Dead and Kicking (6 page)

When I travel I’ve got a bit of a reputation for keeping a rather messy hotel room, but even by my standards room 427 was a real pigsty. Ransacked is such an evocative word, and if my room was anything it was well and truly ransacked. Drawers had been opened and their meagre contents dumped on the floor, the mattress had been pulled away from the bed and my portable printer was broken into bits. A quick hunt around revealed that my laptop was missing. Also missing, and obviously jimmied away from the wall, was the room’s small electronic safe.

I’d been in Saigon for eight weeks, staying in this hotel the whole time, and suddenly tonight I get mugged and robbed and my room gets tossed. I was mulling over the implications of this with the assistance of my minibar and the wonderful people from the Glenfiddich distillery, when there was knock on the door. A glance through the peephole revealed it was the cops, or one cop in particular.

‘Miss Hoang, this is most unexpected.’

‘Mr Murdoch,’ she said, ‘according to a police report, a man named Alby Murdoch was attacked and robbed earlier this evening. I doubt that our city is playing host to two men with that name so I decided to see if you were okay.’

She was wearing a sky-blue
ao dai
embroidered with a delicate floral pattern over white trousers. It was just as stunning as her last outfit, maybe more so, and I still couldn’t spot any concealed firearms.

‘May I come in?’ she asked.

I opened the door wide. ‘The place is a bit of a mess, I’m afraid. I was going to call housekeeping, but I didn’t want to spoil someone else’s evening as well.’

Nhu ran a copper’s well-practised eye over the place.

‘The door to the room was not forced?’

I shook my head.

‘The wall safe is gone?’ she asked.

I nodded.

‘Were you keeping anything of value inside?’

‘Inside a hotel wall safe?’ I said.

She nodded. ‘Most wise.’

I closed the door. There were a couple of light cotton hotel robes in the open closet and she handed me one.

‘Perhaps you should take a long hot shower to relax your muscles. It will make you feel better. I will phone in a report so that you can claim for any valuables on your insurance.’

I really didn’t have anything to claim for, apart from my laptop and printer, as everything else had been packed up and collected for shipping back to Australia. I decided to follow Nhu’s suggestion about the hot shower, and she was right. I let the water run over me for a good fifteen minutes and it did make me feel better.

After towelling off and running a brush through my hair, I pulled on the bathrobe and walked back into my room. Nhu had used the time to neatly remove all evidence of the break-in. I’m sure the people from
CSI Miami
or New York or Broken Spoke, Wyoming, wouldn’t approve, but this was Saigon and it was her city. The mattress was back in place, the bed made up, the drawers returned to their appropriate positions and my few clothes were hanging neatly in the closet. As was Nhu’s
ao dai
.

The lights in the room had been dimmed and she was waiting for me on the bed. Besides baguettes it looked like the French had also left the Vietnamese an excellent legacy of fine silk lingerie.

The figure-hugging
ao dai
tends to reveal the lines of underwear, unless said underwear is also quite figure-hugging, and Nhu’s certainly was. It was also quite see-through in a couple of spots that I didn’t even want to think about, given my recent altercation in the alley.

‘Miss Hoang,’ I said. ‘Or should I call you Nhu?’

She stood up and walked slowly around the bed towards me.

‘This may seem strange, but I very much like the way you call me Miss Hoang, Mr Murdoch.’

It did seem a bit strange, but then she stood up on her tippy-toes and kissed me. And I have to say I very much liked that.

‘Miss Hoang, in the alleyway —’ I started to say, but she put a finger up to my lips.

‘The report of the robbery was quite detailed, Mr Murdoch. I am aware of the circumstances and I assure you I will be gentle with you.’

And she was.

Later, when she was sleeping, her long dark hair tossed over the pillow of my once-again rumpled bed, I sat back against the headboard, finished off the whisky and looked at her. Nhu’s skin was soft and golden, her buttocks tight and round, and she had the most exquisitely beautiful, delicate feet I’d ever seen. Having a woman like Nhu in bed next to you made a man glad to be alive.

I
was
glad to be alive, and bloody lucky, too. When those coppers had pulled me from the crumpled cyclo it had been too dark for them to notice the bullet marks freshly scored into the alley’s crumbling brickwork. The only reason I’d seen the flashes that had flared from inside the jeep was because the muzzle of someone’s silenced pistol had been pointing almost directly at me when they’d fired.

‘Silenced’ is the wrong word because silencers don’t actually silence weapons. What they really are is suppressors. In this instance, the noise of the vehicle accelerating away had worked with the suppressor to almost completely muffle the sound of the shots, but luckily for me the movement had also spoiled the shooter’s aim.

Right now I knew for certain that someone wanted more than just what was in my camera bag. Someone also wanted me dead. And if those two cops had shown up just thirty seconds later, I probably would have been.

I woke up early the next morning, all by my lonesome, and decided to head down to Saigon’s old Ben Thanh Market. The city was wide awake and well into its day by the time I arrived. The Lunar New Year, called Tet in Vietnam, was approaching, so the fantastic bustle and variety of a great Asian market was even more frenetic than usual. Being a photographer, it made sense that I was constantly looking around, searching for the next great shot. Of course, what I was also doing was keeping a careful eye out for anyone who might want to take a shot at me.

Ben Thanh is a visual feast for the photographer, and an actual feast for anyone with an interest in food and an empty belly. I was in serious need of a good breakfast; dicing with death followed by some good lovin’ will do that to you. I wandered the crowded aisles for a while, grabbing shots with the Leica and marvelling at the displays of spices, exotic fruit, garden-crisp vegetables and masses of clucking, croaking, splashing and slithering creatures that would be someone’s lunch or dinner before the day was over. I’m with the Vietnamese: fresh really is best.

There were branches of yellow and pink blossoms to decorate the home for Tet, and specially prepared food for the celebration. Stalls offered
banh tet
, square packages of sticky rice, mung-bean purée and seasoned pork wrapped in banana leaves; a range of salty, slow-cooked meat dishes called
kho
; and
gio bo
, beef and dill sausages. There were pâtés, pickled shallots and leeks to serve on the side, and nuts and watermelon seeds for snacking, plus masses of garishly coloured candied coconut, melon rind and lotus seeds.

My photo-taking efforts were abandoned when I reached a stall serving breakfast and pulled up a plastic stool at a table. The range of food on offer was unbelievable, but I went for my favourite,
pho gai
– poached chicken and soft rice noodles swimming in a steaming bowl of spicy broth dressed with bean sprouts, chilli, basil leaves and the usual squeeze of lime.
Pho gai
beats a bowl of cereal for breakfast hands down, and this one was unbelievably aromatic and tasty. I was contemplating a second helping when my past came up and bit me on the butt.

‘Alby fucking Murdoch, as I bloody live and breathe.’

Jezebel Quick was six foot six of dynamism, gorgeous good looks, dangerous curves and pulsating sexual energy packed into a five-foot-nothing frame. A shock of shoulder-length curly blonde hair framed her face, her blue eyes sparkled and those red lips were as inviting as ever. Her diaphanous blouse and light cotton trousers made sense in the tropics, but if they’d been any flimsier they’d have blown away in a mild breeze. Jez was an underwear-optional kind of woman, and for a moment I didn’t quite know where to look so I looked everywhere.

Jezebel opened her first restaurant at the age of twenty-one to long lines and rave reviews. We’d worked together a lot of years back when I’d shot the pictures for one of her early cookbooks,
Jezebel’s Quicksnacks
. I’d eventually wound up being one of those snacks and I still hadn’t recovered from the experience. It was a brief intense and very tempestuous affair and I’ll admit I was a bit relieved when she moved on to fresh fields.

The success of her restaurant ventures and cookbooks had eventually led to Jezebel getting her own TV food series. The show had an avid fan base of women looking for fast, foolproof recipes they could throw together to please their husbands, and husbands who watched every episode desperately hoping Ms Quick would prepare something featuring whipped cream. Jezebel made Nigella look like a homely peasant girl and her whisking technique really had to be seen to be believed. There’d even been one famous spatula-licking sequence that had to be edited out, given her programme’s early-evening timeslot. The producers decided it was definitely too hot for the tots.

‘Hello Jez,’ I said. ‘Still got that convent girl’s vocabulary, I see.’

‘Why don’t you go and shove your head up a dead bear’s bum, Alby, you prick,’ Jezebel said, and then she gave me a big wet kiss. ‘Mmmm,’ she said, licking her lips, ‘you can really taste the star-anise in that stock.’

Off-camera, Jezebel swore like a Queensland bullocky with an extremely colourful turn of phrase. In one famous incident on the set of a TV show, she’d been asked by Gordon Ramsay’s personal assistant if she could tone it down a bit as he was starting to get embarrassed. There was definitely the potential for a high-rating reality TV show about Jezebel’s life but you’d probably have to call it
Expletive De-fucking-leted
.

‘What brings you to Saigon, Jez? And didn’t I take out a court order that said you couldn’t come within 500 metres of me?’

‘In your bloody dreams, lover,’ she laughed. ‘We’re here shooting sequences for my new series and I’ve tied it in with some personal appearances and one of my Experience bloody Gourmet Asia tours.’

I figured Asia with Jezebel would be one hell of an experience, and way too much for me to cope with.

‘I’ve just taken this bunch of filthy-rich foodie wankers to Tokyo, Singapore and KL, and after this it’s Hanoi and then Hong Kong. To tell you the truth, Alby, I’m bloody sick to death of the bastards.’

Knowing how Jezebel operated, this meant there were no males in the group young enough, fit enough or good-looking enough to keep her entertained.

There was a sudden ruckus behind us and Jezebel glanced over her shoulder. ‘It’s that motherfucker Bourdain and his crew trying to screw up my interview with the cock and balls soup lady. Prick. My boys will sort him out.’

The world’s most exotic markets and locals-only food stalls were now being besieged by film crews from food and lifestyle TV shows, all competing to find something unique for their viewers. The hunt was becoming brutal, and production companies were actively seeking out ex-military types or people with martial arts training to work as producers and cameramen.

The whole food as entertainment thing was getting way out of hand. I’d recently come round a bend on a jungle track while on assignment deep in the heart of unexplored Sarawak and stumbled across a tiny shack, whose owner was squatting in the mud grilling slices of monkey over a charcoal fire. A laminated card pinned to one of the poles holding up the sagging thatched roof read ‘As featured on
Asia’s Yummiest Street Snacks
– Gourmet TV Network’.

I noticed a group of police heading in our general direction and assumed they were on their way to handle the TV crew’s demarcation dispute, but they stopped at my table. Usually I’m not all that pleased to see the local wallopers, but this morning I wasn’t too fussed. Not when the cop in charge was so good-looking.

‘Good Morning, Miss Hoang. How very nice to see you again.’

Nhu didn’t return my smile. ‘Mr Murdoch, we need to talk,’ she said. ‘Most urgently.’

‘Who’s your friend with the nice tits, Alby?’ Jezebel asked.

Nhu was wearing a neat uniform of trousers and a crisply pressed shirt with red shoulder boards bearing a thin gold band and three silver stars indicating her rank. It was an outfit that really did show off her curves.

I made the introductions. ‘Miss Jezebel Quick, this is Senior Lieutenant Nhu Hoang of the local police. Miss Hoang is the national police pistol champion.’

‘Interesting,’ Jezebel responded. ‘Is that why she’s showing us her gun?’

It was a good question, since I was wondering about that myself. This time I was definitely able to see that she was armed, as the muzzle of a Russian 9mm police-issue Yarygin Pya semi-automatic pistol was pointing in the general direction of my bellybutton.

‘Mr Murdoch,’ Nhu said, ‘I need to ask you some questions regarding your activities last night.’

Something in her dark eyes made me stifle the comment about my activities the preceding evening and her part in them.

‘We require your assistance with our inquiries.’ She turned to Jezebel and smiled. ‘Ms Quick, since this affair does not concern you I suggest you go about your business.’

Jezebel looked at me. ‘Alby?’

I nodded. ‘It’s under control, Jez.’

Jezebel leaned down and gave me a kiss. ‘We’ll catch up later, okay?’

‘Ms Quick,’ Nhu said, ‘I very much enjoyed your recent book on romantic dinners for two.’

‘Then you wanna keep your eye out for the next one,
Naughty Late-Night Nibbles
. Alby here has got his own chapter.’

Jezebel smiled, turned and walked towards her waiting film crew. I think I might have blushed.

‘Now, Mr Murdoch, if you would please put out your hands.’

One of the officers snapped a nice shiny set of handcuffs around my wrists. I was glad Jezebel had left since I knew exactly what kind of comment she’d make.