I spent the rest of that day back at the hotel near the police headquarters, trying desperately to call Anna, but her phone was switched off.
The problem was I didn’t know where her family lived. My plans for a few days away with her were gone along with a large part of my
dignity because I then did what I often do when a job is finished, or I feel particularly out of sorts.
I took to the hotel bar and sat in the darkest corner with a big bottle of Tiger Beer and several packets of roasted cashew nuts. Then I bought another bottle and ordered a lunch of khao mun gai because Anna had told me it was her favourite and that she’d make me some one day.
The afternoon passed slowly, and the evening began. Around 6 pm Police Colonel Somyot arrived with his two sidekicks so I had to shake myself out of my melancholy and, once more, appear to be a professional crime investigator who might well have just saved the lives of a billion fellow humans including Somyot himself.
I apologised that Anna wasn’t there, but he seemed to know that already and even why she wasn’t there. He probably even knew where she was right now, but for some reason, it felt incompetent to admit I didn’t know. Perhaps, despite Anna’s words, he knew that our relationship had not been entirely signed and sealed by paperwork.
Instead, he wanted to tell me about the raid on Solomon’s apartment, and that they’d gone in with a specialist team from Dr Vichai’s department. And yes, it was a full-blown virus research lab complete with class 2 biological hazard cabinets that vented through the air conditioning unit.
Somyot wiped his forehead when I asked what might have happened if something had gone wrong with the filtration, the freezer, or any of the other equipment and a thick cloud of Malthus A virus had spread across Bangkok.
Finally, though, he shook my hand and offered to escort me to the airport to return to London whenever I was ready. The offer, kind though it was, did nothing to make me feel I should linger in Thailand for too long. For some reason, I needed to move on.
“Which passport should I use?” I asked him, and he did, at last, smile.
“Mr Dobson,” he said.
“And can I visit Thailand again sometime soon?”
“Of course,” he said, handing me a card. “Call me before you come.”
After Somyot left and feeling slightly little less despondent, I called Colin again and told him about Anna.
“Come back, Jinx,” he said. “At least you’ll get a police escort to the airport. We need a face-to-face wrap-up and decide what to do about Virex and Charles Brady.”
“Have you spoken to Charles?” I asked.
“Ching tracked him down to a hotel in San Francisco. If you ask me, he’s trying to avoid publicity.”
I took Colin’s advice, got a seat on an overnight flight back to London and called Police Colonel Somyot again to tell him. He was as good as his word. A police car arrived outside the hotel, and I was driven to Suvarnabhumi Airport, escorted to check in at passport control as Mark Dobson and finally saluted as if I was the minister in charge of police and security.
My phone rang when I got to the baggage hall at London’s Heathrow Airport early next morning.
“Ah, good. You’re on schedule, Jinx,” Colin said. “Come straight to the office because I’ve got a nice surprise waiting for you.”
I was tired after the long flight, but I stayed calm. Nice surprise ?
Anna? Common sense cleared my brain. It was impossible.
Instead of a taxi, I took the train into London. After the blue sky, bright sun and greenery of Southeast Asia, watching the wet and cold west London suburbs pass by from behind the dripping window of a taxi does nothing for my optimism. By the time I got to Marble Arch and walked up Edgeware Road, it was raining heavily, and the rush hour was in full swing.
When I opened the street level door of the Asher & Asher office, I was met by the familiar odour of prepacked sandwiches and humid warmth, which meant that Colin had not left the place for days.
I mounted the stairs, said “Hi” to Ching and Else, dropped my bag and heard voices coming from Colin’s room. When I tried to open the door, it wouldn’t open because something was blocking it. That often happens with more than three people inside. I knocked.
“Come in.”
“I can’t.”
I heard Colin’s voice. “Ah, our fearless traveller has returned. Move yourself, Kevin.”
This was my surprise. Larry had flown from Washington, Kevin and Tom had arrived from Bristol, and a second black guy I didn’t know opened the door and introduced himself. “Hey, you must be Mark,”
he said. “I’m Tunji.”
I stood on the threshold, surveying this untidy scene. Tom was sitting in the only other chair. Kevin and Larry were on the floor and Tunji must have been leaning somewhere. There is something to be said for seeing people in the flesh. “Where do I sit?”
“We’ve been waiting for you before heading to the Cumberland Hotel,” Colin said. “I decided we needed a catch up.”
Because it was raining, six of us shared two umbrellas to walk back down Edgeware Road towards Marble Arch and the Cumberland Hotel. Colin is well known at the Cumberland and has a permanent arrangement to use any free meeting rooms at any time. Coffee was on hand and, of course, a pile of sandwiches. Besides sandwiches, Colin loves chairing meetings, especially if he’s got his laptop to record things.
Such is the effect of a long-haul flight, but my own appetite was gone, so I took a seat as the others grabbed food and coffee.
“Right then, folks,” Colin said enthusiastically. “Let’s summarise because Larry needs to return to Lagos, Tom has his bookshop to run, Kevin has students, Tunji is doing something tonight, I’ve got a meeting with the Serious Fraud Office at 5:00 p.m., and Mark…” he stalled. “What are you doing, Jinx?”
“Nothing,” I said.
What happened next was a round-up of everything that had happened in the last few days. I didn’t have much to add because Colin, being office based and in constant touch with the world via his gadgets, took charge of the Asher & Asher input. I was, though, the only one who knew what had happened to the boxes that had been airfreighted to Singapore from Bangkok because Caroline had called me while I was on the train. “They were impounded,” I said. “The last I heard was they were being checked in a bio secure lab.”
Colin looked at me across the top of his half-moon spectacles. “You don’t seem quite your ebullient self this morning, Jinx.”
“No.”
He continued to stare, and the others, too, then looked at me. It was as if, having been on the front line, so to speak, I was expected to be the real live wire and the one with the most to say. It was true. I had a lot to say and even more questions, but right then, everything seemed to be lying low, as if held down by a heavy weight.
I looked at Colin and raised an eyebrow.
“Ah,” he said knowingly and so I shook my head as a warning not to divulge anything private. “Ah,” he said again. “Jinx is upset about losing Jimmy.”