John Burdett - Bangkok 8

I signed for the small plastic bag of Pichai's personal effects, which included his Buddha necklace and a larger bag of clothes, and went home to the hovel I rent in a suburb by the river. Under the rules I should have gone directly to the police station and begun to make my report, fill in forms, but I was too heartsick and didn't want to face the other cops with my grief. There had been much jealousy at the closeness of my friendship with Pichai.

The dharma teaches us the impermanence of all phenomena, but you cannot prepare yourself for the loss of the phenomenon you love more than yourself.

Pichai's cell phone ran out of prepaid units when I tried to call my mother from my room. There is no telephone in any of the rooms in my project, but on each floor, there is an office belonging to the management company where a telephone is available. Under the eye of the fat female clerk, who is addicted to shrimp-flavored rice puffs, I call my mother, who lives in the steaming plains about three hundred kilometers north of Krung Thep in a place called Phetchabun. She and Pichai's mother are former colleagues, close friends who retired to their hometown together, bought a plot of land and built two gaudy palaces on it; that is to say, the two-story houses with green-tiled roofs and covered balconies are palatial by country standards. While I wait I hear the crunch-crunch-crunch of Fat Som plowing through her puffs, and the burden of her attention is like a hundred sacks of rice on my shoulders, for she has seen my devastation.

I feel like a coward for not telling Pichai's mother myself, but I cannot face this chore or trust myself not to break down when I speak to her. Nong, my mother, will make a much better job of it than I.

I listen to the ringing tone on my mother's mobile telephone. She changes the model every two years because she always wants the smallest. Now she owns a Motorola so tiny she is able to keep it in her cleavage. I think about it ringing and vibrating between my mother's breasts. She always answers cautiously, never knowing if it will be a former lover, perhaps a farang from Europe or America, who has woken up in the middle of the night longing for her. The loneliness of farangs can be a fatal disease which distorts their minds and tortures them until they snap. When they begin to sink they grasp at any straw, even a Bangkok whore they had for a week on a sex vacation long ago.

My mother has been retired for more than ten years, but the calls still come from time to time. It is her own fault, because she always arranges for calls to her old mobiles to be patched forward to the new one. Maybe she is still waiting for that special call? Maybe she's addicted to the power she wields over desperate white men?

"Helloo?"

I tell her and for once she has nothing to say. I listen to her breathe, her silence, her love, this woman who sold her body to bring me up.

"I'm so sorry, Sonchai," she says finally. "You want me to tell Pichai's mother for you?"

"Yes, I don't think I could face her grief right now."

"Not as great as yours, my love. D'you want to come up? Stay with me a few days?"

"No. I'm going to kill the people who did it."

Silence. "I know you will. But be careful, darling. This thing seems very big. You'll come to the funeral, of course?"

I have thought about this on the way home from the morgue. "No, I don't think so."

"Sonchai?"

"Country funerals."

Pichai's body will sit in its decorated coffin under a pavilion in the grounds of the local wat, with a band playing funeral dirges all afternoon. Then at sundown the music will liven up, Pichai's mother will have succumbed to community pressure to throw a party. There will be crates of beer and whisky, dancing, a professional singer, gambling, perhaps a fight or two. Dealers will arrive on motorbikes, selling yaa baa. Worst of all will be the incinerator. In that remote place it looks like something from the early days of steam, with a long chimney, rusting, shaped just large enough to accommodate the coffin, with a tray for a wood fire underneath. The smell of Pichai's roasting flesh will fill the air for days. My soul brother's flesh is my flesh.

"They'll burn him in that thing, won't they?"

My mother sighs. "Yes, I expect so. Come up soon, darling. Or d'you want me to come down to you?"

"No, no, I'll come. After it's all over."

Fat Som is slack-jawed for once when I replace the receiver, a bunch of pink puffs half eaten between her teeth. She wants to say she is sorry, but doesn't know me well enough. The nature of her karma is that she cannot communicate feelings, because of some defilement from a previous lifetime, and is therefore condemned to be fat and resentful. She tries, though, with some futile wrinkling of the brow, which I do not acknowledge as I leave the room. I hear the telephone ringing in the office as I stride down the corridor, and think that Fat Som will have to finish her mouthful of puffs before she answers it. I am on the point of inserting my key into the padlock on my door, which so much resembles the door of a cell, when I hear her calling and, turning, see that she has emerged from her office and is rolling toward me breathlessly, her flesh rippling under her cotton dress. "It's for you."

Astonished, for nobody calls me here, I think that it is some mistake and that I will not take the call, but Fat Som is insistent. When I reenter the office she is weeping like a child. I wonder if perhaps my tragedy has snapped her karma, if she will be liberated now, if Pichai died an arhat after all and has the power to heal from where he waits on the shores of nirvana? I smile at her (for which she is almost unbearably grateful) as I pick up the receiver.

A man, an American, speaks English into my ear. "May I speak with Detective Sonchai Jipeecheap please?"

It takes me a moment to realize he has attempted to pronounce my family name. "Speaking."

My English is almost free from a Thai accent, although it contains shades of many others, from Florida to Paris, reflecting a childhood spent in the wake of my mother's career. I am told that when stressed I speak English with Germanic precision and a Bavarian accent. I will tell you about Fritz soon enough.

"Detective, I'm very sorry to be calling you at home at this time. My name's Nape, I'm the deputy FBI legal attache at the American embassy in Wireless Road. We've just been contacted by a Colonel Vikorn who has informed us of the death of William Bradley, a Marine sergeant who was attached to the embassy here. We understand you are investigating?"

"That is correct." Shock has distorted my perspective. I wonder if this conversation is taking place on some other planet, or in hell, or even in one of the heavens? I have no sense of gripping this unreality.

"I understand your partner and close friend Detective Pichai Apiradee also died, and I want to extend my sincerest condolences."

"Yes."

"You probably know that under a protocol we have with the government of Thailand we have the privilege of access to information you may come by in your investigation of the death of American service personnel in such circumstances, and by the same token we would be willing to share FBI forensic resources with you. When would be convenient for you to come to the embassy to discuss information-sharing-or would you prefer we come to you?"

I want to laugh cynically at the thought of entertaining the FBI in my tiny hovel without chairs.

"I'll come, but you must give me a little time for the traffic."

"I understand, Detective. I'd offer to send a car, but I'm afraid that wouldn't solve the problem."

"No. I'll come. I'll come soon."

Without returning to my room I descend the concrete staircase to the ground floor. Outside, a makeshift shop leans against the wall of the building, with a long green awning which extends almost to the ground. Under the awning louts with many tattoos and almost as many earrings lounge on camp beds, smoking and drinking beer, their numbered jackets slung on the ground beside them. These are the licensed motorbike taxis, Krung Thep's most dangerous form of public transport, and its fastest.