The Half-Child (3 page)

‘When are you leaving Bangkok?' she said, testing the pen.

‘I'm flying back to Brisbane tonight.'

‘Mind if I ask you a couple of questions while we wait for the photocopy?'

‘Shoot.'

‘Did Maryanne know anyone in Thailand before coming here as a volunteer?'

He shook his head. ‘Far as I know, she applied to YCV and they came up with the job in Thailand. I thought she should have finished her degree first, then gone somewhere more civilised, like America.'

For some reason a quote popped into Jayne's head:

Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilisation.
It sounds like a good idea
.

‘What was Maryanne studying?'

‘Social work. Said she wanted to work with children.

I told her there was no money in it. But that's what she wanted to do and like I told you, once she put her mind to something, she was bloody well determined to do it.'

‘And she hadn't been to Thailand before at all? On holiday?'

He frowned and shook his head.

‘What about Maryanne's Christian beliefs, was she…' Jayne searched for the right words. ‘Was she very religious?'

‘She didn't ram her beliefs down other people's throats if that's what you mean. We're a church-going family. Nothing unusual in that.'

Jayne made a note to find out more about the YCV.

‘The article mentioned a brother.'

‘Ian, two years older.'

‘Were they close?'

‘Not particularly. Like I said, Maryanne was close to her aunt Sarah, my younger sister. Sarah's the black sheep of the family, and I think Maryanne favoured her just to piss me off.'

‘Oh?'

‘Maryanne and I didn't always see eye to eye.'

‘Can you give me an example?'

‘She wanted to help those less fortunate than her, though she'd say it was patronising of me to put it that way. We argued about it a lot. In my experience, if you're prepared to work hard, you can be anything in this world. Maryanne believed in handouts, or a “hand up”—' he drew inverted commas in the air ‘—as she put it. Said I was a cynic. I thought she was naïve, trying to change the bloody world.'

He leaned forward across the table.

‘She was too confident. She trusted people too easily. It'd make her a sitting duck in a place like this.'

‘What do you mean?'

He made a sweeping gesture with his hands. ‘Bloody Asian hellhole.'

Jayne thought the Dusit Thani Hotel failed to qualify as any kind of hellhole, but the death of his only daughter was bound to colour Jim Delbeck's view.

She closed her notebook.

‘Jim, what do you think happened to Maryanne?'

‘I don't know,' he said.

‘Accident?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Foul play?'

‘I don't know,' he said again, shaking his head.

‘You must suspect something or you wouldn't be hiring me.'

He drained his beer.

‘You hear a lot of stories about the shit that goes down in a place like this and—' He stared for a moment at the lotus floating in the bowl in front of him. ‘I don't know why anyone would want to hurt Maryanne. I just know that if they did, she wouldn't have seen it coming.'

His shoulders slumped, and Jayne resisted the urge to take his hand.

‘I'm sorry for your loss,' she said.

His sad smile was short-lived. ‘You know, you're the first person to say that since I arrived in this place. One bastard even had a stupid bloody grin on his face the whole time he was talking about Maryanne's death. If he hadn't been a cop, I would've bloody well decked him.'

Again Jayne held her tongue. Smiling in the face of tragedy was a form of stoicism in Thailand, but this wasn't the time to give Jim Delbeck a lesson in cultural sensitivity.

The waitress reappeared with the contract. They signed both copies and took one each. Jim signed the tab for their drinks, too.

‘You can contact me on my mobile number any time,' he said as they walked back towards the entrance.

He extended his hand. ‘Good luck.'

‘I'll do my best,' she found herself saying.

‘One other thing,' Jim said, still holding her hand. ‘If you do find out there was foul play involved, I want you to come to me first, not the cops. I don't trust those bastards.'

Again Jayne bit back the impulse to point out that there were good cops and bad cops wherever you went in the world. She didn't want to know whether Jim Delbeck was angry with the Thais because of his daughter's death or if his antipathy ran deeper. She wanted to accept what he offered at face value: an intriguing case that got her out of the demolition site that was downtown Bangkok.

She zigzagged back along the rubble of Silom Road. The meeting made Jayne think of her own father. She wondered how he would describe her to a stranger. Would he highlight their differences, as Jim Delbeck had done with Maryanne?

Or would he persist as he always did in finding common ground, no matter how hard he had to scratch around for it?

As far as her parents were concerned, Jayne was an enigma. Once she'd been a normal girl with a nice fiancé and a good job at a Melbourne girls' school. Then she'd tossed it all in and run off to Europe with a visiting French teacher.

Somehow she'd ended up alone in Bangkok and for reasons they couldn't understand, insisted on staying there. She hadn't told them about her work as a private investigator.

They still thought she taught English for a living and since her father was a teacher, she let them believe it. He loved to think she'd followed in his footsteps; she couldn't break it to him that she'd strayed from the path.

Jim Delbeck seemed to take it personally that his daughter's values differed from his own. To their credit, Jayne's parents never felt that way. They might not understand her, but they respected her right to be different. Once she did get around to telling them she's a PI, she had no doubt they'd take it in their stride.

It rarely happened, but meeting Jim Delbeck left Jayne feeling homesick.

2

M
ax stood to kiss Jayne European style before resuming his seat. The weather was cool by Bangkok's standards—a balmy thirty degrees by day, mild nights just below twenty. They made the most of it by sitting outside. Max had chosen their rendezvous: the patio at the Sphinx Bar, a little corner of Ancient Egypt in the middle of the Thai capital. Tucked down the end of Soi 4 off Silom Road, the exterior was rendered to look like sandstone, the entrance guarded by a replica of Tutankhamen's sarcophagus. The interior walls were a royal-blue honeycomb of niches containing faux Egyptian artefacts backlit in blue light, and the bar boys wore gold and blue kilts and matching headdresses inspired by the acolytes in the Temple Karnak. A classy joint compared with some of the venues in a lane affectionately known as ‘Gay Soi'.

‘Long time, no see,' he said as Jayne sat down.

‘Too long.'

She pointed to his gin and tonic and signalled for a barechested waiter to bring another.

‘You look good, Jayne.'

‘Thanks Max. I feel good.'

She took a packet of
Krung Thip
out of her pack.

‘Still haven't given up that filthy habit I see.' He pushed the ashtray towards her. ‘Is that wise, smoking the local brand?'

‘Are you kidding? Using a filter is the only way to get a breath of fresh air in this city.'

She drew on her cigarette with exaggerated pleasure and Max smiled. It was a relief to see her looking so relaxed.

He was fond of Jayne, but she risked becoming one of those embittered expatriate women who complain about being passed over by expat men in favour of the locals, persist with living in Bangkok, but won't date Thai men.
Khan thong
, literally ‘golden bowl', the Thai term for spinster. Too precious to put anything inside. For Max, dating Thai men was the only thing that made Bangkok life bearable.

They chatted for a while, before Jayne brought up the Delbeck case. Max knew what was coming. Three years earlier, she'd used her detective skills to expose the affair Max's then-boyfriend was having with the Australian Defence Attaché. She refused payment at the time, saying she'd done it as a favour. Ever since, she regularly provided Max with opportunities to return the favour. And she had the uncanny ability to make him feel pleased to show off his generosity.

‘Jim Delbeck's employed me to look into the circumstances of his daughter's death. Thanks for putting in a good word.'

‘Not at all.'

‘He gave me a copy of the embassy's report into Maryanne's death.' She put the document on the table between them. ‘It has all the hallmarks of Mister Ballast's style: dull bureaucratic language, conservative analysis. But I digress.'

She opened the cover and leafed through a couple of pages. ‘It says Maryanne Delbeck came to Thailand as a volunteer in May last year—'

She looked up.

‘May last year,' Max repeated, reaching over to touch her arm. ‘We were in Chiang Mai.'

Nine months earlier, a friend they'd both loved had died in violent circumstances. Jayne had risked her own life to pursue his killers and clear their friend's name of falsified charges. For this, too, Max owed her.

‘I miss him,' Jayne said.

‘Me too.'

They raised their glasses and drank a silent toast.

Jayne spoke first. ‘What can you tell me about the Young Christian Volunteers?'

‘They're a non-government organisation that sends young people on volunteer placements in Asia and the Pacific. Most of their funding comes from churches, but they get a bit of AusAID money.'

‘Are they fundamentalists?'

‘They wouldn't qualify for AusAID funding if they were.

It's in the guidelines. NGOs aren't allowed to use Australian taxpayers' funds for proselytising.'

Jayne raised her eyebrows. ‘What, even under the Liberals?'

Max smiled, though she'd hit a raw nerve. Since the election of the conservatives in Australia the previous year, unwelcome policy changes were coming thick and fast.

In the latest, Foreign Affairs had issued advice that funds from the Australian Agency for International Development were not to be used to provide information or services related to abortion or emergency contraception. For Max, who oversaw several sexual health projects funded by the Australian government, the directive was causing major headaches. He dreaded what they might come up with next.

No more funding for AIDS projects that worked with gay men and drug users?

‘So how does the YCV identify placements?' Jayne said, lighting another cigarette.

‘Through church networks, I think. But hang on…' He took a diary from the inner pocket of his beige linen jacket. ‘If I'm not mistaken, YCV's Asian program coordinator is due here for a monitoring visit. Yes, here it is. Kate Murchison.

I've got an appointment with her tomorrow at two.'

‘Hot on the heels of Jim Delbeck's visit,' Jayne said.

Max hadn't thought of it like that but she might have a point.

‘Any chance you could arrange for us to meet?'

‘I'll get her to call you?'

‘On the
meu theu
.'

He ignored her use of the lingua franca, knowing she did it to show up his own ineptitude when it came to speaking Thai. French would continue to be the only damn foreign language Max bothered to study, determined his superiors would eventually concede that his next placement could only be the Australian mission in Paris or Geneva.

‘Gone high tech have you?' he asked.

‘Wouldn't be without it,' Jayne said as she waved her mobile phone in the air before noticing something on the screen. She pushed a few buttons.

‘Sorry Max, I've gotta go.'

She stubbed out her barely smoked cigarette, drained her glass and rose to her feet. ‘You won't have dinner with me?' Max was disappointed.

‘I'd love to, but when you said you wanted to meet here, I assumed you'd made plans for the evening.'

She took two hundred baht from her wallet, ignored his attempts to give it back, and placed it under the ashtray.

‘Besides, I have a date,' she said.

‘
What
?'

In the time he'd known her, Max had never heard Jayne talk of a date. He knew she had flings, but it wasn't the same thing.

‘Oh my god, no wonder you're looking so well. You can't go now. You've got to tell me all about it. Who's the lucky man? Do I know him?'

‘You don't know him. It's early days, but he's lovely. And if things work out, I promise I'll introduce you, okay?'

‘Jayne, this is outrageous! How about bringing him to my next Friday night
salon
?'

‘Relax,' she smiled. ‘I told you, it's still early days.

Besides, I have to go to Pattaya to follow up on this case.'

Max was poised to protest, when he caught sight of an attractive Thai man on the terrace of a bar called Telephone across the
soi
. The man had an old-fashioned black telephone on the table in front of him, painted with the number twenty-nine in white. Max knew from past forays that if he took a table at the same bar and dialled twenty-nine on the phone in front of him, he could speak anonymously with the guy.

Suss him out. Flirt a little. See what transpired.

Max made eye contact with the Thai man over Jayne's shoulder as he stood to kiss her goodbye.

‘I'll let you off the hook for now,' he said, smiling at the private pun. ‘But I expect all the juicy details next time.'

3

J
ayne turned as she walked away and caught sight of Max making a beeline for Telephone. Once she resented her friend's single-mindedness, but the promise of romance made her magnanimous.