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looked exactly the same as he had when we meet two months previously.
    I felt a mixture of excitement and terror at the prospect of facing him. I watched as he disappeared into a bar. Two or three of the motorcycle taxi boys had also seen him and came running. None of us could believe we had found him.
    Not wanting to miss the chance, I walked into the bar and pulled up a stool beside him. When he saw me, his mouth dropped open.
    ‘Hello, Ronnie,’ I said. ‘I believe you have something that belongs to me.’
    He regained his composure hastily, and made an effort to remain nonchalant.
    ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.
    I smashed him with a head butt.
    I hit him again a few times, but the motorcycle boys pulled me away. It didn’t matter anyway; I had him and he wasn’t going anywhere.
    I asked the barman to call the tourist police, and gave him the mobile number for the lieutenant in charge of my case.
    The police arrived minutes later and Hayes stumbled out to their pick-up. The lieutenant told me that I shouldn’t have hit him.
    I asked him what was I supposed to do? I told him that I wasn’t about to give him a chance either to fight or to run.
    To be honest, it felt good to thump the bastard. He’d caused me a lot of pain. In that moment, I didn’t really care about the consequences of my actions, and I certainly hadn’t been thinking about the law.
    Hayes tried to bluff his way out of custody. He said he thought O’Connor and OCS were genuine. He actually said he had nothing to do with the financial dealings of OCS and claimed that he was a victim too.
    He said he’d quit working for OCS in December because they hadn’t paid him.
    I didn’t believe a word of it. I told him that the police had already rounded up all the secretaries and office staff he and O’Connor had hired. I was lying through my teeth, but he didn’t know that.
    Eventually I proposed a deal. If he returned his share of the money they’d stolen, and if he was willing to help the police to find O’Connor, then I would talk to his trial judge and say that he was only a small player in the scam.
    I knew O’Connor was the boss. I wanted him more than Hayes.
    It didn’t take Hayes long to betray his partner. Criminals are all the same. They’ll always sell each other out. He claimed that O’Connor had only paid him $80,000, of which he had spent some on a holiday, but that he still had $60,000 left – about 1.5 million baht.
    Pleading for mercy, he said he would hand over all of it if I promised to keep to our agreement. I said I would.
    The police agreed to the proposition and offered to take Hayes to the bank to withdraw the money. I said I would return the next day to collect the cash. I decided to bring a lawyer with me, just to make sure that everything was legal and above board.
    This turned out to be a good idea.
    When we got to the police station the next morning, Hayes had changed his mind. When he withdrew my 1.5 million baht from his account, the police had apparently seen their opportunity, and began to give him all sorts of advice. They actually told him that he didn’t have to return the money until after the court case.
    They advised him to charge me with assault. And they also encouraged him to demand that I drop all charges against him before returning the stolen money.
    I now found myself on the losing side once again – but there was no way I was going to drop the charges. I asked the lawyer for his advice.
    Speaking with brutal honesty, my lawyer said I didn’t have a choice. If I didn’t drop the charges and take the money, then Hayes would use it to make bail, and get out anyway. If I wanted the money back, I was going to have to accept the deal.
    Against my better judgement, I took the money and dropped the charges.
    Nothing is what it seems in Bangkok. When it came to counting the money before signing for it, it was short. There was a lot missing – a little from each stack of