Stephen Leather - Bangkok Bob and the missing Mormon

I leaned over. ‘Are you guys teachers?’ I asked.

The Brit stopped his girlish giggling and his cheeks flushed. Maybe he thought I was the father of one of the girls at the school, or maybe it was just the Singha beer kicking in. ‘Why?’ he asked defensively.

I smiled amiably. ‘I’ve just been offered a job over there,’ I said, nodding in the direction of the school. ‘Supposed to start tomorrow.’

‘You talked to Petrov, yeah?’ said the Canadian.

‘Yeah, what’s his story? Bit strange to find a Russian running an English language school, isn’t it?’

The Canadian shrugged. ‘There’s all sorts running schools out here,’ he said. ‘Any man and his dog can set up a school. Where did you teach before?’

‘Back in New Orleans,’ I said. ‘Came out here on spec.’

The Kiwi grinned. ‘Well you sure didn’t come out here for the money,’ he said.

‘The son of a friend of mine told me it was a good place to work,’ he said. ‘American guy, Jon Clare. Do you know him?’

‘Jon Boy? Haven’t seen him around for a couple of weeks.’

‘He quit, didn’t he?’ said the Brit.

‘I didn’t know that,’ said the Kiwi.

‘From Salt Lake City,’ I said.

‘Yeah, a Mormon,’ said the Canadian. ‘Could never get him inside a go-go bar.’

‘I thought he was gay,’ said the Brit.

‘Just because he didn’t want to watch naked girls swing around silver poles doesn’t mean he’s gay,’ said the Kiwi.

‘Yeah, but it’s a good indication,’ said the Brit, and giggled. It was the sort of giggle that made me want to lean across and slap his acne-scarred face.

Jai yen.

‘Jon Junior wasn’t gay,’ I said. ‘Just a well-brought up kid. Any idea where he went? It’s been a couple of months since I spoke to him.’

All three men shook their heads.

‘Petrov could have sacked him,’ said the Brit. ‘Jon Boy was forever in his office complaining about one thing or another.’

‘Complaining about what?’ I asked, and took another sip of my Heineken.

‘He needed to kick back and relax,’ said the Kiwi. ‘He took it all too seriously.’

‘Took what all?’

The Kiwi shrugged again. ‘We’re not teaching brain surgery, right? Mainly we’re teaching rich kids to speak English. Most of them don’t want to be there, it’s their parents who want them to learn. So they resent it. They resent us and they resent their parents. Our job is to stand in front of them for an hour and talk to them in something approaching a Western accent. If Petrov could get away with it he’d staff the school with Indians and Malaysians but the parents want to know that they’re getting genuine native speakers so he has to hire us.’

The Brit giggled girlishly. ‘Yeah, but sheep-shaggers don’t really qualify as native speakers, do they?’

‘It’s your language in name only,’ said the Kiwi.

‘What’s this crap about lingua franca, anyway?’ said the Brit. ‘Why use a French phrase to say that English is the common language. I’ve never understood that.’

‘It’s Italian,’ I said.

‘What’s Italian?’ said the Brit, frowning.

‘Lingua franca. It’s Italian.’

His frown deepened. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, I’m sure.’ I waved for a round of beers. ‘On me,’ I said. ‘Tradition back at my old school was that the new guy buys the beers.’

‘I’ll drink to that,’ giggled the Brit. I was giving serious consideration to hitting him over the head with my bottle of Heineken.

Jai yen.

‘So you’re telling me that job satisfaction isn’t high on your list of priorities?’ I said.

‘You get bitter and twisted,’ said the Canadian. ‘Some of the kids do want to learn. Some of them work during the day and spend their own money on the courses. But in the main, yeah, it’s rich kids doing what their parents want. If you want job satisfaction, join one of the international schools or the Thai universities.’

The fresh beers arrived and the teachers toasted me. ‘So what’s your reason for coming to Thailand?’ the Kiwi asked me.

‘To teach.’

The Brit sniggered but didn’t say anything.

The Kiwi shook his head. ‘You’re not being interviewed now,’ he said. ‘No one comes to Thailand to teach. There’s no money in it. You must have talked money with Petrov, right? You’ll be getting a quarter of what you’d be getting in the States.’

‘It’s not about money though, is it?’

All three of them laughed. ‘No, it’s not,’ said the Kiwi.

The Canadian took a long pull on his beer and wiped the back of his mouth with his hand. ‘There are three reasons for coming here,’ he said. ‘Sex, sex, and sex.’

‘You forgot sex,’ said the Brit.

‘You put up with the low wages, the students who don’t give a shit, the cockroach-infested classrooms, because a couple of times a week you can go out and get laid by some of the best looking women in the world,’ said the Canadian, warming to his theme.

‘Or men,’ said the Brit. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

‘That’s just the way it is,’ said the Canadian. ‘The only ones not here for the sex are the ones running away from something.’

‘So which are you, Bob?’ asked the Kiwi.

I shrugged. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you guys, but I enjoy teaching. I’ve been doing it almost fifteen years and I wanted to see a bit of the world. And I don’t think Jon came here for sex, either.’

‘Born again virgin,’ sneered the Brit.

‘Yeah, you could never get Jon Boy into a go-go bar,’ agreed the Kiwi.

‘Any sort of bar,’ agreed the Canadian.

‘There you go,’ I said. ‘Not everyone’s here for sex. And I don’t see Jon sticking at a job he didn’t like. Do you think that he just found a better job?’

The Kiwi shrugged. ‘It’s possible. More likely that Petrov sacked him, I’d have thought.’

‘Why do you say that?’

The Kiwi took a sip from his bottle of Singha. ‘Nothing was good enough for Jon. He argued about the classrooms, the state of the textbooks, the fact that classes were merged if we were a teacher short, the rattle and hum from the air-con. He was never out of Petrov’s office, always in there with one complaint or another.’

‘And Petrov didn’t give a damn, right?’

‘The school’s a business, that’s all. He doesn’t care if the students come out speaking the Queen’s English or not, so long as the fees are paid. The kids don’t care one way or another. So why should we? I put in the hours, I get paid, end of story.’

I took a sip of my beer. ‘So do you think Jon quit? Or Petrov sacked him?’

‘Either’s a possibility.’

‘You’ve all got lockers at the school, right?’

The Kiwi frowned at the change of subject. ‘So?’

‘I’m just wondering if Jon cleaned his out.’

The frown deepened. ‘Do you think something’s happened to him?’

‘I’d feel a lot easier knowing that he’d cleared out his locker, that’s all.’

The Kiwi put down his beer. ‘You think Petrov did something to him?’

I put my hands up. ‘I’m just considering all angles, that’s all.’

‘You don’t shoot a guy just because he objects to teaching from photocopied text books,’ said the Kiwi.

‘Who said anything about shooting?’ I said.

‘That’s what you were suggesting.’

‘You’re the one who mentioned shooting,’ I said. ‘Is Petrov like that?’

The Brit screwed up his face as if he’d just swallowed a wasp. ‘We did see him with a gun once. In his office.’

‘Once,’ said the Kiwi.

‘He was playing with it,’ said the Brit. ‘Looked like he was practising a quick draw.’