Stephen Leather - Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye - True Stories From the Case Files of Warren Olson

She happily gave me the number, I bought another round of drinks, and then paid my bill and headed to an Internet cafA© where I emailed Pete with a report of what had happened. I sent him the mobile phone number as proof that I’d spoken to her.

The next day I received a reply from Pete. He’d phoned Noi and asked her what she’d been doing that night. Noi had said she’d been bought drinks by a farang but that she wouldn’t let him pay her bar fine. And she’d promised him that she didn’t go with customers any more. It was clear from the tone of the email that Pete believed her. That’s one thing I could never understand. The client pays for information and then believes the word of a lying bargirl who is taking him for every penny she can rather than trusting the professional he’s paying.

I emailed him back, assuring him that Noi would have happily gone with me. Pete phoned me a few hours later. He said he trusted Noi, but to be absolutely sure he wanted me to go back and see her, and this time he wanted me to pay her bar fine and take her to a hotel. Once she was in the room, he wanted me to text him. He’d phone her and that would be that. I agreed, but told him that he’d have to come up with another 10,000 baht, plus the money for the bar fine, plus any other expenses. He promised to send me 12,000 baht by bank transfer. So far as I was concerned he was throwing good money after bad, but the client is always right. Even when he’s wrong.

Once the money was safely in the bank I went back to Noi’s bar. The staff greeted me like a long-lost friend and the bartender was pouring a double Jack Daniels before I’d even sat down. Noi and Lek appeared within seconds and as the waitress went off to get them two lady drinks their hands were already stroking my thighs.

A couple of drinks later and I paid bar for the two girls and we walked to a nearby short-time hotel. Four hundred baht bought us a room for ninety minutes. I was planning to text Pete while the girls were in the shower, but as soon as the door closed they pushed me on to the bed and ripped off their clothes, and mine. I tried to put up a fight, honest I did, but they were consummate professionals, and besides I figured it was Pete’s fault, putting temptation in my way like he did. They were both as cute as hell and had clearly worked together before. Even taught me a few tricks. Twenty minutes later I was flat on my back, drained, while the two girls were giggling in the shower.

I sent a text to Pete, giving him the name of the hotel and the fact that she was there with Lek. I dressed quickly. As I headed out of the door, I heard Noi’s mobile phone start to ring. I hurried down the stairs and out onto the street. I didn’t want to be around when she tried to explain where she was and what she’d been doing.

I don’t know why farangs think that the place to look for a long-term partner is in a go-go bar or massage parlour. I doubt that they’d go looking to marry a prostitute in their own country. Like I said, it’s as if they check in their brains when they arrive in Thailand. I often get asked if it’s possible to marry a bargirl and actually live happily ever after. I knew of a few cases where it’s worked out. Four, in fact. But in all four cases the girls hadn’t been working in the bars for more than a few weeks, and the guys they married weren’t hardened barflies. But they were the exceptions. Generally marriages to bargirls don’t work out. The girls are damaged goods. Many are on drugs, many have a kid upcountry staying with the parents, more often than not there’s a Thai boyfriend or even a husband in the background. A girl who’s been working the bars for just a couple of years will have slept with hundreds of different guys and is probably supporting her whole family. Any farang who expects to find the love of his life under those circumstances needs his head examined. And the services of a Bangkok private eye.

I was having a dream about two twin go-go dancers doing terrible things to me with whipped cream when my mobile phone started ringing and dragged me back to reality. It was a British voice on the other end of the line. A man.

‘What time is it there?’ he asked.

‘What do you think I am, a speaking clock?’ I growled. I squinted at the clock on the bedside table. It was just after three.

‘It’s nine o’clock here,’ he said.

‘It’s three in Bangkok,’ I said.

‘That’s okay then,’ he said.

‘In the morning,’ I said. ‘It’s three o’clock in the morning.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m in London.’

‘Congratulations,’ I said.

‘Shall I call back later?’

I sat up in bed, rubbing my face. ‘That’s okay, I’m awake now. Is this business or pleasure?’

‘Business,’ he said. ‘I need help.’

I always keep a notebook and pen by my clock so I took notes as the caller went through his story. His name was Mike Tyson (no relation to the boxer, he said, ‘and I’m a fair bit older and whiter’) and he was a retired businessmen. He’d built up his own sportswear company and sold out for a decent price once he hit sixty. I got the feeling that he wasn’t exactly short of money. He’d sent his Thai girlfriend the money for her ticket to the UK but Mike had waited at Heathrow airport for hours and there’d been no sign of her. He’d tried calling her mobile phone but it was switched off. Mike was sure that something had happened to her and he wanted me to check the local hospitals, go around to her house, to do whatever it took to find out what had happened to her.

It was an easy enough job, so I told him to send me a 10,000-baht retainer through Western Union.

‘No problem, that’s how I send money to Metta,’ he said.

‘Have you been sending her a lot of money?’ I asked. Alarm bells were already ringing.

‘Just a few hundred pounds a month,’ he said. ‘And some extra money when her father was in hospital. And money for her passport and visa. And for her ticket.’

I asked Mike for as much detail as he could give me. Her name was Metta Khonkaen, he said. I got him to spell it for me twice because Khonkaen is a city in the north east and it seemed a strange surname. It would be like being called Pete Birmingham or Eddie Queenstown. Not impossible, but unlikely. He had her date of birth and I groaned inwardly when I realised that he was almost three times her age. Alarm bells were really ringing now.

‘Where did you meet Metta?’ I asked. I would have bet money that he’d met the lovely Metta in a go-go bar or massage parlour.

‘I haven’t actually met her yet,’ said Mike. ‘Not in person. We met online.’

I was totally awake now. Mike had sent hundreds if not thousands of pounds to a girl he hadn’t even met? I was starting to wish I’d asked for a bigger retainer because Mike clearly wasn’t a man who kept a tight grip on his money.

I asked Mike to email me any pictures he had of Metta, and to fax copies of any paperwork he had, then I put down the phone and went back to sleep.

The next day I wandered along to Starbucks for a latte and a banana muffin and then took a motorcycle taxi to the Western Union office. Mike had been as good as his word and I collected my 10,000 baht. There was a faxed copy of her passport and copies of the papers that she’d taken to the British Embassy. And he’d emailed me some head and shoulder shots of her. Metta was a stunner, no doubt about it. Pale skin, high cheekbones, long straight hair.

I went through the motions and phoned a couple of dozen hospitals in Bangkok but none had admitted a Metta Khonkaen. I checked my emails and there was a message from Mike. One of life’s little coincidences; just a couple of hours after speaking to me, he’d received an email from a friend of Metta’s. According to the friend, Metta had been arrested by the immigration police when she was trying to leave the country. There was something wrong with her visa and she didn’t have enough funds to cover her time in the UK. The police were holding her in the notorious Bangkok Hilton and the friend said that she needed 50,000 baht to get her released, and another 150,000 baht so that Metta could show she had sufficient funds to travel to the UK. Two hundred thousand baht in all. The helpful friend had included her own name and bank account details so that Mike could send her the money without further ado.