Smoking Poppy by Graham Joyce (the read aloud family .txt) 📕

keep tourists away from the opium. Anyway, this girl and her boyfriend were too ill to travel, so they had to spend a second night in the village. We were overnighting it so their guides decided to press on with the original group, and we were to bring the sick pair with us later.

‘I went to take a look at them. They were stretched out in a bamboo hut. I don’t know how many pipes they’d had, but they were out of it. It can get you like that. You think nothing’s happening so you smoke more and more and then you’re a puddle on the floor. I went through their bags. I was really after the guy’s passport, because my boyfriend wanted one. The guy had obviously had the sense to leave it somewhere safe before coming on the trek, ’cos his wasn’t there. But I found hers.’

‘That’s when you stole Charlie’s passport?’

She nodded. ‘Next day our guides were up bright and early, but this couple were still sick. Maybe it wasn’t the opium; maybe something else. But our guides were in no mood to hang around waiting for these two farang to recover. The guides were jumpy, I don’t know why. A couple of strangers had walked into the village – not tribesmen – and I think they wanted us on our way. So we left. That’s it.’

‘You left them there?’

‘Yes.’

‘That was a dirty piece of work you did that day, wasn’t it?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re fuckin’ sorry,’ Mick said. ‘We’re all fuckin’ sorry.’

The prison officer wanted to join in. ‘Yeh. Solly. Velly solly.’

‘You have a lot to answer for, young lady,’ said Phil.

‘If I get a map,’ Brazier-Armstrong said, ‘do you think you can tell me where the village is?’

‘I’ll try.’

He spoke with the prison officer who went off in search of a chart. Brazier-Armstrong read my thoughts. ‘It’s four or five months ago. Hardly likely she’s still there.’

I said nothing. The officer came back and spread a good-sized army map across the table. Marchant placed her finger on the map, close to the border with Myanmar, halfway between Pai and Fang, in the mountainous region to the north-west of Chiang Mai. ‘Here.’

The prison officer looked grave. His brow wrinkled. He said some words in Thai to Brazier-Armstrong. They seemed to be discussing the implications. At length, Brazier-Armstrong said, ‘He wishes it were nearer the Golden Triangle area, where there are tourists making treks every day. But this place is lawless. Over the past six months there has been fighting between the opium gangs. Also the border is mined. Officially the Thai government wants the world to think it has the opium growing under control. In reality, they send in the army to burn a few fields, and the opium growers simply drift westwards.’

‘When can we go there?’ I asked him.

‘You don’t seem to understand, Daniel. There are no roads. It’s an area of steep-sided ravines—’

‘She went there,’ Mick interrupted, pointing at Claire Marchant. ‘So did Charlie.’

‘You can trek it,’ Marchant said. ‘You would need guides, but it can be done.’

Claire Marchant had served her usefulness. She stood up. As the female guard was leading her out of the room, Phil got to his feet. He put a hand on Marchant’s shoulder. ‘Don’t despair. You have reason to be in good hope.’

‘What?’

Phil narrowed his eyes at her. ‘The Lord is closer than you think.’

‘Thank you for that,’ Marchant said. ‘It’s comforting. I’ll take that and smoke it. I’ll put it in my chillum. I’ll powder it and put it in my beaker. I’ll snort it up my fucking nose.’ She turned to her guard. ‘Can you get me out of here, please?’

Mick was grinning, but I looked at Phil and felt desperately sorry for him. He was trying to do his best.

The prison officer spoke in rapid Thai. Brazier-Armstrong’s face dribbled with sweat as he turned to me, saying, ‘He says the situation is volatile in that region. There are Kareni refugees from across the border, KMT guerrilla forces, not to mention the opium gangs. The Thai government can’t even move their army around up there. I have to say to you, in an official capacity, that if you do go it is against my recommendation. If you go, and I will put this on record, the British Consulate can be of no help to you whatsoever.’

Mick slapped his thigh. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that will be a big fucking loss to us, won’t it?’

Securing the services of a guide was not as easy as we thought it would be. Several tour companies in Chiang Mai offered three-or four-day treks, but mostly to the controlled areas north of neighbouring Chiang Rai and up around the Golden Triangle. Our trek had to be open-ended. We had only a rough idea of the location of the village we were after, and we didn’t know where we would want to go after arriving there. The tour companies failed to understand what we wanted: they worked hard at trying to fix us up with packaged treks in the company of German and Australian tourists looking for adventure holidays.

There was another problem. Whenever we pointed to the region we needed to get to, there was a marked reluctance to even try to find suitable guides. Eventually we were helped by a small company called Panda Travel. They knew of guides who had spent several years in the Thai army. When we offered to double the going rate, a telephone call was made. We would need two guides, we were told, should anything happen to one of them. We arranged to meet up.

The two guides came to the offices of Panda Travel. On arrival they went directly to the rear of the offices where the Thais huddled in conversation. The prospective guides chain-smoked cigarettes, turning occasionally to look at the three of us, coolly and critically, I thought.

Finally they were introduced to us as Bhun and Coconut. Both were wiry little guys who didn’t smile nearly