Number Seven

by Colin Cotterill

  “What are they into?” Arnie asked.

  “Probably easier to ask what they’re not into,” said Jim. “Lot of rumours and suspicions, no convictions. A sure sign of influential friends in high places. They’re building a four-star hotel on land with disputed deeds but nobody doubts they’ll get permission. Dum owns people.”

  “Someone mentioned a fire some while back,” Arny said.

  “Let’s just say the Happy House is the type of place you’d stay clear of if you believed in curses cause that place sure has a lot of accidents,” said Jim. “There’s the fire, then there were a couple of girls who died from sleeping on bedding that had been sprayed with this bedbug repellent called phosphine. It’s banned in Thailand but they still use it. There’d been a few cases of the same thing up north but Happy House was the only place in the south. They arrested and charged the manager of the pest eradication company contracted at Happy House even though he swore he’d never used anything illegal.”

  “You think that’s how they died?” I asked.

  “Some of the foreigners down here were talking about a cocktail they drink at the tourist bars,” said Jim. “They call it four times a hundred. It’s a mix of cough syrup, a local narcotic called kratom, and Coke. They lace it with DEET for an extra kick.”

  “Ouch,” I said. “That good old insecticide buzz.”

  “Is there a reason why they don’t let the guests use the pool at night?” Arny asked.

  “Yeah,” said Jim, “Some woman got high and decided it’d be a good idea to jump into the pool from the second-floor balcony. She half made it. Hit her head on the springboard on the way in. Drowned.”

  “What time span are we talking about?” Arny asked.

  “The fire was eighteen months ago,” said Jim.

  “And all the victims female,” I said.

  “Yup, lucky you’ve got your bodyguard with you,” said Jim.

  *

  We stopped by the police station on our way back and the evening shift sergeant at reception was every bit as insistent they’d never had a Burmese there on a murder charge. Captain Grit was still on leave and, as far as they knew, nobody had reported a tourist missing.

  We went back to the Happy House, got cleaned up, ate at the restaurant and went to sit at the bar. Arny had a tonic water. I had Sex on the Beach from a stainless steel ice bucket. Our barman from the previous evening hadn’t turned up for work and the new guy knew ‘nothing about nothing’. I called Manager Doom in Pak Nam and told her we’d apparently lost her boyfriend. I kept quiet about his relationship with the Italian.

  “Doom,” I said. “You got a call from someone claiming to be a lawyer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he say he’d spoken to Te Win?”

  “Yes, that’s how he found out about me.”

  “Te Win told me nobody had talked to him except police. How do you know the caller was a lawyer?”

  “Well, he told me.”

  “In Thai?”

  “No, he spoke English.”

  “Did he mention money?”

  The pause was long enough to answer my question.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “He… he said we could offer an incentive to let him go,” said Doom. “He said they had a lot of experience with negotiation with the Thai police.”

  “How much?” I tried again.

  “500,000 baht.”

  “Quite reasonable I’d say. And you happened to have half a million baht lying around?”

  “I have savings. My family isn’t short of money.”

  “And you take the word of an English speaking stranger and send him your savings?”

  “Look, yes. When you say it like that I know it sounds like madness.”

  “I can’t think of a way to say it to make it sound like anything else.”

  “I knew something was wrong,” she said. “I hadn’t heard from Te Win for two days. Before that we’d talk on the phone two or three times a day. The lawyer told me things only Te Win could have known.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like… like about his family in Burma. About our relationship. How else could he get my number? The lawyer told me about the International NGO he was working with. His name and picture were on the site. They had a Paypal account. I sent the money there. They acknowledged receipt right away by email. It was all quite legitimate. I waited for news. Nothing came. Te Win still didn’t call. I couldn’t get through to the lawyer. That’s when I brought you on board.”

  I laughed.

  “Doom,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “You’re pretty stupid for a bank manager.”

  *

  I was on my third Sex on the Beach. I may have commented before about my huge tolerance for alcohol but I do tend to get, what my Aussie classmates used to call ‘randy’, after a couple of litres of booze. Arny had gone to bed. A couple of greasy farang had attempted to woo me. I told them I was Christian, awaiting the second coming. They were gone before my second psalm. But I wouldn’t have fought too hard if a gorgeous Swedish paddle boarder had whisked me away for the night. In the meantime I ignored the headache-inducing garage music and retreated into my investigative cocoon. What did I have? The murder of an Italian tourist that may or may not have actually happened. The probable killer who had been with the girl on the beach. Someone availing themselves of the chaos to extort money from the suspect’s girlfriend: probably Te Win himself or his law firm cohorts. My sister, Sissy had a few dozen fake sites on-line soliciting money for causes so I knew how easy it would have been to set up a fake international NGO.

  The police were obviously covering something up. I assumed I’d cornered Captain Grit before they’d had a chance to brief him after his lovely holiday in Spain. That was the only reason I’d got to see Te Win. But since then the cop shop had been firmly shut down. They denied there had been a murder and I had no concrete evidence to the contrary. All I had was hearsay and the 7-Eleven video we’d copied. I didn’t know whether the Burmese was still in jail and, to be honest, I had no idea what to do next. It was what Sissy would refer to as a ‘bafflement’.

  I would probably have paid my bar tab around then and gone a little unsteadily to our cabin. But, suddenly, sitting on the stool beside me was a young Thai man with a wispy moustache and a hump. He wasn’t exactly Quasimodo but you could have stood several shot glasses on it without spilling any.

  “I’ve been watching you,” he said.

  He nodded towards the dark cabin with its now, two shadowy characters concealed there. He had to be one of Dum’s boys.

  “Hope I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said.

  “I saw your boyfriend leave you alone.”

  “Husband,” I said. “He’s warming up the bed.”

  “No,” said Quasi, “I didn’t see any passion between you two. A woman like you needs excitement.”

  “And, don’t tell me. You know where all the excitement is.”

  “I might. If you’re up for it.”

  “Seems to me you’ve got a lot of choice at a place like this. Lot of pretty girls here.”

  He glared at me. He had a good face if you could see beyond his appendage. Thailand wasn’t the most gracious country in which to carry a deformity so I was sure he’d have suffered his fair share of mockery growing up. But I have to say he looked at me as if he were disappointed in what he saw. That was a little humiliating.

  “Something wrong?” I asked.

  “You,” he said. “You don’t seem that drunk.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s your third bucket.”

  “But who’s counting, right?”

  Obviously he and his creepy family were. I wondered what the bucket limit was before someone crept out of the shadows to check out the drunk girls at the bar. I wondered if the lone lady backpacker might feel safe with him because of his growth. I wondered if they’d take pity on him. But he’d already given up on me.

&
nbsp; “Enjoy your night,” he said. “You never know when it might be your last.”

  He turned to leave then stopped and looked back.

  “Give my regards to your brother,” he said.

  I watched him hobble away. How did he know Arny was my brother unless he’d checked us out on-line? We’d used our passports to check in so we could have passed for husband and wife. And if Quasi knew of our relationship, I imagined he’d also know I was a journalist. And, if he did, that might have made me the enemy. What if they’d heard about our meeting with Te Win at the police station? About our conversation with the missing barman? About our lunch with Jim? Our visit to the 7-Eleven. We were in headman Dum’s territory and I suddenly felt vulnerable.

  ‘You never know when it might be your last,’ he’d said.

  Had they sent him to warn me? Was he hoping I’d be too drunk to notice a walk to the beach? But for whatever reason, it was around then that the whole case suddenly began to twinkle like fairy lights in my head.

  I was clear-headed by the time I got to our cabin. Total waste of alcohol. I locked the door and wedged a chair under the handle. A good cliché always worked for me in times of stress. I didn’t want to disturb Arny. He would have panicked which was the last thing I needed. I slept fitfully, waking to every dog bark, every lizard tut. I was in this eerie world where nothing was as it seemed and that night I was never sure whether I was conscious or unconscious.

  *

  I got a call from Jim at 7AM. It didn’t wake me. I’d been staring at my phone for an hour wondering what to do with it.

  “You heard?” he said.

  “No.”

  “The Central police station in Phuket town called a press conference this morning,” he said. “My editor got me out of bed for it. We’re waiting for the details. But there’s been a murder.”

  “Another one?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think so. Maybe just a repeat of an old one.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Arny was slowly regaining consciousness. He took a while to greet new days.

  “They found a dead Italian girl on the beach at Kamala this morning. They’ve arrested a Burmese who was staying at the guest house with her.”

  “What?”

  “Media people are flying in as I speak. Local news teams are already on to it. Looks like you’ll be the last journalist on the case.”

  “This is nuts,” I said.

  “Mysterious, right? I love it.”

  “Are you at the police station?”

  “Yup.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you there in half an hour. This thing needs sorting out.”

  “You bet.”

  I was getting dressed and trying to explain everything to Arny when the window smashed and the frame came off its hinges. Not much point locking a door if you can be invaded through a window. Should have thought of that. Three men climbed into the room. They were armed. Two had guns but I was already intimidated by the machete of the third. I’d sooner be shot than hacked to pieces. I sat on my bed, not terrorized exactly but, as Mair would say, extremely concerned. Arny trembled on his own bed. Like I say, he wasn’t much help in times of crises. One of the men removed the chair and opened the door and in walked a short, unimpressive man followed by two younger versions of himself. No prizes for guessing who they were. One of them I recognized from our meeting the night before. In daylight his hump seemed more streamlined.

  Headman Dum sat beside me on my bed and put his hand on my thigh. I could have slapped him I suppose but I didn’t see that as our best exit strategy.

  “You know?” he said, “This was all going so well. Everybody was cool. Everybody knew their roles. Nobody of any significance was going to be hurt. Today should have been the final scene in a beautiful movie. Then… there was you.”

  I remembered Grandda Jah’s famous words of advice, “When someone’s pointing a gun at you, don’t make a smart-arse comment.”

  He was right. That only worked in Hollywood. So I kept my mouth shut. Arny held on to my cell phone with both hands.

  “You aren’t planning to use that, son?” said Dum.

  Arny shook his head. He never could speak mid-trauma.

  “Good,” said Dum. “Because whatever you do and whatever you say here this morning, the outcome is going to be the same.”

  His fingers were squeezing my flesh in time to his pulse and I realized it wasn’t a conscious action. It was adrenalin coursing through his veins.

  “If I’d just wanted you gone, which of course I do, I could have firebombed your room and it all would have been over by now. I’m sure you see that. I could have slipped something into your water, etcetera, etcetera. But before we say goodbye, there is a strand of your meddling that needs to be clarified. I would like to know who you have discussed this situation with and what, if any advice you have solicited from outside sources. I know you, thanks to the magic of the internet and the ingenuity of my boys, and I know what kind of person you are. So I doubt you would respond positively to threats and torture until a good deal of unnecessary pain had been inflicted, and even then I’m sure you would lie your arse off.”

  He stood and walked to the other bed. It didn’t take long. It was a small room. He looked down at Arny who still couldn’t make eye contact.

  “But,” said Dum, “You did us the honour of introducing us to your brother, Arnon here. And I feel sure there is as close a family bond between you two as there is between me and my sons. And, if anything happened to my boys I would be devastated. I would confess to anything. I would give up every secret. Family is love. So, I intend to make a deal with you. I promise not to inflict agonizing wounds upon your brother in front of your eyes, long periods of cruel torture, if you will tell me everything I need to know about the people you’ve contacted and the plans you have set in progress while you were investigating this case.”

  “But we’ll still be dead at the end of it,” I said.

  “That, I’m afraid, is unavoidable,” said Dum. “But you have to agree there’s death and there’s death. I, myself, would like to be alive one second and gone the next. I would hate for the life to be coaxed out of me, sting by sting until I begged to be put out of my misery. I’m sure your shuddering brother here feels the same.”

  “Then, it’s a deal,” I said.

  “No,” said Arny.

  “Excellent,” said Dum. He returned to my bed. “Go ahead.”

  “I have one small condition,” I said.

  Dum laughed.

  “You are really not in the best position to ask,” he said.

  “Nirvana can be a miserable place when you have a mystery that cannot be resolved,” I said.

  I made it sound like it was a quote from the Lord Buddha. He laughed.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  “I realize now just how brilliant this whole thing is,” I said. “The planning has been methodical. I’m almost embarrassed to have stepped in and spoiled it. It’s clearly the work of a genius.”

  “Flattery won’t keep you alive.”

  “I know. But it’s true. If I was still writing for the Mail full-time I’d make a feature out of it. It’s fantastic. All I ask is to have a stab at explaining it all. If I’m wrong, fair enough. But my last request is to at least make an attempt.”

  “Dad,” said Quasi, “we gotta get this done and get out of here.”

  Dum sneered at his son.

  “Don’t you tell me how to run an operation, boy,” said Dum.

  “Sorry, Dad,” said the son. “But…”

  Dum turned to me and smiled.

  “You have five minutes,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, not really knowing how to start or where it would lead. “Here goes. You have associates at the Kamala police station. People who owe you favours, or money, or debts of gratitude. You’re a generous man. You help people. Sometimes you can claim those debts. That’s only fair.”


  “Don’t see anything inaccurate so far,” said Dum.

  “You’re a good father,” I said. “And kids can be difficult. Your boys here can be unruly at times. And they have a taste for foreign girls. There have been accidents that involved backpackers. Your boys may have been unfairly implicated in their deaths but you, Headman Dum, you have the knack – the skill. You know how to blur lines, how to talk to people, how to introduce evidence that the police may have missed. You’ve protected your sons as any good father would.”

  “I don’t know about you boys but I think this girl has abilities,” said Dum. “She’s very perceptive. It will be sad for me to end her career so young. Continue, young Jimm.”

  “Dad, I-,” said Quasi.

  “Shut up,” said Dum.

  It was my big finale, and finale could also mean ‘termination’.

  “One of your boys watched the Italian drinking herself into a stupor,” I said. “He went to talk to her. He took a shine to her. She was too innocent to understand the situation. Te Win, the Burmese foreman, he… I don’t know, had an instinct or a fear for her safety. She insisted on going to the beach. She couldn’t be talked out of it. He didn’t want her to go alone so he helped her there. I have no idea what happened at the beach but I suspect she passed out and Te Win found her a soft patch under the trees and decided there wouldn’t be any harm in her sleeping off her drunken night under the stars. So, as he had to get up for work in a few hours, he left her there. That was his only crime. He lied to me because he had no idea who was listening in. You had him arrested back then on some trumped up charge and put on ice until the body was eventually discovered.

  “One of your boys, and I’m guessing it wasn’t Lumpy here-.”

  “Dad!” Quasi shouted.

  “You’re annoying me, boy,” said Dum. “You want a beating?”

  I had no choice but to keep digging.

  “He follows them to the beach,” I said. “He sees the Burmese leave her there. And there she is under the trees sleeping like a baby. So pretty. So available. My imagination’s a bit fuzzy as to what happened then but there’s a machete involved, maybe he took it there himself to threaten the Burmese. I don’t know. Sometime later they’d switch it with a machete Te Win had used at the building site. I’m assuming, as the body was only discovered this morning that your boy here buried the girl in the sand and ran home to tell daddy what he’d done. Or, he left her there and you all hurried down to the beach and put her deep enough to work out a plan. And those plans got messed up somewhere around there. Maybe you don’t even know all the things that went wrong that night.”