Free Hungry Ghosts by John Dolan

describe her as Thai Goth since she wears rather too much makeup, especially around the eyes which are further enhanced by large false eyelashes. She has a diamond in one of her teeth, but no tattoos anywhere as far as I know. I’ve never seen her naked, so I could be wrong about this.
    Maybe Thai Goth is also a bit strong.
    Wiwatanee Lamphongchat – which is her real name – is, however, a very well-educated young lady and a highly-talented singer and musician. She also happens to be the niece of a powerful Bangkok gangster, who ‘keeps an eye on her’ on behalf of his dead brother, Jingjai’s father.
    I first encountered Jingjai about two months ago, when she was working in a bar in Chaweng. A German client in the music business had asked me to reassure him she wasn’t up to the sort of thing that many Chaweng bar girls are up to, since he was considering offering her a music contract. The music contract never actually materialised but my getting to know her proved to be important. It also resulted ultimately in my involvement in the killing of Police Constable Preechap Chaldrakun.
    Unbeknown to Jingjai, Chaldrakun was being paid by her family in Bangkok to ‘mind’ her. The unpleasant gorilla – ‘PC’ to some of us island ex pats – developed an obsession with the girl, despite the fact that they’d never spoken, and started killing off any potential farang boyfriends and setting alight their corpses.
    When our ambitious Samui Police Chief ‘Papa Doc’ Charoenkul took it into his head to fit up a tramp for the ‘burning murders’, I enlisted the help of the brother of one of the victims to kill PC. I figured if PC discovered I knew he was the murderer, I’d be the next pile of charcoal under a coconut tree. And that was not about to happen.
    Looks like I’ve got away with it. It’s not keeping me awake anyway.
    Suffice to say Jingjai knows nothing of this. What is more, she is not going to learn anything about it from me. Hard to know what it would do to her if she discovered that she was the unwitting catalyst for four deaths. Far better that she not know. Sometimes ignorance really can be bliss.
    I offered the girl with the diamond tooth a temporary job at the Agency to cover for Da as soon as it became obvious that using Da’s backwoods cousin as a replacement was hopeless. Jingjai was free as she had just lost her own job when the Ocean Pearl bar closed. The current arrangement is good for her since she has her evenings free to do more music gigs at Charlie Rorabaugh’s place and in other watering holes. The arrangement is good for me because she speaks excellent English and knows how to deal with Western clients. Given Da’s general low opinion of yours truly in matters of morals, her initial unsurprising assumption was that I’d hired Jingjai because of her looks and fit bod. She now realizes that’s not the reason. Well, not the main one anyway.
    Jingjai brings me a cup of coffee into the West Office. The East Office still smells of diapers, so is out of action. Da has reluctantly gone home with the infant phenomenon, although not before leaving a couple of disposable nappies in Jingjai’s desk ‘for later’.
    “Mr. Vlad should be here for his appointment in a few minutes, David,” she tells me.
    Jingjai’s habit of calling me ‘David’ drove Da nuts to start with (“A bit too familiar, if you want my opinion, Khun David”) and she had a moan to my housekeeper Wayan about it – the two of them being members of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. But as they’ve both got to know Jingjai better, coupled with the fact that I’m not using her fit bod for sexual gratification, they’ve let the matter drop.
    I set aside the Sudoku book and check my watch.
    “OK.”
    She is smiling and shaking her head slightly.
    “What’s tickling you, Jingjai?”
    “I was just thinking about you and Da. Really, you’re like a married couple the way you bicker.”
    “That, my dear, would be my worst