Frequent Traveller (Cathy Dixon #1) (23 page)

Since the property had opened its doors a year ago, MoonStar Yacuiba enjoyed a seasonal crowd. The property catered largely for tourist groups or foreigners who preferred staying in serviced apartments and offered a small number of guest rooms, penthouse suites and studio style apartments, for single travellers or long-term guests.

It was in one of these serviced apartments that a shower was turned on and Linda stepped under the gushing water. She felt the cold water on her body and mentally ran through a checklist of things she was supposed to have accomplished. Uncertain she had done it all, something nagged at her. As she sponged herself, getting a whiff of the shea butter shower gel, she heard the front door. It was an unusually loud slam which meant he wasn’t in a good mood. She took a deep breath, just as he pounded on the bathroom door.

“What the bloody hell have you been doing all day long?! Where the hell is my coffee? You know it must be waiting for me, you fool!” shouted Larry.

“Just give me a few minutes and I’ll make your coffee for you,” Linda said in a hurry, trying to get the soap off her body and trying to rush out as fast as she could manage.

“You open this door now before I come in and get you. I want my coffee now!” he screamed back, this time the fury in his voice was unmistakable.

Linda could already imagine the veins at his temples ready to pop.

“Larry ... hang on. Please, let me finish up here. Just five minutes, please,” her voice pleaded.

A loud bang sounded as the bathroom door crashed inwards and Larry charged in. He pushed her against the wall then wrapped his hands around her neck, moving his face closer to hers. Linda smelt the beer and scent from the strip bar he had just visited. She closed her eyes and pretended to be somewhere else. Maybe, this way it won’t hurt as much.

“You stupid woman! Open your eyes! I put a roof over your head and food in your fat belly. When I want my coffee, you give me my coffee! It’s that fucking simple! You hear me?!”

“Y ... e ... s,” Linda stammered.

“What?! I didn’t hear you?!”

“I’m sorry. I am. It won’t happen again,” she said, trying to break free from his grip.

“Look at you, with your fat bum and a face like a bag of liver. God knows why I keep you. You can’t even give me proper sex. I have to go out for it. Now, go get me my coffee and remember ... lukewarm. Not hot, not cold. It has to be warm.”

He sounded a menacing laugh and let her go. Linda wrapped a towel around her trembling body and ran out to make the coffee.

“I knew it. I just knew I had forgotten something,” she muttered to herself, trying to stay calm. She knew full well that the bathroom door had to be fixed, at least this would give her a few pleasant minutes with Raymond. She smiled to herself.

The next day, Raymond the property’s Resident Manager was seen on his mobile phone, his expression was grim.

“Sure, no ... don’t worry about it. I’ll be up in a few minutes,” he said as he ended the call and looked at Cathy.

“I hate this,” he muttered, gulping his coffee so he could finish the beverage a little faster than he wanted.

At the moment, a European media group was staying at the property. As they did not have a Public Relations Manager, Cathy was on hand to assist. After morning briefing, she and Raymond stepped out to the snack bar for a sandwich, when reception called him to report a major problem in room 1707 where the guest needed to speak only to him.

“Every other week, something is broken or damaged ... and it’s fine that he pays for it but how much is he going to hit her before she leaves?” he said staring into space.

“Have the guests signed a lease or is it just a month to month arrangement?” Cathy asked.

“One year. He’s Algerian. She’s from Mumbai, I think. Been together for almost two years. Here, they’ve only been staying for three months and she’s already called in a broken lamp shade, a cracked plasma screen, Housekeeping has had to clean up a blood stain on the carpet and Engineering has had to pick up their dead cat from a twelfth floor apartment balcony. Trust me, that’s only some of it. If I gave you a list, you’d be thinking of ways to throw him out too.”

“Wow.”

“You telling me. You know how it is, I can’t come right out and tell her to leave him. They are both guests and he could turn around with a long list of complaints. I’m finding it so hard. How do you just stand and watch without putting a stop to it?

“Ray, you can’t. You know that. She needs to put a stop to it herself. She needs to say “no”. But in her position, I’m sure she feels as if nothing good can come from her. He must be filling her head with all kinds of nonsense about how stupid she is. It’s not as easy as it looks,” Cathy said gently.

“Are you speaking from personal experience?” Ray asked, looking around as the associates on duty attended to other guests.

“No, just watching from the outside through the years.”

“She calls me directly, it was the least I could do, Cathy. I gave her my mobile number and told her to use it for emergencies. He’s extremely possessive as well, you know. This one time she had gone for a walk on the beach and I was off duty, enjoying my daily jog. We had stopped for a chat and he saw us from the apartment balcony and was livid. Within the hour, he had wanted to see me in the lobby and had accused me of flirting with guests and had made an official complaint that I wasn’t doing my job.”

Cathy watched his expression, knowing there was more to the story than what Ray told her, but decided not to push the matter, for now. He sighed.

“I just don’t want the next call to be about something I can’t fix and the thing is, she’s not stupid, Cathy. The other day, we had a server issue which affected all the computers in reception. IT cracked their heads for more than half a day. She volunteered and it took her less than twenty minutes to figure it out before we were up and running. She makes it seem so easy.”

“What does he do? As in for work?” Cathy asked.

“He runs a bar downtown, it’s about ten minutes away. She used to help out as a cashier or something and then he told me that it was awkward to have her around because he couldn’t see his other women.”

“His other women?!”

“Oh yeah. He’s a proper Casanova. Thinks he’s a Brad Pitt look-alike, always chasing our girls at reception. This one time, I saw him in a guest room, on the other side.  He was with another cafe owner, well the owner’s wife. He felt he needed to explain and told me she needed money to save her business. He was going to give it to her but at a price of course. He said that’s all women were good for, their holes.”

“I think he got left behind a couple of decades,” Cathy grimaced.

“Looks like it, doesn’t it? One of his staff has already lodged a police complaint against him. He called me one night, asked me to help out with the local police. Of course, he insisted that he was innocent and she was a local slut trying to make a quick buck but her story seemed pretty air tight. Apparently, he wanted to pay her $3000 for a week of sex.”

“Stop it! The more I know about him, the more I have the urge to spit on him when I meet him and I’m pretty sure I will,” Cathy said, feeling disgusted that anyone would tolerate such behaviour.

“I’ve never told anyone how much I know but please tell me what to do, from a female perspective?”

“She’s holding on because she seems to think that this is the best she can do and it’ll be hard to convince her otherwise. But Ray, as Resident Manager you can’t get involved. You know that. I can try talking to her ... to offer her a way out but she’s old enough to make her own choices and if we push this in the wrong direction it’s bound to blow up in our faces.”

“I know. Well, let me go see what he’s paying to be fixed this time,” said Ray as he stood up, already dreading the moment he would see more bruises on Linda, again.

“Sure, I’ll be at the office going through some press releases that need to be sent.”

An hour passed before Raymond walked into the office and sat down opposite Cathy. He seemed far more relaxed than earlier.

“It was the bathroom door. She said it had jammed and she couldn’t get out, so he broke it down. Can you believe it?”

“You really care about her don’t you? As in more than a guest?” Cathy asked softly as the pieces fell into place.

“Is it that obvious?” he smiled.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“She has this smile. It starts from her eyes and then her whole face lights up. I’ve just never met anyone like her,” Raymond said with a faraway look in his eyes.

“And you’re planning to do something for her?”

“Yes. Well I know she might not feel the same about me but I need to know I tried and I was wondering if you could help?”

“Me? How can I fix this?"

"Well, apparently the only reason she’s putting up with him is because she doesn’t have a job. Even when she worked for him, he didn’t pay her and she’s stuck. Is there anything you can offer her? Even at entry level, a Public Relations Assistant or something, anything would be fine. I can work on the other details.”

“Sure, I could do that,” Cathy smiled. “But it’ll have to be somewhere away from this property, of course. Ask her to send me her CV and it’s done. When can I meet her?”

“Meet her? Ah see, that’s the strangest thing. I got this call about a broken bathroom door, I went to check and she was already gone. I don’t have a clue where she is, well, at least that’s the story bloody Larry will be getting. Wonder how long it’ll take before he gets some other girl to move in with him?”

CHIANG MAI, THAILAND

September 2010

On the one end, this city boasts a bustling nightlife, lined with conventional restaurants selling fancy dinners and fine wines. On the other, Chiang Mai’s street corners are coursed with local joints, satisfying sexual fetishes you have never heard of. A city that is known to offer Asia on a platter, Chiang Mai is also known to struggle with ensuring all its communities stay above the poverty mark. There are many different sides to Chiang Mai, but none allows you to leave without taking a small piece of it with you.

In the literal sense, Chiang Mai means “New City” and it is one of Thailand’s largest cities, receiving at least three million foreign tourists every year. Thriving on tourism, it remains a major exporter for handcrafted items such as wood carvings, handbags and silver ornaments. Like any other Thai state, Chiang Mai is also a well-known hub for a variety of spas, including the latest trend of fish spas and centres that offer courses for those wanting a career as a masseuse. At night, the streets come alive with night markets, selling anything and everything from food to stolen goods.

The city also plays host to numerous local festivals which attract many tourists. One of the more prominent festivals is the Full Moon Festival known as Loi Kratong and is celebrated in November. Tens of thousands of people gather to offer their “kratong” or floating banana leaf containers, decorated with flowers and candles to the Goddess of Water. A prayer is offered to her in the hopes of steering away misfortune from local families and to ensure the city’s prosperity.

In recent years, this peaceful festival has been marred by stampedes on overcrowded piers, but it continues to be a yearly attraction among locals and foreign tourists. Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year is celebrated in April and attracts large crowds to the citywide Water Festival and beauty pageants.

Local festivities aside, Chiang Mai is also in the running to host the World Expo 2020 and is already deemed "the preferred event location" for a series of conferences and business conventions.

It was during one of these conventions that MoonStar Chiang Mai was in a state of utter flurry. In one of their rooms, tension brewed as raised voices were heard arguing.

“You fool! What the bloody hell did you think we were training you for, to be the next Travel Channel hostess?” the older man stood in the middle room and barked as his face flashed with fury.

Cathy sat on the bed, her eyes were closed and her body trembled. She bit her lower lip doing her best not to answer him. At this very moment, she would give anything to be dealing with a hotel issue than what she was facing now. She had received her CI-7 mission earlier that day and had only just been told that it involved putting a bullet through a man’s head. The man screaming at her was Jeremy, her handler for the past two years.

It was standard protocol that all missions were supported by two other agents, although Cathy suspected there were numerous other agents unknown to her, lurking in the shadows, just in case a mission failed. She had always felt too much was at stake for a mission to fail and on most missions when she tried to cope with the uncertainty that surrounded her, her handler always seemed collected enough to walk her through a successful mission. Except this one time.

“We have invested time, money and a lot of effort with you. You will do as you're told,” he said, stressing each word, making sure she understood the gravity of the situation.

“But you are asking me to kill a man, it’s a horrible thing to do ...,” Cathy’s voice trailed off.