She goes to the minibar and hands me a tiny bottle, keeping one for herself. We unscrew the tops and clink. “Good luck,” the FBI says. I take the video out of my jacket pocket and hand it to her.

At first I think I’ve cracked my inner resistance, that I’ve got my objectivity back. I am able to watch the prolonged foreplay with a certain distance and professional eye. I have to admit, Damrong pulls out all the stops. With her, fellatio is developed into an art form, complete with elegance, romance, humor, drama, tension, and an attention to the visual side of the thrill which is nothing less than masterful; a sorceress at the top of her game. The masked man, too, is no amateur. He understands that he is the foil to this extraordinary performance and does not permit ego to intrude. Kowlovski is particularly courtly on his knees during the cunnilingus scene. Advanced camera techniques allow us to participate in the versatility of his tongue, the anguish of her pleasure. Kimberley pauses the disk for a moment, freezing Damrong with the tip of her tongue just touching her upper lip with her eyes half closed, to say in a philosophical tone, “I’ve been thinking about it, and the way I see her, she’s a kind of Madonna phenomenon. A basically plain face, nothing special at all, which somehow highlights the sexual charisma. A paradox, really. But you can see how it works.” The FBI presses the button that makes Damrong come to life again. “Look, she’s actually enjoying it. She’s not faking. She’s excited.”

Which is very hard to take; her excitement, I mean. Accepting how real her enjoyment is ten minutes or so before she dies does something to my head. She isn’t even slightly frightened; she is in a state of ecstasy. I tell Kimberley to turn it off, but she refuses.

“Tough love, kid,” she growls. “You’re going to suck it up this time.”

“At least give me another shot.”

She pauses the video to get four more miniature bottles from the minibar. With the action frozen, it is possible to take in a little of the scenery. Just as I recalled, a shelf with priceless objets d’art is visible: the jade reclining Buddha. Now that I know what I’m looking for, it is easy to identify the decor of Tanakan’s room at the Parthenon Club. We swallow the miniatures quickly, and she unleashes the rest of the flick.

“Wait,” I say. She pauses again, using the remote, with a what-now look on her face.

“I’m not going to be able to look at it again, after the ending, so let’s rerun the story so far. I need to know more about Kowlovski, but that damned mask is in the way.”

“Watch his hands,” Kimberley says. “They’re all we have of the human in him.”

We replay the foreplay in slo-mo. The FBI is right-the only clue to the psychology of the masked man lies in the way he uses his hands.

“There,” Kimberley says. She freezes at a point where he is attending to Damrong’s left breast.

I say, “What?”

“The shaking. You can’t see it when I freeze. There.”

It’s true -her female eye saw it probably from the start. I myself was too transfixed by Damrong. “It doesn’t prove anything,” I say.

“No, but it’s all we’ve got. Virginia sent me some porn stuff he did not long before. In the narrow confines of mainstream porn, he was something of a master.”

“No shaking in the hands?”

“No.”

The FBI backs up a few frames and freezes again. Now we are looking at three fingers lightly supporting Damrong’s left breast, while bearing in mind that those fingers are actually shaking rather wildly. Indeed, we must bear in mind that the whole hand is shuddering from the wrist. I exchange a glance with Kimberley, and she presses play.

Now that the FBI has shared her wisdom, it is not difficult to pick up on other clues. When their foreplay is almost over, he lays her on her back to begin the first of five intercourse intervals before the final countdown (on her back; doggy style; with her on top; plus a couple of rather complicated maneuvers that have him penetrating her from behind while she twists around for him to thrust his tongue down her throat).

The FBI takes us through the first penetration scene again in slo-mo. Now that I’m focused, I see that the hands that dramatically part her unresisting thighs are hardly under his control at all. At one point Damrong herself reaches down to grasp a bunch of his fingers in a comforting way: one professional to another. She also whispers something in his ear.

“STOP!” I yell. This time Kimberley obeys. She goes to the mini-bar and brings all the miniatures she can find, about ten in all, a mixture of brandy, whiskey, vodka, gin; necessity is the mother of anesthesia. I gulp two; my hands are the ones shaking in this scene. I have no choice but to let Kimberley see my pathetic, tearstained face.

“Stay with it, trooper,” she says, which only makes things worse. She has to hold my head in her arms, as she would comfort a child.

“She’s giving him moral support,” I say, hardly able to get the words out.

Even the FBI is having trouble with self-control. “Say what you like about her, that is one amazing woman.”

“It’s almost as if she loves him.”

“Why not? He definitely loves her, though he might not know it.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Why else would he be suffering like that?”

“If he’s having so much trouble with his head, how can he still perform at all?”

“Viagra is the lifeblood of the porn industry, Sonchai.”

She presses play again. We are deep into intercourse territory now, with the camera somehow zooming in on private bits that, at this level of magnification, could be any part of the body at all; could even be the genitalia of some other anthropoid species; at one point the shading of flesh from deep crimson to light pink reminds me of carnivorous vegetation, say the pitcher plant.

“Look!” He is taking her from behind again, but with such trembling in his knees that he is unable to maintain intimacy. Three times in this scene her small, elegant brown hand reaches down to reinsert his member.

“Sonchai, for god’s sake!”

“I bought her that ring,” I sob. I have just remembered. Our affair was so short, there was hardly any time for presents, and I recall how cheap I felt, buying her a silver ring from an antique stall at Wat Po for a few thousand baht, knowing she had slept with billionaires. It strikes me that it might not be a coincidence that this is the only jewelry she is wearing; that at this moment, exactly three minutes twenty-five seconds before her death according to the counter on the DVD player, she is perfectly aware that I would one day be watching this hand of hers, with my ring on it, giving comfort and aid to her executioner.

When he finally takes her to a kind of trestle for her to lean on, so that no detail of the finale will be lost to the camera lens, and fumbles with the orange nylon rope so badly that he drops it and she has to pick it up for him, I grab the remote and switch it off.

Kimberley looks at me with disappointed eyes. “Sonchai – ”

“I can’t.”

“If you don’t, it’ll haunt you for life.”

“I’m Thai. All Thais are haunted for life.”

“Sonchai!”

“Fuck your tough love, Kimberley. It’s destroying the world, haven’t you noticed?”

Suddenly I’m outside her suite, slamming the door. It is a genuine tantrum, complete with amnesia: I have no idea how I got out into the corridor at this moment. I do know that I’m running, though. There is really only one thing to do at a time like this.

I take a cab in the direction of the police station but have the driver stop at Phra Titanaka’s wat. Just outside the massive doors a string of stalls sell candles, lotus wreaths, and monk baskets. I am still shaking when I buy all the paraphernalia you need for a serious exorcism. The baskets these days are no longer wicker or bamboo but the same semi-transparent buckets of lurid hue you would use for washing the car, although these are all saffron-tinted. Inside, ready-packed by the stallholder, I find all a monk needs to survive a day or two in that spiritual desert called maya: a pack of instant coffee, biscuits, Lux brand soap, two cans of 7UP, a box of yaa dum aromatherapy sticks, toothpaste, toothbrushes, and incense. The whole idea of tambun is to store up treasure for chart na: give flowers, you’ll be beautiful; give money, you’ll be rich; give medicine, you’ll be healthy; give candles, you’ll be enlightened. It’s a long wait for the next life, though, when you’re only thirty-five.