‘Yes, yes.’ Yada nodded in agreement and looked back at his wife, whose demeanour remained hostile. ‘There was nothing I could do. The lawyer came, two policemen.’

‘Local police?’

‘Yes. We see them every day, walking up and down the beach. They must have been paid big.’

Summer and Shrimp left Yada and his wife and they headed back to Summer’s bar. They had another cocktail. By that time two British lads had wandered in and were being fussed over. Summer sat at the bar, next to Shrimp. He suddenly realised he was starving.

‘Do you know of somewhere good to eat here, Summer? You hungry?’

‘Sure.’ Summer smiled sweetly and it was as she reached over to get her handbag from behind the bar that Shrimp saw her Adam’s apple. He looked from Summer to the other girls with their arms around the lads. Yep, they were all tall girls, deep voices, big hands.

Shrimp had heard about it, he’d seen a drag act in Hong Kong but he’d never talked to a ladyboy before.

‘What? Something the matter, honey?’ Summer got off her stool; Shrimp was staring at her.

‘Are you a man, Summer?’

She giggled nervously. ‘Not a man, sugar. Didn’t you know there are three sexes in Thailand—man, woman and ladyboy? I had the operation, see?’ She patted her flat crotch. Shrimp looked horrified. ‘Don’t worry. Even have the vagina, clit, everything—so clever, these doctors. Feel everything, if you know what I mean? Real tight fit, sugar.’

‘Okay, I have to go now.’ Shrimp got quickly down from his stool.

‘Look!’ She wiggled her shorts down around her narrow hips and pulled down the front of her panties. There was a triangle of pubic hair but no appendage. ‘Let me show you the man in the boat.’

‘Not right now, thank you—have to run, just remembered something.’

Shrimp skipped past the girls, June and July, who were waiting to hug him on the way out. He was in such a hurry he didn’t see the two men who were armed with baseball bats.

41

The men skulked around like beaten dogs as Saw continued to sit by the fire and drink alone after the Burmese commander had left. Jake wondered who would dare approach him first. Toad moped around the edge of the fire. Handsome came nowhere near. He was busy; he had resumed pestering the female porters. But Weasel was most in need of reassurance from his leader and he was too stupid to know better. Jake watched him approach Saw. As soon as he was within range, Saw lashed out at him. He stood and caught Weasel by the throat and, although he was shorter than Weasel, he was at least a third heavier and broader and he picked Weasel up by the throat and threw him across the fire. Handsome stopped to watch as Weasel rolled away from the hot embers and lay panting, a wheezing noise coming from his chest, a look of consternation on his face as he waited to see what more would come his way. Saw bounded across to him and, for a moment, Jake thought he was going to finish Weasel; and he could see that Weasel thought it too and suddenly looked as if he might fight back. His body stiffened and he raised himself on his elbows, but his instincts told him it would be the last strike he ever made. Handsome started laughing. He drank from his rum bottle and he laughed at Weasel, smouldering, covered in ash. Handsome knew he was the only one who could come close to stepping into Saw’s shoes. He was like Saw in so many ways: clever, ruthless and evil. But Saw was still the dominant male in the pack. Handsome would have to wait a bit longer before he could oust Saw.

Saw stood for a few minutes, swaying on unstable feet but his eyes held a look of triumph as he grinned at Weasel and then at Handsome. He lifted his rum bottle towards him as a salute and Handsome returned it. They howled to the rafters and bats flew. Saw’s eyes filled with menace. He strode over towards the porters and picked up the youngest of the female porters by the arm and he tore open her top and exposed her small breasts. She clutched desperately at her clothes and tried to cover herself. Scrabbling across the ground the other women screamed and moved as far away as they could. Saw’s men gathered around. Here was what they had been waiting for—a return of the master they knew. As the young woman tried to get away from Saw he pulled her skirt off and pushed her to the ground. She crawled on all fours as he tore off her underwear. Saw’s men gathered round, chanting and jeering at the waiting porters. Their faces were lit with madness and lechery. Jake and Thomas moved closer to the girls and tried to hide them from the men’s view. The young porter crawled naked around the platform, like a spider with half its legs pulled off. She couldn’t escape. She couldn’t get past Saw’s men. Saw began throwing objects at her to make her move as she crawled around the platform, pleading for her life. An old pot broke as it bounced from her back onto the floor. She collapsed momentarily with the impact of it and lay for a few seconds, bleeding. In that instant Saw seemed to lose interest in her. He stopped, his chest rising and falling, the veins standing out on his neck muscles, the sweat gleaming on his body—and he looked across at Anna.

42

Alfie ducked into the doorway of the Prostitute Information Centre. He looked inside; Magda was showing a group of tourists around. She was doing the usual: ‘Here is the bed…here is where we wash the penis…’

Magda waved at him, obviously confused as to why Alfie was hiding in her doorway. She went to call to him, but he tucked himself further in the doorway and shook his head and made a face as if to say ‘not now’. Magda shrugged and went on with her tour, then she realised what Alfie was doing there—it must have to do with Katrien walking past minutes earlier. Magda had heard her heels all the way down the street. Her nose in the air. Her vampire makeup. She had been all smiles when Magda first met her; now she pretended she didn’t even know who Magda was.

Alfie stayed there a few more minutes before he ducked to the other side of the street and moved close to the walls of the Auld Church. Belle, the brass statue memorial to prostitutes everywhere, still had a bike chained to her. Alfie knew that would be what Magda wanted to tell him—she wanted to tell him to get the bike removed. She was a stickler for the rules and she felt she owed it to the prostitutes to make sure they weren’t forgotten. Alfie would do something about it later but, for now, he had to keep after Katrien who was walking past Casa Roso. Just when Alfie thought she would turn into one of the side roads, he saw her turn instead into the entrance to the Erotic Museum. He walked across the canal bridge and watched from a doorway as she walked straight in to the groundfloor shop and then disappeared right. Alfie waited a minute then followed her. He peered in. The shop looked empty. There was no one along its two congested aisles crammed with chocolate willies and flavoured condoms. The attendant wasn’t there. Nothing unusual in that, thought Alfie. He knew the woman who ran it. She was on her own most days and had probably been caught short and was out the back. He passed the mannequin on a bike hovering over a penis-shaped saddle and modelling tacky red fishnets and suspenders and came level with the stairs up to the museum itself.

He heard the sound of voices as he stepped over the rope that acted as the gate to the museum. He crept silently up. The stairs swung sharply back on themselves in the typically Dutch tall, thin canal-house style. On the walls were beautiful drawings done by John Lennon—intimate portraits of Yoko.