Stephen Leather - Bangkok Bob and the missing Mormon

She shook her head.

‘Did he say if he was going to stay in Bangkok?’

‘Maybe,’ she said.

That could have meant that maybe he said, or maybe he didn’t, or that he did and she didn’t remember.

‘Did any friends visit him?’

She frowned as she thought, then she shook her head slowly. ‘No one come to see him.’

‘No girlfriends?’

She shook her head a bit more emphatically this time.

‘What about when he checked out? He took all his luggage with him?’

‘Jing Jing,’ she said. Sure. The first Thai she’d used with me. It had finally got through to her that I was speaking to her in her own language.

‘Did he have a lot of bags?’

‘A rucksack. A black one. And two nylon bags.’ She was back to speaking English.

‘So did he get a taxi?’

‘A tuk-tuk.’

Tuk-tuks were the three-wheeled motorcycle hybrids that buzzed around town. They used to be a quick way of getting around town but the traffic is now so heavy that they weren’t any quicker, or cheaper, than taxis. They were usually used by tourists or locals for short journeys down the narrow sois. I asked her if she meant a tuk-tuk or if he’d used one of the small sideless vans that also plied their trade down the smaller roads. She decided that it was a van. A red one. By then I’d pretty much run out of questions so I thanked her in Thai and walked back up the soi to Sukhumvit Road.

I walked down to the traffic lights at Soi 3, and waited for them to change. All the sois to the north of Sukhumvit were odd numbers, those on the south side were even. Fatso’s was in Soi 4, also known as Soi Nana and home to Nana Plaza. Nana Plaza is one of the city’s red light areas, with forty-odd go-go bars and a couple of thousand bargirls.

The traffic lights were under the control of a middle-aged policeman sitting in a glass cubicle on the Soi 4 side of Sukhumvit. He had a walkie-talkie pressed to his ear. There was no alternative other than to wait patiently.

Jai yen yen.

Relax.

Don’t worry.

My cell phone rang. It was Khun Chauvalit, calling me from the airport.

‘Your Jon Junior did indeed arrive on a Delta airlines flight from Seattle on January the eighth,’ he said. ‘He was given sixty days and he left the country by land on March the fifth.’

‘By land?’

‘To Cambodia. The Ban Laem border crossing. He returned the same day and was given a further sixty days. He had a double entry sixty-day visa granted by the Thai Consulate in Chicago.’

‘Did he gave an address?’

‘It is listed as simply “Hotel”, with no name or address,’ said Khun Chauvalit.

‘And so far as we know he is still in Thailand?’

‘He has sixty days from March the fifth, though the visa that he has can be extended for a further thirty days if he visits the immigration department.’

I thanked Khun Chauvalit and ended the call.

The good news was that Jon Junior was still in Thailand. The bad news was that he’d arrived back just a week before the fire at the Kube.

The policeman gave the order to change the lights to red and I hurried across the road and down Soi 4.

The early shift go-go girls were starting to arrive at the plaza, more often than not dropped of by their motorcycle-driving boyfriends. Most of the girls wore the standard off-duty bargirl uniform of low-cut black t-shirt, tight blue jeans and impossibly high heels. The ones who were doing well had an ounce or two of gold around their necks and a top-of-the-range cellphone clipped to their belt.

A couple of girls sitting at the beer bar at the entrance of the plaza called over to tell me what a handsome man I was.

Not true, but always nice to hear anyway.

I walked down Soi 4, past the beauty salon, the German restaurant that served a halfway decent wiener schnitzel and the travel agency run by Debby from Rochdale who’s been married to a Thai for so long that she speaks English with an accent.

I pushed open the glass door that led into the haven of Britishness that is Fatso’s.

Big Ron was sitting in his specially-reinforced chair and smearing butter over two halves of a stick of French bread. His early-evening snack. He didn’t really start eating until the sun went down.

The chair was huge, almost three feet across, built from scaffolding with a massive red cushion. It just about accommodated his huge backside.

‘How are they hanging, Bob?’ he asked as he began stacking rashers of fried bacon onto one of the slices.

‘Straight and level,’ I said, sliding onto one of the barstools. ‘How’s the diet?’

Big Ron chuckled as he piled the bacon higher. He tipped the scales at something like six hundred and fifty pounds, but it had been some years since he’d stepped on a set of scales. Even taxis were reluctant to take him any distance, figuring that the damage to the suspension would be irreversible. He lived in a two-bedroom condo, which was a ten-minute waddle from the bar.

One of the waitresses put an opened bottle of Phuket Beer in front of me and I smiled my thanks. ‘How are you, Khun Bob?’ she asked. Her name was Bee and she had shoulder-length hair and a cute button nose and a skirt that barely covered her backside when she bent down to pick bottles of cold beer out of the chest fridge behind the bar.

Not that I looked.

Cross my heart.

‘I’m fine, Bee, thanks.’ She noticed the beads of sweat and my brow and handed me an ice-cold towel in a plastic wrapper.

All the Fatso’s waitresses had infallible memories for faces, names and drinks. You could walk into the bar once, order one drink and leave and not go back for a year. But when you did go back, they’d remember your name and what you drank. And whether or not you’d thrown up in the bathroom.

There were only two other customers sitting at the bar. Alan and Bruce, both long-time regulars. Alan was an analyst with a Japanese stockbroking firm; Bruce helped run a furniture factory. I waved at Bee to buy them both drinks and they raised their glasses in thanks.

Fatso’s was a small place with room for about twenty sitting on stools around the horseshoe-shaped bar and another dozen patrons could just about pack into the space by the door. A spiral staircase ran upstairs to a small restaurant area with a dozen tables and the unisex toilets. Big Ron kept a small camera behind the bar so that he could take pictures up the skirts of his waitresses as they went upstairs. The results of his hobby were hanging on the walls of the bar, along with photographs of the Fatso’s regulars in various stages of inebriation. There’s a couple of me somewhere but I don’t go out of my way to seek them out. Part of my past.

I’m not ashamed of my heavy-drinking days. But they’re a bit like an old girlfriend that you never really loved and now half-regret sleeping with. I mean it was fun at the time, but looking back I cringe a bit.

Big Ron slapped the top down on his sandwich and began munching on it. Bacon fat and butter dribbled down his chins and he groaned contentedly. The bacon sandwich was just a snack; he’d start eating in earnest at about eight o’clock.

‘I’m looking for a Mormon,’ I said.

‘You’ve come to the right place, they’re all morons in here,’ said Big Ron. He grabbed a handful of paper napkins and wiped his chin.

‘I resemble that remark,’ said Alan prissily.

‘Mormon,’ I said. ‘Salt Lake City and all that.’

‘The Osmonds,’ said Bruce. ‘I’ll be your long-haired lover from Liverpool.’

‘Not in this lifetime you won’t, you bald twat,’ said Big Ron. Insulting his customers was as much a part of his charm as his habit of photographing the stocking tops of the waitresses. You either loved Big Ron or you hated him, there was no middle ground.