Hungry Ghosts (24 page)

“Edward Brown is famous in certain circles here in Thailand,” Nathon announces with a smile and my father laughs a little self-consciously.

Nang nudges my father in the ribs, none-too-gently. “Tell him, Edward,” she says sternly.

“In my dealings in Thailand I have always gone under the name of Brown.” Braddock Senior pauses before continuing.

“Back in Malaya,
before you were born, things were very different. South East Asia was in a state of post-Colonial flux. I was running our plantations and we were making money but the future looked uncertain.

“
The borders between Thailand, Malaya and Indonesia were permeable then, more so than today. There was money to be made in moving goods around.

“
The Korean and Vietnam wars had created demand for many types of goods and services, and the trade in narcotics had boomed. Routes were opening up to channel psychoactive substances to Europe and North America via Hong Kong and Korea or overland through Afghanistan and Persia. Singapore was an obvious shipping point if the transit through the Malayan Peninsula could be managed effectively.”

My father pauses for a moment, so I jump in.

“Hang on, let’s not sanitise this with technical terminology. You’re talking about moving drugs, right? Cannabis and opium, presumably?”

“Yes.”

“You were involved in drug smuggling?”

“Yes.” He holds eye contact with me.
The fucking holier-than-thou hypocrite
.

“In fact you set up a drug-smuggling business from scratch?”

“Yes.”

“I presume you’re going to give me the potted version now and the detailed version later?
Then you can explain how a man, who was on the face of it a respectable plantation-owner in Malaya, and who has spent the last forty-odd years lecturing me on the value of responsible, ethical behavior, was actually a drug baron?”

Edward Braddock clenches his teeth. “Yes,” he hisses.

“Just checking,” I say casually. “Carry on.”

Nang flashes me a warning sign with her eyes but I pretend not to notice.

“We established an operation to move the merchandise from Thailand down through Malaya to Singapore,” he continues. “I had various business interests which could provide cover at my end, and I recruited Sura and others to handle the Thai part of the pipeline. One of the other key players was a man named Chompol Sangukhon, and for years Sura and Chompol ensured things ran smoothly north of the border.”

He stops to give me the opportunity to comment. I don’t. I just stare at him to make him feel as uncomfortable as possible. It doesn’t seem to work.

“By the early sixties racial tensions in Singapore were increasing. In spite of the fact that in 1963 Singapore joined with Malaya, Sabah and Sarawak to form the new state of Malaysia, the Chinese majority population in Singapore was soon feeling aggrieved at the way things were moving. The policy of affirmative action, giving preference to Malays, stuck in their throats. I could see increasing problems with using Singapore as a transit point. In Malaysia I envisaged life would become more and more difficult for Colonial plantation owners as the government introduced ‘Malaysianisation’: the writing was on the wall there too.

“So I decided to get out, sell up and move us back to England. By then of course Nang and I were married and you were of an age where English schooling would be appropriate.”

He sounds like a Professor of History talking about somebody else’s history.

“I know how this story goes,” I interjected. “There were race riots in Singapore and they left the Malaysian Federation. Yeah, yeah, you were very far-sighted. Now tell me about the drugs part of the tale.”

My father takes a sip of tea from his cup. It has gone cold. He puts it back down.

“When I decided to leave South East Asia, I divided up the business between Sura and Champol.
Fifty-fifty. They had been my loyal lieutenants, as well as my friends, and it seemed appropriate.”

“My father and Chompol Sangukhon always spoke of
Khun Edward as ‘Mr. Brown’ as a mark of respect,” says Nathon. “That was the name he always used. They knew he would someday return to England as a ‘legitimate’ businessman so they kept his real identity a secret. My father passed it on to me shortly before he died, with Edward’s permission. I would guess Chompol has kept the name from his family too. It is a matter of honour.”

Nathon looks at my father and places a hand on his shoulder.

“My father loved Edward, and owed him a great debt.”

“That’s all in the past now, Nathon,” says my father. The affection between the two men is only too obvious. It makes me feel nauseous with jealousy.

I remark, “Excuse me for crashing the love-in, but I presume the relationship between the Lamphongchats and Sangukhons has soured somewhat since?”

Nathon
picks up the story.

“My father and Chompol worked on their portions of the divided-up business, resolving matters, taking new partners and respecting territory. My father had a rather more theatrical streak than Chompol, and so he called his organization
the Jade Dragons, and as it developed he adopted some of the methods of the Chinese Triad gangs.”

“Tattoos? The whole works?”

“Tattoos, certainly,” replies Nathon with a smile. He rolls up his right sleeve to show me an elegant green-and-red dragon crouching on his forearm.

“Go on.”

“Both families diversified into crop production with partners in Northern Thailand and Laos – around the Golden Triangle mostly – but also in Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam. As various conflicts happened in South East Asia during the 1960s and 1970s, we moved our farms accordingly.

“We also set up distribution networks within Thailand itself, and that has proved very profitable. Bangkok is by far our biggest internal market naturally.”

“Naturally.”

“The trans-border businesses were continued, but as Edward
had forseen, that became much more problematical and dangerous.”

“How about human trafficking? Are you into that?” I see my father lean forward but I keep my attention on my host.

“No,” he replies simply. “All of our clubs have prostitutes on the payroll: that’s standard and the customers expect it. But that’s as far as it goes. Our girls are from either Bangkok itself or the Udon Thani area. Occasionally we have girls from other parts of Thailand, but it’s not the norm.”

“How do you know Rattanakorn?”

“Who’s Rattanakorn?” my father asks.

“He’s the head gangster on Samui,” I respond, “
and the guy who took care of Chaldrakun’s expenses while he was watching over Jingjai.”

“Thongchai Rattanakorn and I have done some business in the past.”

Nathon holds my gaze. Obviously that’s all he’s going to say on the subject.

“So tell me why you’ve got this problem between the two families now. I presume your father’s death brought to an end the cosy Lamphongchat-Sangukhon relationship? Or at least severed some of the key ties?”

The Thai nods.

“The forty-year period of peaceful
coexistence – punctuated by the occasional spat, of course – was based on the friendship between my father and Chompol Sangukhon. My relationship with the old man is nowhere near as strong, and as for Chompol’s eldest son, Mongkut, well …” He shakes his head.

My father passes another sheet of paper to me. “We may as well complete your education on this topic. Here’s the Sangukhon family tree.”

I cast my eye over it.

“I don’t know any of these people, so this doesn’t mean much to me.”

“For our purposes, there are two salient pieces of information. The first is that Chompol’s wife died recently, and since then he seems to have lost interest in his business somewhat. At least, he no longer maintains
quite
the iron grip he once had. This vacuum has been filled by Mongkut, his eldest son. That’s the second important issue: Mongkut suffers from paranoia, wants his father to leave him alone to run things, and fundamentally believes there is not enough room for both families in the drug business. He is the one behind the skirmishes in recent months.

“However, even Mongkut wouldn’t really be an issue if it weren’t for ‘The Toad’.”

“Who the hell’s ‘The Toad’?” I interject.

“The Toad is the senior policeman in charge of
the precincts where a large chunk of our and the Sangukhon’s business is located,” Nathon explains. “If he wasn’t so outrageously and obviously corrupt he’d probably be one of the Metropolitan Police’s Deputy Commissioners by now.

“David, you’ve been in Thailand long enough to know that there is often an uneasy alliance between the police and the organized crime elements. Bribes are paid, blind eyes are turned. You are no doubt also aware that the police and the army are the biggest traders and distributors of drugs and contraband in the country. They have networking links with the Generals in Myanmar, for instance, that we lesser criminals can only dream of.”

I have to smile at Nathon’s description of himself as a
lesser criminal
. In spite of the fact that he’s had me locked in a closet for two days with only my own shit for company, I find myself starting to warm to him.

“Two years ago
the Toad took up his appointment, and ever since he has been squeezing both families so he can get his own drugs out on the street. Each of our constituencies has been shrinking, so we’ve ended up standing on each other’s toes and creeping onto each other’s turf, if you will excuse the mixed metaphor and my poor English.”

“Your English is excellent, as well you know.”

“About ten days ago we found ourselves in the ridiculous situation of kidnapping a couple of the other family’s drug mules in a ‘tit-for-tat’ retaliation.” Nathon suddenly laughs. “How stupid. All that has happened is that we have two hostages we don’t know what to do with, and they have the same.”

“One of the hostages you are holding wouldn’t happen to be an Englishwoman by the name of Rosie Fletcher, would it?”

Nathon looks at me with something that looks suspiciously like respect. But I’m not relying on it.

“Why would you think that, David?” my father asks.

“Oh, just a wild guess. Plus the fact that I know Rosie Fletcher was recruited as a mule by a Scotsman called Andrews who works for the Sangukhons, and that the timing of her disappearance coincides with Nathon’s calendar.”

They all look at me like I’m expected to say more, so I add, “Her brother employed me to find her. That’s what brought me to Bangkok in the first place. I
suspect it was asking questions about her and Andrews that got me into hot water with the other family.”

“
Wiwatanee said you were looking for a missing woman, but she didn’t mention the name and my men didn’t pick up on that either. It seems our fates are more interlinked than I thought,” says Nathon.

“Fate
s? No, I think we can give this its proper name of karma,” I reply. “We’re all good Buddhists here.”

Nang chuckles.

“So where is Rosie Fletcher? I hope she’s been well treated while enjoying your hospitality. Though having had a taste of it myself –”

“Miss Fletcher is fine.”

“How would you know? How would you know whether or not your men have been beating her and raping her every day?”

“David!” exclaims my stepmother.

“I’m sorry, Nang, but let’s face it: these people are not saints. My colleague was murdered by one of Mr. Nathon’s ‘boys’. My housekeeper was beaten by the same guy and wound up in hospital.”

I look Nathon in the eyes. “Thanks for the family history lesson and the nice room here and all that, but none of this alters the fact that you are pimps and drug-dealers. You are quite prepared to use violence to achieve your aims. So what makes you think Rosie Fletcher isn’t lying on some dirty floor with broken bones and blood coming out of every orifice?”

My father tries to speak but Nathon stops him.

“It’s all right, Edward. Your son has some valid questions, and he has been employed to find this woman.”