He led Mann down a corridor. On the right were official portraits of the King of Thailand when he was a young prince. His hair stood straight up on his head in a boxy style that made him look more like the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air rather than the future king of Thailand. There was a second photo of him in his orange robes.

‘Was the prince a monk?’ asked Mann.

‘Briefly. It is customary for most boys to enter the monastery for a few months, to learn about Buddhism. But here in Chiang Mai, where people are poor and education difficult to afford, there are many young boys studying to be monks—it means a free education for them and the added bonus that their parents are guaranteed a place in heaven.’

‘Good selling point,’ commented Mann, wryly.

The classroom was on the left, the whiteboard still up. The room had a couple of basic foldaway tables and a dozen plastic chairs—that was it. It echoed with their footsteps as they stepped onto the linoleum floor. The walls were decorated with acupuncture charts and drawings of human anatomy interspersed with posters of people on mats in various yoga positions. There was an appeal poster for the tsunami relief fund, with ‘NAP’ printed prominently across the top.

‘Do you work exclusively for NAP?’ Mann said, looking closely at a poster of smashed houses and fishing boats on roofs.

‘Not exclusively. I do whatever I can. You acquire skills along life’s road, don’t you?’

‘Like what?’

‘I help out in a hospital in Mae Sot as a medic and I go into the Burmese hills as a backpack medic, to help the hill tribes.’

‘Very worthy job. You’re a trained doctor?’

‘Somewhere between a doctor and a nurse. I am qualified to do certain emergency procedures.’

‘More of a field doctor?’

Louis was busy tidying the chairs.

‘I suppose so.’

‘One of those skills you acquired along the way?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘What are you doing here now?’

‘You emailed me, remember? I have things to do here, personal stuff.’ He turned to stare at Mann. ‘I have gone out of my way to be helpful. I feel like I’m being cross-examined. What is it you need—my name, rank and serial number?’ He spoke half-jokingly, but Mann could see he was beginning to get pissed off.

‘Look…’ Mann turned around to face him. ‘I’ll be honest—I don’t give a fuck about you or your life. I care about why five kids have gone missing. You can opt out of everything as far as I am concerned. You can spend your life saluting the sun and sticking incense cones up your arse, I couldn’t give a damn. But, yes, when it comes to my job, even where you had those tattoos on your forearms done and why you had them removed—even these details matter to me right now.’

Louis looked uneasy but apologetic.

‘Okay, okay.’ He smiled. ‘I’m not used to getting the third degree. Lots of people live here because they would rather not live somewhere else. This is a paradise where you can start again. I had the tattoos removed because I no longer believed in what they stood for.’

‘Which was?’

He had lost the smile now. ‘When I was young I belonged to the White Terror group. It’s a racist group in New York—’

‘I know what it is. The name kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it? You were in the forces though, weren’t you? Which was it, the army, the navy, special?’

‘No, you’re wrong. Look, I have told you enough. I don’t see why I have to tell you jack shit. Who the fuck are you anyway?’

‘I am a rare thing around here: someone who gives a damn what happens to those five kids. I intend to find out why they were taken and who has them. If there’s any dirty dark secret in your past that’s put these kids in danger in the present, I want to know.’

Louis sat down on one of the plastic chairs and rested his elbows on his knees. He shook his head and, as his hair parted, Mann caught the glimpse of blue on his scalp. He had racist slogans tattooed on his scalp as well as everywhere else. The White Terror group wore them on their heads as a badge of honour.

‘I came out here for some headspace. I never expected to stay but the people, the way of life here, made me rethink mine. My dirty secrets don’t go beyond 1986. The kids going missing has nothing to do with me.’ He stood and stacked the chairs and made ready to leave. ‘When someone offered me the NAP work I jumped at it. It means I can hang about up here for a few days, relax. Things can get tense down in Mae Sot.’

‘Did the kids say what they thought about NAP?’

‘They thought they were lucky. They were lucky—small group, individual attention.’

They walked back along the corridor towards the rectangle of bright sunshine waiting for them at the end.

‘How did they leave here?’

‘By airconditioned minibus.’

‘How did they seem?’

‘Seem?’

‘Happy, sad, worried? What?’

Louis thought about his answer. They stopped by the poster of the prince.

‘Young. They just seemed young. They made me feel so old. Fuck! It seems like yesterday I came here but I’ve lived here for fifteen years. Time means nothing to me now. There’s a slight change in the seasons but it always looks the same. It’s all crazy shit, huh? You were young and then one day you wake up old.’ He shrugged. ‘How did that happen?’

‘I’ve often wondered the same thing myself,’ Mann replied as he walked away and left Louis standing in the entrance to the yoga centre.

Mann went to look for his tuk-tuk driver. The young monks had vanished between the drying sheets. The other monk had finished sweeping and was sat watching the dog feeding her young. But there was also someone new in the courtyard. From beneath the obelisk at the entrance to the park an old woman stepped into Mann’s path as he made his way across the dusty square. She was carrying a small wicker basket in the shape of a ball. It contained a bird, barely more than a fledgling, startlingly ugly in the surrounds of so much gold and red and finery. This bird was grey, big eyed, and it beat its wings to try and maintain its balance as the woman turned the basket in her hands. Its dusty feathers flew from the ball. She grinned up into Mann’s face.

‘Free bird—free soul. One thousand baht.’ Mann tried to sidestep her but she was small and nimble and determined. ‘Free bird—free your soul,’ she repeated, undeterred.

Mann looked into her eyes. She was ancient. How on earth had she caught this bird? He looked over to where she was pointing. There were four other cages, each with the same type of bird, a generic and ugly type of sparrow that could be found anywhere in the world.

She wagged her finger back and forth from her basket to the other remaining cages on the floor at the side of the temple.

‘Family.’ She grinned, brown stumps for teeth, still blocking Mann’s path as he tried to go around her.

The old monk from the temple appeared behind Mann.

‘Buddhists believe to set something free is to free yourself.’

Mann looked from the monk to the woman.

‘But you have to trap it first?’

The monk and the old woman nodded in unison.

32

Alfie left Magda resting. He had cleared the mess up and had made her take a break. She was so exhausted but he was so proud of her. She had her fighting spirit back. Whilst she was sleeping he cycled over to Katrien’s. He tucked his bike around the back of her building and sauntered casually to the entrance, carrying a box; it was his usual trick of pretending to be a delivery man. With the information that Magda had got from Dorothy he could now have a crack at getting Katrien’s codes. He also needed to get back into her apartment to access her email accounts. Using his mobile, he rang NAP and asked to speak to her, making sure she was safely out of the flat, then hung up before she came to the phone.