“That’s school one?”
“Yes, sir. The second school, inevitably perhaps in today’s fallen world, posits a rape/seduction by the father, who was a known pedophile.”
“Ah! And the third?”
“The third school, sir, takes this theme and adapts it to all that is known about them, their family, and the relationship with the father.”
“Yes?”
“According to the third school, sir, they quite callously calculated in their early teens that it would be to their advantage to seduce their father themselves. I think the leverage that would have accrued from such a strategy is obvious.”
“Wow! So, Maria, which school do you bat for?”
“All three, sir.”
I pause. “All three?”
“Yes, sir. Of course, I am merely floating a hypothesis, but it seems to me to be consistent with the facts that they did indeed inherit the grandfather’s hunger for absolute power at any cost, plus a dastardly capacity to enjoy the sufferings of others. I think they also seduced their father, and that the father immediately became addicted to their attentions. Naturally, after that moment they held the balance of power in the family and could get away with literally anything. I think they blackmailed him for every indulgence they could dream up while he was alive. At the same time the guilt he experienced as a direct consequence of his fatal weakness drove him to drink. I think that also was a part of the diabolical strategy they had hit upon.”
“Murder by forcing the victim into a slow suicide by alcohol?”
“Exactly that, sir. On the other hand, I do believe the daughterly instinct remained present in a perverse and twisted way. They loved their father exactly for his weakness and indulgence, and each blames the other for his ugly death.”
I let a few beats pass. An irrelevant but compelling question has floated into my head and will not go away. “Maria, if you don’t mind my asking-what level of education do you have?”
“I have a master’s in private and public international law, sir, obtained from one of our distant learning institutions. It is the enduring regret of my life that I lack the wherewithal to set myself up in practice, but it is not for me to question the ways of the Lord.”
“Ah! I’m sorry. I’m sure you’d make a fantastic lawyer.”
“Thank you, sir. That is most kind.”
“Suppose I send an extra thousand Hong Kong. You have a punch line worth a thousand bucks, perhaps?”
She coughs. “They are cannibals, sir, and they use embalmed human penises, rendered tumescent by means of some kind of stiffening agent, as dildos.”
I gulp. “Ah, what was that, Maria?”
“I think you heard me, sir, and I will not repeat it. Please ensure you keep your side of our contract. Good night, sir.”
I close the phone, then it whooshes: an SMS from Maria with her account details.
I fell asleep on the plane and now we’re just coming in to land. The lethargy of total disorientation makes me drag my steps all the way to immigration, then customs, where I snarled and flashed my cop’s ID, because they look as if they’re about to search me. In the cab on the way home, I loll in the backseat, where the latest radio reports of the Sukhumvit Rapist’s adventures penetrate my dormant brain: a young woman’s sobs and gulps fill the airways; at first they are indecipherable, only slowly the meaning of her words dawns on me: “No, he didn’t rape me… Yes, I think he was going to but a noise disturbed him… No, I don’t have any physical injuries… Why am I so distraught??? Because I was just this hour trapped in a dark alley by a seven-foot monster that looked like half-man half-monkey and it’s scared the living shit out of me, idiot.”
15
Lek is normally the most self-effacing of assistants, with the discretion of a trusted servant. When he feels he has served beyond the call of duty and craves recognition over and above the usual, however, he acquires the characteristics of a neglected wife. He ambushed me as I walked into the station and hasn’t stopped following me and talking for the past ten minutes:
“Talk about footwork, oh Buddha, you wouldn’t believe what I’ve gone through the past two days when you were off shopping in Hong Kong. How you must have suffered, darling. I feel so sorry for you.”
I arrive at my desk, pull back the chair, sit, and put my feet up on the desk while he stands beside me. “Tell me about it, Lek. What angle were you following up? I forget.”
“Oh, he forgot. The maharaja of District Eight carelessly distributes duties, assigns tasks, and goes tiger hunting. You told me to check out the shareholders of the mansion in Phuket-you do remember Phuket, Vulture Peak? You know, the case?”
I let him have my best patrician smile, the kind that sends a message of infinite tolerance for the intellectual shortcomings of slaves. “Tell me about the shareholders.”
“Well of course, none of them are in Bangkok-that would have been just too easy, wouldn’t it? And when I checked out the registered home addresses, of course there are no telephone numbers.”
“Where are the registered addresses?”
“Each and every one of them in Isaan, darling. And I don’t mean urban Isaan, like Udon Thani or Khorat-oh no, nothing easy like that, I mean deep country Isaan, the kind of place that was genuine jungle with monkeys swinging from tree to tree about five minutes ago and even now is hardly more than shacks with corrugated roofs.”
“Really?”
“Would I lie? Want to see the blisters on my feet? I nearly died of heatstroke about five thousand times. My expenses for bottled water alone will tell you what I’ve been through.”
“Okay, okay, I get the picture. So, did you talk to any of the shareholders?”
“Depends what you mean by talk. There was only one actually living where he was supposed to live, and he was eighty-five years old, almost blind, and so deaf I got laryngitis from shouting at him.”
“But he’s the real thing, a shareholder in the Vulture Peak mansion?”
“Oh, yes, no doubt about it. He remembers signing his name and having his ID card photocopied-and that’s as far as it goes. He’s never been to Phuket in his life and has no idea he’s worth maybe thirty million baht. And of course I didn’t tell him, you know, just in case something goes wrong. I wouldn’t want to get his hopes up, an old man like that. I felt so sorry for him and jealous as hell at the same time. Imagine, a multimillionaire, and he’s living in a shack with no water or electricity.”
“But who put him up to it? He told you that?”
“All he knows is someone came to see him one day and said they were an agent for a rich man who wanted to buy a mansion and they would give him twenty thousand baht if he signed a contract first, then another sixty thousand once the formalities had been finalized, on condition he kept his mouth shut. And he didn’t have to do anything, not even leave his shack. So was he going to say no, a lonely old man starving to death? He couldn’t believe his luck. He still hasn’t spent all the money they gave him, says he can live on it for another year at least.”
“When did this happen?”
“Just before the last official sale of the property.”
“Can we trace the agent he’s talking about?”
“Of course not, darling. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
“Anonymity?”
“My, you’re quick today!”
“But the agent, was he Bangkok-did he speak to the old man in Isaan or in Standard Thai?” Lek scratches his chin. “You didn’t ask?”
“Not in so many words.”
“Lek?”
“Well, I didn’t need to. Like I say, the old guy is nearly deaf, lived in Isaan all his life. I wouldn’t expect he’d understand anything except Isaan.”