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

‘Are you sure?’

He nodded. ‘If I tell you something, you mustn’t say it was me that told you, okay?’

‘Big okay,’ I said. And I promised him 500 baht to seal the deal. He asked me if I remembered a big guy who was sitting right in front of the television, drinking beer from an ice bucket through a straw. I remembered. He was an ugly brute with a huge mole on his top lip that looked as if it was about to turn cancerous. He’d glared at me when I spoke Laotian as if I had no right to be using his language, and he’d jumped to his feet every time a goal looked likely.

I nodded. The guy laughed again and jabbed a dirty fingernail at the photograph. ‘That’s his wife,’ said the guy gleefully.

‘No.’

‘Yes.

‘Are you sure?’

The guy nodded emphatically. He told me that the guy with the mole was the boss of the local motorcycle taxi rank, that he was a nasty piece of work and that nobody liked him. Like most ranks they operated on a rota system but the boss had a habit of grabbing the best jobs for himself, best meaning young, pretty and female. But what had really got up his men’s noses was that the boss had started boasting that he was able to get drunk every night on a farang’s money and that he was about to buy a new high-powered motorcycle as his wife was due to receive a stack of money from Denmark and an airfare. Pim was most definitely his wife, my guy had seen them together, and he lived with her in Block C. They had a two-year-old son who was being cared for by her mother back in Chonburi.

I gave the guy 500 baht and stumbled up the stairs to the platform, marvelling at my luck. The Chinese have a saying that pretty much covers it: even a blind cat can stumble over a dead mouse sometimes.

The next day I emailed Lars with the details of Miss Pim’s web of lies. I never enjoy breaking bad news, but at least I’d be saving him a lot of heartbreak down the line. I just hoped that he didn’t ask for proof, which a lot of my clients did. ‘Just a photograph,’ they say. ‘So I can see for myself.’

I’ve never understood that. They pay me to get the information they want, then when I get it they want more. It’s as if they want to torture themselves. Or maybe they don’t believe me. Or don’t want to believe me.

Often they start firing questions at me, as if somehow I know all there is to know about all things Thai. How could she lie to me? How could she sleep with me when she has a husband? How could a husband allow his wife to sleep with another man? All good questions. And to be honest, I don’t have the answers. I’m a private eye, not a psychiatrist. I have my opinions though, not that they’re much use to Lars and the thousands of other farangs who get ripped off by Thai girls every year.

How can they lie so easily? For money. Most of the girls that farangs meet are from the countryside, or are one generation removed from working the land. Rice farming is back-breaking, sweaty, unpleasant work. So is factory work, twelve-hour shifts and one day’s holiday a month. Is it surprising that a girl would be prepared to tell a few lies if it means an easier life? And once she’s started lying, wouldn’t the lies get easier and easier? Especially if she’s gone into the relationship solely as a way of earning money.

How can they sleep with farangs when they already have a Thai husband or boyfriend? Because by doing so she gets a better life for herself and for her man. It’s work, pure and simple. And in comparison with local wages, it pays well. A half-decent go-go girl can earn over 100,000 baht a month, about six times what a nurse or a teacher would get. As a student, Miss Pim’s earnings would be zero. Her husband, even as the boss of the motorcycle rank, would be lucky to pull in 10,000 baht a month. Then out of the blue appears Lars, flashing his Euros and offering her 20,000 baht a month just to go to university and have sex with him on his occasional trips to Thailand. Lie back and think of the money. I’ve heard that refrain from countless bargirls. Farangs like Lars assume that girls would be ashamed to take money for sex, that there is something morally wrong with trading sex for money. The Thais don’t see it that way. They see it as commerce, and more fool the farang if he mistakes commerce for love.

How can the husband tolerate his wife sleeping with another man? Because he understands that it’s work. She doesn’t love the farang, she probably doesn’t even like him. She is the mother of his child. She is his wife. The farang is just a customer. A fool with more money than sense.

I hoped that Lars would just do the sensible thing and cut off all contact with Pim. But I knew from experience that often the girl would be able to persuade the farang to give her a second chance. Or a third. Or a fourth. Thai girls can be very persuasive. And farangs can be very stupid. A perfect match, really.

I can never remember if it’s good things that come in threes, or bad things, but that week I got two more ‘good’ girls that guys wanted me to check up on. Like Miss Pim, they were both girls who had never been within a hundred yards of a naughty bar or a short-time hotel. Both ladies were in their early twenties.

A guy called Terry who lived in the UK had lost his heart to Nam, who worked as a private secretary in a Thai oil company.

A South African by the name of Mark who worked for an estate agency in Bangkok had hooked up with Suming, a hi-so girl who seemed to do nothing other than shop, take care of her daughter from a previous marriage, and socialize. She had a maid to clean the ten million-baht penthouse that she shared with Mark. Hi-so girls, in my experience, should come with a Government health warning. Hi-so stands for ‘high society’ and you’ll see them in all the trendy bars and restaurants, hanging out in the expensive shopping malls, or parking their BMWs or SUVs while talking nineteen-to-the-dozen into mobile phones. The hi-so girls are generally high maintenance, they rarely pay their own way and expect to be courted with expensive gifts, holidays and sometimes cold, hard cash. They also, from what I’ve seen, tend to have the moral standards of alley cats that have snacked on Viagra. A pal of mine who is a good deal more cynical than me once said that if a hi-so girl is at the wheel of an expensive car then she’s either having sex with a rich guy, or is the daughter of someone who had sex with a rich guy. Mind you, he’s the same guy who swears blind that bargirls who wear high heels only ever adopt the starfish position when they’re in bed and I know for a fact that he’s wrong on that one.

Anyway, Terry and Mark got in touch with me shortly after I’d burst Lars’ bubble. Of the two cases, Suming was the more interesting because according to Mark she spent most of her evenings at Rivas nightclub in the Sheraton Hotel. Usually she was with Mark, but when he was out of town she went alone or with friends and it was on one of these nights that he wanted me to check on her. That meant sitting in a top bar eyeing up hard bodies and drinking JD and Coke at 200 baht a throw. Mark had okayed all expenses and sent me a decent retainer to kick off the case.

Nam’s routine was much more mundane. She worked in the company’s head office in Yannawa, a huge building more than thirty storeys tall, and I had to hang around in the midday heat trying to spot her among the thousands of office workers pouring out for a noodle or fried rice lunch or at five o’clock when they headed to the bus stops.

Terry had sent me several good photographs of Nam plus a copy of her ID card and passport so it didn’t take me too long to spot her. He didn’t expect me to find out anything untoward. He loved her, she was from a good family in Chonburi and was a university graduate. They were engaged and had already set a date for a wedding in Thailand in six months time and were already talking about starting a family. Everything had been going along swimmingly until Terry had started visiting several websites devoted to Thailand and Thai ways, especially the Stickman website at www.stickmanbangkok.com. Stick’s an old mate and his site is packed with first-person accounts of farangs who have lost their hearts, and their cash, to lying bargirls. There are some success stories too, written by guys who have settled down with former bargirls and never regretted it, but I’d say that the horror stories outnumber the success stories by about fifty to one. Terry realised that the odds were stacked against him, and while he had no reason to doubt that Nam was anything other than the perfect fancA© he figured it would be prudent for me to run a few basic checks. Smart boy.