Harry Hole 02 - Cockroaches (7 page)

Harry could appreciate the practical side of the arrangement and waved him to carry on.

‘Nothing more to tell, Officer. We went to room and looked again, then I locked door and rang police.’

‘So, according to Dim the door was not locked when she got there. Did she say anything about it being ajar or was it just unlocked?’

Wang shrugged his shoulders. ‘Door was closed but not locked. Is that important?’

‘You never know. Did you see anyone else near the room that evening?’

Wang shook his head.

‘And where’s the guest book?’ Harry asked. He was getting tired now.

The motel owner’s head shot up. ‘No guest book.’

Harry watched him in silence.

‘No guest book,’ Wang repeated. ‘Why do I need one? No one will come if they register their names and addresses.’

‘I’m not stupid, Wang. No one thinks they’re being registered, but you keep a list. Just in case. VIPs drop by now and then and it could be good to slap a guest book on the table if you have any trouble one day, right?’

The motel owner blinked like a frog.

‘Don’t be difficult now, Wang. People who had nothing to do with the murder have nothing to fear. Especially public figures. Word of honour. Now. Book, please.’

It was a little notebook, and Harry scanned the closely written pages covered in Thai characters.

‘One of the others will come and copy this,’ he said.

The three officers were waiting by the Mercedes. The headlamps were on and they illuminated the briefcase, which was lying open on the patio.

‘Did you find anything?’

‘Looks like the ambassador had unusual sexual predilections.’

‘I know. Tonya Harding. I call
that
kinky.’

‘When can we talk to Dim?’

‘We’ll get hold of her tomorrow. She’s working tonight.’

Harry stopped in front of the briefcase. Details of the black-and-white photographs came to the fore in the yellow light from the headlamps. He froze. Of course he had heard about it, he had even read reports and talked with Vice Squad colleagues about it, but it was the first time Harry had
seen
a child being screwed by an adult.

7

Friday 10 January

THEY DROVE UP
Sukhumvit road where three-star hotels, luxury villas and wooden and tin shacks stood cheek by jowl. Harry didn’t see any of this; his gaze appeared to be fixed on a point straight in front of him.

‘Traffic’s better now,’ Crumley said.

‘Yeah.’

She smiled without showing her teeth. ‘Sorry, in Bangkok we talk about the traffic the way other places talk about the weather. You don’t have to live here for long to figure out why. The weather’s the same from now until May. Depending on the monsoon it starts raining sometime in late summer. And then it pours for three months. All there is to say about the weather is that it’s hot. We tell each other that all year round, but it’s not the most interesting topic of conversation.’

‘Mm.’

‘The traffic, on the other hand, determines our everyday lives in Bangkok more than any goddamn typhoons. I never know how long it’s going to take me to get to work. Could be forty minutes, could be four hours. Ten years ago it took twenty-five minutes.’

‘So what’s happened?’

‘Growth. The last twenty years have been one long economic boom. This is where the jobs are, and people flood in from the rural areas. More people travelling to work every morning, more mouths to feed and more demand for transport. The politicians promise us new roads and then just rub their hands with glee at how well things are going.’

‘Nothing wrong with good times surely?’

‘It’s not that I begrudge people TVs in their bamboo huts, but it’s happened so damn fast. And if you ask me, growth for growth’s sake is the logic of a cancer cell. Sometimes I’m almost glad we hit the wall last year. You can already feel its effect on the traffic.’

‘You mean it’s been worse than this?’

‘Of course. Look there . . .’

Crumley pointed to a gigantic car park where hundreds of cement mixers stood in lines.

‘A year ago that parking lot was almost empty, but now no one is building any more, so the fleet has been mothballed, as you can see. And people only go to shopping malls because they have air conditioning, they don’t actually shop.’

They drove in silence for a while.

‘Who do you think is behind this shit?’ Harry asked.

‘Currency speculators.’

He looked at her, uncomprehending. ‘I’m talking about the photos.’

‘Oh.’ She glanced at him. ‘You didn’t like that, did you.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m an intolerant person. I can’t help thinking about the death penalty.’

The inspector checked her watch. ‘We pass a restaurant on the way to your apartment. What do you say to a crash course in traditional Thai food?’

‘OK. But you didn’t answer my question.’

‘Who’s behind the photos? Harry, there are probably more perverts in Thailand per square inch than in the whole world, people who have come here because we have a sex industry that meets all needs. And I do mean
all
needs. How the hell should I know who’s behind a few pictures?’

Harry grimaced and rolled his head from side to side. ‘I was just asking. Wasn’t there some row a couple of years ago about an ambassador who was a paedophile?’

‘Yeah, we busted a child sex ring involving a number of embassy people, among them the Australian ambassador. Very embarrassing.’

‘Not for the police though?’

‘Are you crazy? For us it was like winning the soccer World Cup and an Oscar at the same time. The Prime Minister sent his congratulations, the Minister for Tourism was in ecstasy and medals rained down on us. That has a big impact on the credibility of the force, you know.’

‘So what about making a start there?’

‘I don’t know. First up, everyone who was involved with the ring is either behind bars or has been deported. Second, I’m not convinced the photos have anything to do with the murder.’

Crumley turned into a car park where an attendant pointed to an impossible gap between two cars. She pressed a button and the electronics buzzed as the large windows on both sides of the vehicle were lowered. Then she put the car in reverse and put her foot on the accelerator.

‘I don’t think . . .’ Harry started to say, but the inspector had already parked. The side mirrors quivered.

‘How do we get out?’ he asked.

‘It’s not good to worry so much, Detective.’

Using both arms she swung herself through the window, placed one foot on the windscreen and jumped down in front of the Jeep. With a great deal of difficulty Harry succeeded in performing the same feat.

‘You’ll learn,’ she said and started walking. ‘Bangkok is cramped.’

‘And what about the radio?’ Harry looked back at the invitingly open windows. ‘Do you reckon it’ll be there when we get back?’

She flashed her police badge to the attendant, who straightened up with a jolt.

‘Yes.’

‘No fingerprints on the knife,’ Crumley said with a satisfied smack of her lips.
Sôm-tam
, a kind of green papaya salad, didn’t taste as weird as Harry had imagined. In fact, it was good. And spicy.

She sucked the foam off the beer with a loud slurp. He looked round at the other customers, but no one seemed to notice, probably because she was drowned out by a polka-playing string orchestra on the stage at the back of the restaurant, which in turn was drowned out by the traffic. Harry decided he would drink two beers. Then stop. He could buy a six-pack on the way to the flat.

‘Ornamentation on the handle. Anything there?’

‘Nho thought the knife might be from the north, from the mountain tribes in Chiang Rai province or around there. Something to do with the inset pieces of coloured glass. He wasn’t sure, but in any case it wasn’t the standard kind of knife you can buy in shops here, so we’re sending it to an art history professor at Benchamabophit Museum tomorrow. He knows all there is to know about old knives.’

Liz waved, and the waiter came and ladled some steaming coconut soup from a tureen.

‘Watch out for the little white guys. And the little red ones. They’ll burn you up,’ she said, pointing with a spoon. ‘Oh, and the green ones, too.’

Harry stared with scepticism at the different substances floating round in his bowl.

‘Is there anything here I
can
eat?’

‘The galanga roots are OK.’

‘Have you got any theories?’ Harry asked in a loud voice to drown her slurping.

‘About who the murderer could be? Yes, of course. Lots. Firstly, it could be the prostitute. Or the motel owner. Or both.’

‘And what would the motive be?’

‘Money.’

‘There was five hundred baht in Molnes’s wallet.’

‘If he took out his wallet in reception and Wang saw he had a bit of money, which is pretty likely, the temptation may have been too much for him. Wang wouldn’t have known that the man was a diplomat and that there would be such a big stink.’

Crumley held her fork up in the air and leaned forward excitedly.

‘They wait until the ambassador’s in the room, knock on the door and stab him with the knife when he turns his back. He falls forward on the bed, they empty his wallet, but leave the five hundred so it won’t look like robbery. Then they wait three hours and call the police. And Wang is bound to have a friend in the force who’ll make sure everything runs smoothly. No motive, no suspect, everyone keen to sweep an incident involving prostitution under the carpet. Next case.’

Harry’s eyes suddenly bulged out of his head. He grabbed the glass of beer and put it to his mouth.

Crumley smiled. ‘One of the red ones?’

He got his breath back.

‘Not a bad theory, Inspector, but there’s a flaw,’ he gasped in a throaty voice.

She frowned. ‘What’s that?’

‘Wang keeps a private guest book, probably crammed with names of politicians and civil servants. Each visit is logged along with the date and time. To have some defence, if anyone should make a fuss about his establishment. But when there’s a visitor whose face he doesn’t recognise he can hardly ask for their ID. So what he does is join the guest outside under the pretext of making sure there’s no one else in the car, right, to find out who he is.’

‘Now I don’t follow you.’

‘He writes down the number plate, OK? Then he checks it afterwards against the register. When he saw the blue plates on the Mercedes he knew at once Molnes was a diplomat.’

Crumley studied him thoughtfully. Then she swung round to the adjacent table with her eyes open wide. The couple jumped in their chairs and busily concentrated on their food.

She scratched her leg with a fork.

‘It hasn’t rained for three months,’ she said.

‘Sorry?’

She waved a hand for the bill.

‘What’s that got to do with the case?’ Harry asked.

‘Not a lot,’ she said.

It was almost three in the morning. The noise from the city was muted by the regular hum of the fan on the bedside table. Nevertheless, Harry could hear the odd heavy lorry driving over Taksin Bridge and the roar of a solitary riverboat setting off from one of the piers on the Chao Phraya.

As he’d unlocked the door to the flat he had seen a red flashing light on the telephone and after pressing a few buttons he’d listened to two messages. The first was from the Norwegian Embassy. Tonje Wiig, the chargé d’affaires, had a very nasal voice and sounded as if she was either from Oslo West or had a strong desire to live there. She told Harry to present himself at the embassy the next day at ten, but then changed the time to twelve as she discovered she had a meeting at a quarter past ten.

The other message was from Bjarne Møller. He wished Harry luck, no more than that. It sounded as if he didn’t like talking to answerphones.

Harry lay on the bed blinking into the darkness. He hadn’t bought the six-pack after all. And the B12 shots were still in his suitcase. After bar-hopping in Sydney he had taken to his bed with no feeling in his legs, but one vitamin shot and he had got up like Lazarus. He sighed. When was it he had actually decided? When he was told about the job in Bangkok? No, it was before that. Several weeks ago he had set a deadline: Sis’s birthday. God knows why he had taken the decision. Perhaps he was just sick of not being present. Days came and went without him noticing. Something like that. He was tired of the discussion about why old Bardolph didn’t want to drink now. When Harry took a decision it was unshakeable; it was inexorable and final. No compromises, no prevarication. ‘I can stop any day I like.’ How often had he heard men at Schrøder’s trying to convince themselves that they weren’t long-term full-blooded alkies? He was as full-blooded as any of them, but he was the only one he knew who could actually stop whenever he wanted. The birthday wasn’t for a few weeks, but as Aune had been right about this trip being a good starting point Harry had even brought it forward. Harry groaned and rolled over onto his side.

He wondered what Sis was doing, if she had dared to venture out in the evenings. If she had rung Dad as she had promised. And if she had, if he’d managed to talk to her, beyond answering with a yes or a no.

Three o’clock passed, and even though it was only nine in Norway he hadn’t slept much over the last thirty-six hours and ought to have fallen asleep without a problem. However, every time he closed his eyes he had the image of a naked Thai boy illuminated by headlamps on his retina, so he preferred to keep them open for a while longer. Perhaps he should have bought the six-pack after all. When he did finally drop off, the morning rush hour over Taksin Bridge had already started.

8

Saturday 11 January

ON THE SEVENTEENTH
floor, behind an oak door and two security checkpoints, Harry found a metal sign bearing the Norwegian lion. The receptionist, a young, graceful Thai woman with a small mouth, even smaller nose and two velvety brown eyes in a round face, bore a deep frown as she studied his ID card. Then she lifted the telephone, whispered three syllables and put it back down.