immy suddenly stopped the bike beneath a tree, shut the J engine, and still sitting astride the bike, took another call through his headphones.
I dismounted and tried to listen in, but it was entirely one sided. “Yeh . . . No . . . Sure . . . Heading north . . . How far do you think he’s got?”
I, of course, had no idea who he was talking to. The call ended, and he stuffed the phone into the deep pocket of his orange trousers. “We’ll motor on, Kurt.”
“Great,” I said. “Any chance of some explanations?”
Perhaps I was still under suspicion because he first seemed to think it necessary to think about that. He hadn’t yet restarted the engine. Instead, he dismounted, propped the bike, pointed towards the grassy verge, and said, “Sit,” as if I was a dog.
I didn’t sit, but he did. He found a patch of shade, and of course, it was now time to roll another and inhale some smoke so I strolled about in the sun, wiping sweat. Finally, he sprang to his feet but remained in his own patch of shade. I was standing, playing with a long piece of grass and trying to make it whistle like I used to in the park when I was a kid. It wouldn’t whistle, which was frustrating.
“Listen up, Kurt. Your friend, Cass, is still on the run somewhere south of Surat Thani according to the only phone track we managed. Even that was vague. He’s using an old Nokia, and . . . and anyway, if you feel you need to talk to your English friends, Kevin or Walid, or whoever and check for some first-hand, then feel free. I shan’t object.”
I tossed my useless piece of grass aside. “That’s so good of you,” I said. “Can I call my friends? Are you sure you don’t mind?”
He looked at me, smirked, and deliberately blew smoke at my face.
“For information,” he said, “this thing looks a whole lot bigger than it did a day or so ago. You still wanna come?”
What a stupid question. I’d already forgotten my plan for a holiday of peace and tranquillity, of forest walks and searching for toucans. And here I was standing on a grass verge by a main road between somewhere and somewhere else with trucks roaring past, and my only form of transport was a seat behind a guy with long greasy hair smelling of smoke and stale sweat.
I shrugged. I was desperate to know what I could do about Cass, but as far as I knew, he could have been a thousand miles away by now. It felt hopeless, like the old saying of looking for a needle in a haystack.
Suddenly, though, Jimmy started to talk. He didn’t move around but just stood there in his patch of shade. If I wanted to know anything, then it was up to me to go and stand within hearing distance, which, of course, meant standing in the sun.
But at least I started to learn a few things.
He told me everything he knew or at least what he thought I should know.
***
Two years before, Cass had gone to Turkey on a ticket he’d bought from Khan. On arrival in Istanbul, he’d been abducted by some friends or relatives of Khan, was taken somewhere, and was forced to make fake passports and other stuff for Al Qaida or ISIL. He’d then been sent to fight in Syria, survived against all the odds, and got back to Turkey only to be recaptured again by the Khans.Then he’d got a break. It seems he was, by then, trusted enough and thought to be sufficiently brainwashed and radicalised to be sent to Malaysia to join ISIL-backed groups that were sprouting up around Southeast Asia, especially Malaysia and Indonesia. Instead, he’d escaped across the Thai border and found refuge in a Buddhist temple near Nakhon Si Thammarat.
***
That sounded more like the Cass I remembered. None of us ever imagined him as Moslem, let alone as a potential Islamic terrorist.Now he was on the move again because the police thought he was responsible for planting a bomb somewhere. It looked like he’d been set up. The police had tracked him down from immigration photos, and his photo was on Facebook and TV
and in the papers. Cass was a wanted man and on the run.
All this had come from a few phone calls he’d been able to make to Kevin.
By then, with the sun moving around, I’d found a small patch of shade next to this stinking Yank and was, at last, starting to understand and believe things.
For one thing, Jimmy seemed different. He still looked dirty and smelled disgusting, but I started to think that maybe, given a chance, he might one day take a shower, use a deodorant, and give up smoking. He was definitely an interesting and slightly mysterious sort of guy. He was old enough to be my father, not that that seemed at all likely. As I’ve mentioned, my mother preferred black West Indian guys with dreadlocks, not white Americans with long straight greasy hair.
“We’ll aim for just short of Surat Thani,” he said, as if that was it. “Maybe just camp by the roadside and wait for information.”
Questions were piling up in my thoughts. He’d started his explanation, making me think all this had come from Kevin and a guy called Roger, but there was clearly more to it than that.
“Where’s all this information coming from?” I asked. “I can tell you. I’ve never imagined Kevin as an expert on foreign police and Islamic terrorism. He never talks much sense on a phone. Panic seems to sets in when he gets connected to someone via technology because, or so it seems to me, he’s more focussed on the wonders of communications technology than what he’s actually talking about.”
“Yeh,” Jimmy said. “It’s all being pieced together by a real pro. His name’s Colin Asher. I do jobs for him from time to time.”
Ah, I thought, here we go again. Just as I thought. More snippets are available if you keep prodding. Prod some more because I’m not moving from this spot until I know what it is.
“UK police?” I asked.
He shook his head. “A private investigator. The plan is not to involve the police just yet, in case the extent of the problem gets lost in political correctness.”
The extent of the problem? It sounded like this thing went far deeper than Cass and Khan came instantly to my mind. If Khan was the one who’d started this, then it was likely that Khan was still involved somehow.
And I understood political correctness. Don’t forget I’d been living in Shipley Street during the street demos around Park
Road. The police had tried to enter the mosque but soon crept away like scared dogs with their tails between their legs.
We all knew that modern police stood back and scratched their heads instead of going in with guns blazing like they used to. They were confused by political correctness. People understood that only too well, and so some took advantage.
Others sympathised because they, too, were confused and felt scared to do or say anything in case they fell foul of the system. This was the way things were. A new sort of culture had replaced the old-fashioned one where good and bad and rights and wrongs were defined by the law.
The Ten Commandments had become the Ten Disputed Wish Lists, and we were back with the archbishop spouting weak-kneed shit about God not being the celestial insurance policy we’d always thought he was.
The police around Park Road had backed away, intimidated, as if they’d seen the archbishop himself heading an army with placards, smart phones and abusive words. Except, on that occasion, it hadn’t been the archbishop but an angry Imam from Park Road Mosque and a local councillor.
“Who’s decided not to involve the police?” I asked Jimmy.
Jimmy hesitated. “Pass,” he said. “I’ll find out later.”
I was so pleased to hear that Stinker didn’t know. Stinker was being kept in the dark. He was following instructions.
“Our job is to find Cass,” he said quickly.
It was as if he knew I’d just sussed him as a junior help to someone way above his head. Our relationship was changing.