The man considered this. “Johan is at Chakkrawat Police Station,” he told me, “In Chinatown. May I ask…Can you tell me what you mean? About permits? And what did you call this person—a fixer?”
“There was some trouble with his permits in Myanmar,” I said, although something was feeling wrong now. “Someone was bribed or something, but Johan had no part in it. It was his fixer. Who’s since sorted it all out.”
The man went silent for a while. He had a kind, round face with a curious shamrock-shaped birthmark on the side of his neck, and a tendency to pause before talking that reminded me a little of Dad.
“I need to check my notes,” he said eventually. “Make sure everything we know matches with what you know.”
While he was away I googled the police station Johan had been taken to. It looked clean and orderly, which I found comforting. But it remained incomprehensible that this was where Johan was. That they could have coordinated a major arrest all the way down on Koh Samui for a man who’d done nothing more than dive on a dodgy permit someone else had organized. His very presence there was to help preserve Myanmar’s heritage.
The man came back. Johan had been taken to the police station in Chinatown because his alleged crime was committed in the vicinity, he said. It was meant to have happened just over a week ago.
I’d been pacing until that point, but at this news I sat down. Something behind my eyes felt fizzy. “I…In Chinatown? What crime?” I asked. “Do you mean…Do you mean unrelated to the permits?”
The man pursed his lips. “We do not have any information aboutan issue with permits,” he said. “The information that we have here is that he was arrested for drug trafficking.”
“I…What?”
He repeated himself, this time so quietly I could barely hear him. I couldn’t hear any of the sounds of this busy consular office now. Only the buzzing in my head, the placid gurgle of my empty stomach.
“That’s impossible,” I told him. “We…got married yesterday. He doesn’t take drugs.”
The man pursed his lips sympathetically and tilted his head to one side. He handed me a bottle of water, and I wondered how often he’d had to have these sorts of conversations, how many sympathy bottles he’d handed out.
I tried again. “Are you sure? Drug trafficking is…well, it’s just a no. Impossible. I’ve been with him the whole time he’s been in this country.”
Only I hadn’t, I realized, as the ground underneath me began to tilt.
The man spoke up. His voice was gentle. I registered the beginning of cramping in my abdomen.
“If that is true, then you should go to the police station and make a statement. You could help him.” He watched me for a moment. “You have been with him for all of the time he has been here in Thailand? He has not been on his own at all?”
I am a doctor. The words slid into my consciousness as if on a screen. I couldn’t lie. Especially in a situation like this.
“Apart from when he was traveling in from the airport,” I said. “That was the only time I wasn’t with him. But he was not doing a drug deal. He was getting his kit through customs. He’s a diver, you see; he had to bring some of his diving kit with him. There wasn’t anywhere he was willing to leave it in Myanmar, plus he was hoping todive here…” The man was watching me sympathetically. “He was just getting his kit through customs and storing it in a lockup by the hotel. Hetoldme,” I added, childishly.
The man made a few notes in the large notebook he’d been carrying since he’d found me dragging bags through the entranceway.
“I think you should just go to the police station and tell them everything you know,” he said.
“But why haven’t they taken me in for questioning, too? Why didn’t they get a statement from me on Koh Samui?”
The man held up his hands, as if to say,I’m afraid this is beyond my remit, but I could tell what he was thinking. They hadn’t bothered with me because I clearly had no knowledge of the crime, and somehow they already knew that.
“Is he OK?” I heard myself asking. “Is he safe?”
“He is not being tortured, if that is what you mean, although I cannot pretend that the conditions in police stations are good. I urge you to go there as soon as possible. If it turns out that you can help him, you must.”
Soon after that, he explained apologetically that he had a long queue of Swedish nationals waiting for him, and that he had to go. “You are welcome to stay in touch,” he said, handing me a card. His name was Niklas Sundberg.
And then I was outside again. Traffic roared in both directions as I dragged the bags up the Sukumvit Road toward Phloenchit. Above me the Skytrain rumbled, its pedestrian walkways hammered by the smart shoes of homeward bound workers.
At a loss, I sat down on a wall and got out my phone. Who to call? What could anyone do, anyway?
Someone, help me.
I became aware, suddenly, of a hot stickiness between my legs. I mustbe a day early. I’d been planning to buy tampons today; we were going to have a lazy first morning as husband and wife before going into town in the early evening for dinner and supplies. Our first full day married.
Blood began to seep through the thin fabric of my knickers.
