The Solitary Man (19 page)

The woman frowned, not understanding.

'Let me help you,' said the teenager, taking the case for her. He had a large blue nylon rucksack on his back. The American walked with her to the Customs area.

A Customs official wearing a light green uniform waved them over. 'Where have you come from?' he asked.

'Bangkok,' said the American boy.

'Bangkok,' said the woman.

The Customs officer pointed at the suitcase. 'Is that yours?' he asked the American.

'It's hers,' he said. 'I'm just carrying it for her.'

'Open it, please,' the Customs officer said to the woman.

She held the baby close as she opened the case with her free hand. The Customs officer checked the contents halfheartedly. Threadbare clothes, a washing kit, some Thai magazines, and a small plastic bag of green chillies.

'Okay,' he said, as if disappointed not to have found anything. He waved them through.

The American carried her bag through the main arrivals area. A Chinese man in T-shirt and jeans walked over and spoke to the woman in Thai. She replied and the man took the bag off the American. 'Thank you for helping my sister,' he said in heavily accented English.

'No sweat,' said the American and he walked off in the direction of a taxi rank.

'That was stupid,' hissed the man.

'I couldn't stop him,' said the woman.

'Don't do it again,' said the man. 'Use a trolley if you have to, but you carry your own bag.' He walked with her out to the car park. A driver was already at the wheel of the blue Nissan. No one helped the woman get into the car, she had to open the passenger door herself.

They drove in silence to a housing estate and into an underground car park. A small girl and her mother were in the lift, and they both smiled at the baby.

'He's so quiet,' said the mother. She looked down at her daughter. 'I wish you'd been that quiet when you were a baby. You cried all the time.'

It was only when the two men and the woman got into the flat that the woman let out a long sigh of relief. She put the baby on to the kitchen table and massaged the back of her neck. The driver went into the lounge. The other man took a long knife THE SOLITARY MAN 145 from a drawer under the kitchen sink. He went over to the baby and unwrapped its shawl. A red line ran down the centre of the baby's torso, an old cut that was held together with white stitches. The man used the knife to cut through the stitches one by one. The skin popped apart. The woman turned away.

'Not squeamish, are you?' grunted the man. 'You carried it all the way from Bangkok.'

The woman shuddered. It wasn't her baby, and it had been dead when she collected it from the house on the outskirts of Bangkok, but that didn't make her feel any better about what she'd done.

The man reached into the baby's body cavity and took out a plastic package the size of his fist. It was splattered with blood. He put it into the sink. There were another four packages inside the dead baby. Almost two kilos of pure heroin. The man rinsed them under the cold tap.

The woman went into the lounge and poured herself a glass of whisky. She gulped it down. It was the tenth time she'd made the trip, the tenth time she'd carried a dead baby through Customs. She never asked where the babies came from, whether the mothers had been paid for them or whether they'd been stolen. That they had been killed solely for the purpose of smuggling heroin out of Thailand, she had little doubt. The tiny corpse would be incinerated, the drugs fed into the distribution network, and she'd be back in Bangkok within twenty-four hours with her thirty-thousand-baht fee. It was a lot of money, more money than she could earn in six months in Thailand.

'Whose idea was this?' she asked the driver. *

'This?'

'The babies.'

The man beamed. 'Brilliant, isn't it? It's never failed. They never examine the babies.'

The woman refilled her glass and stared into the amber liquid as if seeking an answer to her question there. 'The man who thought of it, he must be mad.'

'Oh no, he's not mad. And he'd better never hear you call him that. Zhou Yuanyi is a very dangerous man.

JENNIFER LEIGH WAS READING through a stack of photocopied newspaper cuttings that Rick Millett had given her, about the heroin trade and foreigners in Thai prisons, when there was a knock at the door. She looked up from her desk, an annoyed frown on her face. She'd left a 'Do Not Disturb' sign hanging on the doorknob as she'd wanted some peace and quiet while she read. The knock was repeated, louder this time.

'Can't you read?' she yelled.

'Er, it's me,' said an American voice.

The who?' shouted Jennifer. The, Tim Carver. I've got something for you.'

Jennifer got to her feet. There was a mirror hanging on the wall above the desk and she checked herself in it. Damn it, why hadn't he phoned first? She was wearing a sweatshirt and a pair of baggy shorts. She growled in frustration as she realised that she wasn't even wearing a bra.

'Yeah, hang on, Tim, will you?' she called. 'Sorry,' she shouted, as an afterthought.

She ripped off the sweatshirt, pulled one of her bras from a drawer and fumbled with it as she looked at her open suitcase for something decent to wear. She chose a pale green silk shirt and left the top two buttons undone. The shorts would have to stay, she realised. She ran a comb through her hair, grinned at the mirror to check that there were no remnants of her club sandwich lunch sticking to her teeth, and went over to open the door.

Carver was wearing a beige linen suit that was rumpled at the knees and his hair was tousled as if he'd just got out of bed. He looked, thought Jennifer with a slight tightening of her stomach muscles, good enough to eat.

'Hi, come in. Sorry about that.'

Carver shrugged good naturedly. 'This is Thailand,' he said. 'I'm used to waiting. Time moves at a different pace here, as you've probably discovered already.'

'Tell me about it,' said Jennifer, closing the door. 'Why do THE SOLITARY MAN 147 they walk so slowly? Three abreast so that they block the pavement?'

'Just one of the mysteries of Thailand,' said Carver, looking around the room. 'Like, why do they put salt in their orange juice? This is a great room, Jennifer. Practically a suite.'

'Yeah, like I said before, it's a freebie, so make yourself at home. Do you fancy a drink?'

Carver sat down on a plush sofa and crossed his legs. 'Just water,' he said. He took out a pack of Marlboro and his lighter. 'Do you mind?'

'Do I mind? I've just smoked the last of my duty frees, so I'm gasping,' she said.

She took a bottle of Perrier water from the minibar, opened it and handed it to Carver. For a moment he looked as if he was going to ask for a glass, but then he drank straight from the bottle and put it down on the table next to the sofa. He lit two cigarettes and handed one to Jennifer.

'Didn't Humphrey Bogart do that in a movie?' she asked.

'What, drink Perrier?'

Jennifer looked at Carver through slightly narrowed eyes, wondering if he was joking or not. 'The thing with the cigarettes,' she said. Carver looked confused and when he opened his mouth to ask her to explain, Jennifer waved a hand to cut him off. 'Forget it,' she said. She sat on the edge of the bed. 'You said you had something for me?'

'Information,' he said.

Jennifer smiled. That was a good sign, because he could have telephoned her. The fact that he'd turned up on her doorstep meant that he was interested. She leaned forward slightly. 'I'm listening.'

'Warren Hastings. It was a tip-off. Anonymous, which is unusual.'

'Why unusual?'

'Because the police generally pay for information leading to arrests. Most of their tip-offs, and ours, come from our regular informants. This one came out of the blue. I've checked with our Hong Kong office and Hastings isn't known there, though that might just mean that he hasn't been caught before. He runs a 148 STEPHEN LEATHER kennels there, trains dogs, looks after them while their owners are away, that sort of stuff.'

'Have you got an address?'

Carver grinned and pulled an envelope out of his jacket pocket. 'I knew you'd ask, so I've put it all down on paper for you.'

Jennifer took it eagerly. She opened it and slid out a single sheet of paper. 'Perfect,' she said, quickly running her eyes over the typed information. 'You've worked with journalists before. This is just what I wanted.' '

He threw her a mock salute. 'The DEA is here to serve, ma'am,' he said.

'Do you know how he's going to plead?'

Carver shrugged and ran a hand through his untidy hair. 'He'd be crazy to do anything but plead guilty. He's not cooperating, though, from what I've been told. He's sitting tight and saying nothing. He even turned down a lawyer.'

Jennifer raised an eyebrow. 'Why would he do that?'

'Jennifer, I wish I knew,' he said. 'Hastings turned dpwn the services of one of the best lawyers in the city, a guy called Khun Kriengsak.'

Jennifer grabbed for a pen and asked Carver to spell the lawyer's name. 'Is Kriengsak his family name?' she asked.

'No, that's his first name. Khun is the equivalent of mister or miss, it's used by both sexes.'

Jennifer nodded. 'Who was paying this Kriengsak?'

'No idea. So you haven't managed to speak to Hastings yet?'

'Sore point,' she said. 'My journalist friend didn't come through. He said the cops wouldn't play ball, the best I could do was to get a letter to him, and that cost me a thousand baht. I don't even know if Hastings got it, he certainly didn't get back to me. I might have more luck once he's been transferred to Klong Prem.'

'You could just try offering more money. When the Thais say that something isn't possible, more often than not they mean that you haven't offered a big enough bribe.' Carver looked around for an ashtray, holding his cigarette upright.

Jennifer got one from on top of the television cabinet and handed it to him. He smiled his thanks.

'Why are you so keen on this story?' he said. 'The guy doesn't THE SOLITARY MAN 149 want publicity, he's facing a long prison sentence and he's turned down a lawyer. I'd have thought there were better things you could be working on.'

Jennifer wrinkled her nose and shook her head. 'I've got a hunch on this one, Tim. There's something not right about the way Hastings is behaving, as if he's trying to hide something.'

Carver drew on his cigarette and exhaled slowly. 'It could be that he's been told not to say anything. By the people he's working for.'

Jennifer nodded. 'Maybe. But I think there's more to it than that.' She waved the sheet of paper in his face. 'He's a dog trainer, for God's sake. Why would a dog trainer get involved in drug smuggling?'

Carver stabbed out the stub of his cigarette and stood up. 'Beats me,' he said.

'You're not interested?' she asked.

'Like I said before, it's such a small amount, relatively speaking; it's not worth my time. The DEA is after bigger fish. I'll wait to see what the lab says.'

Jennifer frowned. 'What can they tell you? Heroin is heroin, right?'

'It's m6re complicated than that. They can do a detailed breakdown of the drug so that we can tell where it came from. Each batch is different, depending on the raw materials used and the way the heroin is manufactured. The lab can even tell which scientist was in charge of production. They all have their own way of doing things and they leave their own signature. Even the way the heroin is wrapped can give us an idea of who was handling the distribution.'

'So it might lead you to Mr Big?'

Carver grinned boyishly. 'It might tell us which Mr Big is behind it, but that doesn't get us any nearer arresting him. Most of the Mr Bigs are up in the Golden Triangle and they're pretty well untouchable.' He looked at his wristwatch. 'I'm sorry, I have to go,' he said.

Jennifer's face fell. 'Oh, I was hoping we could have dinner . . . or something.'

Carver looked at his watch a second time. 'I'm afraid I've got someone to see.'

'A pretty Thai girlfriend?' she asked, unable to keep the bitterness from creeping into her voice.

'No,' he said.

'Not Thai?' said Jennifer.

'Not a girlfriend,' said Carver. He looked at her levelly. 'Boyfriend.'

Jennifer narrowed her eyes. 'Oh,' she said. She hesitated for a second as realisation dawned. 'Oh,' she said again, quieter this time. 'I'm sorry.' �

Carver smiled broadly. 'There's no need to be. Anyway, I've got to run. The traffic's hell outside.'

Jennifer opened the door for him. 'Thanks for the info,' she said as he left. 'And if you change your mind . . .' She flinched as she heard what she'd said, and closed the door before he could say anything.

She leaned against the wall, her face reddening as waves of embarrassment washed over her. 'I thought it was the Mounties who always got their man,' she muttered to herself. She grinned. 'What the hell, there's plenty more fish in the sea.'

CHAU-LING WAS PUTTING BOWLS of dog food in front of Mickey and Minnie when Naomi yelled at her from the office. 'Telephone,' she called, and mimed putting a phone to her face. The Dobermanns stuck their muzzles into the bowls and wolfed down their food.

'Who is it?' Chau-ling asked as she got to the office door.

'Some Thai guy,' Naomi replied in Cantonese. 'Wouldn't say what it was about.'

'Thanks,' said Chau-ling. 'Can you finish the feed for me? This might take some time.' Chau-ling waited until Naomi had left the office before picking up the receiver.

It was Khun Kriengsak. He briefly explained what had happened during his visit to the detention centre. 'I am sorry, but I appear to have wasted my time,' he said.

'I don't understand,' said Chau-ling, sitting on the edge of a desk. 'Does he have another lawyer? Is that it?'

'No. He said that he doesn't require any legal representation.'

'But that's crazy.'

'That is what I told him, Miss Tsang. But he was adamant.'

Chau-ling's forehead creased into a frown. It didn't make any sense. Warren hadn't tried to get in touch with her, and she'd checked to see if he'd contacted his lawyer in Hong Kong. He hadn't. There was no reason she could think of that would explain why he was refusing her help.

'What will happen next, Khun Kriengsak?' she asked.

'He'll appear before the Criminal Court in Ratchadraphisek Road. The police will present their evidence, and if the judges are satisfied that there's a case, he'll be sent to prison.'

'Prison? Oh my God.'

'Believe me, Miss Tsang, conditions in prison are no worse than where he is being held at the moment.'

Chau-ling sighed mournfully. 'What can I do, Khun Kriengsak?'

'Until the police have finished their investigation, nothing,' said the lawyer. 'Bail is never allowed in drugs cases. Mr Hastings can present his own evidence to the judges, but to be frank, Miss Tsang, I doubt that there is anything he could say that would prevent him from being held in custody. He was found with a kilogram of heroin in his possession.'

'But Warren would never . . .' began Chau-ling, but she didn't finish the sentence. It wasn't the lawyer she had to convince of Warren's innocence. 'What about character witnesses?' she asked. 'Could I speak at the hearing?'

The lawyer didn't reply immediately and Chau-ling sensed from his hesitation that he didn't think Warren's prospects were good. 'Perhaps,' he said, and his tone confirmed her first impression.

'So what do we do?' she asked. Her father had told her that Khun Kriengsak was one of the best lawyers in Bangkok and she was prepared to accept his judgement.

'I will continue to monitor the case,' he said. 'I have contacts within the police who will be able to advise me of the strength of the case within a day or so. Until then, all we can do is wait.'

'Okay,' said Chau-ling despondently. 'But as soon as you know when he's going to appear in court, please call me. I want to be there, even if it's just to offer him moral support.'

Chau-ling's voice began to shake and she ended the call quickly. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. There was a scratching at the office door and Mickey pushed his way in, his stub of a tail wagging furiously. Chau-ling bent down and hugged the dog as she wept. ^

IT TOOK JENNIFER LEIGH six attempts before she managed to speak to Khun Kriengsak on the telephone. He was polite, and while he didn't actually refuse her request for an interview, he insisted that pressure of work meant he wouldn't be available in the foreseeable future.

'Can you at least tell me if you'll be representing Warren Hastings at his trial?' asked Jennifer.

'Mr Hastings has made it clear that he doesn't require my services,' said the lawyer curtly. ,

'Doesn't that strike you as unusual?'

'Unusual? In what way?'

'He's not a lawyer, is he? And presumably he understands the seriousness of his situation. Surely he'd be only too keen to have a lawyer representing him, especially a lawyer of your calibre.'

'One would have thought so, yes.'

'So, did he give you the impression that he already had a lawyer? Or that he had something else in mind?'

'Such as?'

'Oh, I don't know. Co-operating with the police, maybe. Offering information in exchange for a shorter sentence, that sort of thing.' .

'He would be foolish in the extreme to attempt that without a lawyer.'

'Could he plead not guilty without a lawyer? Could he represent himself in court?' '

'Not unless he speaks fluent Thai and had legal training. And I don't think either applies in his case.'

Jennifer toyed with the telephone cord. Warren Hastings rejecting the services of a lawyer didn't make sense, no matter THE SOLITARY MAN 153 how he intended to plead. 'Khun Kriengsak, who exactly is paying your fee for this case?'

'As things stand, Miss Leigh, the matter of a fee is hardly relevant. Other than to make a couple of telephone calls and visit Mr Hastings twice, I have done no work at all on the case.'

'But you were hired by someone, obviously.' There was a long silence on the line as if the lawyer was deciding what to say next. Jennifer had the feeling that if she didn't break the silence, he wouldn't answer her question. 'I'm just trying to get some background information on Mr Hastings,' she said. 'I won't be quoting you, or even mentioning you in the article. But it would be a big help if I could speak to people who know him so that I can find out what sort of person he is and why he would get involved in heroin smuggling.'

'I don't think the man who hired me knows Mr Hastings personally,' said the lawyer. 'His daughter works for him. But I think I have said too much already, Miss Leigh.'

Jennifer had a sudden image of Kriengsak sitting in the witness box while she interrogated him and she smiled. To do their jobs well, both lawyers and journalists had to be able to extract information from unco-operative witnesses. And while Kriengsak wasn't exactly being unco-operative, information was hardly pouring out of him.

'Her father must be a very wealthy man to be able to afford your fees,' said Jennifer. 'A lawyer of your reputation doesn't come cheap.'

'Miss Leigh, I can tell you now that flattery won't work with me,' said the lawyer. 'Now, please . . .'

'Oh, I wasn't trying--'

He didn't let her finish. 'I know exactly what you are trying to do, and you're wasting your time. I'm afraid I've already told you more than I should have done. I don't want to be rude, but I think I've said all that I have to say. Goodbye.'

The line went dead in Jennifer's ear. She put down the receiver and considered her options. Warren Hastings wouldn't speak to her, neither would the lawyer who had been hired to represent him. Rick Millett had been no help, and she figured that she'd got all she could out of Tim Carver. She smiled. More's the pity,

she thought. She already had enough background information to write an article on heroin smuggling, but the nagging feeling that there was more to the story kept worrying her, like a bothersome child tugging at her sleeve. Her airline ticket was lying on the desk and she picked it up. The only line she had to follow was the girl in Hong Kong, the girl who worked for Hastings. Jennifer didn't have a name, but she did have the address of the kennels. If she was going to keep on digging, she'd have to go to Hong Kong. The question was, would the trip be justified?

She knew it was pointless to confer with the paper's news desk; they'd simply tell her to get on the next plane home. Jennifer knew that she had to follow her hunch. She tapped the ticket against the side of her face. The ticket was a freebie, compliments of the airline, so she doubted that there'd be any problem persuading them to fly her via Hong Kong. She could go and speak to the girl in person. A day at most, that's all it would take, and she'd know whether or not it was worth continuing with the story. She nodded to herself, her mind made up. It wouldn't be a waste of time, her journalistic instincts had never failed her before.

RAY HARRIGAN ROLLED OVER on his sleeping mat. The Canadian was staring at him with vacant eyes. 'What? What are you looking at?' asked Harrigan.

The Canadian blinked several times. 'You were talking in your sleep.' He coughed and cleared his throat noisily.

'Yeah? What was I saying?' Harrigan pushed himself up into a sitting position. It was late at night and through the windows he could hear the clicking of insects and the barking of far-off dogs.

'I couldn't make it out. Something about getting away.' Harrigan rubbed his eyes. 'Chance'd be a fine thing. I'm starting to think I'll be in here for ever.'

'Nah,' said the Canadian, sitting up. 'Only fifty years.' Harrigan laughed harshly. A mosquito landed on his leg and he slapped it. It splattered on his skin, a mixture of black and red.

The Canadian unscrewed the top off a plastic bottle of mineral water and drank. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and gave the half-empty bottle to Harrigan. He grinned when he saw Harrigan look at the bottle neck. 'First of all, I haven't got AIDS, and second of all, you can't get it from a bottle,' he said.

'I wasn't . . .' Harrigan began, but the Canadian silenced him with a wave of his hand.

'Yes, you were. You had the same look in your eyes that you have whenever I shoot up.'

'Sorry,' said Harrigan, and he drank as the Canadian watched, amused. Harrigan handed the bottle back. 'There's a lot of Thais with AIDS in here, you can see why I'd be worried,' he said.

'Only if you share your works or let them fuck you up the arse,' said the Canadian. 'And I don't do either.'

'What does it feel like?' Harrigan asked.

'Being fucked up the arse?'

Harrigan flashed a two-fingered gesture at the Canadian. 'Heroin,' he said.

The Canadian pursed his lips. 'Remember what it was like the first time you had sex?'

'Jesus, I can barely remember the last time I had my hole, never mind the first time.'

'Well, it's like sex, but it lasts longer. It's a rush, it's like you're firing on all cylinders.'

'But what does it feel like?' Harrigan pressed.

'Like an orgasm. But deeper. It's not just in your head or your dick, it's everywhere. And it goes on and on and on.' He cocked his head on one side. 'Are you thinking of trying it?'