Behind the Night Bazaar (9 page)

The young men slowly got to their feet and dusted off their clothes.

‘I’m sorry, Officer,’ the first one said, retrieving his baseball cap from the ground.

‘Me, too, Officer,’ said the second.

Both looked suitably humbled and Komet nodded to show he accepted their apologies.

As he backed away, the man with the cap raised his fingers to his lips and gave a loud whistle.

‘Come on then, Deh,’ he said, slapping his companion on the back. ‘Let’s go!’

‘OK, Bom.
Mai pen rai
, hey!’

Komet watched them go, satisfied by how quickly their dispute had settled, and envying them each other’s company. He checked his watch and sighed, replaced his baton in its belt-loop and turned back to the house.

Bom’s whistle was Jayne’s signal to get out, fast. There was no point continuing her search anyway, since the house had been ransacked. Didier’s computer and all the files from his study were gone, drawers of the desk were left open and empty, contents scattered. There were large gaps in the bookshelves lining the walls of the main room, and Didier’s beloved books lay strewn all over the floor. The wardrobes in both bedrooms were empty, bathroom cupboards also plundered.

The house was built in the northeast style, the stilts forming a space underneath where Thai women typically worked on their looms during the heat of the day and tethered their animals at night. In Didier’s case, there was only enough room for motorbikes as the land sloped upwards. Anticipating the back door would be locked, Jayne had broken in through the bathroom window overlooking the back garden. She’d chosen it in advance, knowing it didn’t close properly.

Passing by the place in daylight, she easily spotted the surveillance team of two and decided to wait in a nearby cafe to see what happened.

Didier lived in a residential neighbourhood where it was hard for Jayne to look inconspicuous. She might pass herself off as a lost tourist, but it was a difficult act to sustain. Not so the ‘World Traveller’, a particularly earnest type of backpacker—the kind for whom Thai-English phrase-books were invented.

Smiling sweetly at the cafe owner and using her dictionary to communicate, Jayne ordered food and opened her notebook. For the rest of the afternoon, she pretended to be writing a journal, all the while watching the house across the street.

At ten that night, Jayne saw a young cop arrive on a motorbike. He nodded to the surveillance duo, which didn’t even wait for him to dismount before driving away. Leaving a tip twice the size of her bill, Jayne waited outside the cafe in the shadow cast by an awning and watched the cop enter the house. She lost sight of him from time to time, but he re-emerged on the balcony whenever anyone came close. After waiting twenty minutes and satisfied the man was alone, Jayne walked to a public phone, called Bom, then flagged down a tuk-tuk to take her to his place.

She’d met Bom through Didier, the weekend they scheduled their book club meeting to coincide with the Yi Peng festival. They had joined a crowd on the banks of the Mae Ping to place small floats—traditionally woven from banana leaves—containing flowers, candles, incense and coins on the river. Thais believed all the misdeeds that might bring them bad karma in the next life would float away. Unique to Chiang Mai, and as a kind of karmic back-up, people also launched paper lanterns like hot-air balloons into the night sky.

Bom learned that Jayne had once been a drama teacher and grilled her for ideas to liven up the lessons he taught at a local high school. They’d met several times since and got along well; Jayne had even made a guest appearance at one of his classes. In the Thai scheme of things, this put Bom in her debt. But when she explained what she wanted, he was more concerned with helping her clear Didier’s name—an indication of how much he was affected by their friend’s death.

Recruiting his housemate, Deh, they came up with the idea of having a fight over an imaginary girlfriend. While Jayne made coffee, the two men worked on a routine and a signal for when to get out of the place.

Jayne hesitated when she heard Bom’s whistle, reluctant to leave Didier’s books, until she heard the cop’s footsteps on the front stairs. She snatched those closest to her and tucked them into the waistband of her jeans. But she’d lingered too long to get back out through the bathroom window. She ducked into the kitchen, released the catch on the back door and dashed across the backyard. She scaled the back fence and ran to the lane where Bom and Deh were waiting on their motorbikes.

Jayne was more convinced than ever that Didier had been onto something—something in which the police were implicated. Why else would they have cleaned the house out so thoroughly? But she’d found no leads, no clues. All she had were a few paperbacks. Squirming in her seat on Bom’s bike, she plucked them out from beneath her clothing.

‘Are you OK?’ Bom asked over his shoulder.

‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘How about you?’

‘
Sanouk mark-mark
!’ he said with a laugh.

‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’

Jayne managed to keep it together until the boys dropped her back at the Silver Star. But once she retreated to the sanctuary of her room, with the door closed behind her and finally alone, she started crying.

These were not the angry tears of the day before, but thick, wet tears of grief. The tension left her throat as her sorrow found its voice and she howled with the pain of losing the man she loved. She rocked her body back and forth with a sadness that came in waves. By the time her tears subsided, her chair was surrounded in soggy tissues and the box was empty.

She caught sight of the paperbacks she’d rescued from Didier’s place. Two were Agatha Christie novels,
Nemesis
and
Death on the Nile
. But it was the third book, by Raymond Chandler, that set her off again:
Farewell, My
Lovely
.

She searched her purse for another tissue and came across a business card she didn’t recognise. On one side was the address and phone number of the Chiang Mai Plaza Hotel. On the other, in Didier’s handwriting, was
Mtg.
Moira O’Halloran, Room 1228. 6/5, 17.00
.

A flash of lightning outside her window followed by a whip-cracking thunderbolt signalled the storm that had been building all evening. Jayne checked her watch. The meeting was scheduled in twelve hours’ time. And Jayne intended to keep the appointment with Moira O’Halloran on Didier’s behalf.

W
ith gentle prompting, the receptionist at the Chiang Mai Plaza Hotel revealed that Moira O’Halloran was an
ajarn
from Australia. Given the reverence accorded to teachers in Thailand, she could be anything from a primary school teacher to chancellor of a university. Jayne knew Didier had worked with Australian researchers and asked to be put through to room 1228.

To resist the urge for a cigarette, Jayne translated the health warning in Thai on the packet while she waited for the connection. ‘Smoking impairs your sexual ability.’ No real disincentive there. Marginally more cautionary were the messages, ‘Smoking is like dying on the instalment plan’ and ‘Smoking causes your blood vessels and brain to burst’. Thinking her own brain would burst if she were forced to listen much longer to an electronic version of ‘Für Elise’, the phone was answered.

‘Ms O’Halloran?’

‘It’s Professor O’Halloran, actually.’

‘My apologies, Professor. My name’s Jayne Keeney. I’m calling on behalf of Didier de Montpasse. I was wondering if—’

‘Didier’s not going to cancel on me, is he?’ the woman said. ‘He promised to get me an interpreter for the interview. We arranged it before I left for Chiang Rai. I told him Souk wouldn’t be able to make it tonight.’

Moira O’Halloran didn’t know Didier was dead. In a split-second decision Jayne elected not to enlighten her.

‘I have Didier’s calendar in front of me,’ she said, shuffling papers. ‘I’m sorry, Professor. Can you remind me of the time and location of the interview?’

‘Half past six at The Nice Place. I need one more session to complete my field work before I return to Melbourne tomorrow and—’

‘Oh, yes! Here it is. He’s got me scheduled to do that one.’

‘You?’

‘You need a Thai speaker, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ the woman replied cautiously. ‘But the subjects of my study are CSWs. All the other interpreters have been Thais.’

Jayne cringed at the acronym for ‘commercial sex worker’. Though Moira O’Halloran was paid for the work she did, too, Jayne doubted she’d introduce herself as a ‘commercial academic’.

‘I can assure you, I have extensive experience conducting interviews in Thailand’s clubs and bars,’ she said, ‘and I’ve found the women often feel more at ease talking to an outsider.’

There was a pause on the line.

‘I mean, if you’d rather not use me, I can try to find someone else. Though at such short notice, I can’t guarantee anyone with as much experience…’

‘Look, Miss—?’

‘Jayne.’

‘Right, Jayne. To be frank, it’s not ideal. Where is Didier, anyway? I can’t get hold of him.’

‘Ah, he’s been called away. He wanted me to apologise on his behalf.’

The woman snorted. ‘That doesn’t bode well for our proposed collaboration, especially on top of the differences we’ve been having.’

‘Ah yes, the collaboration. Didier wanted to brief me on that but we ran out of time. Perhaps we could…Well, perhaps I could do your interpreting this evening in exchange for ten minutes to brief me on the project?’

Unable to resist a free interpreting service, Professor— ‘Call me Moira’—O’Halloran gave her the address of The Nice Place and suggested they meet at six.

Jayne arrived early, spotting Moira as she approached. She looked like an up-market tourist—boutique haircut, white linen pants, sleeveless orange top, chunky silver bracelets on both wrists, large leather tote bag—but she lacked the relaxed air of a holidaymaker. She barrelled through the crowd without lifting her head, shoulders hunched, until she reached the club. Up close, Jayne saw she had the leathery skin of an older woman and a tightness around the mouth that suggested an eating disorder. Once introductions were out of the way, Moira got down to business. ‘I don’t know how much Didier told you, but I’ve been conducting field work in northern Thailand for two weeks,’ she said as they entered the bar. ‘I’m collecting stories that demonstrate processes of gender-related discrimination and alienation resulting in women having to sell sex for survival.’

Jayne murmured noncommittally and glanced around the room. The Nice Place struggled to live up to its name. Tables draped in pink polyester cloth, chintz curtains drawn over the windows, and smoke-stained prints of European landscapes on the wall only made it look dingy. The waitresses wore pink bikinis, rabbit ears fixed to headbands and white pom-poms on their backsides. Up-beat dance music in the background failed to charge the torpid atmosphere.

‘I’ll be presenting my findings at a conference in Sydney later this year,’ Moira continued, gesturing to a corner booth, parallel bench seats of brown vinyl.

Jayne accepted her business card, exchanging it for one she’d had made near her hotel.

‘You’re based at Chulalongkorn University,’ Moira observed.

‘Yes, as I said on the phone, I’m hoping to work on a project with Didier. I—I mean, he was thinking you could brief me on it.’

A waitress appeared at their table, her bunny ears like antennae.

‘Would you like me to order you a drink?’ Jayne asked.

‘Yes. Lemonade, please. And could you tell her,’ she nodded at the Thai woman, ‘that we’re expecting Nalissa?’

Jayne relayed the information and ordered herself a lemon juice. She turned back to Moira, keen to pursue Didier’s research topic, but the academic had other ideas.

‘Now,’ she said, moving a vase of plastic daisies to one side and taking a legal pad from her bag, ‘I simply need you to translate my questions and the responses as we go along. I’ll be taking notes, but there’s no need for you to pause on my account. It’s more important we maintain the natural flow of conversation. You should translate my questions precisely as I ask them,’ she added, testing a pen.

‘Don’t you have them written down?’

‘No, I’m using an open-ended interview technique.’

It was on the tip of Jayne’s tongue to ask what distinguished that from a conversation, when a different waitress appeared with a tray of drinks. Like the others, she wore a pink bikini and bunny ears, plus a plastic badge with the number 11 on it. The pale make-up on her long face contrasted with the coffee-colour of her throat. Her eyes were close set and smeared with pink glitter, her nose flat with slightly flared nostrils—features that enhanced her rabbit-like appearance.

‘Ah, Nalissa!’ Moira said, beaming at the woman. ‘Jayne, please invite Nalissa to join us on my behalf.’

‘
Sawadee ka, Khun Nalissa
,’ Jayne began in Thai. ‘I’m Jayne. I’m interpreting this evening as—’ she turned to Moira, breaking into English, ‘what was your previous interpreter’s name again?’

‘Souk.’

‘Souk is unable to be here,’ Jayne said, reverting to Thai. ‘Please have a seat.’

Nalissa sat so Jayne was between her and the academic.

‘Right,’ Moira said, ‘now, please start by thanking Nalissa for her time.’

‘She is going to pay me, isn’t she?’ Nalissa asked. ‘Souk said she would.’

Jayne relayed this to Moira who flushed slightly and patted her bag. This seemed to satisfy the Thai woman who nodded for them to continue.

‘So, Nalissa,’ Moira asked, ‘how did you come to be forced into sex work?’

Jayne hesitated. ‘Do you want me to translate that literally?’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, in Thai, you’d use euphemisms like “bar work”, “the service industry” or even “your current line of work” rather than ask directly about sex work.’

‘Yes, well,’ Moira frowned, ‘for the sake of my research, the meaning must be very clear and specific.’

‘Okay,’ Jayne said slowly. ‘But the question’s a bit loaded, isn’t it? I mean, you’re assuming Nalissa was forced into sex work. Maybe she chose to—’