long,’ I said, and it sounded strange – that I would be here on the far side of the world working for a man who I had known for just a few months. But Farren had found me in London when I was at a low and feeling that all the best times were behind me. He had seen some point to me when I was struggling to see it myself. Most important of all, when I had no work, Farren had offered me a job. ‘Long enough,’ I said.
I parked the bike in the car park and we started up the path towards the house. A pale green snake, eighteen inches long, slithered along beside me. Its head was livid red, as if it was enraged about something. I kept an eye on it. But it got no closer, and it got no further away. It was as if we were out for a stroll together. Then at the last moment, at the end of the mangroves, it slipped back into the trees.
Before I rang the bell, Farren’s man answered the door. Pirin. A short, heavy-set Thai, dark as one of the elephant mahouts. He led us inside. I had only been here a handful of times, and the beauty of Farren’s home took my breath away.
It was full of glass and air and space. But it was Thai. Handwoven rugs on gleaming hardwood floors. Claw-foot sofas and chairs carved from more hardwood. That sense of abundance, as though the world would never run out. Beyond the glass wall of the living room there was an infinity pool that seemed suspended in space. It hung above the bay like a good dream.
Farren rose from the water, his body tanned and hard, and as Pirin draped a white towel around his broad shoulders, he came towards us smiling with all his white teeth.
‘I want my money back,’ Baxter said.
The Australian was an old guy, worn out from the plane, stiff and creaky from the ride on my motorbike. His strong days were all behind him.
But once he had his hands around Farren’s throat, it took Pirin and me quite a while to pull him off.
3
I walked from Farren’s home back down to the security gate, pausing to let a flock of two-stroke bikes pass by – all the cleaners and cooks and maids coming to work, two or three of them perched on some of the bikes – and I tasted the diesel of their little machines on the back of my throat.
I watched the tribe of helpers hurrying to their work in the big white houses and it seemed strange to me, like something from a hundred years ago, a world divided into people who were servants and people who were served.
I headed down a track through the mangroves that eventually led to the bay until I came to a single-storey building with blacked-out windows. It looked like an abandoned barracks at an army base. But this was the heart of Wild Palm, and as soon as I opened the door I was hit by a barrage of noise.
A long table, covered with phones, computer screens and half-eaten food, surrounded by a dozen men and women – mostly men – all of them dressed for the beach, all of them speaking urgently into handsets – cajoling, pleading, bullying, laughing, taunting and selling – always selling. None of them were over thirty. All of them were talking English but the accents were from the US and the UK and South Africa and Australia. I walked to the far end of the room to the water cooler. Some eyes flicked my way, but they all ignored me.
I sipped from a polystyrene cup, and nodded at a young Englishman called Jesse. He was very white – his skin, his cropped hair. For someone living in the tropics, he looked as though he had never been touched by the sun. He was wearing a baggy pair of Muay Thai shorts and nothing else. He cradled the phone between his neck and shoulder as he doused a bowl of noodles in sweet chilli sauce.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he was saying, the accent from the north of England. ‘I’m at Heathrow. Just checking into my flight for Thailand. Excuse me a second,’ he said into the phone, and then he stared at me, the pale eyes wide, as if I was someone else, in some other place. ‘Seat 1K?’ he said. ‘Oh, that will be fine. The vegetarian meal, please …’ The eyes flicked away, and I noticed that there were three watches on his thick white arm, all of them set to a different time zone. ‘Sorry about this, John,’ he said into the phone, and the eyes were on me again. ‘Do you have my Gold Executive Club Number?’ A pause. I sipped my water, trying to fit the words he was saying to the place he was in. But I saw that was impossible. ‘Oh, it’s in the system already?’ he said, eyes wide with surprise. ‘Perfect. Sorry, John – the hassle of modern travel, eh? What’s that?’ A burst of mad laughter. ‘Yeah, you’re right there – at least I’m in First Class.’ He covered the phone with his hand. ‘Don’t you have anything to do?’
‘Getting you,’ I said. ‘Bringing you to the house. That’s what I’ve got to do.’
‘Where were we?’ he said into the phone, raising five fingers to say he would be right with me. ‘As I say, I’m leaving London right now and coming to Thailand. I am going to be there with my boss, Mr Farren, for forty-eight hours. And there’s a brief window of opportunity – a brief window – for a serious investor such as yourself who was smart enough to retire to Phuket with his lovely young Thai wife. A high-yield investment programme. New beachfront apartments in Hat Nai Han. You got it – just south of Hat Kata and Hat Karon. I shouldn’t really be telling you this …’
I watched him over the rim of my polystyrene cup. His pale features creased with concentration. There was a script on the table in front of him. But Jesse did not need it.
‘Phuket has one of the fastest-growing property markets in the world,’ he said, his voice lower now. ‘The cost of living is low but rental returns are high. You retired to the most prosperous province in Thailand.’ He paused dramatically. ‘When the other Asian Tigers were mewing for mercy, on Phuket you were still roaring … on Phuket you have muscles on your muscles … Phuket me love you long time … Phuket me love you too too much … Phuket your only problem this side of the grave is wealth management … on Phuket you will live forever in the lap of luxury and the gods will get down on their knees and bow before their master …’ He winked at me. ‘Listen, we’re getting ready for take-off,’ he said. ‘I am going to have to turn off my BlackBerry now. Oh, glass of champagne, please! No nuts! Do you have the extra-large sleeper suit? Look, I’ll call you when I land, John. A beer at the Sunset Bar in the Chedi? Sounds good.’
He hung up and stood up, and I saw his gaudy Muay Thai shorts. The first time we met he had told me that he came to Phuket for the martial arts, that there were serious Muay Thai training camps all over the island and any day now he was going to cut back on the Tiger beer and get back in training.
We walked up to the house together.
‘What’s it like in First Class?’ I asked him, still somehow believing that what he said on the phone had some roots in reality.
Jesse adjusted his Muay Thai shorts, and his blue eyes got a faraway look. ‘I reckon it rocks, don’t you?’ he said.
I nodded towards the house. ‘The Aussie I picked up at the airport,’ I said. ‘Baxter. He doesn’t seem very happy.’
Jesse laughed at that.
‘Farren will sort him out,’ he said.
We were on Bangla Road, the great gaudy strip of Patong, and there was a gibbon in a cowboy hat outside the bar.
‘Hello, sexy man,’ one of the girls said to Baxter – fifty-something, fifteen stone, pale and shaky from the long day – and the gibbon bared its teeth and had a good old laugh at that.
I looked up at the cracked neon sign above the bar. The gibbon
