After The Fire

7. Closing Time

Five in the morning and the night had been hard in Walking Street. The bar girls' faces were pale and tired in the pools of light as they picked their supper off the food vans. Wasted and sweaty from the heat and the demands of the night, still they kept coming, circling the corners and the doorways, prowling in and out of the bars, always with a watchful eye for the next wealthy ex-pat. These guys weren't too hard to spot in Thailand: grey hair, sun-reddened Western faces, floral shirts tight over big bellies, and wallets that opened wide for the right smile.

The Johnny l'Americain bar doors were flung open onto the street, and there, bang centre, shaven-headed, wearing his favourite old Triple Five Soul vest and cargo shorts, with jacked-up muscles and beaten-up tribal tattoos, Mick Bluff cranked up the volume for the last set of his slot. Old school techno, late in the night now and a bit of a rarity round here, but it was what he loved, and it always got this crowd back up on its feet. He saw Rahul, the old Indian owner, looking at him. In a minute he'd tell him to turn it down, always fearful of having to increase his bung to the local police, but in the meantime, Mick could nudge it up another notch and keep on dancing in the booth.

Mick knew this was a good time. He was coupled up, so far as he ever got, and mostly happy. Mainly because he'd been smart enough to stay out the marriage trap. A mate of his had made the mistake of getting married last year. Six months in they found him in a pile at the bottom of his tower block. Pati, his inconsolable wife, said he had jumped from their condo balcony. She had told the stone-faced detectives how she had begged him to stop, but he'd been too determined. She showed how she had reached out for him while he was sitting there, yet he had pushed her away, and slipped off the balcony in front of her. When they'd calmed her down, she talked for hours: how poor Carlton had been so sad, how he kept on missing England and what he'd given up there to come here to Pattaya, and how, try as she might, she couldn't cheer him up.

Mick knew with certainty that Carlton didn't have a suicidal idea in his head. In fact, exactly the opposite – he was loving life. An overweight tax inspector out of Scarborough, Carlton had finally had enough of being bossed around by the government. He'd sold his house and flown business class out to Bangkok while he was young enough to have fun. He'd certainly enjoyed it, though not in the way he expected. He'd got his stomach stapled, lost a lot of weight, tried to party – which was how he'd met Mick – but his heart wasn't in it. He wanted something quieter, and that's where Pati came in. Carlton, silly sod, too vulnerable after ten years on his own, had fallen head over heels.

Mick guessed, and the stone-faced detectives would almost certainly know, that Pati's three brothers paid the couple a visit that night. Maybe for drinks on the balcony, more probably getting straight to the point, but either way Carlton wouldn't have seen it coming. The brothers would have left in a hurry after Carlton hit the pavement, leaving Pati time both to wash up the glasses, and get worked up and emotional for the police.

Except for Mick, no-one cared. Soon enough Pati would sell the condo, reassign his pension, and split the money between herself and her brothers. So long as they looked after the police, they wouldn't be too interested. Carlton was far underwater now, the waters breaking overhead, another ex-pat drowned in a foreign country where, whatever the size of his money clip, he'd never quite belong.

Mick hadn't married Amita, but he did kind of love her, despite everything. He'd tried not to, because that was how you went wrong. But you couldn't not like a woman who turned up regularly and slept with you every night, whether or not you wanted sex (and lately he wasn't so bothered, he just liked the company), who did your laundry, who cooked, cleaned, who made you laugh, dressed up good when you went out, who had a banter with your mates without stepping over any lines. He'd found her sitting in a bar six years back, and he was still paying her 40,000 Baht a month to keep her on board, so in theory he could pull the plug any time, but she'd outsmarted him in one way: Florence, their daughter, was going to be five soon, and no doubt about it, leaving her was going to be hard.