A VERY THAI SORT OF CRIME

Ladarat found herself wide awake especially early the next morning, more than an hour before her alarm went off. Even so, Wiriya was already gone. She had time for an extra cup of peaflower tea in her little kitchen; the garden was too chilly this early in the morning. With that extra time, she left the tea to steep for an extra minute, so it turned a bright, almost artificial blue.

She had time to think about how her house was empty, but not quite empty. It didn’t feel empty in the same way that it was empty when she was living here all alone. There was sort of a residual presence that was oddly comforting.

She had plenty of time to think about this and other things, a rare luxury these days. Those thoughts led from one topic to another, so as she was in her car, driving leisurely toward the hospital, those thoughts had time to turn almost by accident to the misfortune that Ukrit had suffered. To fall asleep and be robbed—that sounded like something that might happen in Third World countries like India. Or perhaps London twenty years ago.

It was such an antique sort of crime. You wait for someone to fall asleep and then take their money? So sneaky, and yet gentle at the same time. A very Thai sort of crime, which avoided conflict and drama.

As Ladarat pondered this odd approach to separating people from their valuables, she found herself once again in the vicinity of the bus station. It wasn’t exactly on the way to the hospital, but it wasn’t exactly out of her way, either.

Deciding perhaps that fate had had a hand in her navigation this morning—and in waking her up especially early—on a whim that she couldn’t have explained, once again Ladarat pulled into the long circular access road. It was still early, and the overnight buses from Bangkok were arriving and disgorging passengers, who stumbled bleary-eyed out to the front door to waiting tuk-tuks and taxis. That river of passengers parted around a farang couple who seemed to be arguing with a policeman.

Curious, Ladarat pulled up next to the three of them and rolled down her window. She was close enough to hear the man and the woman talking in accented English. The policeman either didn’t understand them or—more likely—took them for drug addicts because they both looked confused and unsteady on their feet. Remembering Ukrit and his story, though, Ladarat got out of her car, leaving it parked conspicuously, and conspicuously illegally, and went over to offer what assistance she could.

Ladarat greeted the policeman with a respectful wai. He returned it perfunctorily but then, after a comic double take, considerably more enthusiastically as his eyes widened in recognition.

“Ah, Khun Ladarat.” He smiled. “You are solving another murder?”

It was amazing how far her fame had spread—aided, no doubt, by her … affiliation with Wiriya. But still. Did everyone on the Chiang Mai police force know who she was?

She smiled, then shook her head. Disappointed, he shrugged and introduced himself, then explained the situation in Thai.

“These kids, they are drunk, I think. Or they’ve been smoking Thai sticks, or something. They seem confused. They keep saying they arrived on the day bus from Bangkok.”

“You mean the overnight bus?”

The cop shook his head. “No, I’m sure they meant the day bus. The last one that gets in at two a.m.? And I guess they fell asleep on one of the benches inside. They must have slept there half of the night. And now they’re saying they’ve lost all of their money. But that’s what happens when you get drunk and fall asleep.”

The couple had been watching this conversation with interest, but they were strangely silent. Neither one of them made an effort to ask Ladarat who she was. They both seemed, well, a little drunk.

“Let me talk to them,” she said kindly. “I will tell them that I’m a nurse. Perhaps they’ll be more honest about whatever drugs they’ve used.”

The policeman nodded uncertainly and took a step back. Meanwhile, the man and the woman looked unperturbed by this turn of events. Perhaps they were thinking that their day couldn’t get any stranger.

Looking at them more closely, Ladarat realized that they were little more than kids, as backpackers in northern Thailand all seemed to be. The boy and the girl both wore identical loose-fitting cargo shorts and T-shirts of the sort of material that promises to dry quickly. Both were blond and blue-eyed, with short, sensible hair. Ladarat pegged them immediately as pragmatic Germans.

“Where are you from?” she asked in English.

“Australia,” they both said in unison.

Oh, well. She hoped her skills of detection were better than her knowledge of culture and geography.

Bit by bit, in response to repeated questions, their story emerged, as Ladarat alternately listened and translated for the bewildered policeman. Their story would have been difficult to unravel if she hadn’t heard most of it already.

They’d been in Thailand for a week, the girl said. Down on the beaches, the boy added. Koh Samui, Koh Tao, Krabi, Pattaya. Here they both made a face. Too dirty, they said. Too much sex and drugs.

Then they flew back to Bangkok and took the bus here yesterday, during the day, so they could see the country. And just like Ukrit, they had fallen fast asleep. Someone had carried them off the bus and deposited them on two adjoining benches with all of their belongings stacked neatly beside them. Well, almost all. Someone had also rifled through their pockets, stealing an envelope of cash and their credit cards. The thief had also taken an expensive diving watch from the boy’s bag and a necklace from the girl’s. But at least the thief had left their passports.

Ladarat thought for a moment after she’d translated this story for the policeman. She turned to him and asked the logical question, the question that a detective would ask.

“So if they were robbed, do you think it happened on the bus, or while they were lying on a bench?”

The policeman shook his head emphatically. “Not on the bench. You see, there was someone very important who fell asleep on a bench yesterday. It happens a lot lately, and some people get robbed. But this man … well, he was very important. I heard he was a famous doctor visiting Chiang Mai to speak at the medical school. But he was robbed, and your friend Captain Mookjai has stepped in to help with the investigation.”

Ladarat smiled as vacantly as she could.

“So the word came down that anyone who falls asleep on a bus we should watch over like family. Even if they’re drunk or stoned, like these kids. I came on at six a.m., and one of the cops working the night shift told me about them. He made sure that the bus attendant carried them very gently, and then he made sure that all of their belongings were with them, and that no one touched them.”

“Does this happen … often? The falling asleep on a bus?” And waking up poor.

He didn’t hesitate. “Oh, yes. All the time. One of the bus attendants explained it to me. These farang, she said, they travel long distances to visit our country. Sometimes they’re in planes for twenty-four hours. Can you imagine? And when they get here they suffer from jet lag. You know jet lag?”

Ladarat nodded.

“So they’re tired and suffer jet lag. And even though it’s seven in the morning, their farang brains tell them that it’s still late at night. Especially when they’ve smoked a Thai stick … You can’t wake them up. So you see, it’s normal for them to sleep like this. Not like that famous doctor—we still don’t know what happened to him. That was a mystery.”

“The bus attendant who told you this, she seems very knowledgeable … Which bus company does she work for?”

“Ah, she was from the Royal Yellow Bus Company. Very good company. Always on time. Good service. I use them whenever I go to Bangkok.”

She turned to the young couple. “And which bus company did you use?”

The boy seemed confused. He shook his head. The girl thought for a moment and then said she couldn’t remember. In fact, as they compared notes, it became obvious that they couldn’t remember anything about the trip. They knew that they had arrived at the station in Bangkok. They remembered being rushed and not being sure whether they’d have time to eat dinner. And then … they woke up here in the middle of the night. They couldn’t remember buying tickets or boarding a bus. And they couldn’t remember having dinner.

There was something about this story that didn’t seem right. But as Ladarat was mulling it over in her head, a flash of movement off to her right caught her attention instead. As they’d been talking, traffic had been gotten busier along the driveway that led past the bus station entrance. Cars and taxis and tuk-tuks jockeyed for position near the curb to discharge passengers. Another policeman walked up to Ladarat’s car, parked in a “No Parking” zone, and had begun to write her a ticket. The cop she’d been helping shouted to him and waved him away. Ladarat had lost track of the time, but she realized that she’d gone from being exceptionally early to being quite late.

Before she left, though, she wanted to make sure the young couple would be all right. She took one of her business cards from her handbag and wrote down the name of the monastery next to the hospital. The monks there often made room for visitors to the hospital who had come long distances.

“Do you know Somporn and Kamon?” she asked the policeman.

“Ah, yes. They’re assigned to the case of the famous doctor who was robbed. You think … you think these cases are related? But these kids are just on drugs.”

The policeman looked both of the farang up and down with visible skepticism, as if he couldn’t imagine any serious crimes in which these two would be on the victim roster next to a famous visiting doctor. Ladarat didn’t have the time to explain that the thieves had in all probability made more off of these two backpackers than they had from a poor medical fellow who had an expensive girlfriend to support.

“Just call them, would you? And ask them to get the details, and then to take these two to the Australian consulate.”

The policeman nodded, still skeptical, but intrigued despite himself.

Ladarat explained to the couple what she’d arranged, keeping one eye on her car to make sure her good efforts weren’t rewarded with a ticket.

The couple seemed grateful, but distracted. The boy in particular had an odd tendency to repeat questions, as if he forgot the answers as soon as he heard them. He must have asked her four times in the space of just a few minutes how they could contact their parents.

As Ladarat thanked the policeman, he was already on the phone trying to reach Somporn and Kamon. She rescued her car and pulled into traffic, weaving carefully through the ranks of taxis and tuk-tuks. That didn’t give her much attention to spare for the mystery of the sleeping travelers. Yet there were aspects of this story that were definitely strange.

The boy, for instance—so much more impaired than the girl was. Why would that be?

And the attendant who was so helpful, so confident in explaining away the fact that travelers were falling asleep mysteriously. Was that suspicious?

But no, that was being too much of a detective. People were helpful. Everyone had their theories about why farang did what they did. It was a national Thai pastime, trying to explain the strange behaviors of Germans and Australians and Americans.

Like pancakes. Why did backpacker hostels all serve pancakes? Banana pancakes, usually. What was the appeal of a big, tasteless slab of fried dough? That attendant was welcome to her theories. In the meantime, Ladarat would work on her own.