Harry Hole 02 - Cockroaches (13 page)

‘You’re in Chinatown now, Mr Hole, not in
farang
land. I have no argument with the Chief of Police in Bangkok. I suggest you have a chat with him before you say another word, then I promise you we’ll forget this embarrassing scene.’

‘Usually the police read the Miranda rights to the criminal, not vice versa.’

Mr Sorensen’s teeth shone white between moist, red lips. ‘Oh, yes. “You have the right to remain silent,” and so on. Well, this time it was vice versa. Woo, show them out. Gentlemen.’

‘Your activities here can’t stand the light of day and neither can you, Mr Sorensen. If I were you I would go straight out and buy some sunscreen with a high protection factor. They don’t sell it in prison exercise yards.’

Sorensen’s voice went a touch deeper. ‘Don’t provoke me, Mr Hole. I’m afraid my sojourns abroad have caused me to lose my legendary Thai patience.’

‘After a couple of years behind bars you’ll soon have it back.’

‘Show Mr Hole
out
, Woo.’

The massive body moved with astonishing speed. Harry caught the acrid smell of curry, and before he could lift an arm he was swept off the ground and clasped like a teddy bear someone had just won at the fair. Harry tried to wriggle loose, but the iron grip tightened every time he released air from his lungs, just like a boa constrictor constricts its victim’s supply of air. Everything went black and the sound of traffic became louder. Then finally he was free and hovering in the air. When he opened his eyes he knew he had been unconscious, as though he had been dreaming for a second. He saw a sign covered in Chinese symbols, a bundle of wires between two telegraph poles, a greyish-white sky and a face looking down on him. Then sound returned, and he could hear a stream of words cascading from the face’s mouth. He pointed to the balcony and then to the roof of the tuk-tuk which had been left with a nasty sag.

‘How are you, Harry?’ Nho waved away the tuk-tuk driver.

Harry peered down at himself. His back hurt and there was something immeasurably sad about bedraggled sports socks on dirty, grey tarmac.

‘Well, I wouldn’t have been allowed into Schrøder’s like this. Have you got my shoes?’

Harry could have sworn Nho was biting his tongue to restrain a grin.

‘Sorensen told me to bring an arrest warrant next time,’ Nho said once they were back in the car. ‘Now we’ve got them for violence against a civil servant anyway.’

Harry ran his finger down a long cut on his calf. ‘We haven’t got
them
, we’ve got the goon. But perhaps he can tell us something. What is it about you Thais and heights? According to Tonje Wiig I’m the third Norwegian to be thrown out of a house this week.’

‘An old mafia modus operandi. They’d rather do that than plug someone with lead. If the police find a guy beneath a window they cannot rule out the possibility that he might have fallen accidentally. Some money changes hands, the case is shelved without anyone being directly criticised and everyone’s happy. Bullet holes complicate matters.’

They stopped at the lights. A wrinkled old Chinese woman sat on a carpet grinning. Her face blurred in the quivering blue air.

15

Sunday 12 January

‘WHAT’S A PAEDOPHILE?’

Ståle Aune sighed deeply on the other end of the line.

‘Paedophile? That’s one hell of an opener. The short answer is it’s a person who is sexually attracted to minors.’

‘And the slightly more in-depth answer?’

‘There’s a lot we don’t know about the phenomenon, but if you spoke to a sexologist he would probably make a distinction between preference-conditioned and situation-conditioned paedophiles. The classic figure with a bag of sweeties in the park is the preference-conditioned. His paedophile interests usually begin in his teens, not necessarily with any external conflict. He identifies with the child, adapts his behaviour to the child’s age and can on occasion assume a pseudo-parental role. The sexual activity is usually carefully planned and for him sex is an attempt to solve his life problems. Am I being paid for this?’

‘And the situation-conditioned?’

‘A more diffuse group. They’re primarily more sexually interested in other adults, and the child tends to be a substitute for someone the paedophile is in conflict with.’

‘Tell me more about the guy with the bag of sweeties. How’s he wired?’

‘Well, as a rule, paedophiles have low self-esteem and a so-called fragile sexuality. That is, they are uncertain of themselves, they can’t take on adult sexuality and they feel like failures. They think they can only control the situation if they live out their desires with children.’

‘And it’s all down to nature and nurture, the usual spiel?’

‘It’s not unusual for abusers to have been sexually abused themselves as children.’

‘How do you recognise them?’

‘Sorry, Harry, but it doesn’t work like that. They don’t really stand out at all. They’re usually men who live alone and have a poor social network. They might have a damaged sexual identity, but they can function perfectly well in other areas of life.’

‘I see. So you can’t tell.’

‘Shame creates clever camouflage artists. Most paedophiles have lifelong training in concealing their predilections from others, so the only thing I can say is that there are a lot more out there than the police arrest for abuse.’

‘Ten for every one caught.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing. Thanks, Ståle. By the way, I’ve put a cork in the bottle.’

‘Oh. How many days?’

‘About forty-eight hours.’

‘Hard?’

‘Well, at least the monsters are staying under the bed. I thought it would be worse.’

‘You’ve only just started. Remember, you’ll have some bad days.’

‘Is there anything else but bad days?’

It was dark, and the taxi driver passed him a small colour brochure when he asked to be driven to Patpong.

‘Massage, sir? Good massage. I’ll drive you.’

In the sparse light he saw pictures of girls smiling at him, as pure and innocent as a Thai Airways advertisement.

‘No thanks, I just want to eat.’ Harry returned the brochure even though his battered back thought it sounded an excellent suggestion. When, out of curiosity, Harry asked what kind of massage, the taxi driver made an international sign that left no room for interpretation.

It was Liz who had recommended Le Boucheron in Patpong, and the food looked really good, it was just that Harry didn’t have the appetite. He smiled apologetically at the waitress who took away his plate, and he gave a generous tip so they wouldn’t think he was dissatisfied. Then he went out into the hysterical street life of Patpong. Soi 1 was closed to traffic, but it was even more crowded with people surging up and down, like a seething river, alongside stalls and bars. Music boomed out of every orifice in the wall, sweaty men and women on the pavements were on the lookout for action, and the smells of humanity, sewage and food vied for supremacy. A curtain was pulled aside as he passed and inside he saw girls dancing clad in the obligatory G-strings and high-heeled shoes.

‘No cover charge, ninety baht for drinks,’ someone shouted in his ear. He continued walking, but it was like standing still because the same was repeated all the way down the overpopulated street.

He felt a pulse beating in his stomach and couldn’t decide if it was the music, his heart or the dull din from one of the machines pounding piles night and day into Bangkok’s new motorway over Silom Road.

At one bar a girl in a loud, red silk dress caught his gaze and pointed to the chair beside her. Harry walked on, feeling almost drunk. He heard a roar from another bar with a TV hanging from one corner and it was clear some team or other had scored. Two Englishmen with pink necks clinked glasses and sang ‘
I’m forever blowing bubbles
 . . .’

‘Come in, blondie.’

A tall, slim woman fluttered her eyelashes at him, pushed out a pair of large, firm breasts and crossed her legs so that the skintight trousers left nothing to the imagination.

‘She’s
katoy
,’ a voice said in Norwegian, and Harry turned.

It was Jens Brekke. A petite Thai woman in a tight leather skirt was hanging from his arm.

‘It’s fantastic really, all that: the curves, breasts and a vagina. In fact, some men prefer a
katoy
to the genuine item. And why not?’ Brekke bared a set of white teeth in his brown childlike face. ‘The only problem of course is that surgically created vaginas do not have the same self-cleansing properties as those belonging to real women. The day they can do that I’ll consider a
katoy
myself. What’s your opinion, Officer?’

Harry glanced at the tall woman who had turned her back on them with a loud sniff when she heard the word
katoy
.

‘Well, the thought hadn’t struck me that any of the women here might not be women.’

‘It’s easy to fool the untrained eye, but you can tell by the Adam’s apple and generally it’s not possible to remove that. Also, they tend to be a head too tall, a touch too provocatively dressed and slightly too aggressively flirtatious. And much too good-looking. That’s what gives them away ultimately. They can’t control themselves; they always have to go that bit too far.’

He left the sentence hanging in the air, as though he were hinting at something, but if he was, Harry didn’t know what.

‘By the way, Officer, have you been overdoing things yourself? I can see you’re limping.’

‘Exaggerated faith in Western conversational styles. It’ll pass.’

‘Which? The faith or the injury?’

Brekke watched Harry with the same unseen smile that had been there after the funeral. As though it were a game he wanted Harry to join in. Harry was not in a ludic mood.

‘Both, I hope. I was on my way home.’

‘Already?’ The neon light shone on Brekke’s moist forehead. ‘Look forward to seeing you in better shape tomorrow then, Officer.’

On Surawong Road Harry flagged down a taxi.

‘Massage, sir?’

PART THREE

16

Monday 13 January

WHEN NHO PICKED
harry up outside River Garden, his high-rise apartment block, the sun had only just risen and was shining gently down on him between the low houses.

They found Barclays Thailand before eight o’clock and a smiling car-park attendant with a Jimi Hendrix hairstyle and headphones let them into the car park beneath the building. Nho eventually spotted a solitary free slot for guests between the BMWs and Mercedes by the lifts.

Nho preferred to wait in the car as his Norwegian was limited to ‘takk’, thank you, which Harry had taught him to say in a coffee break. Liz had half teased that ‘takk’ was always the first word a white man tried to teach natives.

Nho was uncomfortable in the neighbourhood; all the expensive cars attracted thieves, he said. And even if the car park was equipped with CCTV he didn’t quite trust car-park attendants who clicked their fingers to an invisible beat while opening the barrier.

Harry took the lift up to the ninth floor and entered the reception area of Barclays Thailand. He introduced himself and looked at the clock. He had half expected to have to wait for Brekke, but a woman accompanied him back into the lift, swiped a card and pressed P which, she explained, stood for penthouse. Then she darted back out and Harry rose heavenwards.

As the lift doors slid open he saw Brekke standing in the middle of a glowing brown parquet floor, leaning against a large mahogany table with one phone to his ear and another on his shoulder. The rest of the room was glass. Walls, ceiling, coffee table, even the chairs.

‘Talk later, Tom. Make sure you’re not gobbled up today. And, as I said, don’t touch the rupiah.’

He smiled in apology to Harry, shifted the other phone up to his ear, glanced at the ticker on the computer screen and uttered a brief ‘yes’ before ringing off.

‘What was that?’ Harry asked.

‘That was my job.’

‘Which is?’

‘Right now securing a dollar loan for a customer.’

‘Big sums involved?’ Harry surveyed Bangkok, which lay half hidden in the mist beneath them.

‘Depends what you compare it with. An average Norwegian local council budget, I imagine. Did you have a good time last night?’

Before Harry could answer, one of the phones buzzed and Brekke pressed a button on the intercom.

‘Take a message, Shena, will you? I’m busy.’ He released the button without waiting for confirmation.

‘Busy?’

Brekke laughed. ‘Don’t you read the newspapers? All the Asian currencies are on the slide. Everyone’s pissing their pants and busting a gut to buy dollars. Banks and brokerage companies are shutting down every other day and people have started jumping out of windows.’

‘But not you?’ Harry said, absent-mindedly rubbing his spine.

‘Me? I’m a broker, vulture family.’

He flapped his arms a few times and bared his teeth. ‘We earn money whatever happens so long as there is action and people are dealing. Showtime is a good time and right now it’s showtime 24/7.’

‘So you’re the croupier in this game?’

‘Yes! Well said. Have to remember that one. And the other idiots are the gamblers.’

‘Idiots?’

‘Certainly.’

‘I thought these traders were relatively smart.’

‘Smart, yes, but still absolute idiots. It’s an eternal paradox, but the smarter they become, the keener they are to speculate in the currency markets. They’re the ones who ought to know better than anyone else that it’s impossible to earn money on the roulette in the long term. I’m pretty stupid myself, but at least I know that.’

‘So you never have a punt on this roulette, Brekke?’

‘I do place the occasional bet.’

‘Does that make you one of the idiots?’

Brekke proffered a box of cigars, but Harry declined.

‘Wise man. They taste awful. I smoke them because I think I have to. Because I can afford it.’ He shook his head and put a cigar in his mouth. ‘Did you see
Casino
, Officer? The one with Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone?’