I’m tactile: I like to feel my way around before I turn lights on. Anyway, there’s enough moonlight to see the outlines of the pools and the furniture-and two shadows sneaking down the hall to the front door, opening it silently, sliding through like ghosts, and closing it again. I run, stumble, fall, crack my knee on the floor, and make for the front door in a running limp, and fumble with the handle. By the time I’m outside, they have disappeared. I didn’t hear or see a car.
Bad nerves cause me to fumble with my cell phone and my wallet where I keep the card with the heart. I listen to a recorded message in her soft tones. When I call the Chung King bar, I ask to speak to the mamasan, who says in a dry tone, “Om is not available.” It’s standard brothelspeak meaning The girl you want is with another client.
I turn around to face the house. From the driveway it looks as if it has only one story, because the land falls away on the ocean side. The design is so much the Thai temple style, it could almost be a temple. There’s no light pollution on the Peak-everything is washed in moonlight. It’s quiet too. It’s entirely possible that a couple with reasons to keep their relationship secret have taken to meeting up here. Perhaps they heard the house was empty most of the time, parked their car by the seashore, and climbed up the back way, entering through the sliding door, like me. I imagine the man talking the girl into it and her pretending not to know what they would do when they arrived in the great mansion; but it doesn’t fit. That was Om with her monster, or I’m a North Korean.
Before I return to the house, I walk to the end of the driveway, where it meets a one-lane road glistening with tarmac of the expensive kind that includes flecks of granite. Now I can make out the other two houses that are part of the development. They are both in darkness. I wonder who owns them and why they never seem to be inhabited. Back in the mansion I find a bank of switches near the front door. There seem to be dozens of them, and for five minutes I have fun illuminating the pools without the side lights, side lights without the pools, the balcony without the house. Then I find the switch that turns on the serious lights that the cleaning staff need. Now the whole place is bathed in white neon, every flaw and defect clearly visible. But there are not many flaws-the place was very well put together by serious money. In the main bedroom all signs of death have been cleaned up by the forensic team. The white sheet covers the gigantic bed without any sign of recent frolicking bodies. The same is true of the beds in the other bedrooms.
The maid’s room, though, at the far end of the house near the road, is a different matter: a small narrow bed with the sheets almost pulled off, a half-drunk can of beer, a glass with water and a smudge of lipstick. Odd, with so many grand bedrooms with grand beds to choose from, that a romantic couple should choose this little room-except that it’s as far away from the scene of the crime as it’s possible to be. And Thai girls are very superstitious. But in that case, why come to this house at all?
Proximity to sex and death has started a new continuum, which proves a relentless driver. I forget Vikorn and call a cab.
Down on the main street in Patong, business is booming. It seems a few more jumbos carrying a few more thousand tourists with an overabundance of single men have landed at Krung Thep in the past few days, with a sizable number of the passengers making straight for Phuket. The snake charmers are charming the snakes with added gusto, the katoeys are even more extravagantly made up, and halfway down the street one of the larger bars has set up a Muay Thai boxing ring where two battered fighters are slugging it out-or pretending to: no need to throw or take any serious kicks for a bunch of foreigners who don’t understand what they’re looking at.
In the Chung King I have to squeeze between girls and clients to reach the bar. I don’t hold out any hope that Om will be here, but I ask anyway. This time the mamasan smiles: “She’s just arrived. Over there.” She points. Om is in a very short skirt with a skimpy silk blouse tied under her breasts that looks like it would fall open with a single tug; I’m pretty sure she’s not wearing a bra. She is talking to a tall farang, her body language restrained although the smile is as seductive as usual. “He’s not a regular,” the mamasan says. “D’you want me to call her over?”
I do not say You bet, but she gets the picture. I’m surprised she takes the trouble to squeeze between bodies to reach Om and whisper a few words in her ear. Om turns immediately and smiles at me across the room. All this may not sound strange, DFR, but it is; my upbringing makes me abnormally sensitive to breaches of brothel etiquette. When Om arrives she puts a hand on my shoulder. I cannot resist placing one on her hip. Inexplicably we behave like old lovers, delighted to have come across each other again after a long break. I’m feeling bewitched when I say “I, I, ah-” and blush.
She smiles. “D’you want to pay my bar fine?”
It hadn’t crossed my mind, but of course it’s the obvious thing to do. If I pay her bar fine I own her for the rest of the evening. I can do what I like with her. I can even interrogate her. I say, “Yes.”
She disappears for a moment to bring me a bill on a silver plate. I throw a thousand baht onto the plate without looking at her and wait. Ten minutes later she’s in jeans and T-shirt when she brings me my change. Now I can hardly believe I’m walking down the main street with her, holding her hand. I can’t believe how good it feels. How right.
“I have to talk to you,” I say, after we’ve watched the Muay Thai for a while.
“D’you want to take me back to Bangkok?”
“The beach will do.”
She makes a little pout of disappointment. When we reach the beach, we sit in the same chairs as before, looking out to sea. She waits. I ask for a cigarette. My hand is shaking a bit when I take it and let her light it. I remain silent for a long moment to give the impression of being in control. “Just tell me where you were earlier this evening.”
She feigns surprise. “This evening? I’ve been-”
“Don’t,” I say, “don’t spoil it.”
“Spoil what?”
“Your beautiful face with a lie,” I say with more tenderness than I intended and, surprised, experience one hell of a hard-on.
She takes a long toke on her cigarette. “Where do you think I’ve been?”
“Up on Vulture Peak. With a client.”
She turns away to blow smoke into the black night. “Yes.”
I take five minutes to reply. “Who was the client?”
“Who do you think?”
“Manu.”
She shrugs.
“You knew it was me up there when you ran away, didn’t you?”
A nervous toke on the cigarette. “I guessed. Who else would it have been?”
“You know I can arrest you?”
“For what?”
“Just about anything, from breaking into a house, violating a crime scene, to suspicion of murder-a triple murder. An atrocity of the worst imaginable kind.”
She shocks me by bursting into laughter, then recovers.
“I’m sorry.”
“You have protection?”
“Yes.”
“The army?”
She is quiet for a long time. Finally she says, “Detective, get out of Phuket. This isn’t Bangkok. Nobody here will take you seriously. It was I who told the mamasan that if you came tonight, she was to let me know immediately. I like you. Maybe I feel about you the same way you feel about me. That’s why I’m trying to save your life. There’s a rumor going round that someone was murdered-a clerk from the land registry.”
“So?”
“There are people who want to know who did it, and they’re not cops who can be bribed.”
I let that pass and go back to her earlier sentence. “How do you know how I feel about you? You hardly know me.”
“I think I know men. Get out of here. Don’t stay the night. Go back to your wife. If you can’t get a flight, take a cab to Surat Thani and stay the night there. You have no idea how big this is. I haven’t told anyone that you were up at that house tonight. But-”