Stephen Leather - Bangkok Bob and the missing Mormon

‘Can I look around?’ I asked.

I could see the look of concern flash across her face so before she could say anything I slipped her a five hundred baht note. Probably more than two days wages. She stared at the note, then the adverts ended and the soap opera restarted. She gave me the key to room 31. ‘Second floor,’ she said, her eyes back on the TV set.

There was an elevator but I took the stairs, figuring that I could do with the exercise.

The room was large with a queen size bed, a cheap black plastic sofa and a glass-topped coffee table that was a twin of the one in reception. There was a wardrobe and a dressing table and a door that led to a small bathroom. Western-style toilet, washbasin and a shower stall.

The wardrobe was bare except for a line of pink plastic coathangers.

There as nothing in the dressing table drawers.

I looked under the bed. There was a roach trap and a lot of dust, but nothing else.

I lifted the pillows. Nothing. Lifted the mattress. Nothing.

I went over to the plastic sofa and lifted the cushions. Nothing.

I wasn’t sure what I expected to find. A map showing where he’d gone? A letter? But whatever I was hoping to find, I was disappointed.

I went back to reception. The woman there was wiping her eyes as the end credits of the soap opera rolled across the television screen.

I gave her back the key.

‘And he definitely didn’t leave a forwarding address?’ I asked.

She shook her head.

‘Did he take a taxi or a tuk-tuk when he left?’

‘I didn’t see him leave,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘He must have checked out at night,’ she said.

‘Who was here then?’

‘The night man,’ she said. ‘Gung.’

Gung. It means prawn.

‘Does he work every night?’

‘He’s the night man,’ she said patiently.

Stupid question.

Jai yen.

‘How did he pay his bills?’ I asked.

‘Cash.’

‘No credit card?’

‘Just cash.’

‘And the only visitor he had was this girl?’

‘She was the only one I saw.’

I’d have to talk to Gung to find out if Jon Junior had had any nocturnal visitors. I was running out of questions for the receptionist. It looked like a dead end. Jon Junior had been here. Now he wasn’t. End of story.

The receptionist looked at me blankly. I felt that I was missing something. That if I asked her the right question then the puzzle would be solved. I looked at the mailboxes.

‘Did he get any mail while he was here?’

‘No.’

Okay, so that wasn’t the magic question.

‘Any phone calls? Did anyone call here asking for him?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘But any calls would come through reception, right?’

There was a small switchboard on the desk. The receptionist nodded.

‘So, did anyone call for him?’

‘Maybe. I don’t remember.’

I figured that it was unfair of me to expect her to remember every call she answered.

‘He did make some calls, though.’

I stared at her in surprise. ‘Really?’

She twisted around and opened the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet and pulled out a sheaf of papers. She licked her index finer and flicked through them. They were receipts. She smiled triumphantly and pulled out a sheet and handed it to me.

It was dated three weeks earlier and was a computer print-out of half a dozen phone calls, the time and date of each call and how long the call lasted. I wanted to reach over and plant a kiss on her cheek but I slipped her another five hundred baht note.

‘Can I keep this?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘It’s for our records,’ she said.

I quickly copied down the numbers, dates and times and gave the receipt back to her. Another soap opera was starting and she hurried to put the receipt back into the filing cabinet drawer as I left.

I found a Starbucks, ordered a low-fat latte and sat down at a corner table. There were two numbers on the receipt. One was a cellphone. Jon Junior had called it five times on three different days. Two of the calls had been short, just a few seconds so I figured he’d left a message, and the three others had all been over half an hour.

Interesting. Half an hour was a long time to be talking on the phone.

I took out my cellphone and tapped out the number. I went straight through to the answering service which suggested that the phone was switched off. It was the standard recorded message and it gave no clue as to who owned the phone. I thought about leaving a message but then decided against it.

The other number had the prefix 02 which meant that it was a Bangkok landline. Jon Junior had made a two-minute call. I tapped out the number.

A Thai woman answered, speaking English. ‘Betta English Language School,’ she said briskly.

Interesting.

I asked her for the address of the school and scribbled it down in my notebook. It was a short walk away from Jon Junior’s apartment. I cut the connection.

Very interesting.

The fact that Jon Junior had switched rooms suggested that he’d wanted to move closer to the Betta English Language School. But the Betta English Language School had been on the list that Stickman had given me. And they’d denied all knowledge of Jon Clare Junior.

Petrov Shevtsov was a big man who looked as if he worked out a lot. He was wearing a too-tight black t-shirt and khaki chinos and brown suede loafers with tassels on them. He had a couple of days of stubble on his chin, or maybe his hair just grew faster than mine. He wore a thick gold chain on his right wrist, a gold Rolex on his left, and he had a gold chain with three Buddhas on it around his neck. I knew his name was Petrov Shevtsov because that was the name on his office door. He hadn’t introduced himself when I’d walked into his office. ‘So where did you teach before?’ he asked.

‘New Orleans,’ I said. ‘Night school.’

‘You’re qualified?’ There were three cellphones on the desk close to his right hand. All brand new Nokias, the sort that let you surf the internet, take a five megapixel photograph, pinpoint your position to within a few feet and, on a good day, allow you to make a phone call.

‘Sure.’ I handed over a degree certificate showing that I’d got a degree in English from New Orleans University, and a TEFL certificate from a college in New Orleans. A print shop in the Khao San Road had made them up for me for five hundred baht. The owner of the shop had asked for two thousand but I’d bargained him down. It took him five minutes on a computer and I had perfect fake qualifications.

I’d faked the qualifications but I’d used my own name just in case I was asked to show my passport or driving licence.

‘References?’

‘I’m having some sent over.’

‘We pay four hundred baht an hour,’ said Petrov, tossing the certificates back to me. ‘You’ll get a minimum of six hours a day. Most of our classes are early mornings or evenings and weekends. Weekends are our busiest time.’

‘So that’s two thousand four hundred baht a day, right?’

Petrov squinted at me as if he had the start of a headache. ‘I just said, four hundred an hour. If there’s no class, you don’t get paid. If there’s a class, you get paid. Most of our students attend regular schools and use our school to get extra English lessons so most of the classes are early morning, in the evening and at weekends.’

‘How many pupils in each class?’ I asked. I was asking the questions I figured a job applicant would ask, but all I seemed to be doing was annoying the Russian. His frown deepened.

‘A class is a class,’ he said. ‘One, ten, a hundred. You teach, they learn. Do you want the job or not?’