John Burdett - Bangkok 8

"When did you find out?"

"Well, Bill wasn't doing as well as he expected with his yaa baa. The shipment came about every two months. We would go to the domestic airport to collect it. I went with him just in case there was a problem that needed a translator-his Thai never did get beyond the beginner stage. The stuff was sent by some Burmese army general who paid off everyone on the border, and a local syndicate. All Bill had to do was move it from the airport to the squatters under the bridge. They're Karen and have strong connections to the people in the jungle on the border. The syndicate didn't really need Bill except for that one link from the airport to Dao Phrya Bridge. It would have looked strange if a Karen squatter turned up to collect a big shiny steamer trunk every few months, but an American in a Mercedes sort of went with the trunk. But Bill's contribution was not exactly crucial and he wasn't indispensable, so he didn't get paid that well. I didn't know this until quite recently, that he wasn't getting that much money out of the yaa baa thing, despite the risk. I mean, if he'd gotten caught they would have put him in Bang Kwan for life, wouldn't they?"

"Probably. He would have been transferred to the States after five years, but he would have had to do time there as well. He was running a big risk."

"That's right, that's what I told him, a big risk for small bucks. I'm trying to be the good wise wife at this stage. I'm also getting curious. Dr. Surichai and his hospital do not come cheap, and if the yaa baa isn't paying that well, and the little bits and pieces he's doing for the jeweler aren't paying that well either, where's the money coming from?"

"Did you have suspicions?"

"Not of what was really going on, no. I knew there was a whole side to Bill that I didn't know about, but I had no idea what that was. For a while I really wondered if he was serious about the jeweler being the devil, or a devil worshiper, you know, if there was some kind of black magic they were into. I even wondered if Bill was blackmailing him. I asked him outright a few times, Where are you getting the money for the medicines, Dr. Surichai, the hospital, all that? He would tell me not to worry about it, the money was there."

"But you did find out, somehow?"

Silence. She is sitting on a sofa, I'm sitting in a large armchair.

"You think I killed him, darling?"

"I know you did."

"Little me? How on earth would I manage with all those snakes? Be real, Detective, it would have taken an army of experts."

Then she stands up, exactly as a woman would, elegantly and with an erotic intonation in the way she twists her buttocks, which really does seem to be unconscious. In the silence I have to admit it's eerie just how perfectly the operation seems to have worked in her case. No wonder Dr. Surichai is so proud of himself. It is only from this angle, looking almost directly up at her neck, that I can see the tiny scar he talked about. I stand up and she escorts me to the door. The idea of killing her is ridiculous at this moment. I am under her spell and she knows it. She cocks her head slightly. In a whisper: "Not going to kill me today?" The question takes me by surprise because I'm sure she read my thoughts. She leans toward me. "Let me kill the jeweler for you, then you can do what you like with me. What do I care?" Suddenly holding my chin and staring into my eyes. "You're an arhat, why ruin your karma on a senseless vendetta? The world needs you. Let a devil do your killing."

I try to move but she holds my shirtsleeve in a hand suddenly turned into a claw. "The first time you saw me, in the shop, you knew, didn't you? I'm the other half of what you are, darling, if one of us is in the world, so must the other be. I'm your dark side. I think you realize that. Kill me if you like, but then you kill yourself."

She opens the door and suddenly I'm outside again, between the Chinese door gods. There is no time to ask her about the apartment, which she bought outright in her own name according to the clerk in the Lands Department, or the priceless furnishings. The cost of the penthouse was twenty million baht, or half a million dollars, but the jade collection-on display on a Chinese temple table in polished blackwood-would have been worth more than that. Then there were all the other artifacts from Warren's shop, artistically placed on pedestals, antique tables, or just left on the floor where one might easily kick them by accident if one were not careful.

I am left thinking how easy it would have been to kill her. The thought that I may have failed Pichai threatens to depress me. It is only counterbalanced by the opposite possibility, that she has charmed him too.

Yesterday my mother sent a messenger to the station with samples, for the Colonel and me, of the new T-shirts and tank tops she has designed. The motif is identical in both cases: under the main legend in burning scarlet-THE OLD MAN'S CLUB-the subtext in black italics: Rods of Iron. She employed a professional cartoonist to produce a convincing caricature of senior prurience: stooped but muscular, bald but sprouting pubic hair from his chin, tongue hanging out. The Colonel sent for me to ask what I think. Filial loyalty (read: a childhood of relentless brainwashing and emotional blackmail of the lowest kind) obliges me to opine that it is the work of genius.

He takes the T-shirt in both hands and presses it against me. I have to hold it up as he stands back. "Farangs go for this sort of thing? It's so… so ugly."

"It's the way they are. If you give them a traditional Thai men's club they'll be intimidated."

"Really?" For a moment he stands confused, stranded in an alien psychology. "It's not important that some of the customers will actually look like that?"

"That's the point. It makes them feel more secure."

A slow nod of understanding, or at least acceptance. "By the way, your mother and I are giving you ten percent of the shares in the business. She wants you in as a family member, and I can see the advantage of not having you passing heavy judgments on us when you go through one of your devout phases."

"I'm afraid I cannot accept. Making money out of women in that way is expressly forbidden by the Buddha."

"So is smoking dope. Anyway, I'm ordering you. Disobeying a superior is also proscribed from the Eightfold Path."

"Then I accept."

I take off the T-shirt and fold it on his table. He unfolds it to take one more look, then, reassured-if aesthetically challenged-the Colonel nods and lets me go. After all, Mother is the one who took the WSJ course on the Net. When I reach the door, he calls to me. "Sorry, I forgot. This fax came through from the American embassy a couple of days ago. It's just one of those dumb profiling things they do in Quantico. I had it translated into Thai, but it's the usual crap. Stuff you would know just by thinking about it."

I find a quiet corner of the station. The profile is only three pages long and surprisingly free of technical jargon.

Report from the Department of Criminal Profiling,

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Quantico, Virginia

Category of document: Confidential, for distribution only to interested parties (permission is granted for this report to be shared with the Royal Thai Police)

Subject: Fatima, a.k.a. Ussiri Thanya, a transsexual who underwent gender reassignment in her late twenties, born and brought up in Thailand. Father an unidentified African American serviceman (probably a draftee during the Vietnam War); mother a prostitute of tribal origin in northwest Thailand, a member of the large Karen group who reside in the border areas. Within the Thai tradition, the subject is believed to have been brought up by her grandmother in the tribal area on the border with Myanmar while her mother continued to work as a prostitute in Bangkok…