The bangkok betrayal, p.1
The Bangkok Betrayal, page 1
Other novels by Frank Hurst:
The Postmistress of Nong Khai – 2016
The Chiang Mai Assignment – 2018
Mekong Dragon – 2019
The Peccavi Plot – 2020
A Backward Glance – 2021
(a family memoir written under his own name)
The Story of Jett – how he became a secret agent – 2023
First published in Great Britain in 2024 by
The Book Guild Ltd
Unit E2 Airfield Business Park,
Harrison Road, Market Harborough,
Leicestershire. LE16 7UL
Tel: 0116 2792299
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Copyright © 2024 Frank Hurst
The right of Frank Hurst to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This work is entirely fictitious and bears no resemblance to any persons living or dead.
ISBN 978 1835741 122
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
For my remarkable mother, a unique human being, who sadly died a few days after this final manuscript was completed. She travelled much and always cherished the remarkable peoples and civilisations of the Far East.
Betty Cooper née Rawlin, born 18th April 1930, Istanbul, died 25th October 2023, Cowes, Isle of Wight.
“Au fond de tout patriotisme, il y a la guerre:
voilà pourquoi je ne suis point patriote.”
“At the bottom of all patriotism there is war.
That is why I am not a patriot.”
Jules Renard, Journal (1899)
Contents
Author’s Notes
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Epilogue
Historical Note
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Author’s Notes
Some Context
This is a work of fiction, although the central character in the novel, Henry Gough, actually lived. He was born in the London suburb of Marylebone in 1835, and was my great-grandfather. My first story in this series, The Peccavi Plot, shadows his early history. Research has shown us Henry’s family life was both scandalous and complicated, to say the least…
We know Henry Gough was less than six years old when both his parents, Charles and Hannah, died. We know he was brought up by his grandfather, Richard, a Haymarket chaff-cutter, and there is evidence that Henry started work, aged thirteen, for a baker named James Cummings who lived appropriately in London’s Upper Baker Street. We know also that Henry eventually rose from this highly inauspicious start to own a thriving business, becoming a hansom cab proprietor with stables and forty horses. He lived and worked, for the most part of his life, close to his birthplace in Marylebone. Henry Gough went on to sire twenty-one children – nine with his wife, Hannah, and twelve with his mistress, Caroline, who subsequently became his second wife.
How Henry prospered and managed his life largely remains a mystery. How he coped with keeping two families concurrently and feeding so many children, is even more of a conundrum. We can only guess.
This novel is a whimsical attempt to add further colour to his story.
Given my own working background, it was inevitable that Her Majesty’s Excise would enter part of Henry’s fictional story. The excisemen, policemen and War Office characters are all inventions, although, like Scotland Yard, the Excise Detective Branch at Tower Hill and the War Office Intelligence Branch at Horse Guards Avenue both existed. The Excise Detective Branch was created in 1850 to address the problem of illicit alcohol; it was the forerunner of Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise Investigation Division, which has played a key role in recent years to combat drugs smuggling into Britain. The numbers, objectives and methods of the early Detective Branch are portrayed as accurately in the novels as I have been able. The War Office Intelligence Branch was set up in 1873, with an objective of better understanding Russia’s ambitions in India. It had an initial staff of seven officers. This was a time, much like now, when Russia’s ambitions in the world were causing concern to Great Britain.
What happens to Henry Gough in this story, set in 1880, is complete make-believe, although I have made every effort to preserve as much historical detail of the period as possible. A few of the prominent events of the time are cited, and some of the lesser characters were conspicuous in Victorian Britain.
The characters in Siam are all fictitious, with two exceptions. The story told within the novel of Sir Thomas Knox and his daughter, Fanny, is based on fact. King Chulalongkorn, otherwise known as Rama V, ruled Siam between 1868-1910. He earned his rightful place in history as a transformational and acclaimed monarch, much loved by his people. None of the thoughts, actions and words attributed to Chulalongkorn in this novel are his. All are completely fabricated, and products of my own imagination.
Henry Gough died in 1912, aged 77, surrounded by the children and grandchildren of both his marriages. I am a third-generation product of his love affair with long-time mistress and eventual wife, Caroline. My grandfather, James, a man I much admired, born in 1888, was Henry’s twentieth and penultimate child.
It has been fascinating to speculate about Henry Gough’s life and utterly absorbing to write another novel with him at its centre.
FH
Chiang Mai
October 2023
Chapter One
London, Monday, 21st February 1880
Henry Gough had heard gunshots before – many times, in fact. He knew the sound of a pistol report well enough, but never in his life had he heard a volley of gunfire in South Kensington. He puffed out his cheeks, and with a weary outbreath of night air, he examined the broad, lamp-lit thoroughfare. With one boot on the step of his hansom cab, he wondered how this day, that had opened with so much expectation, could have ended like this. Not in his wildest dreams could he have imagined such events. The blood on his hands was still warm. Despite the carnage before him, there was a strange, despairing tranquillity about his bearing. The lifeless body of his passenger, head split half-open and barely recognisable, was slumped under the wheels of his cab. Folk were running hither and thither, shouting all about. Throughout this pandemonium he remained astonishingly calm, unruffled – almost serene. Henry cocked his ear to hear the clatter of a retreating horse far away along Ashburn Place. He leant over the body once more. Ribbons of crimson snaked in rivulets across the cobbles to form a pool under the hansom’s nearside wheel. He concluded, with icy logic, that the fatal shot must have come from behind, such was the distorted state of the poor man’s face. The shell must have escaped from between the eyes. The shocking mutilation told its own gruesome tale.
The day had started with such great promise…
Henry seldom stared into the looking glass these days. The mad rush of his busy life simply didn’t allow it. There never seemed a second in his hectic existence to call his own. There were always countless problems of some sort to disentangle, a challenge to overcome, an issue to resolve. If it wasn’t the horses, an unwelcome vet’s bill, a carriage’s broken axle, or a grievance from one of his grumbling staff, his three young sons always found ways to infiltrate any spare moments. But, on this pristine February morning, as the vestibule clock had chimed six and he was tying up his boots, his eyes had fallen on the swordstick that Albert Woodward had given him some years before. Propped in the corner of the hall, next to the honest oak coat stand, the skulking weapon, flawless of design and lethal of purpose, seemed to call out to him. On a whim, he’d reached out for it and turned it in his hands. A torrent of stirring reminiscences came flooding, whimsical and welcome, into his head. It was a strangely powerful moment, and Henry was forced to inhale a deep draught of calming air, gripped as he was by those precious seconds of icy solitude.
Then, raising himself from the battered stool into the hall’s hushed embrace, his boots polished and laces firmly set, and with the house sleeping around him, he’d carefully balanced the swordstick back into its rightful place, and stood tall before his reflection in the long glass. With shoulders pinned back, spine as straight as he could manage, extending to his full height of nearly six feet, with chin raised, he’d pondered the image for a while.
‘Tut!’ He’d clicked his tongue and frowned into the mirror. Was that a hint of grey he detected amongst the tangle of whiskers? He was now almost forty-four, but he felt more youthful – his young wife and the babies saw to that. He looked in good fettle too, a broader waistline perhaps, but there was barely an ounce of fat to the naked eye. The gunshot wound to his side, inflicted by Dimitri Michaelov three years earlier, had healed well. True, there were twinges of pain on chill mornings such as these, but at least the scar was a constant source of amusement to Caroline and the children. In all other respects, he felt as fit as a circus flea. A few silent moments of contemplation passed. After a bout of mental self-congratulation, and freshly emboldened by his appearance, Henry had turned a lock of stray hair behind his ear, brushed his shoulders, and unbolted the catch to his front door. On yet another impulse, so typical of his character, he’d dropped his arm, and with a single pluck, he reclaimed the old swordstick, flicked it under his coat and strode out into the still, dark yard.
And now, less than twelve hours later, with several routine spells of commonplace clipping around the capital city behind him, he had somehow become embroiled at the centre of a bloody and violent crime, the like of which the good people of South Kensington must surely have never beheld.
A young policeman approached, hurrying from the east, truncheon in hand. On seeing Henry and the horrifying tableau in detail, he put a whistle instantly to his lips, and soon a shrill call for help was reverberating around the neighbourhood.
‘Did you witness the deed, sir?’ he barked with all his breathless force, once the piercing blast had ceased – it was an unnecessary exertion, as he was less than two paces from Henry and well within earshot.
‘Yes, Officer, that I did.’ Henry nodded to the uniformed interloper with the air of a man in full command of his senses. The policeman approached the body and gingerly picked up an unblemished cuff of the man’s overcoat as if he were about to search for a pulse. Instead, and rather bizarrely, he commenced to examine the coat’s material and its stitching.
‘He’s dead, Officer.’ Henry spoke the obvious with a steady composure. ‘He must have died in an instant, shot in the back of his head from less than a foot, if I’m not mistaken.’ From a crouching position, the officer turned his glazed eyes towards Henry and seemed lost in the moment. Temporarily dumbstruck, he fumbled for his whistle again and put it to his lips. Within seconds, the sound of noisy shouting from the nearby street corner resumed, and presently the young bobby ceased his blowing.
‘And you must be the fellow’s cabbie? Am I correct?’ the officer in blue serge stammered. He had recovered his tongue at last.
‘I am, Constable.’
‘When did this occur? Did you see the crime? Do you know this man? Did you see the attack? Where has the attacker gone?’ The young peeler had transformed from mute to chatterbox in a few short seconds. Clearly, the man was befuddled. All his questions now came out in a flood of frenzied demands, which appeared all the more chaotic by the clouds of vapour that filled the cold air as he blathered on. Before Henry could answer even the first enquiry, the policeman added, while scanning anxiously over his shoulder, ‘my fellow officers will be here shortly. I can hear them now. Please stay calm and do not move, I beg you, sir.’ Another puff of fog rose from his lips and dissolved into the night.
Henry decided the best course was to heed the officer’s advice rather than answer his flurry of questions. Better to wait for reinforcements to arrive before making any statement that might be inaccurately recorded by the clearly inexperienced and agitated man before him.
‘I have no intention of moving, Officer. I will gladly obey your command, and I will tell all when the time is right.’ Then thinking better of it, he added, ‘But perhaps, to answer just one of your questions, the attacker was on horseback and cantered off that way about two minutes ago.’ Henry pointed southwards towards Chelsea. ‘I fear he has escaped for sure by now.’
‘You have blood on your hands, sir,’ the policeman observed carelessly, without a trace of accusation in his voice.
‘Yes. It is my passenger’s. I did my best for him – I tried to turn him over, but it was too late. His head is half blown away.’
At that moment a broad-shouldered officer of middle age slid to a halt in front of them. Much of his face was hidden behind a resplendent array of mutton-chop whiskers. The three stripes on his arm announced his seniority. Seconds later, two further blue uniforms tumbled onto the scene.
‘Is this man under arrest, Constable Jones?’ the large man thundered.
‘No, sir, I don’t believe so—’
‘Have you arrested him, Jones?’ the sergeant repeated, this time with an edge to his voice.
‘I have called for the doctor—’
Before the young policeman could add further to the confusion, Henry intervened. ‘No, Officer, I am not under arrest. My name is Henry Gough. I am merely the honest cab driver who collected this passenger.’ Pointing to the corpse he added, ‘I brought him to this point, I witnessed the crime, and I did what I could to defend the wretched fellow. But I regret the villain has fled the scene. I could do nothing to stop him.’
Waggling a disapproving head at his junior colleague, who by this time had shrunk back into the shadows, the older officer sighed, then turned his face back towards Henry. With a look of drained resignation, he said, ‘Very well, Mr Gough. While we await the attendance of the good surgeon, pray give me your full account. Constable Fairfield!’ he shouted over the head of the hapless Jones, ‘take out your pocketbook and note down what is said between us.’
Henry explained that he had collected his passenger from the Langham Hotel just before five pm. It was to be his last fare before returning to his stable yard in St John’s Wood.
‘Was this man staying at the hotel?’ the policeman asked.
‘I cannot be sure. You can check. I was hailed by the doorman, and I pulled over to wait a few moments before the man entered the cab.’
‘Where did he ask you to take him?’
‘He did not speak to me. The fellow was of foreign appearance and maybe he wasn’t able to converse openly with me. I doubt if English was his mother tongue. Instead, the hotel doorman handed me a note with the address of 21, Ashburn Place. It is the premises about a hundred yards further along, you know.’ Trying to be helpful, Henry indicated down the street, but the policeman’s eyes did not follow his signal. Instead, the two orbs concentrated their gaze on the witness before them – now with an ever-greater intensity.
‘A foreign gentleman, you say?’ The sergeant flexed his shoulders and jutted his jaw towards Henry. The officer’s deep intonation and slow delivery was typical of a long-serving official of the law – it was as if the language of Whitechapel and the legalese of the Old Bailey had combined to create a most singular vernacular for the sole use of those occupying this certain rank and station.
‘Yes, Officer, he was Chinese, I believe,’ Henry replied at length. ‘Of middle age, I estimate; small of stature, as you can see. The face is all but destroyed now, but before his accident he had the unmistakeable appearance of a Chinaman; the eyes narrow and dark, the hair black and straight.’
‘Are you taking this down, Fairfield?’ The sergeant addressed these words to the officer at his side without once removing his cold stare from Henry.
‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Reading from his notebook, Fairfield continued, ‘“The witness believes the dead man looked like a Chinaman”.’
‘So, tell me what happened at the scene.’ The burly policeman twisted his moustache and resumed his exchange with Henry.
