Tiger Lily Of Bangkok In London E-Book

Owen Jones

• Herausgeber: Tektime
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 279

Beschreibung

After the devastating effect her rampage had on her own life and the citizens of Bangkok in her early days as a medical student there, Lily's life quietened, and she settled down to her studies. After two years, she won a scholarship to work in Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital in London and moved there without Ron, who continued his education in Bangkok.
'Tiger Lily Of Bangkok In London' picks up her story in her second of two years as a student doctor at the hospital. She loves her job there, and gets on well with the staff and children patients alike, but she has no friends outside work.
On one of her days off, she reads an article in the Sunday Times about organised paedophile rings in London involving the very establishment of the country itself and it incenses her.
She can either ignore it or get involved.

The Tiger is on the Prowl Again!
After the devastating effect her rampage had on her own life and the citizens of Bangkok in her early days as a medical student there, Lily's life quietened, and she settled down to her studies. After two years, she won a scholarship to work in Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital in London and moved there without Ron, who continued his education in Bangkok.
'Tiger Lily Of Bangkok In London' picks up her story in her second of two years as a student doctor at the hospital. She loves her job there, and gets on well with the staff and children patients alike, but she has no friends outside work.
On one of her days off, she reads an article in the Sunday Times about organised paedophile rings in London involving the very establishment of the country itself and it incenses her.
She can either ignore it or get involved.
Her first reaction is to avoid re-arousing the Demon that had possessed her in Bangkok only a couple of years earlier, but when she meets fellow victims of child abuse, the die seems cast.
This story is not for the squeamish, but does not describe acts of child abuse. It does, however, make frequent references to notorious scenes of child abuse, especially the infamous 'Meat Rack' on Piccadilly Circus in central London.
Many of the issues raised are still under police enquiry at the time of writing, although few people expect anything to come from them.
Shame on our so-called leaders, who would rather protect the powerful abusers than the powerless abused!

Leseprobe

TIGER LILY

OF

BANGKOK

IN LONDON

The Tiger’s On The Prowl Again!

by

OWEN JONES

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

Copyright © May 2015 Owen Jones Author

Published by

Megan Publishing Services

http://meganthemisconception.com

All rights reserved.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Written during ‘National Child Abuse Prevention Month’

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CONTENTS

1 The Sunday Times

2 Great Ormond Street

3 Dolphin Square

4 The Gang

5 Lily Seeks Help

6 Piccadilly Circus

7 Lily Works on a Theory

8 Lily Gets Organised

9 Freelancing

10 The Squat

11 Greg

12 Alice

13 Confession

14 Home Sweet Home

15 Business As Usual

00 The Disallowed

About the Author

1 THE SUNDAY TIMES

Lily was a good intuitive shot. She was one of those people who doesn’t seem to have to take aim like most marksmen. Whatever her eyes were looking at was in trouble – they were her laser-targetting devices. She threw her meat cleaver and hit David Cameron right between the eyes. She had been willing the blade to find that spot, but she knew that she had hit it as much through luck as judgement.

She was still fuming mad, so she jumped up and retrieved the six assorted kitchen knives from the two chopping blocks to which she had stuck six photos of famous politicians and personages cut out of the Sunday Times colour supplement at random. The chopping blocks were hanging from cords like dartboards on the far wall of the kitchenette.

“How dare they?” she said to no-one but the photographs. “How dare they allow child abuse to go on under their very noses and do nothing about it!?”

Leon Brittan got a steak knife in the right eye, but she was still most proud of the Cameron shot, although hitting any part of a three by four inch photograph from ten feet with ordinary domestic cutlery was quite a feat in itself, especially as she hadn’t practised since she’d left Bangkok.

Lily was no ordinary young woman though.

She had studied martial arts in her native Thailand and taken up archery in conjunction with that. Throwing knives or indeed anything sharp had just happened, because she couldn’t practice archery in her flat, first in Bangkok and now in London. She was still a medical student, but she had managed to get a placement in Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital for two years.

She had one year left.

Her English had been good since school and studying medicine had meant that she had had to read a lot of medical books and journals in English. She had decided to force the pace by reading the Sunday Times from cover to cover every week, and it did take her all week to accomplish. Today, she had been reading about the suspected paedophile rings operating in Dolphin Square and some of the orphanages, children’s homes and hospitals up and down the country.

Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy Savile caught steak knives in the head for the fourth time each. They had thwacked in hard and were still vibrating from the ferocity with which they had been thrown.

Sunday was the only day that she knew she would be free every week, so she was still in her girlish pyjamas. She was also entitled to a second day off a week, but sometimes she took two half days and other times she just worked it. She didn’t really have a lot of use for free time. She still hadn’t made any close friends in London, although she sometimes went for a night out with a bunch of her co-workers.

It wasn’t a problem to her though, she had been a loner since her so-called uncle had started abusing her when she was eleven, half her lifetime ago and she loved her job and the children it involved her meeting. Lily was petite and could still pass for a child if she wanted to. In fact, many of the children at the hospital thought at first that she was a patient dressed up as a nurse, although she was in fact a student doctor.

She threw the six knives at the six photographs one more time, then she returned her attention to the long article on establishment child abuse.

It cited alleged instances from the Seventies and Eighties, yet she wasn’t even born until 1993 and the names meant nothing to her. The only politicians she had heard of when growing up were Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and George Bush, who, she knew wasn’t even British. Now she was aware of Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Miliband. In fact their photographs were on the wall, although she was conscious that some of them were still in school when the abuse took place. Others, suspected participants or, at best, misguided facilitators were already dead, and yet others waiting to die in nursing homes or mental institutions, oblivious to the scandal that was brewing up among the general public outside.

Lily picked up her iPod and called up the locations mentioned in the article. First, Stoke Mandeville hospital where someone called Jimmy Savile, now dead, had carried out many of his crimes; then Dolphin Square, in Pimlico, the heart of London’s Westminster and West End; Elm Guest house, Barnes, in south-west London; and finally Grafton Close Children’s Home in Richmond-upon- Thames.

Investigations by various police forces including London’s Metropolitan Police Force such as Operation Fairbank, Operation Midland, Operation Fernbridge and Operation Yewtree were still mysteries to her, but she wanted to learn more about them.

It was gone eleven by the time Lily stopped reading about the allegations. Her head was reeling and she felt sick. Memories that she had always tried to push to the back of her mind were resurfacing and she didn’t like it.

She took off her pyjamas, opened the French windows onto her fourth-floor verandah and stood naked in the summer sunshine, then she calmed her mind and began her warm-up moves of T’ai Chi, before moving on to the more aggressive Kyokushinkai Karate, which she had studied in Bangkok as a full contact sport. She was light, but fast and strong and many opponents had made the mistake of underestimating her.

When she felt more at ease, she collected the six knives and threw them at the tattered images one last time, then she put the knives away and the photographs in the bin and ran her bath.

Lily had always sought solace in a warm bath, it was where she carried out most of her most productive contemplation.

She had hoped that those dark days of madness in Bangkok of two years before were behind her. She had forgotten how many men, suspected paedophiles, she had killed, although she would be able to recall each grizzly instance and count them if she wanted to. She never did want to though. It was more than ten and that was close enough for any young woman to cope with, however much the victims had deserved their fate.

This was not her country though, she could pretend that it wasn’t her fight. Surely, the British would sort out their own mess. Yes, she could try that approach and stay out of it. That thought lasted almost a minute, but she knew how the rich and powerful could literally get away with murder in her own country, and hadn’t Nick, the chief witness in this London scandal, and several officers in the Metropolitan Police Force hinted at something similar happening in Britain?

How could she do nothing when she had the power to do something, albeit illegally? She could help redress the balance, if she were strong enough. In Bangkok, she had been burning with rage, now she was only really angry and she was older and more able to control her temper. Practising martial arts had been a great help in that respect.

However, she could still choose to do something, and who knew? Being sanguine about the problem might even make her more effective and less likely to get caught.

No-one had touched her since she had moved to London. She was still officially going out with Ron, but he was in Bangkok and neither of them had expected the other to remain faithful, although they Skyped one another often and always finished by saying ‘I love you’. Ron even sent her part of his allowance from his parents so that she would be free from financial worries and could concentrate on her studies. Not that she was poor anyway. She had stolen a lot of money and jewellery from the men whom she had liberated from their sinful existence to start a new life and make amends.

She couldn’t tell Ron that though, he only knew about the ten million Baht that her mother had left her, and that was not a lot of money to him or his family.

Lily lived quite frugally, not purposely so, it was just her nature. She took buses everywhere, didn’t go out much and didn’t own or want a car, despite the fact that the British drove on the same side of the road as the Thais, so she would have picked it up quickly.

Her only extravagances were her apartment, her vast wardrobe of assorted outfits and her collection of make-up . She liked nice clothes and she insisted on living in a comfortable environment and Ron’s contribution paid for most of the rent anyway.

She foresaw that in about fifteen months time, she would return to Bangkok, move in with Ron and pass her doctor’s examination, before looking for a job somewhere. Ron would want that to be in Bangkok, near his parents, where he had lived all his life and that was all right by her, because she hadn’t spoken to any of her family since her mother’s funeral.

However, that was all next year, what about the rest of this one?

She knew deep down that there was no way that she could do nothing. It just wasn’t an option. She despised her own family for having done nothing when she was being abused, however much they asserted that they hadn’t known what was going on. She couldn’t believe that no-one had noticed that she had become ‘quiet’, troubled and nervous of being left alone with her treacherous ‘uncle’. It was inconceivable to her, and so was the idea that she would be able to live with herself if she did nothing now.

However, do what?

Although the skin on her fingers had long since turned wrinkly, she let more hot water into the bath and thought.

It seemed to her that the main difference between the situation she had faced in Bangkok and the one she would in London was local knowledge. She been going from home to work, to the shops and back home for the last year and didn’t know her way around like she did in Bangkok. Furthermore, the article she had been reading, had talked about homosexual paedophiles, whereas she had concentrated on men who liked young girls, other than that, perhaps, she could adapt her old tactics to the new circumstances without too many complications.

She paused to consider whether her not inconsiderable make-up skills would stretch to making her look like a boy. She wasn’t sure, but sat up in the bath to see her face in the clouded mirror. She pulled what she thought were boys’ faces, but was not convinced, then the idea struck her that she could make a passable lady-boy – a transvestite.

This led her to thinking about disguises, uniforms and ultimately, weapons.

The skewers had been exceedingly effective in Bangkok, and could be used again, but they were necessarily close-range weapons and they may form a link with the Bangkok murders. She could throw, which would put more distance between her and her target. She was sure that she would be able to hit a man somewhere from twenty to thirty feet, given the right missiles and more practice, but she could easily treble that distance with a bow and be more accurate.

It was getting hold of the weapons without drawing attention to herself that was the problem. She was not your typical Londoner, whatever that was, but she didn’t feel like one anyway, and she knew that her deceptions worked best when she was able to relax and believe herself what she was trying to convince others of.

She stood up slowly and pulled out the plug with her foot, then rinsed herself off with cold water from the shower head, wiped the mirror with the flannel and studied her body.

No problems yet, and she might just pass for a boy, she thought.

She dried herself off, covered her body in talcum powder in the old Thai style and applied other creams and her beloved jasmine oil to her face, hands, arms and neck as she was accustomed, then she wrapped a large towel around her body and went back to the living room.

Before she had even had a chance to take a coffee onto the balcony to enjoy the summer that the British said was so hot, but was the same as a Thai winter, she knew what she would be doing that afternoon, and if she did that, she knew what she would inevitably be doing in the near future, as sure as ‘b’ follows ‘a’ and two follows one.

She got dressed in drab student-type clothes so as not to stand out and went shopping.

The train was in motion and the destination inevitable.

The first thing she wanted to do was find a hobbyists, so she loaded an app onto her iPhone and let it look for the nearest registered outlet. A taxi took her to within a hundred yards of it minutes later.

She took a deep breath, and walked into the small shop.

“Hi,” she said, not attempting to hide her Asian accent. “I want to make plaster models for my family for good luck, but heads keep snapping off. Do you have metal rod to put inside?”

“Yes, Miss. We stock several diameters, which would you like?” He helpfully pointed at a rack of what looked like stainless steel stair rods behind and below the counter.

“Er, I think six millimetre”.

“Certainly, Miss, how many?”

She could see that they were a metre in length.

“Er, three, please. Er, how you say? I am here for holiday and not have tools for cut. Do you have?”

“No, Miss, I’m very sorry, we are waiting for delivery, but there is a Jewson’s builders’ merchants two hundred metres out this shop turn right. They will have angle grinders, hacksaws or whatever you need”.

Lily paid and left for Jewson’s, happy that her first purchase had gone so easily.

At Jewson’s, she took her time looking around. She knew what she wanted, just not what form it would come in.

She weighed six-inch nails in her hand, but they were far too light. Then she spotted the nail punches. That was more like it. She put a roll of eight assorted-sized punches and a single, loose one of the largest punch into her trolley. As she was looking at files, she noticed a broken one, the handle of which had come adrift. The metal file was nine inches long and the wicked-looking spike that went into the handle was four inches. She reassembled the useless tool and put it in her trolley too. Then she bought a four-inch angle grinder, a few spare discs, a hacksaw, spare blades and a pair of pliers, and left.

She took a taxi to a hundred metres from her flat and stopped for a coffee before continuing home.

Lily put the bags containing her purchases under her bed and then caught a bus to a shopping centre that she had not used often, but she knew quite well. Her first job was one of her favourite hobbies: she walked from shop to shop holding clothes up against herself and chatting with sales assistants about the latest fashions and which colours suited her best. She wasn’t completely sure what she wanted, but she had the confidence to know that she would recognise it when she saw it.

She was now officially on a mission and they had always worked out for her, so far.

Lily already had a vast collection of makeup since that had been a passion of hers since she was first allowed to wear a little eye shadow and mascara at the age of sixteen. She also had several CD’s of magazine cuttings on different styles and techniques of applying makeup that she had collected over the years and scanned to disc.

She had always liked to experiment with new looks and styled herself on Madonna: she wore wigs and different styles of clothes which transformed her from a teenage punk to a demure young woman and every stage in between. She could even hide the fact that she was Asian, although she didn’t normally bother. However, being of Chinese-Thai descent, she had a naturally light-coloured skin, and since she had lived in London, it had paled to a typical European hue. The only style she had never tried, and couldn’t think why not now, was to look like a boy.

She brought up mental images of Julie Andrews and Lisa Minnelli dressed in men’s clothing and thought that it looked quite good, but not what she was after. AC-DC was more what she wanted, but then they were real men. That didn’t put her off, she just started paying more attention to the sort of clothes that teenage boys wore in the UK. She soon realised that most of them were shapeless scruffs when they didn’t have to go to school. She would have no trouble hiding the fact that she was female if she wore a hoodie or a kagoule.

They went on her mental shopping list.

She also bought short and long trousers, skirts, blouses and shirts, socks and sensible shoes, then took her bags to a coffee shop for the chance to think. She tried what she thought was a butch voice on the waitress who came to take her order, but she wasn’t happy with it and noticed the strange look on the girl’s face, so she didn’t say another word in the shop.

Lily was running her purchases through her mind and letting combinations of clothes and scenarios suggest themselves to her, when the usefulness of several more items suggested themselves. When she left, she was glad to get out of there as she felt that she had made a fool of herself. She felt as if this were confirmed when the two waitresses started giggling to each other as she walked out of the door.

Lily wanted a large map of central London that she could hang on the wall, a roll of one-inch wide Sellotape and some inexpensive party wigs. They were easy enough to find and she bought four assorted types and the four polystyrene heads to store them on cost more than the nylon hairpieces. It was four o’clock when she got in a taxi to take her and her things home, which was a touch on the late side for what she wanted to do, but she couldn’t help that.

She didn’t have time to put her clothes away properly which would normally have been a priority after such a shopping expedition, but they had strict rules on noise in her apartment block and there was to be no noise made that might disturb other residents after five pm. It was one of the reasons why she had chosen the flat in the first place and she didn’t want to start attracting any undue attention to herself now.

She took the angle grinder, the pliers and one rod from under the bed and on to the verandah, where she plugged the cutter in. Then she divided the rod into six pieces with markings using an eye-lining pencil, put on a pair of sunglasses and, holding the rod with the pliers she carefully cut it up. She was left with six six-inch stainless steel rods a quarter of an inch in diameter.

She listened for neighbours banging on the wall in complaint, but she still had twenty minutes to make as much noise as she wanted. She had to do it now, because when she was working, she didn’t get in until six. There were no signs that she had upset anyone, so she placed the grinder between her knees, clenched hard and started it up again. She took a six-inch length of steel and turned it on the spinning blade until it was as sharp as a teacher’s 3H pencil. It was too hot to touch, but she admired the point and then treated the other five rods in the same manner.

She switched the machine off and listened intently again, but still there was nothing. Good, she was five minutes within her limit. She was hoping that people would not have associated the noise with a shy, foreign, female, medical student anyway and she was probably right. Lily returned the angle grinder to its box and hiding place under the bed and fetched the broken file and carefully used it to take off all the rough edges and burrs from the six items.

She turned them over in her hand, feeling their weight and testing their sharpness. Some she perfected with the file before laying them out in a row on the table before her.

‘They ought to be black,’ was the only criticism she could think of, ‘but they’ll do for now’.

Lily brushed the dust and filings over the edge of the balcony. She was house-proud, and always had been, but she didn’t want that in her flat. She put the dustpan and brush away, and started to control herself again. Deep breaths, mind-focus, calmness…

She gathered up the mini rods, their combined weight in her hand felt reassuring, like an old, oft-used hand gun – a friend that she had known in the past. She fanned them out in her left hand, points towards her body and walked to the far end of the room. She span quickly and had flicked three bo-shuriken into each of the chopping blocks in ten seconds. It was almost as fast as automatic fire. The first hadn’t hit its mark before the second and third were flying on their trajectory behind it

There came a tap, tap, tap on the wall. Lily snapped out of her reverie and looked at the wall clock. It was five thirty and they were into the curfew on noise.

She put the bo-shuriken rods in the back of a drawer and went for a shower.

‘Six hits with six forty-gramme, six-inch steel bolts from twenty feet wasn’t bad,’ she was thinking as she stood under the shower, ‘ even if the targets were fifteen inches in diameter’.

She hadn’t thrown shuriken since Bangkok and had never used this particular design before, so she was happy with that… for today. It was only the start of her training, but it was a propitious sign.

2 GREAT ORMOND STREET

Lily got up at seven, as she usually did on a working day, showered, performed her exercise routine of T’ai Chi and Karate Kata, ate, showered again, dressed and caught the eight fifteen bus into Great Ormond Street where the eponymous hospital that she worked at was located. The bus got her there at about eight forty which gave her plenty of time to change again and start work at nine.

As an overseas medical student who was not going to be sitting any examinations, she had a nine to five job, acting more as an assistant nurse than a doctor, but she was still learning a great deal and this placement would be impressive on her curriculum vitae. Two years experience in one of the best children’s hospitals in the world would be worth more than her Thai degree outside Thailand.

She went into the staffroom associated with her ward to check what duties had been assigned to her for that day and pick up a copy of her rota for the week. She noted that her recommendation for two half-days off on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning had been approved, so she asked for Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning for the following week in writing on the receipt that she had to hand back that proved that she had received her work schedule.

She said a perfunctory ‘Good Morning’ to those whom she knew and received a similar reply. Everyone was too busy at the start of a shift to stop for a chat, then she hurried off to look for the doctor and sister whom she would be assisting on their round.

Lily was popular with everyone, but especially the children, they seemed to regard her as an older sister and she was able to talk to them on the same level about things that they had only seen on television. When she was alone with them, she charmed them with stories of Asian princes and princesses, tigers, crocodiles, huge snakes and elephants, all of which she said she had seen in the flesh back home. And it was true, she had, although she had seen more snakes than royals, and the elephants, tigers and crocodiles had been on farms not in the jungle. Still, she could tell a good story and keep them amused or distracted while the oft boring treatments and tests were being carried out.

Working with the children like this was her favourite part of the job and her enthusiasm showed and earned her respect.

On the previous 14th November, she had turned up for work in ‘traditional Thai costume’. It wasn’t, she had come across the sarong in an Oxfam Shop and bought a few pieces that went with it, but with her hair up and talcum powder on her face, the children were convinced that she was Oriental royalty herself. Her superiors had allowed her to wear it for that one day only when she had explained that that day was called Loy Krathong – ‘Launching Boats’ - and was Thailand’s equivalent of St. Valentine’s Day when many women across Thailand wore traditional dress.

The kids had loved it and the long term patients often asked her to wear it for them again.

She would have her own children, probably with Ron, one day.

“Lily, bring the trolley a little nearer, please”.

“Oh, sorry, sister,” she replied, snapping out of her daydream. One of her jobs on these rounds was to push the drugs trolley, then the sister would hand the medication to the doctor to administer. This child, a girl of about seven, had Type 1 diabetes with complications and needed regular injections of insulin, until they could find a better alternative, if there was one. She watched the doctor find the vein, the poor girl wince and look away, and the doctor insert the needle.

It brought a tear to her own eye and she quickly wiped it away, because she wasn’t sure whether it was regarded as a sign of weakness in Britain. It would have been wrong in her county, but it didn’t stop her feeling the child’s pain anyway.

When the girl caught her eye, Lily winked, smiled and held up a thumb. The girl managed a smile too and they both felt a little better.

Lily watched the sister disconnect the sharp and drop it into the receptacle on the trolley. Then they moved on to the next bed and Lily gave a little wave ‘Bye-bye’. The girl grinned and waved back.

At lunchtime in the hospital canteen, Lily often sat with some of her colleagues, but not always. Sometimes, she went shopping, as did everyone from time to time, and on other occasions she would sit alone. People assumed then that she was homesick and respected her privacy. However, on this day, she wanted to talk. As they were eating, she asked:

“Did anyone read that article on organised paedophile rings in hospitals and children’s homes in London in the Sunday Times? It didn’t mention this hospital, did it go on here as well?”

Her fellow diners looked horrified.

“Of course not,’ said a male nurse after a few seconds to the agreement of the others.

“But how would you know, Julian, you weren’t working here thirty-five years ago”.

“No, I wasn’t even born, but it’s best not to stir up trouble with awkward questions like that, Lily… they can’t do the hospital any good”.

“Julian’s right, Lily,” advised Susan, another nurse. “We can’t change what has gone on before, we can only be vigilant and make certain that it doesn’t happen on our watch”.

“What and let the perverts get away with their crimes? Is that what you’re saying? What about the forty-year-olds and justice for them after all this time?”

“All right, what do you want me to do, Lily? ‘ Cause I don’t know what I can do to help”.

“No, nor do I, but if I was in Bangkok, I’d write to my MP and insist that he supported an inquiry into the allegations. A letter only takes thirty minutes and an email only three”.

“Yes, well, I’ll probably do that, I just meant what can I do here, now”.

“I don’t know… this is not my country… I don’t know how things work here. I only know that this is deeply shocking to a Thai, because Thais hold Great Britain in the highest regard, and all we have heard is scandal for years, and now this”.

“Yes, well, we’re not proud of our self-proclaimed betters either,” added Jane another nurse at the table. “I’m with Lily, we should be doing something, but what?”

People stared at their food or their newspapers and wished that either they or Lily had chosen that day to go shopping.

They were all glad to get back to work.

Ten minutes before the end of her shift, Lily went to the stores and stole a few syringes and needles to fit. She put them in her overalls, changed, transferred them to her bag and calmly went for her bus home.

She had the beginnings of an idea.

On the way home, Lily called in at a DIY shop to buy an electric drill and a set of fine bits. The shop had a hobbyists’ section where she noticed small pots of enamel paint. She bought two of matt black and two children’s paint brushes. It seemed appropriate somehow. She judged that one pot of paint might just cover six of her new bo-shuriken

After eating a meal of salad and Sunday leftovers, she showered and dressed in baggy jeans and a T-shirt, then sat on the verandah and painted her shuriken. The small pot might have covered seven items, but she knew that the dregs would have gone hard by the time she got around to cutting any more, so she stood them on their point against the railing to dry, put the brush and tin in a paper bag and pulled on her new hoodie. She wanted to test something.

She took the bag with her and wore the hood down, so as not to alarm her neighbours then went down onto the street. While still in the shadows of their building, she tied her hair back tightly, put the hood up and walked up the quiet avenue where she lived, dumping her paper bag in the first bin she passed.

She put her hands in her pockets, adopted the slouch and mannerisms of a bored teenage boy and headed for the local shopping centre which she knew attracted groups or gangs of teenagers after the shops were closed.

When she was almost there, a youth jumped out from behind a wall and started to walk half a pace behind her to her right, on the inside of the pavement.

“Got any ganja?” the person asked.

She didn’t reply, but kept on walking.

“I’m talking to you, you ignorant piece of shit…”. he put a hand on Lily’s shoulder and in an instant she had tripped him to the floor.

“You’ll regret that you fucking bastard! You don’t know who you’re dealing with. This is our manor and we don’t tolerate intruders,” he said as he jumped up and pulled a knife as big as a Roman broad sword from behind his back.

There was a distance of about three yards between them.

Lily was watching the fifteen year-old like a hawk, but she kept her head down so that he couldn’t see her face.

“Fuck off and leave me alone,” she said quietly, but it was not what she wanted to happen and she knew that the boy couldn’t lose face either. Being Thai, she knew all there was to know about face.