More Short Fuses (Four Free Short Stories)
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The Irishman shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand and peered down the crowded street. Both sides were lined with stalls selling dried fish, counterfeit cassette tapes and cheap clothes. The smell of spices, fried food and sewage was overpowering. “Bloody hell, Park, how much further?” he asked.
His Thai companion flashed a broad smile. “There,” he nodded. “The big building.”
The Irishman squinted at a four-story concrete block with iron bars over its windows. There were several signs affixed to the side of the building, all of them in Thai, but he recognised a red and white Coca-Cola symbol and a sign advertising Kodak film.
He shuddered. He didn’t like being among crowds, and the street was packed with sweating bodies: old women huddled over trays of cigarettes; men sleeping on sunloungers while their wives stood guard over their stalls; bare-chested and shoeless children running between the shoppers, giggling and pointing at the sweating foreigner. A three-wheeled tuk-tuk sped down the narrow street, narrowly missing a teenage boy, its two-stroke engine belching out black fumes.
“Come on,” said Park. “We said three o’clock.”
The Irishman looked at his watch. “Shit, if we’re late we’re late,” he said. “This is Thailand, right? No one’s ever on time here.” Rivulets of sweat trickled down his back and his shirt was practically glued to his skin. According to Park, it would get even hotter in the weeks to come, but by then the Irishman would back in Dublin, drinking Guinness and chatting up the local talent. The Thai girls were pretty enough with their soft brown skin and glossy black hair, but the Irishman preferred blue-eyed blondes.
Park walked down the street with an easy, relaxed stride, covering the maximum amount of distance with the minimum of effort. He scratched his right cheek as he walked. The skin there was rough and ridged with scar tissue. Park had told the Irishman that he used to be a kickboxer, but this wasn’t the sort of scarring that a man would get from fighting with fists or feet. The Irishman hurried after Park, sweat pouring down his face.
They were followed by two Thai men, friends of Park with virtually unpronounceable names who’d met them at Chiang Mai airport. They smiled a lot but the Irishman didn’t trust them. But then he didn’t trust anybody in Thailand, not since he’d given money to a beggar with no arms as he’d left his hotel in Bangkok. The beggar had been sitting cross-legged at the bottom of a footbridge over one of the city’s perpetually congested roads. He had been in his early twenties, dirty and dishevelled and holding a polystyrene cup in his teeth, the empty sleeves of his T-shirt dangling at his sides. The Irishman had dropped two ten-baht coins into the cup and Park had roared with laughter. It was only then that the Irishman had noticed the bulges and realised that the beggar had his arms folded behind his back. He had reached towards the cup to take back his money, but Park had restrained him, laughing and explaining that the beggar was simply like everyone else in the city, trying to make a living. Since then, he had taken nothing at face value.
He stepped aside to allow three saffron-robed monks to walk by. The monk bringing up the rear was a young boy who smiled up at the Irishman. It was a guileless smile and the boy’s eyes were bright and friendly. The Irishman grinned back. It seemed as though everyone he met in Thailand smiled, no matter what their circumstances.
Park took them around the side of the building to a loading ramp. The four men walked up the ramp to a steel shutter which Park banged on with the flat of his hand, three short raps followed by two more in quick succession. A door set into the shutter opened a couple of inches and someone inside muttered a few words in Thai. Park replied and the door opened wide. He motioned for the Irishman to go in first.
It was dark inside and the Irishman blinked as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. The warehouse was hot and airless. The area around the door was bare except for a small steel table and two wooden stools, but the rest of the building was packed with wooden crates and cardboard boxes which reached almost to the ceiling. A line of bare lightbulbs provided the only illumination in the warehouse, but there were so many crates and boxes that much of the interior was in shadow, adding to the Irishman’s feeling of claustrophobia. He wiped his damp forehead with his sleeve.
Park smiled sympathetically. “We check, then we go,” he said.
The Irishman nodded. “Let’s get on with it, then.”
The man who’d opened the door was short and squat with a tattoo of a tiger on his left forearm and a handgun stuck into the belt of his pants. He had a frog-like face with bulging eyes, and around his neck was a thick gold chain from which dangled a small circular piece of jade. He grinned at Park and nodded towards the far end of the warehouse. Three more Thais in T-shirts and jeans with guns in their belts materialised from the shadows. The Irishman looked at Park, and the Thai gave him a reassuring smile. Together they walked down an aisle between the towering boxes, following the man with the tiger tattoo. They turned to the left down another aisle where a large space had been cleared. A cardboard box had been opened and half a dozen Panasonic video recorders taken out. The man with the tattoo spoke to Park in rapid Thai.
“He wants you to choose one,” Park explained.
The Irishman shrugged carelessly. “You choose,” he said.
Park squatted down and tapped one of the machines with his finger. The man with the tiger tattoo picked up a screwdriver and quickly removed a panel from the bottom of the video recorder. He pulled out three polythene-covered packages containing white powder and handed one to the Irishman.
The Irishman walked over to a stack of boxes. He indicated the cardboard box at the bottom of the stack. “That one,” he said.
The man with the tiger tattoo began to talk quickly but Park silenced him with a wave of his hand. Park said something in Thai but the man continued to protest. “He says it’s too much work,” Park translated. “He says they’re all the same.”
The Irishman’s eyes hardened. “Tell him I want to see one from that box.”
Park turned to the man with the tattoo and spoke to him again. There was something pleading about Park’s voice, as if he didn’t want to cause offence. Eventually the man with the tattoo shrugged and smiled at the Irishman. He waved his two colleagues over and they helped him take down the upper boxes until they had uncovered the one on the bottom. They dragged it into the centre of the space. The man with the tattoo handed a crowbar to the Irishman and pointed at the box.
“He wants you to”
“I know what he wants,” said the Irishman, weighing the crowbar in his hand. The metal was warm and his palms were damp with sweat. He stared at the man with the tattoo as if daring him to argue, but the Thai just smiled good-naturedly as if his earlier protests had never occurred. The Irishman inserted the end of the crowbar into the top of the box and pushed down. There was a crashing sound from the far end of the warehouse followed by shouts. He looked across at Park.
The man with the tiger tattoo pulled his gun from his belt and ran towards the entrance to the warehouse. His two companions followed. Park yelled at his own two men to go with them.
“What’s happening?” shouted the Irishman.
“Maybe nothing,” said Park.
“Maybe nothing, my arse,” the Irishman shouted. “This is a fucking set-up.” He jumped as a gun went off, the sound deafening in the confines of the building. There were more shots, louder than the first. The Irishman glared at Park. “Maybe nothing?” he yelled.
Park looked left and right, then grabbed the Irishman by the arm. “This way,” he said, pulling him down the aisle. They ran between the stacks of boxes.
“Is it the cops?” asked the Irishman, gasping for breath.
“Maybe,” said Park. “I don’t know.”
A bullet thwacked into a cardboard box above the Irishman’s head and he ducked down. “The cops wouldn’t just shoot, would they?” he asked.
“This is Thailand,” said Park. “The police can do anything they want.?
?? He kicked an emergency door and it crashed open. Sunlight streamed in, so bright that the Irishman flinched. Park seized him by the belt of his jeans and pulled him across the threshold, then stopped dead.
It took the Irishman a second or two to realise that the once noisy street was now totally silent. He blinked and shielded his eyes from the blinding sun. The stall-owners had gone, and so had the crowds. Khaki Land-rovers had been arranged haphazardly around the building and red and white barriers had been erected across the alley. Behind the vehicles and the barriers crouched men with rifles, in dark brown uniforms and sunglasses. The Irishman whirled around but immediately knew that there was no escape. They were surrounded. Three rugged Thais with assault rifles stood at the emergency exit, their fingers on the triggers of their weapons.
A megaphone-amplified Thai voice echoed off the walls of the alley.
“Drop the crowbar,” said Park calmly. “Drop the crowbar and put your hands above your head. Very slowly.”
The Irishman did as he was told.
The Irishman is sent to prison in Bangkok where he faces the death penalty for drugs offences. His bosses put together a daring plan to get him released. They track down the prisoner who escaped from prison at the start of the book, and blackmail him into helping the Irishman. It’s a dangerous mission, one that ends in bloodshed in the lawless badlands of the Golden Triangle.
THE EYEWITNESS