Captured by Tina Johansen Page B

sufficiently rough to be in a position to provide Daniel with the guidance he desperately needed. He looked up, and Daniel realised that he’d been staring.
    “Nice bar you have here.”
    “Hmm,” the bartender nodded, his expression disagreeing. “You British?”
    “Yeah.” Focussed on his mission, he found it difficult to muster the necessary small talk. “Been here long?”
    He zoned out as the other man spoke of his life back in Britain as a long-distance truck driver: the long boring hours, his bitch ex-wife who had left him for his best friend. He certainly looked animated now. Simon nodded when he noticed the man looking to him, expectantly. Silence.
    “I said, ‘you married?’”
    An opening . “Yeah. Well I should be. Except I found out she liked my brother more. We were supposed to get married here actually. But I suppose that’s off now...” he trailed off, sneaking a glance at the other man. “Sometimes I think if I just had a gun...”
    “I know the feeling.”
    “What’s it like over here? I lived in the States for a couple of years, now there I could just walk into a shop and pick one out. Just like that. Come back in a few days, pick it up. Now at home of course, no such luck...”
    A light went on behind the barman’s eyes. “Well you could do that here. Not legal of course, but you can get anything you want in Bangkok. I got one for protection. I knew a guy who knew a guy. Job done.”
    “Your friend also happen to have a friend who could get me something a little stronger than this?” he raised an eyebrow and gestured towards the whisky his new friend had placed in front of him.
    The erstwhile truck driver laughed a deep hearty chuckle. “I know a lot of people,” he confided, leaning forward.
     
    His hands were steady as he rapped four times on the peeling red door, as he had been instructed to, and they remained so as an uncharacteristically tall and broad Thai youth frisked him and muttered something in Thai. Then one of the older men had leisurely counted his banknotes, examining some, and nodded his head towards two black plastic bags that were sitting on a filthy dining table. Lifting the bags from their nest of cigarette butts and old brown bottles, he hesitated.
    “You want try?” the oldest man raised an eyebrow and smirked.
    He shook his head and held the man’s eyes, curious at the jagged scar extending from his hairline to his brow. Seemingly satisfied, the man turned away. Daniel’s cue to leave.
     
    He opened the pill capsules and mixed the white granules with a few teaspoons of sugar early the next morning. He still had no idea how he was going to approach this. He couldn’t stop thinking about Kirsty. Not in that focussed way he usually thought. That might have helped him. No, this was different. Coupled with Grace’s arrival in less than twenty four hours, he felt more pressure than he could remember ever feeling before.
     
    “Daniel! What are you doing here?” it took her a few seconds for her brain to process the figure standing near the door of the little internet cafe: they had spoken the day before and he mentioned nothing about a visit to Thailand.
    Grant nodded noncommittally to the newcomer, unsure of his relationship to Kirsty and waiting for a less ambiguous response from her, since he couldn’t see her face to read her expression.
    “Hi Kirsty! I hoped I’d bump into you! They sent me to work in the office here for six months to help finalise a deal for private wealth management. An old friend of mine works for the client and they thought that I might hold some sway with him.” He hoped she hadn’t spoken to Susan. If she had, well... he’d think on his feet.
    He had returned to the guesthouse first thing that morning and waited in the ground floor cafe, burying his face in a book. It was noon when they had eventually appeared downstairs. He made a mental note of what they were both wearing. He was pleased to see that neither of them