Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye: True Stories From the Case Files of Warren Olson (20 page)

I got chatting away in Khmer and asked them if they knew of any women-only blocks within walking distance. There was lots of frowning and head-shaking but when I said I’d pay a hundred baht to anyone who could come up with a name one of the guys said he thought there was a hostel for women fairly close by so I had him run me over. Another hundred baht for the security guard on duty and I learned that no one who looked like Nam lived there. It was a small place, probably only two dozen studio flats, so I was pretty confident that the guy knew what he was talking about.

My motorcycle guy saw that my wallet was well-packed with 100-baht bills so he came up with another women-only block in Silom. That was well outside walking distance from the office where she worked but I figured it was worth a try so we took a run out there. Another hundred baht later and I had confirmation that Nam didn’t live there either.

By four o’clock I was back at the office block, sweating in the heat and waiting for Nam to finish work. I was pretty sure that she was lying about living in a women-only block close to her office and having caught her out in one lie I was sure there’d be others.

Nam appeared just after five by which time I had large damp patches under both armpits and I could feel puddles of sweat in my shoes. She waved goodbye to a group of her co-workers and walked across the road to a bus stop. A bus came and went and Nam made no move to board it. She looked at her watch, then made a call on her mobile phone. Another bus came and went.

I went inside a coffee shop, bought a Coke and settled down to wait. I figured she was waiting for a bus and that once she’d boarded one I’d get one of the motorcycle taxi guys to follow her. Following busses is a piece of cake because the motorcycle taxi guys all know the bus routes. I was sipping my Coke when a new model Toyota Corolla pulled up at the bus stop. Nam got in and the car roared off. I managed to get a look at the number plate before it vanished around a corner. I rushed over to the motorcycle taxi rank but by the time I’d explained what I wanted the car was well gone. It was my own fault, I should have had my ride already fixed up, but I’d just assumed that she was going to get the bus. Still, I had caught her out in two lies, and I was pretty sure that it had been a Thai man at the wheel of the Corolla.

I phoned Terry and told him what I’d discovered, and he said he’d pay me to follow her for another couple of days. He asked me what I thought, and I told him the truth. She was lying to him, and that could only mean one thing. ‘But she isn’t a bargirl,’ he said plaintively. I thought about giving him the ‘just because she doesn’t work in a bar doesn’t mean she’s not a bargirl’ speech, but I decided against it. I said I’d phone him back when I had something to report.

The following day I was better prepared. I had my own motorcycle guy all ready to go at four o’clock, and when Nam appeared I was on the pillion and he had his crash helmet on. The Corolla turned up at ten past five and we tucked up behind it and followed it a few kilometres through the crowded streets until it parked outside a decent-sized apartment block. The man was in his thirties wearing a suit and tie and the way she touched his arm as they went into the block together suggested that they were, as we say in the private-eye game, ‘romantically involved.’ I managed to fire off a few digital photographs and I emailed them to Terry later that night.

There was only one more piece of the puzzle and that was to identify the guy. The next day I took a run out to the Car Registration Office at Chatujak, near the famous weekend market, filled out the necessary forms and a twenty-baht fee, and explained to the girl behind the counter as I slipped her a tin of chocolate almonds that I was buying the car and wanted to check that it was owned outright and not under any finance deal. It’s a common enough request and the chocolate almonds were the only incentive she needed to offer me every assistance. She punched in the registration number of the Corolla, printed out the details and gave me a copy, along with her phone number, which I thought was quite sweet of her considering she was a good five years older than me and had the makings of a half-decent moustache.

The owner was from Chonburi, the same place as Nam, which suggested the he was a long-time boyfriend, but the surname on his ID was different from Nam’s so it didn’t look as if they were married. Chonburi is on the way to Pattaya, and as I had a couple of bargirl investigations lined up in Sleaze-By-The-Sea I decided to pop out that way and stop off at the Chonburi Municipal Office to run a check on the guy. I told the girl behind the counter that he had applied for a job with my company and my winning smile, a box of Thai sweets and a 500-baht note got me a look at his house papers. He was married and had a son. Nam was obviously his mia noi, his minor wife.

I guess that Miss Nam was happy to be the Thai guy’s mia noi at the same time as she was going out with Terry, and that she was just putting off the time when she had to choose. Maybe the Thai guy would leave his wife, maybe Terry would marry her and she’d settle down with him. To be honest, I could understand why she’d want to keep her options open. Girls marry young in Thailand, often in their teens, and her clock was ticking. For all she knew, Terry might dump her for a younger, prettier girl. It’s not as if he’d be spoilt for choice in Thailand. The Thai guy could also trade her in for a newer model at any time. From Miss Nam’s point of view, she was simply hedging her bets.

Terry didn’t see it that way, of course. He couldn’t stand the fact that she’d so blatantly lied to him and he called off the wedding, changed his phone number, and refused to answer her emails and letters. From the day I filed my report, he had no further contact with her. Harsh, maybe, but in my opinion he did the right thing. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—lies are like cockroaches, If you find one,. There’ll be dozens of others that you don’t know about.

So, with two out of two good girls turning out to be bad, I started Mark’s investigation feeling pretty confident that Miss Suming had a skeleton or two in her closet. I parked myself at a corner table in Rivas nightclub and knocked back JD and Cokes at 200 baht a throw, plus tax plus service charges plus the odd tip for the very pretty waitresses. I had a good view of Miss Suming and her friends—all thirty-something hi-so Thai women—knocking back bottles of champagne and having a whale of a time. Suming showed no interest in any of the farangs hanging around the bar and no Thai men came over to join them. From the look of it, Miss Suming was enjoying a girls’ night out, and fair play to her.

There was a band playing, an American group that could actually hold a tune, and during their break they came over and joined Miss Suming’s group and more champagne was swiftly ordered. Miss Suming certainly knew how to enjoy herself, but I suppose it was nothing to her as Mark was paying for everything even though he was out of town for a week on business.

Other than the band, Miss Suming’s table remained a man-free zone for the night, but I figured that I ought to hang around until closing time just to check that she went back alone to Mark’s apartment. Eventually the band finished and the staff started packing up for the night. Miss Suming and her group were obviously well known there and they seemed in no rush to leave so eventually it was just me and them still drinking. I decided I’d better go so I hung around outside, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. I was able to keep an eye on Miss Suming through the open doorway.

The band had changed out of their stage outfits and they went over to Miss Suming’s table and helped her and her friends finish the last of the champagne. The drummer, a big African American guy with bulging biceps and a massive afro, sat next to Suming and seemed to be hanging on her every word. He was about ten years younger than Miss Suming, with a thick gold chain around his neck and a gold front tooth. One by one most of Miss Suming’s friends said their goodbyes and left, and the band members drifted off until eventually there were just four at the table; Miss Suming, the black drummer, one of her friends, and one of the guitarists.

I sat in the corner of the lobby and pretended to read the
Bangkok Post
. Another bottle of champagne arrived at Miss Suming’s table, and there was lots of glass-clinking and laughing.

It was two o’clock in the morning when they finally left the nightclub. I was knackered and feeling the effects of the dozen or so JD and Cokes that I’d had drunk at Mark’s expense, so I sat in the comfy armchair and tried to focus on the group as they stood in the hotel lobby by the elevators. I expected a bit of air kissing, maybe a handshake or a wai, what I didn’t expect was to see Miss Suming link arms with the black drummer and go into the lift with him. As the lift doors closed Miss Suming’s friend was giving the guitarist a full-on kiss and a grope between the legs to boot.

I watched as the floor indicator lights blinked. The elevator stopped at the seventh floor and a few minutes later returned to the lobby, empty.

Miss Suming’s friend and the guitarist went up to the fifth floor, so if the partying was continuing it was on an individual basis. I waited for another hour but Miss Suming didn’t reappear so I headed home to my bed.

The next day I emailed Mark a full report. He was, understandably, livid. He’d invested a lot of time and money in Miss Suming, and had been planning to ask her to marry him. If it’d been me I’d have cut my losses and walked away, but Mark was convinced her infidelity was a temporary slip. He confronted her and she eventually admitted to having a fling with the drummer, but that she’d only been to his room once. That sounded dubious to me. What were the odds that the one time she had slept with the guy, I’d be sitting in the lobby? Pretty bloody slim. And from the way they’d been head to head in the nightclub, I’d say it had been going on for some time.

Anyway, rule number one of the private-eye game is that the client is always right, even when he isn’t, and if Mark wanted to pour good money after bad then that was his business. But I did suggest that he install a password sniffer on the computer that they both used in their apartment. Before long he was able to keep a track on her emails and sure enough he discovered that Miss Suming was still very much in touch with the black drummer. Unbelievably, he was asking her for money, which had to be a turn up for the books. Usually it’s the Thai girl hitting on the farang for cash, but the drummer wanted a 10,000-dollar loan from Miss Suming, ostensibly to buy new equipment. Mark hit the roof again, and she begged him to forgive her. It was his fault, she said, for leaving her on her own such a lot. She was flattered by the attentions of the young black drummer, but she promised on her mother’s life that she would never talk to him again. Anyway, Mark gave her another chance and as far as I know they’re still together. I’d like to think he knows what he’s doing, but in my experience if a girl fools around once, she’ll fool around again. And like I said, generally hi-so girls have the moral standards of alley cats. You’re often better off with a bargirl. At least you expect a bargirl to lie and cheat and you won’t have your balloons burst. Unless you find yourself in a Patpong show bar, of course, sitting opposite a pretty young thing with a dart gun inserted into her you-know-what.

THE CASE OF THE RESTAURATEUR’S WIFE

I can probably count my Austrian clients on the fingers of one hand but I was just as willing to accept euros as I was to take pounds and dollars so I was quite happy to offer my services to Helmut when he emailed me from Salzburg. He was in his late sixties and in my experience there’s no fool like an old fool, especially when there are Thai girls around. But Helmut had been a frequent visitor to the Land of Smiles over the years and from what he told me he knew how things worked. He’d picked up a Thai wife a couple of decades earlier and together they had set up a Thai restaurant. That was par for the course. Bargirls always seem to think that they can cook and half the Thai restaurants in Europe have been set up by girls who started life dancing around silver poles. In my humble opinion that’s the reason why Thai food outside Thailand is generally so bad. Helmut’s wife wasn’t a great cook, he admitted, and she wasn’t a fan of hard work. They’d soon separated and he hadn’t seen her for years but Helmut had been bitten by the restaurant bug and decided to stick with it.

He started to recruit chefs and waitressing staff from Thailand and with the missus out of the kitchen the food, and the takings, soon improved. Before long he had a chain of very successful restaurants in Austria and was making regular trips to Thailand to recruit staff. On one of his recent trips he’d met a thirty-something woman called Mem who had been put forward as a possible manageress. She was from Khon Kaen but her husband had walked out on her so she’d moved to Bangkok to work and support her daughter who was a student at one of the city’s universities. She’s worked in catering for almost a decade and Helmut didn’t think twice about hiring her to run one of his restaurants. She was an attractive woman and soon became Helmut’s live-in girlfriend and eventually his wife. He emailed me a picture and she seemed a good sort.

Over the years Helmut gave her more of his restaurants to manage and he started spending more time looking after his other business interests. Once Mem’s daughter had graduated, Mem started visiting her in Thailand several times a year. It was when she returned from her latest trip Helmut started to smell a rat. He found a receipt for a gold bracelet worth 50,000 baht. Helmut knew that she’d only taken a small amount of money with her and nothing had shown up on any of his credit card statements. Helmut asked Mem about the bracelet—she told him that it was a present for her daughter and that it had only cost 5,000 baht but that she’d asked for a receipt for ten times as much so that she could have it insured for much more. That sounded like nonsense to Helmut, so then Mem told him that the 50,000-baht receipt would give her more face with the staff in the restaurant. That made a bit more sense because face is hugely important to Thais, but even so it was a red flag that something might be amiss so he’d gone trawling through the internet and found my website. Helmut wanted me to pay a visit to the jeweller’s store to check how much his wife had paid for the bracelet. That’s what he wanted, but of course there was more to it. He wanted to know whether or not she’d lied to him. And if she had lied, that would open up a whole new can of worms.

Anyway, he sent me a scan of the receipt and wired a retainer to my bank account. The jeweller’s was a small shop in the Big C department store complex in Ratchaparohp Road. I paid the shop a visit and told the lady in charge that my Thai friend had brought a lovely bracelet there and that I wanted something similar. I showed her the receipt and the woman said that she remembered the sale. The lady had brought the bracelet for her daughter but it had been a one-off and if I wanted a similar one it would have to be made to order and that would take a few weeks.

I told her that I was still a bit confused by Thai money. Had it cost 5,000 or 50,000? The woman laughed and said it was definitely 50,000—the bracelet was solid gold with real diamonds.

I emailed Helmut with the news that his wife had indeed paid out 50,000 baht. He said he’d do a little auditing on the home front and get back to me. A week later he got back to me. There were discrepancies in the accounts of a couple of the restaurants that Mem was managing. And the takings of her restaurants seemed to be well below the levels of the others in the chain. He was pretty sure that she was skimming money, but he wanted to be one hundred per cent sure before he confronted her. He had the number of her bank account in Bangkok—would I be able to get a copy of her statement? I said that in Thailand anything was possible providing you had enough money. Helmut said that money was no object and he wired me the funds.

I had a good contact within the bank that Mem used and for half the money that Helmut sent I was able to get a digital photograph of the screen showing her account. It contained a very modest 30,000 baht, which meant that she was hiding her ill-gotten gains elsewhere.

Then I got another email from Helmut. He had spoken to a trusted member of his staff, who told him that Mem had mentioned building a new home in Khon Kaen. Helmut wanted me to carry on digging and he agreed to send me enough cash to cover me for two more days.

I took a plane to Khon Kaen and hired a taxi driver at local rates once I’d shown that I was fluent in his Isarn dialect. Our first stop was the area municipal office where all housing plans have to be registered. It didn’t take long for me to ascertain that Mem was indeed having a new dwelling built. The land ownership office was along the corridor and it only took another fifteen minutes to find out who owned the land where Mem was building the house. It belonged to Mem’s former husband. And that was most definitely a red flag that something was rotten in the state of Austria. Or Khon Kaen, anyway.

I got the driver to run me out to the site, expecting to see the usual Thai home being built—a slab of concrete acting as a foundation, a living room and a kitchen with one or two bedrooms and a bathroom, total cost about 100,000 baht. What I found was a mansion under construction with more than a dozen young workers scurrying around under the watchful eye of a middle-aged foreman wearing a Chang Beer baseball cap.

I wandered over and told the foreman that I was impressed by the quality of his work and that I was also thinking of having a house built. Thais are as susceptible to flattery as anyone and he was quite happy to tell me that Miss Mem’s mansion had a two million baht price tag. That was quite reasonable by European standards, but it would make it the most expensive house in the village by a long way. The foreman was busy and didn’t have time to chat, but he was happy enough for me to take a few pictures with my digital camera. I headed back into town, booked into a hotel and emailed the pictures to Helmut.

My driver picked me up at eight o’clock in the evening and we headed back to the building site with a couple of dozen bottles of Chang Beer and several bags of fried grasshoppers. As I’d suspected, the foreman had gone home leaving his workers camped around the site. My beer and snacks were well received and I sat down with them and started chatting in their native Isarn. They had seen the wealthy Thai woman who was building the house, but didn’t know her name. She lived abroad, was married to the village headman and would soon be returning to live in the house with her husband. It looked as if poor old Helmut was being well and truly shafted. I figured that as soon as the house was finished, Mem intended to take as much money as she could from Helmut and hightail it back to Khon Kaen.

I left the labourers with the beer and insects and went back to the hotel to send another email to Helmut. I didn’t tell him the bad news about Mem but asked him to email me with any bank details he had for his stepdaughter. I figured that Mem had to be getting Helmut’s money into the country somehow, and she clearly wasn’t using her own account.

I spent a very enjoyable evening in a local disco entertaining a bevy of beauties at Helmut’s expense, and woke with a major hangover at midday, too late to enjoy the hotel’s complimentary buffet breakfast. I wandered down to a Dunkin Donuts outlet, stocked up on coffee and carbohydrates, and then visited an internet café. There was an email from Helmut waiting for me. He’d sent money to his stepdaughter’s account in Khon Kaen a few years earlier so he had her account details. I went to the branch shortly after they opened and played the part of a dumb farang. I spotted a rather plain middle-aged Thai woman, waied her and gave her one of my winning smiles and a box of imported chocolates. I asked her if she spoke English and she said a little. I said she spoke it really well and we were soon on great terms.

I gave her Mem’s daughter’s full name, address and account number and explained that my brother had just transferred a large amount of money to the account to pay for the construction of his new home. I said that I had spoken to the site foreman who had complained that his men’s wages hadn’t been paid. My new best friend dutifully keyed in the details and I saw her eyebrows head skywards.

‘How much he send?’ she asked me.

I shrugged and took a stab at one million.

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘There is twenty million baht in the account but no transfer this week.’

Twenty million was a big chunk of change, all right. I gave the cashier another winning smile and said that there was no problem, that she was probably waiting to earn some interest before paying the workers, and that all was well with the world.

I didn’t tell Helmut how easy it had been to check his stepdaughter’s account, of course. There’s no point in letting the client think that the job’s easy. And besides, it had been a quiet month. I stayed in Khon Kaen for another day at Helmut’s expense and went back to see the cuties at the local disco, and then sent him a full report and a bill for the job that guaranteed I’d be keeping the wolf from the door for a few months.

Helmut was devastated by what I told him. He’d honestly believed that he’d found the perfect wife in Mem, but she’d lied to him and stolen from him. He’d gone back through all the accounts and it was now clear that she had been skimming money from the restaurants from the day that she’d started working for him. She become greedier in recent months, a sure sign that she was planning to leave Helmut for good. He’d always thought that he had a good relationship with his stepdaughter, too, but she had obviously been more than happy to help steal from him.

Looking at it from Mem’s point of view, I guess she was just doing whatever she could to make a better life for her family. Her Thai husband was more concerned with his status in the village than what his wife was doing overseas, and he knew that she would be coming back to him one day. Helmut was nothing more than a golden goose, and so far as they were concerned he had more money than sense. What they didn’t bank on was him having enough sense to employ yours truly.

According to Helmut, she hit the roof when he confronted her with what he knew. At first she tried to lie about it, but the photographs of the Khon Kaen house and the land ownership records put paid to that. Then she begged for his forgiveness, promising that she really loved Helmut and would happily divorce her Thai husband. When that didn’t work she told him that she wanted half of everything he had or she’d have him killed. Helmut just threw her out of his house, changed the locks and hired a good lawyer. Last I heard Helmut was fit and well and hadn’t paid her a euro.