Behind the Night Bazaar (20 page)

‘Excuse me, older sister,’ Komet said, removing his cap, ‘I wonder if I might have a moment of your time.’

‘Of course, Officer,’ the woman smiled, ushering him in. ‘But I’m hardly your older sister. Younger sister will do. Call me Nong Ornsri.’

Komet nodded politely. With her crow’s feet and traces of grey in her hair, Ornsri definitely had a few years on him.

‘Fine, Nong,’ he said, taking out his notes. ‘I called your guesthouse last night and spoke with your husband—’

‘No,’ she interrupted him, ‘I’m not married any more. My husband was a lousy drunk, Officer. I got rid of him. You must’ve talked with my son. He’s out tonight.

‘Hmm,’ he said neutrally. ‘Well then, old—, I mean, younger sister, I was asking about farang women who’d checked in on Tuesday afternoon or evening and was given two names.’ He held out a piece of paper.

‘Ai Leen Run Den,’ Ornsri transliterated aloud, ‘See Mon Wid Feed.’ Gesturing for Komet to follow, she took the registry, tilted it towards the light from the TV, and scanned the list of names.

‘Yes, Officer, both those women are staying here.’

‘Can you tell me anything about them?’

‘Khun Aileen, she’s American and Khun Simone, she’s from England,’ she said, reading from the ledger.

She looked up and narrowed her eyes. ‘Why? Are these women in trouble with the police? Because, you know, Officer…?’

‘Komet,’ he said.

‘Officer Komet, I run a very respectable business here. I tell my guests, no drugs, no girls. And if there’s any idea that these women—’

‘No, no,’ Komet reassured her. ‘It’s nothing like that. I just need to talk with them.’

The smile returned. ‘
Mai pen rai
,’ she said, squinting at the pigeonholes on the wall where the room keys were kept. ‘Khun Aileen is in. She came back hours ago. Chances are she’s already asleep. Do you want me to wake her?’

‘Ah, that may not be necessary,’ Komet said. ‘Tell me, Nong Ornsri, does Khun Aileen speak Thai?’

The woman frowned. ‘No.’

‘What about Khun Simone?’

‘Oh, yes, she speaks Thai very well,’ Ornsri said. ‘Krung Thep accent, but otherwise very good.’

Komet inhaled sharply. A Bangkok accent was a good sign. ‘I know it’s late, but would it be possible for me to speak with her?’

Ornsri glanced over her shoulder again. ‘She’s not in, Officer Komet.’ She leaned forward and nudged him. ‘She didn’t come in at all last night.’

‘Oh? Well, when did you last see her?’

‘It was around seven. She said she was going out for dinner.’

Komet looked at his watch; she’d been gone four hours.

‘Perhaps you’d like to wait here for her?’ Ornsri added, glancing at the pile of cushions on the floor. ‘You can sit with me and watch television. And I have some
lao Kwang
Thong
…’

Komet suddenly became aware of how it looked, the two of them in the dimly lit reception area, the woman offering him rice whisky.

‘Ah, younger sister, thank you for your kind offer,’ he said carefully, ‘but I can’t drink on duty. And since the farang didn’t come back at all last night…Well, I have other police business. It’d be best if I try again tomorrow morning.’

‘Up to you,’ the woman shrugged.

‘Yes, that would be best,’ Komet said again, restoring his cap to his head. ‘I’m grateful for your help.’ He hesitated. ‘Younger sister, could I ask you not to mention this visit to Khun Simone? I wouldn’t want to make her… nervous about seeing me.’

‘
Mai pen rai
,’ Ornsri nodded with a tight-lipped smile.

Komet breathed a sigh of relief as he got back on his motorbike. He wasn’t used to divorcées—such women had a reputation for being forceful, even aggressive. Komet guessed they had to be tough to live with the knowledge they’d failed at a Thai woman’s most important task: keeping a marriage together.

Things sounded promising but he still had ten places left to visit, and he needed to think up an excuse to explain how he’d spent the night searching for Bom and Deh, only to return to the office empty-handed.

Mark watched as Simone exhaled the smoke from her cigarette.

‘One of my English students offered to pay me to check out this Australian guy who wanted to marry her,’ she said, ‘and I tailed the guy to a bar in Patpong and caught him on film fondling a topless waitress.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Word got around and more and more people came to me for help. The work paid better than teaching, but it was the thrill that got me hooked.’ She smiled and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘And that’s how I ended up working as a private investigator.’

‘Mild-mannered Melbourne school teacher hits Bangkok and turns into Australia’s Mata Hari!’ Mark said with a grin.

‘Oh, hardly.’ She pulled a face. ‘The work’s mostly research and surveillance, pretty mundane stuff. More Miss Marple than Mata Hari.’

‘Who?’

‘Miss Marple. You know, as in Agatha Christie novels?’

‘Ah, I don’t read much,’ Mark said.

‘Oh?’ She seemed disappointed. ‘Anyway, it’s your turn. How did you end up working in southeast Asia?’

‘Where do you want me to start?’ Mark held up their empty bottles and gestured for a waiter to bring another round.

She rested her chin on her hands and fixed her green eyes on him. ‘Why did you become a cop?’

Mark shrugged. ‘Like you, sometimes you fall into something and discover you’re good at it.’

‘When did you join up?’ she asked.

‘Ah…I was nineteen, so it was the end of 1985.’

‘So you’re thirty now?’

‘Almost. My birthday’s in November. Why? How old are you?’

‘Same. Twenty-nine,’ she said as the waiter set down the fresh drinks.

‘Back in those days, you didn’t get a lot of wogs on the force in Queensland,’ Mark said. ‘So I ended up doing a lot of “cross-cultural liaison”. Some of the more…er…traditional men couldn’t get their heads around the idea that beating your wife and kids was illegal in Australia.’

‘Was that what your father was like?’ she said gravely.

‘God, no,’ he laughed. ‘My dad wouldn’t hurt a fly! When I went to Italy, I couldn’t believe his brothers. They’re these wiry, tough bastards who live in the mountains, carry bloody great daggers in their belts and slaughter their own goats! It wouldn’t surprise me if Dad came to Australia ’cause he wasn’t tough enough for Calabria.’

‘So your work was in domestic violence?’ Simone said.

‘For a while. Then I got transferred to a special squad set up to investigate child sex abuse. That’s how I ended up in the Feds—my boss recommended me for a transfer to the paedophile unit at AFP.’

Simone looked poised to ask another question, but he held up his hand. ‘Time out,’ he said.

He left her lighting another cigarette and wandered from the terrace through to the men’s room. Mark knew swapping life stories was part of the deal when getting to know a person. But his time with the special squad was best kept to himself.

Most sexual crimes against children were committed by extended family members or people known to them. But some victims—or ‘survivors’, as they preferred to be called—alleged they’d been lured by high-profile members of the community into private clubs for paedophiles. And while Mark made initial headway in pursuing these cases, witnesses would suddenly decide not to press charges, key documents would go missing, and obscure legal obstacles would emerge. Mark began to suspect an unholy alliance of church, state, big business and the law to protect wealthy perpetrators from prosecution. But he knew better than to share these thoughts and jumped when the opportunity to join the Feds came up.

But he didn’t want to go over all that with Simone. He zipped up his fly and flushed the urinal. It only made him feel anxious about his current case to mull over unfinished business.

Jayne watched Mark walk away, unsure of what to think. Were they beginning a relationship, or just keeping each other on side for the sake of their respective investigations? Mark’s mention of Calabria made her think of the Mafia saying,
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer
. She didn’t want to let him out of her sight.

Two young Ahka girls approached her table, their beanie-like hats covered in silver coins. The taller girl, about seven, carried cheap souvenirs on a tray suspended from a sash around her neck. The other held a bronze-coloured insect in her hand, fastened by one leg to her ring finger with a piece of red cotton, a tiny leash.

When Jayne spoke Thai, they became excited, asking her to teach them English words and giggling at the strange sounds coming from their own mouths. She was still chatting with them when Mark reappeared.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘I don’t suppose you know the English word for this, do you?’

He looked into the girl’s outstretched palm and shrugged. ‘Nah, sorry.’ He resumed his seat.

‘Neither do I,’ she laughed.

When she told the girls this, they grinned, the younger one cupping her hand over her mouth to hide her smile. Then they scampered off, leaving Jayne to stare after them.

‘Do you want to move on?’ Mark said, bringing her thoughts back to him.

She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s nearly midnight. You don’t think we should be watching Kelly’s place?’

‘Nah. Since you saved me the effort of getting an ID on those cops, I can take a night off.’

She thought for a moment. ‘How about we go to a show?’

‘What kind of show?’

‘It’s a surprise.’ She signalled for the bill.

Officer Tanin blinked, bug-eyes widening. There was no mistaking it. Officer Komet was sitting in the garden of the Mountain View Lodge with a farang woman.

Tanin ducked behind the trunk of a coconut palm. Although he was too far away to hear what the two were saying, he figured they must be speaking Thai as, to his knowledge, Komet didn’t know any other languages.

The woman had fair hair and pale skin, and there was a lot of skin showing. Her dress had little strings over her shoulders, and when she leaned forward, Tanin could almost see her breasts. She shook her head a lot and waved her hands in the air when she talked.

The Mountain View was on Tanin’s regular beat. The garden restaurant had a winding path across the lawn that led to the tables, each lit with candles inside domes of coloured glass. The path itself was lined with flowers, neatly trimmed to waist-height; and there was a pond in the middle, covered in pink lotus blossoms. It was quiet and romantic, a place where lovers met.

Tanin was confused. Was it possible Officer Komet had taken a mia noy? He knew Komet’s wife was expecting a baby. But he didn’t think farangs could be minor wives. It was very strange.

He wondered what Sergeant Pornsak would make of it. Word around the office was that he’d fallen out with Ratratarn, forced to do guard duty at the dead farang’s house. Tanin hoped it wasn’t serious: Pornsak had promised to look after him, and Tanin needed his help if he was to advance his career. He was trying to save enough money to get married.

Although Tanin looked up to Pornsak, the sergeant was always making scornful remarks about ban nok people and, like Komet, Tanin had grown up in a rural area. He tried to imagine the look on Pornsak’s face if he knew that Komet—whom he dismissed as a hick—had a farang girlfriend. Pornsak was bound to be jealous.

Smiling at the thought, Tanin withdrew from behind the tree and backed away to his motorbike. He was tempted to drop in on Pornsak there and then, but it would keep until the end of their respective shifts. It gave him something to look forward to.

Mark cast a sideways glance at Simone who laughed as a drag queen dressed as Grace Jones took centre stage to sing ‘I Need a Man’. A waiter wearing silver micro-shorts and the number 21 around his neck approached their table and, careful not to take his eyes off the guy’s face, Mark ordered himself another scotch.

When the tuk-tuk had pulled up outside an ornate wooden house called the Lotus Inn, Mark assumed Simone was taking him to see some traditional Thai dancing. By the time he realised it was a gay bar, it was too late to suggest they go elsewhere without causing a scene. It wasn’t that he had a problem with gays. But he didn’t like having it shoved in his face.

The drag queen strutted around the stage, gyrating his pelvis and making lewd gestures with his tongue on the microphone. Half the time, Mark couldn’t tell if these tran nies were men or women. Some of their tits looked real, and one or two wore dresses so tight he could see every curve— and there were no bulges where their dicks should have been. Did they strap them up into the cracks of their arses? Or worse?

Mark downed his second scotch in one gulp and ordered another. The drag queen stepped down from the stage and started making his way through the audience. Still lip-synching, he stopped next to one guy, stroked the stubble on his shaved head and perched on his lap, his free hand working its way down towards the man’s groin. The punter looked as if he was enjoying himself, but Mark didn’t want to risk being the next victim. Mumbling an excuse to Simone, he made his way to the bathroom.

It was a bad idea. Stumbling through the washroom into the toilet area, Mark came upon two men in a corner by the urinal, shirts unbuttoned and hands down each other’s pants. The men—one a westerner, the other a local—didn’t even pause to look up as he brushed past them and locked himself in a cubicle.

Even with the music booming in the bar, he could still hear the two guys going at it through the door. Mark put the toilet seat down and sat back with his head against the wall, waiting for them to finish so he could return to Simone and suggest they get the hell out of there.

The two guys’ groans grew deeper, louder, more intense. Mark sighed, wondering just how long it could take for a couple of poofs to jerk each other off, when he looked down and realised he had a hard-on.

He stared at his distended groin in shock and his head started to spin. He tried to will his cock to go down, to block out the sounds of the two men gasping towards climax. But his erection only grew harder, straining against the fly of his jeans, as the voices outside rose to a howl of satisfaction.

Mark slumped forward, listening to the men kiss loudly and laugh. He heard footsteps, the sound of running water, paper towels being pulled from the dispenser and muffled voices. Finally, he heard the bathroom door being opened. The music grew louder for a moment. Then he was alone.