Somsak was sitting behind his desk when the secretary showed me into his office. He stood up and shook my hand then showed me to a hard-backed wooden chair. ‘How’s the head?’ he asked sympathetically. It had been two days since I’d been shot, two days that I’d spent at home being fussed over by Noy. Which, truth be told, I actually quite enjoyed.
My hand went instinctively up to the dressing on my temple. ‘It’s fine. Just a headache.’
‘You were lucky.’
‘You must be using some definition of lucky that I’m not familiar with,’ I said. ‘Where I come from, a four-leaf clover is lucky. Getting shot in the head definitely ranks up there with black cats and broken mirrors.’
Somsak frowned and I quickly explained about black cats crossing paths and shattered mirrors bringing seven years of bad luck.
‘I meant you were lucky to be alive,’ he said patiently.
It was my own fault for using sarcasm. Somsak was as straight as a dye and while he had a good enough sense of humour where anything involving slapstick was involved, irony and sarcasm were generally lost on him.
‘I am,’ I said.
‘That bus driver saved your life,’ he said. ‘If he hadn’t been high on amphetamines he probably wouldn’t have hit the motorcycle and the guy would have got off another shot.’
‘They dead?’
‘The driver is but the shooter’s in hospital.’
‘Talking?’
‘Life support. Fifty-fifty.’
I sighed. ‘Think he’ll talk?’
‘If he doesn’t die, he’ll probably talk. Depends who hired him.’
‘You’ll cut him a deal?’
‘If he pleads guilty and cooperates then any sentence is automatically halved, Khun Bob. You know that.’
‘I’d lock him away for ever,’ I said.
‘It’s more important to know who wanted you dead because whoever paid for the hit might want to pay again. And don’t worry, he will go to prison and Thai prisons are not holiday camps.’
He was right. Fifty men per cell, sleeping on concrete floors, a couple of bowls of rice a day and an open sewer for a toilet.
‘And he’s in a worse state than you are,’ said Somsak. ‘He’s lost his spleen and his left leg is never going to heal properly.’
I shrugged. Somsak was right. There was no point in bearing grudges. He’d tried to kill me, he’d failed, and he was the one on life support. I should be counting my blessings.
‘Let me know what he says, yeah?’
‘Of course.
‘I wouldn’t have though this case would have been in your jurisdiction,’ I said. ‘Don’t the Lumpini cops deal with Soi 3.’
‘Indeed they do, but I thought you might like things handled by a friend. Especially in view of what we found in the taxi.’
He smiled. It was a mischievous smile. Like he knew something that I didn’t. Something that amused him.
‘What?’
His smile widened and he leaned over and took a DVD case out of one of his desk drawers. He tossed it to me and I caught it. ‘You’ve got a strange taste in movies, Khun Bob.’
I groaned. It was the Bumrungrad DVD of my colonoscopy that I’d dropped in the taxi. ‘You’ve seen it?’
‘We’ve all seen it. You paid good money for that?’
I sighed mournfully.
‘I’ve seen better pornography on sale at Pantip Plaza,’ he said.
‘It’s a colonoscopy.’
‘Really?’
‘They put a camera through your intestines.’
‘The things you farangs do for fun.’ He chuckled.
‘It wasn’t fun,’ I said.
‘That’s your colon?’
‘All twenty-two feet of it.’
‘And you’re carrying around a video of the procedure?’
I sighed. I explained that I’d just left Bumrungrad Hospital when the hitman had taken his shot. And that the colonoscopy had been clear.
‘See,’ he said. ‘It really was your lucky day.’ He lit a cigarette and blew smoke up into the air. ‘What about your missing American? Did he ever turn up?’
I shook my head. ‘All dead ends,’ I said. ‘I keep trying his phone and email but his phone is off and he doesn’t seem to be logging on to get his emails. My only hope now is to get him next time he does a visa run.’
‘You don’t think something has happened to him?’
‘Somsak, I just don’t know. It looks as if he left his place in Soi 22 of his own free will, and I think he might be with a girl.’
‘And what about what happened to you? Do you think there’s a connection?’
‘What, you think Jon Junior wanted to have me killed?’
Somsak blew a perfect smoke ring. ‘I wondered if perhaps someone you had spoken to…’
‘It’s possible,’ I said.
‘Do you want to give me a list?’
I nodded. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I can do that.’
Somsak grinned. ‘I probably won’t need it, I’m pretty sure that the hitman is going to talk. They usually do.’