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

I’d had four JDs and my aches and pains were starting to go when Aussie Andy came back, smelling of soap and looking like the cat that had got the cream. Miss Vee wasn’t a bad sort, he said, considering she was thirty-eight. He’d checked her ID while she was in the toilet, which I thought was using his initiative. It showed that she’d been lying about her age and from my experience if a girl lies about one thing then you can’t believe a word she says. Anyway, Miss Vee hadn’t been in the room for two minutes before she was offering him a ‘special’ massage for an extra 2,000 baht.

Andy played it straight and handed over the 300 baht that he said was the agreed fee. She phoned the agency and said that she’d been paid, then she started giving him the massage. A lot of baby oil was used, and she spent most of her time concentrating on his nether regions before telling him that he could have a ‘special’ massage for 1,500 baht.

Andy gritted his teeth and said that he was happy with a regular massage. She poured on more oil, then asked him to roll onto his back. The price of a ‘special’ massage dropped to 1,000 baht. Andy declined, but then her top came off and more oil got poured and Andy said he’d be willing to go an extra 500. They agreed to split the difference and settled for 800 baht. I handed him the money and he bought me a drink. Miss Vee had performed admirably, he said, and her magnificent breasts were most definitely the real thing.

As soon as I got home I sent Rick an email telling him that not only was Vee working, she was also more than happy to have sex with clients. He must have been straight on the phone to her because the next day I got a reply from him. Rick wanted to know if I was sure that she was having sex because she’s told him that she was just helping out with the hotel visits because the parlour was short-staffed. She’d assured him that she only did straight massages.

I’ve never understood why clients will always take the word of their girlfriend over the evidence that I’ve given them. Time and time again I’d present my report only to have the client phone or email asking me if I was sure. Was I sure? Of course I was sure! What did they think they were paying me for? And of course the girlfriend is going to lie. She’s hardly likely to admit that she was screwing around, not when there’s money at stake, is she? I didn’t argue with Rick, I just phoned Andy and asked if there were any details he could give me that would convince Rick that he’d had sex with his nearest and dearest. Andy told me about the tattoo of a butterfly that she had on the small of her back, the three moles on the inside of her right thigh, and the fact that she whimpered like an injured kitten when she came. I passed on the information to Rick and I never heard from him again. It was probably more detail than he wanted. I felt a bit bad about bursting Rick’s balloon, but I figure I was saving him money and heartache down the line.

A big chunk of my work in the early days came from sex tourists who’d fallen in love with bargirls and wanted me to check up on whether or not they were being faithful. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the answer was no, she was still sleeping with paying customers. It was money for the proverbial old rope. Initially I got work through word of mouth, but after a year or so I figured I should go out looking for business, and the best way to do that was through the internet. I set up a website advertising my services, www.thaiprivateeye.com, and before long I was getting assignments from around the world.

One of the first emails I got through the website was from a woman named Barbara who lived in Glasgow in bonnie Scotland. Any country that makes Johnnie Walker Black Label has got my vote of thanks, so I was more than happy to help Barbara. Plus she sent my retainer by bank transfer within forty-eight hours of me taking the case, which in my mind at least put paid to the theory that the Scots are tight with money. Barbara’s husband had been in Thailand for a couple of months, and while she had no evidence that her husband was fooling around, she had a feeling that something was wrong. Women’s intuition. And she wanted me to find out if he was having an affair with a Thai girl.

Her husband, William, was an artist and he’d been travelling around the Chiang Mai area, painting. For a lot of the time he’d been staying with a friend, but she didn’t have an address for him. All she knew was that it was a penthouse apartment with a stunning view. Not much help, really. He was going to stay in Bangkok for a week or so before returning to Scotland, but she didn’t know which hotel he’d be staying at. I explained that Bangkok was a city of more than ten million people, so without an address I had no hope of finding him. She did know the date of his return flight, and that he was flying British Airways. He’d bought a cheap economy ticket and he was locked into his return date so he’d have to be on that flight. I asked her to email me a photograph of him and I’d put him under surveillance at the airport. In my experience, if a guy has a Thai girlfriend she will see him off at the airport, for no other reason than he’d probably give her all his unwanted baht before heading for the plane.

The money, and the photograph, arrived within forty-eight hours. William was a good-looking guy with blonde hair tied back in a ponytail, in his early thirties. If he’d wanted to fool around in Thailand, I didn’t think he’d have had any problems.

I got to the airport a good three hours before the flight was due to leave and wandered around with a paper cup of coffee. He appeared ninety minutes before the flight was due to close, pushing a trolley loaded with two suitcases and a dozen or two cardboard tubes that I assumed contained his artwork. And hanging on his arm was an absolute stunner. The girl was in her early twenties, waist-length glossy black hair, smooth white skin, great figure and a mouth that just begged to be kissed. I took a few pictures with my digital camera. She kept planting kisses on his cheek, and I got a belting photograph of him with both hands on her bum, kissing her full on the mouth. A lot of times on surveillance operations I’m always amazed at how plain the girls are. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in Thailand so long but I’ve become very selective whereas a lot of tourists seem to jump on the first girl they see. I get paid to check up on some of the ugliest girls in the country, and the guys get really upset when I tell them that the love of their life is still sleeping with customers. But William’s girl was faultless, and I had half a mind to ‘accidentally’ bump into her and get her phone number after he’d flown off. But I’m nothing if not professional so I carried on taking a few long-range photographs.

They went and sat in a pub on the first floor while they waited for his flight, and I managed to get a couple more shots of them getting close and personal, then followed them to the departure gate where true to form he took out his wallet and gave her all his Thai money. She put up quite a performance, shaking her head and wiping tears from her eyes, but she took the money. After he’d kissed her and waved and gone through to immigration, I followed the girl to the taxi rank. Lots of heads turned to watch her as she walked. She got into a taxi and it headed down the expressway.

I caught a cab home and emailed the pictures to the wife, along with a report of what I’d seen. Easy money. I could imagine the scene in Glasgow when William arrived home. Thai girls tend to cut off the dicks of unfaithful husbands. Upcountry they toss the bloody remains to the ducks, and in the cities they put it in a food blender. I doubted that Barbara would be as cruel as that, but I reckoned William was still in for a shock when he got home.