Free Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett Page B

flick now from Lek to me and back again. I let silence tell the story. I’m thinking that if he already knows she’s dead, it will be hard to fake a reaction to the news. Lek and I are watching carefully, trying to sift maya from reality. With a slowness that may or may not be theatrical, he grabs the back of a chair and shifts it so that he’s looking out of his window while he leans on it.

Softly: “How did she die?”

“What kind of death did you have in mind for her, Mr. Baker?”

His head snaps around to glare at me. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

I shrug. “You admitted to feelings of extreme bitterness, to being a kind of emotional slave. The condition of psychological slavery is invariably a precursor to homicidal thoughts. In your fantasies, from time to time, how did you kill her?” He stares, speechless. “I fear my interrogation technique is not quite up to Western standards, Mr. Baker. You must forgive me. You know how we Thai cops are, virtually no training in the finer points of forensic investigation, nothing but our crude third-world intuition to go by—and what little we’ve been able to glean of human nature in our folksy way. You did dream of killing her from time to time, didn’t you?”

I seem to have broken through to another, more interesting Baker when he says, “She was murdered? Yeah, okay. Guilty of homicidal thoughts against her, so long as you include half the Johns in Bangkok in that category.”

Then all of a sudden another fragment takes over; there is nothing to forewarn us of the flash storm. “Dead? Goddamn it, you people just make me want to puke. You come here to tell a man his ex-wife is dead, and that’s it, you just say it like that, like a weather report, like it’s just a fact like any other.” He is wild-eyed and challenging me with outrage. Perhaps in a newcomer it would have been a convincing response, but this man has been here nearly five years. Finally he makes a show of controlling himself. “Are you going to tell me how she died?”

“First tell me how surprised you are,” I say. Just the quirky, dumb question you’d expect from someone like me, right? Hard to answer though.

“How surprised? What kind of question is that?” He studies me for a moment. “Maybe I need a lawyer.”

I look around the room. “By all means. They’re expensive, though, and it can be quite difficult to find one who, let us say, has your interests at heart. You could spend a long time in jail waiting and then find you have to answer my questions anyway. Up to you.”

He thinks about this and says, “I am personally shocked that she is dead, but no one who knew her would be surprised that she met an early end.”

“Good,” I say, “now we’re getting somewhere. What sort of early death would you have envisioned for your ex-wife? Give us the whole story. Take your time.”

A pause, a groan, then what looks like an honest response: “Nothing you can’t guess. Really.”

I let a couple of beats pass while he wrestles with his heart. “When did you last see her?”

“A couple months ago.” He raises his eyes to look into mine. “Of course I’m not going to demand a lawyer. For what? You don’t have a system of justice—you have a system of extortion. This is a kleptocracy. Everyone who stays here long enough finds that out.” I raise my eyes in a question. “So it would give me some comfort if you would disregard some minor infractions, in the interests of bringing her killer to justice.” There is no self-consciousness now, no posturing; he’s looking for a deal.

“I can’t promise because I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can be very lenient for the right person though.”

“How much d’you want?”

“I’m not talking about money. I want information. Everything you know about her life here.”

Shocked: “You don’t want money?” He sighs and purses his lips.

After they let me out of the penitentiary, I came