The Hand that Trembles

THIRTY-SIX

It was thirty-two degrees Celsius in the shade. How hot it was in the sun, Sune Stolt did not dare to guess. He walked as close to the building wall as possible in order to maximise his shade. Business was in full swing, the shops had been open for a couple of hours. From time to time he heard people speaking Swedish.

He liked Krabi in spite of the tourists, because the city had not been as ruined as many of the others. Here there was still a somewhat intact Thai atmosphere. He hated Phuket. Phuket City might be all right but the beaches to the north were dreadful. Perhaps it was because Stolt mostly got to see the dark side of the tourist business: prostitution and drugs.

He was on his way to the police station in the centre of town. He had been there several times before and then always met with Mr No, as he was called. Stolt had forgotten his real name. Everyone knew who Mr No was – a legend in the corps – unusually tall for a Thai and known for his hard hands. Perhaps he was corrupt – there were rumours that he was involved in real estate transactions on the islands south of Krabi and that his methods were not always above board – but he had always been friendly to Stolt.

Mr No had called in the morning. Stolt could not help but smile as he thought of how pleased he had sounded as he told him that the missing-person report had gone out in Krabi the same day and that a woman had come to the station the following morning. She had brought her brother. That was all Stolt knew. Now he would find out more.

He had just completed a visit to Bangkok and was standing at the airport preparing to fly to Phuket, where he was stationed, when Mr No called. Stolt had managed to rebook his ticket, and a couple of hours later he had landed in Krabi.

It could be nothing more than a false alarm, but something in Mr No’s voice told him it was a bull’s eye. Mr No liked appearing capable and here was an opportunity to display his Thai efficiency.

Stolt was relieved to enter the station’s air-conditioned and almost arctic climate. Mr No was waiting for him in front of the reception desk. They greeted each other as warmly as usual. Sune Stolt asked him how his wife and children were doing. Mr No was clearly flattered by the fact that Stolt remembered the names of his twins. Stolt had checked the names in his notebook just before walking in.

After a couple of minutes of conversation, Mr No took him by the arm – a gesture he only bestowed upon Westerners – and showed him into a corridor, stopping at a door and opening it.

The room was bare and empty, with the exception of a wooden table and a couple of chairs. A man and a woman were sitting at the table. They immediately rose to their feet. The first thing Stolt noticed was the fear in their eyes. Thereafter he felt astonishment. The woman before him was identical to the woman in the photograph.

Mr No introduced him. Stolt nodded, smiled, and greeted the woman. She immediately began speaking in an intense torrent of words, and Mr No waited for her to finish. When she was done she stared at Sune Stolt as Mr No translated.

The photograph was of herself. It had been taken two years ago outside the restaurant where she still worked. The person who had snapped the picture was her sister, who shortly thereafter travelled to Sweden.

‘Why did she go to Sweden?’

Mr No shot him a look that expressed as much irritation as sorrow. The woman answered with another long explanation. Again Mr No waited patiently for her to finish.

‘She was going to pick berries in the big forests,’ he summarised. ‘She was going to make a lot of money. You have big forests, isn’t that right?’

‘Yes, we do,’ Stolt said. ‘What is her sister’s name?’

He used the present tense as the woman did not know her sister’s fate.

‘Pranee Kaew Patima,’ said Mr No.

It was an hour later, when Sune Stolt had checked in to the hotel, that the grief washed over him. As long as he was at the police station he could retain his composure, but outstretched on the bed in his room, prey to the vertigo no physician could find a reason for, he gave way to the bottomless black void that had recently grown deeper and wider. He felt ashamed, both as a Swede and as a man. Bosse Marksson had given him enough information so that he gathered how it had gone. The same old story, this time with a deadly outcome.

Thailand let its young women go to humiliation and death. Sune Stolt hated the Scandinavians, British, and Germans, the old men, the gangs of rowdy twenty-year-old men, the pudgy pale middle-aged men, and the well-established ones with gold clubs in their luggage. All came for the sake of flesh.

Most of them were content to screw their way around massage parlours and in dim rooms behind bars, others moved down for a few winter months in order to live like kings, and still others imported the reed-thin girls to a cold and loveless life in Europe. Of course there were exceptions, of course there were instances of real love and concern, but most of the time it was purely a matter of commerce with bodies.

Now yet another name could be laid alongside the earlier ones, Pranee Kaew Patima.

How long would he be able to stand looking up close at this misery? He knew this hatred threatened to make him a poor policeman. He glanced at the clock. He knew he ought to get up from the bed, turn on the computer, and email Marksson what he had discovered.