Inspector Zhang Gets His Wish (5 page)

"He attacked me," said Mercier. "He opened the closet door and saw me and attacked me. We struggled. I had to stop him."

"By driving your pen into his throat?"

Mercier looked at the floor.

"I think not," said Inspector Zhang. "If you stabbed him at the closet, there would be blood there. The only place where there is blood is the bed. Therefore you stabbed him on the bed."

"We were struggling. I pushed him back."

"And then you stabbed him?"

"My pen was in my top pocket. He grabbed it during the struggle and tried to force it into my eye. I pushed it away and it..." He fell silent, unable or unwilling to finish the sentence.

"You stabbed him in the throat?"

Mercier nodded.

"And then rather than leaving the room, you hid in the closet again?"

"I didn’t know what else to do. I knew that he had ordered room service so I couldn't risk being seen in the corridor."

"So you waited until the room service waiter discovered the body and while he was phoning the front desk you slipped out of the closet?"

Mercier nodded. "I went through to the next room but there was someone in the corridor so I couldn’t leave and I had to pretend that I’d just arrived. It was an accident, Inspector Zhang. I swear."

"That’s for a judge to consider," said Inspector Zhang. "There is one more piece of evidence that I require from you, Mr. Mercier. Your handkerchief."

"My handkerchief?"

"I notice that unlike your colleagues you do not have a handkerchief in your pocket," said the inspector. "I therefore assume that you used it to wipe the blood from your hands after you killed Mr. Wilkinson."

Mercier reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a blood-stained handkerchief. Sergeant Lee held out a plastic evidence bag and Mercier dropped the handkerchief into it.

Inspector Zhang nodded at the two uniformed policemen. "Take him away, please."

The officers handcuffed Mercier and led him out of the room. Inspector Zhang nodded at the two evidence bags that Sergeant Lee was holding, containing the pen and the handkerchief. "You can send them to your friends in Forensics," he said.

"I will," she said.

"I suppose it does prove one thing," said Inspector Zhang. He smiled slyly.

"What is that, Inspector?" asked the Sergeant.

"Why, that the pen is indeed mightier than the sword," he said. He grinned. "There is no need to write that down, Sergeant Lee."

THE END

There are three more Inspector Zhang short stories available on the Kindle – Inspector Zhang and the Falling Woman, Inspector Zhang and the Disappearing Drugs, and Inspector Zhang and the Dead Thai Gangster.
 
They are all traditional “locked room” mysteries, where the inscrutable Inspector Zhang and his assistant Sergeant Lee are faced with a seemingly impossible case to solve.
 

And if you would like to meet another detective based in Asia, why not try Bangkok Bob and the Missing Mormon?

Long-term Bangkok resident and former New Orleans cop Bob Turtledove has the knack of getting people out of difficult situations. So when a young man from Utah goes missing in Bangkok, his parents are soon knocking on Bob’s door asking for help.

But what starts out as a simple missing person case takes a deadly turn as Bangkok Bob’s search for the missing Mormon brings him up against Russian gangsters, hired killers, corrupt cops and kickboxing thugs. And he learns that even in the Land of Smiles, people can have murder on their minds.

Bangkok Bob and The Missing Mormon is about 63,000 words, equivalent to about 250 pages, and you can find it on the Kindle at
 
–

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/
B004AM5MV6

Here are the first few chapters!

****

CHAPTER 1

She was wearing a lurid Versace silk shirt, had a diamond-studded Rolex watch on her wrist, diamante Gucci sunglasses perched on top of her head and a Louis Vuitton handbag on her lap. She pretty much had all brand name bases covered but she still looked like a sixty-year-old woman with more money than taste. She had brought her large Mercedes to a stop next to a fruit stall and she wound down the passenger side window and waved a ring-encrusted hand at the fruit vendor. I was sitting behind her in a taxi that had only just managed to avoid slamming into her trunk.

The fruit vendor was also in her sixties but had clearly had a much harder life than the woman in the Mercedes. Her face was pockmarked with old acne scars and her stomach bulged against her stained apron as she weighed out mangoes for a young housewife.
 
The fruit vendor pocketed the housewife’s money and waddled over to the car and bent down to listen to the woman, then nodded and hurried back to her stall. The driver tapped out a number on her cellphone and began an animated conversation.

“Hi-so,” said my taxi driver, pulling a face. He wound down his window, cleared his throat, and spat a stream of greenish phlegm into the street.

Hi-so.

High society.

From a good family.
But in Thailand being from a good family didn’t necessarily equate to good manners. The woman in the Mercedes almost certainly wasn’t aware of the dozen or so cars waiting patiently for her to get out of the way. And even if she
was
aware, she wouldn’t have cared. After all, she had the Mercedes and the diamond-encrusted Rolex and we didn’t so it really didn’t matter that she was holding us up. It was the natural order of things.

There was no point in getting upset. She would move when she was ready, and not before and there was nothing that
I or the taxi driver
could say or do that would change that. Acceptance was the only option.

The Thais have an expression for it.

Jai yen.

Cool heart.

Don’t worry.

Be happy.

Sometimes, for emphasis, they say jai yen
yen
.

Real cool heart.

I settled back in my seat and turned to the letters page of the Bangkok Post. A reader in Chiang Mai was complaining about the air quality. The farmers around the city were carrying out their annual field burnings and the mayor had warned the population to stay indoors with their windows closed. A Manchester City fan was complaining that he could only get a Thai commentary for his team’s last match. A reader in Bangkok was complaining about his erratic cable wi-fi service. For many people Thailand was the Land Of Smiles, but the average Bangkok Post reader seemed to spend most of his time complaining about the state of the country.

The fruit vendor hurried over to the Mercedes with a bag of mangoes. She handed them through the window. The woman put her cellphone on the dashboard and then took the mangoes out of the bag one by one, sniffing them and squeezing them to check their ripeness. She rejected one, and the fruit vendor went back to her stall to replace it. The woman picked up her cellphone and resumed her conversation.

I twisted around in my seat. There were now
two dozen
cars behind us, and a bus. The air was shimmering with exhaust fumes.

Jai yen.

I went back to my paper.
 
A tourist from Norway was complaining of the double pricing for foreigners at the Lumpini Boxing Stadium.
 
Tourists paid up to ten times what locals were charged, she said, and that wasn’t fair. I smiled. Fairness wasn’t a concept that necessarily applied to Thailand, especially where foreigners were concerned.

The fruit vendor returned with a replacement mango. The woman smelled it, squeezed it,
then
put it into the carrier bag. She opened her Louis Vuitton handbag and took out a Prada purse and handed the vendor a red hundred baht note. The vendor zipped open the bag around her waist, slipped in the banknote and took out the woman’s change. The woman took the change, checked it, put the money into the Prada purse, put the purse into her handbag, placed it on the passenger seat and closed the window. I didn’t see her thank the fruit vendor, but that was par for the course for Thailand. Women who drove expensive imported cars did not generally say “please’ or “thank you’, at least not to fruit vendors. The window wound up, the woman checked her make-up in her driving mirror, then put the Mercedes into gear.

We were off.

Finally.

Jai yen.

The taxi moved forward. The Mercedes lady was talking on her cellphone again.
 
She indicated a right turn but then turned left on to Sukhumvit Road, oblivious to the motorcycle that narrowly missed slamming into her offside wing.

The traffic light turned red and the taxi jerked to a halt. There were two policemen sitting in the booth across the road from us. It was getting close to the end of the month which meant that the police were looking for any excuse to pull over motorists and either issue a ticket to meet their quota or collect some tea money to pay their minor wife’s rent. Bangkok’s traffic light system was perfectly capable of being co-
ordinated
by a multi-million-pound computer system but more often than not the police would override it and do the changes manually, using walkie-talkies to liaise with their colleagues down the road. That meant that when a light turned red, you had no idea how long it would stay that way. Your fate lay in the hands of a man in a tight-fitting brown uniform with a gun on his hip.

Jai yen.

I went back to my paper. My taxi driver wound down his window and spat throatily into the street again.

Just another day in Paradise.

Not.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 2

Ying is a stunner. A little over five feet tall with waist-length glossy black hair and cheekbones you could cut steel plate with, a trim waist and breasts that are, frankly, spectacular.

Whoa, hoss.

Stop right there.

I’m married and old enough to be her father.

 
And I’m her boss, hoss.

She looked over her shoulder and flashed her perfect white teeth at me as I walked into the shop.

My shop.

Dao-Nok Antiques. It’s sort of a pun on my name. Dao-Nok is Thai for turtle-bird and my name’s Turtledove. I’m not sure if anyone else gets it but it makes me smile.

Ying was carefully rolling bubble-wrap around a wooden Chinese screen that we were shipping to Belgium. “Good morning Khun Bob,” she said.

Khun. It means mister, but it’s also a sign of respect. She respects me because I’m older than her and because I’m her boss.

“You are late,” she added, still smiling.

Not much respect there. But she wasn’t being
critical,
she was just stating a fact. I was normally in the shop by nine and it was now nine-thirty.

“There was a mango queue,” I said.

“I see,” she said, even though she didn’t.

“All the way down Soi Thonglor.”

“I told them you wouldn’t be long.”

“I see,” I said, even though I didn’t.

“They’re waiting, in your office.”