The Dead and the Missing: An Adam Park Thriller by A. D. Davies

Author:A. D. Davies [Davies, A. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-05-12T23:00:00+00:00

As night faded into dawn, a chugging tuk-tuk misfired. I jerked upright, my head shifting from a horrible angle on my shoulder. I hadn’t been asleep, but my body was crying out for it. Now alert thanks to that squirt of adrenaline, I crouched in the bush for another hour, traffic growing steadily, but there was no movement in the apartment. Commuters passed by, the occasional glance my way made me feel ridiculous, and proved this wasn’t an effective hiding place after sun-up. Most of the women wore traditional gear—long, colorful áo dài, the silk tunic over pantaloons, while the men seemed far more westernized in shirts and trousers. Three schoolgirls in dazzling white áo dài and conical leaf-hats giggled as they saw me emerge from the bushes to continue my “surveillance.” I use the term loosely, of course, because I was behaving like an amateur right now.

Out in the open. Taller by a head than ninety-five per cent of the foot-flow, with every person on the street giving me a wide berth. If the grinning fraudster on the third floor happened to look out, I could expect a posse of faithful barflies trotting up the road, settin’ fer a lynchin’.

Or something.

I crossed the road and popped into a clothes shop and browsed for an I Love Vietnam cap or some such, but this wasn’t a tourist area. Instead, the excitable old lady behind the glass counter placed a non la on my head, a cone-shaped hat much like the schoolgirls were wearing but this one was made of straw rather than leaves. I bought it and went to a café and sat at an outdoor table, where a bored teenage girl in shorts and a vest asked in Vietnamese what I wanted.

Without thinking I said, “Coffee, please.”

“You wan’ drip coffee or Nescafé?”

“Nescafé?”

Inside the café, behind the counter, sure enough, jars of Nescafé instant lined up behind the sweaty bloke with a red, bulbous nose and the approximation of a chef’s outfit.

“Drip coffee please,” I said, whatever that is.

Back home, the proliferation of American sitcom-inspired coffee-shops gave me great places to take prospective clients who didn’t want to meet in the office or in a wine-bar full of hooray-Henries, and also to take Harry if I wanted to watch his jaw hit the table when he saw how much a venti soy latte cost. He called me a coffee snob, which I did not take as an insult. Actually, he once fainted at the price of his white-chocolate and raspberry muffin. True story.

My drink this morning arrived in a metal filter placed on top of a large espresso mug with a jug of what appeared to be milk beside it, only thicker. Cream, perhaps? I must have looked as green as any first-timer, as the girl lifted the top off the filter. The coffee slowly dripped through to the cup.

Aha! That’s why they call it “drip” coffee. Good detective work.

While it dripped, I watched the apartment complex, a fruit and veg stall setting up between us.

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