Twenty One

From this angle the building looked virtually intact. Evidence of the violent attack was more apparent from the south facing side. By climbing into an adjacent car park you got a good view of twisted chairs, sculpted into hideous shapes, flattened by burnt roof struts blocking the way to a darkened corner of the room gauged by a large fireball. The precision grenade launcher picked out the target exactly as planned. A total of five bodies were labelled and pieced together from the round table closest to the bar. In most cases they were barely recognisable or complete, missed limbs and charred fingers meticulously collected and added to body bags Even the sex could be questioned in a couple of the cases. Dental records were currently being tracked down with the café reservations book being carefully analysed in case correct names were ever given. Detectives were despatched throughout the capital to pass on the gospel of bad news and make checks on known contacts for people missing breakfast that day. One person that could be accounted for was that of a slim but muscularly built Thai in his early thirties. After a whole day of dusting down personal effects and pulling together the ashen remains from the floor it was clear that Kae was not included in the recently deceased. If Captain Vaenkeo were able to show any emotion over the botched hit he would have thrown the nearest rookie into a wall and demanded that they burn their balls searching all day and night for the retched Thai. Instead he bit down on his lip and felt the fire deep down inside.

“Sir! I think we’ve found the fragments from a grenade. Looks like a professional job, perhaps political. I’ve seen similar attacks in the past. They’re often initiated by our Hmong comrades. Few other groups could pull such a stunt. What do you think?” The investigator was still young enough to care about pleasing his superior. All the while he remained prone upright, uncertain about moving until he received a reply.

“It might be Hmong,” the captain pondered the question. “If it were gangland we would know about it don’t you think. We employ enough agents to keep checks on them. No, it’s probably Hmong. The more these gits get to kill each other the fewer gunned henchmen we have interfering with our job. Get forensics to bag all of the fragments up and have it sent direct to my office. I’ll have a close look tomorrow.”

“As you say sir. I’ll let you know what else they come up with. Do you want me to go through my report again sir?”

“No, you can sod off now. I have the mother of all headaches churning over in my brain. It’s not helped by all of these questions.” The captain briskly broke off, moving back into the blackened crime scene.

It was the only truth that Captain Vaenkeo had spoken. That cock sucker Kae was giving him a terminal headache. The colonel had warned him that the Thai would be no easy target to flick back into the gutter. He should be fried chicken by now. They should all be smugly sat at some press conference beating on about how brutal the Hmong were in targeting bystanders in a bar. The grenade attack was launched at exactly the agreed time. Accuracy was good, no doubting that. As directed, the grenade was fired towards the corner of the bar. The ass licking Thai usually spent his afternoons perched on up there with pallid friends sipping imported beer. Of all the days to change his fucking routine it would have to be on the day of his assigned death. The death cheating geek was beginning to cause a big problem. His concern was finding him and putting a bullet through the greedy Thai’s mouth to stop him talking on a permanent basis. He could ill afford for any loose tongues to rant on about PC38 involvement in things they really should have no interest in. The public wouldn’t listen, how could they dare oppose the secret police without the risk of being added to the long list of missing, but a few figures from offices around the government district might. The colonel was getting very concerned that his more recent transactions with the Thai could be very bad for his long awaited retirement. Much trust was being placed with the young captain to clear matters up. It was known that some officials held more power than a warlord and wielded it like a vicious whip. It was the best reason for him to knock this murder investigation on the head and bury the evidence deep within the bowels of PC38 HQ, quietly referred to as “Devil’s Gatehouse”. They held enough evidence to wrongly point the finger of doom at the Hmong without curious technicians uncovering any possible grains of true identity. It would be more than enough to unload a few trucks of troops and go after what he really had in mind.

The hijacked bus episode annoyed the shit out of him. Carefully prepared plans were apt to go up in flames when the first of those bullets were fired. No one was saying as much, but he was dam sure the attack was sanctioned from colleagues within PC38. The delivery of such a high profile attack bore all the hallmarks. Who else would be stupid enough to take out a bus on a public highway! It was an inside job for sure. Trouble was working out which idiot had sanctioned the bloody fiasco and why? Without a doubt they were putting it down to the Hmong. Why they were always so single minded in their pathological desire to hound them out was beyond him. His own little theatre at the bar would have been enough to tick that little box, without causing a fucking international incident. Luckily the ambush did not roller coaster the carefully prepared scheme. He already knew of Kae’s man on the bus, mindfully keeping a check on the inquisitive farang. So far the black body bags brought back did not contain any bullet ridden pink bodies. If anything, the hijack pushed things forward for it flushed everything out. People would now have to start considering their moves. The backpackers were obviously being helped out by someone, probably the Hmong. Perhaps they might have stumbled across this Louise. His primary concern was to keep a lid on the world’s media. They were already psyched up by the brutality of the attack. If they got wind that photogenic farang were possible victims they would be topping up the ink for a new front-page run. It was essential that they were decoyed into believing that the story was now dead.

Raised voices from within alerted the captain to a further find. Part of a torso was being bagged up and dispatched to the city morgue. The pathologist would have to match it up with the assortment of other burnt body pieces he was collecting. Yet more evidence for the captain to contaminate and bury somewhere. He would need to instruct the pathologist not to be too methodical in his investigation.

As Captain Vaenkeo paced back towards his black sedan the first in a series of large raindrops fell on his lapels. Usually a keen observer of government weather reports, these past few days were taken up with the Kae question, causing him to miss them. Normally if rain caught him unawares he would curse his misfortune. The wet season was still a good two months away. Today though he smiled. A solid downpour would piss all over the forensics, pushing many investigators into calling it a day. He now needed a spot of luck in tracing where Kae was currently holed up.

There was only one other errand to run. Once he got back to the office he was going to place a long distance call to England. If his fellow idiots couldn’t run the show he was more than happy to continue this one alone.