Carl was wearing the clean clothes he had put on at the department store. He dropped the rest of the shopping off at the room. The need for creature comforts had overruled common sense on the return journey and he had made the taxi stop at the Hyatt Hotel so he could buy books, a bottle of Ardbeg single malt, and a box of Cuban cigars. He was starting to feel himself again, to hell with enemies.
On his way out he slipped his man some more money and let him know there was luggage in the room, failing to mention that it was in paper and plastic shopping bags. The attendant didn’t ask any questions or show any interest in what was going on. As long as he remembered to slip him some money every day Carl could have been screwing his way through a circus troupe, animals and all, or running an opium den for all the attendant cared.
By early evening Carl was sitting in one of Bangkok’s famous and trendy bars. He was inconspicuous as his blue jeans and three-day beard were perfect camouflage amongst Bangkok’s middle class drinkers. Brown Sugar was a jazz pub on the street that ran behind Lumpini Park. It had opened in the 1980s when Carl was a relatively young man and its murky and relaxed atmosphere where Thais and foreigners mingled was a novelty in the Bangkok of that time. It suited his mood that night as he craved something familiar. The frontage was mostly glass so Carl had gone straight to a table at the very back where there was the least light.
He had called George from the taxi and given him a cryptic clue to where he was going; the Rolling Stones like it in their coffee. He was confident that George would be able to solve it; he had taken great interest in Carl’s daily battles with the Bangkok Post’s cryptic crossword. George was reliable as always. Carl was only on his third beer when he arrived and sat down opposite him.
“I took the long way here to make sure I wasn’t followed.”
“I figured you would,” Carl told him as he ordered him a beer.
“What is our present status?”
Carl placed a rolled up paper bag on the table in front of him.
“What is it?” George asked without picking it up.
“Spoils of war. Two hundred thousand Hong Kong dollars in cash that I need you to hide for me.”
George wrinkled his brow, looked at the bag, looked at Carl and then slid it onto his lap.
“Do you have a plan or is this bohemian look permanent?” he asked, having taken note of the designer stubble and new wardrobe.
“Floundering a little,” Carl told him. “Seems the colonel doesn’t believe that telling the police our man is a serial killer is a prudent thing to do.”
“Why would he say that?”
“Seems our target may be doing business and playing golf with General Amnuay. Information is that he may be a bit of a handful.”
“Handful? The man is the biggest gangster in town. You have really got yourself in a mess again. How the hell do you plan to get out of this one?”
“That, George, is the question that murders sleep.”
“I see a future with a very long beard if you don’t think of something soon.”
Carl was relieved to see he still had his sense of humour. A sense of humour goes a long way when surrounded by people who want you dead and possess the means.
“I want to pay a late night visit to Inman’s old office building on Phetchburi Road,” Carol told him. “Don’t know where it fits in, but something about it isn’t right. It is a very expensive piece of real estate to leave idle for so many years. Especially when you are in the real estate business. That and the fact that somebody is still paying the electricity bill.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“Do you still pick locks?”
“Sounds like I’ll have to,” he said wearily.
The plan was to go there late. Closing time, when the police were all busy dealing with the drunks. George left to put the money somewhere safe and Carl ordered a plate of food and slowed down his beer consumption. Getting comfortably numb on alcohol was always a temptation when dealing with stress but not a good idea before a burglary. The piped jazz music was pleasant enough but he wasn’t in the mood.
The live music started at nine and the band typically showed up a little before. The band comprised a piano player, double bass, tenor saxophone, and a long-legged black vocalist. She was beautiful. Her name was Jacqueline, and once upon a time she had almost become another Mrs. Engel. When she saw him in the corner she came and sat in the seat George had recently vacated.
“It’s been a long time Carl,” she told him, looking at him with sparkling but disapproving eyes.
“Sounds like the title of a song. How’ve you been?”
“Tall, black, and beautiful mostly. How ‘bout you?”
“Cynical, grumpy, and self-possessed. Same as always.”
“No wonder you’re so irresistible to women.”
“Do you still sing Misty in your sleep?”
“How would I know? Who’s around to tell me?” she said as she signalled the waiter for a drink. “The Dutchman comes here regularly, he told me that you are back. Why didn’t you come and see me?”
“I didn’t think you’d want me to.”
“That’s your most annoying trait, always thinking. Real life is such a mystery to you. I could never work out whether you are an idiot genius or a genius at being an idiot.”
“Me too. I thought about calling you, but eh, you know me.”
“Yeah I know you. Forgiving everybody except yourself. I have to go and sing, will you be around later?” she asked as she leant over and kissed Carl on the cheek. She picked up her drink and walked away without waiting for an answer.
Carl missed her more than he liked to admit. The relationship was not going to be warmed up by him under his present circumstances and he couldn’t tell her why without making her an accomplice. She was going to be handled at arm’s length for a while. Being close to him immediately shaved decades off a person’s life expectancy and she sang far too well to die young. Like dodgem cars that crashed and passed in the night, Carl knew another wedge had just been put between them.
They had only ever had one argument but one had been enough. She had asked Carl what it had been like living in Thailand as a young foreigner during the 1970s and 1980s. He told her that it had been like being a Negro in a Swiss village in wintertime. She was offended and declared it a racist statement. Carl disagreed and told her that racism would be behaving and speaking differently when she was around and that he had no intention of putting a governor between his thoughts and his mouth. She gave Carl a lecture on American style political correctness. Carl insisted that political correctness was just an insidious form of racism, as it required putting on different behaviour for different people. They did not agree and her programming had kicked in. She remained angry with him for quite some time after. Carl could put up with almost anything, but not her disapproval. So he had gone quietly.
She stood in front of the grand piano and sang Misty. She sang the words to him across the crowded bar as if it was only the two of them there. Just like the old days when he used to pick her up at the Brown Sugar late at night. She didn’t sing at Carl again all night and didn’t come back and talk to him. After taking time to think about what she had said, Carl’s money was on just plain ‘idiot’. He would do what he had to do and then go to bed with his bottle of Ardbeg. A marriage made in heaven.
Once, she had confided to the Dutchman that she reckoned some woman had broken Carl’s heart, and how she would like to get her hands on that woman for ruining him for everybody else. The Dutchman said, ‘no, no, no,’ and told her that it was not a woman that had drawn first blood. It was life that had broken Carl’s heart but that had been a very long time ago. The Dutchman’s theory, he had claimed, was based on something he had heard Carl say in India whilst wasted on hashish and booze. Carl thought they were both talking nonsense but then, what did he know?
George got back around midnight and spent a few minutes huddled at a table with Jacqueline. They openly conspired whilst unashamedly glancing in Carl’s direction. They had long ago joined forces believing two heads would be better than one at unravelling the enigma that was their common burden. Carl always let them have their fun; two martyrs were definitely better than one. He paid the bill and waited.
George had brought a discreet midsize Japanese car with him that Carl didn’t recognize and thought it best not to ask about. George got in the driver’s seat and drove the car towards their destination in silence. The traffic was only medium weight even though some of the bars had already begun to send their customers home. The cold gun pressed against Carl’s belly was disturbing but uncharacteristically comforting. As usual, Carl hoped he knew what he was doing.
The car park behind the building was quiet as the grave. The shop houses around the square were all shut for the night. There was nobody to be seen but Carl assumed that some of the people would live above their businesses so windows were relevant and they needed to be careful. They parked the car behind the building and George switched off the headlights.
“What’s next?” he asked Carl. “Was it your turn to bring the ladder?”
“Sad story George. The ladder’s in the pawn shop again.”
“Does that mean we can go home now?”
“We have the advantage of being old and respectable foreigners,” Carl told him. “Being furtive would make us conspicuous whereas walking up to the door and opening it like we own the place shouldn’t draw any attention whatsoever.”
“I assume this wonderful plan is based on my ability to pick the lock so quickly it will appear like we have a key,” he said sarcastically.
“If you’re as quick with a lock as you are quick witted then I have nothing to worry about,” Carl said smiling. “Walk over, stop near the door and light a cigarette so you can know what we’re up against.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“That makes two foolish acts you get to perform in one night. Or is it already three? Do we count car theft?” Carl said as he handed George a cigarette and a lighter.
George got out of the car and walked straight as if he was going to pass the door. He stopped and spent a long time in the shadow of the back of the building performing a wonderful act of trying to light a cigarette with a lighter that kept going out. He gave up after several attempts and resumed his walk away from the car. A few minutes later he had doubled back around the building and was back in the driver’s seat. He handed Carl back the lighter.
“I can pop that lock in reasonable time,” he told Carl as he reached into the glove compartment for a torch.
“Let’s do it then.”
George put the torch in his pocket and they got out of the car. They both walked confidently up to the back door and George got to work on the lock. It seemed much longer to Carl than the minute he actually took to open it. Then they were inside. George switched on the torch and they began to explore the building.
The ground floor was four shop houses wide and one of the four had a large metal roll-down shutter that opened to the pavement of the main road. These rusty roll-down doors were standard on shop houses all over Bangkok. The rest of the front of the building across three units was floor to ceiling glass. Inside the metal shutter there were tire marks on the dusty floor surrounded by footprints of various sizes. Only one set of footprints appeared to be male. Someone had been parking their car on the ground floor recently and he had been bringing guests with small feet.
They took the open stairs against the wall up to the second floor where there was a large teak door leading into what had obviously been the boss’s office. The door was heavily ornate and the room behind it was very large, taking up most of the entire second floor. There were well made wooden shelves and cabinets behind a place that a very large desk would have once been. It looked like an ordinary deserted office building until you looked closer, and there was an unusual metallic smell to the air. Carl took George’s hand and directed the torch around the room.
“Shit. He kills them here George. This is where it happens,” Carl whispered. His knees were trembling and his voice was shaking.
“What do you see?” George asked him in a whisper.
“The windows have two layers of curtain, light reflective silver underneath and thick black curtain material so no one can see in when they are closed. The windows are more recent than the rest of the structure, very expensive thick double-glazing. The bathroom in the corner has all the requirements for taking a thorough shower. If you look at the walls and door they are soundproofed. And, just up there, where I am pointing the torch there is a metal ring attached to the wall, strong enough to restrain somebody. The brown patches on the wall are probably dried blood, see how it is smeared and pale brown like somebody tried to wash it off. You recognize that metallic smell George. This whole place smells like an abattoir.”
“I’ve seen places like this in Vietnam,” he whispered. “This is an evil place.”
“Very evil indeed. Did you notice that all the female footprints point in the direction of this room? There are none pointing back downstairs. I want to get out of here, I think I’ve seen enough.”
“Me too.”
Carl took a quick look in the bathroom and noted the heavy duty cleaning fluids. Under the sink he saw a pile of rags, abrasive cleaning cloths, duct tape and a roll of black plastic sheet. Beside that was a box of tools and knives. Above the sink and under the mirror there was a box of Bolivar Churchill cigars. Carl opened it and with the light from the torch counted that sixteen cigars were gone.
“Fuck! Either he is a chain smoker or he has had a lot of victims in here.”
“I hope he is a chain smoker,” George said.
“Unfortunately I doubt that. There have been at least three rooms like this. There was one in America, one in Vietnam and now this one. Our devil is probably one of the most prolific serial killers of all time.”
They both retreated very carefully smearing their footprints in the dust as they went backwards down the stairs. They had a quick last look before they left the building. There was nothing more to see but they had seen more than enough.
Back in the car George said, “I didn’t really believe all this until just now.”
“We can stop whispering now, George,” Carl told him so he would appear more in control than he really felt. “I didn’t totally believe it either. Now it is real, horribly real, and for some strange reason fate has made it our problem.” Carl spoke softly, which was only slightly louder than a whisper.
“What the fuck do we do now Carl?” He said as softly.
“Go back to my room. There is a decent bottle of whiskey there. We need to talk this through.”
George very carefully, annoyingly slowly, drove the car past the building and out onto the main road. It was as if he was trying not to wake the ghosts. Carl didn’t mind. He didn’t want to wake them either.