Stephen Leather - Bangkok Bob and the missing Mormon

It was the website that had got me started as a part-time private eye. A woman in Seattle who’d bought a couple of Khmer statues from me sent me an email asking if I’d go around to her husband’s hotel and check that he was okay. He’d gone to Thailand on a golfing holiday with half a dozen of his buddies and she hadn’t heard from him for three days.

She’d imagined all sorts of scenarios, most of which involved her husband running off with a sloe-eyed beauty.

There was no great mystery. He’d gone down with food poisoning and was in hospital. His buddies had headed off to Pattaya after the doctors had said that he’d be back on his feet in a day or two. They’d assumed that he’d phone his wife, he’d assumed that they’d done it.

I called her, put her mind at rest, and a week later I received a cheque for five hundred dollars that I hadn’t asked for. I hadn’t even thought about money. The guy ran a computer business and a few months after he got back to Seattle he called me and me to check out a Thai software firm that he was planning to do business with. I made a few calls and discovered that the two guys running the software company had a history of ripping off Western investors. The Seattle guy was so grateful that he sent me a cheque for five thousand dollars and passed on my name to all his friends.

Now I probably got half a dozen requests for help every week. Most are through the website or word of mouth. A few get pointed in my direction from the Western embassies. I don’t take on every case. Just the ones that I find interesting, or where I know that I’ll make a difference. I liked Mr and Mrs Clare and I wanted to help.

I wanted to reunite them with their son.

And I wanted to lose the feeling I had that something bad had happened to him.

I looked at my watch. It was time to visit the Kube.

Or at least what was left of it.

The Kube was in Sukhumvit Soi 71, also known as Pridi Banomyong, named after the seventh prime minister of Thailand who ordered it to be built. He also founded Thammasat University, the country’s second oldest. He did a lot of good things for Thailand, and I don’t think he would have been impressed with what had happened in the street that bore his name. Two hundred and twenty three young people dead. Many more injured. And all because some Thai wannabe rock star thought it would be a good idea to let off fireworks in the middle of his show.

I paid the taxi driver and waited until a stream of motorcycles had passed by on the inside before opening the door and getting out. The air was stiflingly hot after the blisteringly cold aircon and within seconds my face was bathed in sweat. Panels of corrugated iron had been erected on a scaffold frame to shield the burnt carcass of the building from the road. Two uniformed policemen were standing by their Tiger Boxer motorcycles. One of them was drinking a can of Red Bull.

‘I’m here to see Colonel Somsak,’ I said in my most polite Thai. ‘He’s expecting me.’

One of them pointed at a gap in the corrugated iron and I went through. I could smell the ash and seared wood before I saw the building, or what was left of it. It had once been a two-storey building, the lower part built of concrete blocks and clad with wood, and the upper storey made of teak. Only the blocks remained, the grey concrete stained with black soot. The window frames had been reduced to ash and there was broken glass all around.

Somsak was standing in front of a concrete arch on which the name of the club was spelt out in yellow metal letters which had buckled in the heat of the fire. He was wearing his brown uniform that looked as if it had been spray-painted onto his athletic body, a peaked cap with gold insignia and gleaming black boots. His Glock was in its nylon holster on his hip and he was holding a transceiver as he spoke to a pretty woman in a black suit who was carrying a Louis Vuitton briefcase. Standing close by were two more uniformed officers.

Somsak grinned when he saw me and waved his transceiver. ‘Khun Bob, come and meet the Public Prosecutor,’ he said. ‘Khun Jintana, this is the Khun Bob I was telling you about.’

Khun Jintana smiled and managed to wai me which was no mean feat considering she was holding the briefcase. It was a nice wai, too, with eye contact before and after. I figured the wai was more out of respect for my wife than for me but I gave her a wai back anyway.

Somsak grinned again and hugged me and patted me on the back with his transceiver. ‘Good to see you, my friend.’

‘Terrible business,’ I said, nodding at the carnage behind him.

Somsak nodded. ‘You should have been here on the night,’ he said. ‘It was bad.’

Somsak was based at the Thonglor station, not far from my apartment, and the Kube was on his patch.

‘Will there be prosecutions, Khun Jintana?’ I asked.

She smiled, showing perfect teeth. ‘That remains to be seen, Khun Bob,’ she said. ‘The investigation is on-going.’ She smiled again.

I had spoken to her in Thai and she had replied in English. Perfect English, but then my Thai is perfect, too.

‘Two hundred and twenty-three dead,’ I said. ‘That’s terrible.’

‘Most of them teenagers,’ said Somsak. ‘And a lot of them underage. It doesn’t look as if they were checking IDs. And it’s two hundred and twenty-five. Two more died overnight.’

‘And how many have still to be identified?’

Somsak looked pained. ‘A lot,’ he said.

‘Is there are a problem?’

‘The bodies are in a mess,’ he said. ‘The ones with ID are done but if the fire’s destroyed ID and clothing then we just have work through missing person lists plus dental records and once we’ve done that the Central Institute of Forensic Science will start DNA testing.’

‘What about the foreigners? How do you about getting dental records for them?’

Somsak looked even more pained. ‘It’s not my field, Khun Bob. I wish that it was. I’ve been told that’s the way to proceed.’

Hierarchy was everything in Thailand. Bosses were never to be criticised, even when they were wrong.

‘I have to be going,’ said Jintana. She gave me another wai and walked away, swinging her briefcase.

‘Do you know who she is?’ asked Somsak.

‘The Public Prosecutor, you said.’

‘Ah, she’s much more than that,’ said Somsak. ‘She’s from a big family. Her father is an MP in Chiang Mai. Went to school with one of the owners of the Kube.’

‘That’s one hell a coincidence.’

‘My father always used to say that there are no coincidences in life, only opportunity,’ said Somsak.

‘Your father was a wise man,’ I said. We both watched her walk through the gap in the corrugated iron and onto the pavement. ‘So do you think you’ll punish anyone for this? For the deaths?’

‘Someone will have to be punished,’ said Somsak. ‘A lot of kids died here. A lot of hi-so kids. The phones have been ringing off the hook.’

‘What about the owners?’

‘It’s complicated,’ said Somsak. He jerked a thumb at the ruined building. ‘And after this it’s going to get even more complicated, I’m sure. The real owners invested in the place about five years ago, but they did it through an offshore company and used figurehead directors in Thailand.’

‘That’s interesting.’

‘But not unusual,’ said Somsak. ‘Places like this sometimes get busted for drugs or underage drinking and the great and the good don’t like to see their names in Thai Rath.’

Thai Rath is one of the bestselling tabloid newspapers and the paper gives a whole new meaning to the word sensationalism.

‘And Khun Jintana’s father is friends with one of the figureheads or one of the great and good?’ I asked.