“Each of them died tragically in mysterious circumstances.”
“Right. While she was out of the country. But HiSo is HiSo. As long as she plays the game and turns up in those amazing ball gowns at those society events, they’ll protect her. They may even be proud of her. How can you tell with the Chinese?”
Lek and I fall to pondering in the taxi, which is speeding now on the highway to the airport. “When you think about the Fat Farang Case, though, and then you put Moi in it as a suspect, it does all seem to fall into place,” Lek opines with a yawn.
“It does. I’ve been racking my brains trying to think of anyone in Thailand who could possibly have done it, and Mad Moi simply didn’t occur to me. Now that Sukum’s onto her, though, I’m wondering why I never thought of her.”
“He’s going to claim all the credit, you do know that? Even though it was Nong who first mentioned Doctor Moi-if it weren’t for you, he wouldn’t even be thinking along those lines.”
I sigh. “It doesn’t matter, Lek, it really doesn’t. I don’t want promotion anyway. I’d feel even more of a fraud than I feel now.”
“Don’t talk like a fool, darling. The minute he gets his promotion they’ll start to put pressure on him to take money. White turns to gray at that level, and soon after that you get to black. They’ve only let him keep his innocence because he’s so junior. You watch, he’ll turn up to work one day in a Lexus, and you’ll know that’s another soul sold to the devil.”
While we are leisurely discussing Sukum and his imminent forensic triumph, he calls on my cell phone: his name is flashing on and off to Dylan’s heartfelt There is too much confusion, I can’t get no relief. I wink at Lek.
“I’ve traced her,” Sukum says.
“Well done, Detective.”
“She’s staying at the Somerset Maugham Suite at the Oriental.”
“Ah! Old money! Don’t you love it? They always know how to hide in full view. When are you going to take her in?”
“When are you free? They told me you’re on your way to the airport doing something dirty for Vikorn.”
I frown at the phone. “Why do you need me, Detective? Call the media, do what Vikorn does, make a career-building event of it.”
“Suppose she denies all involvement?”
I cough. “Detective, you will have to do some work. She might fight against the prospect of death row-some do, you know.”
“I know that,” he snaps. “I’m talking about how clever she is. She’s educated and thinks like a farang. I might not understand what she’s talking about. I want you to be there.”
“Is it the LSD from last time that’s got you all nervous, Khun Sukum?”
“You’re not kidding. Have you ever had someone slip you some acid and you think you’ve lost your mind for the rest of your life? And suppose she’s HIV-positive and she’s got spikes hidden in her hair like in that movie you made me watch.”
“ Hannibal? There were hair spikes laced with the AIDS virus?”
“I’ve watched it five times now. She was a black American named Evelda Drumgo. That’s put me right off, I can tell you. I’m just not qualified to deal with sophisticated foreign women, I don’t have the exposure. I only know Thai housewives and factory workers, the other kinds are more your field.”
I’m puzzled by his reluctance, given the decade he spent on the Mad Moi files. I shrug at Lek. “I might be a while. We’re not at the airport yet, and the traffic’s going to be pretty bad on the way back, I can tell from the way the cars are all slowing on the other side of the highway.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Suppose she makes a run for it?”
“Then I can arrest her, can’t I? But she’s so cunning, I bet she won’t commit a single crime while I’m watching.”
Lek can’t believe he said that and is repeating the phrase over and over and shaking his head while we arrive at the airport’s taxi drop-off.
20
They’re not supposed to keep a suspect for more than twenty-four hours without handing them over to the police. They’ve made an exception in Mary Smith’s case because they had to take her to the hospital for a laxative, where she was kept under tight supervision with a special toilet to catch the condoms. Now the condoms have all been sent off to forensics for tests and nobody thinks they contain anything less than high-quality smack.
Immigration took the opportunity to throw Mary Smith in with another offender, a French woman who was caught with a small amount of cannabis. The French woman speaks perfect English, and Immigration secretly filmed and voice-recorded Mary’s night with her. I watch the part of the video where Mary slips a hand between the French woman’s thighs and they turn to kiss like old lovers.
“Recidivists,” the customs officer says, “both of them. You can tell by looking. These girls love jail, they just don’t know that they love it.”
Smith is in her midtwenties, longish, light brown hair which needs washing, crumpled backpacker pants and shirt. An unhealthy paleness haunts her otherwise unremarkable features; she looks like a young woman who is frequently sick from junk. She speaks English in two shades of gray: estuary and Cockney. During my interview with her, I understand completely where the customs officer is coming from. It’s not something you can explain to anyone who is not in the business, but cops come across it all the time: people in the grip of a psychological need for incarceration. It’s a fatal attraction like any other. Some people scare themselves to death with vertigo as a precursor to jumping off buildings; young men with a morbid fear of violence join the Marines and get themselves killed; there are leprophiles and AIDSphiles, most of whom succumb to their chosen diseases in the end; and there are recidivists, people who, from a fantastically early age, know that their destiny lies in prison. Mary Smith, for example, knows all about Thai jails, even though she’s never been in one. She knows they will likely hold her in the women’s holding prison at Thonburi, where Rosie is incarcerated. She also knows the name of the prison where she will likely serve out her time. She knows about the punishments, the occasional sexual assault by bull dykes, the likely effect eight or more years will have on her mind, and there is a quiet joy behind the shock, a slow-eyed relief that all the important decisions will be made by someone else from now on-and love will be simply a series of stolen opportunities with short shelf lives. The world recently got very simple for Mary Smith.
I say, “Maybe I can help with the sentence. There’s a huge difference between eight years and twelve-believe me, I’ve seen it.”
“What difference?”
“Eight years, there’s still something left, some tiny memory of how to function in a free society, something you might just be able to build on-and you’re still quite young. In eight years you’ll be-let me see-”
“Thirty-six.”
“Right. Thirty-six. Still of childbearing age. Still with a lot of future in front of you.”
“I don’t want a future. I hate future. I definitely don’t give a fuck about having kids.”
I nod sagely. “But twelve years, that’s something else, every programming you ever received out of jail, from birth onward, will have been erased from your mind. All of your responses, even the most basic, will have been replaced with jail responses, even down to using a toilet-you’re going to be doing it our way for the rest of your life.”
“Our way?” She uses a sneer to convey the allegation of hypocrisy.
I scratch my left ear. “Let’s cut the crap, Mary. Twelve years is too long. As the jail’s little farang whore you might just about get away with eight and still be viable, after that you’ll be some toothless toy for the dykes to play with, you won’t even get to choose who uses the dildo or where they shove it, much less what they make you do with your mouth. Better talk.”