You won't be expected to be involved with drugs in any way,' said the Ambassador. But things never quite work out as they are expected to.

A furtive little man came wobbling up the drive to my house on a rusty old bicycle without any brakes. He wore a stained Caltex tee shirt and dirty trousers and would have been at home selling tips in a dark corner of an East End greyhound stadium. Even Dr Watson would have known immediately that he was a nark.

He introduced himself as Tony Brown and said it was vital that he should speak to Mr M. at the Embassy; would I please put the call through since he had no money. Honorary Consuls are used to getting odd requests from odd people. Tony spoke for a short while and then passed the telephone back to me. 'Be a good chap and lend him three thousand, will you? Send the bill to me.' M. I knew was head of the drug enforcement agency.

Tony told me that he worked for the Embassy, that he used to own a guesthouse, but that his wife, who was the daughter of a general, had divorced him and taken everything he possessed - I was inclined not to blame her. He also told me, I don't know why, that he had spent a year in jail for a drug offence - I wasn't surprised.

Two days later I found a message from him on my answering machine. ' I am desperate, this is a matter of life and death, please, please ask Mr M. to contact me immediately.' I do not know if he did. Next morning the police called to say that an A.F. Brown had been found dead in X guesthouse. They suspected that it was an overdose of heroin. A syringe had been found beside the body. There were no other papers or possessions. I went to the guesthouse and retrieved his passport but there was nothing else at all.

The Embassy disowned him and even refused to contribute to the cost of his funeral. His daughter, whose name we found in his passport, said she had no money, nor was she interested in what had happened to her father.

We gave him a pauper's funeral. The Ruam Jai Foundation donated a coffin and took the body to a primitive crematorium. I invited two missionaries to come and say a prayer, then the coffin was put into the kiln, or, rather they tried to put it in. It was too big so they had to knock off the legs and remove the lid. Waxed Coca-Cola cups were used as firelighters. A sad and moving experience. His ashes were interred in the Foreign Cemetery - you will find his cross in row D.

I have replayed Tony's final appeal many times; he was a very frightened man. He certainly did not commit suicide and someone who knew him told me that he had been a regular user of heroin for many years so there was no possibility that he took an accidental overdose. Then I looked at his passport and discovered that he had been to Holland twice in the last six months! A man who had no possessions and could not afford a telephone call to Bangkok? Who had paid for him to go and what had he carried? No wonder the Embassy wanted nothing to do with the case.

I think he must have been working for a drug gang and at the same time passing information to the Embassy. When the gang found out that he was double-crossing them, they killed him with a massive dose of heroin. And nobody cared, least of all the police.

I was grateful to the Ambassador for his thoughtful advice.