Stephen Leather - Bangkok Bob and the missing Mormon

And I’d been playing a lot of tennis.

And I’d cut down on my drinking.

Good news, bad news didn’t sound reassuring.

The last time I’d had to break good news, bad news to anyone it had been a data processor from Manchester who’d asked me to run a check on his Thai fiancee. I don’t normally get involved with relationship cases because when you tell people something they don’t want to hear about their loved one, they tend to lash out at the messenger. Besides, I also figure that what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms or a short-time hotel is up to them and their consciences. I’d taken Jason’s case, though, mainly because he wasn’t the normal case of a tourist falling head over heels for a bargirl. Jason worked for a website design company in Hua Hin and he’d met the girl of his dreams. Her name was Fun. It means rain. Jason was planning to marry her and then take her to Manchester to meet his parents and introduce them to his new bride. While he was in the UK he planned to sell a flat he had there. With the money he was planning to buy a piece of land near the beach in Hua Hin and build a house where he and Fun could live happily ever after. Under Thai law, foreigners can’t own land, so Jason wanted to be one hundred per cent sure that he was doing the right thing. He’d heard horror stories of expats who’d lost everything after marrying local girls and so he wanted me to check that there wasn’t a Thai husband waiting to come out of the shadows once all Jason’s assets were in Fun’s name. He was a friend of a friend so I agreed to help.

It was an easy job. Fun was from Udon Thani, in the North East. Jason gave me her full Thai name, her date of birth and her parents address. I drove up to Udon Thani and spent an hour drinking tea with two middle-aged ladies in the local amphur – the district office.

Good news, bad news.

The good news was that Fun was totally loyal, totally faithful, loved Jason to bits and would probably make him a great wife.

The bad news was that Fun was a man.

Oh yes, it happens. It happens a lot in Thailand. A snip and a tuck and a six-month course of hormones and Mr Fun was Miss Fun.

Good news, bad news.

Jason took it quite well, I thought. So far as I know, they’re still together. He’s given up any thoughts about taking her back to Manchester. Tells everyone that she’d hate the rain and the cold but the real reason is that all her legal documents, including Fun’s ID card and passport, show that she’s male. The British Embassy would laugh in his face if he applied for a visa for her. So they live happily ever after, sort of, in Hua Hin. He processes data for a couple of Bangkok companies, and Fun does whatever men who have had their penises surgically removed do. They’re thinking about adopting a baby, apparently.

‘The good news,’ said Doctor Duangtip, ‘is that your cholesterol level is on the way down at last. You must be exercising.’

I shrugged and smiled. ‘A bit of tennis.’

‘Your heart is strong, your chest x-ray is clear and your vision and hearing are exceptional.’

Good news.

Great.

Fantastic.

So what’s the bad news?

‘No diabetes, blood pressure normal, your prostate is fine.’

More good news.

‘Your lower abdomen ultrasound shows no problems, your liver is functioning exactly as it should.’

She loves you, Jason. Loves you to bits. There’s just one thing you should know…

Doctor Duangtip took a deep breath. ‘There is however a slightly raised level of CEA.’

That’s the bad news. It didn’t sound so bad. But then, I hadn’t a clue what a raised CEA level was.

Doctor Duangtip looked pained. ‘It’s not hugely high, but it is abnormal and is generally regarded as a red flag.’

A red flag.

Now that sounded like bad news.

It sounded like train crashes and road accidents and bodies lying bleeding in the road.

‘It’s what we call a marker,’ said the doctor, looking over my shoulder at a spot somewhere on the wall.

I nodded. A marker didn’t sound quite as bad as a red flag.

‘It can, in certain cases, be an indication of an intestinal tumour,’ he said.

‘A tumour? Cancer, you mean?’

‘Yes. Cancer of the colon.’

Right then. There it was, finally out in the open. Definitely bad news.

Cancer.

Worse than a red flag.

A lot worse.

‘Wouldn’t that have shown up on the ultrasound?’ I asked. Throw me a lifebelt. Something.

He looked even more pained and flicked the file again. ‘The ultrasound gives us a view of the outside of the various organs in the abdominal cavity, but we can’t see inside them.’ He leaned forward and clasped his hands together as if about to say a prayer. ‘Khun Bob, it is a marker, that is all. The fact that you have a raised level of CEA is an indication that something might be wrong. That is all. It just means that we have to carry out a few more tests. And you should see a specialist.’

Something might be wrong.

That sounds better than a red flag.

Better than cancer.

Cancer.

Shit.

What the hell am I going to tell my wife?

Noy was sitting on the terrace playing something by Bach. I stood in the shadows watching her for the best part of ten minutes. She’s always beautiful, but there was something incredibly sexy about her when she concentrated on her violin. Her eyes half open, a look of rapture on her face as her lithe body swayed in time to the music. I wanted to rip the violin from her, to take her in my arms, to force my lips on her hers and to take her there and then on the terrace. She’d have killed me on the spot, of course. For a start the violin is a Stradivarius and worth almost as much as our apartment. And her playing is as close to perfection as you can get. Interrupting her for something as basic as sex would have been a mortal sin. So I stood and listened and worshipped.

Thailand is famous for its beautiful women, and there are head-turners in every department store and on every street corner, but my stomach still turns over whenever I see Noy. When I first met her hair was almost down to her waist, jet black and glossy, but she’s had it cut since so that it’s just down to her shoulders. She’s got high cheekbones and a cute nose and skin the colour of milk chocolate and a body with curves in all the right places. She was wearing a red dress that ended above the knee showing off one of the best pairs of legs I’ve ever seen. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t thank the Lord that I found her and married her.

Actually, she found me.

I first met Noy when she came into my shop and bought a small nineteenth-century Burmese Buddha. She asked me lots of questions about its authenticity and how it had come into the country, and then she asked a few similar questions about my own authenticity. I figured she just liked to talk and I was happy to stand and listen and gaze at her.

She came back a week later and bought a Khmer wall hanging that I’d had in the shop for almost three years. She barely looked at it and spent most of the time asking me about which restaurants I liked and where I went for holidays. I thought she just liked to talk. On the way out she gave me her card. Back then she was working for one of the glossy magazines that were full of advertisements for dresses that cost twice the national average wage. She was a stylist, whatever that meant.

I had two assistants back then, middle-aged sisters called Start and Stop. They were born two years apart and yes, the first one born was optimistically called Start but the second was delivered by Caesarean and the mother had decided that enough was enough. I’d only been in Thailand a couple of years and my Thai wasn’t up to much so when the two sisters put their heads together and started laughing I didn’t know what had amused them but figured that it almost certainly involved me.