Read Online The Grey Man by John Curtis - Free Book Online

daughter was staying with me at the time and I clearly remember leaning against the doorframe that led to her bedroom. Emma was asleep, curled up on the bed. She was five years old and just beautiful. I stood there and looked at her, watching her tiny chest rise and fall as she breathed.
    Suddenly, I heard a voice in my head. It was my voice but it came unbidden. The voice said: ‘There are children her age being abused in south-east Asia.’ That was all it said.
    My first thought was, ‘Whoa, where the hell did that come from?’ I'd been to Thailand once, on the way home from a trip to the US where I'd gone to train at the Tracker School but I hadn't seen or heard anything about underage sex workers during that brief visit. In fact, I was a pretty naïve traveller when I was in Asia. I had no interest in girly bars or hookers, and the closest I came to that scene was when I got out of the airport, stepped into a tuk tuk and asked the driver to take me somewhere I could change money. He took me to a place called the Happy Happy Turkish Massage Bar and when we went in I saw all these suddenly attentive girls spring up from their tables and drinks. This must be one of those bars, I thought. The whole thing was quite comical. The bartender offered me what even I knew was a bad rate for my foreign currency.
    â€˜Umm, no thanks,’ I said to him. ‘I think I'll just go.’
    â€˜No, stay,’ the man said. ‘You can have one of my girls as well, if you like.’
    â€˜Err, no thanks. Really,’ I said. I suddenly wanted to get out of the place, and had visions of being held up by a gangster with a gun or being taken out into a stinking back alley and beaten up. I was the only white guy in the place and there were no other customers, just these girls eyeing me up. ‘I think I should go.’
    The bartender just shrugged. ‘What hotel are you staying at?’
    â€˜I haven't picked a place yet,’ I said. It was only a one-night stopover.
    The guy found a guest house for me, gave me his address and told me to contact him any time I came back to Thailand. Far from wanting to rob or shoot me, the owner of the Happy Happy Turkish Massage Bar turned out to be typical of most Thais I've since met – friendly, polite, and happy to go out of his way to help a stranger.
    So there was nothing in my limited experience of Asia that had opened my eyes to the problem of trafficking and child prostitution, and when the voice came to me that day I hadn't been thinking or reading about the issue. I had never heard voices before and even though I'd thought about helping disenfranchised people in Borneo, I'd never previously contemplated the evils of the people-smuggling and sex trades. This was a strange experience. I remember saying to myself, ‘Well, if I could do something about it I would,’ but I was forty-five years old, depressed and broke and there seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel.

    The Army Reserve has a scheme whereby the civilian employers of part-time soldiers are paid the equivalent of the adult minimum wage while their employees are on full-time military service, by way of compensation. Self-employed people can claim the employer support payment (known as the ESP) as well, if their normal business suffers because of their military activities.
    Because I'd had to give up running survival courses while working full-time for the army, a year before I heard the voice in my head, I had applied for the ESP. Predictably, the paperwork had been lost in some bureaucratic abyss and I had never been paid. Some months later I had contacted Enoggera Barracks to follow up about my payment, and luckily I got in touch with a female corporal by the name of Fletcher whom I had known while I was an officer there. She assured me she would do her best to find out what had happened to my claim. I didn't have high hopes that this non-commissioned officer would be able to