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

As always, I ran through a list of questions with him, partly to get a feel for the girl but also because there are often telltale signs that something is wrong that only a long-time resident of Thailand would spot. Women with kids asking for a sin sot, or dowry, for instance. Payment of a sin sot is common enough in Thailand, but the amount paid depends on the girl’s social status and frankly, her condition. A hi-so virgin would set a suitor back several million baht. A bargirl who has been around a bit and has a couple of kids wouldn’t merit anything. So when clients tell me that their bargirl’s parents are insisting on a big dowry, I usually tell them to run a mile.

Nam’s parents ran a small supermarket in her home town and they had asked for a sin sot of 100,000 baht. She wasn’t a virgin when she’d met Terry, but she had only had a couple of boyfriends and no kids so I figured that sounded reasonable. He’d met her in a cinema, she’d been with a girlfriend, he’d been there alone. They’d started chatting, he’d asked her out and she’d accepted. That sounded okay, though it was slightly unusual in that she’d turned up alone on the date. Usually a ‘good’ Thai girl would bring along a friend or two as chaperones.

But what really set alarm bells ringing was that he had never been to her apartment. Not once in all the months he’d known her. She’d told him that as much as she wanted him to see it, the block was for women only. It was close to her office, walking distance. Now, there are woman-only apartment blocks in Bangkok, but they are few and far between, but in my experience it’s always a red flag when a girl doesn’t let a guy see where she lives. They’ll pull out a whole host of excuses: it’s a mess, it’s in a dangerous area, she lives with a friend and the friend has the key. But the bottom line is that she’s probably living with a boyfriend or husband, or the place is full of his pictures and his toothbrush is in the bathroom.

Terry had given me Nam’s office address but he didn’t know the name of the apartment block. That was another red flag raised. Anyway, I went out to Yannawa one afternoon and took a few bags of fried insects over to the nearest motorcycle taxi stand and started chatting to the guys there. The motorcycle taxi guys pretty much know everything that goes on in their locality and they’re always my first port of call in an investigation.

I got chatting away in Khmer and asked them if they knew of any women-only blocks within walking distance. There was lots of frowning and head-shaking but when I said I’d pay a hundred baht to anyone who could come up with a name one of the guys said he thought there was a hostel for women fairly close by so I had him run me over. Another hundred baht for the security guard on duty and I learned that no one who looked like Nam lived there. It was a small place, probably only two dozen studio flats, so I was pretty confident that the guy knew what he was talking about.

My motorcycle guy saw that my wallet was well-packed with 100-baht bills so he came up with another women-only block in Silom. That was well outside walking distance from the office where she worked but I figured it was worth a try so we took a run out there. Another hundred baht later and I had confirmation that Nam didn’t live there either.

By four o’clock I was back at the office block, sweating in the heat and waiting for Nam to finish work. I was pretty sure that she was lying about living in a women-only block close to her office and having caught her out in one lie I was sure there’d be others.

Nam appeared just after five by which time I had large damp patches under both armpits and I could feel puddles of sweat in my shoes. She waved goodbye to a group of her co-workers and walked across the road to a bus stop. A bus came and went and Nam made no move to board it. She looked at her watch, then made a call on her mobile phone. Another bus came and went.

I went inside a coffee shop, bought a Coke and settled down to wait. I figured she was waiting for a bus and that once she’d boarded one I’d get one of the motorcycle taxi guys to follow her. Following busses is a piece of cake because the motorcycle taxi guys all know the bus routes. I was sipping my Coke when a new model Toyota Corolla pulled up at the bus stop. Nam got in and the car roared off. I managed to get a look at the number plate before it vanished around a corner. I rushed over to the motorcycle taxi rank but by the time I’d explained what I wanted the car was well gone. It was my own fault, I should have had my ride already fixed up, but I’d just assumed that she was going to get the bus. Still, I had caught her out in two lies, and I was pretty sure that it had been a Thai man at the wheel of the Corolla.

I phoned Terry and told him what I’d discovered, and he said he’d pay me to follow her for another couple of days. He asked me what I thought, and I told him the truth. She was lying to him, and that could only mean one thing. ‘But she isn’t a bargirl,’ he said plaintively. I thought about giving him the ‘just because she doesn’t work in a bar doesn’t mean she’s not a bargirl’ speech, but I decided against it. I said I’d phone him back when I had something to report.

The following day I was better prepared. I had my own motorcycle guy all ready to go at four o’clock, and when Nam appeared I was on the pillion and he had his crash helmet on. The Corolla turned up at ten past five and we tucked up behind it and followed it a few kilometres through the crowded streets until it parked outside a decent-sized apartment block. The man was in his thirties wearing a suit and tie and the way she touched his arm as they went into the block together suggested that they were, as we say in the private-eye game, ‘romantically involved.’ I managed to fire off a few digital photographs and I emailed them to Terry later that night.

There was only one more piece of the puzzle and that was to identify the guy. The next day I took a run out to the Car Registration Office at Chatujak, near the famous weekend market, filled out the necessary forms and a twenty-baht fee, and explained to the girl behind the counter as I slipped her a tin of chocolate almonds that I was buying the car and wanted to check that it was owned outright and not under any finance deal. It’s a common enough request and the chocolate almonds were the only incentive she needed to offer me every assistance. She punched in the registration number of the Corolla, printed out the details and gave me a copy, along with her phone number, which I thought was quite sweet of her considering she was a good five years older than me and had the makings of a half-decent moustache.

The owner was from Chonburi, the same place as Nam, which suggested the he was a long-time boyfriend, but the surname on his ID was different from Nam’s so it didn’t look as if they were married. Chonburi is on the way to Pattaya, and as I had a couple of bargirl investigations lined up in Sleaze-By-The-Sea I decided to pop out that way and stop off at the Chonburi Municipal Office to run a check on the guy. I told the girl behind the counter that he had applied for a job with my company and my winning smile, a box of Thai sweets and a 500-baht note got me a look at his house papers. He was married and had a son. Nam was obviously his mia noi, his minor wife.

I guess that Miss Nam was happy to be the Thai guy’s mia noi at the same time as she was going out with Terry, and that she was just putting off the time when she had to choose. Maybe the Thai guy would leave his wife, maybe Terry would marry her and she’d settle down with him. To be honest, I could understand why she’d want to keep her options open. Girls marry young in Thailand, often in their teens, and her clock was ticking. For all she knew, Terry might dump her for a younger, prettier girl. It’s not as if he’d be spoilt for choice in Thailand. The Thai guy could also trade her in for a newer model at any time. From Miss Nam’s point of view, she was simply hedging her bets.