“You’re looking terrific,” I say.

“Am I? I suppose I am, but I’m afraid I was born about thirty years too late. You have no idea of the kind of drugs that will come online during the next decade. Any girl with the sense to start using them early in life will never age beyond twenty-two. Isn’t that amazing?”

“You mean they’ll be immortal?”

She smiles. I had forgotten how twisted her lips go when her demon reveals itself. “Better than that. I mean still looking perfect at my age. Older. There will be women who will pass themselves off as twenty-five until they die at eighty. Imagine!” She waves a hand at the orchids, the wrought iron, the balcony from which she just descended. “It’s quite splendid, I suppose, but I’m bored with it. I wish they’d hurry up and finish my renovations so I can go home. I miss my maid. I’ve sent her back to her people for a week, and I have to call her every day for help. Her ancestors come from the same village as mine in Swatow. I’ve had her all my life, and I’m only half me without her.”

“You still keep up with latest developments in pharmacology, then?”

We have ordered the full cream tea, but now that it arrives neither of us knows quite what to do with it. Moi smears the thinnest coat of cream and jam over the extreme end of a scone, nibbles at it, then sets it down. For my part, I have never developed a taste for deep dairy, I gave up on jam and other sweet things about a decade ago, and scones make me feel stuffed without contributing anything nutritious. I am not surprised that the people who invented this sedentary decadence were the biggest narcotics traffickers the world has ever known.

“Of course, I keep up,” Doctor Moi says. “If they would only give me back my license you would see what I could do.”

I knew the subject of her license would come up sooner or later. “They won’t give it back to you? After all these years?”

“No. And it’s nothing to do with either of my convictions, which are so minor nobody remembers them except the police.”

“So why?”

“It’s because cops like you keep telling everyone I murdered two of my husbands. This is Thai society: it’s not the law that destroys you, it’s the gossip.”

“Ah!”

“It’s so unfair. You probably don’t understand, chemicals are the future which is already here. The great thing for any pharmacist with brains is that only a few have realized we are now in a position to take over the world.” She takes a sip of Darjeeling, and the gesture is so well executed that a couple of Thai women sitting near us immediately begin to drink their tea with fingers in the same position, imitating the Doctor’s perfect poise.

“You don’t think oil, the economic crisis, the environment, wars, fresh water, and radical Islam will hold our attention more than chemicals?”

“Chemicals are the only way we can cope with such things. That’s the point. More than fifty percent of Westerners depend on mind-altering drugs of one kind or another. We now know that everything-love, war, money, the environment, attitude, work-everything is just a question of chemicals reacting with each other. At the end of the day bliss is all about dopamine, and anger is all about an imbalance in the blood. People are already controlled by the pharmaceutical industry, have been for more than five decades, but we’re scientists, we just don’t know how to use the power which is now in our hands.” The subject has excited her. Her long skinny fingers are shaking slightly as she raises her cup. I wonder what customized chemical she is using today. “Don’t you see, the future isn’t uncertain at all, it is quite obvious, and if I had my license back I could take over. Within less than a decade the average person won’t be able to look at the evening news without taking some kind of tranquilizer. Once the general population get hold of some of the superdrugs that are coming onstream you’ll get total, one hundred percent addiction to a family of molecules over which only a tiny percentage of the population have any control. Our power will be absolute, like having a monopoly on air.”

I have a feeling she hopes to use me in some way to persuade the authorities to give her license back. I have to stare into her eyes and shrug.

“I need a senior cop to put in a word for me. All they would have to say is that I didn’t kill any of my husbands.”

“No cop is ever going to say that. All anyone can say is that there is no proof.”

“You could get Vikorn to say that in writing?”

I’m thinking, Not for the sake of clearing up a little murder inquiry that does not interest him in the least. I say, “I’ll ask him if you like.” In an attempt to distract, I add, “That’s an amazing stone,” and look directly at the large, brilliant, orangey-pink gem at her neck.

She touches it for a second with one of her long fingers, not sure if she wants to let me get away with changing the subject. “Hmm, it’s a pad.” To my blank look, she adds, “A padparadscha. A rare kind of sapphire.”

“Is it as expensive as it looks?”

“It would buy the room,” she says without emphasis, waving a languid hand to include the entire wing of the hotel. “But let’s not get into that. I wear it to amuse myself. There’s no one here worth impressing.”

I clock the gem, thinking, Buy the room! It’s true, she is far too proud to lie about such a thing, and maybe the hotel, with its army of security guards, is the one public place in town where she can safely wear it.

She lets her eyes rest on me for a moment, then looks away. “So, why did you want to see me? Your little colleague Khun Sukum seems to think I had something to do with a dead farang. I can’t think why.”

“Khun Doctor, how good a customer of yours was Frank Charles?”

She smiles faintly at the question, as if giving it seven out of ten for ingenuity. “Customer? What do you mean? I think your mother saw me walking down Soi Cowboy with him shortly before his death. What does that prove?”

“Arm in arm. You were walking with him arm in arm. You don’t let any man take your arm unless he is HiSo or important in some other way. So I assume he was a customer. Also, he had been in Soi Cowboy for a few hours, doing a tour of the bars. He seemed in a strange state of mind-perhaps despair, depression, middle-aged paranoia. He was looking for excitement, then a few hours later you were in the soi, where you had not been seen for years. I think he called you. He needed you.”

“You mean he wanted to hire my body?”

“No. You know I don’t mean that.”

“But I don’t have a license to operate as a pharmacist. How could he be a customer?”

“You have contacts in the industry. You got away with a lot for more than a decade. That means someone senior was helping you. You frequently boast you have access to state-of-the-art drugs few people know the names of. Of course, it would be possible for you to do a little dealing on the side for a HiSo friend.” I lean forward to whisper, “Khun Doctor, we don’t know the details, but we do know you use the canals and the river for transportation. Do we really have to post river police all over your patch?”

She takes another sip of tea, gives the cream and scones a cursory glance, replaces the bone-china cup on its saucer. “You’ll get Vikorn to put in writing there is no evidence I ever killed anyone? It’s the implication of an induced heart attack in the case of my third husband that has the poor little disciplinary committee so excited.”

“I’ll ask him. I can’t promise he’ll do it.”

To my surprise she seems to accept this offer and says, “Anyway, they weren’t the sort of men you’d want to keep alive if you could possibly help it.”

I shake my head. That’s the sort of comment she’s famous for; nobody knows if, at such moments, she is being outrageous, or if she’s merely telling the truth as she sees it. Or maybe she’s just nuts?