It was in the local newspaper. "British tourist raped". I rang the police and they were delighted to hear from the consul and immediately sent a car to pick me up. They took me the Suan Prung mental hospital where Vicky was being held.

A big blond girl she was sitting in the matron's room surrounded by a gently swaying shoal of curious, sedated inmates. A police officer was trying to interview her. She seemed perfectly lucid although at times she lost the thread of what she was saying and her mind wandered off into space.

Vicky had been staying free in a guesthouse as she was a friend of the owner who was away. The night before she had slept with a tour guide. At seven o'clock on the following morning, he introduced her to a friend who drove her - why? - to his house in Sankampaeng where he raped her. She fled to a temple, there she was found and taken to the local police station.

Vicky clearly came from a good family. Divorced twice, she had worked for several months as a cook in a Thaton hotel, where, I heard later, she had acquired quite a reputation and had finally been dismissed for inappropriate sexual behaviour.

On the next day Vicky was released from the hospital.

Two week later the tourist police came to collect me. On the previous evening the guest-house had called the police who kindly took her to spend the night at one of the officer's home.

She stood in the garden partly covered in a white sheet pouring water over herself, staring at the sun through a rolled up newspaper. She babbled of magnetic fields and points of force, most of which apparently, came from my ring.

By saying that we were taking her to her boyfriend we finally persuaded her into the car, still clad only in a white sheet. When Vicky realized that she was back in Suan Prung mental hospital, she broke free and sped towards the exit hotly pursued by an assortment of police, guards and nurses.

Reinforcements arrived and, Gulliver-like, she was caught, overpowered, injected with a sedative and put to bed securely tied, hand and foot.

It was not a pretty spectacle, but what else could they have done with such a powerful girl?

By the afternoon she was calm and they united her.

I had kept the family informed and, two days later, her mother arrived, a delightfully sensible person, head of catering at a major university, married to a psychologist. She told me that Vicky had had mental problems in the past. Possibly as a result of two messy divorces. Two weeks later they went home to England without pressing charges.

Had she been raped? At seven o'clock in the morning, after going voluntarily to his house? He a small man, she a strapping girl? She had certainly been sleeping around. Yet another unresolved case.