The Bangkok Asset

18

Obviously, the Asset killed the girl in the market apartment. With his superhuman strength he twisted her head, snapped the vertebrae between C4 and C5, and pulled until it detached from her body. Then he wrote my name on the mirror in blood, including a reference to my father.

As you know, R, normally in police procedurals you are given the identity of the perpetrator one-third of the way through the narrative and have the pleasure of watching the sympathetic, humble, hardworking cop (but s/he’s a dead shot with a forty-five) plow their way through the clues in a frenzy (must stop the bastard before he kills again) until the cop finally discovers what you the reader already know-whodunit-thus clearing the decks for a nice little orgy of vengeance at the denouement. Here it’s different: I-the-cop am now certain he dunit, and he did it to reach me in a way that hurts the most. That innocent girl with the head of a Buddha died just so he could get my attention. The mystery is why? In theory all I have to do is wait. Except that he has disappeared. A week has passed and no trace. Goldman also has disappeared. All I have to play with is that smart phone. Therefore I call over and over again the number of the single entry in Contacts that begins with the Vietnamese country code. If I wake up in the early hours, unable to sleep, the first thing I do is press autodial for that number. No answer. Then, one fine night, around three-fifteen in the morning, I try it and there is an answer.

“Hello?”

The accent is very British, very cultivated, from a more authentic age when such vowels could be uttered without fear of ridicule. For a moment I’m stuck for words. I don’t want to wake Chanya, so I get up and take the phone out into the yard. The voice becomes impatient and suspicious: “Yes? Hello?”

There is really only one person it can be. “Dr. Christmas Bride?”

A pause. “Who wants to know?”

“Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep, Doctor, calling from Bangkok. I was given your number in connection with a case I’m investigating here.”

A longer pause while he adjusts his attitude. Then he says, “Bullshit.”

I think he is about to close the phone on me. I need a key word to hold him.

“Goldman,” I say, “Mr. Joseph Goldman,” and let the silence speak for itself. He is in no hurry to rise to the bait.

“I see,” he says slowly. “You have my attention. How did you get my number? Who told you to call me?” The tone now is incisive, peremptory, imperial.

“A colleague handed me a telephone in connection with a murder inquiry.”

Silence, then, “I don’t think that answers my question, does it?”

I decide to risk the truth; half of it anyway. “This number was in the Contacts file of a telephone that may be relevant to a bombing at Klong Toey, here in Bangkok.”

A sharp intake of breath.

“You knew about that bombing?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Never mind.” A pause. “I’m afraid this is all a surprise to me, though frankly not a huge one. I’ll have to think about it and call you back.”

I have the feeling he will call someone else as soon as I close the phone.

–

I walk around in circles, waiting for him to call me back. He takes about ten minutes, and now I am certain he has had a hurried conversation with a third party: his attitude is quite different. The Old World courtesy has returned, but he is businesslike, as if I am a task he has agreed to take on.

“Look, thinking this all through, I suggest we meet.”

“Do you want to come to Bangkok?”

“I don’t think that would answer our needs. Yours, anyway.”

“I don’t follow. What needs?”

“The story I have to tell is the strangest you’ll ever hear, that I can guarantee. It is frankly beyond anyone’s credulity, except that it’s true. I wouldn’t dream of sharing it with you unless I can show you the evidence at the same time. Seeing is believing. Thomas was the only disciple with a brain.”

I wonder if the biblical reference has anything to do with his name. “So, what? Shall I come to Saigon?”

“No. There’s no evidence here either. I’m afraid we’ll have to meet in Phnom Penh-I’m going to have to take you up-country.” He utters this last sentence with a sigh, as if under constraint. “How soon can you get there?”

“Phnom Penh? The flight lasts about one hour, there are flights about every hour or two. Give a couple of hours either end, plus time to reach the airport-I suppose I could be there by early evening tomorrow.”

“I’ll fly from Saigon. Stay at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. I’ll do the same.” A pause. “I suppose you’ve begun to have an idea of how big this is, Detective? You’re like a man who went fishing for trout and caught a whale.”