The Burma Legacy (25 page)

‘I see. When did that happen?’

‘Twelve days ago.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘The Thai Narcotics Squad picked it up on the border. Hot gossip.’

Sam straightened his back. ‘So what are you saying? Jimmy’s out in the cold now? Finished? Game over?’

‘It’s complicated. Yang Lai didn’t drop him altogether. And anyway, Jimmy’s sharp enough to know the Wa aren’t to be trusted. So he hedged his bets. Made new friends.’

‘Who?’

Midge lifted an eyebrow. ‘They wore military uniforms.’

‘Thai?’ There was corruption everywhere in the border area.

‘No … Burmese.’

Sam sat bolt upright. ‘Go on.’

‘From what we can make out, Jimmy’s contacts with the Wa were at two levels – the people who supplied and those who shipped in bulk. The side of the business Yang Lai was most sensitive about was transportation. So that’s the part they shut Jimmy out of. But they were still happy to sell him packs of the stuff, if he could find his own means of getting it out of the Triangle.’

‘And he did a deal with the Myanmar military to achieve that?’

‘Yep.’ She grinned triumphantly.

‘Is that just gossip again?’

‘No. It’s from that highly unusual source I told you about. The very best of authorities.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Secretary-2.’

His jaw dropped. ‘The junta itself?’

‘Exactly.’ She was enjoying his reaction.

‘Explain.’

‘Okay. The Myanmar regime has just gone
through one of its regular exercises trying to convince the outside world it’s doing something to curb the drug trade. Secretary-2 held a press conference in a place called Mong Yawn a couple of days ago. That’s in the Triangle. Then the Tatmadaw – the Myanmar military – took a truck load of carefully chosen foreign media to a poppy farm and burned the crops for the cameras. After that they stuck an army officer on a charge to demonstrate their determination to stamp out corruption and drug trafficking.’

‘But where’s the Jimmy connection?’

‘This is the amazing bit. The officer they nailed admitted having dealings with someone travelling on an Irish passport. Name of Vincent Gallagher.’

‘The alias Jimmy Squires used in Phuket.’

‘Exactly. The Tatmadaw notified the Thais and the Thais told us.’

‘So is that enough? You could get a warrant?’ Then he frowned, realising the unlikelihood of it. ‘The Burmese officer’s testimony would never stand up in an Australian court.’

‘Highly improbable. Anyway the junta wouldn’t allow their guy out of the country – in case he spilled the beans on how many of the military commanders flesh out their pay packets with drug money.’

Sam leaned back in his chair. ‘Poor old Jimmy. Shafted from both ends.’

‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.’

‘So, let me get this straight. After Phuket, the Thai military dropped him from their payroll.’

‘Too right. And put him on their wanted list.’

‘So he really is out of business now?’

Midge scowled. ‘What do
you
think? That bloke’s probably got half-a-dozen different aliases. More than likely has someone else lined up already to ship his stuff out of Myanmar. But we’re getting closer, Steve, that’s the point. The tomcat’s lives are running out.’

She said it with passion – or desperation. Sam wasn’t sure which.

The beers arrived. Large glasses alive with condensation. The waitress hovered for the food order.

‘You choose,’ said Sam. ‘You’ve been here before.’

Midge selected fish, prawns, noodles and vegetables and the girl went away again.

‘What exactly did the junta say?’

‘Simply that the Tatmadaw officer – he’s a Major Soe Thein – was using military transport to move Jimmy’s heroin down to Rangoon. Nothing about how it was shipped out of the country.’

Sam sat back and folded his arms. ‘So what’s the next step?’

‘Nailing the bastard.’ Midge pulled a long face. ‘That’s the trouble. We still don’t have the hard evidence to put him away. Don’t even know where he is right now.’

‘
I’m
going to Yangon tomorrow.’

‘You are?’ She looked as if she’d seen a vision. ‘That’s incredible. That’s the third time this evening. Things clicking into place, I mean.’ There was a childlike wonderment about the way she said it.

‘Yeah, but I’ve got a job to do there. Finding Jimmy Squires isn’t in my brief.’

‘
Make
it your brief.’

‘He who pays the piper …’

She gave him a withering look.

‘How are you going in?’

‘On a tourist visa. I pick it up tomorrow.’

He could see she wasn’t going to waste her breath asking what he was being sent there to do, but from the calculating look in her eyes he knew she would use his visit if she possibly could.

‘This lot get through five hundred million tabs a year now,’ she announced out of the blue, gesturing towards the affluent young Thais at the tables nearby.

‘
Tabs
?’

‘Methamphetamine tablets. Speed. Half a billion produced in the Triangle this year. On top of the heroin. The Wa make ’em in a couple of huge sheds just inside the Burma border. You can see them from a military observation post in northern Thailand. Most of it comes here. But we’re getting some in Oz too.’

‘And you’re telling me this because you think Jimmy’s into that trade as well?’

She shrugged. ‘More a fear he might get into it at some future date, I suppose. His smack trading is what matters for now. Because it’s so lethal.’

A veil seemed to slip across her face and she looked away from him as if to prevent him seeing into her mind. He suspected she was thinking of the boyfriend who’d died from contaminated heroin, the man she’d told him about when drunk on New Year’s Eve.

‘You said his name was Barry?’

She glared at him, angry with herself for giving him an opening into a domain she liked to keep private.
‘The man we were talking about was Jimmy Squires …’

‘… who supplied the dope that killed your boyfriend.’ He knew he had no right to dig into that area of her life, but there was a part of him which wanted to see her vulnerable again, like the last time they’d had a meal together.

Midge bit her lip and stared at the table as she got a grip on herself.

‘Now look, Steve,’ she grated. ‘Don’t you try and make anything out of that. No snide, pommy suggestions that I’m letting my personal history interfere with my professionalism. I want Squires nailed because he’s a crook. Nothing to do with Barry. Okay?’

Sam raised a disbelieving eyebrow.

‘All right. Shit … Maybe Barry
did
have something to do with it.’ She smiled self-consciously. ‘But Christ … What d’you expect? I was only fifteen when I fell for him. You fall pretty deep at that age. Took ten years for the rose-tinting to fade and for me to realise what a damaged creature he was.’

Sam knew it would be kinder to stop there, but his curiosity wouldn’t let him.

‘Tell me about it.’

She shot him a glance that he thought said
mind your own effing business
, then surprised him by answering.

‘It was in Cabramatta that he died. Heard of it?’

‘No.’

‘A suburb of Sydney where the druggies hang out. I worked on the squad that made arrests there. We got
a call to a squat and there he was, splayed out on the floor, stark naked. Thin as a skeleton – I think he’d given up on food. No money. There were abscesses on his arms, a couple of syringes and an empty vodka bottle on the floor beside him. The autopsy showed the heroin he’d used had been cut with brick dust. Two of his fingers were black with gangrene because the dust caused blood clots. But they reckoned he just stopped breathing. The mix of booze and smack paralysed his chest.’ She gulped in a lungful of air, then let it out again. ‘Hadn’t seen him for the best part of a year and there he was, dead as a rat.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah. So was I. Waste of a great body.’ She said it with a bitter smile, but kept her eyes looking down.

‘And there’s been nobody else for you since then?’

She looked up startled. ‘Aw, shit! I’ve had my fair share of blokes, Steve. Don’t get some idea I’m in love with a ghost.’

‘I meant nobody else you’ve loved in the same way.’

‘Yeah, but that was the sort of sick love you have when you’re in plaits and tooth-braces. Doesn’t happen when you’re older, does it?’

‘You had plaits?’ Sam tried to imagine it. ‘And the boys pulled them?’

‘Now you’re piss-taking.’

‘No. I’m interested. What colour were they?’

‘My natural hair’s pretty fair, if you really want to know. Used to go blondish in the summer … Heck, that’s enough! Watch it, or I’ll start on you as a kid.
Bet you had loads of spots and stuck your fingers into your nose like it was a bag of sweets.’

Sam laughed. ‘Okay. I was intruding. Sorry.’

‘I should bloody well think you were.’

She looked fetchingly vulnerable all of a sudden.

‘It’s just that I like to know as much as possible about my dinner dates,’ he explained.

She pulled a face. ‘I think it best if we stick to talking shop this evening. Don’t you?’

He shrugged. ‘Whatever you like.’ The waitress appeared behind Midge’s head bearing a tray. ‘Only trouble is, if we keep talking about Jimmy Squires, it’ll spoil the food.’

She’d been right about the restaurant. The shellfish were sensational. They ate in silence for a while, Sam noticing how she kept glancing towards the end of the restaurant where the door was. He could sympathise. He knew what it was to be hunted.

Midge’s mind wandered off somewhere for a few moments. Then, as if she’d thrown a switch, she was back with him again.

‘Changed my mind. Tell me about you as a kid. I want to know.’

He shrugged and began talking about his upbringing in a south coast town. A philandering, submariner father and an uptight, moralistic mother.

‘There was a lot of hate at home, which created what I suppose you’d call an anxious childhood. I was glad when it was over.’

Midge nodded sagely, as if the conflicts he was describing went a long way towards explaining the defects she’d spotted in his character.

‘There must’ve been something good about it, though. What’s your happiest memory?’

‘Sailing with my dad.’

‘Ah yes. The love of boats.’ She said it as if it were a sickness. ‘Got you into the navy – I remember that from New Year’s Eve.’

‘’Sright.’ He told her about his days in RN Intelligence during the dying years of the cold war. ‘Throwing up on stinking trawlers, taking photographs of Soviet warships.’ He grimaced at the memory. ‘And you? I suppose your upbringing was like something out of
Neighbours
. Mum in the kitchen and endless horny teenagers dropping by.’

‘Oh yeah.
All
Aussies live like that.’

Her jaw set firmly, her mouth in a thin line. He had the impression she was trying to decide how much to tell him.

‘Actually it was more like something out of
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
,’ she said, taking in a deep breath. ‘My mum worked in shops or cafés – and occasionally did other things she wouldn’t talk about. We lived in a slum in Sydney and I never knew my father. Not sure mum did either, except for the few minutes it took him to jerk his stuff into her. She claimed the johnnie broke, but I suspect she was pissed as usual and didn’t check he was using one. Then when I was eleven she married a real arsehole she happened to have fallen in love with. A couple of years later he started abusing me when my mum was too drunk to notice. Always used a condom so there’d be no evidence of having sex with me. A sly bastard. Real criminal type. And I was too scared to do
anything about it. Mum was out of it most of the time and when I eventually told her, she accused me of lying. So at sixteen I ran away from home.’

Sam gulped. It had come out so pat, he thought for a moment she was making it up. But from the look in her eyes he knew it was no lie.

‘Christ …’ he grunted, feeling humbled. ‘Where … where did you go?’

‘To stay with Barry’s family.’

‘You told them what had happened?’

‘Not about the abuse, no. Couldn’t talk to anyone about it then, because I didn’t think anyone would believe me. But Barry’s folks were aware of my situation at home. And they were great. Got me into a new school so I could finish my studies. Barry’s dad was a policeman and he encouraged me to give it a go in his profession. I liked the sound of the training – and the idea of putting people like my step-dad behind bars – so I did. And here I am.’

‘Did Barry sign up too?’

‘No way. Whatever his dad did, he was going to do the opposite. Which was fine in principle, only he never settled at anything for longer than a few weeks. Always had a good reason for giving things up.’ She bit her lip. ‘Yep. He was a master at that.’

‘Didn’t give
you
up, though?’

‘Oh no. I was his fairy on the Christmas tree. Trouble was, that’s where he wanted me to stay. But I moved on. Wanted to do something that mattered. And although he did too in theory, he just couldn’t work out where he fitted in. Couldn’t even
find
a ladder, let alone get his foot on it.’

‘But you went on loving him.’

‘Oh yeah. To bits. And hated myself for not being able to help him find his way. For not being able to stop him sliding into addiction …’ The sense of failure was written on her face. ‘But sometimes we’re powerless to help the victims, Steve. I’ve learned that.’

‘Of course.’

‘Which is why we go for the people who damage them instead.’

‘People like Jimmy Squires.’

‘You’ve got it.’

They ate on in silence for a bit, Midge’s gaze drifting repeatedly towards the door.

‘Bloody wonderful,’ said Sam, pushing his plate away.

‘Glad you approved.’

The softness of her smile made him wonder if she was a little in love with him.

‘When are you going to Yangon?’ she asked.

‘Tomorrow evening, so long as the visa’s through.’

She narrowed her eyes. ‘Give me a clue.’

‘Why I’m going?’

She nodded.