Harry Hole 02 - Cockroaches (12 page)

‘His career has ended in a cul-de-sac. He came from some job in Defence, but at some point there were a couple too many “buts” by his name.’

‘Buts?’

‘Haven’t you heard the way Ministry people talk about one another? “He’s a good diplomat,
but
he drinks,
but
he likes women too much” and so on. What comes after the “buts” is a lot more important than what comes before; it determines how far you can get in the department. That’s why there are so many sanctimonious mediocrities at the top.’

‘So what’s his “but” and why is he here?’

‘To be honest, I don’t know. He has meetings and writes the odd report for Oslo, but we don’t see much of him. I think he likes to be left alone. Now and then he goes off on trips to Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia with a tent, malaria pills and a rucksack full of photographic equipment. You know the type, don’t you?’

‘Maybe. What kind of reports does he write?’

‘Don’t know. The ambassador deals with all that.’

‘Don’t know? There aren’t that many of you at the embassy. Is it Intelligence?’

‘To what end?’

‘Well, Bangkok is a hub for all of Asia.’

She looked at him and smiled wistfully. ‘I wish we did such exciting things. But I think the Ministry is letting him stay here for long and generally loyal service to king and country. Besides, I’m bound by an oath of confidentiality.’

She giggled again and laid a hand on Harry’s arm. ‘Let’s talk about something else, shall we?’

Harry talked about something else and then went to find another drink. The human body consists of sixty per cent water and he had the feeling that during the day most of his had evaporated up towards the blue-grey sky.

He found Miss Ao standing with Sanphet at the back of the room. Sanphet gave him a measured nod.

‘Any water?’ Harry asked.

Miss Ao passed him a glass.

‘What does LM stand for?’

Sanphet raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you thinking of Mr Løken?’

‘I am.’

‘Why don’t you ask him yourself?’

‘In case it’s something you call him behind his back.’

Sanphet grinned. ‘L stands for “living” and M for “morphine”. It’s an old nickname he acquired working for the UN in Vietnam at the end of the war.’

‘Vietnam?’

Sanphet nodded unobtrusively and Miss Ao was gone.

‘Løken was with a Vietnamese unit in a landing zone waiting to be picked up by a helicopter when they were attacked by a Vietcong patrol. It was a bloodbath and Løken was one of those hit. He got a bullet right through a muscle in his neck. The Americans had withdrawn their soldiers from Vietnam, but they still had medical orderlies there. They ran around in the elephant grass from soldier to soldier giving first aid. They wrote on the injured men’s helmets in chalk, a kind of makeshift medical chart. If they wrote D it meant the person was dead, so that those who followed didn’t waste any time examining them. L meant the patient was living, and if they wrote M it meant they’d given them morphine. They did that to prevent anyone from being given several shots and dying of an overdose.’

Sanphet nodded towards Løken.

‘When they found him he’d already lost consciousness, so they didn’t give him any morphine, just wrote an L on his helmet and loaded him onto the helicopter with the others. When he was woken by his own screams of pain he didn’t understand where he was at first. But when he moved the corpse lying on top of him and saw a man with a white armband injecting one of the others he understood and screamed for morphine. An orderly tapped his helmet and said, “Sorry, buddy, you’re already pumped up to the eyeballs.” Løken couldn’t believe it and tore off his helmet, where, sure enough, there was an L and an M. However, the thing was, it wasn’t his helmet. He looked back at the soldier who had just been injected in the arm. He saw the helmet with an L on, recognised the screwed-up pack of cigarettes under the strap and the UN badge and realised what had happened. The guy had swapped their helmets to get another shot of morphine. He screamed, but his cries of agony were drowned out by the roar of the engine as they took off. Løken lay screaming for half an hour before they reached the golf course.’

‘Golf course?’

‘The camp. That’s what we called it.’

‘So you were there, too?’

Sanphet nodded.

‘That’s why you know the story so well?’

‘I was a voluntary medical worker and I received them.’

‘What happened?’

‘Løken’s standing over there. The other guy never woke up again.’

‘Overdose?’

‘Well, he didn’t die of a shot to the stomach.’

Harry shook his head. ‘And now you and Løken are working in the same place.’

‘By coincidence.’

‘What are the odds of that happening?’

‘It’s a small world,’ Sanphet said.

‘LM,’ Harry said, then drank up, mumbled he needed more water and went looking for Miss Ao.

‘Do you miss the ambassador?’ he asked when he found her in the kitchen. She was folding serviettes around the glasses and securing them with elastic bands.

She looked at him in surprise and nodded.

Harry held the empty glass between his hands.

‘How long had you been lovers?’

He saw her pretty little mouth open, form an answer, which her brain had not yet prepared, and close and open again, like a goldfish. When the anger reached her eyes and he half expected her to slap him, it died again. Instead her eyes filled with tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ Harry said without sounding sorry.

‘You—’

‘I’m sorry, but we have to ask these questions.’

‘But I . . .’ She cleared her throat, raised and lowered her shoulders, as though shaking off an evil thought. ‘The ambassador was married. And I—’

‘You’re also married?’

‘No, but . . .’

Harry took her arm lightly and led her away from the kitchen door. She turned to him, the anger in her eyes returning.

‘Listen, Miss Ao, the ambassador was found in a motel. You know what that means. It means you weren’t the only one he was fucking.’

He watched her to see what effect the words would have.

‘We’re investigating a murder here. You have no reason to feel any loyalty for this man, do you understand?’

She was whimpering and he became aware he was shaking her arm. He let go. She looked at him. Her pupils were big and black.

‘Are you afraid? Is that what it is?’

Her chest rose and fell.

‘Would it help if I promise that none of this needs to come out unless you were mixed up in the murder?’

‘We were not lovers!’

Harry stared at her, but all he could see was two black pupils.

‘OK. What’s a young girl like you doing in a married ambassador’s car? Apart from taking her asthma medication?’

Harry put the empty glass on the tray and left. It was an idiotic thing to say, but Harry was willing to do idiotic things to make something happen. Anything.

14

Sunday 12 January

ELIZABETH DOROTHEA CRUMLEY
was in a bad mood.

‘Shit! It’s been five days. A foreigner has been knifed in the back at a motel, and we have no fingerprints, no suspects, not one goddamn clue. Just receptionists, Tonya Harding, motel owners and now the mafia. Anything I’ve forgotten?’

‘Loan sharks,’ said Rangsan from behind the
Bangkok Post
.

‘Loan sharks
are
the mafia,’ the inspector said.

‘Not the loan shark Molnes used,’ Rangsan said.

‘What do you mean?’

Rangsan put down the newspaper. ‘Harry, you said the chauffeur thought the ambassador owed money to some loan sharks. What does a loan shark do when the debtor is dead? He tries to collect the debts from the family, doesn’t he.’

Liz looked sceptical.

‘Some people are still caught up with the notion of family honour, and loan sharks are businessmen. Of course they’ll try to get their money back wherever they can.’

‘That sounds really far-fetched,’ Liz said, wrinkling her nose.

Rangsan picked up the paper again. ‘Nonetheless, I found the Thai Indo Travellers number three times on the list of incoming calls to the Molnes family over the last three days.’

Liz whistled softly, and there were nods around the table.

‘What?’ said Harry, realising there was something he hadn’t picked up.

‘Thai Indo Travellers is a travel agency on the outside,’ Liz explained. ‘But on the first floor they run their real business – lending money to people who can’t get loans anywhere else. Their interest rates are high and they have a very effective way of making people pay up. We’ve been keeping an eye on them for some time.’

‘Ever make anything on them stick?’

‘We could have if we’d tried hard enough. But we think their competitors are worse. Thai Indo Travellers has managed to operate alongside the mafia and as far as we know they don’t even pay protection. If they killed the ambassador it would be the first time they’ve killed anyone to our knowledge.’

‘Perhaps it was time to set an example,’ Nho said.

‘Kill a man first and then ring the family to collect the money. Doesn’t that sound a bit back to front?’ Harry said.

‘Why? Those who need a warning about what happens to bad debtors have been warned,’ Rangsan said, slowly turning a page. ‘If they get the money as well, that’s a bonus.’

‘Fine,’ Liz said. ‘Nho and Harry, you make a courtesy visit to the loan sharks. One more thing, I’ve just been talking to Forensics. They’re totally mystified by the grease we found around the knife wound on Molnes’s suit. They claim it’s organic and that it has to be from some animal. OK, I think that’s everything. Good luck.’

Rangsan caught up with Harry and Nho as they headed towards the lift.

‘Be careful. These are rough guys. I’ve heard they use propellers on bad debtors.’

‘Propellers?’

‘They take them out in a boat, tie them to a pole in the river, put the engine in reverse and lift the propeller shaft out of the water as they slowly glide past. Can you visualise that?’

Harry visualised it.

‘A couple of years ago we found a guy who’d died of a heart attack. His face had been pulled off, literally. The idea was that he would have to walk around town as a warning and deterrent to other debtors. But it must have been too much of a strain on his heart when he heard the engine starting up and saw the propeller coming.’

Nho nodded. ‘Not good. Better to pay.’

AMAZING THAILAND it said in big letters over the multicoloured image of Thai dancers. The poster hung on the wall of the tiny travel agency in Sampeng Lane in Chinatown. Apart from Harry, Nho, and a man and a woman behind desks, the spartan room was empty. The man wore glasses with such thick lenses that he seemed to be looking at them from the inside of a goldfish bowl.

Nho had just shown him his police ID.

‘What did he say?’

‘The police are always welcome. We can have special prices on his trips.’

‘Ask for a free trip upstairs.’

Nho said a couple of words and the man lifted a telephone receiver.

‘Mr Sorensen just has to finish drinking his tea,’ he said in English.

Harry was about to say something but a reproving glance from Nho changed his mind. They both sat down to wait. After a couple of minutes Harry pointed to the inactive fan on the ceiling. Goldfish Bowl smiled and shook his head.

‘Kaput.’

Harry could feel his scalp itching. After a couple more minutes the telephone rang and the man asked them to follow him. At the bottom of the stairs he motioned that they should take off their shoes. Harry thought of his sweaty tennis socks with holes in and considered it was best for all concerned if he kept his shoes on, but Nho slowly shook his head. Cursing, Harry flipped off his shoes and trudged upstairs.

Goldfish Bowl knocked on a door, it was flung open and Harry stepped back two paces. A mountain of flesh and muscle filled the doorway. The mountain had two small slits for eyes, a drooping black moustache and his head was shaven, apart from a limp pigtail. His head looked like a discoloured bowling ball; the torso had no neck or shoulders, only a bulging mass that started at his ears and descended to a couple of arms which were so fat it was as if they had been screwed on. Harry had never seen such a large human in all his life.

The man turned and waddled ahead of them into the room.

‘His name’s Woo,’ Nho whispered. ‘Freelance goon. Very bad reputation.’

‘My God. He looks like a terrible imitation of a Hollywood bad guy.’

‘Chinese from Manchuria. They’re famous for being very . . .’

The shutters in front of the windows were closed, and in the darkened room Harry could discern the outline of a man sitting behind a large desk. A fan whirred on the ceiling and a stuffed tiger’s head snarled at them from the wall. An open balcony door gave the impression the outside traffic was passing through the room, and a third person sat by the doorway. Woo squeezed himself into the last remaining chair. Harry and Nho took up a position in the middle of the floor.

‘How can I help you, gentlemen?’

The voice from behind the desk was deep, the pronunciation British, the tones almost Oxford. He raised his hand and a ring glinted. Nho looked at Harry.

‘Erm, we’re from the police, Mr Sorensen . . .’

‘I know.’

‘You lent money to Atle Molnes, the Norwegian ambassador. You rang his wife after his death. Why? To try and force her to pay his debts?’

‘We have no unsettled debts with any ambassador. Besides, we don’t deal with that kind of loan, Mr . . .’

‘Hole. You’re lying, Mr Sorensen.’

‘What did you say, Mr Hole?’ Sorensen had leaned forward. His facial features were Thai, but his skin and hair were as white as snow and his eyes blue.

Nho caught Harry’s sleeve, but he pulled his arm away and held Sorensen’s gaze. He knew he’d put his neck on the block, had taken a threatening stance and that Mr Sorensen would lose face now if he conceded anything. Those were the rules of the game. But Harry was standing there in threadbare socks, sweating like a pig and absolutely sick of face, tact and diplomacy.