"Bangkok Tattoo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burdett John)

18

F lashback: I was having a quiet morning pottering around the Old Man's Club when my cell phone started ringing. It was Lieutenant Manhatsirikit at her least glamorous.

"Get over here, pronto."

I showered quickly and grabbed a cab, only to discover when I arrived that it was not a shoot-out or an investigation by the Crime Suppression Division (our anticorruption bureau: everyone's worst scenario) but an interpretation job. I'm the only one in the station who speaks English worth a damn, so they tend to drag me in whenever there's a farang who needs terrifying. (Hard to convey the finer points of intimidation if the perp doesn't understand a word you're saying.) This guy, though, was something else: the kind of shaved skull like a pink coconut that belongs on the end of a battering ram, a fat round face bursting with Neolithic fury, small eyes, ironmongery hanging from his pincushion ears, short and incredibly muscular arms and legs, a frown characteristic of the intellectually deprived, tattoos on both forearms screaming of his inextinguishable love for Mother (left forearm) and Denise (on the right, in indigo, from elbow to wrist), and puncture marks in all major veins. On the bare wooden table in the equally bare interrogation room: two suitcases, open to show plastic-wrapped gray blocks about six inches by four. Ruamsantiah handed me a British passport: Charles Valentine Buckle. The sergeant explained that Buckle had been caught at his hotel in a combined police/customs operation after a tip-off, bang to rights.

"Tell me if he's as stupid as he looks," Sergeant Ruamsantiah ordered me.

"And if he is?"

"Then we better start looking for Denise."

Ruamsantiah's intuitive approach to law enforcement is famous throughout the station. I myself would have preferred a more thorough investigation, in which the stages of detection are more clearly defined, but his conclusion that this sack of testosterone:

1. was too stupid to arrange for the purchase, transportation, and export of $500,000 worth of morphine on his own;

2. must therefore be within the control of another person of superior intellect, who on the evidence of his tattoos and macho-slave posture was likely to be a woman;

3. whose name, on the balance of probability, was likely to be Denise,

was hard to fault. I noted, with admiration, that the Denise tattoo was darker and fresher than the other, which virtually proved Ruamsantiah's hypothesis. Indeed, the more I looked at him, the more convinced was I-as was Ruamsantiah-that he would not make a move without Denise. Yep, Denise done it.

"His mobile?"

Ruamsantiah took a rather outdated Siemens from a drawer under the table and handed it to me. With considerable pride I was able to locate both his telephone address book on the sim card and the list of numbers recently dialed and calls received. (You don't work with whores without learning mobiles, farang.) There was a predominance of one particular number, which looked like another mobile. When I checked with the address book, I saw that it corresponded to the number under the single letter D. The Pink Coconut was watching me with increasing fury, which expressed itself in recurring bursts of sweat with which his face and shaved pate were covered, just as if he'd come in from a tropical storm. (There was a periodic seeping and an unpleasant odor characteristic of consumers of dairy products-you don't get that sort of stink with lemongrass.)

"D is for Denise, right?" I snapped.

I did not, myself, consider this as evidence of forensic brilliance on my part, but Charles Buckle was clearly impressed. "Yeah." Then he clammed his mouth shut in an odd kind of way, fearing he'd said too much.

"Let's see if she's awake, shall we?"

I used the autodial feature to call the number under D. Twelve rings before a British accent that had been dragged from the bottomless pit of sleep answered. "Chrissake Chaz, what the fuck d'you want now?"

"Good morning," I said. "This is the Royal Thai Police Force, and Chaz is going to jail for the rest of his life, assuming, that is, that he avoids the death penalty. We would like to ask you a few questions concerning-"

Neither the sergeant nor I was ready for it. Arrested persons in Thailand are hardly ever violent for cultural reasons: the cops would shoot them. Indeed, a second after Chaz charged at me, apparently discounting the wooden table between us, Ruamsantiah was on his feet reaching for his service revolver, which he had stuck in his belt at the base of his spine, but Chaz, mad as a hatter, had launched himself across the table, apparently in a desperate but chivalrous attempt to protect the subject of his right forearm from implication in international drug trafficking. The table had other ideas and moved with him, creating the impression (as I and my chair went down under it) of a kind of four-legged land raft on which the lone sailor was making an adventure tour of the interrogation room, while Ruamsantiah prepared to take a shot at him and I rolled out of the way, spilling the Siemens as I went, which exploded into its various components. The suitcases followed me to the floor, and a few of the blocks burst their packing and crumbled, increasing the net value of my khaki open-neck shirt and black pants by maybe $50,000 as I rolled in their contents. I think Ruamsantiah would not have resisted the temptation to shorten the case with a bullet through that pink coconut had not the coconut itself made violent contact with the opposite wall, leaving its owner groaning in a heap along with what was left of the table. A flimsy third-world piece of furniture, it pretty much disintegrated when it hit the wall, unlike that robust first-world cranium, which suffered no more than a dramatic increase in its pinkness. Still, Ruamsantiah agonized over every cop's dilemma in such circumstances: shoot the bastard or merely beat the shit out of him?

Reluctantly, but perhaps bearing in mind the mountain of paperwork that invariably accompanies the death in custody of a farang, Ruamsantiah opened the door of the interrogation room and called for reinforcements. Before long the room was filled with vigorous and enthusiastic young men in black lace-up boots who were quick to see a cure for boredom. Coconut began to squeal as I left the room with the remains of the world-class narcotic smuggler's mobile in my hands.

I had to go to the latrines to dust off my shirt and pants, where I used the occasion to reflect on the fragility of human values: this gray poison, for which people risk life and liberty, was now worthless dust on the floor of an old police toilet. There is no constant in life but change. I also wondered what would happen if I encountered one of our sniffer dogs from the narcotics unit before I had the chance to go home and shower. To the dog, of course, the heroin would remain the most valuable commodity in the universe, since without it he'd be just another unemployed mutt wondering where his next meal was coming from: there are no more enthusiastic supporters of the war on drugs than our sniffer dogs.

Downstairs the forensic boys were too involved with their MP3 project (WAV to MP3 is no problem, but transferring Windows Media Player format into MP3 is quite a challenge, they explained) to check the sim card immediately. They pointed out that in view of the screams from the interrogation room, it did seem as if a confession was imminent, so what was the hurry? They'd get back to me.

Down in the canteen I tucked into a chile-intensive breakfast with a 7-Up before returning to the second floor, by which time the screams from the interrogation room had ceased.

At the top of the stairs one of the young cops in heavy black boots came out to tell me the Coconut wanted to confess. At least, they thought that's what he wanted. When I entered the room, I was quite pleased to see no blood, bruises, or broken teeth. Whatever they did, though, was amazingly effective. The Neolithic fury had quite dissipated, and the fat face was flabby with surrender and exhaustion, revealing the soul of perhaps a five-year-old yearning for Mother as he lay supine on the floor with a cushion thoughtfully placed behind his head which they propped up against a wall. With most of the buttons on his shirt popped, I saw what a gift he had been to various body artists over the years, some more talented than others, though all with the standard addiction to indigo.

When I asked him if he wanted to confess, he licked his lips and nodded. Now we hauled him to his feet and dragged him to a chair, revealing the telephone book he was lying on. The telephone book is the interrogator's best friend in these parts. Inserted between boot and perp, it prevents all signs of physical abuse without detracting too much from the point of the exercise.

Ruamsantiah shook his head in wonder. "He's tough, I'll give him that. They've been going at it all the time you were having breakfast, and they only just broke him. I've never seen anything like it-incredible pain threshold. The ugly bastard must be made of concrete."

Now he mentioned it, I noticed that all the young men were sweating and some were still breathing heavily.

Somebody brought a Dictaphone so Chaz's confession in English and my simultaneous translation into Thai were both recorded. Chaz was commendably brief (Him: I done it. Me: Done what? Him: The dope), so much so that Ruamsantiah told me to tell him that if he didn't think up some convincing details, he was in for another round, this time without the telephone book. Chaz seemed to want to comply but was inhibited by some mystic force that had the power to banish fear.

Ruamsantiah: "What happened with the idiot's mobile?"

I explained that it might be a while before our musically inclined geeks were able to retrieve Denise's telephone number from the sim card.

"I'll get it myself," said the sergeant, who made for the door. By now about twelve young men were all licking their lips. I was not sure how long I could hold them off; nor was I sure if I should hold them off. Maybe if they gave Chaz Buckle a really good going-over while he was still weak from the first beating, he'd see the light and get his sentence reduced by giving us details of Denise's smuggling ring. If I used my influence to save him from a further beating, on the other hand, he would almost certainly get the death penalty. A man whose main crime was a room temperature IQ would rot on death row while the mastermind Denise went free. Properly understood, karma is more complex than a weather system, but fortunately I was saved from the need to intervene in this man's destiny by the sudden and triumphant return of Ruamsantiah, who had, he explained, grabbed back the mobile and simply clipped all the bits together again. It seemed to be working, indeed was that very minute receiving a text message: Chaz, where the fuck R U and? is going on?????

I confirmed the message originated from the same number as Denise's mobile. Ruamsantiah's eyes flicked between Chaz and the mobile. He nodded at me, and I pressed the autodial button. This time only a couple of rings were required. A cautious tone: Yes?

"It's me again. He's in a Bangkok police station getting beaten up after being found with two suitcases of ninety-nine-percent-pure morphine, which he has confessed he was planning to smuggle out of the country. He has named you as an accomplice-"

A great bull yell from Chaz, who tried to attack me again, but this time everyone was ready. Two of the cops sat on him while others held his arms.

A contemptuous tone from Denise: "Leave it out, sonny boy. My Chaz wouldn't grass on me for all the tea in China. What kind of rank fucking amateur are you?" She closed the phone, leaving me stranded in perplexity. When I tried her again, I got a busy signal.

I looked thoughtfully at Chaz. Whatever doubts I might have had concerning Ruamsantiah's rather precipitous conclusion that Denise was behind the racket had now been cleared up. But our evidence against her, although intuitively compelling, could be argued away by an expensive lawyer. Indeed, it could be pretty effectively laughed out of court by a cheap one, since it consisted entirely of that tattoo on his right forearm. Even a Thai court might hesitate to condemn her to death without more to go on.

The sergeant and I shrugged at each other. Ruamsantiah seemed to feel sorry for this great pink baby, who would probably not actually be executed (because he was pink, not brown, the King would pardon him eventually after a few decades on death row) but who would certainly be ground down by our prison system until he was no more than a toothless shade on slopping-out duty. Well, there was nothing more to be done for the moment.

"I guess we better check that it really is morphine in the suitcases," I said to Ruamsantiah, who blinked. What else could it be?

And there it was left, farang, because the next day, before I'd had a chance even to consider what the morphine might signify with regard to Zinna, there was the problem of Mitch Turner to deal with and then that trip down south to Songai Kolok.

End of flashback, farang.