Free Death in the Kingdom by Andrew Grant Page B

plus there were a few chairs and stools and a built-in bench that was the captain’s bed. A crude galley was behind the mess, with an even cruder toilet behind the galley—if a bucket with a couple of rattan screens around it could be considered a toilet.
    About two feet behind the toilet, right in the stern, was a second sleeping area. This, I suspected, started life as a storage locker and had subsequently been very roughly converted into a cabin into which four short, hard bunks had been crammed. That was where I was sleeping, along with the three divers Tuk Tuk had brought in. The divers were in the main cabin playing cards when I entered. They glanced at me and grinned. I guessed my face was still glowingly pale. I grinned back to show I had a sense of humour. ‘Rotting fish and diesel. I hate the smell,’ I said in Thai. The guys immediately laid down their cards and started talking to me ninety to the dozen in their own language. Somewhere along the line I’d decided that speaking Thai and getting alongside these fellows might be a wise move.
    It was amazing in any situation what a few words in the native tongue could achieve. Anywhere but Paris that was! Hell, in my opinion fucking Parisians didn’t even like each other, let alone their cousins from the provinces. So speaking French in Paris was a joke, especially given that most of the natives could speak English when they chose. No such problem where I was! If you could speak Thai, no matter how badly, you were welcomed with open arms. However, because these guys all worked for Tuk Tuk Song I had no illusions about what to expect from them. They would do as I said only because Choy, on Tuk Tuk’s behalf, had told them to. They were terrified of Tuk Tuk and of The Cabbage. They weren’t scared of me. Even so, the illusion of camaraderie could be as important as the real thing. That was how most of the intelligence outfits got on together. Mirrors, smoke and big smiley faces up front, sharp knives ready behind the back. I was good at playing Mr Smiley Face.
    â€˜Who wants a beer?’ I asked and they all chorused very much to the affirmative. I had insisted that we have a good supply of Singha on board. Tuk Tuk had agreed to that readily enough. A big refrigerator the size of a supermarket chest had been squeezed up one end of the mess. As I was boss, if I said drink, they drank. I opened the chest and passed out a string of cans, keeping one for myself.
    I let the dive team get back to their game and joined in the banter at appropriate intervals while I stood sipping my beer, looking over the map that had been taped to the bulkhead wall above the refrigerator. I guessed, from the relatively short time we’d been on the move, that we were anchored in Hastings Harbour, right up in the lee of St Luke’s Island, or Zadetkale Kyun to give it its Burmese name. A lot of the islands and bays on the map had English names. They were all named after bloody dukes, generals, governors and such. However I guessed the Burmese still called the islands whatever they had been calling them for centuries, and to hell with what a bunch of jumped-up colonial types wrote on their maps. I doubted many Burmese on the mainland even knew this mass of islands existed.
    From where I estimated we were I figured that we had maybe half a day’s steaming to get to Loughborough Island. We could probably be in position before nightfall the following day. That was if I wanted us to be there. I hadn’t yet figured out if we would be better to anchor at the dive site and stay there, or commute. The co-ordinates for the wrecks placed us on the eastern side of the island, with no cover from the westerly winds. At this time of the year it could be calm, it could be shitty and there was no way of knowing which until we got there.
    â€˜We are here.’ A brown finger tapped the map. I’d been dead right about our anchorage. The speaker was Niran, the