Black Tiger (39 page)

‘Maybe it wasn’t the Thai police who found Waddle, but someone else, and they only informed the police later,’ Raven suggested.

‘Or maybe the Thai police were told to keep their noses out of things where you were concerned. You must have a lot of influence!’ I said, more cheerfully than I felt. I was uneasy. Not many foreigners have that kind of influence in Bangkok, and Raven had not been there very long. I knew he was not just a visiting lecturer, but I thought perhaps he was an undercover journalist doing some freelance investigating. There were secrets between us, but I felt his heart was good. Whatever he was doing, I did not think it could be unworthy. Now it was his turn to look pensive. I guessed he too was mystified. I wanted very much to touch his hand.

Tactfully, Pim went to the edge of the veranda to watch the squirrels. I said to Raven, in a casual tone that did not show how earnest I felt:

‘Now you must be more careful. You see, I am responsible for you from now on.’

‘How so?’ He looked at me steadily. His eyes were very gentle. He gazed into my face as though he had never seen me before, as though he were imprinting each of my features on his mind.

‘The Chinese say, if you save a person’s life, that person is your responsibility forever.’ We smiled into each other’s eyes.

Pim’s voice sounded sharp with surprise. ‘You’ll never believe who’s coming!’ I jumped to my feet and ran to her side. We watched Colonel Sya Dam striding along the path toward Raven’s room. He spotted us and saluted us gravely, then strode up to the veranda, stepped into the flowerbed, and leaned on the railing. He removed his uniform cap and looked at Raven, who had started to get up from his wicker chair. ‘Princess. Miss Lee.’ He nodded at us, without any Thai salutation. ‘Hello, Raven. How’s the head?’ he asked genially.

‘I’ve had worse hangovers,’ Raven grimaced cheerily.

‘Should have more sense that to prowl about Chinatown after hours on your own,’ Sya reproved.

‘I wasn’t on my own when I was mugged,’ Raven returned evenly. ‘I was with a man called Waddle.’

Sya’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Indeed?’

‘Yes. Unfortunately, he was dead at the time.’

‘You are confused, I think. The only other
farang
attacked last night—fatally, poor chap, in his case—was found in Petchaburi. You were in Chinatown, Raven. Other side of town. You are mistaken!’

‘Of course I’m not mistaken!’ Raven protested hotly. ‘I was examining the poor devil when someone hit me over the head!’

Sya reflected for a moment, looking down at the brown earth in which he was standing. He scuffed at it with his boot. When he looked up again, it was straight at me.

‘In that case, this other man would still have been there when Miss Lee got there. Perhaps he was there all along. Perhaps, in her concern for you, her friend, Miss Lee left that poor man to die.’ His eyes gleamed calculatingly. He was sizing me up, trying to anticipate my response.

‘Of course he was not there,’ I retorted, walking up to him, refusing to show fear. ‘You said the dead man was found in Petchaburi. The paper says that, too.’

‘I don’t know what all this is about,’ Raven was angry, ‘but I fell over Waddle’s body! In Chinatown, in that back alley.’

‘Oh, dear me,’ Sya murmured regretfully. ‘I am sorry to hear that, because, you see, that would mean Miss Lee here would need to come and have a little chat with the police. Are you sure you are not mistaken, Raven? A blow to the head can be very confusing.’

I felt cold. I hoped Raven would not persist. Pim moved close and took my hand. I had done nothing wrong, but in Bangkok that is academic. Guilt and innocence are arbitrary—what is important is in whose interests it is for someone to be guilty or innocent. Facts are governed by expediency. I remembered my old nightmare of the kite girl. I looked at Raven earnestly. To my relief, he dropped his gaze.

‘Perhaps you’re right, Colonel,’ he admitted with assumed humility. ‘I may have tripped over a boulder or a dead dog.’

‘Indeed, Raven,’ Sya smiled. ‘A sack of rice, a rotten durian…’

‘But,’ Raven went on, and I wished he would simply let matters rest there, ‘there’s still something I don’t understand.’

Sya stood up straight and replaced his uniform cap. ‘I don’t doubt there are many things neither of us understands. The world’s complexity is ever increasing. I’m glad we’ve cleared up that particular little misunderstanding, though. Only one dead foreigner was reported last night. In Petchaburi. Then, of course, one dead
farang
is very like another!’ He grinned, saluted us all, and strode off, whistling.

We all stared after him. The brief interlude had shattered our mood.

‘I’m glad you didn’t insist,’ I said. ‘Sya could make things very unpleasant. Best to let it go.’

‘I expect so,’ Raven said. ‘Though it all seems highly irregular.’

‘Not for Thailand,’ Pim said. ‘For Thailand, it’s normal. That’s just the trouble.’

We chatted some more, about Pim’s political plans, a demonstration the students were organising. It was Bangkok normality. When we left Raven stood up and came to lean on the railing of the veranda, watching us. We turned many times to wave, and he lifted his hand each time. I thought his eyes looked worried, but perhaps it was only that his head hurt.

The two gunmen picked their way carefully through the leech-infested swamp paths, carrying their newly acquired sniper rifles with great care. The path took a twist to the right, but the vegetation was just as thick here—although there was not so much mud, which was less wearying.

‘Now what?’ muttered the younger and less experienced man.

‘Now we wait,’ his companion replied, seating himself on a gnarled tree trunk.

Waiting was no hardship while their spirits ran high. The soldiers’ secondment as game wardens in Kao Yai National Park was new and exciting, like the bright, shiny tin badges they had been issued. The younger man rubbed his badge experimentally on his sleeve.

‘Why can’t we climb up to that lookout hut?’ He jerked his thumb toward a reed-thatched observation post on high stilt legs, clearly visible through the leaves. ‘If there’s going to be shooting, we’d be better off up there.’

‘No. Here.’

‘Give me one good reason why we shouldn’t go up there.’

‘Colonel said.’

There was silence.

‘Oh, right,’ the younger man said resignedly, and asked no more questions. When the silence became too oppressive for him again, he patted his weapon admiringly. ‘Sure is a handsome piece of hardware.’

‘
Chai
…yep…very,’ the older man grunted.

‘And that sharpshooter course. Wasn’t that something? I really enjoyed that!’ The younger man, animated, began to fiddle with his gun.

‘Quit that!’ his companion commanded harshly. ‘Quit messing about. We need to be ready.’

The roar of the helicopter battered their eardrums and the beating of the rotor blades flattened the foliage like a hurricane. The older gunman dropped to his knee, raising his weapon. ‘This is it!’ he cried. The young sniper, dizzy with excitement, followed suit.

Inside the helicopter, too, spirits were high. Rowdy toasts were made, drinking songs were bawled, and passengers drained their bottles and threw them merrily out, whooping as they watched them spiral down into the green heart of the jungle. In spite of the racket going on behind him, the Thai pilot made a textbook landing in the clearing. The game wardens watched four plump, happily inebriated men descend from the helicopter, followed by three servants. The pilot got out last and walked away from the group. The cheery comrades were busy directing the servants to drag heavy animal carcasses from the nearby jungle and stack them in mounds. Then the four hunters, with much back-slapping joviality, sent the servants to bring their guns from the helicopter, and were photographed, arms about each other, their feet reposing proudly upon their ‘bag’.

‘Now!’ murmured the older game warden, aiming for the central figure, a fat, grinning Chinese. They fired in unison, and the four hunters dropped one after the other on top of the dead deer. The pilot leapt into the helicopter, and the servants bolted, screeching, into the jungle. The younger game warden rose from his cover and fired like a madman at the helicopter’s rotor blades, shouting at each report. As the pilot realised what was happening, he leapt out again and made a dash for the cover of the trees in the wake of the fleeing servants.

‘Enough!’ the older gunman shouted. ‘Let’s go!’

‘What now?’

‘Now, we go back and report.’

‘Report what?’

‘Poachers in the National Game Reserve were killed when their helicopter, laden with game, failed to take off.’

‘Oh…’

Chee Laan Lee

It is a terrible thing to lose your father and rejoice. I had known only my father’s weaknesses and not their causes. Understanding might have bred in me tolerance, I suppose. Now he was dead, I wondered if there had ever been, could ever have been, anything between us but mutual wariness, tinged—on my part, anyway—with loathing.

My mother, of course, threw herself wholeheartedly into the theatricality of mourning. My brother Pao was more upset than anyone expected. He took to his bed, refusing to speak to anyone. The younger sons, by Father’s second and third wives, were heartless children. Their grief stemmed mainly from a fear that they would be banished from the Lee family home, and that their pocket money and sweets would stop.

The
Bangkok Herald
and all the other newspapers carried pictures of the dead, and a sober little story:

Copter Tragedy: VIPs Killed

Three leading government officials—Mr Sarit Samarn, Mr Derm Sarasin, and Mr Thep Wittiyakara—together with well-known local business tycoon Mr Ching Lee, director of the Lee Bangkok Bank, died tragically yesterday when their helicopter crashed near the Khao Yai National Park nature reserve.

I was reading all these meaningless and perverted accounts when Ah Lee appeared. She announced impassively, with the air of one refusing to be impressed: ‘Thai Princess girl come.’

I rose to greet Pim, took her hands, and drew her to the tea table. We sat in our straight-backed chairs beside it in silence while Ah Lee served us. When she had gone, Pim said, ‘I am sorry, Chee Laan. He was your father, after all.’

‘Yes,’ I said quietly.

We were silent again, then Pim said, ‘Shall I tell you what I heard? About why it happened?’

‘My father was infatuated with helicopters.’

‘Your father enjoyed shooting deer, Chee Laan. He liked shooting deer from helicopters. Especially in game reserves. They all did.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The others were government officials. It was a government-sponsored trip. The helicopter was laden with illegally shot deer carcasses. It couldn’t take off properly.’

‘I asked how you knew, Pim.’

She shrugged. ‘They were members of the government. Servants talk. Pilots talk.’ She sipped her tea delicately, but set it down harder than she intended, a little of the liquid slapping its porcelain rim. ‘It’s typical, I’m afraid, Chee Laan. This government is rotten to the core,’ she said bitterly. ‘We are planning the biggest peaceful demonstration ever. There are thousands of us. All inter-university feuds are forgotten.’

‘When is all this happening?’

‘One week from today, we march. We’ll besiege them, we’ll take turns addressing them through megaphones—we’ll make them listen!’ She shut her eyes, looking suddenly very sad. ‘If only Toom were here,’ she said. ‘I have to do it for both of us now. I say to myself, even if my father beats me, even if he chains me up, I must do it for Toom, for both of us. There’s only me now.’

‘You do exaggerate, Pim. I cannot imagine Prince Prem would beat you, much less chain you up.’

She shook her head. ‘My father is a very bad man to cross. After the last demonstration, I was made to crawl around the room for hours until my knees were raw.’ She laughed at my expression of disgust and anger. ‘I think the authorities are nervous, too. So far there have been only reprimands and expulsions, very few casualties. I think this time it will be very different.’

‘I’m sure you’re exaggerating, Pim,’ I attempted to reassure her.

‘You’ll see,’ she said. ‘But if the police or the soldiers recognise me, they will take care not to harm me. I shall be in a privileged position, less in danger than my comrades.’ She sounded regretful. Then she smiled gently. ‘Remember the Buddha’s teaching: unity in a group is a cause for happiness.’

I capped the quotation: ‘Concerted effort by a group is a cause for happiness!’

She got up to leave, and we embraced at the door, holding together a moment longer than usual. I said, ‘Thanks for coming. Take care of yourself, Pim’

Of course she didn’t. Neither did she exaggerate.

I never spoke to Pim again, though I thought of her often, remembering with a stab of pain the contrast between her commitment and resolve and the sweet expression on her earnest face.

Her father, Prince Premsakul, HRH, once Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Court of St James, did not beat his only daughter. He had her servants strip her naked and tie her to the bedpost with padlocked cycle locks, chains in lengths of hosepipe. The servants were told that the princess was suffering from hysteria, a well-known complaint among unmarried young women.

Pim managed to extricate herself from her bonds. She tore up a bed sheet and fashioned a rough toga-like garment. When it was dark, Pim slipped out and climbed over the compound wall. The watchman, as usual, was sound asleep. Watchmen always sleep more soundly than anyone else in the household, as being a watchman is not a job for those of a nervous disposition. She made her way to the home of friends, in readiness for the great march of freedom.

It is from them that I learned all this. But that was later, when it was too late to ask Pim herself.

Pawn hunched in a corner of the railway compartment, moaning, lost in the contemplation of her misery. Without warning, Salikaa’s hand cracked her hard across the face. The girl shrieked and cowered, staring in terror and pain at her mistress.