Stephen Leather - Bangkok Bob and the missing Mormon

He spoke to his wife in rapid Thai, telling her to go into the house. He sounded like a man who was used to being obeyed.

He walked past her and came up to me. He was about six inches shorter than me and he had to crane his neck to glare up at me. ‘Get off my property!’ he barked.

‘Mr Santhanavit, I’m from the language school, I just wanted to check that Tukkata was okay,’ I said. ‘We haven’t seen her for a while.’

‘She’s fine,’ he said. ‘I want you to go.’ He pointed at the gate. ‘Go now or I will call the police.’

‘Can I speak to her?’

‘Why do you want to speak to her?’ he said.

‘To see if there’s a problem.’

‘There’s no problem,’ he said. ‘She’s sick. In her room. Go now.’

I looked over at the house. A curtain moved in one of the ground floor windows. It was probably Mrs Santhanavit. I looked up at the bedroom windows. All the curtains were open. I didn’t believe him. I didn’t believe that his daughter was sick and I didn’t believe that she was in her bedroom.

I believed Mrs Santhanavit when she said she wasn’t there.

Which meant that Mr Santhanavit was lying.

Interesting.

I nodded and smiled and turned around and walked back through the gate. The old lady smiled and began dragging it shut behind me.

Noy wasn’t home when I got back. I wasn’t surprised. Sunday buffet was often followed by Sunday shopping and if they were really enjoying themselves it would be topped off with Sunday drinks. I went through to my study and switched on my computer, then fetched myself a bottle of Phuket Beer from the kitchen.

I swung my feet up onto the desk which is something I only do when Noy isn’t around because like most Thais she has a thing about feet. It’s bad manners to point with your feet and even worse to put your feet on the furniture, but I figure that when I’m alone in the apartment I’m king of the castle so if I want to put my feet up, I will. I pulled my MacBook on to my lap and logged on to my email account.

Most were work related but there were half a dozen questions about Thailand from guys on their way for the first time and more than twenty possible sighting of Jon Junior.

That was the problem with asking for help on the Internet – every man and his dog was keen to help but when all they had to go on was a couple of photographs there were bound to be false leads.

Seven readers of the Stickman site had contacted him to say that they’d seen Jon Junior. One was in Laos and he said he’d seen Jon Junior at a temple, another had spotted him in Burmese market, and another said he’d seen him in Orchard Towers in Singapore, known throughout Asia as the Four Floors Of Whores, buying drinks for a couple of ladyboys. As I knew that Jon Junior was in Thailand, they could all be discounted. One Stickman reader said that he’d seen him on Koh Samui, an island in the south of Thailand. Another said he’d been asleep on a bus heading for Korat, another that he’d been eating at a seafood restaurant in Pattaya, and yet another that he had been on a hiking tour visiting hilltribes around Chiang Mai.

The four sightings in Thailand were all valid possibilities but none of the readers provided any information that would help me to follow them up.

I went through the rest of the responses – six were overseas and I could ignore them straight away, especially the one that said Jon Junior had been spotted playing blackjack in a Las Vegas casino. The rest included Udon Thani, Surin, Koh Samui, Phuket, Koh Chang, and three in Pattaya. Again the readers hadn’t provided any information that would positively identify Jon Junior, though the one in Koh Samui and one of the guys in Pattaya had said that they were called Jon, and the one in Surin was wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap and had an American accent.

I drank my beer and wondered what I should do next because while I had managed to establish that Jon Junior hadn’t been caught up in the fire at the Kube I was still no closer to finding out where he was.

I logged out of my email address and onto Jon Junior’s account but there was nothing but junk mail.

His parents had said that he wasn’t using his credit card which meant that he was in hiding or that he was physically unable to use his card, which pretty much implied that he was dead because if someone had stolen the card they’d have used it and if he’d lost it he would have got a replacement by now.

I took out my cellphone and called his number but it when straight through to the Thai recording, and I called the number that the receptionist in Soi 22 had given me but that was switched off.

I put the laptop back on the desk and took a long drink from my bottle. I wasn’t getting anywhere finding Jon Junior. The only real clue I had was that a girl he might or might not have known also appeared to be missing. I was running out of options.

The front door opened and I heard Noy calling me.

‘I’m in the study!’ I called, swinging my feet off the desk. I’m only king of the castle so long as she’s off the premises.

She pushed open the door, looking lovely in a black and white dress that was probably Karen Millen, one of her favourite designers. ‘Working?’ she said.

‘Still looking for that missing Mormon.’

‘No luck?’

I shook my head. ‘How were the girls?’

She grinned. ‘Girlish,’ she said. ‘They wanted to go to Q-Bar but I bailed out.’

‘I’m glad you did. I missed you.’

‘You say the sweetest things.’

She slid onto my lap and kissed me, on the lips.

‘Are you okay?’ she asked.

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘You look tired.’

‘I’m fine.’

Except for the cancer.

If it was cancer.

Now would be a good time to tell her.

‘Are you worried about something?’

‘Why do you say that?’

She rubbed my temples with her fingertips. ‘Because you’re doing that frowning thing you always do when there’s something worrying you.’

Noy was my wife.

I loved her.

And she loved me.

I smiled and took a deep breath, and lied.

‘Just a bit of a headache.’

I’d tell her later. When she didn’t look so darn sexy.

I hugged her.

I told her that I loved her.

And we went to bed.

I didn’t think about cancer until I woke up.

I was in the shop bright and early Monday morning, dealing with orders that had come in through the website over the weekend. I had put some small bronze bowls from Laos onto eBay and they’d all sold. They were nice pieces but hard to date. They were either a hundred years old or clever fakes, and frankly even an expert would be hard pushed to tell the difference. I just described them as old Laotian bowls and let the photographs speak for themselves.

A buyer in New York had taken three, one had gone to a buyer in Paris, another to a woman in Italy and a regular customer in London had bought one and sent me an email asking if I could sell him another dozen at the same price. It was a good weekend’s work considering that I hadn’t lifted a finger. I loved ecommerce but I also liked meeting customers face to face.

Usually, that is.

Sometimes there were visitors to the shop that I really didn’t care for.

The little bell on the door tinkled as it opened and Ying already had her welcoming smile in place as she looked up from the box she was sealing.

Two men walked in and at first glance I knew that they weren’t customers. They were big men, well over six feet, both wearing tight Versace jeans and black leather jackets and with thick gold chains around their necks. One had shaved his head, revealing an ugly scar above his left ear, and the other had slicked his hair back with gel so that it glistened under the shop’s fluorescent lights.