The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook (30 page)

Suchada shook her head. ‘They didn’t
all
forget. They were in a group.’

‘You telephone him?’ Wong asked.

‘That’s the most worrying thing of all. All three actors had mobile phones, and so did the driver who was bringing them to the theatre. None of them have answered their phones in the past two hours.’

Joyce put her worried face back on. ‘
Cheese.
That seems a bit like totally suspicious.’

‘It’s as if all four of them have vanished off the face of the earth.’

Wong asked: ‘Where were they last time seen?’

‘We know they left the house where they were staying at about 3:40. They were staying at the private home of our chairman Pansak Jermkhunthod. Khoon was travelling with his two co-stars, Ing Suraswadee and Warin Krungwong. Nothing has been heard of any of them since.’

There was a sudden musical bleating noise. A mobile phone was ringing. Suchada tugged a small, white Nokia cell-phone from her Prada Tessuto handbag. ‘Excuse me. Yes, hello, Kamchoroen here.’

After a few seconds, she stiffened with excitement at the words she heard.

Wong and McQuinnie tried to eavesdrop but Suchada spoke in short, sharp bursts of Thai, responding with excitement to what she was hearing. The only words they understood were the last two: ‘Yes, bye.’

She rang off. ‘They’ve found the car and the driver. But all three actors have gone. The police have interviewed the driver. He says the car was attacked. He is in a bad state. The actors . . . they’ve been kidnapped. Oh, Mr Wong—our luck is not good at all today.’

The premiere of
Street Fighting Dragon
went ahead without a hitch. But while four hundred people sat motionless in the theatre—indeed, a number were fully comatose, the nearby offices of Star City Theatre Ventures were a hive of activity.

Senior Bangkok Police Major-General Thienthong Sukata, a liver-spotted man with a pear-shaped head, briefed Ms Suchada and her elderly boss, Plodprasad Sardsud, on the discovery of the car in which the actors had been travelling. Plodprasad had very dark skin and wrung his hands continuously as he listened, his head bowed and eyes fixed to the floor.

Wong and McQuinnie sat quietly behind them.

The vehicle was discovered on the outskirts of the city, having veered off the road and hit a tree, where an officer on patrol found it, the policeman explained. Plodprasad groaned, while Suchada sat in silent misery.

The
feng shui
master insisted that they speak to the man who actually found the car.

A few minutes later, Major-General Thienthong introduced them to a brown-uniformed man of about thirty with astonishingly tiny hips, the sight of which filled Joyce with sick envy. His name was Sergeant Chatchai Suttanu and he claimed to be able to speak English, although he had a pronounced Bangkok accent.

‘Car was Chevrolet Zafira. Actor’s car. Car was travelling along quiet roat just off New Petchburi Roat when another car speet up and came lewel wid them, you know?’ he said. ‘And then someone from insite nubber two car fire —’

‘Wait, please,’ interrupted Wong. ‘Who told you this?’

‘Drywer,’ Sergeant Chatchai said. He looked down at his notebook. ‘A man name, ah, Khun Boonchoob Chuntanaparb.’

‘Thank you.’ Wong began to write the name down, but quickly realised it would be impossible. He scribbled out what he had written and replaced it with: ‘Driver Mr K.’ Then he remembered that
Khun
meant
Mister
and scratched the whole line out.

The officer continued: ‘Anyway, bomb was fire from that assailan’ car into Chevrolet Zafira of moowee s’tar. It was fire with big power and s’mats true clows wi’dow, bang!’

‘Bomb?’ asked Wong.

‘He means a missile,’ said Major-General Thienthong.

‘What sort of car was it?’ asked Suchada Kamchoroen. ‘The car that fired the missile.’

‘Drywer Khun Boonchoob do not know what sort of car. He set it was grey car, four doss. It was hard to get detail fom him. He was wery shock, you know?’

‘Which window broken?’ the geomancer asked.

The officer looked down at his notes again. ‘Gas bomb t’ing went true fron’ side wi’dow, and lantet in emp’ty patsenjer seat nex’ to drywer. Stray away it startet giwing off large amoun’ of gas wit lout hissing noise. Gas smell wery bad and make all patsenjers in car to s’tart coughing and have painful ice. In back, moowee s’tar Khun Khoon grap door hander and open door to ex-cape, but dit not go out of car. Car was goin muts too fas’. Somepoty—maybe Khun Khoon or may be other man actor Warin Krungwong—shout to drywer to s’low-s’low car, so they can jum’ out. But now other car was behine other car —’

‘The assailant’s car was behind the actors’ Chevrolet,’ Major General Thienthong inserted.

‘Yets, bat guy car was behine actor Chevrolet and was bumping it from behine. So drywer he coot not s’top car, or even s’low-s’low car.’

‘
Cheese
,’ Joyce exclaimed. ‘Sounds like a movie.’

‘In fact, it sounds a bit like the movie that is being premiered tonight,’ said theatre director Plodprasad, apologetically. ‘There are two car chases in it. It’s an action movie,’ he added disdainfully, and then appeared to regret his comment. ‘Sorry, that’s off topic.’

Major-General Thienthong gave him a stern look before nodding to Sergeant Chatchai to continue.

‘Assailan’ car was behine actor car, smat’ing it from behine, again-again-again. This make it
wery
hard for drywer to s’top. He poost down hart on foot brake and pull up han’brake wery muts. Car s’pin roun’-roun’-roun’ go off site of roat. It hit barrier and s’crape site wall of s’chool and s’mall-s’mall sop-house sellin’ durian and other fruit. It go a bit more and than s’top about fitty-sisty metre along roat. Fron’ site car all broken into tree.’

‘I hope no one was hurt,’ said Joyce.

‘No one on s’treet was hurtet,’ Sergeant Chatchai assured her. ‘But drywer hit his het, go s’leep. Maybe from crass, maybe from gas, don’t know. He wake up ten minute after. All moowee s’tar gone, snatch away.’

Plodprasad was shaking his head in amazement. ‘All very amazing. Very movie-like. One of the Bond films had a good car chase in Thailand. Now, which was it? Can never remember the name. I think
Man with the Golden Gun.
The one with Mary Goodnight. I can remember her.’

‘Perhaps the driver was lying. Perhaps he was in cahoots with the kidnappers,’ Joyce suggested.

‘No.’ Sergeant Chatchai was adamant. ‘Drywer was in s’tate of shock. His arm hat burn mark from when gas bomb explote. He hat big cut on his het, loss of blut. I do this job many year. I can hear people who tell lice. He was telling troot.’

Major-General Thienthong turned up his palms in a gesture of futility. ‘So that is our challenge. No description of car. No description of kidnappers. But we have to find them.’ He turned to Wong. ‘If you can help, I would be grateful.’

Straight after breakfast on Saturday morning, Wong travelled with Sergeant Chatchai in a police vehicle to the house where the three actors had stayed. Their plan was to study the scene there and then retrace the route the car had taken from the house towards New Petchburi Road.

It took nearly an hour to reach the mansion on the outskirts of Bangkok. The house was a fortress. A long row of iron railings six metres high, backed by a thick hedge, kept out the rabble. Their car followed a seemingly endless outer perimeter wall for eight minutes, after which they came to a gateway bounded by two large pillars topped with stone eagles more suited to an American military academy.

Guards opened the gate electronically for them, and they drove up a winding driveway to a grand, steep-roofed house hidden in the trees.

The country home of tycoon Pansak Jermkhunthod was huge, beautiful and completely absurd. It was a villa designed on the lines of an over-sized temple, or perhaps a royal palace a Thai king might have built for himself circa 1830. It had multiple layers of roofs, the lowermost ones held up by painted, carved pillars.

Spiky and triangular, the building made Wong shiver. To him, the impression was one of rising fire energy, blasting over-rich yang energy upwards. Pyramid-shaped buildings were always unsuitable for personal dwellings, he believed. Only temples or churches had the right to point to Heaven with such casual effrontery. Yet an attitude of self-worship was all too common among the rich, and it was not surprising that the same conceit could be found in the design of their homes. No wonder many wealthy people were unhappy.

From his viewpoint in the driveway it looked as if the internal walls were lined with heads—how revolting. He squinted and realised that they were probably
khon
masks, repulsive heads of Thai gods with exaggerated lips and eyes, and teeth hanging down over their chins. How could anyone think that decapitated beings could add charm to their home? No lake was as deep and unfathomable as the human mind, he mused.

He fondled the charm around his neck, bowed his head, and stepped into the palace.

Joyce, meanwhile, had been told to relax and go shopping, but had decided against it—largely because she had no money left. There was another consideration: the possibility that she might get to hang out with movie stars. Now that was something not be missed.

Just outside the offices of Star City Ventures, she was interviewed by a young reporter from the
Bangkok Post
called Phaarata Sittiwong. The press, thronging around the doors, were hungry to speak to anyone who had the slightest connection to the case. In an attempt to prove to the reporter who interviewed her that she had not wasted her time, Joyce blurted out that she herself was part of an imported team investigating the incident.

Twenty minutes later, the two of them were on their way together to interview driver Boonchoob Chuntanaparb, who had been sent by police to recover at his home in a village on the outskirts of Samut Prakarn, just outside Bangkok.

Joyce was pleased that she could understand Phaarata’s Thai-accented English, which was far clearer than the police officer’s, although she pronounced
with
as
wit
and
world-wide
as
wort-white.

In a coughing, light-blue taxi filled with images and statuettes of the Buddha, Phaarata explained that Samut Prakarn Province was at the mouth of the Chao Phraya River which ran through Bangkok.

‘Bangkok is really a very old place,’ she said. ‘It was built in the 1620s, but first it was on the west side of the river at Phra Pradaeng. Two hundred years later, King Rama the Second commanded his men to move the whole city across the waters in boats.’

‘Cheese, hard work.’

Joyce stared out of the stained taxi window. Although only a short hop by plane from Singapore, Thailand was totally different. There was an out-of-focus quality about it — the edges of the roads merged into the sidewalks and the sidewalks blurred into shops and restaurants. But the streets were a happy riot of colour, people were cheerful and brightly dressed, and they moved relatively fast, despite the fierce heat.

‘It’s nice, this place,’ she commented absently. She found the jostling rows of mismatched buildings oddly attractive.

Many streets featured long strings of ugly, blockish shops interspersed with absurdly ornate temples. Homes tended to be small and cottage-like, or large, grand, and half-hidden behind high walls. The streets, whether in the urban areas or on the long stretches of palm-fringed roads between, were lined with utility poles bearing a huge number of trailing wires. It appeared to her as if the whole of Thailand had been swamped in hundreds of thousands of kilometres of spaghetti cable dropped from the skies.