Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller полностью

“I know that,” Miaow says. “I was with him for a long time. Not just two or three days, like you.”

“Miaow,” Boo says.

“He took care of me,” Miaow says, and suddenly she’s swiping at her cheeks with her forearm. “I was almost a baby, and he…he-” She breaks off, grabs air, and dives in again. “I thought…I thought you started again. Started the yaa baa, I mean. I thought you went away because you wanted that. More than you wanted anything. More than you wanted to-I don’t know-to stay with me. With us.”

“No,” Boo says. “I don’t use that now. Remember Hank Morrison?”

“Sure.” She scrubs her arm over her eyes as though she’s punishing them. Then she sniffles. “He helped Poke adopt me.”

“He got me into a monastery up north. The monks got me through it.”

She looks at him over the top of her arm. “A monastery?”

The corners of his mouth lift. “I meditated. I even ate vegetables.”

“But you’re back,” Miaow says. “You’re here. Why did you come back?”

“I belong here. Where else would I go?”

“It’s his forest,” Da says.

Miaow looks at Da as though she doesn’t understand, but then she nods. “It is,” she says. “But why are you here now? I mean here, in this apartment?”

“I came to ask Poke for help,” Boo says. “But it turns out I’m going to help him.”

“How?”

Boo lifts Peep to his shoulder and begins to pat the baby’s back. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

“A FIRE,” TON says.

“That’s what he looked for,” says Ren. “They checked the search history on the computer he used in the morgue at the Sun. He was looking for fires. He printed out stuff on four or five of them, a factory and some houses and a couple of slums.”

Ton is wearing a suit that cost more than three thousand dollars and looks every penny of it. He leans against the edge of the desk, the unbuttoned, silk-lined jacket hanging open in a way that gives Ren an almost sickening pang of envy. No matter what he does, no matter how much money he eventually makes, he will never in his life look like that, like a man who was born to wear expensive clothes.

Captain Teeth-Kai-has one earphone in place and is listening to Ton and Ren with the free ear. Now he swivels his chair around to face them and says, “So he’s looking for a fire? So what? Anyone could see that Pan’s been in a fire, with those hands.”

“He saw Pan’s hands the first time they met,” Ton says. “Why go looking for fires now?” He runs his own hand over his jaw as though checking on his shave. “Who did he talk to today?”

“The cop, Thanom,” Ren says. “And Wichat.”

“Thanom knows part of it,” Ton says, “but he’d never say anything, not after what he went through to erase those records.” He lowers his eyes, studying an area of the carpet. “Wichat might say things he shouldn’t-he’s stupid enough-but I doubt he knows much of anything. Still,” he says, “Wichat.”

“But you…” Ren says. He looks like he’s trying to hear something that’s just out of earshot.

“Yes? I what?”

“You gave him Wichat.”

“Of course I did. Anybody good would have found Wichat. When someone really digs into Pan-and they will if we continue-it’ll be somebody good. You’ve got to assume that the people you go up against will be good, or you’ll be caught stretching your willie when you should be wondering what’s around the corner. And after he talked to Wichat, he went to the morgue at the Sun?”

Ren says, “He called me to set it up.”

Ton straightens. “Timing,” he says. “Wichat doesn’t know what the fire means, any more than you two do, but he knows when it happened. He probably gave Rafferty a year, maybe two. Rafferty went looking for fires during that period. Anybody who puts it together is going to have a new set of questions.” He pushes himself away from the desk and puts both hands into his trouser pockets. Ren hears change jingle. “This exercise would have been worth it,” Ton says. He glances at Ren. “If it weren’t for having to kill the reporter. As it is, it may be worth it anyway.”

He goes to the door and opens it, but instead of going through, he lets it swing closed again and turns back to Ren. “Anything else? I mean anything at all.”

Ren swallows before answering. “His tail lost him twice today. Just for a few minutes.”

Ton blinks slowly, leaving his eyes closed for a second. “How? When? Where?”

“The first time was after he finished at the Sun. He went back to Silom, probably just going home, but he kept looking behind him, like he knew someone was back there.”

“He undoubtedly did,” Ton says, putting his teeth into it. “I more or less told him he’d be followed.”

“But Dit-that was who was following him-Dit figured that he shouldn’t let Rafferty see his face. Rafferty went into a building, and when he got into the elevator, he turned around again, so Dit ducked back, and he couldn’t see what floor Rafferty went to.”

Ton waits. After a long moment, he says, “And?”