** (9) **
The Huntsman is an upmarket pub located in
the basement of the Landmark Plaza, one of the many modern hotel
and shopping centre tower complexes along Bangkok’s busy
Sukhummvit Road. Many of the pub’s clientele were Americans and
Europeans working in Bangkok. In addition, prosperous Thai
businessmen and businesswomen also frequented the bar together
with foreign tourists perhaps staying in the towering luxury hotel
situated above it. The Huntsman was fitted out and furnished
exactly like a traditional British pub. On one side there was a
row of sturdy wooden tables and upholstered benches, separated by
partitions topped with framed semicircular stained-glass
windowpanes. The remaining perimeter space, with the exception of
a small stage used by musical performers, was taken up with large
easy chairs and low wooden tables. The walls were decorated with
framed old black-and-white photographs representing people and
events in Britain from the early part of the Twentieth Century.
The bar area was located in the centre, and was surrounded by an
almost continuous table surface, punctuated by wooden pillars
stretching up to about half the height of the ceiling. Here,
people sat on high stools, and some gazed up at a television set
suspended above the bar. Showing on the television was a live
football match from England. The sound on the television had been
turned down. The resident Filipino band was just about to begin
playing their first song for the last set of the evening. The time
was just before ten thirty on a Saturday evening in
mid-January.
At one of the partitioned tables in the pub,
Mr William Avon sat opposite the managing director of the Lucky
Bird Export Company of Bangkok, Thailand. The company’s founder
and managing director, Mr Somchai Tantaratana, was what is
referred to in Thailand as a Chinese Thai. He was in his mid
fifties, and relatively light-skinned. He was perhaps more
reserved and not so easily given to smiling as the majority of
Thais. In fact, the ease and frequency with which most Thais were
able to smile had earned the country the well-deserved epithet:
the Land of Smiles. On this evening, however, even Mr Somchai
Tantaratana was allowing himself the luxury of something
approaching a smile. His seat was facing the stage where the
Filipino group was about to perform. Like many of the other Thais
in the pub, Somchai Tantaratana was rather fascinated by the
attractive female Filipino singer. Partly, this was because in
many respects she looked quite similar to a Thai lady. It was only
when she spoke English with a characteristic Filipino accent,
Hispanic-sounding and quite distinct from the singsong tonal Thai
rendition of the language, that any doubt could be removed. In
addition, the Filipino national psyche is also very different from
the Thai. The historical, cultural and religious backgrounds of
the two countries are completely different, with Thailand a
predominantly Buddhist country and the Philippines, Roman
Catholic. Somchai clapped his hands enthusiastically when the
Filipino singer announced that the band was about to perform the
song known popularly as theme tune from the film Titanic. He
continued clapping as the plaintive opening chords of the song
rang out.
Avon grimaced at what he perceived to be a
lack of sophistication in the musical taste of his companion, but
Somchai either did not notice or paid no heed. The loudness of the
music now made talking at the table difficult. Looking around in
his seat, he noticed the photographs hanging on the wall near to
him. One particular photograph caught his eye. It was of two
schoolboys standing together in the backyard of a terraced house
in London, and was dated nineteen thirty. He was struck, however,
not so much by the shabbily dressed and tousle-haired subjects of
the photograph, but by the quality of the light in the background.
The photograph had been taken late in the afternoon sometime in
autumn, as evidenced by a solitary bare tree in the distance. Only
in the Northern Hemisphere, in autumn, could one witness such a
grey melancholic fading of the day. In tropical Southeast Asia, in
contrast, night fell almost instantaneously. The days were almost
exactly the same length throughout the year. In his mind, there
was no dramatic distinction between the seasons, at least not in
the same sense that there were in Britain. There was a hot season,
an even hotter season and a hot season with rain. Each day was
more or less indistinguishable from the rest. There was nothing
really to mark the passage of time, and it was easy to fall under
the illusion that time was standing still. He seemed only to
experience the passage of time during his occasional trips back to
Britain. Otherwise, he felt as if he had been frozen in time
during what had actually been a stay of more or less ten years in
Thailand.
Most of the expatriates that lived and worked
in Thailand, even if for lengthy periods of time, were usually
never able to learn to speak the Thai language properly. It was a
tonal language that was extremely difficult to learn without a
prolonged and sustained effort. And if they could learn to speak
some Thai, then it would usually only be sufficient for simple
conversation, or to use the much used and generally applicable
Thai expression: Mai pen rai. Which is often translated into
English as: “It doesn’t matter” or: “It’s not important” or even:
“You’re welcome.” But perhaps a more insightful rendition of its
sense would be something along the lines of: “It won’t be very
important in the long run, in fact it will be meaningless in the
long run, so lets not vex or concern ourselves too much with it
right now.”
William Avon, however, was an exception to
this general rule regarding the mastery of the Thai language. He
could both speak the language fluently, and could also read the
Sanskrit-derived characters in which the language was written.
Admittedly, he had put some effort into learning the language
after he came to Thailand ten years ago to teach English at a
technical college, but this process had also been assisted by what
seemed to be an almost innate ability for the language. The
ability to speak both Thai and English fluently had made him a
potentially very useful employee. Consequently, he no longer
taught English, and had for the past year-and-a-half worked as an
agent for the Lucky Bird Export Company of Bangkok.
The Lucky Bird Export Company of Bangkok was
a very mysterious entity. For one thing, the wealth it appeared to
generate would not appear to be commensurate with the level of
services it offered. In addition, the name of the Company would
not appear to correspond to the type of services that it
proffered: The Company was not at all involved in the exporting of
goods. In reality, the Company was involved mainly in overseeing
the shipping of personal possessions from Thailand to destinations
all over the world, particularly to Europe, and especially to
Britain, Germany and Scandinavia. Most of its clients were
foreigners who had spent some time living and working in Thailand,
and who, for whatever reason, wished to move back again to their
country of origin. In this business, it was Avon’s job to seek out
potential customers, and to persuade them, either directly or
through an intermediary, to use the services of the Lucky Bird
Export Company. His ability to speak Thai fluently was a
considerable boon in this respect, as many of the company’s
prospective customers would be returning back home with a Thai
spouse.
Somchai clapped his hands appreciatively when
the Filipino band finished the song. He then took a sip from the
pint beer glass containing imported dark Irish Stout, a speciality
of the Huntsman pub, which he had been nursing for the duration of
the performance. Avon was drinking Thai ‘Singha’ beer. Somchai
used the brief pause in the entertainment to say a few words to
him. “You know, William, I have been England many time on
business. But always, I only go London. This first time I will
have been to the North England,” he said in his Thai-modified
English, noticeable for its begrudging use of prepositions. “Oh,
you’ll love it. It’s really wild,” replied Avon with a smirk on
his face.
“A long time has passed, nearly two month. We should
have done this earlier. Or rather, you should have done it. But it
seem that your bad habit got in the way,” continued Somchai. “I
don’t have a bad habit,” objected Avon. “You know that the stuff I
take, I mean took, wasn’t addictive. It’s not heroin or anything
like that. I just got in a bad way because of where the stuff took
me. It disturbed me a little; shook me up. But anyway, I’m over it
now; recovered from it completely and ready to finish off this job
once and for all.”
“I already said many time, William, that we
have the business of selling goods, not using them. You see how
dangerous these drugs are?”
“Well I can assure you after the
fright I got last November that I won’t be using those goods
again. I’ve never experienced a trip like that one. It really
freaked me out; scared the living daylights of me. I’ll never be
able to understand how realistic it seemed to be at the time. Most
times, there is still some part of me that seems to know that
whenever I’m on a trip, whatever it is that I’m seeing, hearing,
smelling or touching, it just isn’t real. For example I once
smoked something, sage I believe it was, which took me right back
to my old grandmother’s house the way it was about thirty years
ago. The old furniture, the smell of cooking coming from the
kitchen, the old clock ticking loudly on the mantel piece, a dog
barking in the street outside: everything exactly the way it was.
I could walk around the room, touch things, and look at my
grandmother wearing her shawl, standing in the room. But I didn’t
freak out then and say: “Shit, I’m stuck in 1970.” I knew that in
a while it would all dissolve before my eyes, and that even though
I might then find myself somewhere else removed from the
here-and-now, I would eventually find myself back in the
present.”
“But this time you got really scared, and you run
back to Thailand,” observed Somchai. “You know everything was
going to plan. I had been observing the Humes for a while. I knew
what time they and their neighbours usually went to bed. I also
knew that the Humes didn’t yet have an alarm system fitted in the
cottage. In fact, I was all set to lay my hands on those damned
wooden animals and complete the job, but then everything went to
pieces. I’d only taken a sniff of the stuff to give me some extra
strength and courage.”
“Seems like you got the opposite,”
remarked Somchai in Thai.
“Yeah, I’ve never ran so fast in my
life. After scrambling up a dark rocky hill, clambering over a
stone wall, and running along a dark country road towards the
village, I eventually ended up in the local pub. Not so much to
get a drink, but to be reassured by the sight of real people,”
explained Avon, unconscious of the fact that he had switched back
again to using English.
After some delay sorting out song requests
from the audience, The Filipino group eventually began the second
song of their final performance for the evening: a rendition of
Elton John’s Crocodile Rock. Somchai had not entirely understood
what Avon had just said. “What you mean?” he asked, raising his
voice so that he could be heard above a string of la-la-la’s from
the Filipino singer. “I mean that I pity anybody that has a lick
of that stuff,” explained Avon in Thai, similarly raising his
voice to be heard.
“Tell me again, where are you getting this
stuff from?” asked Avon during the next brief interlude in the
entertainment. Somchai looked around the room before leaning
forward and whispering: “I have a contact on the Thai-Burmese
border. He is someone high up in the Thai military. He has a
contact on the Burmese side, also a military man. This Burmese
gets his supplies from a member of the Karen hill tribes. They
manufacture the drug, which if you translate directly into English
is called ‘Orange Sound’, from fungus found on jungle plants. But
it’s a secret recipe, and they won’t tell anyone what it
is.”
“So, it’s a bit like Colonel Saunder’s secret recipe for
Kentucky fried chicken,” said Avon sarcastically in English.
Somchai looked at him with incomprehension, and then said: “I must
go and make a telephone call to my wife. Please excuse me for a
moment. It’s too noisy in here for me to use my mobile.”
“Yeah, too much orange sound,” muttered Avon quickly under his
breath as Somchai walked away from the table. He immediately felt
pleased at the multiplicity and obscurity of this pun. For it had
connotations not only both with noise and the name of a well-known
mobile telephone company, but more significantly perhaps, it also
made an oblique reference to the Malay/Indonesian word ‘orang’
meaning ‘man’, as used in ‘Orang Utang’, meaning ‘man of the
jungle’. He also recalled that the novelist Anthony Burgess, a
speaker of Malay and who coincidentally had himself once worked in
the Far East as an English teacher, had also played with the word
‘orang’ in the title of his famous novel ‘A Clockwork Orange’, a
similarly obscure pun intended to mean: ‘A Clockwork Man’.
After musing briefly on what seemed like a
strange, if ineffable, connection between himself and something
else, he also realised that the statement: ‘Too much orange sound’
was more than a mere pun: it seemed to neatly and literally
describe the cause of the problem on his last visit to England. He
smiled, and whimsically said to himself. “Orange sound: the sound
of man”.
Somchai Tantaratana returned a few minutes
later. “Come on William, let’s go somewhere else to eat,” he
urged. After paying the bill, the two men left the hotel bar
together. Once outside the comfort of the air-conditioned
environment of the Landmark Plaza, it only took a few minutes
before the warmth and humidity of the night began to be felt by
both men. They laboured up the steps of one of the many pedestrian
footbridges crossing Sukhummvit Road. Walking was by far the
quickest mode of transportation. Beneath them, the road traffic
was still very busy; even though it was now well after eleven in
the evening. Car horns sounded, motorcycle engines roared, and
public buses produced clouds of choking black exhaust smoke from
their diesel engines each time they managed to shunt forwards. A
continuous line of traffic trailed for as far as the eye could see
along the road. Above their heads, a sky train rumbled to a halt
at Nana station on the raised track of the city’s ultra modern
public railway system. Around them, the air was filled with the
pulsating cacophony of music emanating from the many so-called
entertainment establishments in the area. Their gaudy neon lights,
together with the lights from the myriad of tall buildings and
skyscrapers in this gigantic city, conspired with the noxious
traffic fumes, to block out any view of the stars in the night
sky.
At ground level, the hundreds of
stall-holders along Sukhummvit Road, who sold all types of goods,
including clothing, shoes, watches and electronic equipment, all
of uncertain provenance, were completing their efforts to pack up
for the evening. The streets, however, still thronged with
tourists and members of Bangkok’s vast army of demimondaine, as
well as with homeward-bound office and shop workers. It was
eleven-fifteen by the time William Avon and Somchai Tantaratana
reached the Kentucky fried chicken restaurant located at the
entrance to the huge Ambassador Hotel complex, also on Sukhummvit
Road. The fast food outlet had not been Avon’s choice as a
suitable place to dine, and he wondered whether his earlier quip
concerning Colonel Saunder’s secret recipe had prompted the idea
in Somchai’s head as a mild form of revenge. On the way, Somchai
had informed him that another employee of the Lucky Bird Export
Company would be meeting them later at the restaurant.
In the restaurant, Avon decided not to order
anything to eat. Instead, he sat down holding only a Styrofoam cup
of hot coffee. Somchai ordered some fried chicken, which in a few
minutes he was eating voraciously. The restaurant still had a
number of customers, even though it was very nearly closing time.
A young assistant was aggressively mopping the floor, whilst
another was clearing tables. There were a number of Caucasian men,
or ‘Farangs’ as they are referred to by Thais, paired up and
sitting with Thai women at several tables in the restaurant. The
men looked, on the whole, to be above fifty years of age, or in
one or two cases, even older, whilst most of the women looked
considerably younger.
The person they were waiting for still hadn’t
arrived by the time Somchai finished his last piece of fried
chicken and had slung the picked bones back into the cardboard
meal container. He then began to clean trapped pieces of meat from
his teeth using one end of the plastic stirring-spatula supplied
with his companion’s coffee. During this unprepossessing activity,
he began speaking to Avon in Thai. “You know, William, you fled
back here to Thailand from Britain; a journey of over seven
thousand miles. It took me three weeks before I could get any real
sense out of you. I paid for you to see a traditional healer, and
then a doctor, a psychiatrist in fact. They diagnosed you as
suffering from stress. But is it really so stressful working for
me?”
“Why do you ask? Are you going to fire me?” asked Avon
staring across the restaurant at a woman who had suddenly begun
smiling at him without any prompting. He noticed that she had been
sitting with the Caucasian man who was now standing up and washing
his hands in a basin located on the wall of the restaurant. There
was a mirror directly above the wash basin, and in it he caught
glimpses of the man’s face; it was severely pockmarked. He
understood the nature of the relationship between the man and the
women, and did not feel inclined to respond to her smiles. Somchai
answered Avon’s question in Thai: “No, William, I’m not going to
fire you, even though I was very angry with you at the time. But
we have worked together for one-and-a-half years, and I’ve come to
trust you. It is true that you made a mess of this particular job,
but I’m sure we can still rectify the situation. Having said that,
I do hope that our lovely couple in England haven’t found out yet
that there is something interesting packed inside their oversized
Thai ornaments.”
“I’m sure they haven’t. I’ve been monitoring
the local press in that part of the world on the Internet, and
there has been no mention of anything being discovered in Wet Rain
Hill,” responded Avon, also in Thai. “Except of course maybe in
your apartment, which you left in such a rush,” Somchai reminded
him.
“True. But I’m sure they’ve already written me off as a
casual drug user, or at worst, a small dealer. The main thing is
that there is nothing to link me to the Humes.”
“I believe you,
William, but nevertheless I no longer wish to take any unnecessary
risks.”
Somchai’s remark perturbed Avon. He half
expected at any moment to see an assassin burst into the
restaurant in the style of a Hollywood gangster movie, and for his
employer to reiterate that he wasn’t going to fire him; instead he
was going to murder him. Murder related to unsatisfactory business
dealings was not uncommon in Bangkok. This unease increased at the
site of the man with the pockmarked face returning to his seat,
who, as he sat down at the table with his Thai lady friend, seemed
to glare malevolently across the room.
“There are no risks. As I said, they don’t
know I work for the company that shipped their belongings out to
Britain. They never saw me in Thailand. All the business in this
case was handled by John Wakes,” Avon pointed out. John Wakes was
the person who it was planned would join them shortly in the fried
chicken establishment. Like Avon, he was an Englishman. He had
joined the Lucky Bird Export Company five months ago, and had
managed to persuade the Humes to use the company for their move
back to Britain. He had overseen the removal of their belongings
from their home. Then, once the Humes’ belongings had been secured
in the Company’s holding area in Bangkok, Avon had managed what
was known euphemistically as the additional packaging. This was an
extra service of which the customers were naturally unaware. The
company had the services of some corrupt Thai customs officials
who ensured that the crates were not inspected during their
shipping from Thailand. It was this stage of the operation in
Thailand that carried the highest risk for the company. This was
because if on arrival at their destination overseas, the crates
were opened and inspected by customs and excise, then the company
could always plead ignorance and claim that it was their customer
who had had the criminal intent.
Once this particular shipment had left
Thailand, William Avon had travelled to Britain and awaited its
arrival. British customs and excise controls were so strict,
however, that it was impossible to get access to such shipments
until they had been cleared. A legitimate and wholly unsuspecting
third-party company was used for the final delivery within
Britain. From the point of view of the Lucky Bird Export Company,
the final stage of their service generally involved burglarising
the customers’ homes in order to reclaim the additional items that
had been shipped secretly. This same modus operandi was to have
been used in the case of the Humes’ shipment, and it was Avon who
should have carried out this particular burglary.
Somchai began explaining to Avon, in Thai,
his intended safeguards. “Since I am going to Britain with you
this time, and because I wouldn’t want to see you arrested on
arrival in London’s Heathrow airport, I have arranged a new
identity for you. You will get a new passport obtained with the
help of a friend that works in the British Embassy on Wireless
Road here in Bangkok. Moreover, the passport has a legitimate Thai
visa stamp, so that you won’t have to explain a blank passport to
the immigration officer at Bangkok’s Don Muang Airport when you
leave Thailand. The visa stamp was provided with the help of
another friend in the Thai Immigration Office.”
“When will I
be having the plastic surgery?” asked Avon sarcastically.
“No
need to change your face. I used one of the passport photographs
you once provided me with. Only a change of name has taken
place.”
“And my new name is?”
“Your new name is John
Wakes.”
“John Wakes!” exclaimed Avon. “What does John think
about that?”
“He doesn’t mind. He will arrive any minute now
with your new passport. And by the way, it is a replacement
passport and not one that has been newly issued. It was easier for
my friend in the British Embassy to produce a replacement passport
from existing records than to create a completely new and
fictitious identity. John still has his original passport, which
remains valid. If he needs to leave Thailand quickly before we
return here, then he can use one of the land border points into
Malaysia, for example, and fly out from there. The system is not
computerised at the land crossings, so unlike at Don Muang
Airport, the immigration officials will not notice that John Wakes
has apparently left the country two times without a single
re-entry in between. So you see, William, your new identity has
been completely taken care of.”
“Well, it seems that anything
can be taken care of in this country if you are ready to pay the
right price for it,” said Avon looking across at the man with the
pockmarked face and his lady friend, who were now holding hands.
It was evident that the man was extremely self-conscious about his
facial disfigurement. He had placed a hand over the lower half of
his face in an attempt to partly cover it.
A short time later, Avon saw John Wakes enter
the restaurant. One of the assistants mopping the floor also saw
him and immediately called out: “Sorry sir, closed now.” Before
noticing William Avon and Somchai Tantaratana sitting in the
corner, Wakes halted momentarily and turned towards the direction
of the voice. Then he noticed the man with the pockmarked face. In
a voice that was sufficiently loud to make everyone in the
restaurant look over, he yelled out: “Bloody hell, Snaz. What are
you doing here in Bangkok?”
** (10) **
February had arrived, but the days were still
short and the nights still long. Nok Hume was spending her first
night alone in the cottage. Her husband had departed earlier in
the day for Saudi Arabia, where he was going to work for six weeks
on a lucrative short-term contract that involved carrying out
inspections for a major oil company on pipelines near Jeddah. At
first, Nok had not been enthusiastic about her husband taking this
work, but had finally agreed that the extra money would be most
welcomed. It would help finance, amongst other things, a holiday
for both of them to Thailand later in the year. She was very much
looking forward to seeing her family in Thailand once again.
The idea of being left alone in the cottage
had been at first a little scary for Nok. She had initially
considered travelling with her husband to Saudi Arabia, but had
eventually come around to the view that it would be difficult for
her to stay in that ultra-conservative desert kingdom, even for a
short time.
In staying at home by herself, there was
thankfully one less thing for Nok to worry about; namely that the
strange Thai-speaking ‘farang’ was no longer in the village. He
had vanished from Wet Rain Hill, and was not thought likely to
return. Something else that made her feel better was that the
majority of villagers now behaved in a very friendly manner
towards her. The Humes were no longer significantly affected by
the unpleasant rumours concerning the disappearance of cats in the
village. This matter seemed to have vanished from the minds of
most people. The Siam Kitchen takeaway restaurant business had
been handed over the previous week as a going concern to an Asian
family from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the Humes had managed to make
some money from this deal.
Nok had also noticed that the vicar from the
village church had become particularly warm towards her. He had
shown great interest in learning about Lord Buddha and about Thai
culture. Though at times, she felt uncomfortable about his evident
desire to get her to attend one of his church services.
Then, of course, there was her neighbour:
Elsie Crawford. For the few months that Nok Hume had lived in the
village, she had grown close to Elsie Crawford. Indeed, she had
come to regard the kind old lady as if she was her own
grandmother. On hearing that Jack Hume was going to be away for
some time, Elsie Crawford had promised to keep Nok company, and to
help her in any way that she could. Nok had been invited to drop
in next door at any time for a talk, or to watch television
together. Elsie Crawford had even offered her the use of one of
the unoccupied bedrooms in the cottage, in case she was scared of
staying alone in her own cottage. Nok had not, however, taken up
this offer.
It was late on a Friday night. Nok Hume
looked at the illuminated face of her bedside alarm clock. The
time was five minutes before midnight. She began thinking about
her husband, who would by now have already arrived in Saudi
Arabia. The change in her circumstances was making it difficult
for her to fall asleep this night. Finally, however, she drifted
off to sleep.
Some time later, she was suddenly awoken. The
bedside clock revealed that it was now 2:20 a.m. She lay for a
moment trying to collect her thoughts; briefly unable to
understand why her husband wasn’t in bed beside her. Then the
realisation that she was alone in the cottage dawned upon her. She
also quickly realised that there was something else: she had been
disturbed from her sleep by noises in the cottage. The noises were
coming from the living room; from the other side of her bedroom
door. There was the sound of furniture being moved and dragged
across the parquet floor. Shocked, she immediately sat up in bed.
A wave of paralysing terror swept through her body. She could also
hear, coming from beyond her bedroom door, sounds resembling a
series of hisses. Not being able to imagine what could possibly
produce such ghastly sounds, Nok Hume struggled to compose herself
and to suppress the urge to scream out in terror. She pinched
herself to confirm that she wasn’t just experiencing a terrible
nightmare. Her heart pounded remorselessly. She took hold of the
Lord Buddha medallion around her neck and quietly muttered a
prayer, pleading for strength, protection and safe deliverance
from this terrible situation.
A short time later, she reached over to take
the mobile telephone lying on the bedside table, and with
trembling hands switched it on. To her horror, the telephone gave
two very loud bleeps as it registered a network connection.
Instantly, the noise in the living room stopped completely and
everything fell quiet. Feeling unable to use the mobile telephone
in the terrifying silence, she lay clutching it with her head
pushed back firmly against the headboard of the bed. After a pause
lasting several seconds, the noises in the living room resumed
once again. For several minutes she listened, not moving, and
hardly daring to breathe. Finally, there was what sounded like the
crash of a chair falling over, and then everything went silent.
The silence continued; a heavy silence, which felt almost as
terrible as the commotion that had preceded it. She continued to
lie motionless, her hands now grasped tightly together under the
bedclothes. The steady pounding rhythm of her over-worked heart
resounded in her ears like rapid wave-falls on a beach. Each
heartbeat marked the passage of time. Seconds and then minutes
passed. Nothing happened. Silence remained sovereign. Then, a
sharp ray of light from the illuminated face of her alarm clock
caught the medallion she was wearing. Looking down, she saw that
Lord Buddha was serene. His countenance remained benevolent and
unperturbed. She clasped the medallion tightly and said quietly:
“Khorp Khun Ka”: “Thank you”.
The time was 2:40 a.m. Nok Hume now felt
brave enough to climb out of bed. She crept over to the window in
her bedroom, facing onto Main Street, and unlocked and unbolted
it. Using all her strength, she tried to push the sash window
upwards. The frame screeched and momentarily stuck partly open,
before finally yielding completely. The rush of cold night made
her shudder. She was able to climb through the window and out onto
the front driveway of the cottage. Wearing only her nightdress,
and still in bare feet, she ran across the small garden at the
front, hardly daring to look around. Arriving at Elsie Crawford’s
front door, she began to knock on it frantically whilst shouting
the old lady’s name through the small letterbox.
The tumult at her front door quickly awakened
Elsie Crawford. Moments later she opened the door, sure from the
sound of the voice that it was Nok Hume. At the same time, lights
went on in the Jackson’s cottage across the road. Nok had
evidently also been heard across the road. Elsie Crawford
immediately brought her into the living room and tried to
establish what had happened. In no time, Paul Jackson’s father,
Stanley Jackson, had also appeared on the scene. He knocked
briefly at the unclosed door and, still wearing his dressing gown,
entered Elsie Crawford’s living room.
“She heard some intruders inside her
cottage,” explained Elsie Crawford.
“Have you called the
police?” asked Stanley Jackson.
“I’ll do that now,” responded
Elsie picking up her telephone.
“Meanwhile, I’ll have a look
around the back,” announced Stanley Jackson.
“Don’t do that. I
think dangerous,” said Nok looking terrified.
“Don’t go there
in the dark by yourself, Stanley. Just have a look from over this
side,” said Mrs Crawford, pointing towards the garden at the back
of her cottage. Then she turned towards Nok and tried to comfort
her. “Don’t worry pet, you’re safe now. Everything’s going to be
fine.”
The previous day had been bright and
cloudless, and now the night was bitterly cold and still. From
where he was standing in Elsie Crawford’s garden, partly
illuminated by the light from the cottage behind him, Stanley
Jackson could see that the glass in both patio doors at the back
of the Humes’ cottage had been completely broken. The patio doors,
however, remained closed. He looked and listened carefully for any
indications of those responsible for this deed. But the garden,
like the hillside behind it, was silent and still. Then his son
suddenly appeared by his side. “What happened, Dad?” asked Paul
Jackson breathlessly. “I heard you going out of the house, and
followed you across. Mrs Crawford just mentioned something about
intruders next door.”
“A break-in, I’m sure” replied Jackson
senior. “I’m not sure what, if anything at all, is missing. But I
bet both the video and television have gone. Thieving scumbags,
they make me sick. People work hard for what they buy, and then
these blighters think they can come and help themselves to
anything they like.” Stanley Jackson’s face frowned. “Can you
catch that awful smell, Paul? I’ve never smelt anything like that
before; it’s rank.”
“Yes, I can smell it,” confirmed his son,
noticeably twitching his nostrils. “Doesn’t it smell a bit like an
animal house in the zoo?”
A few minutes later a police car arrived in
front of the Humes’ cottage. Elsie Crawford heard it pull up, and
went to the door to invite the police into her cottage. There were
two police officers: a man and a woman. Elsie brought them into
her cottage and explained the situation. The male officer was then
directed through the kitchen and into the garden at the back where
Stanley and Paul Jackson were looking over into the Humes’
cottage. The woman officer remained in the living room with Nok.
After trying to give Nok some reassurance about the situation, the
woman officer began taking down details in a notepad about the
incident.
Outside in the garden, the officer told the
Jacksons to remain where they were for the moment. He then climbed
over the low wall dividing the two gardens. Using a flashlight, he
first carefully inspected the area around the patio doors,
speaking into his walkie-talkie as he looked. “This is PC
Edminson, at 1 Main Street, in the village of Wet Rain Hill,
reporting a forced entry into the said premises. Perpetrators
appear to have fled the scene. It is very likely that we are
looking at an attempted or actual theft. I’m also noting a very
pungent and unusual smell coming from the premises. Requesting
backup, over.” A squelched, and to the ears of those on the other
side of the wall, indistinct reply came back over the
walkie-talkie. Then the officer carefully entered the dark living
room of the cottage, stepping through the opening of one of the
patio doors, taking care to avoid the small, jagged and
potentially lethal, shards of glass that still remained attached
to the inside of the frame. The beam of his flashlight could be
seen moving around the room. Suddenly, he cried out from inside:
“What the on earth is this?”
A few seconds later, the officer had
apparently located and switched on the light in the Humes’ living
room. Then peering out through the opening in one of the patio
doors, he called out to Stanley Jackson and his son: “Please tell
WPC Johnson and the young lady who lives here that I’m sorry, but
that they will both need to come here to have a look. There
something in here I don’t understand. We also need to know if
anything is missing from the cottage.”
A short while later, Stanley and Paul Jackson
crossed over into the neighbouring garden together with Nok Hume
and WPC Johnson. They were warned to take great care of the broken
glass lying on the floor as they entered the living room. It had
not been possible to enter through the front door of the cottage,
because it remained locked and Nok Hume’s key was still inside.
The strange animal odour was even more
apparent inside the living room. As they entered, Stanley Jackson
and his son noticed the large wooden carving standing by the side
of PC Edminson at the far end of the room; its presence dominated
everything. Although the Jacksons were not familiar with the
layout of the room, it was apparent that the sofa had been pushed
forward from its usual position, and now stood hard up against the
mantelpiece. A table had been pushed back against the wall on the
opposite side, and two chairs lay overturned. It was as if a
passageway had been created in the centre of the room so that
something could move through the space created. The television set
and video recorder had not been removed, and appeared to be
undamaged.
The first thing Nok noticed as she entered
the room behind the Jacksons was that the wooden carving of the
Siamese cat and the carving of the upright crocodile were no
longer behind the patio doors. Then she cried out, shocked at the
sight of the carving of the crocodile in its altered location. It
now stood gazing out onto Main Street, towards the steeple of St
George’s church, with a ghastly object stuck between its jaws: the
partially skeletal remains of a dead cat. The curtains that had
covered the nearby window had been pulled off the runner and lay
in a heap on the floor.
“I’m sorry, dear,” apologised the PC Edminson
looking at the object beside him. “We’ll come to this one in a
minute. But is there anything that is missing?”
Nok looked
around the room in a state of incomprehension. “My Siamese cat
carving has gone. It was together with my crocodile statue by the
doors here,” she said pointing to the patio doors behind
her.
“And nothing else missing apart from that?” asked the same
officer, before adding: “And can you be sure about, for example,
credit cards, bank books and so on?”
“No. Everything valuable,
I keep in downstairs bedroom,” explained Nok, pointing towards her
locked bedroom door.
“Was there an attempt to enter your
bedroom?”
“No. They never tried to open the door. But I think
they hear me when I switch on my mobile telephone.”
“Did you
hear any voices?”
“No voices.”
“So you have no idea how many
people there were in here?”
“No idea. But there were some
strange noises.”
“Strange noises; like what, dear?” asked WPC
Johnson.
“Something like a snake; a big snake,” she replied
with evident conviction.
“A hissing sound?” asked WPC Johnson.
Nok was not familiar with the word, but guessed the meaning from
its onomatopoeic qualities.
“Yes,” she confirmed.
“It looks
like this whole thing involves one or two people with very sick
minds,” suggested WPC Johnson, gazing at the carving of the
crocodile with the dead cat in its jaws. “Sorry to push you on
this, Mrs Hume, but do you have any idea why anyone would do
something like this?” asked PC Edminson. Nok shook her head; she
didn’t know. “I think I might have an idea what this means,”
offered Stanley Jackson. “It’s possibly a sick joke directed at
Nok, and has some connection with the spate of disappearing cats
we had lately in the village. There were some nasty and of course
baseless rumours that somehow Nok and her husband were responsible
for the disappearances, and that they were using the cat meat in
their takeaway. That’s my interpretation of this.”
“So we might
be looking for someone local. This is just a small village. Any
ideas who you think could be responsible?” asked PC
Edminson.
“There was that strange guy who once lived in Church
Lane,” said Paul Jackson looking at Nok. Paul and Nok had never
really spoken to each other before except just to say hello. Nok
clearly understood the reference, but remained silent. “But he’s
not in the village any more. He disappeared about two months ago,”
added Paul Jackson.
The carcass of the dead cat hanging from the
mouth of the wooden crocodile made for very unpleasant viewing. It
also seemed to have been taken for granted that it was the source
of the evil smell that lingered in the room. With its matted dirty
fur, exposed patches of bone on both its abdomen and skull,
severely decayed shrivelled face and empty eye sockets, the
carcass hung precariously from the carving. The slightest
disturbance and it would surely drop onto the floor. Looking at
the dead cat, Paul Jackson noticed that there was something
familiar wrapped around its neck. He moved closer, and immediately
recognised the identification tag from his missing cat, Katy.
“It’s my cat, Katy, which went missing last November,” he cried
out in astonishment. Everyone watched in stunned silence as Paul
Jackson, covering his nose and mouth, took hold of the
identification tag and confirmed that the cat was his.
Two more police officers finally arrived on
the scene. A thorough check was made of the whole cottage. At the
point of entry, the glass in both of the patio doors had been
shattered, but no attempt appeared to have been made to force open
the locks. The doors remained both closed and locked. The thieves
had entered the living room, and had removed the carving of the
Siamese cat without opening the doors. “And you never heard the
sound of the glass being broken?” asked one of the newly arrived
officers.
Nok shook her head. “No. Mrs Crawford didn’t hear
anything either.”
“Coming straight through the glass seems to
make some sense if they supposed that the doors would be alarmed,”
suggested PC Edminson.
“Which it isn’t,” observed Stanley
Jackson. “And all this mischief for a wooden carving and just to
do something like that,” he added, pointing to the carving of the
crocodile. PC Edminson shook his head in despair. He was now
standing by the patio doors. Bending down, he partially lifted up
a large shard of glass, about a metre in length. “The glass is
fairly thick and strong. It would have required the application of
a considerable force to break through it,” he
suggested.
“Judging by the largeness of all the pieces of
glass, the force must have been applied quickly and over a large
area in each of the doors. It couldn’t have been done with
something like a hammer, which would have produced some smaller
pieces from the point of impact,” added Stanley Jackson. The large
shards of glass lay on top of a thick rug covering the area of the
parquet floor immediately behind the patio doors.
“Are you an
expert on glass?” asked PC Edminson.
“I work in the hardware
business. I know something about it,” replied Stanley
Jackson.
“What do you think managed to smash this glass then?”
asked PC Edminson.
“Something big, heavy and fast-moving,”
replied Stanley Jackson.
“Such as?”
“I have absolutely no
idea. But the glass was knocked out, and then it must have fallen
relatively quietly onto the rug behind. Some further fragmentation
may have occurred when the glass was subsequently trodden
on.”
After completing their investigation, the
police finally left. They had promised to keep Nok informed of any
progress they made in finding out who was responsible. Even though
the incident was bizarre and disturbing, it was a fact that the
break-in could not be considered sufficiently serious to warrant
the use of a large amount of police time. There would be no
photographers recording the scene of the crime, and no forensic
scientists in white suits dusting down the door frames and glass
shards for possible fingerprints or traces of those responsible.
It was three thirty in the morning when
Stanley Jackson went across the road to his home and returned with
a toolbox and two wooden panels of approximately the right
dimensions for blocking up the patio doors. It was about
half-an-hour later by the time he had finished the job of fitting
the panels in place. Then, Stanley Jackson finally removed the
body of the dead cat from the jaws of the wooden crocodile, and
took it home to be buried. Elsie insisted that Nok spend what
remained of the night sleeping in her spare bedroom. It was an
offer that Nok Hume readily accepted in the circumstances. Even
though deeply exhausted by the night’s events, Nok was
understandably not able to fall asleep immediately. But just as
there were the first indications that morning was approaching,
such as the sound of a car passing through the village, Nok
finally drifted off to asleep.
During her sleep, Nok had one of the most
powerful and vivid dreams she had ever experienced. She dreamt
that that she was in a large oceanarium, with a huge clear acrylic
window that allowed visitors to see fish and other marine life
from beneath the surface of the ocean. The daylight that
penetrated the depths illuminated a hitherto unseen and strange
world. Seaweed and other aquatic plants swayed in turbulent ocean
currents that churned up sand, pebbles and sediment on the seabed.
Fish of all sizes, types and colours swam in the diffuse
aquamarine light. Then she saw what resembled a child suddenly
appear and swim right up to the window of the oceanarium. Treading
water, and apparently breathing effortlessly as if the sea was its
natural environment, it peered through the window at her. The long
black hair of the feral sea child drifted upwards in the water.
Its nakedness was only partially concealed by the strands of
seaweed wrapping themselves around its body. The sea child’s face
was expressionless, presenting dark eyes powered by an
intelligence that did not seem to be human. It made no attempt to
communicate, and just continued to tread water and to watch
through the window of the oceanarium. Then the sea child suddenly
turned and swam away, vanishing into the huge expanse of ocean
that lay beyond. Nok marvelled at what she had just witnessed, and
for the first time looked around the oceanarium to see if any of
the other visitors had witnessed the sea child. But they had
evidently not. No one was paying any attention to her section of
the window. Then she awoke, and for a few seconds lay in bed
convinced of the reality of her dream. Only after the effects of
the dream had begun to fade was she able to recall the events of
the previous night.
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