Inspector Zhang And The Falling Woman (6 page)

“Hi-so,” said my taxi driver, pulling a face. He wound down his window, cleared his throat, and spat a stream of greenish phlegm into the street.

Hi-so.

High society.

From a good family.
But in Thailand being from a good family didn't necessarily equate to good manners. The woman in the Mercedes almost certainly wasn't aware of the dozen or so cars waiting patiently for her to get out of the way. And even if she was aware, she wouldn't have cared. After all, she had the Mercedes and the diamond-encrusted Rolex and we didn't, so it really didn't matter that she was holding us up. It was the natural order of things.

There was no point in getting upset. She would move when she was ready, and not before and there was nothing that
I or the taxi driver
could say or do that would change that. Acceptance was the only option.

The Thais have an expression for it.

Jai yen.

Cool heart.

Don't worry.

Be happy.

Sometimes, for emphasis, they say jai yen
yen
.

Real cool heart.

I settled back in my seat and turned to the letters page of the
Bangkok Post
. A reader in Chiang Mai was complaining about the air quality. The farmers around the city were carrying out their annual field burnings and the mayor had warned the population to stay indoors with their windows closed. A Manchester City fan was complaining that he could only get a Thai commentary for his team's last match. A reader in Bangkok was complaining about his erratic cable wi-fi service. For many people Thailand was the
Land Of Smiles
, but the average
Bangkok Post
reader seemed to spend most of his time complaining about the state of the country.

The fruit vendor hurried over to the Mercedes with a bag of mangoes. She handed them through the window. The woman put her cell phone on the dashboard and then took the mangoes out of the bag one by one, sniffing them and squeezing them to check their ripeness. She rejected one, and the fruit vendor went back to her stall to replace it. The woman picked up her cell phone and resumed her conversation.

I twisted around in my seat. There were now two dozen cars behind us, and a bus. The air was shimmering with exhaust fumes.

Jai yen.

I went back to my paper.
 
A tourist from Norway was complaining of the double pricing for foreigners at the Lumpini Boxing Stadium.
 
Tourists paid up to ten times what locals were charged, she said, and that wasn't fair. I smiled. Fairness wasn't a concept that necessarily applied to Thailand, especially where foreigners were concerned.

The fruit vendor returned with a replacement mango. The woman smelled it, squeezed it,
then
put it into the carrier bag. She opened her Louis Vuitton handbag and took out a Prada purse and handed the vendor a red hundred baht note. The vendor zipped open the bag around her waist, slipped in the banknote and took out the woman's change. The woman took the change, checked it, put the money into the Prada purse, put the purse into her handbag, placed it on the passenger seat and closed the window. I didn't see her thank the fruit vendor, but that was par for the course for Thailand. Women who drove expensive imported cars did not generally say “please" or “thank you", at least not to fruit vendors. The window wound up, the woman checked her make-up in her driving mirror, then put the Mercedes into gear.

We were off.

Finally.

Jai yen.

The taxi moved forward. The Mercedes lady was talking on her cell phone again.
 
She indicated a right turn but then turned left on to Sukhumvit Road, oblivious to the motorcycle that narrowly missed slamming into her offside wing.

The traffic light turned red and the taxi jerked to a halt. There were two policemen sitting in the booth across the road from us. It was getting close to the end of the month which meant that the police were looking for any excuse to pull over motorists and either issue a ticket to meet their quota or collect some tea money to pay their minor wife's rent. Bangkok's traffic light system was perfectly capable of being co-ordinated by a multi-million-pound computer system but more often than not the police would override it and do the changes manually, using walkie-talkies to liaise with their colleagues down the road. That meant that when a light turned red, you had no idea how long it would stay that way. Your fate lay in the hands of a man in a tight-fitting brown uniform with a gun on his hip.

Jai yen.

I went back to my paper. My taxi driver wound down his window and spat throatily into the street again.

Just another day in Paradise.

Not.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 2

Ying is a stunner. A little over five feet tall with waist-length glossy black hair and cheekbones you could cut steel plate with, a trim waist and breasts that are, frankly, spectacular.

Whoa, hoss.

Stop right there.

I'm married and old enough to be her father.

 
And I'm her boss, hoss.

She looked over her shoulder and flashed her perfect white teeth at me as I walked into the shop.

My shop.

Dao-Nok Antiques. It's sort of a pun on my name. Dao-Nok is Thai for turtle-bird and my name's Turtledove. I'm not sure if anyone else gets it but it makes me smile.

Ying was carefully rolling bubble-wrap around a wooden Chinese screen that we were shipping to Belgium. “Good morning Khun Bob,” she said.

Khun. It means mister, but it's also a sign of respect. She respects me because I'm older than her and because I'm her boss.

“You are late,” she added, still smiling.

Not much respect there. But she wasn't being
critical,
she was just stating a fact. I was normally in the shop by nine and it was now nine-thirty.

“There was a mango queue,” I said.

“I see,” she said, even though she didn't.

“All the way down Soi Thonglor.”

“I told them you wouldn't be long.”

“I see,” I said, even though I didn't.

“They're waiting, in your office.”

I frowned. “And they would be…?”

“An American couple. They need your help.”

There was a coffee maker by the cash register and I poured myself a cup and took it upstairs. The door to my office was open and my two visitors looked up, smiling hesitantly. He was a big man run to fat, in his mid to late forties. His wife was half his size, with wispy blonde hair, and probably five years younger. He pushed himself up out of his chair and offered me his hand. It was a big hand, almost square with the fingernails neatly-clipped, but it had no strength in it when we shook.
 
“Jonathon Clare,” he said in a Midwestern accent.
 
“This is my wife Isabelle.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Clare,” I said. Mrs. Clare smiled and offered me her hand. It was a child's hand, milk-white skin with delicate fingers as brittle as porcelain.
 
“Mrs. Clare,” I said, shaking her hand as carefully as possible.
 
I went and sat behind my desk and flashed them a reassuring smile.
 
“So how can I help you?” I asked.

“Matt Richards at the embassy said that you might be able to find our son,” said Mr. Clare, dropping back into his chair. It creaked under his weight.

I nodded.
 
Matt Richards was an attaché at the US Embassy. He was an acquaintance rather than a friend, someone I bumped into from time to time on the cocktail party circuit.
 
He was an affable enough guy but hard to get close to. I kind of figured he was a spook, CIA or maybe DEA.
 
Whatever, he was cagey enough never to let his guard down with me and I never really cared enough to do any serious probing. It wasn't the first time he'd sent along people who needed help that the embassy couldn't – or wouldn't - provide.

I picked up a pen and reached for a yellow legal pad.
 
There were a whole host of questions that I'd need answering, but from experience I'd found that it was often better just to let them get it off their chests as quickly as possible.
 
“I'm listening,” I said.

Mr. Clare looked across at his wife and she nodded at him with raised eyebrows.
 
He was twice her size but I got the feeling that she was the one who ruled the roost in the Clare household.
 
“We're Mormons,” he said, slowly. “From Salt Lake City. Utah.
 
I'm telling you that because I want you to know that Jon Junior is a God-fearing boy who has
honored
his mother and father since the day he was born. He's not a boy to go wandering off without telling us where He's going and what He's doing.”

Mr. Clare reached inside his suit jacket and slid a colour photograph across the desk. I picked it up. It was a graduation photograph, Jon Junior grinning at the camera with an all-American smile, his wheat-coloured hair sticking out from under a mortarboard, his blue eyes gleaming with triumph, a diploma in his hand.

“Second in his class,” said Mr. Clare proudly. “Scholarships all the way.
 
A man couldn't ask for a better son.”

“The apple of our eye,” said Mrs. Clare, nodding in agreement.

“How old is he?” I asked.

“Twenty-one,” said Mr Clare.

“Twenty-two next month,” added his wife.

Mr. Clare handed me a sheet of paper. “We have a photocopy of Jon Junior's passport.
 
We also told him to photocopy all his important documents. You can never be too careful.”

“Indeed,” I said.

“We've already got his birthday present,” said Mr. Clare. “A digital camera. State of the art.”

Mrs. Clare reached over and held her husband's hand. He smiled at her with tight lips.

“And He's in Thailand?” I asked.

“He came two months ago,” said Mr. Clare.
 
“He wanted to take some time off before joining me in the family business. Janitorial supplies. Cleaning equipment. We're one of the biggest in the state. There's barely a hospital or school in Utah that doesn't have our soap in its dispensers.”

I decided it was time to cut to the chase before I got the complete Clare family history. “And when was the last time you heard from Jon Junior?” I asked.

“Three weeks ago,” said Mr. Clare. “He phoned us every week. And wrote. Letters. Postcards.”

“Do you remember when exactly he phoned?”

Mr. Clare looked over at his wife. “March the seventh,” she said. “It was a Sunday. He always phoned on a Sunday.”

“And when did he fly in?”

Mr. Clare looked over at his wife again. “January the sixteenth,” she said.

“Did he apply for a visa in the States?” I asked.

“Why does that matter?” asked Mr. Clare.

“If you apply for a tourist visa overseas then you get sixty days, which can be extended for a further thirty days,” I explained. “If you arrive without a visa, immigration will give you thirty days in which case Jon Junior will have overstayed.”

“Is that bad?” asked Mrs Clare.