Number Eight

by Colin Cotterill

  “I think I…” he began. “I think I know this one.”

  He’d recognized his partner but not himself.

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “Well, he was a good ten kilos heavier and balding,” said Chu, “But I think he was one of the two that came to kill me yesterday.”

  There was something surreal about that moment. Something time-traveling and shape shifting and weird. But the dog snored there at his feet unaware of the warping of time. Despite the impending dangers, I had no choice but to put into play my second reason for being there. A venture for which my nose clip would be of no help.

  “Chu,” I said, “I need to feel your head.”

  I thought he might object but he smiled and lowered his face to allow me access. I felt like an explorer about to head off into a vermin-infested jungle. Who knew what might be lurking there amid the knots and head sores? I wished I’d bought gloves.

  *

  Chompu called me ten minutes before the back-hoe opera’s overture began to play.

  “I found your truck,” he said.

  “Registered to one Arkom Taywadee?” I said.

  “How did you…?”

  “I’m Jimm Juree,” I said.

  “Yes, you are,” he laughed. “Sometimes I forget.”

  “Any idea where he’s staying?” I asked.

  “I have my people out checking the local hostelries,” he said. “Everyone’s only too pleased to get away from the paint fumes. I ask you, who uses oil-based paint for interiors in this day and age? And the colour. Oh, my god. You’d have to be on a drip to appreciate it.”

  He went into great detail about the bad taste of the police department renovation. The din started on time so I had to take my phone into the Porta-loo where I sat on the Porta-throne. Heavy-duty plastic walls are surprisingly sound proof. I told him everything I knew and suspected. I guessed that the story about Chu disrupting the trains had made its way into the media. Some keen local journalist had photographed him and sent the picture to accompany the article. Someone at Thrifty Retail had recognized the ex-director, which opened a can of maggots. The man they thought was dead had come back to life. The internet company, now owned by the business partner would be forced to reinstate Chucheep and pay him a share of the profits they’d earned in his absence. My smelly man had a scar behind his hairline and a lump I took to be the memento of an exit wound. The bullet had created enough of a trauma to erase Chu’s memory but not to kill him. Something had convinced him that living like a bum was a sound idea. It appeared he’d awoken in the hospital morgue with no idea who he was or why he was there. He headed for the street where he existed in his own way for fifteen years. He’d lived on his wits. He hadn’t lost his mind, only his past. I’d mentioned the name of the company he’d once owned and the identity of his partner but I may as well have been telling him a bedtime fairy story.

  And so it was, the following morning bright and early, the old man walked towards the level crossing with the dog on a leash by his side. He carried his box and the three plastic bags that contained a man’s world. One was full of magazines, Forbes and Time, in a forgotten language. One with clothes including the soiled hospital shroud and toe tag and the suit he’d stolen from a dying bus crash victim. And one with things he loved: a pink sea shell, wild flowers pressed in a book, a tooth from the first dog to join him on his walk south, a bead bracelet a little girl called Yunee had made for him and other pieces an outsider might call junk.

  The sniper lay on the damp ground, the sight of his M14 already trained on the spot the tramp was programmed to return to. He knew that street people were conditioned for routines. They may go off on a berserk tangent at times but they’d always fall back on the pattern. The job the assassin had been paid for fifteen years earlier would at last be completed. It had been a granite choker around his neck all those years. His first and only failure. A blight on his career record. He’d learned from it, of course. He’d learned that a bullet to the head wasn’t necessarily a kill shot. He’d learned that year by year a failure takes root in your mind and messes with your head. And when he’d seen the tramp the previous day he’d lost his cool. He shouldn’t have taken the shot then but he did and he’d missed and the failure had crossed over into the supernatural and become a curse. Now, nothing was more important than getting rid of the ghost who continued to haunt him. It wasn’t for money. It was for pride and reputation. He wasn’t going to be the hit man that missed three times.

  It was too easy. The bum stepped into his sight like a brown bear in a trap. The killer smiled and squeezed the trigger, once, twice. No head shot. He watched as the old man’s chest burst open in a puff of smoke and the victim fell backward. It was perfect, all but for the blood. There was none. And the killer knew why. When the bullet hit his own trigger hand there was blood. Plenty of it. That’s how it should look. A second shot grazed his cross-trainer shoe. Another zipped over his head. The shouts told him he was surrounded. His victim got to his feet and pumped his fist in the air. The killer had failed again and failure hurt far worse than bullets.

  *

  “What if he’d hit you in the head?” Mair asked.

  Her father smiled his insincere, non-humorous smile and left it at that. Granddad had insisted on playing the role of the street person in our small drama. We had no evidence, you see? We had to catch someone in the act. Uncle Chu would have refused to make a statement and the sniper would have walked. We figured two bulletproof vests might be enough to keep granddad alive. The exploding talcum powder pack was his own idea. A little bit of Hollywood to make it look authentic. When he volunteered, Arny and I had suffered only a fleeting moment of indecision. Well worth the investment, we thought. What a way to go. Better by far then rotting away in a hostel for the demented.

  Everything worked out well. We caught the assassin, who subsequently implicated the partner, Arkom Taywadee who was picked up at the Glang Suan Resort. And, with Sissy’s help the whole story rolled on out. Chu, alias Chucheep, had learned that his partner was stealing profits from the company. According to the family, Chucheep was about to confront Arkom and take sole control of the business. Arkom brought in a hit man to break into Chucheep’s house and make his death look like a robbery gone wrong. They had their payrolled coroner declare ‘murder by an intruder’ and, as the surviving partner, the contract allowed Arkom to take over the business.

  But Chucheep didn’t die. He woke up with a splitting headache in his split head and had no idea who he was. He stole clothes, walked out into the street and began a march south that took him fifteen years. And he would have continued on and on had it not been for the railway scam and a media hooked on bizarre incidents.

  We were sitting around a huge coconut wood table at Captain Kow’s place; me, Arny, Granddad Jah, Lieutenant Chomphu and the captain, eating earth foods that were good for our health and drinking Mekhong Whisky, which was not. It had been the first opportunity to get everyone together and celebrate our victory.

  “So, did your smelly man really agree to undergo psychological evaluation without putting up a fight?” asked Chom.

  “I wouldn’t use the word, ‘agree’ exactly,” I said. “More like, ‘Was totally against it’. But this criminal case nudged him back into the system. And the psychiatrists seem to think they can get him back to some sort of functional condition.”

  “Turn him back into an internet guru?” Chom asked.

  “More like, get him off the street and into a program that would allow him to utilize his obvious intellect,” I said.

  “Once you’re nuts you’re nuts,” said Granddad Jah.

  He was a sweetheart, our granddad.

  “Being nuts doesn’t mean non-functional,” I said. “Look at half the leaders around the world. I’d sat Chu at the computer and showed him the website for Thrifty Retail. He couldn’t believe he’d helped set it up and run it so successfully. He’s a smart guy.”

  “There should be a lot of m
oney coming his way,” said Chom.

  “You know? I don’t think he’s even remotely interested in it,” I said.

  “Once you’re nuts you’re nuts,” said Granddad Jah.

  “Father, have a little respect for those of us with different minds,” said Mair. “But I admit it would help if they could do something about his scent. His dog has better hygiene than him.”

  Mair had taken in Uncle Chu’s mongrel, Psycho. The tramp had told her it would be temporary but we hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if the mental health services have Uncle Chu on some sort of meds already,” I said. “They’ll have shampooed and dressed him decently. He’ll come back a new man. His dog won’t recognize him.”

  *

  Something odd was happening to our beach as well. For ten days there’d been no back-hoeing, no rock rolling. You could hear yourself exfoliate. Until that wonderful phone call from Sissy, I’d assumed the operators were on a temporary break.

  “Surely you’ve heard,” she said.

  “Heard what?”

  “All the Chumphon beach preservation projects are on hold,” she said. “Probably indefinitely.”

  “No?” I said. “But that’s sensational. What happened?”

  “For a journalist you really aren’t very news conscious, are you, Jimm?” she said. “It’s been in all the papers.”

  “We’re too remote for newspapers,” I said.

  “It’s on every Thai news website.”

  “No signal.”

  “My family is comprised of hillbillies,” she said with a sigh.

  “Come on, tell me.”

  “All right,” she said, “Find yourself somewhere comfortable to sit and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

  I sat.

  “It all began,” she said, “when somebody climbed the fence to the Phato quarry, strapped dynamite to his chest and tied himself to a rock. When the workers arrived in the morning and tried to remove him, he held up the detonator trigger and threatened to blow himself up. The standoff continued for several days before the press got wind of it and started to ask questions. The provincial council wasn’t that forthcoming with answers. But to cut a long story short, the rocks being blasted from the mountain in Phato were destined for your beach.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. But it appeared the project had been misrepresented by the local headmen and one or two reprehensible members of the district budget distribution committee. The wall was intended as a breakwater to protect beach roads from erosion.”

  “But our beach doesn’t have a road,” I said.

  “Exactly, but in the plans submitted to the ministry there is a road hugging the coastline.”

  “And the person who strapped dynamite to himself knew all this?”

  “Apparently. The police arrested everyone involved in the scam and the dynamite man wasn’t charged because the executives of the quarry were in jail. There was nobody to make a complaint about him. The press was hoping to interview him when he untied himself from the rock but he disappeared like the Lone Ranger. And nobody knew who he was or where he came from, but…”

  “But?”

  “But long after he’d fled the scene an overwhelming stench lingered there causing some journalists to lose their lunches.”

  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.