I got to the Betta English Language School at just after six o’clock. The list that Petrov’s secretary had given me showed the first classes starting at six-thirty and I figured that the teachers wouldn’t be turning up much before then. I was wearing my English teacher’s outfit. Cheap khaki chinos with imitation leather belt, fake Lacoste polo shirt, scuffed shoes and carrying a canvas briefcase. I nodded at the security guard at the main entrance and headed up the stairs. The door to the school was locked but I only had to wait fifteen minutes before Petrov’s secretary arrived. She was wearing a pale blue skirt suit with a white bow holding her hair back in a ponytail.
‘You are early,’ she said.
‘The early bird catches the worm,’ I said.
She frowned and I explained the proverb as she unlocked the door.
Once inside she unlocked the door to the staff room for me before walking along the corridor and opening the classrooms.
I closed the door and went over to the metal lockers. Most had name tags glued to them, other had names scratched into the metal. Jon Junior’s name was on a locker on the bottom row. Padlocked. I’d seen the padlock last time Petrov’s secretary had shown me the room so I had come prepared.
I figured the padlock was significant.
If Jon Junior had quit or been sacked, why would he have left his locker padlocked?
It was a combination lock with three dials. Nine hundred and ninety nine combinations. A thousand if you included treble zero. You wouldn’t have to be a safecracker to open it, just patient. But I didn’t have time to go through all the combinations so I took the boltcutters out of my briefcase and snipped the cheap steel hasp.
There was a photograph taped to the inside of the locker. Jon Junior in his graduation get-up, father to his left with his hand on his shoulder, mother beaming proudly at the camera from underneath a wide-brimmed hat. There was a blue laundered shirt on a metal shelf next to a plastic bottle of ozone-treated drinking water and a dog-eared copy of a John Grisham novel. At the bottom of the locker was a squash racquet and a pair of old tennis shoes.
Nothing that you’d particularly want to take with you if you did a moonlight flit. I picked up the book. There was a Foodland receipt among the pages. A bookmark, halfway through the novel. Not many people gave up halfway through The Firm.
So maybe Jon Junior hadn’t had time to clear out his locker.
Or maybe somebody had prevented him.
The door handle started to turn and I quickly shut the locker.
It was Petrov’s secretary.
‘I can use any of these, can I?’ I asked, pocketing the padlock.
‘Any that aren’t already being used,’ she said. She was holding a computer print-out. ‘Your first class isn’t until eight.’
I feigned surprise. Opened my mouth. Raised my eyebrows. Hardly Oscar-winning material but she got the message. ‘You thought you had an early class?’ she asked.
‘I thought seven,’ I said. ‘Oh well, I might as well go home and come back later.’
She smiled brightly. ‘We have a class at seven and the teacher has just called to say that he’s sick today.’
‘Right…’ I said hesitantly.
‘So you could teach the class.’
I smiled. I shrugged. I frantically tried to think of a reason to turn down her offer but nothing sprang to mind.
‘I thought classes start at half past the hour,’ I said. ‘Seven thirty?’
‘Not always,’ she said. ‘It’s in room four.’ Her smile widened. ‘The early bird really does catch the worm, doesn’t it?’
Indeed it does.
By the short and curlies.
I looked at my watch. Three minutes to seven.
She held the door open for me. ‘Most of the students are already here.’
Terrific.
I followed her down the corridor and she showed me into one of the classrooms. ‘This is Khun Bob,’ she said, by way of introduction. ‘He will be taking your class today.’
The door closed behind me with a dull thud. I smiled. Twelve faces smiled back. Three teenage boys. Nine girls. I looked at my watch. One minute gone. Fifty-nine to go.
So far, so good.
‘So what did you do in your last lesson?’ I asked.
No one spoke. A boy with shoulder-length hair and a diamond earring in his left ear opened his book at Chapter Five and pointed at it.
‘Right then, let’s open our books at Chapter Five,’ I said.
I walked over to the girl nearest me and looked down at her book. The chapter was headed ‘At The Post Office’.
Half of the pupils had photocopies of the text book, the pages stapled together. Twelve faces looked at me expectantly.
Right then.
How hard can it be, teaching?
‘So, who’s been to a post office then?’ I asked.
No reaction.
‘Some of you must have been to a post office. To buy a stamp. Post a letter.’
Twelve smiles.
‘Hands up who’s posted a letter?’
Nothing. Just smiles.
I was obviously going about this the wrong way.
‘Why don’t we read the first paragraph out loud?’
Blank looks.
I pointed at the books. ‘Read,’ I said slowly.
The students haltingly read through the first paragraph then looked at me.
I looked at my watch again. Fifty-five minutes to go.
‘So, are there any words there that anyone doesn’t understand?’
Twelve smiling faces.
‘Anything at all?’
I sat down on the table and smiled amiably. ‘How long have you been studying here?’ I asked. This time I spoke in rapid Thai. A few of the girls exchanged looks of surprise. I presumed that they hadn’t come across many English teachers who spoke their language fluently.
‘Three months,’ said a girl with shoulder-length hair and a Gucci bag.
‘How many hours a week?’
‘Five.’
‘What do your teachers do in class?’
‘We just read from the book,’ said one of the boys.
‘Which other teachers have you had?’
‘Khun Bill,’ said the boy with the earring.
‘Khun Peter,’ said one of the girls.
‘Khun David, from New York.’
Several of the girls nodded excitedly. Khun David of New York had obviously left an impression.
‘And they all just get you to read the book?’
Twelve nods.
Right then.
‘Anybody remember a Khun Jon? From America? Jon Clare’
Twelve frowns.
I took the photograph from my jacket pocket and handed it to the girl on my left. She looked at it and handed it to the girl next to her. The fourth girl to look at the picture smiled and nodded. ‘Khun Jon,’ she said. ‘From Salt Lake City.’
‘He taught you?’
The girl nodded.
Three of the girls in the class and one of the boys said that they remembered Jon Junior. None of them had seen him in the last two weeks.
‘Does anyone know where he went?’ I asked.
‘I thought he went back to the States,’ said one of the girls.
‘Did he say that?’
She shook her head. ‘I just assumed…’
‘Did he have any friends at the school? Anyone he was close to?’
The girl with the Gucci bag giggled and whispered something to the girl next to her. It sounded like ‘Tukkata’.
Doll. That’s what Tukkata means.
The theme from James Bond started playing and one of the boys pulled a cellphone from his pocket. He started talking into it in Thai, his hand cupped over the phone. He was obviously talking to his girlfriend. I wagged my finger at him and he flashed me a dirty look and turned away.
‘Can you take that outside?’ I said.
He ignored me and carried on whispering into his phone.
I walked over to his seat and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Outside,’ I said in Thai.
‘I’m on the phone,’ he snapped sullenly.
‘I can see that,’ I said. ‘Take it into the corridor.’
He glared at me and left the room, still whispering into his phone.
‘Do your other teachers let you use your cellphones in class?’ I asked the rest of the students. I’d given up speaking to them in English.
‘They don’t care,’ said one of the girls. The one who’d said Tukkata. ‘They don’t care about much.’ She looked me in the eye without a trace of shyness. A teenager going on thirty-five. The others looked away. It’s not in the Thai psyche to be critical. Especially of one’s teachers.
I stood up again. ‘Okay, let’s forget the textbooks. Close them. Close your books.’
They did as they were told.
‘Let’s not talk about the Post Office. Let’s talk about people.’ I held up the photograph. ‘Let’s talk about Khun Jon,’ I said in English. ‘I want you to describe him in as many different ways as you can.’ I was faced with confused looks so I repeated what I’d said in Thai.
‘American,’ said one of the girls.
‘Good,’ I said.
‘Handsome,’ said one of the girls, who blushed and hid her mouth with her hand.
‘Tall,’ said another of the girls.
‘Good,’ I said. There was a black marker pen on a shelf below the whiteboard. I wrote on the board. ‘American’. ‘Handsome’. ‘Tall’.
‘Teacher,’ said a boy with gelled hair and a silver chain around his neck.
I wrote ‘Teacher’ on the board.
‘Yellow hair,’ said one on the girls.
‘Blond,’ I said. ‘We say blond.’
More words were thrown out. ‘Serious’. ‘Kind’. ‘Lonely’.
Interesting.
The girl who’d said lonely was in her late teens with short hair and a gold Rolex watch. Like the rest of the girls she was wearing a white shirt and short black skirt with a leather belt. There was a small gold pin on her shirt pocket that showed she went to one of Bangkok’s most prestigious schools. It wasn’t the most expensive but it was one of the hardest to get into. You needed connections to get your children accepted. The sons and daughters of Thailand’s top politicians and generals were on the school role and the school’s alumni ran many of the country’s top companies and financial institutions. I asked the girl her name. ‘Kai,’ she said.
Kai. It means chicken.
‘What makes you think he’s lonely, Kai?’ I asked. She was one of the girls who’d nodded when she’d seen Jon Junior’s photograph.
‘He used to sit on his own sometimes, reading.’
The girl who’d said ‘Tukkata’ nodded. ‘He was always reading.’
‘Just because you read doesn’t mean you’re lonely,’ I said.
‘He didn’t talk to the other teachers,’ said the boy with gelled hair.
‘So he didn’t have many friends?’ I asked, looking at the girl who’d said ‘Tukkata’.
She shrugged but didn’t say anything.
‘He didn’t talk to the teachers, but was he friendly with the students?’ I asked.
The girl smiled but didn’t say anything. The boy who’d been using his cellphone came back into the room, scowled at me and flopped down onto his chair.
‘Enthusiastic,’ said Kai.
I wrote ‘enthusiastic’ on the board.
‘Was he a good teacher?’ I asked.
Several of the girls nodded. I wrote ‘good teacher’ on the board.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s play a guessing game. Let’s see if we can guess where Khun Jon has gone.’
I stood there with the marker pen in my hand, smiling encouragingly.
Twelve faces looked back at me, blankly.
Just when things were going so well.