Badly shaken: how the hell did a bunch of Columbian bums find out a secret address in Bangkok? Fighting an adrenalin rush: he needs to hide. If the Escaverada family know about the warehouse, they must know about him, too. Maybe the bombers saw him leave the warehouse and know he’s still alive? He calls Lalita on her cell phone. They’d had no time to make love, but he’d paid her bar fine, so she was in the hotel room, waiting for him.

“Get the hell out of there right now,” Magnus says, “just get out right now.”

They meet at On Nut Sky train station. He tells her things have gone badly wrong for him. He doesn’t go into detail and she is too smart to ask. He tells her she is not to worry, he still has plenty of money and will look after her, but just at a the moment she must help him. He will pay whatever she wants for a week or so totally out of sight, out of play.

Lalita does not seem overly put out. Sure, she knows a place: her home in the country, near Surin, right on the Cambodian border.

He waits while Lalita calls her parents, tells them she is coming to see them with her fiancé. After all, these are respectable, pious country people, no way she can turn up with a man unless she is at least engaged to him. Magnus doesn’t mind. He guesses enough dough will settle ruffled feathers at the end of the day. Things are difficult, but not so difficult he would consider marrying a Third World whore.

Or would he?

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