The new security measures added to the firm’s overheads, but not a great deal. They paid two boys an extra one hundred Baht each to sleep in the shop and another two a hundred each to sleep in Lek’s suan or garden, which Craig called her orchard. This amounted to a free meal each and a bottle of whisky to keep them amused. The boys were happy to do it and devised a rota in order to take it in turns. After the first day, they reduced the number of men working around the shop to one, because Lek had been quite right that any attack would come at night not in broad daylight when there would be too many witnesses.
However, there was no more vandalism on Ayr’s rice fields, probably because the thugs didn’t know which ones were hers. Lek insisted on placing a man in the grounds of their house,
