TABOO TALES(erotica)

Somehow it felt better, clearer, knowing something about the woman who’d given birth to me, and Nia was rubbing my back gently; I think she thought I may have been affected by dad’s story, but the truth was, she was still little more than a face in a photograph; mum was my mum, what dad had told me was just background information, nothing there to make me change my life plans or anything.

I had another question. “Dad, how come you speak Vietnamese so well?”

He grinned. “Jamie, your mother is a good and patient teacher; you should have stuck with it!”

He stood up. “Anyway, it’s late, we have a busy day tomorrow, go to bed, now, your own beds, and I’ll see you at breakfast!”

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Excerpt from the private diary of Nguye’t Morrison:

Saturday, 23 April, 2011

Tomorrow I shall graduate, I shall be Ms. Nguye’t Morrison LLB, B. Anth (Hons). Feels funny, I’ve been in school of one sort or another since I was 4 years old, now to be thrust out into the cold, cold world and have to fend for myself after 17 years, feels scary, or it would be if I didn’t have the Polar Bear and his wisecracks and obscure sense of humour –I swear, he gets more like dad every day; even mum’s taken to looking at him sideways…

Now that he’s a Captain of Industry (or at least boss of his own practice, anyway) he finally has the time and space to work with me on finding my sister. Our goal has never changed, from the day we found out about her, and Jamie has been a godsend, with all his odd contacts and furtive little friends in the world’s out-of-the-way places, digging for hints, clues, or information, finding a piece here, a grain there, always working towards getting her back. Poor baby, he really has put his heart and soul into this, and I love him all the more for it.

He sent me a fabuloso graduation present, a platinum bracelet set with blue-tinged diamonds from Hong Kong, he says they match my eyes — isn’t that sweet? He’s due back in later this afternoon from Hong Kong, one of his minions is collecting him from Heathrow and bringing him directly here, the parents can have him when I’ve finished with him!

He also said he has a lead, something solid, so he’s a little excited, well, a lot excited but trying not to show it, but he thinks he may have got the first piece of the puzzle of where my sister, Hu’e, disappeared to, and where she went after that piece of shit police captain took her. After much persuading, mum told us his name, and the district he controlled, and Polar Bear took it from there, so if he’s made a start, we have a jumping-off point at last.

When mum told me, I wanted to get the Vietnamese government to hunt him down, corral him so I could have a word with him, maybe rip off his arm and beat him with the wet end, but common sense prevailed (Jamie) and we agreed we’d do this slowly and methodically, although when I do find that baby-stealing piece of shit, I am going to shove a stiletto heel so far up his arse it’s going to bruise his tonsils. Then I’m going twist it until one of his eyeballs falls out. Polar Bear says I have deep-seated, unresolved anger issues…

When I was young, I read a children’s book of folk stories from around the world, and one of the stories was from Malaysia, about Pontianak, the Child-Stealer, who came into houses at night and took children, and it frightened me for years, I was afraid it would come and take me. Mum always told me there are no such things, made me feel safe again, but now I know there really is a child-stealer, and he came and he stole my sister away, and I swear to the Goddess I will get her back!

I start my new job in mid-May, not the beginning, Jamie asked me to defer for two weeks but didn’t say why, so he’s up to something, it better be good! I will be a Junior Counsel with the Legal Protection Unit, based in central London, so just a bus-ride to work in the morning, and I can’t wait; for a start, I get unrestricted access to UNICEF and their Child Search Database, plus I get to sift through the reports that come through via sister agencies and people like Amnesty International, and Child Rights Coalition Asia.

I’ll do the think-work, and Jamie’ll do the legwork, and maybe we can track down my sister, find that little girl he stole from her mother, from her family, from me, and let her know who she is, tell her about her real mother, who never stopped loving her, who never stopped wanting her, and maybe, give my mum some peace of mind at last.

Anyway, I suspect Jamie’s got some good news for me, as he’s been in Qui Nhon, about 200 miles from Da Nang, looking at on-shore thingummies for oil and gas whatnots, and I suspect he may have been sneaking around Da Nang, having a bit of a snoop, and whatever he found has made him excited, but he’s trying to hold it down and play it cool; Ha! The last time he fooled me, I was 6, he told me to pull his finger, so I did…

He’d better be champing at the bit when he gets here, I am, and I plan on making jungle music with him, so his blowpipe better be in full working order!

+++

My contact in Vietnam, a really nice, almost honest police Colonel called Phuoc Dienh, for two bottles of Chivas and a tickle with a hundred dollar bill, agreed to let me look at the records the Vietnam Security Force have been collecting on missing children from 1983 to the present day, and I noticed one thing. Almost all records from the Da Nang area were marked as ‘Case Closed’ or ‘Unsolved’, and were signed off by the same Police Captain, Minh Thuyet, then later Police Commander Thuyet.

I asked my new friend what was the likelihood that this particular Captain was in some way connected to the disappearances, and got back a suddenly blank, professional face, all smiles that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Police work can be so overwhelming when your force spread so thin! Perhaps I have a little chat with him, I sure he be happy to clear this up, with overwork and everything else, he obviously sign them off by mistake. Oh dear, what a scamp he is!”

And Colonel Dienh, with his happy smiling face, and flat unsmiling eyes, closed the file cabinets, escorted me out of the Record Room, and walked with me all the way back to my hotel, obviously concerned I’d get lost on my way there, talking about everything, saying nothing at all..

At last I had confirmation. I already knew the name of the police captain who’d taken Hu’e; it was a Captain Thuyet, mum had told me, now I knew his first name, and that he’d signed off dozens of missing child reports over several decades.

I was going to get no more here. Now that the police higher-up’s knew I was looking, they’d make sure there was nothing to find, nothing to sully Vietnam’s reputation as a holiday spot; they’d deal with him internally, and that was what I was most afraid of; I knew all about Chi Hoa, the fearsome high-security prison in Ho Chi Minh City, and once he ended up in there, probably incarcerated under a different name, my search would be over — we’d never see or hear of him again.

The Vietnamese officials were doing their best to clean up the mess that followed the war, and were eager present themselves as a progressive, modern nation; true, and to their credit, the corruption and post-war incompetence had been largely eradicated; but there were still echoes of it, and I was hearing them loudly right now.

I made a call to the man who’d given me Col. Dienh, Lieng Ho An, the Exploration Coordinator and generally nice guy, and asked him if he could put in a word with the government officials who managed the project, try and get me back in a room with Col. Dienh.

While I waited for Lieng, I actually got a significant amount of work done; after all, I was there to examine the potential of the inshore oil deposits everyone was convinced existed, and deep-water offshore drilling was decidedly risky with China sabre-rattling over the South China Sea, so I had a lot to keep me occupied.

10 days passed, I was due to leave, and then I got a call from Lieng.

“Jamie, the Colonel has agreed to see you again, but it will be in private, in the open, at the Blowout Preventer site, and he wants to do it tonight, so meet me downstairs in 15 minutes!”

I was ready when Lieng arrived, and we drove to the Preventers, abstract-looking steel sculptures in a maze of large-bore pipes and diverter valves under the test well drilling rigs, where we waited for a few minutes. A sleek saloon car pulled up and a dark figure came towards us.

“James, Lieng,” He nodded, and motioned for me to follow him. Lieng stayed in view of the car and remained where he was.

The colonel started speaking.

“James, Lieng Ho An has told me more of why you so interested in Minh Thuyet. I will tell you he not District Commander anymore. I shall speak with him later, he waiting for me in Security Force barracks here in Da Nang, we shall have an… interesting and informative conversation; I am sure I will learn many more new and… interesting… things. This not a good thing that he do, and it not liked that people asking these questions. I help you because this wrong, it must stop! Too much of the old ways still here, he part of that, and for this, Thuyet will not see Da Nang again, but I have details from him of what he been… doing for last 30 years. He know where he going, he want very much to help, it only chance he got. Read this and learn, it make… instructive… reading. I give this to you, but it did not come from me, and I do not know you, have not met you, I not here now, and we have never spoken. Your work here in Vietnam is completed, now you will go, do not return. Good luck James!”

He handed me an envelope and walked back to his car, got in, and drove away.

Lieng drove me back to my hotel, where I looked over what Dienh had given me; a thick wad of photocopied typewritten pages, single spaced and dense, no paragraphs.

I interleaved each page with the pages in the project file I had, and packed it away with my stuff, waiting for the Courtesy Bus to take me to Da Nang Airport.