“Nothing. Thanks, Ståle. By the way, I’ve put a cork in the bottle.”
“Oh. How many days?”
“About forty-eight hours.”
“Hard?”
“Well, at least the monsters are staying under the bed. I thought it would be worse.”
“You’ve only just started. Remember, you’ll have some bad days.”
“Is there anything else but bad days?”
It was dark, and the taxi driver passed him a small color brochure when he asked to be driven to Patpong.
“Massage, sir? Good massage. I’ll drive you.”
In the sparse light he saw pictures of girls smiling at him, as pure and innocent as a Thai Airways advertisement.
“No thanks, I just want to eat.” Harry returned the brochure even though his battered back thought it sounded an excellent suggestion. When, out of curiosity, Harry asked what kind of massage, the taxi driver made an international sign that left no room for interpretation.
It was Liz who had recommended Le Boucheron in Patpong, and the food looked really good, it was just that Harry didn’t have the appetite. He smiled apologetically at the waitress who took away his plate, and he gave a generous tip so they wouldn’t think he was dissatisfied. Then he went out into the hysterical street life of Patpong. Soi 1 was closed to traffic, but it was even more crowded with people surging up and down, like a seething river, alongside stalls and bars. Music boomed out of every orifice in the wall, sweaty men and women on the pavements were on the lookout for action, and the smells of humanity, sewage and food vied for supremacy. A curtain was pulled aside as he passed and inside he saw girls dancing clad in the obligatory G-strings and high-heeled shoes.
“No cover charge, ninety baht for drinks,” someone shouted in his ear. He continued walking, but it was like standing still because the same was repeated all the way down the overpopulated street.
He felt a pulse beating in his stomach and couldn’t decide if it was the music, his heart or the dull din from one of the machines pounding piles night and day into Bangkok’s new motorway over Silom Road.
At one bar a girl in a loud, red silk dress caught his gaze and pointed to the chair beside her. Harry walked on, feeling almost drunk. He heard a roar from another bar with a TV hanging from one corner and it was clear some team or other had scored. Two Englishmen with pink necks clinked glasses and sang “I’m forever blowing bubbles …”
“Come in, blondie.”
A tall, slim woman fluttered her eyelashes at him, pushed out a pair of large, firm breasts and crossed her legs so that the skintight trousers left nothing to the imagination.
“She’s katoy,” a voice said in Norwegian, and Harry turned.
It was Jens Brekke. A petite Thai woman in a tight leather skirt was hanging from his arm.
“It’s fantastic really, all that: the curves, breasts and a vagina. In fact, some men prefer a katoy to the genuine item. And why not?” Brekke bared a set of white teeth in his brown childlike face. “The only problem of course is that surgically created vaginas do not have the same self-cleansing properties as those belonging to real women. The day they can do that I’ll consider a katoy myself. What’s your opinion, Officer?”
Harry glanced at the tall woman who had turned her back on them with a loud sniff when she heard the word katoy.
“Well, the thought hadn’t struck me that any of the women here might not be women.”
“It’s easy to fool the untrained eye, but you can tell by the Adam’s apple and generally it’s not possible to remove that. Also, they tend to be a head too tall, a touch too provocatively dressed and slightly too aggressively flirtatious. And much too good-looking. That’s what gives them away ultimately. They can’t control themselves; they always have to go that bit too far.”
He left the sentence hanging in the air, as though he were hinting at something, but if he was, Harry didn’t know what.
“By the way, Officer, have you been overdoing things yourself? I can see you’re limping.”
“Exaggerated faith in Western conversational styles. It’ll pass.”
“Which? The faith or the injury?”
Brekke watched Harry with the same unseen smile that had been there after the funeral. As though it were a game he wanted Harry to join in. Harry was not in a ludic mood.
“Both, I hope. I was on my way home.”
“Already?” The neon light shone on Brekke’s moist forehead. “Look forward to seeing you in better shape tomorrow then, Officer.”
On Surawong Road Harry flagged down a taxi.
“Massage, sir?”
16
Monday, January 13