Stephen Leather - Bangkok Bob and the missing Mormon

‘Isn’t that illegal?’ she said.

That was a good question, and the answer was probably yes.

‘It’ll be a big help to see if he’s still sending emails,’ I said. ‘And with any luck there might be clue to his whereabouts in his inbox.’

‘Jeeves,’ she said. ‘He had a cat called Jeeves. He was a big fan of P.G. Wodehouse at school.’

I tapped in ‘JEEVES’ and the server allowed me to reset the password on the account.

‘All right, Mrs Clare, I’m in,’ I said. ‘Please stay on the line and I’ll see if there’s anything useful here.’

I opened Jon Junior’s inbox. Nothing had been opened for two weeks. There were more than fifty unopened emails, about half of which were spam offering cheap Viagra, millions of dollars from Nigerian bank accounts and cheap flights. I clicked on a personal message, from a friend back in Utah asking him why he hadn’t been in touch.

‘I don’t see anything recent, Mrs Clare,’ I said.

‘That’s not good, is it?’ she asked.

‘It might not mean anything,’ I said. ‘He might just be away from a computer. Did he have a laptop with him?’

‘It’s here, at home,’ she said. ‘He wanted to travel light. This isn’t good, is it, Mr Turtledove?’

‘He could be travelling,’ I said, trying to put her at ease, even though I was beginning to share her concern. ‘A lot of backpackers go up north to visit the hilltribes or over the border into Laos or Burma. Not everywhere has internet coverage.’

‘Tell me one thing, Mr Turtledove. If Jon Junior has started working as a teacher in Bangkok, why hasn’t he called us?’

It was a good question. One that I couldn’t answer.

‘We’re not bad parents,’ she said.

‘I’m sure you’re not.’

‘We love our son.’

‘I’m sure you do.’

She was upset.

I’d upset her.

I thanked her, promised to call her when I had any news, and cut the connection.

Thailand’s immigration policy is different to most developed countries – they just put out a welcome mat and pretty much allow everybody in. There are a few countries where Thailand insists on visas and generally anyone who arrives is given permission to stay for thirty days. Anyone who wants to stay longer can apply for a tourist visa at a Thai consulate or embassy in their own country and they’ll be given a sixty-day visa, good for either one or two stays. The Thais are happy to let visitors in because all employment of foreigners is strictly regulated through a work permit system – a system that leads straight to jail if it’s abused.

I guess the way the Thais think is that providing visitors aren’t working, they’re bringing money into the country which can only be a good thing. But what they didn’t bank on was the visa run, where foreigners working illegally in Thailand simply leave and return once a month. Coaches packed with illegally-employed Westerners now shuttle back and forth between Cambodia and Laos so that they can be legally in the country, albeit working without a work permit. Once the authorities realised the extent that the system was being exploited, they slashed the number of days that would be granted to a visitor arriving by land from thirty to fifteen. But that didn’t stop the illegal workers, it just doubled the number of visa runs and increased the profits of the companies, mostly Western-owned, that ran the coaches.

I googled ‘Thailand visa run’ and got almost a quarter of a million hits. I went through the first few pages, looking for companies based in Bangkok that did same-day visa runs to the Ban Laem border crossing that Jon Junior had used. Most of the companies only offered overnight trips for people who needed to get a new visa from the Thai Embassy in Phnom Penh. They spent the night in a cheap hotel and then picked up the visa the next day.

Jon Junior didn’t need a new visa, all he had to do was to leave the country and return to activate the second half of his double re-entry visa. After half an hour of scrolling through the Google search results I had about twenty possibles, and I started calling them. I got lucky with the seventh company. The phone was answered by a Thai girl who spoke English with an American drawl that she had probably picked up at an international school in Bangkok. I spoke to her in Thai and asked if Jonathon Clare had been on her company’s run to Cambodia on March the fifth. She put me on hold for a couple of minutes and then came back on the line and said yes, he been on the bus.

I punched the air in triumph.

‘Is there a problem?’ she asked, and I reassured her that there wasn’t. I explained that his parents were looking for him and asked if she had an address or phone number for him. She only had a number and it was for a cellphone, the one that the Clares had given me.

‘I don’t suppose you know if he was sitting next to on the coach, do you?’

‘I know the bus was almost full,’ she said. ‘My boss was on it, he might remember, but he isn’t in at the moment. I’ll ask him and give you a call.’

I gave her my number and ended the call.

I figured the next line of attack should be to track down the school where Jon Junior was teaching. For that I needed a list of English language schools and I figured my old friend Stickman would be able to help. Stickman runs a website about Thailand and in a former life he was an English teacher until he started to earn more from the internet than he was paid to stand in front of a group of unruly teenagers. Before I went to bed I emailed him to see if he had a list of English language schools. When I switched on the computer again at eight o’clock in the morning he’d replied with a list of thirty but warned me that it wasn’t an inclusive list. ‘The fly-by-nights open up for a few months, shut down and then open up under another name,’ he said in his email.

Top of his list was the AUA school. I called and an efficient secretary confirmed within minutes that there was no Jonathon Clare on staff.

Sometimes it was important to be specific when talking with Thais so I got her to check Jon Clare and J Clare, and also to check using Junior as the family name.

It took me the best part of two hours to work my way down the list. None of the schools had heard of Jon Junior. He was either working for a school that wasn’t on the list, or he was using another name.

That worried me.

If Jon Junior wasn’t using his own name, then he was hiding. But from whom? And why?

I went through to the kitchen where Noy had made breakfast for me. A cheese omelette with a slice of wholewheat toast and a cup of tea. She sat and watched me as I ate.

‘What are you doing today, light of my life?’ I asked.

‘I’m showing an American around three apartments. He’s got sixty million baht to spend.’

‘What does he do?’ I asked, my fork poised over the omelette.

‘He’s a banker,’ she said. ‘Works in Hong Kong but wants a place here.’

‘Where did I go wrong?’ I asked.

‘Are you unhappy with your lot?’ Her eyes sparkled with amusement.

I grinned back. ‘No honey, I’m the luckiest man alive.’

‘Because you’ve got me?’

‘Exactly,’ I said.

And I meant it.

I was in the shop helping Ying wrap a bronze statue of a Khmer dancer that we’d sold over the internet to a collector in Texas when my cellphone rang. I didn’t recognise the number or the voice, but it was a Frenchman speaking accented English and he said that his name was Philippe and that he was the owner of the company that had taken Jon Junior to Cambodia. I asked him if he remembered Jonathon Clare but he ignored the question.