The band had changed out of their stage outfits and they went over to Miss Suming’s table and helped her and her friends finish the last of the champagne. The drummer, a big African American guy with bulging biceps and a massive afro, sat next to Suming and seemed to be hanging on her every word. He was about ten years younger than Miss Suming, with a thick gold chain around his neck and a gold front tooth. One by one most of Miss Suming’s friends said their goodbyes and left, and the band members drifted off until eventually there were just four at the table; Miss Suming, the black drummer, one of her friends, and one of the guitarists.
I sat in the corner of the lobby and pretended to read the Bangkok Post. Another bottle of champagne arrived at Miss Suming’s table, and there was lots of glass-clinking and laughing.
It was two o’clock in the morning when they finally left the nightclub. I was knackered and feeling the effects of the dozen or so JD and Cokes that I’d had drunk at Mark’s expense, so I sat in the comfy armchair and tried to focus on the group as they stood in the hotel lobby by the elevators. I expected a bit of air kissing, maybe a handshake or a wai, what I didn’t expect was to see Miss Suming link arms with the black drummer and go into the lift with him. As the lift doors closed Miss Suming’s friend was giving the guitarist a full-on kiss and a grope between the legs to boot.
I watched as the floor indicator lights blinked. The elevator stopped at the seventh floor and a few minutes later returned to the lobby, empty.
Miss Suming’s friend and the guitarist went up to the fifth floor, so if the partying was continuing it was on an individual basis. I waited for another hour but Miss Suming didn’t reappear so I headed home to my bed.
The next day I emailed Mark a full report. He was, understandably, livid. He’d invested a lot of time and money in Miss Suming, and had been planning to ask her to marry him. If it’d been me I’d have cut my losses and walked away, but Mark was convinced her infidelity was a temporary slip. He confronted her and she eventually admitted to having a fling with the drummer, but that she’d only been to his room once. That sounded dubious to me. What were the odds that the one time she had slept with the guy, I’d be sitting in the lobby? Pretty bloody slim. And from the way they’d been head to head in the nightclub, I’d say it had been going on for some time.
Anyway, rule number one of the private-eye game is that the client is always right, even when he isn’t, and if Mark wanted to pour good money after bad then that was his business. But I did suggest that he install a password sniffer on the computer that they both used in their apartment. Before long he was able to keep a track on her emails and sure enough he discovered that Miss Suming was still very much in touch with the black drummer. Unbelievably, he was asking her for money, which had to be a turn up for the books. Usually it’s the Thai girl hitting on the farang for cash, but the drummer wanted a 10,000-dollar loan from Miss Suming, ostensibly to buy new equipment. Mark hit the roof again, and she begged him to forgive her. It was his fault, she said, for leaving her on her own such a lot. She was flattered by the attentions of the young black drummer, but she promised on her mother’s life that she would never talk to him again. Anyway, Mark gave her another chance and as far as I know they’re still together. I’d like to think he knows what he’s doing, but in my experience if a girl fools around once, she’ll fool around again. And like I said, generally hi-so girls have the moral standards of alley cats. You’re often better off with a bargirl. At least you expect a bargirl to lie and cheat and you won’t have your balloons burst. Unless you find yourself in a Patpong show bar, of course, sitting opposite a pretty young thing with a dart gun inserted into her you-know-what.
THE CASE OF THE RESTAURATEUR’S WIFE
I can probably count my Austrian clients on the fingers of one hand but I was just as willing to accept euros as I was to take pounds and dollars so I was quite happy to offer my services to Helmut when he emailed me from Salzburg. He was in his late sixties and in my experience there’s no fool like an old fool, especially when there are Thai girls around. But Helmut had been a frequent visitor to the Land of Smiles over the years and from what he told me he knew how things worked. He’d picked up a Thai wife a couple of decades earlier and together they had set up a Thai restaurant. That was par for the course. Bargirls always seem to think that they can cook and half the Thai restaurants in Europe have been set up by girls who started life dancing around silver poles. In my humble opinion that’s the reason why Thai food outside Thailand is generally so bad. Helmut’s wife wasn’t a great cook, he admitted, and she wasn’t a fan of hard work. They’d soon separated and he hadn’t seen her for years but Helmut had been bitten by the restaurant bug and decided to stick with it.
He started to recruit chefs and waitressing staff from Thailand and with the missus out of the kitchen the food, and the takings, soon improved. Before long he had a chain of very successful restaurants in Austria and was making regular trips to Thailand to recruit staff. On one of his recent trips he’d met a thirty-something woman called Mem who had been put forward as a possible manageress. She was from Khon Kaen but her husband had walked out on her so she’d moved to Bangkok to work and support her daughter who was a student at one of the city’s universities. She’s worked in catering for almost a decade and Helmut didn’t think twice about hiring her to run one of his restaurants. She was an attractive woman and soon became Helmut’s live-in girlfriend and eventually his wife. He emailed me a picture and she seemed a good sort.
Over the years Helmut gave her more of his restaurants to manage and he started spending more time looking after his other business interests. Once Mem’s daughter had graduated, Mem started visiting her in Thailand several times a year. It was when she returned from her latest trip Helmut started to smell a rat. He found a receipt for a gold bracelet worth 50,000 baht. Helmut knew that she’d only taken a small amount of money with her and nothing had shown up on any of his credit card statements. Helmut asked Mem about the bracelet-she told him that it was a present for her daughter and that it had only cost 5,000 baht but that she’d asked for a receipt for ten times as much so that she could have it insured for much more. That sounded like nonsense to Helmut, so then Mem told him that the 50,000-baht receipt would give her more face with the staff in the restaurant. That made a bit more sense because face is hugely important to Thais, but even so it was a red flag that something might be amiss so he’d gone trawling through the internet and found my website. Helmut wanted me to pay a visit to the jeweller’s store to check how much his wife had paid for the bracelet. That’s what he wanted, but of course there was more to it. He wanted to know whether or not she’d lied to him. And if she had lied, that would open up a whole new can of worms.
Anyway, he sent me a scan of the receipt and wired a retainer to my bank account. The jeweller’s was a small shop in the Big C department store complex in Ratchaparohp Road. I paid the shop a visit and told the lady in charge that my Thai friend had brought a lovely bracelet there and that I wanted something similar. I showed her the receipt and the woman said that she remembered the sale. The lady had brought the bracelet for her daughter but it had been a one-off and if I wanted a similar one it would have to be made to order and that would take a few weeks.