a conference.”
“Oh!”
“It’s just … it would be really bad publicity for the hotel if she’s lying dead in a flower bed somewhere.”
“Well, yes. Certainly. Do you know what conference it was?”
“Child care.”
“That was just this weekend.”
“Yes.”
“I … I should tell somebody.”
“Thank you. And perhaps they’ll suggest you find the hotel reservations for a Dr. Somluk Shinabut and the list of conference attendees.”
“Yes. Yes. Good idea.”
She started to rifle through a drawer.
“And perhaps you could put me in touch with someone from the hotel who attended the conference.”
She looked up.
“We … we don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Attend. We just rent out the space. The organizing is all up to the people who book it.”
“So, they could all be running around naked up there and you’d never know?”
“Oh, I doubt whether … they wouldn’t do that.”
“Who was it that booked the conference room last weekend?”
“Right. I should know. There was a welcoming sign up at the front of reception. It was … The Bonny Baby Group. The sign said: THE BONNY BABY GROUP YOU’RE WELCOME TO MIDWIVES AND PEDIATRIC NURSES.”
“Good. I’ll look it up. But you’re sure nobody from your staff dropped in to see what was happening?”
“Yes. Unless…”
“Yes?”
“Well, I’m not on at the weekend so I don’t know, but if they wanted the event recorded, our IT person might have been there.”
“An inspired thought. And where would I find the IT department?”
“It’s not a department as such. He shares a room with the chamber maids,” said Doy, as she led me along the dark corridors of the swimming pool wing. We disturbed four maids, sitting with their feet up drinking chocolate milk. They didn’t jump to attention when we entered their room. In the far corner was an alcove. It was wide enough for two chairs and had high banks of shelves crammed with electrical equipment. A young man was sitting there repairing a coffee percolator. He’d allowed hair to grow wherever it wanted on his soft face, and as a result, he had a rambutan beard and I counted six mustache hairs. Doy left me with him and went off in search of someone who might be able to give me permission to look at the privileged hotel files. The young man was looking at me suspiciously even before I finished my story.
“You have a photo of her?” he asked.
I produced the Maprao Medical Clinic brochure open at the photo of Dr. Somluk.
He sighed.
“The only photo you have of your mother is in a photocopied brochure?” he said.
“It’s the most recent,” I told him.
He sighed again, as if life was a disappointment. He knew I was lying.
“You have to show me an ID,” he said.
“What for?”
“The log book. You want to look at a copy of the weekend’s DVDs, you have to sign for them.”
I handed him my citizenship card. He looked at the surname and up at me.
“She remarried,” I said.
He sighed as he filled out my details in the log book. Half an hour later, I was in a hotel room with Rambutan Chin, Doy, and a stack of DVDs. By telephone, the manager had given permission to afford me every assistance in the search for my poor mother. The “bad publicity” gambit had worked. We skipped the bullshit opening speeches from local dignitaries and the keynote address from some renowned pediatrician from Singapore because the camera was fixed on the podium. Rambutan wasn’t big on audience shots. In fact, he only bothered during the Q&A sessions at the end of each panel. That was my chance to search for my lost mother. Doy had brought me the program for the Bonny Baby Conference and Dr. Somluk was listed neither as a participant nor a speaker.
“Are you certain she was here?” Doy asked.
“I’m certain she told her nurse she was coming,” I said. “Oh, wait. Here.”
On the back page of the program was a list of affiliates of the Bonny Baby Group. Halfway down was Dr. Somluk’s name.
“Then she might have been helping to organize it,” said Doy.
“You’d think you’d know if your own mother was organizing a conference,” muttered Rambutan. I wanted to pluck out those hairs with tweezers.
It was a three-day conference. We’d been through the first two days. Doy ordered us the staff version of room service, which was tasty but classless. We’d arrived at Sunday. It was the second session of the day. The speaker was a fat woman talking on the topic BREASTS—THE MYTH. As I watched her full-body articulation played fast forward, I had to admit there was something fabulous about her enormous chest, heaving from side to side. She finished her PowerPoint. There was a Q&A session, and as the camera swung around, I thought I might have spotted someone who looked like Dr. Somluk seated beside an aisle. I pressed normal playing speed on the remote. The camera had found the person asking a question, and I was about to rewind to check the woman in the aisle. But there she was, standing behind the young lady at the microphone.
“I think that’s her,” I said. “Blue top.”
“You only think?” sighed Rambutan.
“I’d be sure if the camera was focused,” I said.
“There’s nothing wrong with my—”
“No, that’s her,” I said. She was in the queue, up next to speak. She seemed nervous. Shifting her weight from foot to foot.
“Wait. I remember this,” said Rambutan. “It was the only highlight in a deadly boring weekend.”
“Why, what…?” I began, but at that moment the young lady stepped away from the mic and Dr. Somluk took hold of it.
“Dr. Aisa,” she said. “Perhaps you can tell all the people gathered here who funded your trip to Chumphon and why you’re rea—”
Suddenly, she was grabbed by the arm by one of two women who had been standing behind her in the queue. Both were dressed in mudmee silks and had impeccable but impossible hairstyles that stood up on their heads like Formula One helmets. The second of the two wrested the mic away from Dr. Somluk and proceeded to ask a question of her own. Something about breast disease. Meanwhile, woman one was escorting Dr. Somluk back down the aisle and out of shot. The doctor had been forcibly prevented from completing her question. I was delighted. It suddenly turned the whole venture from a futile favor for a skinny nurse into a fully fledged mystery. Da’s concern might not have been groundless after all.
“That was weird,” said Doy.
We watched the scene again up until Dr. Somluk was being frogmarched out of shot.
“Do you remember what happened to her … my m
other, after that?” I asked.
“Yeah,” said Rambutan. “The woman in silk was joined by another woman and they walked your … mother right out the exit. I don’t remember any of them coming back in.”
We watched the rest of the day’s footage, and he was right. There was no more sign of Dr. Somluk or her abductors. We went back to the scene. Watched it several times. In the queue, Dr. Somluk was nervous. Getting more agitated the longer the girl in front hogged the mic. When she was finally nabbed, she treated it like a joke, laughed and smiled. We Thais have a nasty habit of smiling to disguise what we’re actually feeling. Dr. Somluk’s smile was vast, but it was a Band-Aid not broad enough to cover the wound. We zoomed in on her face. Her eyes were not smiling. Dr. Somluk was petrified.
* * *
It was Wednesday when I got the call. I hadn’t given him my cell-phone number, but in Maprao you just had to ask someone who might know you and they’d happily pass it on. What point was there in having a phone if you didn’t want people to call you? My neighbors hadn’t yet learned the art of caller culling.
“Hello, Jimm.”
I quite liked my name without its correct high-rising intonation. It made me sound like a Sydney bricklayer. I was, I have to admit, excited to hear Conrad’s voice. But as they’d taught me in Aussie, “Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen.”
“Who is this?” I asked.
“It’s Conrad. Conrad Coralbank.”
“Er, how did you get this number?”
“From your mother.”
Traitoress. Happy to farm me out to any rich superstar.
“You’d rather I didn’t call?” he asked.
“In fact, I was about to call you.”
“Splendid.”
“My editor said you aren’t interesting enough. He didn’t accept my first draft. I need some dirt.”
“That’s too bad. I’m clean. I could be a Sunlight-washed soup tureen.”
“I don’t believe it. Everyone has dark secrets.”
“Perhaps you could hypnotize me and probe my depths.”
“You can lie if you like,” I said. “I just need something to sell newspapers and get myself a pay packet.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you. But not on the phone.”
“Really? I’m so disappointed.”
“Why?”
“The ‘But I can’t tell you on the phone’ line was voted the worst crime novel cliché of the millennium.”
“It’s unavoidable. If everyone spilled their beans over the phone, there’d be no meetings in dark warehouses. No body discoveries. No arriving in a room where one entire wall was dedicated to photographs of you, illuminated by candles. No meals at the Opposite the Train Station Restaurant.”
“There’s no such restaurant.”
“That might not be the name, exactly. But the sign’s in Thai and I’m only up to the written character for ‘soldier’ in my self-study program. It really is opposite the train station. What do you say?”
“I don’t have an entertainment budget.”
“My treat.”
So, that was it. The banter that led to the first date. It was lunch at the Opposite the Train Station Restaurant, and it did indeed have a view of the Lang Suan train station. On a good day you might get nine passenger trains on that single track between Bangkok and the deep south. Invariably, those trains would get derailed or blown up by southern terrorists or just break down because they were antique. If they survived all that, they could merely plow into a backhoe on one of the unmanned crossings or careen down into a flooded valley like a water ride at Disney World. A five-hour delay was a good day. In fact, the only real inconvenience about Thai rail travel was on those unique occasions when the train arrived on time. You see, nobody ever turned up at the hour stated on the timetable. Those trains would leave the station empty, and the railways would run at a loss. Bad scheduling made economic sense.
The reason I bother to mention all this is that our luncheon that day was accompanied by a cabaret. The eleven fifteen from Thonburi had arrived with a motorcycle entangled in its undercarriage. A shirtless, dark-brown man with a blowtorch had been entrusted with the task of removing it so the Sprinter could continue its sprint. The passengers were all out on the track giving advice, phoning ahead, and smiling violently at the station staff, who were largely innocent.
“Do you suppose the motorcycle rider’s under there as well?” Conrad asked.
Only a murder writer would garnish a meal with such bad taste.
“If he is, a blowtorch probably isn’t going to do him much good,” I replied, kind for kind.
Conrad laughed.
“During the floods the farmers park their motorcycles up on the embankment so they don’t get bogged down in the mud,” I said. “The train drivers usually slow down and beep their horns to give the locals time to move them. Some might just bump them off the tracks. Looks like this fellow was in a hurry.”
“How could you possibly know all this?” Conrad asked.
I smiled and took another spoonful of coconut fish soup. In my haste I accidentally took in a lemongrass leaf, which was part of the debris you’re supposed to leave in the bowl. I wasn’t about to spit it out. I chewed it a little and swallowed it. It’s probably still in my intestines.
“I’m a journalist,” I said. “I ask the right questions of the right people.”
It was my Lois Lane line. In fact, I didn’t imagine for one second the farmers would be so stupid as to park on a train track. I just wanted to impress him with some local color. I’d been prepared for the worst after his “somebody’s mistress” comment, but he’d apologized for that the moment we met in the restaurant car park. He’d offered to pick me up at the resort, but I’d made up some appointment and told him I’d meet him here. As it turned out, Grandad Jah wouldn’t let me have the Mighty X so I’d arrived on our motorcycle. It’s hard to look your best with insects stuck to your sweat and mud flecks on your face. The helmet plastered down my interesting spiky hairdo into a globule of fettuccini.
He’d still seemed pleased to see me when he stepped out of his SUV, Gatsby-cool even down to the brown loafers and chinos. When we’d walked past the waitresses, they must have thought I was being interviewed for a laundry position. My only saving grace was that I was wearing a dress. Scullery maids never wore dresses. The English sign over the cashier’s table said: WE NOT COSH CHICKS.
“I should hire you,” he said.
“What as?” I asked.
“Researcher. Cultural adviser. Odd-jobs woman.”
“You already have someone to hold your watermelons.”
“Right. That wouldn’t be in the job description.”
Not a flinch. I was expecting at least a blush. Men who defile their maids usually show remorse. I decided to keep pushing.
“Your handywoman seems very content in her work.”
“You think so? I really hope you’re right. I do try to keep her happy.”
Brazen.
“I’d hate to lose either of them,” he continued.
“Her and her son?”
He laughed so loud the four uniformed bank employees at the next table looked around.
“Did I say something funny?” I asked.
“No. You’re right. Jo does look so young. I thought the same when I first met him and A. But he’s her husband.”
“But he’s…?”
“Twenty-four. A’s twenty-seven. She graduated from Meiktila University. Literature. She spends a lot of her time typing. I gave her my old laptop. She speaks Thai and English as well as Burmese. Smart girl. And here she is, making beds and washing dishes. What a messed-up country Burma is.”
That’s when it first occurred to me that he might not be diddling her after all. Especially not with her baby-faced husband walking around the grounds with a machete. So, was her warning for me to stay away from him because she had plans to get Little Jo deported and move in on her boss? Or was there someth
ing else I needed to know? I had to get her alone and find out what she meant.
Most good Thai meals give way to periods where you’re enjoying the food too much to be bothered with conversation. We were in one of those vacuums. Fish lahp, prawns and broccoli in oyster sauce, spicy bamboo shoot and sweet basil, and cold Singha beer. He’d insisted I select the dishes. It was good to see a foreigner enjoy Thai food, even with sweat leaking out of him faster than he could throw in the beer. It was like perpetual motion. But even damp he looked adorable. With the maid issue sort of sorted out, I only had one more query to address before I’d allow myself to be seduced.
“Did you beat your wife?” I asked.
Again, no twitch, no tic, just a smile.
“Would it help sales if I had?”
“Either that or a transvestite lover. The editor seems to think, as it stands, you aren’t worth a headline. You promised me a dark side.”
“And you think my wife is the gateway to sensationalism.”
“Why did she leave?”
“Is this the newspaper asking or you?”
“That depends on the answer.”
He took a few sections of tissue paper from the roll and wiped his face dry. He gently flapped his hand at the flies waiting in the wings for his leftovers.
“She wasn’t ready for this life,” he said. “She was young. Your age. So you know exactly what I’m talking about. No decent cappuccino. No bars. No pizza. No variety or stimulation. Stuck with me in Eden.”
“Did she have a lover?”
“Several, probably. Is this on the record?”
“I’m going to embellish everything you say. But, don’t forget, nobody reads the Chumphon News.”
“Right. Then, it wasn’t the lovers. The desire for sex I could forgive. Understand even. But the deceit…”
A hood of gloom seemed to lower over him at that point. The toothpick snapped between his fingers.
“I’d made a commitment,” he said. “I’d never done that before. I promised myself to her. She wasn’t the easiest person to love, but I worked on it. I changed … so it would be successful. I gave up things I thought were sacred. I refurbished my id so it could accommodate another. All this was based on the fact that she said she loved me, and I valued that more than anything. A beautiful young woman loved me. So I gave her me. But that me wasn’t enough for her. She deserved what she got.”
The Axe Factor: A Jimm Juree Mystery (Jimm Juree Mysteries) Page 6
