There followed almost forty pictures, each taken on the anniversary of their wedding day, children starting as small babies, growing into toddlers and then teenagers, and finally men. Walking along the line of photographs was like watching a flickering black-and-white movie, as Ng Wai-sun changed from a whipcord-thin youngster with black straight hair to a balding old man and his wife from a radiant bride to a stooping old lady with clawed hands and parchment skin, the two of them surrounded by three middle-aged men and a woman, and a clutch of small children, including one with blonde hair and pale white skin.
The changes between consecutive pictures were small, other than when babies appeared, but in their totality they made Ng all too well aware of his own mortality. When he was younger it was different; the series of pictures gave him a sense of history, of tradition, and it gave him a feeling of security seeing his parents stretching back across the years. But the fact that his mother had disappeared and no longer took her yearly place at her husband’s side made Ng realize that no one lived for ever. And in next year’s picture there would be no Simon, standing there with his hands on Thomas’ shoulder, and maybe no Sophie either.
He looked at the last picture in the series, taken some three months earlier, the three brothers and sister and a scattering of children, most of them belonging to Catherine, the youngest of Ng Wai-sun’s children but by far the most productive. Still in her twenties, she and her banker husband had produced five children, one boy and four girls. Charles and his American-born Chinese wife Sandra had two boys, and Simon and Jill only had Sophie. Thomas caught his father looking at him as he studied the picture.
‘No Father, I have no plans to marry,’ he said quietly, without turning his head. Ng had plenty of girlfriends, and no shortage of female company when he was between regular companions, but he had never wanted to marry, and he had no plans to get hitched just to satisfy an old man, especially one who was already a grandfather eight times over. Or seven, if they lost Sophie. Ng Wai-sun tut-tutted, but his eyes were smiling.
‘I have had a robe prepared for you in your old room,’ he said.
Ng nodded. The robes were just as much an anachronism as the house, but he knew that the other triad leaders, the old ones at least, put as much store by the ceremonies as his father did. The request he was about to make tonight was unusual, unusual enough to warrant them appearing in what, when it came down to it, was little more than fancy dress. Ng went upstairs to change, leaving his father looking wistfully at the last photograph.
The bedroom door was on the first floor, and it was exactly the same as when he’d last seen it some three months earlier, save for the black robe lying on the bed. Ng knew that the room was dusted every day and the bedding changed every week, even though it had been at least ten years since he had actually slept there. It was his room and it would be until he died. There were rooms on the same floor for Simon, Charles and Catherine, though it had also been more than a decade since they had been slept in.
Ng took off his suit and shirt and pulled the robe over his head, draped the scarlet scarf around his neck, the ends reaching past his knees, tied and untied the white belt until it looked right and then he put on the headband with its single knot. At the end of the bed he found a brown shoe and a rope slipper and he put them on over his socks. He checked himself in the large free-standing mirror by the window and couldn’t help grinning at his reflection. He looked absurd, and he wondered what his banker friends in San Francisco would say if they saw him in the outlandish outfit, the ceremonial dress of a Pak Tsz official, the adviser.
It was one o’clock in the morning and every girl in the Limelight Club was a virgin. That’s what they all told Jack Edmunds, anyway, as he sat on his stool nursing a tumbler of Jack Daniels and watching the dancers sway in time to the music. The Limelight was on the ground floor of Pat Pong One so all the girls were dressed, albeit scantily in bikinis or cutaway swimsuits. You had to go up to one of the first floor bars to watch nude dancers or sex shows but after four days in Bangkok he’d just about seen it all: girls putting safety-pins through their breasts, burning themselves with candles, using their vaginal muscles to shoot darts through blowpipes and to write with large felt-tipped pens. He’d seen full sex and lesbian sex and sex with a German Shepherd dog. Now he was jaded and preferred to sit and drink in the Limelight, where at least there was something left to the imagination. The girls seemed prettier too, though after half a dozen beakers of the amber fluid they all looked good. The bar was a large oval surrounding a raised dance floor on which there were ten or so Thai girls dancing; few moved enthusiastically, but they were all smiling. They were just tired; most of them had been on their feet for the best part of four hours. They danced in twenty-minute shifts, once an hour. The rest of the time they sat around the bar or at the tables around the edge of the room, groping customers’ thighs and hustling drinks, much as the girls sitting either side of Edmunds were doing. Small hands, moving inquisitively around his groin. Neither looked much more than seventeen years old but Edmunds knew just how difficult it was to pinpoint accurately the age of an Asian girl. Sure, you could tell the ones that were obviously underage, flat-chested and no pubic hair, and you could spot the old hags, the over-the-hill hookers who still toured the bars looking for a tourist so drunk that he couldn’t see the wrinkles and the scars. But in between the two extremes there was no way of telling – they all had the same jet-black hair, smooth brown skin and shining brown eyes.
The one on his right was called Del; her long hair was twisted into a single braid which had been wound around her head like a crown, and she wore a bright green swimsuit. She had two cigarette burns on her left thigh, healing nicely. Edmunds had asked her what had happened but she’d just smiled and shaken her head. There were three cuts on one of her wrists, an inch long and half an inch apart. Not deep enough to be suicide attempts, and obviously done at different times. One was a white scar, the middle was still red and the skin raised, and the third was covered with a thin scab.
The other girl had short, pageboy-style hair and a rash of acne badly disguised with make-up. She wore a scarlet bikini that barely restrained her lemon-shaped breasts between which nestled a small chunk of jade on a thin gold chain. Her name was Need. Edmunds knew enough Thai to know that Need was a common name for girls or boys – it meant small. For the tenth time that night she looked at Edmunds, stroked his thigh and said: ‘You make love now?’ She had the sort of teeth that would drive a dentist into bankruptcy. Not a single filling. Edmunds’ mouth contained five thousand dollars’ worth of bridgework. The first time she’d asked he’d shaken his head and said ‘not tonight’, the fifth time he’d said ‘no money’ but now he’d reached the stage where he said ‘maybe later’.
‘I want now,’ she pouted. She pointed to Del. ‘Two girls, good price.’ Del nodded enthusiastically and her hand joined Need’s, gently rubbing up and down his prick. Edmunds took a deep breath and drained his glass. He waved at a waitress behind the bar and gestured at his glass and those in front of the two girls. They were drinking lemonade at twice the price of his Jack Daniels. That’s how the girls earned their money, commission on the non-alcoholic drinks plus whatever they could screw out of the customers as tips or payment for sex.
‘I want make love,’ insisted Need, bouncing up and down on her stool. She did have a cute arse, Edmunds decided. Beautiful firm breasts. And the acne wasn’t that bad.
‘I love you,’ said Need.
‘No shit?’ he said.
‘No shit,’ chorused the girls and they giggled. He was almost three times their age, he realized, but that didn’t make him feel any less aroused.
‘Now? I very tired,’ said Del, resting her forehead on his shoulder and playing with his zip.
‘Soon,’ said Edmunds, his mouth dry and his mind made up. He reached for his drink and closed his eyes as he swallowed. He wanted the two girls but he hadn’t drunk enough yet to dampen the feelings of revulsion in the pit of his stomach. It happened every time he came into one of the Pat Pong bars. He’d sit by himself, intending only to watch and drink, feeling nothing but scorn and contempt for the middle-aged men who sat in the gloom and fondled girls young enough to be their daughters. He’d look at the girls and chat to them, buy a few drinks and watch the shows, knowing that he wouldn’t be tempted, feeling anger at the obscenity of a German businessman with an expense account gut and three chins bouncing a sixteen-year-old Thai girl up and down on his knees and slipping his wrinkled hand down the back of her swimsuit. He’d talk to the girls as best he could, ask them where they were from, how long they’d been in Bangkok, and he’d buy them drinks. It happened every time. The alcohol relaxed him, their hands began to wander, and before long the thought of being in bed with a girl young enough to be his grand-daughter didn’t seem too abhorrent.
‘How much?’ he asked Need and she beamed, knowing that he was hooked. ‘How much for you both?’
She told him. About the same as a decent bottle of whisky would cost back in the States. Economic rape, he thought. Del’s hand grasped his prick through the material of his trousers.
‘Now?’ she said, looking into his eyes.
‘Not here,’ said Edmunds. He’d taken one of the girls into a back room a couple of days ago. ‘Short time,’ she’d called it, down a corridor and into a small square room big enough only for a double bed and a sink. The bed was covered with a sheet stained with God knows what. No pillows, no blankets. A room designed for one thing and illuminated by a single red light-bulb hanging from the ceiling. The girl had looked young, very young; she said her name was Orr but he’d called her Number 11 all evening. That was the number on the badge pinned to her black and white swimsuit and it was about how old she’d looked. She’d taken the money off him and squatted over the sink and cleaned herself, and then insisted that he did the same. She helped him and as he grew hard she’d opened a foil packet and expertly slipped on a condom and pulled him down on the bed, on top of her and into her. Her legs came up either side of his arse and her heels had hooked behind his thighs as she thrust herself against him, hard and fast and tight. Her face was turned to one side, blank and expressionless and he remembered how cheated he’d felt. He started moving, harder and faster, trying to get some reaction from her, some sign that she was enjoying it, but she just gritted her teeth. ‘Look at me,’ he’d said but she’d just continued to grind into him, wanting it to be over. Wanting to get back to the bar, to the next customer. He’d begun pounding into her then, wanting to hurt, to make her feel pain if nothing else, wanting her to acknowledge that he was there, inside her. She’d winced and closed her eyes but said nothing, just kept moving her hips until he came. Edmunds had felt disgusted with himself then, ashamed at the violent feelings he’d had towards the girl, the way sex had got mixed up with pain in his head. He’d washed himself in silence and given her another note as he left the room.
‘No short time,’ he said to Need. ‘You come back to hotel with me.’ The girls smiled. Back in his room he had a king-size bed and clean sheets and more booze. And he’d have time, time at least to feel he was being treated like a human being. Getting the girls in wouldn’t be a problem, the hotels in Bangkok knew which side their bed was buttered. Sure, the girls had to be checked in at reception and have their identity cards recorded, but that wasn’t to hassle the guests, it was to make sure that they weren’t ripped off. And there’d be no snide, knowing smiles from the staff, just polite acceptance of the way the system worked.
‘We go now?’ asked Del. ‘Me horny.’
Jesus Christ, thought Edmunds, where the fuck do they learn their English? But he knew the answer to that – in bed. On their backs. Their hands were fondling him, probing, rubbing, insisting. Two more hands began massaging his neck, slowly and sensually. He dropped his head forward and sighed.
‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘That’s good. So good.’
He closed his eyes and concentrated on the cool, strong hands on his neck. The girl was good, very good. She knew what she was doing, all right, he could feel the tension being pulled from his muscles. God, what could she do to him in bed? He’d be putty in her hands, she’d be able to do anything to him. With him.
The hands slid around his neck, stroking the sides until they found the carotid artery and then they tightened, cutting off the blood supply to his head. His eyes bulged and he gasped for breath and he tried to unclasp the fingers around his throat before he passed out. Then they were gone and he fell forward on to the bar, knocking over his glass which spun on to the floor and shattered. As he gasped for breath a decidedly masculine voice behind him said: ‘You want massage, you randy bastard?’
Edmunds didn’t have to look round, he could think of only one arsehole who’d behave like that.
‘You’re a cunt, Feinberg. A grade-A motherfucking cunt.’
‘I love it when you talk dirty, Edmunds. It gives me a hard-on.’
Del slid off her stool to make way for the second man and he patted her backside as she moved behind him and then stood between them, her hand finding its way back into Edmunds’ lap.
‘I suppose you want a fucking drink?’
‘Jack, I thought you’d never ask,’ said Feinberg, in a drawling imitation of W. C. Fields. ‘And what about one for your wife here?’
Feinberg had a puerile sense of humour, but the business with the neck hadn’t been funny, thought Edmunds. Feinberg could kill with his concert pianist’s hands. And had done. Edmunds massaged his neck muscles.
‘What do you want?’
‘Rum and Coke, thanks.’
Edmunds ordered a round of drinks, and as he waited he remembered the last time he’d seen Rick Feinberg. It was at CIA headquarters in Virginia, eighteen months ago, at a debriefing following a very messy job in South America, and it had been Feinberg’s fault that it had been so messy. A bomb that was to have taken out a general with a nasty line in torture also blew three passing schoolchildren into a million bloody fragments. Strictly speaking the two Americans weren’t to blame; the bomb had been set off with a simple electric timer and they were back in their hotel when it went off, but Feinberg had decided how much explosive to use.