The police arrived within twenty minutes. They were brusque and accusing in their manner. The bedroom was sealed off and men came with cameras and fingerprint kits.
Scrimple and Jim were left under the watchful gaze of a uniformed officer who stared at them with cold eyes while he fingered the wooden butt of his service revolver. It was not hard to guess that the Thai cops assumed the crime had something to do with the foreigners even though the logic was flawed.
Finally a senior detective superintendent arrived who spoke good English. He introduced himself as Khun Somchai and they sat down on the folding chairs that had been provided.
“You are the men who found the body?” Somchai said.
“Yes, I am Jim Bellows, I’m a property agent and I was showing this apartment to my prospective customer. I picked up the keys from the landlord’s agent this morning.”
“You don’t live here?”
“No, it’s an empty flat. Most of the building is still empty. Neither of us has ever been in this flat before.”
“You are sure?” the Thai cop said. He was tall and gaunt with a serious hawk-like face. He wore a jacket, dark slacks and a dark shirt with no tie. Clipped to his top pocket was a warrant card identifying him.
“Khun Somchai, both of us are former police officers from Hong Kong. We are reputable business people here in town,” Scrimple said.
The detective gave him a strange look, nodding thoughtfully. “You have nothing to do with this dead girl?” he said.
“We have no idea who she is,” Scrimple said.
“But why did you come to this apartment?”
Scrimple looked him straight in the eye and said, “It was just by chance. I like this building and I wanted this floor for the view.”
Somchai said, “We will bring you to the police station and take your fingerprints. I will take both your passports. For now, I will not arrest you.”
* * * *
It was half past three in the afternoon by the time Scrimple got back to the office. His staff were used to him being out, sometimes visiting factories or attending customers from England.
He closed the door to his office having told Noi he didn’t want to be disturbed. He took the briefcase out from the safe and counted the money again as he had done in the morning. The notes were neither crisp nor particularly old. He checked the serial numbers which were in no special order. Without equipment he couldn’t determine if the money had any invisible markers on them. He tried a few notes at random and held them up to the light but found nothing.
Bottle had left no phone number or any other information on how to contact him again. Scrimple cursed himself for being dazed by the old man’s visit. It was partially because of this that he’d not told Jim or the police the real reason he was interested in the flat. It would appear strange and create more suspicion. One had to be careful enough with the Thai police who loved jumping to conclusions where foreigners were involved. There were plenty of young Westerners locked up for drug trafficking in the jail just outside of town, some of them probably not as guilty as the police and courts wanted to believe.
The first thing now was to make the money disappear. If the police came and searched his place that amount of cash would be questioned. If there was anything wrong with the money, he didn’t want to be caught holding it until he’d figured out what was going on with Bottle and why the dead girl had been left in that exact flat.
From the cupboard he pulled an old Adidas sports bag, unzipped it and filled it with the cash. He put the empty briefcase back into the safe.
He called Liam McNulty.
“Are you going down the Big P this evening?”
“I hadn’t planned to but I’m open to suggestions,” the Irish computer programmer said.
“It’s Friday so a weekend in Pattaya sounds like a good thing.”
There was a brief pause at the other end of the line. “All right,” Liam laughed, “you’ve twisted my arm. You’re just trying to save the bus fare aren’t you?”
“I’m not that much of a skinflint. I can afford a taxi.”
“If Declan wants to come along as well are we good to all stay at your place?” Liam asked.
“Of course. That’s what it’s there for.”
“You’re not worried about us bringing girls back and shagging them on your sofa?”
“It’s Pattaya, Liam. People expect that.”
“Just checking. We don’t want any misunderstandings.”
“Well, house rules are: No Stains. The maid doesn’t like it.”
“All right, we’ll leave at six thirty. I’ll pick you up from your place. Traffic will be a bugger so we should count on two hours.”
Scrimple didn’t think there would be a problem with the police. They’d taken his passport so he couldn’t leave the country and if they wanted him for further questioning they’d call his mobile phone and he’d be back in no time. Many people went out of town for the week-end so he wouldn’t look suspicious.
He spent the next two hours on his e-mails and made a few calls to Hong Kong and London.
* * * *
Liam’s company provided him with a Toyota Camry. They got onto the flyovers and passed through the various toll booths, went by the new airport complex of Suvarnabhumi and hit the outskirts of the seaside resort by twenty past eight.
“Smells like sex,” Declan said, having rolled down the window to toss his cigarette out.
“Smells like motorbike fumes,” Liam said as he turned by the Dolphin roundabout. Scrimple’s apartment was in a luxury development leading onto Wong Amat beach which was in the northern part of town. It was a few years old and he’d bought it before property prices had began shooting up. Now they were trending down again. He used the place regularly, at least twice a month and for the longer holidays unless he decided to go somewhere out of the country. Last year he’d toured the Southwest of the United States for two weeks on his annual leave. The steaks had been good. He’d brought a girl along but they were no longer seeing each other. She’d found a richer, younger banker and Scrimple didn’t want to compete.
The apartment had three bedrooms and in layout was generic, similar in many ways to the condo Bottle had wanted him to buy, except that it had a large balcony with a view of Pattaya Bay. Now at night the lights twinkled in multi-colors and spoke of seedy pleasures along the beachfront bars.
The furniture was simple, purchased from a store called Index. Several hardwood sofas with big fabric cushions filled the living room which was separated from the kitchen by a counter-top. There was a glass-topped dining-table that could seat six, and the bedrooms had big walk-in closets and generous king-sized beds.
“Make yourself at home, lads,” Scrimple said, distributing the spare keys he kept in a kitchen drawer. He told them the password to the downstairs electronic door.
Liam was examining the fridge. “You’ve got a great part-time maid. Beer, milk, cheese, ham, butter. What more does a man need?”
“Bread, cereal,” Scrimple pointed out where they were. “I’ve got to go see a bloke and sort something out for a few hours. I’ll call your mobile and catch up with you. Where do you think you’re going to be?”
“There’s a new go-go bar off one of the so is on Walking Street,” Declan said, “The Hot Dog Club. We’ll start off there. Liam here might want to sneak off to Soi 6 later. We’ll have to restrain him.”
Scrimple laughed. Soi 6 was the side-road with lady-boy bars. It also boasted a lot of normal bars but it was hard to tell the difference in the gloom and after too many drinks.
Having dropped one overnight bag in his room and brushed his teeth he left a few minutes later with the other overnight bag—the one with the money.
* * * *
Fifteen minutes on the back of a motor-cycle taxi and Scrimple found himself in Jomtien, at the other end of town. It was much quieter here and there were more condominiums similar to his.
The motorbike guy turned off into a small square which held some open air beer-bars. Scrimple paid him a hundred Baht and went into a travel agency which was still open. Sitting at one of the desks was an attractive older Thai woman. She had a lot of gold around her neck and on her fingers and a bit too much make-up around her cheeks. When she saw Scrimple her face creased into a smile of pleasure.
“Khun Inspector, how are you. You haven’t been to see me for a few months,” she said waving him to come and sit.
He took the Adidas sports bag from his shoulder and placed it on the floor. “I’ve been busy working, Nari.”
She laughed knowingly. “No, busy with young girls and no time for your old friend like me.” She spoke excellent English but with a strong Thai inflection that could be so attractive.
“How are the tourists?” Scrimple asked.
“They are getting older at one end and getting younger at the other end. It’s low season now. They should be coming back in a few months.”
“I want to buy you dinner and ask you for a small favor,” Scrimple said. He placed the bag onto her desk and tapped it. It was sturdy PVC with a hefty zipper. He’d attached a padlock that required a key, to ensure that the zipper could not be opened.
“There are some confidential papers in here and I don’t want to leave them in my home or in my office safe. They are private. Can you put them in that big safe of yours that you have in the back and I’ll collect the bag in a few days?”
She looked at him and he knew that she had detected part of a lie but was not going to challenge him on it. She nodded, and picking up the bag took it into the room behind her shop. A safe the height of a man stood there. Scrimple politely turned away while she twisted the dials and opened the heavy door. When she was finished, Nari locked up the front of her shop and they walked out of the back, directly into the kitchen of a restaurant.
The cooks greeted her respectfully because she also owned this establishment. Coming out into the dining area, she chose the best table, the right distance from the air-con and close enough to the door so one could see the people walking past outside.
“You don’t like too spicy, Khun Inspector, eh?” she said with a wink.
“Just normal.” Scrimple glanced around the place. It had about twenty tables and maybe half were occupied by tourists eating the standard Thai dishes that all the restaurants served. There were groups of men, Western men with their Western wives and Western men with their Thai girlfriends. The atmosphere was relaxed and muted pop music played in the background.
“You have to stop calling me inspector one of these days.”
“I always think of you as my inspector,” she said, a faint wistful air about her. “When I was young and you were young.”
It was twenty years ago when they had met in Hong Kong. She had just arrived on a six-month contract to work in a dancing girl bar in Wan chai and he was an off-duty inspector trying to forget his problems in the bottom of a beer glass. It had been a few months after the incident with Mabel and he had been pretty messed up. Much of that had been the fault of his District Commander at the time, Chief Superintendent Bottle.
The hot spicy soup arrived and Nari laughed at him saying it was especially mild for him. The other dishes came and Scrimple drank several glasses of Singha while Nari had water. After a while he told her about Bottle having come to visit him and how strange it had been to see the old man again. He did not say anything about the money, buying the flat and the murdered girl. There was no reason to burden Nari with those issues. She had other matters on her mind, running a string of businesses around town which included two small guest-houses, a dive-shop and several of the ubiquitous girlie bars.
She had done exceedingly well for herself and deserved everything she owned, while never losing the common touch that made her so endearing.
“He was a bad man, your Mr. Bottle,” Nari said. “No heart.”
“No, he was a product of his time. Tougher and with a huge need to get on and survive.”
“You want the mango and sticky rice?” she asked.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” he said, nodding.
“No more smoking in the bars in Bangkok, I think?” she said.
“It’s a pain but it helps you cut back.”
“The only thing that helps you cut back, Khun Inspector, is this,” she said, tapping the side of her head.
“Yes.”
“You’ll be here for the whole weekend?”
“I think so. I’ve got two friends down with me. We’ll relax a bit. I’ll try and drop by again before I return to Bangkok.”
“I’ll take care of your papers. They feel like they are worth a lot of money,” she said with a knowing smile.
* * * *
It was about eleven by the time Scrimple left Nari. He called Liam and Declan but only got their voicemails so he went directly to Walking Street where most of the nightlife was located.
A cacophony of rock, pop and hip-hop music assaulted him as he made his way down the street, dodging groups of foreigners who were ambling around taking in the sights. Outside many of the bars stood pretty young Thai girls in mini-skirts and platform boots waving at the passers-by, encouraging them to come in and see more.
Scrimple found the side-street where the new bar was located. He doubted that Liam and Declan would still be there. In fact it was most likely that the reason their phones were turned off was that both had already bar-fined and were horizontal somewhere with young ladies of the naughty night.
There was nothing special about the Hot Dog Bar except it was new and all the fixtures and fittings were glossy. The diminutive, brown girls in bikinis were all cloned in the same villages of up-country Isaan and the music was middle-of-the-road Americana.
He took a stool by the bar and looked up into the crotch of a girl with long legs and frizzy, black hair. She smiled down at him and rotated her hips in an exaggerated motion. He winked back and ordered himself another Singha and a Jack Daniels shooter from the waitress who had snuck up next to him.
Pensively he smoked his Mild Sevens, watched the parade above him and sipped alternatively at his drinks. There were no new insights from his subconscious. He still had no idea what the Bottle business was all about. If the old man wanted to set him up for whatever reason he would not have left all that cash with him. Nor was the evidence of Scrimple and Jim Bellows finding the body very compelling. The Thai police would draw the right conclusions hopefully.
It was much more likely that it was Bottle who was being set up and Scrimple had stumbled into it.
Perhaps Bottle had an inkling of what might happen and sent Scrimple out as a decoy. That made a lot more sense.
He sent a text message to Liam asking him where they were, then ordered another round. A pleasant buzz was beginning to settle in around his brain and that was just what he wanted.
Fifteen minutes later there was no reply from the guys so he finished up the drinks and walked out. He headed on down towards the end of Walking Street where it joined the Arab area. His destination was an outdoor bar with an excellent live band who played all the great rock classics tone perfect. The lead guitarist could have given Eric Clapton a run for his money.
Scrimple found an empty high table and stool just as they were launching into “Brown Sugar.” He switched to vodka and tonic and lit up another cigarette. For some time he got lost in the music, then started getting mildly annoyed that he’d not heard from Liam and Declan yet.
“Can I come sit with you?” a voice said behind his elbow. He turned quickly having not noticed her approach. His first reaction was to say no, but once he glanced at the girl, he changed his mind.
“Sure, take that stool,” he said.
She had pale brown, near white skin and gentle eyes that matched her smile. There was something vaguely Eurasian about her and Scrimple assumed she was a product of a mixed marriage. Her hair was cut short with one side slightly longer than the other.
“My name is Pim. And yours?” she held out a hand with long, elegant fingers. The nails were done in a dark, red color.
He told her and asked her if she would like a drink. She asked for a gin and tonic. He was surprised at her approach because this bar was not known for working girls. Nor did she look like one. There was an understated elegance about her that puzzled him.
“Are you on holiday?” she asked.
“No, I work in Bangkok. And you?”
“I work in Bangkok too.”
“Oh, yes?” He was not sure if he should ask more. It could be that she was a regular middle-class girl who just happened to enjoy picking up foreign men. It was a bit of a fantasy but it did happen. “And how long are you in Pattaya for?” he said.
“Just the weekend,” she said. “Do you like the band here?”
“They’re great.”
They talked for a while about which old songs they liked. He felt she must be in her late twenties but couldn’t be sure, her musical taste was a decade older. Scrimple could still not make up his mind if she was trying to pick him up for money or was simply being friendly.
“You don’t have a boyfriend here?” he said.
She shrugged. “Used to. A French guy. He was an asshole.”
“They usually are.”
“Hah. That’s what he always said about the English. And where is your girlfriend?”
“I’m not,” he paused, “really into serious relationships.”
“I don’t think any of you fallings are. Even the ones who end up getting married.”
“That’s a generalization. There are some very decent blokes out there.”
Pim nodded. “Maybe.” She finished her second gin and tonic.
“You speak really good English. Where did you learn that?” he said.
“I did my Bachelors at Chulalungkorn University, then did a Masters at the London School of Economics.”
Scrimple was lost for words. He’d only managed a poor degree from a red-brick university. Pim was looking at her mobile phone, a fancy Nokia model.
She said, “Hey, it’s been nice chatting with you. I’ve got to go. See you around some time, okay?” She gave him her hand to shake and slipped off the stool.
Scrimple stared after her as she disappeared up Walking Street. For a while he’d been a little bit in love but that must have been the alcohol dulling his senses.
He realized he was tired from the eventful day. After meeting Pim he felt no urge to meet any other girl that evening. The notion of casual sex with a strange dancing girl held no appeal at all.
Having walked back to Second Road he found a half-empty tuk-tuk that was going up to Wong Amat. He held on to the handle bar above him as the driver accelerated and decelerated up the road. Opposite him sat two Russian men and their busty, blonde wives. Next to him sat a drunk Australian with a moderately attractive lady-boy. The way the man was looking at the trans-sexual, it was unlikely that he knew what he’d picked up. He’d find out sooner or later and his life would never be the same again.
Scrimple got off at the end of the road near his condo and walked the last two hundred yards. It cleared his brain a bit and he waved at the security guard who was sitting behind his counter. The guard gave him a strange look and turned away.
He took the lift upstairs wondering if he’d find a full-blown orgy going on in his flat.
It was when he put his key in the door that he had the first notion something was wrong. His nose picked up the faint smell of cordite, a smell that would always remind him of one of the worst days of his life.
When he stepped into the living room, it was like a double déjà vu. Sprawled across the sofas were the bodies of Liam and Declan. They had both been shot several times in the chest and face. They were still wearing the same clothes they had worn earlier.
Liam’s unseeing eyes gazed up at the ceiling, an expression of horror on his face. Declan’s eyes were rolled up, only the whites visible.
Scrimple stumbled a few steps and managed to vomit, mostly into the kitchen sink.