Louise and Kit were nurses from Bath, they had graduated together and had worked at the local hospital for the past three years. This was their first holiday together.

I received a desperate message on my answering machine asking me to go to the Pent guesthouse as they were afraid for their lives.

I went. It was a run-down, dirty house, the owner a surly Englishman. He said that Louise and Kit had gone out, that they were cheating him and that he would get them.

In the evening they called me and I asked them to come round to the house. They seemed a likeable and genuine couple. Speaking to Pat rather than to me they confessed that they had misjudged their finances and had completely run out of money. They had not eaten for two days. They owed the guesthouse two hundred and thirty baht and were being threatened with prison or worse if they did not pay within twenty-four hours.

I immediately faxed the Embassy, explaining the situation and telling them to contact Kit's parents in Bath requesting that five hundred pounds should be sent immediately. Pat invited them to spend the night with us. I went back to the guesthouse and paid their bill to the obvious annoyance of the owner who, no doubt, was hoping to extort much more from them.

That evening after supper and drinks they told us more about Tom, the guesthouse owner. He made regular trips to the Burmese border, usually accompanied by a police sergeant. They were certain that he was deeply involved in drug trafficking and that the guesthouse was merely a cover. Louise and Kit had seen too much and asked too many questions. They feared not that they would be sent to prison but that they would, at best, be beaten up.

Before going to bed they telephoned home and it was confirmed that the money was on the way. I lent them five thousand baht and in the morning they went sightseeing and shopping for they planned to leave as soon as their money arrived, which it did three days later.

Two days after Louise and Kit had left, I received a telephone call from Mae Tang police station. Peter, an Englishman, had gone trekking with three close friends. On Monday evening he had been taken ill and died a few hours later. The friends came to the Consulate, asking me to contact the next of kin, which I did through the Embassy.

They suspected that his death might have been caused by a combination of valium, opium and alcohol.

I arranged for the body to be embalmed while awaiting the autopsy report and for its subsequent return to England.

Later his father, a doctor, wrote to me.

'I am writing to thank you for the considerable help and support you gave my son's friends at and around the time of his death in Thailand.

'Following the return of Peter's body to this country we arranged a further post mortem examination which found that he died of a rupture of one of two arteries at the base of the brain. Peter could have died at any time or place.'