Everyone Burns (5 page)

Keeping my attention focused, so to speak, on the camera, I produce a business card and hold it out to him. “It’s OK, I’m afraid I need to concentrate on this. Call my office. My assistant will schedule an appointment at the office and we can talk properly.”

He takes the card. “Ah yes, well, I might feel a bit awkward coming to your office in broad daylight, and I was wondering ...” He tails off as I continue to be highly attentive to my camerawork.

Eventually he says, “I’ll call then. Goodnight, Mr
. Braddock.”

“Goodnight, Mr
. Sinclair.”

I stay in position until I am sure he has gone, then I delete all the meaningless photos I’ve just taken and turn back to my steak; but I have lost my appetite. I tell the waiter to take away the plate
. I order a cappuccino and light up a cigarette. David Bowie’s ‘Ashes to Ashes’ starts playing.

I muse on how ridiculously easy it is to impress some people, at least some of the time. How desperately they want to believe in magic. Maybe we all do. Conceivably we’d all be a lot happier if the world were made up entirely of smoke and mirrors. Logic is, after all, an unsatisfying substitute for a magician’s wand. If Sinclair had applied Occam’s Razor, he could easily have concluded that my ‘deductions’ had come principally from a conversation with Wayan and that, accordingly, I am a second-rate detective but a first-rate psychologist. How often – I continue reflecting – is it that we see what we want to see, rather than what is
really
before our eyes. In the trade we call this
confirmation bias
, and our brains are riddled with it. We take a position on something and thereafter only see whatever confirms that position, ignoring all evidence to the contrary. Still, three cheers – or at least two – for confirmation bias: without it I wouldn’t have a business. Monkey thinks ‘detective’, monkey sees ‘detective’. Not that I’m labelling all Geordies as monkeys. Just the ones who interrupt my dinner while wearing socks with sandals.

Across the road Jingjai is still mixing drinks. While she smiles and jokes with the customers, she does not seem inclined to engage with any particular one. Perhaps she is too busy at the moment. Perhaps they are not her type. Perhaps it is too early in the evening. Perhaps this job is making me overly-cynical. I ask for the bill.

*       *       *       *       *

When I arrive home around 11.30
pm Wayan has already turned in, but Claire is still awake in the bedroom.

“Hello my darling,” she says, “you look tired.”

“A little.” I dump my camera on the dressing table.

“It must be awful for you taking photographs of pretty Thai girls all evening.”

“It’s hell. Unfortunately, my tastes only run to flame-haired English women.”

She laughs. “You’re such a liar. Let me see your war wound.”

“It’s just a scratch and it’s healing already. Shame, really.
Scarface Braddock
had a ring to it. I’ll have to come up with some other marketing ploy.”

“Or get into another fight.”

“Or get into another fight. That would work.”

I rub my eyes and sit down on the bed.

Claire says, “Seriously, are you all right? Tell me about your day.”

I tell her about the emotional gangster’s wife, the unemotional German, the broken-hearted Slough-dweller, the rude Geordie, and the latter part of my evening in Girly Bar Heaven, snooping around and clicking a woman with thick ankles.

“That is
not
chivalrous,” she lectures me sternly.

I feel chastened, but unburdened. “Tell me about
your
day.”

She sighs. “My day? What transpired for me today? What would you guess? Everything
and nothing as usual. Waiting, waiting, waiting for something to happen. Good, bad, anything. Anything old, anything new, anything borrowed, anything blue. But nothing happens. Ever. Most days I may as well be dead.”

“That’s not funny, Claire.”

“No,” she says, “Sorry. Sorry to be so ... enigmatic. But you know, my love, I can’t
really
tell you about my day if you don’t already know. You understand that, don’t you?”

I don’t reply.

“Come to bed, David,” she says gently.

“I can’t,” I reply
curtly. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep now. Anyway, I need to get some photos downloaded and finish up a report.”

“But you look exhausted.”

“I’ll only be half an hour.”

“I need to sleep now, even if you don’t.”

“It’s OK, you sleep. We can talk tomorrow.”

“Yes, tomorrow.
There’s always tomorrow.”

I pick up my camera. “Goodnight, Claire.”

“Goodnight, David.”

I go downstairs to my study and fire up the laptop. I download tonight’s pictures of Miss K from the camera: pictures of Miss K leaving her house with her Thai husband, riding with him on his motorbike, kissing and fondling him in a bar. Each photograph displays a time and date stamp. I save them into a file with earlier pictures of her and attach the file as an annex to my report.

The report is addressed to a Canadian client, Joe Mears. Joe is a gentle fiftysomething widower from Toronto with a ruddy, kind face and silver-grey hair. His more streetwise younger brother (whose name I forget) ha
d brought him on an extended holiday to South East Asia to ‘show him some real life’. While in Samui, Joe had met Kung, a thirty-five-year-old divorcee, and, much to his surprise, had fallen for her. His brother, a more experienced Asian traveller, had forseen problems and brought Joe along to see me.

I read through my draft report on Miss K. I always use initials in my reports: my viewpoint is that it helps to depersonalise what is a very personal issue, and starts a distancing process when the news is bad – as it usually is. I also strive to keep the language objective and the content factual. The human element from myself I reserve for the accompanying email.

The summary reads:

As instructed, Miss K has been under investigation and surveillance from [date1] to [date2].

Inquiries have revealed that Miss K is not a divorcee, as represented, but is in fact still married. Her husband,
Tai Tanchan, is employed as the restaurant manager in the Sea Garden in Bophut. They have no children.

Mr
. and Mrs. Tanchan own a house on the northern outskirts of Chaweng, where they live with Mr. Tanchan’s elderly mother. The address is [address1]. Inquiries into the apartment address [address2] of Miss K given to this Agency by the client, reveal that it is let out to Miss K on a short-term rental basis.

Miss K has been observed on three separate occasions entering the apartment late at night with different Caucasian males. In each case the male in question did not leave the apartment until the following morning.

Annex 1 gives details with times and dates of our observations.

Annex 2 contains various surveillance photographs of Miss K. Such photographs are time-stamped for cross-reference to Annex 1.

We can include as Annex 3 copies of any relevant certificates, filings and other documentation, but since these are in the Thai language and client does not read Thai, no Annex 3 is included. These can, however, be supplied on request, with an English translation at extra cost.

It looks OK. I fill in the square-bracketed dates and addresses and save it as a final version.

When I open my emails, however, I find I have just wasted the last
twenty minutes.

There is a mail from Joe.

Dear David,

I recently received an email from Kung explaining that she and her ex-husband have decided to give their relationship another try. While this is sad news for me, I appreciate her honesty.

Naturally this makes your efforts on my behalf redundant. There is no need for you to send me a report.

Please keep any balance on your retainer. If there are any further costs, let me know your bank account details and I will organise a transfer.

Kind regards,
Joe

The romantic in me says that Kung had an attack of conscience and felt unable to take further advantage of this sweet guy. The pragmatist in me says she was tipped off about my surveillance, or saw me snapping photos, and decided the game was up. Either way, I am happy not to have to send Joe my report. We all need our little illusions. Or do I mean ‘delusions’?

I reply.

Dear Joe,

I understand. I am sorry things did not work out for you.

There are no further costs to my account. If I can be of service to you at any time, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Best wishes, David

I attach the report file and annexes and forward the email to Da.

Da

If you are not in labour, please convert attached to
PDF and file under Closed Cases.

David

I logoff and power down.

As I switch off the study light and emerge into the hall, I notice a white envelope on the floor by the front door. I pick it up. My name is written on it in a hand I have seen before.

I take it into the study and open an anonymous-looking folder I had tucked away at the bottom of a locked drawer. From the folder I remove another envelope and compare the two. The envelopes are the same – cheap, white and obtainable anywhere on the island. On both my name is written in capital letters with a black pen in a style that looks either childish, or the way a right-handed person might write with their left hand.

I spread my handkerchief out on the desk and place the second envelope on it. After putting on some surgical gloves, I take out some dusting powder and a small brush and carefully check the envelope for fingerprints. Other than my own on the corners, there are none. I slit the envelope open with a paper-knife. If this was
CSI
, I could check the gummed flap for the writer’s DNA. But this is
KSI
(
Koh Samui Investigator
), and I have no such technology at my disposal. I carefully extract a single sheet of paper and repeat the dusting procedure. Nothing.

I
shake off the powder and lay out the paper beside the letter from the first envelope. I am comparing two A4-sized sheets of cheap photocopying paper. Both have been neatly folded twice, and the printing on both is in Ariel Bold from a lazerjet printer.

The first letter says

HOW DO YOU SLEEP AT NIGHT?

The second says

WIVES CAN BE A PROBLEM

I put the envelopes and letters into the folder, and the folder back in the bottom of the desk drawer. I tidy up, lock the drawer and put out the light.

3

“and what I want to know is

how do you like your blueeyed boy

Mister Death”

E.E. Cummings, Selected Poems

This morning I go to the temple for one of my regular spiritual cleansing sessions.

Wat Son
is a small but colourful Buddhist temple clinging to the hillside not far from my house. The wat is not on the standard tourists’ itinerary so there I can meditate without being surrounded by gawping visitors or plagued by souvenir sellers. The only wares on offer here are merit and the necessary paraphernalia of devotion. I have rarely seen another white face there, and that suits me just fine.

Aside from the main temple building, the complex comprises a courtyard, some outbuildings, a walled garden and the monks’ quarters. One of the outbuildings houses a glass case which contains a mummified monk dressed in traditional robes. In his cupped hands he holds a painted wooden lotus, the eponymous symbol
of Buddhism. Some wag – I suspect the Old Monk who is in charge of the temple – has put a pair of mirrored sunglasses on the mummy. The devout claim this is so that you can see your own
karma
reflected back at you. I think it’s just to demonstrate even Thai monks have a sense of humour. Or perhaps someone thought it was nicer to look at than a corpse’s sewn-up eyelids.

The day’s heat is already gathering strength when I arrive
, and the courtyard is quiet – only a few locals and one young, orange-robed monk sitting on the wall, his head buried in a newspaper. As I pass by him I see he is reading the football results. “Manchester United wins again,” he says brightly, giving me the thumbs-up.

I buy incense, flo
wers and gold leaf to rub on the Buddha statues, slip off my shoes and enter the temple, passing under a large stone arch in the form of a nāga, or serpent. Although there is no-one around, many incense sticks are burning and the sunlight streams through the windows exposing the peeling paint and setting alight the dust particles in the air. I experience one of those moments where time’s arrow is suddenly halted in mid-flight, or seems to be. In the centre of the temple, the larger-than-lifesize golden Buddha sits impassive and I can feel around me the world of
samsara
crumbling before his blind gaze.
I am not a god,
he had said,
I am simply awake.

I light a bundle of incense sticks and holding them between my palms, bow several times to the statue, before kneeling and bringing my forehead to the temple floor. After this, I present the rest of the incense, along with the flowers and gold leaf, before walking backwards respectfully out of the space. I slip on my shoes and go in search of the Old Monk.

I find him sitting beneath a tree in the garden, his bright eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. While I wait for him to finish his meditation, I look around the garden. Although Thai Buddhism follows the Theravada tradition, there is something of Zen in this garden: not so much colour and many rocks, even some raked gravel shaped into lines and circles. But then the Old Monk, who exercises a hypnotic influence over the others here, is impatient with such sectarian distinctions, and I have heard him quote from Mahayana and Chán scriptures. He even likes kōans – paradoxical riddles which have no universal ‘right’ answer.
Buddha is Buddha,
he proclaims.
Although there is really no Buddha to be found at all,
he adds with a Zen twinkle.

At length, he notices me. “Ah, the White
Tathagata returns,” he says to me in Thai. (We always converse in Thai although we both know very well he speaks English.)

“Old Monk,” I give him a high
wai.

“Are you looking to pierce the veil of reality this morning?”

“That would be good. However, I fear it is beyond me today.”

“Nonsense. Sit with me and meditate awhile.”

“It’s too hot for me out here to meditate,” I say wiping away the perspiration from my neck and face with a handkerchief. “I’m burning.”

“The whole world is burning,” he responds tersely, rising to his feet. “Have you not read the
Fire Sermon
? Everything is burning, everything is aflame. The eye is aflame, the ear, nose and tongue, all the senses. Your body, even your mind is aflame. And you worry about a little sunshine? The sun is
there
to make us disenchanted with the corporeal world.”

“Thus have I heard.”

His eyes flash suddenly, “So why have you come here today, mmn? Is it to show your farang skin so that you will impress the ignorant ones here and they will come and do business with you?”

It’s worked out well that way so far,
I muse to myself. But I say, “I don’t think anything. I come here
not
to think.”

“Hrmph,” he grunts. “Better. I don’t believe a word of it. But better. Give me one of your cigarettes.”

I light us both a cigarette, although I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t be doing this.

He looks at me for a while. “Your mind is cloudy and swirling with too many inappropriate thoughts. Like the proverbial teacup, full to the brim. You first need to empty it before you try to pour in anything else.”

I have heard this speech before. “You are so right.”

“Walk with me. Walk slowly: you should always walk slowly. And do not talk. If you do this you might learn something of use to you.”

I follow him out of the garden and along a narrow track that winds upwards through the trees. He takes a final puff on his cigarette and crushes the butt beneath his sandal. I do the same with mine: everything is dry and I do not want to start a forest fire.

A few minutes later we emerge into a small clearing with a view out to the sea above the tree-line. In a shaded spot there is a small wooden bench and he indicates for me to sit on it. I watch his bony frame draped in orange as he stands, unmoving, gazing out over the dazzling sea, looking for all the world like a prophet of the Old Testament. I start to relax.

I allow my eyes to de-focus, then close them and feel the slowing of my heartbeat. I concentrate on my breathing and the space between the inbreath and the outbreath. The moving light images behind my eyelids steady their dance and I imagine them coalesce into a single candle flame. Because I am so wired this morning, I struggle to eliminate intrusive thoughts and my meditation is shallow and fragmentary. I become aware of sweat droplets running down my face, but I am partially detached, afloat on a strange sea. There is an incomplete melting of the barrier between
I
and
Other
, but at least I feel some sort of inner stabilising. Today I know, however, I will not experience that mysterious and inexplicable interpenetration, and the gateless gate will remain closed to me.

I hear the Old Monk clear his throat and take this as a signal to reopen my eyes.
In spite of my inability to achieve any depth in my practice, the tension in my neck and shoulders has disappeared. The colours I see are brighter, almost luminous, and my ears are attuned to the smallest sounds. Slowly, time starts to move again.

After a
few minutes more, without a word and careless of whether I am following him, the Old Monk sets off back down the path. When we reach the garden he stops and turns to me.

“Is your mind clearer now?”

“Much clearer.”

“It can be better not to talk. Sometimes words can mislead.”

“Yes.”

“And did you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Did you hear the sound of one hand clapping?”

“No.”

He shakes his head.
“That is because you listen only with your ears.”

*       *       *       *       *

Now it’s later, it’s quiet apart from the distant boom of dance music, and I’m alone in my office. Night has dropped over the island like a wizard’s cloak. I’m seated at my desk, finishing my second whisky, looking at the framed photograph of my flame-haired wife and flame-haired teenage daughter. The picture is about ten years old, taken on holiday with a backdrop of Balinese rice terraces. I can almost smell the happiness mingling with the scent of frangipani. I light a Marlboro and reflect on the events of the last few hours.

The day was all downhill after my meeting with the Old Monk. To appreciate why that was the case, it is necessary to understand a little of my history and the way I go about my business.

When someone reads my somewhat lurid advertisements and billboards – which are designed to sow the seeds of doubt in the farang mind as to the fidelity of his new girlfriend – that someone may well conclude that I am offering my services as a private investigator. So far, so good. They are intended to create that impression. However, nowhere will the reader find the words
private investigator
or
detective
on any of my hoardings or literature, and that is for a very good reason. I am unregistered, and have no PI licence or qualifications. Unless you consider the two-week course I did over the internet, and my library of Mickey Spillane, Raymond Chandler and Conan Doyle as sufficient evidence of professional standing, you would have to conclude I am not a suitable applicant for the status of PI Registered Practitioner. And you would be right. You may suppose, therefore, with some reason that my investigations business operates in something of a legal grey area. As to why I chose this way of making a living for the first time on my arrival in Samui – having previously run car dealerships and import-export and property businesses – is a tale which will have to keep for another time. For now, let’s just say I was ready for a change. As are many who wash up on these shores.

Furthermore, i
f you are curious at this point about my qualifications to act as a therapist, I should perhaps enlighten you that in the UK,
hypno
therapy
is a largely unregulated profession, and a three-week course will avail you of the relevant certificates to frame and hang on the walls of your consulting room. Take out some readily-available insurance, print some business cards, and, voilà, you’re away. Just don’t call yourself
doctor
or sleep with your clients.

However, while a couple of courses and some marketing bumph may get you into these businesses, they will not keep you in business – as many less-successful
impostors in Thailand have discovered. For me, the threat of unmasking as an unqualified fraud has receded with time. The longer you go on playing a role, the more it becomes you: and one day you wake up and discover you are in fact the person you have been pretending to be. Nor are my dual identities as PI and therapist as diverse as they appear to be. The thriving PI and the winning therapist share many common features, including the ability to create empathy, to project professionalism and discretion, and to probe and analyse logically. I may be lacking in some relevant paperwork, but these are the types of skills I honed in my years running various businesses, and they have stood me in good stead in my time on the island; along with my obsessive appetite for new experiences, tendency to gallows humour, and my sincerity. As someone once said,
sincerity
is the single most important human characteristic. So once you can fake
that
, you’re made.

In truth, when I first came here I had no plans to be doing what I am doing now. I had bought
into a small import-export concern in Bangkok through a contact of my father’s and had thought to potter between the island and the capital. But I soon became bored and started experimenting first with a therapy practice and later, almost by accident, with investigations work. As a foreigner, drifting into business, in a country like Thailand, is generally discouraged. For a start, there is the little matter of the appropriate work permit – the absence of which can get you deported – as well as a whole other string of quotidian matters designed to trip up the unwary or those with a disregard for the niceties of South East Asian bureaucracy. I most decidedly belong to this camp. In fact I would be a fully-paid-up member of the
I Hate Paperwork Club
if I could summon the enthusiasm to fill in the application form.

I suspect my activities here would not have survived long without an idea, the germ of which came from a conversation with Charlie Rorabaugh, a New Yorker who owns a restaurant and jazz
bar in Fisherman’s Village. Charlie is an invaluable source of information on the island and its inhabitants, and it was he who told me that Police Chief Charoenkul had a
mia nói
.

The system of
mia yài
mia nói
– major wife, minor wife – has a long tradition in Thailand. Until 1934, believe it or not, there was no law in Siam prohibiting polygamy: indeed there used to be no word in Thai for ‘polygamy’. All the Thai kings up to Mongkut in the nineteenth century had
sànŏm
; the royal version of mia nói. While this practice lives on today among jâo phâw, politicians and anyone else with money, a practitioner’s primary wife may have a divergent view on its acceptability for
her
husband. Having met Mrs. Kat Charoenkul, I had a feeling that she would not be one of those who would be happy with her spouse’s fondness for this particular facet of Thai culture. A plan began to form in my head.