Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye: True Stories From the Case Files of Warren Olson

THE CASE OF THE BAD GOOD GIRLS

I’ve lost count of the number of times over the years that guys have said to me that they were ninety-nine per cent sure that their Thai girlfriends weren’t fooling around ‘because she’s a good girl.’ They’re not making a moral judgment, of course. What they mean is that she wasn’t dancing around a silver pole when they met. She wasn’t a bargirl. And, their logic goes, if she wasn’t a bargirl, then she must be a good girl. The problem with that argument is not all bargirls are bad girls. And not all bad girls work in the bars. There are plenty of girls in regular jobs, or going to college, who are every bit as dangerous as the most hardcore go-go dancer.

There’s a pattern to my ‘good girl’ investigations. I’m usually hired by guys who’ve made several visits to Thailand and who have got bored with the bar scene. Bored with watching beautiful semi-naked girls dance around silver poles, I hear you cry. Never! Nah, it’s true. After a while they get bored of hanging out with hookers, and they dream of having a true ‘girlfriend experience’. They start to look elsewhere for female companionship. They pick up a smattering of Thai and start to strike up conversations with shop girls in the local Robinsons department store, or the girl who cuts their hair, or the receptionist in their hotel. One thing leads to another and before long the love-struck tourist is taking the ‘good’ girl to the movies, to dinner, and eventually, to bed. He can’t believe his luck. He’s going out with a regular girl. A girl who hasn’t slept with thousands of other farangs, who doesn’t have a tattoo of a scorpion on her shoulder or stretch marks across her stomach. A girl who says that she loves him, who doesn’t demand a bar fine before going out with him or 2,000 baht every time they have sex.

Stop right there.

What’s wrong with this picture?

I’ll tell you what’s wrong. Despite what most tourists believe, Thai girls are not easy. They do not fall into bed with handsome strangers. They do not fall head over heels in love with men twice their age, five times their weight or one tenth as attractive. Good Thai girls from good families are choosy about who they date. And they generally have higher moral standards than their Western counterparts. Good Thai girls do not hold a man’s hand in the street, they would not go out with a man, Thai or Westerner, without a couple of chaperones in tow, and they would not have sex until they are married, or at the very least, engaged. Good Thai girls do not fall into bed with farangs. But bad girls do. Hundreds of them, every year. Thousands.

Usually the tourist has gone home and is staying in contact by phone or via email. More often than not there are requests for money. Sometimes the girl switches off her mobile phone at night. Or in the evenings. Sometimes a man answers her phone and claims to be her brother. Suspicions are raised, but the tourist consoles himself be thinking that his girlfriend is a ‘good’ girl. But the suspicions festers like an open wound, and that’s when they call me. They always start the conversation the same way. ‘I know I’m worrying about nothing, because she’s a good girl. She isn’t a bargirl.’

Rule number one of the private-eye game: if you think that your girlfriend is being unfaithful, she almost certainly is. I don’t tell them that, of course. I don’t want to burst their bubble. Besides, if I did tell them the cold, hard truth there’d be no point in them wiring me a retainer, would they?

Anyway, one day I was sitting at my desk wondering whether two o’clock in the afternoon was too early to open a bottle of Jack Daniels when my mobile rang. It was a Danish guy who said he was heading back home the following day and would appreciate a few minutes of my time. He had a Thai girlfriend, ‘a real girl, not a bargirl,’ he stressed. He planned to marry her and take her back to live in Denmark, and in the meantime had agreed to support her. His name was Lars and he said he wasn’t far from my office having coffee at a Delifrance outlet. I said I’d be there within half an hour, figuring that if nothing else I’d get a free coffee and a croissant.

I was across the road from the Delifrance within five minutes and spent a quarter of an hour watching the place. I’d done several bargirl investigations the previous week and the last time I visited Soi Cowboy I had the distinct impression that a few of the girls were talking about me behind my back. Nothing concrete, just a prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck, but I had been looking over my shoulder a lot over the past few days. I didn’t know Lars and for all I knew a girl might be using him to set me up. I spotted him straight away-he was the only farang in the place, and by the look of it he was on his own. No Thai heavies nearby, nothing out of the ordinary. When I was absolutely sure he was alone I wandered over and introduced myself. He asked me what I wanted and I said I’d have a white coffee and a chocolate croissant.

He was in his mid-forties, losing his hair and gaining weight, with a receding chin and ears that stuck out like teapot handles. I’m no oil painting, but I reckoned that fate hadn’t been kind to Lars in the looks department. After eight years of being told that I was a ‘handsum man’ maybe I was starting to believe my own publicity. I could understand why a man like Lars would come to Thailand looking for love. I doubted he’d have much chance of pulling anything better than a three-bag girl back in Denmark.

I munched on my pastry as he told me his story. He was on his fifth trip to the Land of Smiles, and on his third visit he’d been drinking in a pool bar in Sukhumvit Soi 4, a regular place with no go-go dancers, short-time rooms or barfines. Just pool tables and waitresses, with maybe a few freelancers playing pool who wouldn’t say no to a short-time with a punter but who wouldn’t be too upset if they went home alone.

Lars was with a Danish friend who had started going out with a bartender, another ‘good’ girl who wouldn’t dream of trading sex for money. Lars had told her that he was fed up with bargirls and wanted to meet a ‘real’ Thai girl, a ‘good’ girl. A girl he could love and who would love him. Miss Bartender, as it transpired, had the perfect candidate. She knew of an attractive young student who was all alone and who would very much like to meet a handsome farang such as Lars. An introduction was arranged, and Lars fell in love. Her name was Pim, she was a twenty-three year old student at Rhamkamheng University, and she had never been anywhere near a go-go bar. Lars took her on holiday to Hua Hin, then they went up to Chiang Mai for a week, and before long he had agreed to pay her 20,000 baht a month. My eyebrows headed skyward when he told me that. If she was a ‘good’ girl, why was he paying her twice the national average wage to attend university? Was that how courtship worked in Denmark? Of course it wasn’t. I didn’t say anything, though. I wasn’t in a bubble-bursting mood, and I’d yet to receive a retainer, so I just nodded and smiled and ate my Danish.

Lars said that he had visited the girl’s small apartment, and she’d taken him to her university once, dressed in the traditional uniform of black skirt and white blouse. Miss Pim was set to graduate the following year but Lars had decided not to wait and that he was set to marry her within the next few weeks and take her back to Denmark. Pim had done nothing to arouse his suspicions, but Lars had been visiting a few websites devoted to Thailand and Thai ways, including a site that was full of horror stories of the ‘farang boy meets Thai girl, farang boy falls in love with Thai girl, Thai girl steals everything the farang boy has and runs off with her Thai husband’ type. Lars was sure that Pim was a good girl, and that she loved him, and that she would make the perfect wife, but he wanted me to run a few basic checks, just to make absolutely sure. The next night he was due to go back to Denmark for a month and that seemed the perfect opportunity to put me on the case. If the mouse did play she was more likely to do it while the cat was 6,000 miles away. He paid me a three-day retainer in cash and gave me her address and her landline phone number. She had a mobile but Lars always called her on the landline at night so he always knew where she was. That made good sense. A common sight in the city’s red-light districts is a bargirl huddled in a corner, a hand cupped around their mobile phones, assuring their sponsor that they were at home, tucked up in bed, already sleep.

Lars showed me a photograph of Miss Pim but it was a small passport type and I doubted that I’d be able to recognize her from it. Lars was staying at the Amari Boulevard and she was coming around to see him the following afternoon so we agreed that I’d wait in the lobby and see her in the flesh. I was there, reading the Bangkok Post , when Miss Pim arrived in her university uniform. She looked like any of the other thousands of students you can see in Bangkok any day of the week. Tidy, a little over five foot, slim, hair tied back in a ponytail. Not too pretty, but I wouldn’t have kicked her out of bed. The only thing out of the ordinary was the confident way she walked across the lobby to the elevators. Most young Thai girls would have been too shy to walk into a major tourist hotel and go up to a man’s room, but Miss Pim clearly had no reservations.

I sent Lars a text saying mission accomplished and that I’d keep in touch by email.

According to Lars, Miss Pim went to university every day, taking the bus from her apartment on Sukhumvit Soi 77 at about eight o’clock and getting home just after four. So Monday morning at seven I took the Skytrain to On Nut and a motorcycle down Soi 77 to where she lived. There were four massive apartment blocks, creatively named A, B, C and D. It was a working-class Thai area and I was the only farang for miles. I sat down at one of the many pavement foodstalls and ordered my staple kow man gai and a Coke. With breakfast at thirty-five baht I was keeping expenses down, which would make Lars happy. Hundreds of students in black skirts and white blouses walked by, others whizzed by sitting side-saddle on the back of motorcycles. Eight o’clock came and went with no sign of Miss Pim, and by the time my watch read 9am I realised that she was either still at home or I’d missed her.

Pim’s apartment was number 305C, which I figured was Block C, third floor, apartment five. I waited around the entrance to the block until a group of students came out, and I hurried inside before the door closed. There were no elevators and the temperature was heading towards the predicted low-forties so I took off my jacket and headed for the stairs. There was a metal grille across the door to apartment five on the third floor. On the door itself were the numbers 305 so I figured I had the right place. The grille was padlocked on the outside, so there was obviously no one inside which meant that I’d missed her. Or that she hadn’t gone home that night.

I left it until four o’clock in the afternoon before returning to the roadside foodstall. The mid-forties forecast had been breached, and it was hellishly humid, and the boiled chicken had been sitting in the sun all day so I gave the kow man gai a miss and just ordered a Coke and a ten-baht bag of fresh pineapple. I ate my pineapple and sipped my Coke and scrutinised the faces of the passing students for any sign of Miss Pim. Five o’clock came and went and there was no sign of her, but as the majority were whizzing by on the back of motorcycles at five baht a time, I figured I could easily have missed her.

I got a motorcycle back to the Skytrain, then went home for a shower and a nap. I had a bargirl investigation that I’d been meaning to do for a while so after dark I caught a taxi to Soi Cowboy and parked myself in a dark corner of the After School Bar with a JD and Coke. The girl I was looking for was the fiancA© of a Swiss guy currently in receipt of a 30,000-baht-a-month retainer until her visa came through. Her name was Ann and there was no sign of her on the stage or sitting next to the half dozen or so customers scattered around the bar.

I started chatting in Khamen to one of the prettier girls. Yu-ee her name was, and she was determined to get me over to the Naughty Boys’ Corner but the only oral I was interested in was the sort that produced answers to my questions. I offered to buy her a cola but she said she’d prefer a Heineken beer and a tequila chaser. She told me she was eighteen but I figured she was a few years older than that. But even if she was in her early twenties that was still a pretty impressive drinks order for eight o’clock in the evening.

She slipped her hand on my knee and than ran it slowly along my thigh and asked me again to visit the Naughty Boys’ Corner with me. Five hundred baht and I was guaranteed a smile on my face. I told her that I was actually there to see a girl called Anne because a friend of mine had barfined her last month and he wanted her mobile phone number so that he could call her from Australia. I was pleasantly surprised when Yu-ee told me that Anne had stopped work, that she had a rich farang taking care of her, and that she was planning to start a new life in Zurich. She pronounced Zurich to rhyme with rich, which was cute.

I bought her another beer and chaser and spent another ten minutes having my thigh rubbed before I figured that the Naughty Boys’ Corner wasn’t that bad an idea after all. I left the bar at midnight with a smile on my face, and not just because I’d finally found a bargirl who was doing the right thing by her sponsor.

I went over to the motorcycle taxi boys and was about to tell them to take me home, when I remembered Lars. I decided to pay a night-time visit to Miss Pim’s apartment. I negotiated a round-trip fare with a guy with a 100cc Honda and got him to wait for me outside Block C. It was cooler than during the day, but it was still a hot evening and many rooms had their doors open, TVs on full blast, radios playing. The door to Miss Pim’s room was shut. The grille was unlocked, though, so someone was obviously inside. I bent down, pretending to tie my shoelace, but I couldn’t hear anything inside. But I did see two pairs of cheap flip-fops in the corridor outside the door, and one of the pairs was way too big for a girl. It’s the Thai way to leave their shoes outside the front door, and I’ve cracked more than a few cases by checking footwear outside an apartment at night. There were a number of reasons that could explain away the man-size pair of flip-flops outside her door. Her father might be visiting. She might have called a repairman out to fix her fridge. Or she might be on the other side of the door having torrid sex with her boyfriend or husband. If I was a betting man, which I am, I’d be betting the farm on the latter.

I got my motorcycle taxi guy to run me home. On the way I stopped off at a late-night internet cafA© and fired off an email to Lars laying out the shoe situation for him.

He phoned me three hours later, forgetting about the time difference in his haste to hear about the shoes from the horse’s mouth. I gave him a run down on what I’d seen, and suddenly he didn’t sound so sure of himself. Once when he’d phoned Pim on her landline a man had answered. Pim had hurriedly taken the phone and explained that it was her brother visiting. Lars said it was probably her brother again, but I could hear the uncertainty in his voice. I said I could easily check if she had a brother, though it would mean a trip to her home town.

Lars asked if I’d keep her under surveillance and promised to send me more money. I spent a couple of hours at the kow man gai stall the following morning, but I still couldn’t spot Miss Pim. There were just too many students on the move. I was starting to think about knocking on her door and giving her the old ‘I’m from the Danish Embassy’ speech and taking it from there. The temperature was heading towards the mid-forties again so I moved into a small shop where a dozen motorcycle taxi guys were watching a football match on a big screen TV. There was a small fan mounted on the wall and I positioned myself so that I could watch the game, keep an eye on the entrance to Block C, and enjoy a cool breeze. A couple of the guys were munching on fried grasshoppers and chatting away in a Laotian dialect so I nodded at the bag of insects and said ‘ sapp-e-lee?’, the Laos phrase for delicious. They roared with laughter and asked me if I’d like to try. I’ve eaten bugs before so in the interests of a bit of male bonding I took one. I’d like to say it tasted like chicken, but I’d be lying. It tasted like a fried insect. A bit like a slightly bitter cashew nut, with legs. I ordered a bottle of Sangsom whiskey and some soda for my new-found friends and they found me a plastic chair. I figured I’d missed Miss Pim for the day so I might as well enjoy the football.

It turned out that one of the guys came from my wife’s village, so we did plenty of glass-clinking and shouting ‘ chon-gel’ which sort of means ‘cheers’. A few hours later and I figured I’d better head home to freshen up and dig out a suit to catch Miss Pim in my embassy guise later that evening.

My new best friend said that he was knocking off for the day and that he’d give me a lift to the Skytrain station at On Nut. It was one hell of a ride due to the combination of the whisky I’d bought him and the amphetamines he’d been popping. We zig-zagged through the traffic, me with white knuckles and clenched teeth, him with a manic look in his eyes and a tendency to scratch his groin with his gear-changing hand whenever we overtook a smoke-belching bus. By the time he pulled up in front of the Skytrain station I was feeling fairly light-headed.

The guy wouldn’t take any money from me. I was just about to head up the stairs to the platform when I thought I’d try a long shot. I pulled out Miss Pim’s picture and showed it to him. It was probably all the whiskey I’d drunk but I didn’t bother with a cover story, I just told him the truth, that Miss Pim’s boyfriend was worried that she might be being unfaithful and that I hadn’t been able to find out whether or not she was fooling around. The motorcycle taxi guy grinned the moment he looked at the photograph, then he beamed, then he burst out laughing. ‘I know her,’ he said.

‘Are you sure?’

He nodded. ‘If I tell you something, you mustn’t say it was me that told you, okay?’

‘Big okay,’ I said. And I promised him 500 baht to seal the deal. He asked me if I remembered a big guy who was sitting right in front of the television, drinking beer from an ice bucket through a straw. I remembered. He was an ugly brute with a huge mole on his top lip that looked as if it was about to turn cancerous. He’d glared at me when I spoke Laotian as if I had no right to be using his language, and he’d jumped to his feet every time a goal looked likely.

I nodded. The guy laughed again and jabbed a dirty fingernail at the photograph. ‘That’s his wife,’ said the guy gleefully.

‘No.’

‘Yes.

‘Are you sure?’

The guy nodded emphatically. He told me that the guy with the mole was the boss of the local motorcycle taxi rank, that he was a nasty piece of work and that nobody liked him. Like most ranks they operated on a rota system but the boss had a habit of grabbing the best jobs for himself, best meaning young, pretty and female. But what had really got up his men’s noses was that the boss had started boasting that he was able to get drunk every night on a farang’s money and that he was about to buy a new high-powered motorcycle as his wife was due to receive a stack of money from Denmark and an airfare. Pim was most definitely his wife, my guy had seen them together, and he lived with her in Block C. They had a two-year-old son who was being cared for by her mother back in Chonburi.

I gave the guy 500 baht and stumbled up the stairs to the platform, marvelling at my luck. The Chinese have a saying that pretty much covers it: even a blind cat can stumble over a dead mouse sometimes.

The next day I emailed Lars with the details of Miss Pim’s web of lies. I never enjoy breaking bad news, but at least I’d be saving him a lot of heartbreak down the line. I just hoped that he didn’t ask for proof, which a lot of my clients did. ‘Just a photograph,’ they say. ‘So I can see for myself.’

I’ve never understood that. They pay me to get the information they want, then when I get it they want more. It’s as if they want to torture themselves. Or maybe they don’t believe me. Or don’t want to believe me.

Often they start firing questions at me, as if somehow I know all there is to know about all things Thai. How could she lie to me? How could she sleep with me when she has a husband? How could a husband allow his wife to sleep with another man? All good questions. And to be honest, I don’t have the answers. I’m a private eye, not a psychiatrist. I have my opinions though, not that they’re much use to Lars and the thousands of other farangs who get ripped off by Thai girls every year.

How can they lie so easily? For money. Most of the girls that farangs meet are from the countryside, or are one generation removed from working the land. Rice farming is back-breaking, sweaty, unpleasant work. So is factory work, twelve-hour shifts and one day’s holiday a month. Is it surprising that a girl would be prepared to tell a few lies if it means an easier life? And once she’s started lying, wouldn’t the lies get easier and easier? Especially if she’s gone into the relationship solely as a way of earning money.

How can they sleep with farangs when they already have a Thai husband or boyfriend? Because by doing so she gets a better life for herself and for her man. It’s work, pure and simple. And in comparison with local wages, it pays well. A half-decent go-go girl can earn over 100,000 baht a month, about six times what a nurse or a teacher would get. As a student, Miss Pim’s earnings would be zero. Her husband, even as the boss of the motorcycle rank, would be lucky to pull in 10,000 baht a month. Then out of the blue appears Lars, flashing his Euros and offering her 20,000 baht a month just to go to university and have sex with him on his occasional trips to Thailand. Lie back and think of the money. I’ve heard that refrain from countless bargirls. Farangs like Lars assume that girls would be ashamed to take money for sex, that there is something morally wrong with trading sex for money. The Thais don’t see it that way. They see it as commerce, and more fool the farang if he mistakes commerce for love.

How can the husband tolerate his wife sleeping with another man? Because he understands that it’s work. She doesn’t love the farang, she probably doesn’t even like him. She is the mother of his child. She is his wife. The farang is just a customer. A fool with more money than sense.

I hoped that Lars would just do the sensible thing and cut off all contact with Pim. But I knew from experience that often the girl would be able to persuade the farang to give her a second chance. Or a third. Or a fourth. Thai girls can be very persuasive. And farangs can be very stupid. A perfect match, really.

I can never remember if it’s good things that come in threes, or bad things, but that week I got two more ‘good’ girls that guys wanted me to check up on. Like Miss Pim, they were both girls who had never been within a hundred yards of a naughty bar or a short-time hotel. Both ladies were in their early twenties.

A guy called Terry who lived in the UK had lost his heart to Nam, who worked as a private secretary in a Thai oil company.

A South African by the name of Mark who worked for an estate agency in Bangkok had hooked up with Suming, a hi-so girl who seemed to do nothing other than shop, take care of her daughter from a previous marriage, and socialize. She had a maid to clean the ten million-baht penthouse that she shared with Mark. Hi-so girls, in my experience, should come with a Government health warning. Hi-so stands for ‘high society’ and you’ll see them in all the trendy bars and restaurants, hanging out in the expensive shopping malls, or parking their BMWs or SUVs while talking nineteen-to-the-dozen into mobile phones. The hi-so girls are generally high maintenance, they rarely pay their own way and expect to be courted with expensive gifts, holidays and sometimes cold, hard cash. They also, from what I’ve seen, tend to have the moral standards of alley cats that have snacked on Viagra. A pal of mine who is a good deal more cynical than me once said that if a hi-so girl is at the wheel of an expensive car then she’s either having sex with a rich guy, or is the daughter of someone who had sex with a rich guy. Mind you, he’s the same guy who swears blind that bargirls who wear high heels only ever adopt the starfish position when they’re in bed and I know for a fact that he’s wrong on that one.

Anyway, Terry and Mark got in touch with me shortly after I’d burst Lars’ bubble. Of the two cases, Suming was the more interesting because according to Mark she spent most of her evenings at Rivas nightclub in the Sheraton Hotel. Usually she was with Mark, but when he was out of town she went alone or with friends and it was on one of these nights that he wanted me to check on her. That meant sitting in a top bar eyeing up hard bodies and drinking JD and Coke at 200 baht a throw. Mark had okayed all expenses and sent me a decent retainer to kick off the case.

Nam’s routine was much more mundane. She worked in the company’s head office in Yannawa, a huge building more than thirty storeys tall, and I had to hang around in the midday heat trying to spot her among the thousands of office workers pouring out for a noodle or fried rice lunch or at five o’clock when they headed to the bus stops.

Terry had sent me several good photographs of Nam plus a copy of her ID card and passport so it didn’t take me too long to spot her. He didn’t expect me to find out anything untoward. He loved her, she was from a good family in Chonburi and was a university graduate. They were engaged and had already set a date for a wedding in Thailand in six months time and were already talking about starting a family. Everything had been going along swimmingly until Terry had started visiting several websites devoted to Thailand and Thai ways, especially the Stickman website at www.stickmanbangkok.com. Stick’s an old mate and his site is packed with first-person accounts of farangs who have lost their hearts, and their cash, to lying bargirls. There are some success stories too, written by guys who have settled down with former bargirls and never regretted it, but I’d say that the horror stories outnumber the success stories by about fifty to one. Terry realised that the odds were stacked against him, and while he had no reason to doubt that Nam was anything other than the perfect fancA© he figured it would be prudent for me to run a few basic checks. Smart boy.

As always, I ran through a list of questions with him, partly to get a feel for the girl but also because there are often telltale signs that something is wrong that only a long-time resident of Thailand would spot. Women with kids asking for a sin sot, or dowry, for instance. Payment of a sin sot is common enough in Thailand, but the amount paid depends on the girl’s social status and frankly, her condition. A hi-so virgin would set a suitor back several million baht. A bargirl who has been around a bit and has a couple of kids wouldn’t merit anything. So when clients tell me that their bargirl’s parents are insisting on a big dowry, I usually tell them to run a mile.

Nam’s parents ran a small supermarket in her home town and they had asked for a sin sot of 100,000 baht. She wasn’t a virgin when she’d met Terry, but she had only had a couple of boyfriends and no kids so I figured that sounded reasonable. He’d met her in a cinema, she’d been with a girlfriend, he’d been there alone. They’d started chatting, he’d asked her out and she’d accepted. That sounded okay, though it was slightly unusual in that she’d turned up alone on the date. Usually a ‘good’ Thai girl would bring along a friend or two as chaperones.

But what really set alarm bells ringing was that he had never been to her apartment. Not once in all the months he’d known her. She’d told him that as much as she wanted him to see it, the block was for women only. It was close to her office, walking distance. Now, there are woman-only apartment blocks in Bangkok, but they are few and far between, but in my experience it’s always a red flag when a girl doesn’t let a guy see where she lives. They’ll pull out a whole host of excuses: it’s a mess, it’s in a dangerous area, she lives with a friend and the friend has the key. But the bottom line is that she’s probably living with a boyfriend or husband, or the place is full of his pictures and his toothbrush is in the bathroom.

Terry had given me Nam’s office address but he didn’t know the name of the apartment block. That was another red flag raised. Anyway, I went out to Yannawa one afternoon and took a few bags of fried insects over to the nearest motorcycle taxi stand and started chatting to the guys there. The motorcycle taxi guys pretty much know everything that goes on in their locality and they’re always my first port of call in an investigation.

I got chatting away in Khmer and asked them if they knew of any women-only blocks within walking distance. There was lots of frowning and head-shaking but when I said I’d pay a hundred baht to anyone who could come up with a name one of the guys said he thought there was a hostel for women fairly close by so I had him run me over. Another hundred baht for the security guard on duty and I learned that no one who looked like Nam lived there. It was a small place, probably only two dozen studio flats, so I was pretty confident that the guy knew what he was talking about.

My motorcycle guy saw that my wallet was well-packed with 100-baht bills so he came up with another women-only block in Silom. That was well outside walking distance from the office where she worked but I figured it was worth a try so we took a run out there. Another hundred baht later and I had confirmation that Nam didn’t live there either.

By four o’clock I was back at the office block, sweating in the heat and waiting for Nam to finish work. I was pretty sure that she was lying about living in a women-only block close to her office and having caught her out in one lie I was sure there’d be others.

Nam appeared just after five by which time I had large damp patches under both armpits and I could feel puddles of sweat in my shoes. She waved goodbye to a group of her co-workers and walked across the road to a bus stop. A bus came and went and Nam made no move to board it. She looked at her watch, then made a call on her mobile phone. Another bus came and went.

I went inside a coffee shop, bought a Coke and settled down to wait. I figured she was waiting for a bus and that once she’d boarded one I’d get one of the motorcycle taxi guys to follow her. Following busses is a piece of cake because the motorcycle taxi guys all know the bus routes. I was sipping my Coke when a new model Toyota Corolla pulled up at the bus stop. Nam got in and the car roared off. I managed to get a look at the number plate before it vanished around a corner. I rushed over to the motorcycle taxi rank but by the time I’d explained what I wanted the car was well gone. It was my own fault, I should have had my ride already fixed up, but I’d just assumed that she was going to get the bus. Still, I had caught her out in two lies, and I was pretty sure that it had been a Thai man at the wheel of the Corolla.

I phoned Terry and told him what I’d discovered, and he said he’d pay me to follow her for another couple of days. He asked me what I thought, and I told him the truth. She was lying to him, and that could only mean one thing. ‘But she isn’t a bargirl,’ he said plaintively. I thought about giving him the ‘just because she doesn’t work in a bar doesn’t mean she’s not a bargirl’ speech, but I decided against it. I said I’d phone him back when I had something to report.

The following day I was better prepared. I had my own motorcycle guy all ready to go at four o’clock, and when Nam appeared I was on the pillion and he had his crash helmet on. The Corolla turned up at ten past five and we tucked up behind it and followed it a few kilometres through the crowded streets until it parked outside a decent-sized apartment block. The man was in his thirties wearing a suit and tie and the way she touched his arm as they went into the block together suggested that they were, as we say in the private-eye game, ‘romantically involved.’ I managed to fire off a few digital photographs and I emailed them to Terry later that night.

There was only one more piece of the puzzle and that was to identify the guy. The next day I took a run out to the Car Registration Office at Chatujak, near the famous weekend market, filled out the necessary forms and a twenty-baht fee, and explained to the girl behind the counter as I slipped her a tin of chocolate almonds that I was buying the car and wanted to check that it was owned outright and not under any finance deal. It’s a common enough request and the chocolate almonds were the only incentive she needed to offer me every assistance. She punched in the registration number of the Corolla, printed out the details and gave me a copy, along with her phone number, which I thought was quite sweet of her considering she was a good five years older than me and had the makings of a half-decent moustache.

The owner was from Chonburi, the same place as Nam, which suggested the he was a long-time boyfriend, but the surname on his ID was different from Nam’s so it didn’t look as if they were married. Chonburi is on the way to Pattaya, and as I had a couple of bargirl investigations lined up in Sleaze-By-The-Sea I decided to pop out that way and stop off at the Chonburi Municipal Office to run a check on the guy. I told the girl behind the counter that he had applied for a job with my company and my winning smile, a box of Thai sweets and a 500-baht note got me a look at his house papers. He was married and had a son. Nam was obviously his mia noi, his minor wife.

I guess that Miss Nam was happy to be the Thai guy’s mia noi at the same time as she was going out with Terry, and that she was just putting off the time when she had to choose. Maybe the Thai guy would leave his wife, maybe Terry would marry her and she’d settle down with him. To be honest, I could understand why she’d want to keep her options open. Girls marry young in Thailand, often in their teens, and her clock was ticking. For all she knew, Terry might dump her for a younger, prettier girl. It’s not as if he’d be spoilt for choice in Thailand. The Thai guy could also trade her in for a newer model at any time. From Miss Nam’s point of view, she was simply hedging her bets.

Terry didn’t see it that way, of course. He couldn’t stand the fact that she’d so blatantly lied to him and he called off the wedding, changed his phone number, and refused to answer her emails and letters. From the day I filed my report, he had no further contact with her. Harsh, maybe, but in my opinion he did the right thing. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again-lies are like cockroaches, If you find one,. There’ll be dozens of others that you don’t know about.

So, with two out of two good girls turning out to be bad, I started Mark’s investigation feeling pretty confident that Miss Suming had a skeleton or two in her closet. I parked myself at a corner table in Rivas nightclub and knocked back JD and Cokes at 200 baht a throw, plus tax plus service charges plus the odd tip for the very pretty waitresses. I had a good view of Miss Suming and her friends-all thirty-something hi-so Thai women-knocking back bottles of champagne and having a whale of a time. Suming showed no interest in any of the farangs hanging around the bar and no Thai men came over to join them. From the look of it, Miss Suming was enjoying a girls’ night out, and fair play to her.

There was a band playing, an American group that could actually hold a tune, and during their break they came over and joined Miss Suming’s group and more champagne was swiftly ordered. Miss Suming certainly knew how to enjoy herself, but I suppose it was nothing to her as Mark was paying for everything even though he was out of town for a week on business.

Other than the band, Miss Suming’s table remained a man-free zone for the night, but I figured that I ought to hang around until closing time just to check that she went back alone to Mark’s apartment. Eventually the band finished and the staff started packing up for the night. Miss Suming and her group were obviously well known there and they seemed in no rush to leave so eventually it was just me and them still drinking. I decided I’d better go so I hung around outside, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. I was able to keep an eye on Miss Suming through the open doorway.

The band had changed out of their stage outfits and they went over to Miss Suming’s table and helped her and her friends finish the last of the champagne. The drummer, a big African American guy with bulging biceps and a massive afro, sat next to Suming and seemed to be hanging on her every word. He was about ten years younger than Miss Suming, with a thick gold chain around his neck and a gold front tooth. One by one most of Miss Suming’s friends said their goodbyes and left, and the band members drifted off until eventually there were just four at the table; Miss Suming, the black drummer, one of her friends, and one of the guitarists.

I sat in the corner of the lobby and pretended to read the Bangkok Post. Another bottle of champagne arrived at Miss Suming’s table, and there was lots of glass-clinking and laughing.

It was two o’clock in the morning when they finally left the nightclub. I was knackered and feeling the effects of the dozen or so JD and Cokes that I’d had drunk at Mark’s expense, so I sat in the comfy armchair and tried to focus on the group as they stood in the hotel lobby by the elevators. I expected a bit of air kissing, maybe a handshake or a wai, what I didn’t expect was to see Miss Suming link arms with the black drummer and go into the lift with him. As the lift doors closed Miss Suming’s friend was giving the guitarist a full-on kiss and a grope between the legs to boot.

I watched as the floor indicator lights blinked. The elevator stopped at the seventh floor and a few minutes later returned to the lobby, empty.

Miss Suming’s friend and the guitarist went up to the fifth floor, so if the partying was continuing it was on an individual basis. I waited for another hour but Miss Suming didn’t reappear so I headed home to my bed.

The next day I emailed Mark a full report. He was, understandably, livid. He’d invested a lot of time and money in Miss Suming, and had been planning to ask her to marry him. If it’d been me I’d have cut my losses and walked away, but Mark was convinced her infidelity was a temporary slip. He confronted her and she eventually admitted to having a fling with the drummer, but that she’d only been to his room once. That sounded dubious to me. What were the odds that the one time she had slept with the guy, I’d be sitting in the lobby? Pretty bloody slim. And from the way they’d been head to head in the nightclub, I’d say it had been going on for some time.

Anyway, rule number one of the private-eye game is that the client is always right, even when he isn’t, and if Mark wanted to pour good money after bad then that was his business. But I did suggest that he install a password sniffer on the computer that they both used in their apartment. Before long he was able to keep a track on her emails and sure enough he discovered that Miss Suming was still very much in touch with the black drummer. Unbelievably, he was asking her for money, which had to be a turn up for the books. Usually it’s the Thai girl hitting on the farang for cash, but the drummer wanted a 10,000-dollar loan from Miss Suming, ostensibly to buy new equipment. Mark hit the roof again, and she begged him to forgive her. It was his fault, she said, for leaving her on her own such a lot. She was flattered by the attentions of the young black drummer, but she promised on her mother’s life that she would never talk to him again. Anyway, Mark gave her another chance and as far as I know they’re still together. I’d like to think he knows what he’s doing, but in my experience if a girl fools around once, she’ll fool around again. And like I said, generally hi-so girls have the moral standards of alley cats. You’re often better off with a bargirl. At least you expect a bargirl to lie and cheat and you won’t have your balloons burst. Unless you find yourself in a Patpong show bar, of course, sitting opposite a pretty young thing with a dart gun inserted into her you-know-what.