I gave the room a quick once-over on the off chance that there might have been something incriminating, but other than a few snapshots of the girls hugging and kissing, there was nothing to set the pulse racing.
I went back outside and told Daeng to call me when the girls got back, then phoned one of the other motorcycle taxi drivers for an update on her progress. Ying was clearly a creature of habit; she was back at the restaurant where I’d followed her to the first night. I drove over to the restaurant and parked in front of the office building I’d visited the previous night. Another bag of extra-salty grasshoppers and a crisp 500-baht note and I was back in the fifth-floor stairwell clicking away as Ying and her student friends smoked amphetamines and drank Thai whiskey. I did get quite a nice shot of Ying kissing her girlfriend full on the lips which I reckon was clearly more than platonic.
Ying and her girlfriend got back to the apartment at three o’clock in the morning. I paid off Daeng and his buddies and gave them each a 1,000-baht bonus. They were worth every baht because I couldn’t have done the job without them.
I sat in the rental car and tuned the receiver to the transmitter in the apartment. I watched the small screen of the video camera, waiting to hit the record button. I didn’t have long to wait. The girls went into the bathroom together and emerged a few minutes later wrapped in towels. The towels soon got tossed aside and Ying and her girlfriend hit the bed, kissing and stroking and generally giving me a hard on the size of a baseball bat. I didn’t know where to look. Actually, that’s a lie. I couldn’t take my eyes off the small screen. Ying was a stunner, I’d known that as soon as I saw the photographs that Knight had given me. But the baggy jeans and T-shirt had hidden the girlfriend’s figure and as she rolled on the bed with Ying I could see that her body was every bit as curvaceous and supple as her partner’s. It would be a tough choice to have to say which one I’d have preferred to have a session with, though from the way the two girls were going at it I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be in with half a chance with either of them. The tape ran out and they were still going strong though every so often they’d take a break from the sexual Olympics and smoke yah ba or drink some more whiskey. I kept on watching long after the tape had stopped. I didn’t have anything better to do, frankly.
I phoned Greig Knight on Monday afternoon and told him I had the evidence he wanted. I went to see him in his office and gave him a file with my report and the photographs I’d taken of Ying and her student friends. And I gave him a copy of the video.
He had a television and video player already set up and he gave the video cassette to Gung to slot into the player. I didn’t want to sit and watch the video with Knight. I’d seen it several times already while drinking a few JDs and Coke back in my apartment. ‘I’ll be on my mobile if you need me,’ I said, getting up.
Knight waved at me to stay where I was. ‘I might need you to do more work,’ he said.
I looked pained. The tape was as conclusive as you could get. Ying on her back. Ying on top. An especially seductive 69 that made me hard just thinking about it. It wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to watch in company, and I was damn sure that Knight wouldn’t want me there either, not once the lovely Ying had dropped her towel on the bed. But Knight ignored my discomfort and stabbed at the remote control.
I looked across at Gung. He had moved to stand at the door, his face impassive, his arms folded.
I sat back in my chair and tried not to look at the screen, just grateful that there was no sound on the tape. Going by Ying’s facial contortions, I reckon she had at least two very vocal orgasms during the session.
Knight watched the tape for about twenty minutes before switching off the tape. He looked at me without a trace of embarrassment. ‘That’s it?’ he said.
I could feel my cheeks burning. ‘That’s it,’ I repeated.
‘There’s no guy?’
‘Not that I can see.’
‘Just the girl.’
‘She was the only one I saw her with. In an intimate setting.’ I thought that was a nice touch. Intimate setting. It made it seem a bit less sordid.
Knight nodded slowly. ‘It could have been worse, I suppose,’ he said.
‘If it had been a guy?’
‘I’m not exactly the faithful kind,’ said Knight. ‘I love Ying, but I’ve been out in Asia too long to ever want to confine myself to one woman. Even in Hong Kong…’ He left the sentence unfinished, but I knew what he meant. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. And while he didn’t want the lovely Ying doing the dirty with another guy, having her in bed with another girl every now and again wasn’t the end of the earth. Plus, if ever he decided the time had come to part company, the tape would make the split a hell of a lot easier.
‘The drugs are a bit of a worry,’ I said. If she ever got picked up by the cops while he was with her and they found yah ba, he’d be looking at prison time too.
‘I know about the yah ba,’ he said. ‘Never in the house and never in the car. She promised.’
‘That’s all right, then,’ I said. I wasn’t sure that I’d take the word of a girl who clearly had only a passing relationship with the truth, but Greig Knight was the client and the client is always right. Except, of course, when he’s wrong.
Knight took out his bulging wallet and took out a handful of 1,000-baht bills. He gave them to me with a rueful smile and then used the remote to rewind the tape.
Gung showed me out, his face still impassive. But as he closed the door, he winked at me.
A few months later I was in my dentist’s waiting room and I picked up one of the glossy magazines. There was a photoshoot of the opening of Greig Knight’s latest restaurant. At the top of the page was a picture of the man himself, grinning like a man possessed, one arm around the shoulders of the lovely Ying, the other around the waist of Ying’s girlfriend. I stopped watching the video after that. The fun had gone out of it.
THE CASE OF THE WAYWARD WIFE
One of my first jobs as a private eye was to check up on a girl called Fai, a rescued bargirl who was now living a life of luxury on the back of a guy called Arthur. Arthur had met Fai in a Nana Plaza bar and had decided that she was the love of his life. He worked in an oil refinery in Rayong, a couple of hours’ drive from Bangkok, and he wasn’t short of a bob or two. He paid her family a decent sin sot, or dowry, moved her into his spacious apartment on the outskirts of Rayong, paid her a monthly allowance that was more than I earned in a good month, and kept her on a long rein. Every now and again he had to pop over to his firm’s head office in Singapore and while he was away Fai would go to Bangkok to see her family. All was well until one of his friends said that he’d seen Fai on Sukhumvit Road, eating at a street stall close to the Thermae.
Arthur was enough of an old Bangkok hand to hear alarm bells at the mention of the Thermae. It’s a Bangkok institution, a late night hang out frequented by freelancers, or Pay For Play girls as I call them, and expats who baulk at paying barfines. There’s always a mixed bag at the Thermae: former bargirls who are past their prime; young girls just down from the countryside who don’t speak enough English to work in the farang bars; office girls who are struggling to pay their rent. The going rate for a short time with a Thermae Pay For Play girl would be about half what it would cost at Soi Cowboy or Nana Plaza. The expats are a mixed bunch too but generally they are at the scummier end of the market, prowling around like tigers hunting for fresh meat. If Fai was hanging around the Thermae, it wasn’t for the bar snacks.