Stephen Leather - Bangkok Bob and the missing Mormon

‘Not really.’

‘He had a degree, though?’

‘Sure.’

‘Then he’d get a job no problem. The Thai universities would insist on a teaching qualification like an RSA. The good ones, like Thammasat and Chula would want a Master’s degree. But most of the language schools will take on any farang provided they’ve got a degree.’

‘What’s an RSA?’ I asked.

‘Four-week course that supposedly prepares you for teaching,’ said the overweight guy. ‘That and a degree would get you into most schools. You can go on a course at the EEC in Siam Square. Set you back about sixty thousand baht.’

‘Or you can buy a fake one for a fraction of that,’ said Ponytail. ‘I got mine for two thousand baht on the Khao San Road.’

Khao San Road.

Uncooked Rice Road.

The jumping-off point for most backpackers embarking on a South East Asian experience. Cheap food, cheap lodging, cheap transport to anywhere in the country and beyond. You can buy pretty much anything on the Khao San Road. Fake certificates, fake passports, fake driving licences. Drugs. Weapons.

‘Don’t they check?’

‘Depends where you go,’ said Ponytail. ‘Some places are desperate they’ll take anyone. There’s an Indian at my school who can barely speak English. He just gets the students to read the text books. But he’s got a degree certificate from the UK. I don’t think the ink’s dry yet, but the school doesn’t care.’

‘What about the students? They must realise that they’ve been fobbed off with an incompetent teacher?’

Ponytail grinned. ‘They wouldn’t say boo to a goose. It’s not the Thai way. They’d probably just stop going after a few lessons. But there’s always more students joining. Most pay in advance so the schools don’t care about drop-outs.’

I made a mental note to ask Mr and Mrs Clare if Jon Junior had taken his educational qualifications with him.

‘So you’re saying that anyone can get off a plane and start teaching English in Thailand?’

The teachers nodded in unison.

My two bottles of Heineken arrived. I asked the waitress to bring a round of drinks for the guys and they all beamed at me like I was Father Christmas.

‘So where’s the best place for me to go looking for Jon Junior?’

‘If he’s legit and an American, you could try the AUA,’ said the guy with earring. ‘The American University Alumni. They’re one of the biggest schools in Thailand. But he’d need real qualifications and references. You could try the Thai universities and high schools. And the International schools. They’re the best payers and the most selective. If he’s using dodgy documents, then you’d drop down to the second division English schools.’

‘How many of those are there?’

‘Dozens,’ said the guy with the earring.

‘Hundreds,’ added Ponytail.

‘Needle in a haystack,’ added one of the teachers.

It wasn’t too daunting. There’d be a list of language schools somewhere. All I had to do was to telephone them all and ask if there was a Jon Clare on their staff.

The drinks arrived, two for each of the teachers. I paid the bill and then went around the bar, showing Jon Junior’s picture to anyone who looked like a teacher.

An hour later and all I’d seen were shaking heads and blank faces.

I went home. At least it had stopped raining.

Maybe my luck was starting to change.

I could never get the hang of changing time zones. I know that if I fly to Hong Kong I lose an hour and that if I fly back to Bangkok I gain an hour. And I know that the clocks in the UK are moved an hour during the winter months so that farmers don’t have to get up in the dark, and that the Americans change their clocks a week after the Brits. But other than that it’s a mystery to me. I couldn’t work out if Salt Lake City was ahead or behind Bangkok time, but I figured that as it was pretty much on the opposite side of the world, the difference would be about twelve hours either way. I left it until eleven o’clock in the evening before calling the Clares. Mrs Clare answered and she sounded wide awake so I guess I hadn’t woken her up.

‘Is he okay, Mr Turtledove?’ she asked as soon as she realised it was me.

‘I haven’t found him yet, Mrs Clare,’ I said. ‘But I’ve checked with the police and the hospitals and he’s not been in any trouble. And I’m fairly sure that he wasn’t in the nightclub. I’ve spoken to some of the people who worked there and no one remembers seeing him that night. So that at least is good news.’

I was trying to sound as optimistic as possible but she was obviously close to tears. I asked her about Jon Junior’s degree. Had he taken it with him or asked her to send it to him in Bangkok? She said that he hadn’t mentioned it to her and that so far as she knew his degree was framed and hanging on his bedroom wall.

I asked her to go and check. I waited for almost four minutes. The Clares must have lived in one hell of a big house.

While I waited I booted my laptop and went to the Google Mail page. I tapped in Jon Junior’s user name and clicked the button that said I’d forgotten my password. It asked me for Jon Junior’s date of birth and I got that from the photocopy of his passport. The next stage was to answer Jon Junior’s security question. ‘What was the name of your first pet?’

Mrs Clare came back on the line.

‘It’s still on the wall,’ she said.

‘Is it possible he took a copy before he left?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘It’s in a frame.’

‘And did he take some sort of teaching class before he came to Bangkok?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘We had no idea that he was considering teaching as a career until we got his phone call.’

‘He wouldn’t have done it in secret?’

‘Why would he have done anything in secret, Mr Turtledove?’ she said archly.

‘Perhaps if he knew that you wouldn’t approve.’

‘I thought I made it clear in your office. We support our son fully in whatever he decides to do. Our philosophy in raising our children has always been to offer guidance and support, not to lay down the law.’

That’s not quite what the Clares had said in my office and I didn’t have to look at the notes I’d made. They’d wanted Jon Junior to join the family business. And if he was set on becoming a teacher, they wanted him to teach in Utah, not Thailand.

‘Did he mention taking a teaching course in Thailand?’ I asked.

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘I’m told it would cost about sixty thousand baht for a four-week course. About one thousand five hundred dollars. Nothing like that showed up on his credit card statements did it?’

‘Definitely not.’

‘Did he have that sort of money on him?’

‘He was on a tight budget, Mr Turtledove. I don’t think he would throw away fifteen hundred dollars on a teaching course. Would you mind telling me why you have this sudden interest in my son’s educational qualifications?’

‘I’m trying to find out which school he was teaching at. It would make it easier if I knew what qualifications he had.’

I didn’t want to tell her that if Jon Junior’s degree was hanging on the wall in a frame then he’d probably had a counterfeit copy made in the Khao San Road. I figured that a devout Christian would probably regard that as a sin.

‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’ she asked.

‘Actually there is,’ I said. ‘Can you tell me the name of Jon Junior’s first pet?’ I asked.

There was a long pause during which time she was no doubt wondering whether I’d gone insane.

‘I’m trying to access his email account,’ I explained.