The car park behind the building was quiet as the grave. The shop houses around the square were all shut for the night. There was nobody to be seen but Carl assumed that some of the people would live above their businesses so windows were relevant and they needed to be careful. They parked the car behind the building and George switched off the headlights.
“What’s next?” he asked Carl. “Was it your turn to bring the ladder?”
“Sad story George. The ladder’s in the pawn shop again.”
“Does that mean we can go home now?”
“We have the advantage of being old and respectable foreigners,” Carl told him. “Being furtive would make us conspicuous whereas walking up to the door and opening it like we own the place shouldn’t draw any attention whatsoever.”
“I assume this wonderful plan is based on my ability to pick the lock so quickly it will appear like we have a key,” he said sarcastically.
“If you’re as quick with a lock as you are quick witted then I have nothing to worry about,” Carl said smiling. “Walk over, stop near the door and light a cigarette so you can know what we’re up against.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“That makes two foolish acts you get to perform in one night. Or is it already three? Do we count car theft?” Carl said as he handed George a cigarette and a lighter.
George got out of the car and walked straight as if he was going to pass the door. He stopped and spent a long time in the shadow of the back of the building performing a wonderful act of trying to light a cigarette with a lighter that kept going out. He gave up after several attempts and resumed his walk away from the car. A few minutes later he had doubled back around the building and was back in the driver’s seat. He handed Carl back the lighter.
“I can pop that lock in reasonable time,” he told Carl as he reached into the glove compartment for a torch.
“Let’s do it then.”
George put the torch in his pocket and they got out of the car. They both walked confidently up to the back door and George got to work on the lock. It seemed much longer to Carl than the minute he actually took to open it. Then they were inside. George switched on the torch and they began to explore the building.
The ground floor was four shop houses wide and one of the four had a large metal roll-down shutter that opened to the pavement of the main road. These rusty roll-down doors were standard on shop houses all over Bangkok. The rest of the front of the building across three units was floor to ceiling glass. Inside the metal shutter there were tire marks on the dusty floor surrounded by footprints of various sizes. Only one set of footprints appeared to be male. Someone had been parking their car on the ground floor recently and he had been bringing guests with small feet.
They took the open stairs against the wall up to the second floor where there was a large teak door leading into what had obviously been the boss’s office. The door was heavily ornate and the room behind it was very large, taking up most of the entire second floor. There were well made wooden shelves and cabinets behind a place that a very large desk would have once been. It looked like an ordinary deserted office building until you looked closer, and there was an unusual metallic smell to the air. Carl took George’s hand and directed the torch around the room.
“Shit. He kills them here George. This is where it happens,” Carl whispered. His knees were trembling and his voice was shaking.
“What do you see?” George asked him in a whisper.
“The windows have two layers of curtain, light reflective silver underneath and thick black curtain material so no one can see in when they are closed. The windows are more recent than the rest of the structure, very expensive thick double-glazing. The bathroom in the corner has all the requirements for taking a thorough shower. If you look at the walls and door they are soundproofed. And, just up there, where I am pointing the torch there is a metal ring attached to the wall, strong enough to restrain somebody. The brown patches on the wall are probably dried blood, see how it is smeared and pale brown like somebody tried to wash it off. You recognize that metallic smell George. This whole place smells like an abattoir.”
“I’ve seen places like this in Vietnam,” he whispered. “This is an evil place.”
“Very evil indeed. Did you notice that all the female footprints point in the direction of this room? There are none pointing back downstairs. I want to get out of here, I think I’ve seen enough.”
“Me too.”
Carl took a quick look in the bathroom and noted the heavy duty cleaning fluids. Under the sink he saw a pile of rags, abrasive cleaning cloths, duct tape and a roll of black plastic sheet. Beside that was a box of tools and knives. Above the sink and under the mirror there was a box of Bolivar Churchill cigars. Carl opened it and with the light from the torch counted that sixteen cigars were gone.
“Fuck! Either he is a chain smoker or he has had a lot of victims in here.”
“I hope he is a chain smoker,” George said.
“Unfortunately I doubt that. There have been at least three rooms like this. There was one in America, one in Vietnam and now this one. Our devil is probably one of the most prolific serial killers of all time.”
They both retreated very carefully smearing their footprints in the dust as they went backwards down the stairs. They had a quick last look before they left the building. There was nothing more to see but they had seen more than enough.
Back in the car George said, “I didn’t really believe all this until just now.”
“We can stop whispering now, George,” Carl told him so he would appear more in control than he really felt. “I didn’t totally believe it either. Now it is real, horribly real, and for some strange reason fate has made it our problem.” Carl spoke softly, which was only slightly louder than a whisper.
“What the fuck do we do now Carl?” He said as softly.
“Go back to my room. There is a decent bottle of whiskey there. We need to talk this through.”
George very carefully, annoyingly slowly, drove the car past the building and out onto the main road. It was as if he was trying not to wake the ghosts. Carl didn’t mind. He didn’t want to wake them either.
Chapter 17
They went back to Carl’s short-time room and opened the bottle of Ardbeg. The adrenalin was pumping so hard that the neat whiskey tasted like water. George was sitting on the bed and Carl was in the room’s only chair. They poured themselves another shot from the bottle on the bedside table before either of them spoke. They had not said a word throughout the drive back, not even when they stopped at a 7/11 store and Carl had jumped out to buy bottled water and cigarettes.
George opened the conversation. “What do we actually know about General Amnuay?”
Outside the room they could hear car engines, doors slamming and drunken arguments between people who did not speak the same languages. There was laughter too as a lot of the working girls enjoy themselves as much as the customers. Thais love a party. The Russian prostitutes are very different to the local girls though. From somewhere close to the door of their room they heard the cold professional accent from that part of the world telling an Italian who hardly spoke any English that, with the Russian girls, it was always money up front and she didn’t care how the Thai girls did it.
“Amnuay is a very scary character,” Carl said as he sipped his whiskey. “The army’s Mr. Big of the underworld. He is rumoured to be behind illegal casinos, massage parlours, drugs, and now we can assume, gun running to Japan. I read once that heavyweight politicians and certain men in uniform have their own camps for housing assassins, hit-men’s holiday homes. They use these camps to hide the assassins from the authorities between jobs. The article was written at the height of the Red Shirt and Yellow Shirt conflict when people were telling journalists things that are historically never spoken of in Thailand. It sounded very credible at the time,” Carl said softly as, if they could hear the comings and goings from outside, then the people outside could hear them too.