“What?” I said.
“At that moment I caught sight of another man, younger than my lawn-mate but with similarly bad dress sense, running from behind the house. He ran like a man who had never done so before. He seemed disoriented, no doubt unsure as to where he’d parked his motorcycle. I’d used my “Oi” line already, so I went with “Freeze and put your hands in the air.” To my surprise he did exactly that, dropping his keys in the process. At that moment something caused the grass sprinklers to start working, and all three of us were soon soaked. The old man on the lawn with me was fascinated by my now wet T-shirt, and he seemed to be drooling.
“Jimm, what the hell are you doing here?” came the voice of Da. She was on the doorstep with one shoe off and her hands on her hips. I heard footsteps on the gravel path and turned in time to see a third man in retreat. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
*
“You want another chocolate biscuit?” asked Da.
“I’ve already eaten most of the packet,” I said. “Perhaps another cup of tea?”
We were in the glass kitchen in the glass house but, by now, we could be sure we weren’t being watched. The three perverts had gone home and would no doubt be asking for their money back.
“So, the website’s called ‘Peeping Tom’?” I said.
“In fact it’s called ‘Peeping Tom Tom’, she said as she waited for the kettle to boil. “It’s a Thai site and the Tom Tom comes from the old Carabao song ‘Made in Thailand’. The title’s the only thing in English. All the clients are Thai.”
My wet T-shirt was hanging from the swing in the front garden, so I was wearing a towel ’til it dried.
“Then let me get this straight,” I said. “Perverts join this Tom Tom club, pay a lot of money, and they’re told where and when they can get their rocks off secretly watching an attractive woman who supposedly doesn’t know she’s being watched.”
“But of course we do know,” said Da. “The owners of the site teach us all these seductive moves to get the voyeurs worked up. They get an hour, then they’re escorted off the premises, and the next shift show up. Some days we get a hundred johns hanging from the trees and hiding in the shrubbery.”
“Why would they need to ... to pay to watch a girl wiggle her buttocks? Surely there’s enough porn on the internet to keep them busy.”
“Yes, Jimm. But this is hands-on experience, if you know what I mean. It’s the next step up from video chats with hookers. But now they’re actually here, live, living out their fantasy of secretly watching a woman undress and be sexy. But there’s no fear of getting arrested.”
In fact, it sounded like a training course for stepping up to the next level of home invasion and assault. She gave me my tea and I automatically reached for the biscuits.
“There are rules,” she said. “They aren’t allowed to enter the house. There’s no physical contact with them. They can’t bring cameras. And everyone has to take the license plates off their vehicles, so there’s no blackmailing or private contact. I covered my plates before I pulled into the drive. It’s all very well organized.”
“But how do they police all this?”
“Cameras,” said Da. “There are none in the house, but they have CCTV all around the grounds. When time’s up, they sound a hooter and they have five minutes to finish up. That means–”
“Yes, I get it,” I said. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Eight months or so,” said Da. “There are six of us. It pays really well, so I’m saving up for a house. It’s not like prostitution at all.”
“I suppose that depends on your definition of prostitution,” I said.
To tell the truth, it was horrible on many levels. It encouraged perversion, and reinforced all the wrong ideas of women as sex objects, for one thing. Or perhaps that’s two things. In fact, I could have written a pamphlet on how many ways it was wrong. But I knew Da had made up her mind, and I’d seen how she’d taken to the role of seductress. There’d be no convincing her to give it up. She wasn’t much of a nurse, but she could always have a role in burlesque. I didn’t tell her, but I’d already decided Peeping Tom Tom had had its last peep-peep. There were ways to shut these things down. The internet was still the Wild West, but I had a sister who was one tough marshal. There was one last question I needed to ask Da.
“How did it go wrong?” I asked. “I mean, with aardvark nose.”
I’d settled on aardvark because it’s a word you get so little chance to use.
“There’s not supposed to be any interaction between the clients and the girls,” said Da. “We’re supposed to be anonymous. But that creep had developed a bit of a crush on me. Came back time after time. Spent all the money he had on viewings. He followed me home one day and started stalking me. I didn’t know it was him. He never showed himself. I was really scared. But that night you stayed at my place and I was alone with him, I recognized him. He told me he was in love with me and how much money he’d spent on watching me at Tom Tom. But, you see, the website guys have personal information about all the clients. They felt bad he’d breached security. They gave him a little message to discourage him.”
“Hence the band-aid.”
“A lot of these guys are cowards, so we were sure he wouldn’t come back,” she said. “Jimm, I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you about it all, but I was afraid you’d be upset about me doing this. You’d do your ‘moral auntie’ routine.”
She was right. And suddenly auntie didn’t feel at all bad about denying her a new house.
I talked to my sister Sissy that evening, and we agreed on a way to beat the Tom Toms. It involved hacking into the database – Sissy is a world hacking champion – and publishing the names of all the site members, and the names and addresses of the three young men who started and administered the site. Then we’d just sit back and imagine the mess we created. But there was something else I wanted to discuss with my ex-brother.
“You want to what?” she said.
“It’s the only way I can restore balance to the world,” I said.
“If you’re ever found out…”
“I know. I’ve weighed up the pros and cons. I think it’s worth it. Can you do it?”
“Of course I can do it. I can do almost everything. But I can’t put the pieces of Jimm back together again when it goes wrong.”
“It won’t.”
I’d said that last line with a total lack of confidence, but we went ahead with it anyway. Two nights later, I found Granddad reading the obituaries in the national newspapers. He looked up at me when I walked into his room at the resort construction site, and immediately returned to his reading. I sat opposite him at the card table and laid a manila envelope in front of me. He didn’t stir.
“Granddad,” I said. “I know you aren’t talking to me, and I understand. But there’s something very important I need to discuss with you. It involves the speeding ticket that arrived last Saturday.”
I pulled the speeding sheet from the envelope and looked at it.
“I wanted to be certain it was me driving the Mighty X that day, so I sent a scan of it to Sissy. As you know, she has the skills to enhance photographs. The original photo of me was distorted by the sunlight on the windshield, so you couldn’t make out my face. But with a little of my sister’s magic, we were able to get a recognizable image of the driver.”
I took a second sheet from the envelope. Still he pretended not to be interested. Still he scoured the columns for old friends.
“You see?” I continued. “What worried me about the speeding ticket was the date. Did you notice the date? I really had no recollection of driving to Surat that day. It was the day Captain Kao went to Bangkok. I’d offered to take him to the airport but–”
“What?” said Granddad.
“I was going to take Captain Kao to the airport, but the truck was already gone. I thought perhaps Arny had taken him, but he was at a body-building convention in Pattaya. So I–”
�
�Show me that,” he said.
I handed him the speeding sheet and he went directly to the time the crime was recorded. I’d gambled on his not making a note of the date the day the letter arrived on our kitchen table. He’d been so happy to gloat, so confident I’d be the one to sully the family name. He never wore his reading glasses to lunch, so I was hoping the fine print would have been too much for him.
“I took Kao to the airport on the twelfth,” he said.
“Right,” I said. “And the flight was at 10:30. You like to drop people off at the airport early, so they have to sit and drink coffee for two hours.”
“Better to be sure than sorry.”
“But I’m sure you were behind the wheel of the Mighty X at 8:37,” I said.
“What if I was?”
“Well, that’s the time on the speeding sheet right there – 98 kph in an 80 kph zone.”
Granddad finally got the point.
“That’s ... that’s nonsense,” he said. “I’ve never ever sped in my life.”
“That’s not what the highway police in La Mae think. They’re so confident, they even took your picture to prove it.”
I held up the second sheet. The enhancement of the photograph was grainy but there was no doubt the man behind the wheel was Granddad Jah. And if he was driving, I was in the clear.
“There’s ... it’s got to be a mistake,” he said. “I’ve never ... would never exceed a speed limit.”
“Then you probably just blacked out for a few seconds as a result of being elderly, and leaned on the accelerator a bit too hard. Or you dropped off from fatigue, or the police camera malfunctioned, or someone at the La Mae station has a grudge against you. You see, Granddad? There are any number of eventualities that could explain this speeding sheet. And, right now, it’s just between you and me. I won’t...”
“It can’t be me, I tell you.”
“I’m perfectly happy to keep this between you and me,” I said. “I’d be especially careful to keep it from your old police buddies. But you...”
“It wasn’t me.”
“Right. And that’s the way we’ll have it known.”
I winked.
“But from now on, I want a little respect both for my driving and my status in our family. I don’t want to hear one more ‘Not bad for a girl’ comment, and I especially don’t want to massage your knees again just because you’re old and it’s what grandchildren have been doing since time began. I’m a journalist, not a masseuse.”
I left him looking forlornly at the obituaries. I’d paid the original and authentic speeding fine via the post office, and sent off the actual sheet with the actual dates and the actual non-enhanced photo. Sissy’s copy of everything with the wrong dates and the Photoshop of Granddad’s head would have fooled the commissioner of police himself. The receipt with the words, ‘Thank you for your payment of the fine. This transgression will be added to your criminal record,’ arrived a week later. I gave it to Granddad as a keepsake but I think he burned it.
The End
Jimm Juree’s Short Stories
Number One: The Funeral Photographer
In this story, Jimm, exiled from the north of Thailand and just about surviving in the south, finds a new career by accident. Being Jimm, a crime is never far away.
Number Two: When You Wish Upon a Star
A car drives into a river and a woman is dead. A terrible accident and a broken hearted husband. Or it would be if Jimm’s sixth sense didn’t cut in.
Number Three: Highway Robbery
"First, my only appointment of the week phoned to postpone. Second, on the TV news in the evening I was astounded to see scenes from our own Highway 41 where an armoured security van had been deserted minus its cash. And, third, I was awoken just before midnight by the sound of groaning coming from the empty shop house beside mine. It was a while before I learned how these three events were connected."
Number Four: The Zero Finger Option
A letter a day delivered by a good looking young postman leads Jimm into a new mystery. It starts as a case of internet scamming, but ends up somewhere far worse.
Number Five: Trash
Not a message in a bottle; instead it's in a sealed plastic bag which once held medicines, stuffed inside an old sardine can and washed up on the beach. A cry for help by someone held against their will? And is there any connection to the Burmese labourers dying from malaria? Another case for Jimm Juree.
Number Six: Spay With Me
"On the day I, Jimm Juree, sent one of my mother’s dogs to hell, someone robbed the Siam Commercial Bank in Pak Nam. The two events sound unrelated, but they weren’t. The connection between the two was me and one amazingly bad decision I made. This will all become evident as I talk you through the events of that Thursday."
Number Seven: Sex on the Beach
When a tourist is raped and killed at a resort in the south of Thailand, the police place the guilt on a Burmese migrant worker. Jimm is recruited to help the arrested worker and soon smells a rat, or rather a number of them.
Number Eight: Smelly Man
Who is trying to kill the smelly tramp? The tramp doesn't know, but he hires Jimm to find out. Jimm with her family and a friendly gay cop set to work on the mystery as only they can.
Number Nine: Maprao Syndrome
Jimm and the Thai police try to solve a kidnapping of an American lady, but all is not as it seems.
Number Ten: Tom Tom
Jimm chases a peeping tom which ends up being not what she thought it was.
Number Ten Page 3