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

A couple of days later, I got an email from the husband. I opened it, expecting a torrent of abuse, but to my surprise it was quite a chatty epistle, complimenting me on my professional approach to the job. And he thanked me for bringing an unhappy situation to an end. According to William, the love had gone from his marriage years ago and he had been trying to find a way of ending it. My investigation had been the spark for him and his wife to start talking about divorce, and now they had decided to consult lawyers and end the marriage. There were no kids and his wife had a well-paid job, so all they had to do was to decide on a fair split of the marital assets. Once that was out of the way, William planned to fly back to Thailand and start a new life with Som, the girl who’d been at the airport. And the main reason for the email was that William wanted to pay me to run a check on the lovely Som! I couldn’t believe it at first and thought it was a wind-up, but William was serious. Som had been a go-go dancer in the Long Gun Bar in Soi Cowboy, and while he’d paid her to stop work he was worried that she might go back to her old ways while he was in Scotland. I gave him my bank details and told him to send over a retainer. I told him I didn’t need a photograph of the lovely Som, but I’d need her date of birth, full Thai name and any other details he had.

A couple of days later he emailed me all the information. Som was twenty-two and lived in a cheap hotel in Soi 15, not far from Soi Cowboy. I knew the place. It was a well-known bargirl haunt. She went to school in Siam Square most mornings. Her mother lived in Pattaya with an elderly German.

William said that he’d agreed to transfer 15,000 baht a month into Som’s bank account. That set alarm bells ringing right away. A halfway decent bargirl can easily earn four times that dancing around a silver pole and sleeping with customers. A real pro with high-spending Japanese customers can earn six figures. Som was a stunner and I found it difficult to believe that she was staying at home for just 15,000 baht. Her hotel bill would be almost 10,000 baht a month, even on a long-term lease, then there would be her mobile phone bills, clothes, cosmetics, food. And as a bargirl, even a former one, there would be a good chance of a drugs problem and a very good chance that there was a family to support.

William said that she emailed him pretty much every day, and that she always answered her mobile.

I started to follow her. It wasn’t difficult. She didn’t own a car or a motorcycle and used taxis, motorcycle taxis and the Skytrain. Over a few days I kept a close eye on her. She went to school during the week, spent most of her time in her room, probably watching TV, and went out to eat at night with girlfriends. More often than not, Som would pick up the bill. I saw her using several different mobile phones, but I couldn’t get close enough to hear what she was saying. Multiple phones is always a bad sign. It suggests multiple boyfriends or sponsors. She never went to a nightclub or to the city’s red-light districts. She went to Pattaya one weekend but stayed with her mother and didn’t go near the bars.

I didn’t see her with another guy, Thai or farang, but it was clear that her lifestyle was costing well over 15,000 baht a month and as she wasn’t working the money had to be coming from somewhere.

I reported back to William. Som wasn’t seeing anyone, but she was living well beyond her means. I said that if he wanted to be sure that she didn’t have any other sponsors I’d have to check her bank account. At best that would mean a visit to a branch to sneak a look at a computer terminal, at worst it would mean a bribe of tens of thousands of baht. William said he’d pay me for another day to visit the bank and sent through the extra money to my account along with the details of her account.

I went along to a branch of Som’s bank in a tourist area, found a sweet young cashier, flashed her my most charming smile and told her that I’d sent money to my girlfriend but that she’d told me that it hadn’t arrived yet. I asked the cashier if she could check that the money had actually gone through. The girl told me what I already knew, that I’d have to go to Som’s branch to confirm the transfer, all she could do on her terminal was to check the balance. She called it up on screen and as she did I leaned over and took a quick look. There was close to two million baht in the account. I flashed the cashier a thumbs up. ‘Great,’ I said. ‘The money must have gone through,’ I said. ‘We’re building a house.’ I thanked her and hurried out.

I phoned William and told him that Som had a stack of money in her account, far more than she could have saved, even as a go-go dancer. The only way she could have amassed that amount of cash was from a generous sponsor, and probably more than one. She certainly didn’t need William’s 15,000 baht a month.

‘But you’ve never seen her with another guy?’ he said. I could hear the hope in his voice. I’ve heard it hundreds of times over the years. It was the sound of a man who wanted to believe that he wasn’t being lied to, even when all the evidence suggested the contrary. I don’t know what it is with these guys. They really do check their brains in at the airport. I don’t understand it. I understand bargirls. They work for money. Period. They don’t dance in go-go bars and sleep with men twice their age for fun. They do it for money. But the guys who fall in love with them, just what goes through their minds? The guys who cling to the hope that their bargirls are special, that their bargirls don’t lie and cheat, they’re the ones that I really don’t understand.

‘No, I’ve never seen her with a guy,’ I said. But just because I hadn’t seen her walking arm in arm with another farang didn’t mean that she didn’t have a string of overseas sponsors, men who would send her a monthly ‘salary’ in the hope that Som would be faithful to them. It was laughable. The best they could hope for was a form of timeshare: regular payments would entitle them to her company on their occasional visits to the Land of Smiles. She was providing a fantasy, and getting well paid for it, too.

‘There you go, then,’ said William. ‘That’s all I need to know. I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt.’

I wished him well and cut the connection. I’d done my job. I’d told him what I thought, but he preferred to cling to the fantasy.

I opened a bottle of Jack Daniels. I’m sure Som would make William welcome when he came back to Thailand. She’d probably move in with him for a while, but as soon as a wealthier sponsor came to town she’d be off, spinning William a line about a relative being sick or her mother needing company. The only way to keep a girl like Som would be to keep upping the ante, to keep paying, until he had nothing left to give. And once she’d bled him dry she’d be off for ever. I raised the bottle in salute to the man on the other side of the world, a man who didn’t know what was about to hit him. Another lamb to the slaughter.

Robyn was a well-spoken guy and sounded like he had his head screwed on right when he phoned me from the UK. He lived in Oxford and the way he told it he was one of the few guys who’d married a Thai girl and made a success of it. Sorry if I sound cynical, but in the Western world marriages have about a fifty-fifty chance of actually ending up as till death do we part. In the States most marriages fail, and the UK has the worst marriage failure rate in Europe. Throw in the fact that the wife was a hooker prior to tying the knot and that she is from a totally different culture and I’m always amazed to hear that a Thai-farang marriage has lasted longer than five minutes.