The Tunnel Rats (29 page)

Wright went over and sat on one of the sofas by the side of the entrance. He picked up a copy of the Bangkok Post and tried to read an incomprehensible article on Thai politics. There had just been an election but with no outright winner all the participants were maneuvering to put together a workable coalition. Wright found the story difficult to read: the English was unwieldy and the names of the people involved were so impossibly long and unpronounceable that he couldn't remember them from one paragraph to the next. From time to time he glanced over at Somchai who was waiting patiently with the phone held against his ear.

Wright read through the news section and then the sport section, which contained a surprisingly large number of stories on British football. He read the business section, then flicked through the classified advertisements. He looked at his wristwatch. Half an hour had passed and Somchai was still on the phone. Wright sighed and put his feet up on a small table. He closed his eyes.

He was woken up by someone shaking his shoulder. It was Somchai. Wright rubbed his eyes and took his feet off the table. 'What?' he said, momentarily confused. He looked at his watch again. He'd been asleep for half an hour.

'Colonel Vasan is very busy,' said the receptionist, 'but his secretary said if you come and wait, maybe he can see you.'

'So is that an appointment or not?'

Somchai's eyebrows knotted together. 'I don't understand.'

'If I go, will he definitely see me? I don't want to waste my time.'

'Maybe,' said Somchai, smiling ingratiatingly.

Wright hauled himself up off the sofa. His mind felt woolly and he was having difficulty concentrating. It was probably jetlag, he figured, coupled with the humidity and the alcohol he'd drunk THE TUNNEL RATS 205 the previous night. He thanked Somchai and went out in search of a taxi.

It was a swelteringly hot day and his shirt was soon drenched with sweat. He walked down the soi to Sukhumvit and stood at the roadside, trying to breathe through his nose because the air was thick with traffic fumes. A coach crawled by, the windows wide open and most of its passengers dozing in the heat. Black smoke belched from its exhaust and Wright stepped back. Emission controls were clearly not a priority in the city.

A motorcyclist in a wraparound helmet and wearing a bright green vest over a T-shirt stopped in front of Wright. 'Where you go?' he asked.

Wright shook his head. He peered down the traffic-packed road. The only taxis he could see were already occupied.

'Where you go?' the motorcyclist repeated. He was barely in his twenties with skin burned almost black from the sun. He wore ragged, jearifc and had rubber flipflop sandals on his feet.

Wright showed himtthe police colonel's business card.

'Forty baht,' said the motorcyclist. About one pound sterling.

Wright toolf"another long look around. There wasn't an empty taxi in sight and the traffic was barely moving. 'Okay,' he sighed and climbed on the small motorcycle. The driver twisted around and handed Wright an old pudding-basin-type black helmet with a frayed strap. Wright inspected the interior for lice, found none, and put it on. It wasn't a bad fit. Before he could fasten the strap the motorcyclist pulled away from the kerb and began weaving through the traffic. Wright held on to the metal bar at the rear of the seat.

They made surprisingly quick progress. The cars and trucks all left plenty of space between their vehicles, giving the motorcyclists room to get by. On the few occasions they reached a blockage, the car drivers would do their best to create a gap so that the bikes could get through, acts of generosity that were acknowledged with nods of helmeted heads.

They reached a set of traffic lights where more than fifty motorcycles had already gathered, engines revving. Wright tried holding his tie over his mouth but it provided little in the way of protection from the fumes. The air was deadly, and he could 206 STEPHEN LEATHER understand why most of the traffic policemen he'd seen wore white cotton masks over their mouths and noses.

The lights turned green and Wright almost fell off the pillion as his rider sped away. All the girl passengers he saw were riding side-saddle, one leg on the foot rest, the other suspended in mid air, their handbags on their laps. Many appeared to be office workers or housewives in pastel-coloured suits. There were many child passengers, too, some so small that they sat astride the petrol tanks, their tiny hands gripping the handlebars as their fathers drove. On one 250cc Yamaha he saw a husband and wife and three children between them, packed like sardines on to the seat.

There seemed to be construction sites everywhere Wright looked, and the skyline was peppered with cranes atop half-built office blocks and apartments.

A Mercedes pulled out of a side street and the bike swerved to avoid a collision, but it all happened so quickly that Wright didn't even have time to be scared. They turned off Sukhumvit and roared down a four-lane road, but within half a iryle hit another traffic jam and began weaving in and out of unmoving cars. At one point the driver took the bike up on to the fcavement and drove slowly, nodding apologies to those pedestrians he inconvenienced.

Several times they were forced to stop at traffic lights and had to wait an inordinate length of time. The lights appeared to be operated almost on a random basis by brown-uniformed policemen who sat in glass-sided cubicles. At one intersection they were held up for a full ten minutes and when Wright looked over his shoulder he could see a queue of cars almost half a mile long.

They left the main road and sped through a network of narrow side streets. Behind walls topped with broken glass stood houses with red-tiled roofs, wide balconies, shielded by spreading palm trees. The air was fresher, though occasionally Wright was hit by the stench of an open sewer or the odour of overripe fruit or animal faeces. The small streets had no pavements and the driver kept having to swerve to avoid pedestrians. There were clusters of shops with apartments above them, high-class shops selling Italian furniture and Thai antiques, and others offering haircuts or same-day laundry.

Many of the, side streets were one-way, being too narrow for cars to pass, and they had to zigzag left and right with little or no indication of who had the right of way. They cut through the car park of a large hotel where a security guard in a grey uniform and white gloves pushed a mobile barrier out of the way so they could get by, then joined another main road.J Wright had lost all sense of where he was; the city seemed to be one huge sprawl with no obvious centre.

They eventually came to a halt close to a white three-storey building with a huge car park in front. Above the main entrance porch was a huge gold and red insignia and large Thai letters which ran almost the full length of the building. Brown-uniformed policemen manned the barrier restricting entrance to the car park. Wright dismounted and paid the motorcycle rider, then strode up to the barrier. The policemen smiled at him but didn't ask what he wanted so Wright walked by and headed for the main entrance. He pushed open a glass door and went inside.

A dozen or so Thais sat on several rows of wooden benches, and two men in denims lay on one of the benches, snoring softly. An elderly woman was peeling an orange and handing pieces of the fruit to a little girl in pigtails. The benches faced a wooden counter behind which stood half a dozen uniformed men and women. Two of them, young men with red braid on the left shoulders of their tunics and strips of bright-coloured medals on their breast pockets, were talking to visitors and taking notes but the rest didn't seem to be doing anything. Wright couldn't see a queuing system in operation so he walked up to the counter. A girl who was barely out of her teens smiled at him.

'Do you speak English?' he asked.

She smiled and shook her head.

'Does anyone here speak English?' asked Wright, pointing at the uniforms behind the counter.

Her smile widened. She shook her head again.

Wright and the girl stood smiling at each other. He wondered if it was a test of wills, if she was seeing how long he could wait with an inane grin on his face. If it was a test, Wright failed. He took out Colonel Vasan's business card and handed it to the girl.

'I want to speak to him,' he said.

She read the card and then looked at Wright with renewed respect, speaking to him in rapid Thai.

Wright shook his head. 'I don't understand,' he said. He was starting to feel helpless. The language was so unfamiliar, the sounds so strange, that he couldn't even begin to guess what she was talking about.

A female officer and a middle-aged man came over and took it in turns to read the card. The man spoke to Wright in Thai.

'I'm sorry,' said Wright. 'I don't speak Thai.'

'Name you?' said the man.

'Ah, yes,' said Wright. He took out his wallet and gave the officer one of his British Transport Police business cards. It was studied with equal solemnity.

'Sit, please,' said the man, indicating the benches.

Wright went and sat down. The officers talked among themselves, then the young girl picked up a phone. Wright sighed. That hadn't been too difficult.

Half an hour later he was still waiting. He went back up to the desk and in pidgin English tried to ask how long it would be before Colonel Vasan could see him. He wJs faced with more smiles and nods towards the benches. He wen"and sat down again.

Forty-five minutes later a matronly woman in a pale blue dress came up behind him. 'Mr Nick?' she said.

Wright stood up. 'Yes,' he said. 'Nick Wright. I'm here to see Colonel Vasan.'

'He is very busy today,' she said, handing him his business card. 'Can you come back tomorrow?'

'I don't mind waiting,' he said.

The woman hesitated, then smiled. She turned and went through one of four doors in the wall opposite the counter. **.

Wright sat down. Behind him the two men continued to snore quietly. Wright wondered if like he they were also waiting to see someone, of if they had just come in to take advantage of the airconditioning.

It was a full hour before the woman returned. 'Colonel Vasan will see you now,' she said.

Wright followed her through the door, along a corridor, up a flight of stairs and along another corridor, lined on both sides THE TUNNEL RATS ' 209 with dark wooden doors bearing the names of police officers. The woman took Wright into an office which contained a desk and a dozen filing cabinets. On the desk was a photograph of two smiling children and next to it a gold Buddha statue around which had been draped a garlarid of purple and white flowers. She knocked on a door and disappeared.

When the woman reappeared, a few minutes later she nodded at a chair by the door. 'Please wait here,' she said, smiling. 'He is busy again.'

Wright began to feel that he was getting the runaround, but he smiled and sat down as asked. He could only imagine what sort of reception a Thai detective would get if he turned up at BTP headquarters unable to speak a word of English, so he was prepared to be patient. He sajt with his hands on his knees and resisted the temptation to keep looking at his watch. :

The woman busied herself with paperwork, occasionally pecking !l at a large electric typewriter that shuddered so much that her desk vibrated every time she pressed a key. After fifteen minutes she stood up, opened the door to the colonel's office and told Wright that the colonel was ready to see him. There had been no phone call, no signal from the colonel, and Wright knew for sure that he'd been deliberately kept waiting in the outer office.

Colonel Vasan was a short, stocky man with jet black hair that glistened as if it had been oiled and steel-framed spectacles that sat high up on a prominent nose. He wore a chocolate-brown uniform with gold insignia on the shoulders and a thick chunk of J ribbon medals on his breast pocket. His left cheek was pitted and scarred as if it had been scraped against a rough surface a long time ago. He had a square face with a wide jaw that he thrust forward as he studied Wright. He had Wright's business card on his desk and he looked down at it and then back at Wright's face. I 'Thank you for seeing me, Colonel Vasan,' said Wright, holding out his hand.

The colonel looked at the hand, then at Wright's card, then back to Wright's face. He spoke in Thai. Wright was about to say that he couldn't speak Thai when the secretary spoke behind him.

'Colonel Vasan prefers to conduct interviews in his own 210 STEPHEN LEATHER language,' she explained. 'I will translate for him. He asks that you sit down.'

Wright sat on one of two wooden chairs facing Vasan's desk. The secretary sat next to him, her hands clasped in her lap.

'I am Sergeant Nick Wright. I am a detective with the British Transport Police in London investigating a murder that took place several weeks ago.'

Wright waited for the secretary to translate. The colonel stood up as the secretary spoke and strode over to a window that overlooked the car park. Wright noticed a large holstered handgun on Vasan's right hip, and a radio transceiver hooked to his belt. His trousers were tucked into black boots that had been polished to a lustrous shine. He looked more like a soldier than a policeman.

'I understand from press reports that there has been a similar murder in Bangkok. A man called Eric Horvitz. I was hoping that '

you might tell me what progress had been made on the case.'

When the secretary finished translating, the colonel turned. He spoke in Thai and the secretary turned 1fc> Wright.

'Colonel Vasan asks that you tell kim about the case you are investigating,' she said. '

Wright took an envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Vasan. Inside was a printout of the pathologist's report, a description of the crime scene, photographs of the crime scene and the body, Max Eckhardt's biography and several newspaper cuttings. Vasan studied them. Wright wondered if he was able to read English or if he was only pretending to.

'The victim was a forty-eight-year-old American photographer, married but with no children. He'd only recently arrived in London. He had no enemies as far as we can see. Some camera equipment and his wallet were taken, but we don't think robbery was the motive. The wounds were inflicted over a long period and amount to torture.'