Stephen Leather - Bangkok Bob and the missing Mormon

‘I told them I’d be in Thailand for a while.’

‘Your phone’s off and you’ve stopped using your email account.’

He waved at hand at the beach. ‘There’s no wi-fi here,’ he said.

‘And the phone?’

‘What do you want, Mr Turtledove?’

Tukkata slid off her sunlounger and put her arms around Jon Junior. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked him. She was wearing a yellow t-shirt and a long white wraparound skirt.

‘It’s okay, teerak, he’s a friend of my parents.’

Teerak.

It means darling.

He smiled at her. ‘Tukkata, can you wait for me in the hut?’

‘I want to stay with you,’ she said, resting her cheek against his arm.

‘Let me talk to him on my own,’ he said. He patted her on the hip. ‘It’s okay. We’re just going to talk.’

‘I’m not going back,’ she said. ‘I’m not going back to Bangkok.’

‘I know,’ said Jon Junior. ‘I just need to explain things to Mr Turtledove.’

Tukkata hugged Jon Junior and then kissed him on the cheek. She was close to tears.

‘It’s going to be all right, teerak,’ he said. ‘I swear.’

She nodded, picked up her towel and padded across the sand towards their hut in the shade of a clump of coconut palms.

‘She’s a lovely girl,’ I said.

‘The best,’ he said.

He sat down in his sunlounger and I dropped into the one that Tukkata has just vacated. ‘Your parents are worried, Jon,’ I said. ‘Frantic.’

‘I guess so.’

‘Why didn’t you call them? Or write to them?’

‘I’ve been busy.’ He looked out over the sea.

‘You’re sitting on a beach,’ I said.

‘Like I said, with no internet connection and I’ve no idea where the nearest post office is.’

‘You’ve got a phone.’

He looked across at me. ‘We can’t use the phone because then her father will find us. No phones, no credit cards. We have to stay off the grid.’

‘And how long can you live like that?’ I asked.

He gestured at the beach hut. ‘We can stay there for as long as we want.’

‘What are you doing for money?’

‘I’ve got cash. Tukkata has some. She had some gold jewellery that she sold in Bangkok. The hut’s cheap and we eat local food. A couple of hundred baht a day is all we need.’ He ran a hand through his sun-bleached hair and frowned. ‘How did you find us?’

‘Tukkata sent a text message, three days ago.’

‘Who to?”

‘Her friend, Kai.’

Jon Junior sighed. ‘I told her to leave the phone off. If you found us, her father can, too. We’ll have to move.’

‘That’s your plan?’ I said. ‘To keep running?’

Her shook his head. ‘She’s eighteen next week,’ he said. ‘Then her family can’t do anything.’

‘To be honest, I don’t think her father is looking for you.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘When I talked to him he seemed more worried about how much I knew then whether or not I knew where you were. Seems to me that he’s not telling anyone that Tukkata is missing.’

‘She’s his daughter.’

‘Yes, but she’s the daughter who knows his dirty little secret. I think the last thing he wants just now is a confrontation with her.’

Jon Junior nodded thoughtfully. ‘What about you, Mr Turtledove? What do you do now that you’ve found me?”

‘I’m working for your parents, not for Tukkata’s father. And to be honest all your parents want to know is that you’re safe.’

‘They want me back home, working for my father.’

‘That’s understandable,’ I said.

‘I want to stay in Thailand,’ he said.

‘A lot of people do,’ I said. ‘But you have to think it through. It’s not the easiest place to live and work when you’re a foreigner.’

‘You seem to be doing all right,’ he said.

I laughed. ‘I’ve got a Thai wife who makes my life a whole lot easier,’ I said.

‘That’s what I’m planning, Mr Turtledove. Tukkata and I, we’re going to get married.’

‘That’s what Tukkata wants?’

‘It’s what we both want.’

‘Jon, you’re twenty-one and Tukkata is just seventeen.’

‘Eighteen next week. Mr Turtledove, I’m four years older than her. When I’ll be a hundred she’ll be ninety-six.’ He grinned. ‘Who’s going to care about four years then?’ He waved a hand around the beach. ‘Since I came to Thailand I’ve seen sixty-year-old men walking around with girls in their twenties, girls young enough to be their grand-daughters. Is that what I should do, Mr Turtledove? Follow their example?’

It was funny but every time he called me ‘Mr Turtledove’ I felt about a hundred years old.

‘Because applying that philosophy, the girl of my dreams isn’t going to be born for another twenty years.’

‘I do understand what you’re saying, Jon, But you’re very young to be thinking about getting married, and Tukkata’s even younger.’

‘You’ve met my parents, Mr Turtledove?’

‘Yes. They came to my office.’

‘Well, next time you talk to them, why don’t you ask them how old they were when they got married?’

‘Ah,’ I said, catching his drift.

He nodded. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Younger than me. Quite a bit younger as it happens. So I don’t think they’ll be casting the first stone on that score.’ He leaned forward. ‘You know that Mormons don’t marry for life, they marry for eternity?’

‘I had heard that,’ I said.

‘For eternity, Mr Turtledove. It’s not something that you enter into lightly. You have to make sure that you have made the right choice. And I know that Tukkata is the girl I want to spend eternity with. Do you understand that?’

I nodded slowly.

Actually, I did.

Because that’s exactly how I felt about Noy.

‘I understand,’ I said.

‘So now what?’ he asked.

I shrugged. ‘You’re an adult, you make your own choices. And like you said, as of next week Tukkata’s an adult too.’

‘What would you do, Mr Turtledove? About her father?’

I sighed. It was a good question.

‘You could try talking to him. Or she could. Or Tukkata could talk to her mother.’

‘It would destroy her family if her mother found out. Kai was underage. He could go to prison.’

‘I’m not sure if that would happen,’ I said. ‘I’ve met Kai, she’s hardly a victim in this.’

‘She’s just a kid,’ said Jon Junior. ‘Tukkata’s father committed statutory rape.’

‘Well, strictly speaking Tukkata’s under age too.’

Jon Junior frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

I nodded at the beach hut. ‘The two of you are sleeping together, right?’

His jaw dropped. ‘What, you think…?’ He shook his head. ‘I haven’t laid a finger on her. I swear to God.’

‘Okay,’ I said.

‘I mean it, Mr Turtledove. Yes, we stay in the hut together and we hold each other but that’s as far as it goes and we won’t be doing anything else until we’re married. I’m a virgin and so is Tukkata and that’s the way we’ll be on the day we exchange our views before God.’

I guess that’s the great thing about being young.

You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.

Jon Junior was a good kid and I figured he’d be all right.

I stood up. ‘I’m going back to Bangkok,’ he said.

‘You won’t tell anyone where we are?’

‘It’s none of my business,’ I said. I took my phone out of my pocket. I had already stored Mr Clare’s number in Utah and I called it. I didn’t know what time it was in Salt Lake City and I figured that the Clares wouldn’t care once they found out who was calling. The phone began to ring out and I handed it to Jon Junior. ‘But you need to talk to your parents.’