I was in the shop bright and early Monday morning, dealing with orders that had come in through the website over the weekend. I had put some small bronze bowls from Laos onto eBay and they’d all sold. They were nice pieces but hard to date. They were either a hundred years old or clever fakes, and frankly even an expert would be hard pushed to tell the difference. I just described them as old Laotian bowls and let the photographs speak for themselves.
A buyer in New York had taken three, one had gone to a buyer in Paris, another to a woman in Italy and a regular customer in London had bought one and sent me an email asking if I could sell him another dozen at the same price. It was a good weekend’s work considering that I hadn’t lifted a finger. I loved ecommerce but I also liked meeting customers face to face.
Usually, that is.
Sometimes there were visitors to the shop that I really didn’t care for.
The little bell on the door tinkled as it opened and Ying already had her welcoming smile in place as she looked up from the box she was sealing.
Two men walked in and at first glance I knew that they weren’t customers. They were big men, well over six feet, both wearing tight Versace jeans and black leather jackets and with thick gold chains around their necks. One had shaved his head, revealing an ugly scar above his left ear, and the other had slicked his hair back with gel so that it glistened under the shop’s fluorescent lights.
‘Are you Bob Turtledove?’ said Shaved Head, jutting his chin forward.
‘Who wants to know?’ I said, trying to sound less apprehensive than I felt.
‘Mr Shevtsov wants to talk to you,’ said Gelled Hair.
‘So Mr Shevtsov can call me,’ I said.
‘Now,’ said Gelled Hair, pulling back his jacket to show me the handle of a Glock pistol nestled in a nylon holster. He did it cleverly so that Ying couldn’t see the weapon. ‘Don’t make me ask you again.’
‘Is something wrong, Khun Bob?” asked Ying.
‘Everything’s fine,’ I said, even though it wasn’t. ‘I’m just going out with these gentlemen to see an old friend. His name’s Petrov Shevtsov. Mr Shevtsov is a Russian who runs the Betta English Language School in Sukhumvit Soi 22.’
Ying looked at me quizzically, wondering why I was giving her so much information, but I could tell from Gelled Hair’s annoyed stare that he knew why. If anything should happen to me, Ying would know where to send the police. I smiled at him and gestured at the door. ‘Let’s not keep Petrov waiting, shall we?’ I said.
I expected the two heavies to take me to the language school in Soi 22 but instead we headed for the expressway and north towards Don Muang, which had served as the city’s international airport until Suvarnabhumi had opened in 2006.
They had walked me from the shop and straight to a large Mercedes. The driver was smaller than the two heavies, with close-cropped hair and a goatee beard. Shaved Head sat in the front passenger seat and Gelled Hair sat in the back with me. He didn’t take out his gun.
He didn’t have to.
They didn’t push me down to the floor or put a bag over my head, which could have meant one of two things. Either they weren’t going to hurt me or they were going to hurt me so badly that I wouldn’t be able to identify them or where they’d taken me.
The driver asked me if there was any particular channel I wanted to listen to on the radio, which was nice of him. I said I was fine with whatever he wanted.
We left the expressway at the turn-off before the airport and drove through farmland until we reached a walled estate with two uniformed guards manning a barrier at the entrance. They raised the barrier as soon as they saw the Mercedes and we sped through.
There were just five modern houses on the estate, massive homes three stories high with swimming pools and tennis courts. The Mercedes pulled up in front of one of the houses and parked between a black Bentley and a red Porsche. Gelled Hair opened the door and climbed out and then waved for me to follow him.
He and Shaved Head took me around to the back of the house where Petrov was sitting on a lounger at the deep end of a massive oval pool. Sitting next to him was the blonde girl I’d seen with him at Paragon. She was wearing a tiny black bikini and black Chanel sunglasses and rubbing suncream over her long legs.
Petrov was wearing a miniscule pair of red Speedo swimming trunks that left little to the imagination and Oakley sunglasses. His chest was matted with thick black hair and he had a wicked scar across his stomach, as thick as a finger, and what looked like an old bullet wound at the top of his left thigh.
There was a bottle of Cristal champagne in an ice bucket by his side and he poured some into a glass as I walked up, flanked by his two heavies. He drank from the glass then put it on the table next to his lounger. ‘So you’re not a teacher,’ he said.
‘I gave it my best shot.’ I smiled as if I didn’t have a care in the world but my mind was racing. Sweat was starting to pool between my shoulder blades. The sun was fierce and there was no shade by the pool.
‘What’s your game, Turtledove?’
I smiled again. ‘Tennis, but I like watching football. American football, I mean. Not soccer. I’m a big fan of the New Orleans Saints.’
The Russian frowned. I guess he didn’t have much of a sense of humour. ‘Why did you come to my school?’ he asked.
He obviously knew that I wasn’t a teacher, so there was no point in continuing with the charade. ‘Okay, I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry that I claimed to be something I wasn’t. But I was looking for someone and your people had already lied to me.’
His frown deepened. ‘My people? What people?’
‘I phoned your school, they said they’d never heard of Jonathon Clare. But I was pretty sure that he’d worked for you as a teacher.’ I shrugged. ‘I figured the only way I could be sure was to check the school out for myself.’
‘This Jonathon Clare, why is he so important?’
‘He isn’t,’ I said. ‘He’s just a kid whose gone missing. His parents are worried about him.’
The Russian nodded slowly. ‘And have you found him?’
‘Not yet.’
He reached for his glass and drank his champagne before continuing. ‘Why didn’t you just ask me? Why go through that charade of pretending to be a teacher?’
‘That’s a good question,’ I said.
‘And I’d like an answer,’ said Petrov. ‘Because if I don’t get an answer from you that I like, something very bad is going to happen to you.’
Gelled Hair said something to Petrov in rapid Russian and Petrov sneered at me. ‘You think I care that your staff know where I am?’ He waved a hand dismissively. ‘It’s even easier to kill someone here than it is in Russia. If I say the word…’ He snapped his fingers. ‘It would be done, just like that.’
‘I’m sure it would be,’ I said. ‘But it seems like a bit of an over-reaction. And let’s face it, you didn’t even pay me so you got an hour’s work out of me for nothing.’
Petrov’s eyes hardened. ‘You think this is funny?’
I stopped smiling. No, I didn’t think it was funny. But I’d been threatened by men with guns several times in my life and in my experience it’s not the guys who make threats that you have to worry about. The real danger comes from the ones who just point the gun and pull the trigger.
Not that I was going to explain that to Petrov, just in case he decided to prove me wrong.
‘Like I said, it seems an over-reaction. But if I’d asked you about him, would you have told me anything?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘I really didn’t have any choice, did I?’
‘My school is my business, you had no right to stick your nose in.’
‘I don’t care about your school, I only wanted to know that he’s okay. Do you know why he left?’
Petrov looked at me but didn’t say anything.
‘Did he leave because of you?’ I asked, which was pushing my luck but I’d already convinced myself that his men weren’t going to shoot me.
‘Why do you ask me that?’ he said.
‘He did a visa run to Cambodia and told someone that he wasn’t happy at the school. I was told he was complaining all the time.’
‘Teachers always complain,’ he said. ‘I tell them, if they want more money, get another job. English teachers earn shit money. It’s a shit job. Anyway, they’re not in Thailand because they want to teach, they’re here for the girls.’ He pointed a finger at my face. ‘Do you know how many times I have to sack teachers because they’re sleeping with a student? Once a month, my friend. Once a month.’
‘Jon Clare isn’t like that,’ I said. ‘He’s a good kid.’
‘They’re all good kids until they get to Thailand,’ said Petrov. ‘Then they walk into a go-go bar and it’s all over.’
‘Did he ask you for more money?’
The Russian nodded. ‘Sure. I told him that I paid what I paid. There’s no shortage of teachers in Bangkok, I replaced him the day he left.’
‘And I don’t suppose he said where he was going?’
‘He just didn’t turn up one day.’
‘And why do your office staff say that he never worked there? Why is there no file on him?’
Petrov rubbed his chin. ‘You sell antiques, right?’
‘That’s my day job,’ I said. ‘But I help people when they need it.’
‘You were a cop, right?’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because you’ve got a cop’s eyes.’
I nodded. He wasn’t the first person to have told me that. ‘I used to be, yeah.’
‘In the States?’
‘New Orleans.’
‘Yeah, well you’re not in New Orleans now.’
The blonde girl stood up, stretched, and dived into the pool. She began to swim lengths in a lazy crawl.
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ I said. ‘Why is there no file on Jon Junior at the school?’
‘Because he was a complainer and I thought he might make trouble for me.’
‘You think that’s what he was going to do?
Petrov shrugged. ‘He was a moaner. A complainer. I wouldn’t put it past him to try to get me in trouble with the authorities so I removed all his details. That way if anyone came knocking I could just say that he’d never worked there.’
‘And did anyone come knocking?’
Petrov shook his head. ‘Not so far,’ he said. He pushed his sunglasses up onto the top of his head. ‘Why did you want to know how much tax I paid?’ he asked.
‘What?’ I said, even though I’d heard him perfectly.
‘You went to the tax office with some cock and bull story about looking for a school for your daughter. But we both you don’t have any children, don’t we?’
I looked at him but didn’t say anything.
He was right, I didn’t have any children. Not anymore.
He’d been checking up on me, and I didn’t like that.
I didn’t like it one bit.
‘A friend’s daughter,’ I said. ‘I was looking for a school for the daughter of a friend.’
‘I want you to understand something, Bob Turtledove. If I find out that you’ve been asking anyone else about my business, anyone at all, I’ll have you killed.’ He looked at me with unfeeling pale blue eyes and I could tell that he wasn’t making an idle threat. He meant it.
‘A contract killer in Bangkok costs less than fifty thousand baht, even when it’s a farang being killed. You cause me any more problems, and I’ll have it done. Do you understand?’
I nodded.
Yeah, I understood.
‘Is that what happened to Jon Junior?’ I said quietly.
His eyes hardened. ‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
‘You think I had him killed?’
‘You just threatened me with a hitman. Maybe you did more than threaten him.’
Petrov laughed. ‘He was a kid. Why would I kill a kid?’
‘Maybe he found out something he shouldn’t have. Maybe he was annoying you. Maybe he made a pass at your wife. How the hell do I know what makes you tick. That’s why I’m asking you, did you kill Jon Junior or have him killed?’
‘You’re a sick bastard, Turtledove.’
‘Yeah? Maybe I am, and maybe I’m not. But Jon Junior is missing and you seem to think it’s clever to threaten to kill people, so I’m just putting two and two together.’
‘I didn’t kill him,’ said Petrov. ‘He wasn’t that important. He couldn’t do anything to hurt me. He wanted more money, I said there wasn’t any, he said he’d get another job, I told him to go for it.’
I nodded slowly. ‘There’s something you should know, Petrov.’
He jutted his chin up. ‘What?’
‘I don’t threaten easy,’ I said. ‘I know people often say things in the heat of the moment that they don’t mean, but if you ever try to hurt me or my family, I won’t bother with a hitman. You’re right, life is cheap in Thailand, but I fight my own battles and you won’t be the first man I’ve killed.’
I looked at him long enough for him to know that I was serious, then I smiled and left.
Did I mean what I’d said?
Damn right, I did.