Stephen Leather - Bangkok Bob and the missing Mormon

‘Farang here wants a word!’ shouted the guy with the newspaper.

Lek looked over at me and jutted out his chin. ‘You here to train?’ he asked in accented English.

‘Me?’ I patted my stomach. ‘My fighting days are over.’ I spoke in Thai, and gestured at the changing rooms. ‘What about him, when will we be seeing him in Lumpini?’ I asked, referring to the city’s main Muay Thai stadium.

‘He thinks he’s Rambo,’ said Lek. ‘Wants to get fit so that he can be a mercenary in Iraq.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ I said.

Two more Westerners appeared at the entrance. They were in the twenties with the sort of muscles that only came from steroids. They both had their names tattooed in Thai across their left forearms. Michael and Martin. They waied Lek but spoiled the effect by grunting at the same time. They looked at me with hard faces as they walked to the changing rooms as if daring me to pick a fight with them.

I smiled.

Smiling is the best way of dealing with aggression, I’ve always found.

Unless you’ve got a gun strapped to your waist, of course.

I didn’t have a gun, so I smiled.

‘Ronnie Marsh sent me,’ I said. ‘I took the photograph of Jon Junior from my pocket and showed it to him. ‘The night of the fire, was this boy there? In the club.’

Lek wrinkled his nose. It was a nose that had been hit so many times that it was almost flush against his face giving him the look of a confused monkey. ‘Maybe,’ he said.

‘Maybe?’

‘Farangs all look the same to me,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘Was he with anyone?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Because if he was with a girl I’d probably remember the girl. Girls are more memorable. Especially pretty girls.’

‘Yeah, I get it. Is Tam around?’

Lek pointed upstairs. ‘He’s sleeping.’

‘Okay if I go and ask him?’

‘He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s sleeping.’

‘I’ll be gentle.’

I went up the stairs. They opened into a landing where there were three chipboard doors. There was a buzz-saw snoring coming from one of the rooms and I pushed open the door to find a stocky Thai man wearing nothing but red and gold Muay Thai shorts lying face down on a stained mattress.

‘Khun Tam?’ I said.

The snoring continued so I bent down and shook him by the arm.

Big mistake.

He let out a shriek, jumped up into a fighting crouch and threw a punch that I only just managed to avoid by falling backwards and staggering against the wall.

‘Whoa!’ I shouted. ‘I come in peace.’

Tam drew back his right fist but then he checked himself. ‘Did you touch me?’

‘Not in a bad way,’ I said. ‘You were snoring.’

‘Who are you? He put his hands on his hips. He was dark-skinned and his chest and abdomen were the texture of seasoned mahogany.

‘My name’s Bob,’ I said. ‘Ronnie Marsh sent me.’ I took out the photograph of Jon Junior. ‘He wanted me to ask you if you remember this boy from the night of the fire.’

Tam looked at the picture and rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. ‘No,’ he said.

‘You’re sure?’

‘I was on the door all night and I didn’t see him.’

I put the picture away and thanked him.

‘How is Khun Ronnie?’ he asked.

‘Not good,’ I said. ‘He’s in the Bumrungrad.’

‘He saved a lot of people. Stayed inside to help them get out.’

‘What about you?’

‘I went outside, phoned the fire brigade.’

‘What about Khun Thongchai? What did he do?’

His eyes narrowed as he looked at me suspiciously. ‘Why do you care about him?’

I shrugged. ‘Khun Ronnie said he ran away.’

Tam avoided my gaze and didn’t reply, letting me know that whether Thongchai had stayed or run away was none of my business, or his.

I thanked him and went downstairs. Lek had gone and the guy with the newspaper smiled as I left.

I had a definite ‘no’ and I had a ‘maybe’ from a bouncer who only remembered girls so I was fairly confident that Jon Junior hadn’t been in the Kube on the night that it had gone up in flames.

It would just be nice to be sure.

The key to finding an English teacher to Bangkok is remember that the job pays really badly. An expatriate teacher is doing well if he earns thirty thousand baht a month. That’s twice what a Thai would get, but it’s still only about a thousand dollars which doesn’t go far, even in Thailand, which means that they spend a lot of time hunting down cheap places to eat and drink. The Londoner Pub on Sukhumvit Road is one of many drinking holes that’s realised how hard-up teachers are and offers them a two drinks for one deal every Thursday. I left it until just before nine o’clock before heading there, figuring that the more they’d had to drink, the chattier they’d be. It had started raining again. I don’t know if it was the real thing or the result of more misplaced cloud seeding.

The pub’s down a basement under an office building, right next door to a bowling alley. The decor is standard dark wood and brass fittings and the only nod to the London theme were the Beefeater dresses that a couple of the staff were wearing. Two televisions were showing a British football match but nobody was paying them any attention. The clientele were almost without exception young men in knock-offs of designer shirts and shabby chinos.

A girl in a regular waitress uniform of white shirt and black trousers waved at an empty table but I shook my head and told her that I was there to see a friend.

I wandered among the tables letting the conversations wash over me.

Moans about working conditions. Long hours, low pay.

Places that sold cheap beer.

Why Singha beer always gave you a headache.

Go-go dancers who offered free sex in exchange for English lessons.

Not much talk about the education system or lesson-planning. That’s the way it is in the Land of Smiles – the vast majority of English teachers aren’t here on a mission to educate. They’re here to drink cheap beer. And hang out in go-go bars. Teaching is just a means to an end.

I took out Jon Junior’s photograph and went over to a table where half a dozen guys in their twenties were standing guard over bottles of Singha and Heineken. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but have any of you lads seen him?’ I said, handing the picture over to the teacher nearest to me. He shook his head and handed it around the table. ‘He’s an American,’ I said. ‘Salt Lake City.’

‘A Septic?’ said one of the guys. ‘Just what Bangkok needs, another Septic teacher.’

Septic Tank. Yank.

British humour.

‘He arrived a few months ago,’ I said. ‘Now his parents are worried. Jon Clare’s his name. Jon Clare Junior.’

The picture went around the group and back to me. They all shook their heads.

‘You a detective?’ asked one of the teachers. He was the smallest of the group with shoulder-length blonde hair tied back in a ponytail.

‘Just a friend of the family,’ I said.

‘No reward or anything, then?’

I shook my head and slid the photograph back into my jacket. A waitress hovered at my shoulder and I ordered a Phuket Beer. She smiled apologetically and said they didn’t stock it so I ordered a Heineken.

‘He came over as a tourist a couple of months ago, then decided to stay on as an English teacher,’ I said.

The guy with the ponytail sniggered. ‘Story of my life,’ he said.

‘How easy would that be?’ I asked.

‘To teach English?’ said the guy on my right. He was in his early twenties, overweight with slicked back hair and a gold earring in his left ear. He had a computer case slung over his shoulder and three cheap ballpoint pens in the breast pocket of his shirt. ‘Depends where he wanted to teach. There are some schools who’ll take anybody. Was he qualified?’