John Burdett - Bangkok Tattoo

"No, I know. She passed through those stages years ago. I've never seen such a pro. So it must be burn-out. It happened to me once. You become a victim of your own success. You forget one little thing: all you're doing is fucking for money. Your whole life turns on the male member, you become as obsessed with it as men are. Somewhere inside you a resistance builds up. Some women really freak. I myself had to stop for a whole year when you were ten-maybe you remember, we spent that year in the country with Grandma? Eventually we were running out of money so I had to go back, but it was never quite the same after that. I've been watching Chanya get closer and closer to that wall for a while now."

Why do I wish she were not quite so matter-of-fact? I am consciousness trapped in a pipe. Sometimes it's hard to breathe. Chanya?

"So you think she simply freaked?"

"Yes, I think so. Maybe he was particularly obnoxious, but she would have known how to deal with that. Thing is, a girl gets tired of using guile. Sometimes she craves a full-blooded showdown. I think that was his knife, not hers-and I think it gave her an excuse. She saw it in his room, and some demon possessed her. That's how I see it."

"If it was his knife, and what with him being so big and muscular, no one was going to doubt it was self-defense, even without Vikorn's help?"

"Exactly. That's why I'm still mad at her. She must have thought about it, even calculated. She could have stopped herself. She could have done what I did-cool off for a while. She's rich, after all, she doesn't have a child to look after, she could have afforded to retire all over again. But she's addicted to the Game, you can see. It's the same in every profession: when someone finds they have exceptional talent, they can't stop. They need to score. It's the hunt by that time, not the money."

"In that case, how did she do it? That was a big guy."

A smile. "She's slim and strong-she would have been much faster than him. He was lumbering and muscle-bound. And she would have had the element of surprise." A quick glance at me. "I think she cut it off after she killed him. A kind of trophy."

"And the flaying?"

Mom stares at me, makes a gesture of incomprehension. We both look up as Lek comes into the bar from the yard where Nong has had him organizing the empty beer crates. He looks at me expectantly.

I don't really have the energy, but I accompany Lek to the wat near the police station. Put any Thai under a microscope, and you'll find an encyclopedia of superstition embedded in every cell, but Lek's kind are the most extreme in that respect, and he's itchy with impatience after a day spent in proximity to death: he's already lived too many hours with this threat to his luck and spiritual health. We walk quickly to the temple and purchase lotus buds, fruit, and candles from the street sellers outside. Lek goes through the ritual with fastidious elegance, then sits back on his heels with his hands in a deep wai, eyes closed, praying rather than meditating, I would guess.

He takes so long, I leave him there and return to the station, where I'm told Vikorn wants to see me. I assume he wants to talk about the Mitch Turner case, but he wants to talk about Lek instead. In his office he sits under a photograph of the King and a poster from the Crime Suppression Division illustrating the hundred and one ways the police have found to supplement their income.

"Is he queer?" he snaps.

"No."

"He's very effeminate. I'm getting complaints from some of the men. If he's queer, I'll kick him out. I don't want you lying to protect him. This isn't the time for your bleeding-heart stuff."

"He's not queer. He's not interested in sex at all." Vikorn sits back in his chair to stare me into submission. I'm not really ready to tell Lek's story, but I guess I don't have a lot of choice. "He's from Isaan, from Napo village in Buriram province, not far from where you grew up." He nods. "When he was five years old, he had an accident. He was jumping onto the hind legs of a buffalo to spring onto the animal's back, the way you country people love to do, when the buffalo jerked his legs and sent him flying. He was lucky not to land on the horns and be gored to death, but when he hit the earth, he split his head open on a rock. They had no medical facilities, nothing at all. They assumed he was going to die. He looked dead already. Why do I get the feeling you know what's coming next?"

Vikorn's expression has altered dramatically. His eyes are glittering when he stands to pace leisurely up and down. There is relish in his words. "They called the shaman, who built a charcoal fire near the kid's head and blew smoke over the boy to assist the shaman's seeing. The parents were called. The shaman told them their son was as good as dead. There was one hope and one hope only: they had to offer their child to a spirit who would fill his body and bring him back to life. But after that the child would belong to the spirit, not to the parents." He cocks his brows at me.

"It worked, but in this case there was a downside," I oblige.

Vikorn raises a finger. "The spirit was female."

I hold my palms together and raise them to my eyes in a wai to acknowledge his penetrating understanding while he resumes his seat behind the big desk. "Will you help him?"

He makes an expansive gesture with both hands. "Queers are a Western import. Katoeys are as Thai as lemongrass. I'll protect him as long as I can, but we've got to get him more suitable employment."

"He's going to start taking the estrogen soon. It could be tough."

Vikorn grins. "A male cop with tits? Is he going to have the full operation?"

"He's not sure. Anyway, he doesn't have the money right now."

"So why the hell did he become a cop?"

"Same reason I did. He didn't want to be a whore or a gangster."

Vikorn nods. "I understand. Has he found an Elder Sister yet?"

"No. He's asked me to talk to my mother about that."

A thoughtful pause. "I don't want him working the bars. Is he going to dance?"

"That's what he wants to do. He's looking for sponsorship. He practices all the time. He loves classical Thai, the Ramakien."

He turns his head to one side. "I had a cousin who was a katoey. He died of AIDS. Actually, he wasn't particularly promiscuous, but it was in the early eighties, before anyone knew about that disease. He was unlucky, I guess. Give young Lek one word of advice. If he doesn't have the operation, tell him not to use Scotch tape. It's unyielding and causes terrible sores over time. That woven elasticized plaster they use in hospitals is much better. Okay, you can go."

As I stand up to leave: "Is there anything you're not an authority on?"

For my exit he offers a dazzling smile.

When I get back to the bar, I find that my mother, who is nowhere to be seen, has abandoned control of the sounds to one of the girls:

I pinch you on the bum

I pinch you on the bum

You pinch me on the bum

You pinch me on the bum

Challenging stuff. I quickly switch to Chopin's nocturnes and almost gasp with relief: real music is a taste I developed under the tutelage of a German who hired my mother for a few months in Munich when I was a kid-and who later ended up in our famous Bangkok high-security prison called Bang Kwan. My eleventh and twelfth years were crucial for me. My mother's trade was unusually itinerant, and we spent nearly all the time abroad, in Paris and Munich where her sophisticated customers undertook duties as surrogate fathers. (I learned to love French cuisine and Proust, Beethoven and Nietzsche, Ermenegildo Zegna and Versace, croissants at Les Deux Magots and sunsets over the Pont Neuf in high summer, Strauss played by men in lederhosen while drinking steins of beer in a Munich Biergarten.) Unlike my mother, who loves the Doors (for reasons both sentimental and historic: Apocalypse Now is the only DVD she owns that is not a bootleg), I don't much like rock or pop.