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

Perhaps Jack saw a shadow come over my face because he asked me, ‘Have I treated your daughter badly in this time?’

‘No.’

‘No. I’ve got a daughter of my own. Nearly the same age. I’m not a bad man, Danny.’

‘No.’

‘Yes, you think I’m a bad man.’

‘No.’

‘Don’t fucking argue with me!’ he yelled. His anger rocked on a hair switch. ‘If I tell you that you think I’m a bad man, then that’s what you think! You know what I’m called in your newspapers? Drugs warlord – that’s a good one. Warfucking-lord.’ He said something in Thai, and his two lieutenants laughed. ‘Fucking warlord, living like this. If I’m a warlord where’s my fucking Mercedes-Benz, Danny? Where’s my fucking Mercedes-Benz? Eh?’

‘I don’t see one.’

‘No. You don’t see no Mercedes-fucking-Benz. What car do you drive, Danny?’

‘An old Vauxhall Cavalier. The cigarette lighter is broken and a spring pokes through the driver’s seat.’

He nodded sagely, squinting in appreciation of these details. Then his anger appeared to pass and a smile came over his face. ‘Actually I’ve got three Mercedes, parked in a garage, over in Fang.’ He laughed loudly, and repeated in Thai. The other two joined in the cackling. The first henchman held up three fingers for me to confirm the boast. ‘Yeah, I’m just a slant-eyed farmer with three Mercs.’ He stopped laughing suddenly. The switch from mirthful joker to volatile interrogator was terrifying. ‘You a good father, Danny?’

‘I try to be.’

‘Me too. I try to be. Try very hard. I’m just a farmer, doing the best by my children. My daughter is in Chiang Mai, in school. The best school. I’m going to send her to university in your country. How about that? I’m sending her where I was going before I got brought back from Charterhouse. She’s going to Oxford University.’

‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘Don’t send her to Oxford.’

He stiffened. Both of the henchmen sensed something, and suddenly looked uncomfortable. He squinted at me. ‘Why not Oxford? Why do you say that?’

I paused for a long time, before launching into it. I mean, I was able to clue him in about Oxford, full bib and tucker. Now Jack was looking at me as though I was a man who held some cards. The bearded one obviously couldn’t fully understand me, because he kept looking up to study Jack’s face while I was talking, whereas the other one morosely oiled his gun. Something in the fire flared briefly.

I told Jack how Charlie and I had a terrific relationship before she went to Oxford. I let him know she was a sweet and loving girl. I tipped him off about drugs and body-piercing and tattooing and whoring and general timewasting, which is the general lot at Oxford University, particularly among the professors. I really laid it on with a trowel. ‘I speak as a father,’ I said passionately. ‘The kind of father who would come through the jungle to win my daughter back, if I had to.’

He was simultaneously annoyed and wrong-footed. He stroked his chin. ‘Maybe things have changed since I was in England.’

‘Probably.’ I was able to tell him about Thomas De Quincey and a few other deadbeats – making them sound present-day – and about how Oxford University has always been a hell-hole and a jumping-off point for layabouts and people of low instinct. The way I told it by the time I’d finished you’d think it harsh for a serial killer to serve twelve months at Oxford University.

He reached round behind him and produced another bottle of whisky, splashing a measure each into two rice bowls, one of which he brought round to me. There was none, I noticed, for his men. He squatted next to me, but before handing me the bowl he looked hard in my eyes. ‘Are you shitting me?’

I looked at him without blinking. ‘My Charlie graduated at Oxford, that’s the truth. Look at her now, laid up there, drugged to the gills, unable to leave the hut. I sent them a virgin and that’s what came back.’

He nodded glumly. ‘What about Cambridge?’

I was able to put him right there, too. When I told him about the Cambridge University paedophiles he slammed down his rice bowl. I told him if he didn’t believe me he could check the record of our man in Chiang Mai. ‘Bloody fucking bastards!’ he said. ‘Land of hope and glory. Your country has gone down, dear boy! Down down down.’

‘That’s right.’

He poured more whisky and snarled, ‘So where the damned hell am I supposed to send my daughter for a decent education?’

This question stumped me. The only place I really knew about in any detail was Oxford, since that’s where Charlie went; and Durham, and I didn’t think much of what that had done for Phil’s dress sense. I racked my brains to think of somewhere. One of the sparks I’d met while doing some on-site contracting had a son studying at Nottingham, so out of ignorance I suggested that as a very fine place.

‘Nottingham, you say?’

‘Well, unlike Oxford and Cambridge they don’t drug your children and fuck ’em up the arse, so far as I can tell.’

‘Damn!’ Jack said. He sat back and savoured his whisky. ‘Nottingham. Nottingham.’ He was trying out the word, savouring it on his lips. Then he sat up again. ‘Hey! Isn’t that the place of Robin Hood? That’s me. I’m the Robin Hood of Northern Thailand!’

‘So we are still in Thailand, then?’

‘Some would say so.’

The smile on his face caught the light from the fire. The notion pleased him greatly: Jack did indeed see himself as a Thai Robin Hood. I learned a lot from him that night. He dismissed his two henchmen, even though the bearded one, whose name was Khao, made a weak protest before leaving us alone.

After draping himself in the Lincoln green of Robin Hood’s men, Jack was in a talkative mood, and I made sure I gave him a damn good