Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye: True Stories From the Case Files of Warren Olson Read Online Free PDF Page B

Immediately. At the moment he was in a holding cell. Police could be paid off, Khun Bua could be persuaded not to press charges, and Armitage could walk away. But once Armitage was charged he’d be in the system and there would be nothing he could do to save himself. It was his choice, I told him.
    He started to say that he didn’t have the money, that his bank account was almost empty, his companies had all been losing money, but I held up my hand to silence him.
    ‘I don’t care either way, pal,’ I said. ‘The only reason I’m even wasting my breath on you is because Khun Bua is a nice lady and I don’t want her living out the rest of her years in poverty. If it was up to me you’d rot in prison, but that’s not going to help her. The guys in here will let you use a phone. Call one of your brothers and get them to fly over with the cash.’
    Armitage’s face tightened but I could see that he had taken on board what I’d said.
    ‘If you’re going to make that call you’d better do it today,’ I said, tightening the screw. ‘You’ll be charged tomorrow then it’s off to the Bangkok Hilton and they won’t let you near a phone there.’
    Armitage made the call and the next morning his brother flew over from Singapore with enough money to pay Khun Bua what she was owed, plus sweeteners for the police and the immigration officers up in Nong Kha. Plus my fee, of course.
    Once the money had been paid and the police had pocketed their sweeteners the atmosphere changed. The shackles were taken off, Armitage was given a coffee and croissant and taken to Don Muang Airport in the back of the police chief’s Mercedes where he and his brother were escorted on to the next plane to Singapore. Armitage’s passport was stamped persona non grata and he was told never to darken Thailand’s doorstep again.
    My first case, and I’d come out smelling of roses. I’d made money and I’d helped someone; a private eye couldn’t ask for a better result.

THE CASE OF THE RELUCTANT VIRGIN
    It was love at first sight, at least that’s how the client described it. He’d seen her across a crowded dancefloor in a trendy Phuket nightclub. She was slim and sexy, long black hair, great legs, and was one hell of a dancer. The client was an accountant from Glasgow in Scotland with an accent so impenetrable that I had to keep asking him to repeat himself. He was in his late forties, which made him almost twice the age of the love of his life. He was average looking, definitely not movie-star material but he had his own hair and most of his own teeth and the gold Rolex on his wrist suggested that he was making good money and that alone would make him attractive to the average bar-going Thai girl. Not that Joy was a bargirl. She worked in a hair salon in Patong, the island’s major tourist area but she liked to let her hair down in the evenings.
    The client, Bill MacKay, had offered to buy Joy a drink as she rested between bouts of dancing, and the following day she’d acted as a tour guide, showing him around the island. MacKay showed me photographs of them at a monkey show, riding elephants, posing on beaches. The perfect couple. MacKay had gone to Phuket with three golfing buddies, but after he met Joy he didn’t spend much time on the links. He and Joy became inseparable and by the time his three-week vacation was over he’d proposed to her, on bended knee in a crowded seafood restaurant as the band played ‘My Way’. He’d asked for the theme from Titanic but something had got lost in translation. Not that MacKay cared. Joy said yes and that was all that mattered.
    They went to Joy’s home town of Chiang Mai and he met her parents. They were a middle-class Thai couple with six children of whom Joy was the second youngest. They owned a small noodle shop and seemed thrilled to have MacKay as a potential son-in-law. They’d discussed the sin sot—the Thai dowry that’s usually paid to a girl’s parents—and they’d