Read Online Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Burdett
Tags: Fiction
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smarter than me? “Would you like to bring a colleague? Of course, you can make a telephone call to inform Colonel Vikorn where you are going. We don’t really mind, although we would prefer not.”
I feel like a man in a blindfold: is the next step an abyss or merely level ground? I take a long time to reply. “No, it’s okay. I’ll come now. Shall I come to the address on the card?”
“Yes, if that’s all right. And thank you.”
I call my mother to tell her to come mind the bar. She is in the middle of watching a soap (a family of wizards who live in a mysterious region above the earth and intervene in earthly affairs from time to time, especially in the love life of the lead couple, who are perpetually pursued by a light-stepping human skeleton—we like realism in our entertainment). My argument is compelling, however, and she arrives in about fifteen minutes in her Chanel business suit and her discreet perfume by Van Cleef and Arpels, dripping in gold. Some of the girls are returning one by one from their romantic trysts and, surprised to see the matriarch herself behind the bar, give her deep, respectful wais.
The apartment is close to Soi Cowboy, and it takes me only ten minutes to walk there. It is in Soi 23, a street famous for its restaurants, which cater to every conceivable taste (fussy French, flaky Chinese, Vietnamese, British, German, American, Japanese—we call it the “street of the hungry johns”). As I stroll up the soi, I have frequently to step off the pavement to avoid bumping into romantic couples, most of whom consist of middle-aged white men and Thai women in their twenties. (Cultural note: look closely, and you will see the girls are flinching away from embraces, despite what they are about to do, or have recently been doing, in private: a matter of face, farang. )
A modest building guarded by a few guys in security uniforms with handcuffs and night sticks hanging from their belts. Two of them are sitting at a makeshift table playing Thai checkers with bottle tops. I flash my ID and take the lift.
A door like any other opens onto something quite different. I count eight prayer rugs (richly colored in greens and golds, geometrical patterns only) laid out in parallel at an odd angle to the room as the young man from the bar lets me in. Something in his manner suggests an ancient Arab tradition of hospitality (he has suspended the heavy judgments for the time being, even morphed into gracious host), and he manages a wai, which I return. I’m distracted, though, by the other person in the room, a man in his sixties with a long robe and a skullcap, who rises from a chair to wai me mindfully. I wai back. Wais are more than just a matter of placing your hands together and raising them to your face, however; they are a social semaphore with a whole alphabet of meaning. Let me be frank, those who embark on the spiritual path have ways of recognizing each other’s rank, and this imam impresses me immediately. (Thin and straight, there is depth and fire in those coal-black eyes.) I raise my pressed palms as high as my forehead and pause there for a moment, a form of homage that pleases and impresses the young man. (Under the rules a Buddhist cop need not show such reverence to a southern Muslim, however senior.)
“Welcome, stranger. Our house is your house.” The old man offers the traditional welcome in that power whisper I recognize from my phone call. He nods to the young man.
“My name is Mustafa Jaema,” the young man says, “and this is my father, the cleric Nusee Jaema.”
I do not disguise my surprise. Although rarely photographed, Nusee Jaema is often in the news these days as a moderate voice in the far South, respected by Buddhists as well as his Muslim followers. There are those who believe that he alone holds back the threat of insurrection—for now. I know he lives in a town in the far South called Songai Kolok.
“I am Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep,” I say, “but
I feel like a man in a blindfold: is the next step an abyss or merely level ground? I take a long time to reply. “No, it’s okay. I’ll come now. Shall I come to the address on the card?”
“Yes, if that’s all right. And thank you.”
I call my mother to tell her to come mind the bar. She is in the middle of watching a soap (a family of wizards who live in a mysterious region above the earth and intervene in earthly affairs from time to time, especially in the love life of the lead couple, who are perpetually pursued by a light-stepping human skeleton—we like realism in our entertainment). My argument is compelling, however, and she arrives in about fifteen minutes in her Chanel business suit and her discreet perfume by Van Cleef and Arpels, dripping in gold. Some of the girls are returning one by one from their romantic trysts and, surprised to see the matriarch herself behind the bar, give her deep, respectful wais.
The apartment is close to Soi Cowboy, and it takes me only ten minutes to walk there. It is in Soi 23, a street famous for its restaurants, which cater to every conceivable taste (fussy French, flaky Chinese, Vietnamese, British, German, American, Japanese—we call it the “street of the hungry johns”). As I stroll up the soi, I have frequently to step off the pavement to avoid bumping into romantic couples, most of whom consist of middle-aged white men and Thai women in their twenties. (Cultural note: look closely, and you will see the girls are flinching away from embraces, despite what they are about to do, or have recently been doing, in private: a matter of face, farang. )
A modest building guarded by a few guys in security uniforms with handcuffs and night sticks hanging from their belts. Two of them are sitting at a makeshift table playing Thai checkers with bottle tops. I flash my ID and take the lift.
A door like any other opens onto something quite different. I count eight prayer rugs (richly colored in greens and golds, geometrical patterns only) laid out in parallel at an odd angle to the room as the young man from the bar lets me in. Something in his manner suggests an ancient Arab tradition of hospitality (he has suspended the heavy judgments for the time being, even morphed into gracious host), and he manages a wai, which I return. I’m distracted, though, by the other person in the room, a man in his sixties with a long robe and a skullcap, who rises from a chair to wai me mindfully. I wai back. Wais are more than just a matter of placing your hands together and raising them to your face, however; they are a social semaphore with a whole alphabet of meaning. Let me be frank, those who embark on the spiritual path have ways of recognizing each other’s rank, and this imam impresses me immediately. (Thin and straight, there is depth and fire in those coal-black eyes.) I raise my pressed palms as high as my forehead and pause there for a moment, a form of homage that pleases and impresses the young man. (Under the rules a Buddhist cop need not show such reverence to a southern Muslim, however senior.)
“Welcome, stranger. Our house is your house.” The old man offers the traditional welcome in that power whisper I recognize from my phone call. He nods to the young man.
“My name is Mustafa Jaema,” the young man says, “and this is my father, the cleric Nusee Jaema.”
I do not disguise my surprise. Although rarely photographed, Nusee Jaema is often in the news these days as a moderate voice in the far South, respected by Buddhists as well as his Muslim followers. There are those who believe that he alone holds back the threat of insurrection—for now. I know he lives in a town in the far South called Songai Kolok.
“I am Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep,” I say, “but
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