Everyone Burns (28 page)

“
Next time you have to come to my house for dinner,” he says. “The family would love to see you. It’s been too long, my friend.”

As I step outside my cell
phone rings: it’s Da.

“Aren’t you on your way to have that kid yet?”

“I believed he was coming early this morning,” she replies. “I thought my contractions were starting but it turned out to be a false alarm.”

I
really
have to start thinking about Da’s replacement soon.

“You take care.”

“Always. Now listen, Khun David, I’ve telephoned all the hospitals about Khun Yai’s eye operation, and sorted out which one has the best price. He’ll be going in for an examination tomorrow and his grand-daughter will go with him. If all is well, they’ll do the operation next week. I’ve taken money out of the petty cash box to pay for the consultation. I assume that’s OK?”

“Well done.”

“I had a long chat with Bee over the phone. She sounds nice, I liked her. I assume you like her too.”

“Yes.”

“What does she look like?”

“Older than her years.”

“But she has a nice body, yes? She must have surely.”

“For your information, not
every
woman I talk to –” I begin indignantly, but give up. “Oh, never mind. Listen, Da, I need you to do something else for me.”

“Anything that my current medical condition will allow.”

“I want you to book a hotel for Wayan to stay at tonight.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There was a car parked outside my house last night and Wayan thought she heard someone moving around out there. I had the police station a patrol vehicle there until morning. It might be nothing, but I don’t want to take a chance. I can’t get back to Samui just yet and I don’t want Wayan staying on her own tonight.”

If I were talking about some other female, Da would make some smutty remark at this point, but she respects Wayan, even if she has a particular viewpoint about me.

“Is Wayan OK?” she asks concerned.

“She’s fine.”

“What sort of standard of hotel do you want me to book?”

“
Book a nice one, but not somewhere she’s going to feel awkward. Try the Lotus Blossom Villas. This is
Wayan
we’re talking about. I don’t want her in some cockroach-infested hovel with a backpacker banging a bargirl up against the wall next door.”

“Understood.”

“Then ring Wayan and give her the details. I’ll call her in the meantime and let her know you’ll be in touch. Oh, and one more thing. If you suspect anyone is watching the office or there is anyone hanging around outside looking suspicious, I want you to lock up and go home straightaway. I’m probably over-reacting, but, well –”

“
Khun David, you know you can be so sweet sometimes.”

“Thank you for the
sometimes
. SMS me when you’ve made the booking.”

After I end the call it occurs to me that the
Lotus Blossom Villas
is where Ashley and his brother stayed. But I’m not the superstitious type. Besides, Wayan is not a middle-aged male European. She’s much more appealing than that.

I call her
, explain the situation and tell her to take some money from our cash drawer at home to pay for the hotel room. As expected, she thinks this is all unnecessary, but I am firm with her and eventually she relents.

Now if I was to catch the last flight back to Samui tonight I could surprise
Wayan at the hotel and we could have a drink together and
… And then my life would be in even more of a mess. Stick to the plan, Braddock.

I need to go somewhere not too far from my hotel and where I won’t run into Kat. Somewhere where she wouldn’t be seen dead, preferably. I know just the
spot.

I have X take me to a small eating place on the
north bank of the Chao Phraya River. It’s decidedly downmarket, but it’s popular with locals (usually a good sign), well shaded and has a distant view of the Temple of the Dawn,
Wat Arun
, which right now is shimmering in the haze. The iridescent river is full of busy little boats and rusting, crammed-full ferries, some of which pull in at the nearby pier.

I find a dusty corner table, order some vegetable rice and beer and light up a cigarette. There are quite a few people around and some of them are looking at me curiously. It may be because I am the only
farang in the joint, but I still have this itchy feeling at the back of my neck that I am under observation; and not just casual observation by inquisitive locals. The crackly sound system switches from traditional Thai music to Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’, and I wonder if this is in my honour.

We didn’t start the fire,

It was always burning since the world’s been turning …

My cold beer arrives and I watch the condensation form into small streams and run down the
outside of the glass. It’s so chilled it sets the nerves jangling in my bottom teeth as I take a pull.

I have time to kill.

Time
. So much of our human experience is bound up in time, I muse. It reflects in our everyday colloquialisms, and drives so much of our activities. Yet this obsession with the passing of the hours is a relatively modern phenomenon; an inevitable product of the Industrial Revolution, and its fixation on efficiency. A new master exported by England across the globe, so that in the developed world at least everyone has one wrist on which is clamped the new and unforgiving shackle we call a watch. In less pressurised days, men observed the ageing of the universe through the more sedate changing of the seasons. But no more. Now the hour is king, or the minute and sometimes even the second. We are all people in a rush, where speed is of the essence, and
slow
is often deployed as a term of abuse.

Time to spare. Not enough time. A time to sow and a time to reap. Time on our hands. The time of our lives. Time to decide. The wrong time, the right time. Quality time. The thief of time.

Time as the great healer: although I don’t quite see it that way. I see it more as a vehicle to transport me away from painful memories, when mere distance is not enough. Where burns the hope that one day my pursuing furies will eventually tire and falter, and I will find some kind of peace. But that time is not yet upon me. Would that it were.

I light a
Marlboro and put aside these contemplations.

I
return to my enduring obsession: Kenneth Sinclair.

There are about a zillion other things I should be thinking about, I know. Like who is writing these anonymous letters to me, to Kat and to Charoenkul? Like what on earth is Kat playing at seeing someone else right under her husband’s nose when she knows he is already suspicious? Like what on earth is Kat playing at seeing someone else right under
my
nose? Like what will Charoenkul do if he finds out I’ve been having sex with his wife
while he was paying me to watch her
? Like who was watching my house last night? Like Claire …?

Sod all that. What I really want to think about is Sinclair and what he’s up to. This paying me to spy on his employee, I just don’t buy it.

In spite of the fact that Prasert Promsai’s brother Nikom is currently top of my list of possible farang killers, I decide to indulge my dislike for Sinclair by contemplating how I might fit him up for the three burning murders. Now let me see. Supposing he were to be the murderer, what would be his motive? I consider what I know about the Northern Neanderthal.

His first wife dumped him for somebody else; that’s what Charlie R told me. Someone effeminate, or at least our macho Geordie considered him so. Although it occurs to me that Sinclair might consider anyone who uses toilet paper effeminate, perhaps I exaggerate. Moving on. His first wife’s lover was affectionately referred to as ‘Arse-wipe
’ or ‘Arse-lay’ according to my Bronx friend’s sometime reliable memory. What if this was a word-play on ‘Ashley’, the surname of the initial burning victim? What if Sinclair had by chance discovered his former love-rival on holiday on Samui and beaten his brains out? Losing your spouse and access to your kids could be a powerful motive for murder. Sinclair certainly has the brawn to do the deed. He would have little difficulty wielding a blunt weapon. Indeed he might uncharitably be described as a blunt weapon himself. It would also explain the contemptuous nature of the torching.

But how to explain the other two murders?
One of the more exotic murder motives that I list is
to cover up another misdeed
. He could have done in the other two guys to cover up the first killing, so that the whole thing looks like some serial murder spree when in fact the real crime is a straightforward revenge job.

But why would he bother? The first murder didn’t even make the papers, and it must have been obvious that the police weren’t going to put themselves out investigating it. Carrying out more killings would just attract attention and increase the hitherto negligible risk of getting caught. And aside from anything else, the whole situation with Sinclair’s first wife was over ten years ago. Since then the Geordie has found a new life, fallen in love, remarried and started a second family
…

Wait a minute.

The Neanderthal has also lost his beloved second wife. In circumstances which, anti-Sinclair that I am, even I can appreciate must have been painful.
He went mad
, Charlie said, and recently he’d been excited again when someone had raised his expectations that his wife’s hit-and-run killer might be identified. But how would I jump from
that
to the burning murders? I don’t know. But the coincidence of timing is interesting.

Of course what I should really be considering about Sinclair is why I dislike him. But I don’t want to think about this.

So far as the murders are concerned, my money still has to be on Nikom Promsai. But only a little bit of money, at least until such time as Charoenkul has run a check on the property development angle and Nikom has turned up again. Assuming he does turn up again. Assuming he’s not dead and I’ve somehow managed to get this whole thing arse about face.

Smoke another cigarette, Braddock, and think about something else. Watch the pretty boats on the river and listen to the music. Aha.
When I do pay attention I note the sound system is crunching out Elvis singing ‘Burning Love’. Someone somewhere is trying to tell me something. Wayan would be so proud. Psychedelic dreams, flying demons, spinning pool cues and non-barking dogs in the night-time. Either I’m beginning to embrace primitive religion, or there is only thing that’s barking in the night-time, and that’s
me
.

*       *       *       *       *

A quarter to three in the afternoon sees me sitting at the coffee shop in the marble-columned foyer of the Carlsson Sharifah, hiding behind a newspaper. I’ve succumbed to one of the wicked calorie-laden cakes off the display to accompany my cappuccino, despite the fact that my stomach still feels bloated from the rice and beer I had at lunchtime.

From my position I can watch the revolving doors for the arrival of Kat
. I hope I’ve got my facts right and this is the correct hotel, otherwise the chances of tracking my shady lady to her love-nest are slim.

She’d called me around one-thirty to give me a list of all the shops she and Sumalee had been to and what she’d bought there: Charoenkul’s credit cards had clearly taken a severe battering. She told me she was going back to the hotel shortly to drop off her shopping, change and pick up a few things before heading over to her friend’s house where she would spend the night.

“I’ll need to know your friend’s address and how to get there,” I said.

“
Why?
” asked Kat sharply.

“Because if I’m supposed to have followed you there, I’ll need to be able to give a convincing account to your husband of exactly where it is I’ve been.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, sounding relieved.

She gave me the details and we double-checked our stories. She then asked me what I would be doing for the rest of the day and expressed her fervent hope that I wouldn’t be going off to Patpong to spend time with dirty women. I reassured her on that score, pointing out my body was in no state to be getting involved in anything like that; all the while thinking what a bloody cheek she had.

I see the hands of my watch have already passed the hour and there is still no sign of Mrs. C. I would expect her to be fashionably late, but by the same token a small puff of resentment inside me says that she will nonetheless be anxious to see her lover. Especially as she has already had to forgo one night with him, courtesy of David Braddock.

At ten after the hour she appears looking radiant and makes her way over to the desk where she presumably collects her key-card before proceeding to the lifts. She doesn’t once glance in my direction.

Using as cover the lobby’s grotesquely-sized water feature – which has been making me want to pee for the last fifteen minutes – I see Kat enter one of the lifts, and watch the display above signal the ascent to the top floor. Bingo.