Stephen Leather - Bangkok Bob and the missing Mormon

Guns aren’t difficult to get in Thailand, and just because a man has one doesn’t mean he’s going to use it.

But it wasn’t a good sign.

‘Look, we make jokes about it being a school run by the Russian mafia, but the school is a business,’ said the Kiwi. ‘And Petrov is a businessman.’

‘A businessman with a gun,’ I said.

‘He does hang out with some pretty heavy characters,’ said the Brit.

‘So now we’re condemning a man for the friends he’s got,’ said the Kiwi. ‘Look, he pays my wages and leaves me alone. What more can you ask for from a boss? Jon Junior was a pain in the arse and I wouldn’t be surprised if Petrov sacked him.’

‘Fine. So if Jon Junior was sacked, where is he?’

The three teachers shrugged.

‘Who knows?’ said the Kiwi. ‘People come, people go. Bangkok’s a city of transients.’

‘Who cares?’ said the Brit. ‘He was a stuck-up prick. So where are we going tonight? I fancy Nana Plaza.’

Jai yen.

I caught a taxi back to the shop and as I sat in the back I dialled the cellphone number that Jon Junior had called. The answering service kicked in again. This time I left a message.

‘You’re going to what?’ Noy asked me over breakfast. This time I’d cooked for her. A Thai omelette stuffed with pork, boiled rice, and a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice with added salt, just the way she likes it. It’s one the strange things about Thais – they put salt in their orange juice and sugar in their soups. Go figure.

‘Just for a day or two,’ I said. I sipped my coffee and tried to look as if teaching English was the most natural thing in the world for me to suggest.

‘Would you like to tell me why at this stage in your life you’ve suddenly decided to teach English?’

‘It’s a case.’

‘Honey, you’re an antiques dealer. You don’t have cases.’

‘I’m looking for a boy.’

Her spoon froze in the air on the way to her lips. ‘Oh my Buddha,’ she said.

‘That came out wrong,’ I admitted.

‘I hope so.’

‘There’s an American boy gone missing, his parents have asked me to find him. He taught at an English school and I want to see if his students know where he went.’

She put down her spoon. ‘And you’re going to do this by pretending to be an English teacher?’

‘A teacher of English, yes,’ I said. ‘How hard can that be?’

‘You were a policeman,’ she said. ‘And now you sell antiques.’

‘It’s English, honey. It’s not rocket science.’

‘And when are you going to start this new career?’

‘Tomorrow. And it’s not a career, honey.’ I sipped my coffee.

‘And what about the medical? How did that go?’

‘I get the results this afternoon.’ I patted my stomach. ‘But I feel good. I weigh about five pounds less than the last time I had a medical and I’m playing more tennis.’

‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed,’ she said. ‘Just in case.’

‘It’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘The nurse who took my blood pressure said I had the heart of a twenty-five year old.’

‘Well I just hope he doesn’t ask for it back,’ she said, and giggled at her own joke.

She has a lovely giggle, my wife.

We finished breakfast and then I spent the morning in the shop, pricing a consignment of opium pipes that I’d had shipped over from Vietnam. They were copies of Chinese antiques and looked just like the real thing but at a fraction of the price. I didn’t sell them as genuine antiques, of course, but I have competitors who do. I put them on the website with a clear warning that they were decorative and not antiques.

I had lunch at Fatso’s. Big Ron wasn’t there and a tourist in a Singha Beer sweatshirt and union jack shorts was sitting in the big chair while his wife took a photograph with her cellphone.

I sat at a stool at the other end of the bar and drank a Phuket Beer and had one of Big Ron’s famous steak and kidney pies with French fries and peas before walking along Soi 3 to the Bumrungrad.

I was due to see Doctor Duangtip at two o’clock but I got there at one and went up to see Ronnie Marsh in the burns unit. I’d spoken to a Thai lawyer who I sometimes played tennis with and he wanted Marsh to call him but I wasn’t sure if he had access to a phone. I knocked on the door to his room and pushed open the door and then stopped as I saw a teenage girl lying on the bed, an oxygen mask over her face. ‘Sorry,’ I said, and closed the door. I frowned as a looked at the room number. It was definitely the right one.

A nurse was talking down the corridor pushing a trolley and I asked her what had happened to Khun Ronnie. The look on her face gave it away before she even opened her mouth to speak.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Khun Ronnie passed away.’

‘What happened? He was okay when I spoke to him,’ I said.

‘He passed away last night.’

‘Passed away?’

‘He had heart failure.’

‘Heart failure?’

The nurse nodded. ‘Are you a relative?’ she asked.

‘Just a friend. Is there somebody who can tell me what happened to him?’

The nurse took me along to an office and introduced me to a doctor who looked as if he was in his twenties. He shook my hand solemnly and asked me to sit down, then explained that Ronnie had suffered a massive heart attack in the middle of the night.

‘Is that usual with burns victims?’ I asked.

He pushed his spectacles higher up his nose and shifted in his seat. ‘It can happen,’ he said. ‘But Mr Marsh did seem to be recovering. We had a resuscitation team in his room within seconds of the alarm sounding but they were too late.’ He tapped away at his computer terminal and squinted at the screen. ‘We don’t have a next of kin for Mr Marsh,’ he said. ‘Do you know where his family is?’

‘I don’t,’ I said.

The doctor frowned. ‘That’s a pity,’ he said.

‘I’ll ask around,’ I said. “Look, I know this might sound a little strange, but it isn’t possible that something caused his heart attack?’

‘Such as?’

I shrugged. Like somebody injecting him with potassium chloride, sodium gluconate, or even a straightforward air bubble, is what I wanted to say.

But I didn’t.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. There was no point because if someone had killed Ronnie then there’d be no way of proving it. Potassium chloride and sodium gluconate disappeared from the system within hours and an air bubble was almost impossible to spot. ‘It’s just that he seemed fine when I spoke to him last.’

‘These things do happen,’ said the doctor. ‘Burns of the sort that Mr Marsh suffered cause a massive shock to the system.’ He leant back in his chair. ‘There will be a post mortem of course. I am sure we will know more then.’

On the way out I dropped by the nurse’s station. There were three young nurses sharing a box of cookies and I asked them if Khun Ronnie had received any visitors before he died.

One of the nurses had been working the night shift and she said that yes, two men had come to see Khun Ronnie and brought him some oranges.

I asked her to describe them and I was pretty sure it was Lek and Tam, the kickboxers.

Funny that.

I wouldn’t have pegged either of them as fruit fans.

‘Well, it’s good news, bad news, Khun Bob,’ said Doctor Duangtip, flicking the corner of my file with his thumbnail.

That wasn’t exactly what I’d been hoping to hear. The last three times I’d been in for the chat about the yearly check-up it had been a beaming smile and a pat on the back and see you next year.

And this time I was five pounds lighter.