Number Seven

by Colin Cotterill

“What do you expect me to do?” I asked.

  “What you’re good at, finding the truth.”

  “And if I believe he’s guilty?”

  “He’s not.”

  *

  So there I was in the Mighty X on highway 44 to Krabi, thence to Phuket. I was more convinced than ever that Manager Doom had a hand in the robbery of her own bank. Anyone who could resort to bribery was certainly capable of larceny. She didn’t make any bones about it. I get her boyfriend out of jail and she gets her brother in Bangkok, who happens to be a legal attorney, to facilitate our insurance claim. Simple. And I decided it was worth taking the risk that she’d honour the agreement.

  Mair let me use the Mighty X. Of course I’d told her about the manager’s devious plan and her relationship with Te Win. Granddad Jah said it symbolized the moral decline of a once great nation. Arny had insisted on coming with me, not because he was of any use in a conflict, but because he was my brother and he’d be racked with guilt if anything happened to me. On the roads in Thailand the Mighty X ranked right up there with the brontosaurus. Everyone else had the technology that would guide their path to the North Kamala police station. We had Arny and the PTT tourist map so we arrived early in the evening when the crimson sunset was already making the horizon look like fresh road-kill. The officers were changing shifts, which worked to our advantage as nobody had any idea what they were supposed to be doing. The day cops handed us over to the night shift who assumed we were somehow connected to the former. The captain who approached us was dark skinned, not from ethnicity but from a vacation in Spain. He was delighted to tell us about it. He got to see two Barcelona games. Not bad for a man on six-hundred dollars a month. He asked us what we were doing there and I showed him my press card. I was currently only writing about school sports days and cosmetics for the over fifties for the Chumphon Gazette but I renewed my card every year. You never knew when it would come in handy. The police and the press had a long-standing, mutually beneficial relationship. The officers would pass along snippets in return for favourable mentions. The bigger the snippet the larger the accolade.

  The captain’s name was Grit. He was a shifty looking character built like a pterodactyl stuffed into a tight-fitting uniform. I told him why we were there and he led me to the cell where Te Win sat cross-legged on the concrete floor meditating.

  “They tell me he’s been there like that since he got here,” said Grit. “He can’t have any blood vessels. I get cramps just sitting in an airplane. Twenty hours to Madrid. Can you believe it?”

  I wasn’t really built for yoga myself. My body was more Lego than Slinky. But I sat on the floor on my side of the bars calling upon my mirroring techniques to create empathy. It didn’t help that he had his back to me. Grit was leaning over me like a claw.

  “He won’t talk to you,” he said. “He hasn’t talked since they brought him in.”

  “He’ll talk to me,” I said.

  I hoped English would be the key to unlock the Burmese. It was one of the many useful tools Mair had equipped her children with in our odd but never boring upbringing. Manager Doom had suggested her lover was fluent in English.

  “Brother Te Win,” I said. “I’m a friend of Doom at the Siam Commercial in Pak Nam. She sent me to get you out of here.”

  Te Win didn’t move. I wondered if he’d heard me.

  “See?” said Grit.

  “My name’s Jimm,” I said. “I’m the daughter of Mair. She has a number of projects for the Burmese community.”

  He expired like a puncture in a football and shook his head to bring himself back to the physical world. He turned to face me. I could see right away why Manager Doom would give up her concrete husband for this. He was what Mowgli would have looked like when he grew up. My heart fluttered. Somebody called Grit and he left us alone. I got the feeling he didn’t understand English.

  “I like your mother,” said Te Win. “She’s a good woman.”

  It was interesting he’d put Mair ahead in the ratings above Doom.

  “How did you get here?” he asked.

  “Truck.”

  “No, I mean, why did they allow you to talk to me?”

  “It’s your right.”

  He laughed and I later wished I’d asked him why he thought that was funny but I needed to get to the story.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?” I asked.

  “A girl was found on the beach,” he said. “Italian. She’d been hit on the head with a machete.”

  “Raped?”

  “Yes. Probably while she was bleeding to death.”

  “And they suspect you?”

  “I was talking to her in a bar that evening.”

  “Flirting?”

  “Working. I came to Phuket for a job as a foreman at a building site. It was a stepping stone to bigger projects, higher salaries. The local headman, his name is Dum, he’s building a hotel. Ninety percent of the workers are Burmese. I solve problems for him and in return he gives me the standard wage and lets me stay in his guesthouse for free. There’s a bar by the pool that’s popular with backpackers. Dum expected me to hang around the bar of an evening and talk to the guests, encourage them to drink. I’m sure you get the picture.”

  “You run the building site by day and host the bar at night. I hope at least you get a few free drinks out of it.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “And you’re never tempted to move up to the next level with any pretty backpacker who throws herself at you?”

  “No,” he said.

  It was one of those rare occasions when no actually does mean yes. It was the first lie he’d told me. Not sure exactly what it was that alerted me. Maybe something to do with a lifetime of my being dumped for prettier and slimmer gals. But I digress.

  “You have an alibi for that night?” I asked.

  “I stayed at the bar a little longer then went to my room and crashed.”

  “Alone?”

  I gave him the eyebrow.

  “I started work at six,” he said. “At best I get five hours sleep.”

  “So, alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what time they found the girl?”

  “Just after midnight three days ago.”

  “And there was no evidence to link you to the killing?”

  “There was.”

  “What?”

  “The machete.”

  I gave him both eyebrows.

  “It had my fingerprints on it,” he said.

  “Holy…”

  “That’s probably why I’m here.”

  “You think? Was it your machete?”

  I didn’t get an answer to that because Captain Grit came running into the cell block waving his hands.

  “That’s it,” he said. “Enough. Get out.”

  He grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to my feet.

  “It appears our appointment is over,” I said.

  “I’m surprised they gave you this long,” said Te Win. “You’re the first non-police visitor I’ve had.”

  I was being man-handled to the door.

  “What about the lawyer?” I shouted.

  “What lawyer?”

  *

  Arny and I checked into the Happy House guesthouse that evening. It was where Te Win had been staying. Headman Dum’s place. They gave us a room with two single beds and running red ants. It took the receptionist half a can of Baygon to terminate them. She was very apologetic but by then the place was so full of poisonous fumes we couldn’t stay there. So we went to the pool area, which was already ‘happening’.

  There’s something about backpackers that irks me. I don’t know. Thirty years ago it’s possible there were hardships involved in traveling in the Third World: bandits, malaria, miscommunication, a tent lashed by the monsoons, waiting three months for mail at poste restante. But since then, budget travel had been sanitized by Lonely Planet and its ilk. Every potential pitfall was documented. The road less t
ravelled was sign-posted and had 7-Elevens every thousand metres. So, watching the pseudo hippies in their tie-dyes and batiks quaffing cocktails with suggestive names from ice buckets made me yearn for the early nineteenth century when you could only make it to Phuket by elephant. I felt sorry for those young people on their designer Silk Road. But, most of all I was worried by the fact that they’d arrived in a foreign country and shed all their home-town common sense. The girls were dressed for the bordello and were drinking away their natural defense systems in search of erotic experiences in an exotic land. I was born here. I wrote about crime. The safety they felt was not real.

  We talked to one of the barmen who was only too keen to tell us about the night the Italian girl went missing. He’d heard a rumour she was dead but there was nothing about it in the news.

  “She drank a lot,” he said. “I mean, a lot. But they all do. She had the hots for the Burmese guy. She was asking me about him. My English is shit but I knew she was after him.”

  “But they didn’t go to his room?” I said.

  “Too ordinary,” he said. “You’d be surprised how many of these bitches have beach fantasies. The Jap chicks want it on the sand. The Europeans, they want to swim naked and do it under the stars.”

  “You seem to be an expert on the subject,” I said.

  “I know, sister,” he said. “You’re looking at me like how does this skinny, average-looking guy from the rice paddies get himself laid? But I’m funny, you see? They don’t want a fiancé. They want a laugh and an event they can write home about. I can give ‘em that.”

  “So, the Burmese?” said Arny, sensing the bile rising in my throat.

  “He’s like you, brother,” said the barman. “You and him just click your fingers. Know what I mean?”

  “Does anyone supervise all this seaside nooky?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “See over there? The cabin with the lights off? In them shadows is the owner, Dum and his boys. They watch it all, they do. Wouldn’t be surprised if they had a telescope trained on the cash register. They keep things in check. Anyone starts a fight and they’re on ‘em in a heartbeat. Anyone in the pool gets dragged out. Pool’s just for show at night. Dum and them they’re the shadow cops. Nothing gets past ‘em.”

  “They didn’t do a very good job the night the girl went missing,” said Arny.

  “Nothing they could do, I guess. It happened on the beach. They’re only kind of protective about this place. The story going around is that the Burmese killed the Italian and threw her body in the sea. The cops came early the next day and took away all his stuff so you know he was up to no good.”

  “Is this the first guest they’ve lost here?” Arny asked. “Any mysterious deaths?”

  “I haven’t been here for long but they tell me one of the guests got drunk once and went to bed with a lit cigarette. Burnt down the cabin and herself. I guess that’s why they’re so, what do you call it? Vigilant.”

  *

  Arny and I had matching sky-blue shirts. It was one of Sissy’s jokes. She’d sent one to each of us as Lovely Resort staff. Arny’s was eight times bigger than mine. If you didn’t get close enough to see the resort logo they could have been any old company uniform. It was worth a try. The 7-Eleven was directly between the Happy House and the beach. If the Italian girl (her name was Saphira) had gone there directly she’d have to have passed it.

  “Sorry we’re late,” I said to the accompaniment of an electric chime. I knew from my earlier phone call that the 7-Eleven manager was away at another branch in Pang Nga. The pimply boy behind the counter seemed to be weighted down by the responsibility of running the store alone.

  “I’m sorry, who are you?” he asked.

  “How many times do we have to come here before you recognize us?” I asked.

  “I’ve only recently transferred here,” he said.

  “No excuse,” I said. “Somsee, your manager got us out of our beds this morning with her ‘urgent’ phone call. It’s a disgrace she didn’t tell you. Your CCTV camera’s out of order again.”

  “Not the first time,” said Arny.

  “You people don’t follow the maintenance protocols,” I told spotty. “And we get blamed for it. No need to show us the way. We know where everything is.”

  We walked to the back room leaving him dithering. 7-Eleven architects had no imagination. You saw one you’d seen them all. There was only one door to the back.

  “I don’t…” he called after us.

  “Best not,” I said.

  The computer was staring at us. The standard app stored a week of live footage from four cameras on a split screen. The branch then had the option to delete or to download onto a storage site. Most shops saved, just in case. One of the shots was exterior. We found the date of the murder. There wasn’t a lot of foot traffic after midnight so it was easy enough to spot our girl from the description the barman had given us. She wore a flimsy tropical dress and had a US flag bandana around her head. She was in a bad way. In fact, if the guy she was with hadn’t been propping her up I’d guess she’d have fallen face down on the tarmac long before. And her escort was most obliging because he looked directly into the store so his face was illuminated by the fluorescents… and he smiled.

  *

  It seemed pretty much an open and shut case at that point. Liar, Te Win had escorted a drunk Italian girl to the beach and killed her with a machete. It was him on the tape. I didn’t like people lying to me. But there were a few things that worried me. Too much of it was weird. Where was the press coverage? I’d phoned Granddad Jah who assured me there was still nothing about the murder on TV or in the newspapers. I knew the media was in a frenzy about the riots in Bangkok but nobody could resist the murder of a pretty foreign girl. It sold papers. Four days had passed since her death. Surely the girl’s family would be missing her. Why had the police not viewed the 7-Eleven camera footage? Then there was the murder weapon. Te Win’s fingerprints had been found on the machete even though it would have been easy enough to wipe it clean. So, was it just conveniently lying there on the beach for him to bludgeon her to death? On the video he’d been wearing shorts and a skin-tight T-shirt. No place to conceal a weapon.

  I had to talk to Te Win again to set my mind at ease but at the North Kamala station we hit a brick wall in the shape of a punctilious little lieutenant with a David Beckham haircut.

  “What’s his name?” he asked even though I’d told him three times already.

  “Te Win,” I said.

  “How do you spell that?” he asked looking briefly at a list in front of him.

  “In what language?” I asked.

  “Thai, of course.”

  I had to guess the spelling. He checked the list.

  “No,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “I tried two or three more spellings but got them all wrong. It was like being back at middle school.

  “Look,” I said. “Perhaps you could help me out here. You have a Burmese in custody accused of murder. I’d like to talk to him, however he spells his name.”

  I put my press card on the counter in front of him. He ignored it.

  “No, we don’t,” he said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “We don’t have a Burmese in custody.”

  “I spoke to him yesterday evening,” I said.

  “Oh, I doubt that,” he said. “Last Burmese we had in the lock up was a month ago. Drunk and disorderly.”

  “Look, that’s not… Can you ask Captain Grit? He was with me.”

  “Can’t do that either,” he said. “He’s on leave.”

  “He’s…? But he just came back from vacation.”

  “Look, sister,” he said. “You’re wasting my time. I have better things to do. There’s no murderer in the cells.”

  “What about the dead Italian girl?”

  He laughed, rudely.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen this before,” he said. “You have a few puffs of weed while you’re watc
hing a movie and suddenly it all seems real. I wouldn’t go spreading rumours like this if I were you. It can only get you in trouble.”

  I wished I’d not left Arny in the truck. I needed backup. I asked to see the commanding officer but it appeared he was in a meeting with everyone else above the rank of lieutenant and wouldn’t be free until 2019. I knew when to give up.

  We drove to the modest office of the Phuket Gazette where I found my old friend, Jim. Yeah, I know; Jimm and Jim. They’d never make a series about us. He was a gnarly old American who dressed like a street person but always smelled of scented soap. He had a deep understanding of our easily misunderstood country. We took him for lunch and caught up on the news.

  “So, what do you want?” he asked.

  “Winning lottery ticket.” I said.

  “And failing that?”

  “Everything you know about the Italian backpacker that was killed on the beach at Kamala on Tuesday.”

  “That shouldn’t take long,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s news to me.”

  “Come on,” said Arny. “Four days ago. Beaten to death with a machete. Burmese building site foreman the chief suspect.”

  “They had him in a holding cell at North Kamala. I met him but they’re denying they’ve ever heard of him,” I said.

  Jim pouted and shook his head.

  “No rumours?” I said.

  “No.”

  I told him the whole story from the bank manager liaison to our brief chat the previous evening. I gave him a copy of the 7-Eleven footage.

  “And you got the whole story from your Burmese guy?” Jim asked.

  “And a barman at the Happy House,” said Arny.

  “Any idea where he heard it from?”

  “We can ask him tonight,” I said. “We’re staying there.”

  “Whoa,” said Jim. “Watch out.”

  “Something amiss?” I asked.

  “Nasty little gang,” said Jim. “Headman Dum and his boys. They make Ma Barker’s crew look like the Salvation Army.”