Bangkok Haunts

scissors and leave Lek to supervise the operation while I return to Baker’s apartment. He is shocked to see me again and cannot disguise the foxy look on his face. I pretend a renewed fascination with the photographic equipment in his bathroom, which keeps his nerves on edge for a good ten minutes, then politely take my leave.
    Downstairs Lek is hugging the laptop, beaming. “That was so exciting. I was sure Baker was going to catch the guard at the top of the ladder and kick the ladder away.” Lek gives an elegant demonstration of kicking the ladder, apparently while wearing high heels. I give the guard my cell phone number and tell him to keep an eye on the window and call me when there’s some reaction from Baker. We’re in the back of the cab, halfway to the station, when my phone rings. “He went totally crazy. First he opened the window to pull the rope and saw that the rope had been cut. He stuck his body halfway out the window and seemed to go haywire. Next thing he’s down on the ground, below his window, scrabbling around in the dark, as if the thing fell down. Then he saw me looking at him and guessed what happened, and he looked like he’d seen a ghost. I mean, I’ve never seen anyone go like that. He crouched down against a wall with his head between his hands. I don’t know if he was crying or not, but he was very upset.”
    “Where is he now?”
    “Back in his apartment.”
    Half an hour later he calls again. “That Englishman came, the same as before. He’s with him now.”
    “Describe him again.”
    “Tall, very fit-looking
farang,
dressed in smart business suit, striped, stiff white collar, and flashy silk tie. Good-looking like a film star.”
    “Did he speak to you?”
    “Sure. I asked him in Thai where he was going. He said to Baker’s apartment.”
    “How was his Thai?”
    “Good, with a thick English accent.”
    I drop Lek off at his apartment building and take the cab home. As soon as I get in, I open the laptop. Judging by the lights below the keyboard, there is enough battery power to boot up, but a PIN number is necessary to access it. I don’t know how to bypass the PIN, and I can’t risk leaving it with the nerds at the station—Buddha knows what salable images they might find there. I guess I need the FBI.
    “I’ll need a can opener,” she says. “That’s what the nerds call them. I’ll have them courier one over to me. I should have it by tomorrow.”
    Chanya has seen my impatience with the computer, and I assume she is staring at me in order to provoke an explanation. When we lock eyes, though, she presses her lips together to make an apologetic face, at the same time as she raises her eyebrows in a question. I grunt. The last thing I feel like doing is hunting around for a supermarket that is open at this time of night.
    “Ice cream?”
    “No.
Moomah
noodles.”
    “You’re kidding. There’s no known form of nutrition in them, you could eat them until you’re as round as a football and still die of malnutrition.”
    “It’s what my mum ate when she was pregnant with me.”
    I extract maximum points by emphasizing how tired I am, then drag on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. One shop I know for sure will be open is Foodland up in the Nana area, so I take a cab. I see from the cab’s dashboard that it is one twenty-nine A.M . All along Sukhumvit food stalls have appeared to cater to hungry hookers and their johns. It’s quite a jolly street atmosphere, with people eating or sitting in the doorways of shops and nattering, telling stories of the night. A few drunken
farang
weave shakily between the stalls, but generally everyone is behaving themselves. When I reach Nana, it’s quite crowded with girls who work the go-go bars and have just finished for the night. The supermarket itself serves food at a small bar near the checkout counter, and this is packed too. The aisles of the shop itself are relatively empty, though: only a couple of
farang
men deciding what wine to buy to finish the evening off, some working girls buying provisions to take home with them, and some Thai men shopping for rice whiskey. It takes me a while to find the
moomah
noodles; even the packet is probably better for you to eat than the contents, but who is going to argue with a pregnant wife? I grab five packs, just in case she gets the urge again, chuck them into my plastic basket, and make for the nearest checkout counter when a familiar profile catches my gaze. Of course it