Thai Stewardess

[Mr. Peaky Blinder]

From Black Tiger
As I watched a neat little air hostess walk by, humming, tittuping on her high heels and patting her little hat, inspiration struck me. The air hostess wiggled her fingers coquettishly at an airline official, called, ‘Switzerland, then three days leave!’ and vanished into the ladies’ toilet. Poor girl—her death warrant was signed.

I took up my pail and shuffled along in her wake. The adjacent men’s toilet bore a large sign: ‘Closed for cleaning. Please use toilet in restaurant.’ I took it off the men’s and hung it on the handle of the ladies’ before entering and closing the door behind me. I saw with satisfaction that only one cubicle was engaged. Under its door I could see the stewardess’s shoes. I heard a clatter as the girl kicked them off and stepped barefoot onto the toilet bowl to urinate in the Thai fashion. I waited beside the cubicle door. I held the mop handle horizontally in two hands, like a Siamese fighting-stick. The toilet flushed. I gauged the moment exactly. As she came out I raised the mop handle and struck a blow across her windpipe. She gasped and tumbled backward. Her hands clutched at the air. I dropped the mop and grabbed her hair with one hand. At the same time I flung my free arm round her waist, pressing into her solar plexus. I braced her body against my own and folded it like a jackknife, pressing her face downward toward the toilet bowl. She fought energetically, but my position allowed me to use all my strength without losing my balance. Angel Fleischer had been an excellent tutor. People think you have to be as strong as a bear to kill another human being, but that’s nonsense. You just have to calculate angles and stress points correctly. I performed the twist-and-press movement with textbook precision, exactly as I had been taught. The girl’s vertebrae crunched and parted obediently. She slumped in my arms. In truth, she was more trouble dead than alive, for she was surprisingly heavy. I had to half drag, half push her lifeless body into the cubicle to close the door.

Stripping off her uniform, I was gratified to discover that she had been a girl with respect for herself, who kept herself tidy. There was the inevitable slight odour of fear, of course, compounded of perspiration and incipient micturition, the result of our struggle. But there was also expenexpensive scent—these international stewardesses shopped in the rue de Rivoli—and her underwear was matching white lace and spotless. Perhaps she had a rendezvous with some sexy captain, or she was just a nicely brought-up girl. I locked the cubicle door from the inside—a delaying tactic, nothing more. The body had to remain undiscovered until the flight for Switzerland had left. I kicked the black patent shoes and shoulder bag under the partition into the next cubicle, dropped the lilac two-piece after them, and shinned over the narrow wall. Still wearing my coolie clothes, the stewardess’s clothes safely inside my case, I sold my ticket to a loitering tout. I could see police and guards routinely checking the queues. I knew they would not detain me even if they recognised me; nobody was interested in dragging me back, for they wanted to get rid of me. When the tout insisted, I sold him my passport too. It was made out in the name they had given me, as the wife of that filthy creature Vasit. The first name on this passport was Boonmee. The picture could have been any Asian girl between fifteen and thirty. The tout grunted his satisfaction and paid me handsomely. I insisted on American dollars. I went back to the restroom and dressed myself in the uniform of the dead stewardess. The clothes fitted me fairly well, except that I was eight inches taller. The lilac skirt stopped above my knees, at a point officially declared immodest by government decree. I tugged the skirt down, feeling relieved that I was bound for a destination outside Thailand. My legs were my best features. The shoes were tight, though. Nothing to be done about that. Fortunately, aboard the aircraft, stewardesses changed into traditional Thai costume, so with any luck I should be able to go barefoot beneath the floor-length pasin, with the added advantage of disguising my height.