Number Six

by Colin Cotterill

  “Can you show me a photo of her?” the vet asked.

  Shamed again. I didn’t even have a photo of my beloved dog.

  “They’re in my other phone,” I said, blushing.

  *

  As we drove along the highway to the Street Dog Project HQ, Chom played Maria Carey on the CD player to cheer me up. That was never going to work so he changed the subject instead.

  “When you talked to the bank manager, did she tell you how the workers got out of the bank?” he asked.

  “What?” I said.

  “The bank was full of smoke and the three workers were unconscious. How did they get out?”

  “The bank guard dragged them out,” I said.

  “How come he wasn’t overcome by the fumes?”

  “I asked Doom that too. She said he’s normally stationed outside beside a busy road. So he wears a face mask to keep down the pollution intake. They’re saying that the mask filtered out enough of the bad air to give him time to go in and rescue the unconscious women. But he succumbed too once everyone was out. I guess he was functioning on adrenalin. He was in a worse state than all of them. He’s still on oxygen at the hospital. They’re calling him a hero. I’m working on a piece about him. Lowly guard risks his life to save his workmates. That sort of thing. Sissy’s doing a background check on him for me.”

  “I’d like to talk to him,” said Chom. “Nothing official. I’m just curious. The Lang Suan investigation has come to a dead end. Apart from the robbers, the guard’s the only one who knew what happened in that bank between the smoke bombs going off and the rescue. He had to have seen the intruders.”

  “Mrs. Doom said the back door was unlocked when she went back to assess the damage and losses. So, they probably left that way. But did they also enter through that door? If they did, someone on the inside would have had to unlock the two security exits for them.”

  The conversation distraction stopped working when we pulled up in front of a two-storey terraced house in Tha Chana. The sign out front with the same shocking pink letters said this was the headquarters of the SDP. Birgitt, the founder and manager of the programme came to meet us at the gate. She was a lean woman in her eighties with cheek bones that made her head look aerodynamic. She remembered me from our interview. We sat in the air-conditioned office and drank her home-made cappuccinos. I spun her the same lie about Beer wandering into the temple grounds and being picked up by accident. She went to a shelf and pulled down a thick album.

  “We photograph all of our ladies when they arrive at the vet,” she said. “Then we give them a reference number and code. I have one copy on the computer but I can never resist making a hard copy. I like the old fashioned ways.”

  She opened the album to show us hundreds of mug shots of confused animals with their arrest codes written on paper at their paws.

  “I like to keep it all up to date,” she said. “So I should have the dogs we collected at Ny Kao temple here.”

  She flipped through the sheets and my hopes dropped with every sorry pair of eyes that stared back at me. Beer was not one of the eleven. How was that possible?

  “But I saw…I mean, she was seen being carried to the truck and loaded into a cage.”

  “Your witness must have been mistaken,” said Birgitt. “Either that or your dog escaped while they were putting in the other dogs. Some of our volunteers are a bit slow in closing the doors. We old people have dubious reflexes.”

  That wasn’t impossible. I hadn’t stuck around at the temple to watch the other dogs being loaded.

  “How we can find the driver who pick up that dogs in Thursday?” asked Chom. His English always embarrassed me.

  “He’s part-time,” said Birgitt. “He doesn’t work today or Sunday. He’ll be back here again on Monday.”

  “Could I trouble you for his address?” I asked.

  “I’m happy to give it to you but I know you won’t find him at home this weekend. He and his brothers get together out of town for an annual festival to commemorate the summer solstice. I can give you his phone number. Don’t know if they’ll have a signal in the countryside.”

  She opened her phone and wrote the number down on paper.

  “How about the other volunteers that were with him that day?” I asked.

  “Em and May, elderly sisters,” she said. “From Bangkok. They were here visiting their niece. They like to volunteer with us when they’re in town. They went back yesterday.”

  “Can I…”

  “Their number? Certainly. We have to do everything we can to find your poor dog. I’m so sorry. You must be devastated.”

  All three of us were in tears as we drove away and waved at the old lady at the gate. Birgitt, because every missing animal on the planet left a hole in her heart. Chom because seeing other people cry set him off too. And me because I’d done a terrible thing. She was right. I was devastated. I tried to get through to both numbers but neither had a signal. Mair was expecting her puppy’s return that day so I called her and said the vet was inundated due to an outbreak of mad cow disease and hadn’t yet been able to operate on Beer. He promised to get around to it soon but in the meantime she was being well fed and cared for.

  Yes, I know. I know. You get to a point where the lies are so backed up you can’t dig your way out of the dung you’ve spread. And lying about everything just made it all worse. I wanted to go home and take a lethal overdose of Tylenol but Chom insisted I join him at the hospital to have a talk with the bank guard instead. The heist had fallen into insignificance in my mind but as we were getting out of the car I got a call from Sissy, my sister-cum brother. What she told me reignited my journalistic flame. I told Chom I needed to go for a pee but actually I went in search of an ambulance.

  The nurse told us the guard had been overwhelmed with visitors but when we entered the shared ward the chairs around his bed were empty. He was sitting up against the pillows but napping. He was slim, in his fifties with a crisp military buzz cut. He had sores around his mouth and nose, presumably from the toxins. Beside his bed was a newspaper, not the one I’d sent my stories to. The front page had a large photograph taken at the bank on Thursday. It showed the guard dragging out the third staff member and the onlookers applauding. I’m guessing someone in the crowd took it with their cell phone and made a nice little profit from the effort. The headline read, ‘Local Hero to be Honoured by Governor.’

  “If he makes it that long,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” said Chom.

  “Well, look at the photo. He’s lost an awful lot of weight in the past two days. He must be dying.”

  Our voices woke him.

  “Mr. Theeratet?” said Chom. “Sorry to disturb you.”

  “Oh, Brother,” he said. “I’m enjoying all the attention.”

  “Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?” asked Chom.

  “Are you with the press?” said the man.

  “Police,” said Chom, flashing his ID.

  The guard looked disappointed.

  “Have you found the men that did it?” he asked.

  “You sure it was men?” I asked.

  “Yeah, right, Little Sister,” he said. “In this day and age you’re not allowed to be specific, are you? Just as likely to be girls, right?”

  I didn’t like him from that moment.

  “I’m sure you’ve been over this too many times,” said Chom. “But can you tell us what happened?”

  “No problem, Brother,” said the guard. “I was outside at my post when the fires started. I went inside and helped get the customers out. Some of the staff girls were still inside so I went back in. They must have been locking the drawers or something. It was hard to see. I started to put out the fires. It was-.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “How did I put out the fires? With the extinguisher. One blast in each bin. I called to the girls to get out but there was no answer. I felt my way through the smoke and found them on the floor.”

>   “Did you see anyone else in there?” asked Chom.

  “No. I’m guessing whoever took the money grabbed it when the smoke was at its thickest.”

  “But the girls were still locking the drawers,” I said. “And none of them remembers seeing anyone suspicious behind the desks.”

  “Then, perhaps the girls passed out before they were robbed,” said the guard. “Like I say, it was just a guess. Couldn’t see much. It was getting hard to breathe.”

  “But you could drag the bank staff out,” I said.

  I think Chom was getting a bit miffed that I was taking over the interview but I couldn’t stop myself. All the while I was pushing the redial button on my phone and the hum of rejection from the project driver provided us with background music.

  “Yeah,” said the guard.

  “You weren’t overwhelmed by the smoke?”

  “I was a bit dizzy but I had my mask on, you see.”

  “Which is just a couple of layers of gauze.”

  “Right, but it seemed to do the trick. It didn’t really hit me till while I was taking out the third girl, the assistant manager. I was a bit confused. Couldn’t remember where I’d seen her. I had to fight to stay conscious. She was back in the office by the safe. She’s a big girl. It took me a while to get her out. Once I reached the pavement I was out of it. Bang.”

  “You’re a hero indeed,” I said. “The manager said the back doors were unlocked when she got back from the hospital. Why didn’t you take the assistant manager out that way?”

  “No idea it was open, Little Sister,” he said. “I don’t have access to the office or the rear security doors. I’m just the dumb guard who stands outside all weathers saying ‘welcome’ and ‘thanks for coming’ all day every day. I know my place.”

  “It’s a step down from the military isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “I did a background check. You were in the Thai military.”

  “King’s Guards. Twelve years.”

  “You rode horses.”

  “And cared for them.”

  “And now you’re a guard.”

  “It’s a steady job.”

  “Why did you leave the military?”

  “Health issues.”

  “Did those health issues have anything to do with yamah?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You don’t know it? Methamphetamine. Commonly known as horse medicine - yamah. Kind of ironic that a horse guardsman should fall addicted to horse meds.”

  The guard stared at me for a few seconds. It was creepy.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m feeling a bit tired. If you’ve asked all your questions I could do with some sleep.”

  “Let’s give Mr. Theeratet some rest time,” said Chom.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Just one more question. Mr. Theeratet, are you married?”

  “I was,” he said. “Why? Are you interested?”

  “But you have a girlfriend?”

  “Yes, what…?”

  “And she loves you very much.”

  “I…I suppose.”

  “Loves you enough to ask to travel with you in the ambulance to the hospital on Thursday.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “I just had a chat with the ambulance driver who brought you all here that day. He said she could come along. In fact she was quite insistent. By then she’d shed her market woman disguise.”

  Chom sat with his mouth open. He’d seen me in hypothesis frenzies before. The guard looked at him.

  “I don’t know what this is all about,” he said.

  “Well,” I said. “What this is all about is this. It’s about her removing the money pouches from under your uniform in the ambulance and putting them on herself or into a backpack or a fake baby. I don’t know which.”

  I held up the newspaper and showed him the photo.

  “Look at you outside the bank,” I said. “Chubby little fellow you were then. And look at you now. I’d say a good thirty kilos lighter. I don’t think even hospital food would have that effect.”

  Mr. Theeratet turned to stone before our eyes. Chom, sensing a kill, got on his cell phone and called the station for back up. I continued.

  “You’d been wearing the empty pouches under your uniform since your arrival at the bank. When your girlfriend dropped the smoke bombs in the bins, you rushed in and evacuated the customers and as many staff members as would go willingly. But you knew the manager and perhaps a few others would be tempted to stay behind. Perhaps they got the feeling that the smoke was just smoke and unlikely to cause any great damage. Nothing caustic. But somehow, sometime you’d got access to the extinguisher. I’m no technician so I don’t know how it was done but you managed to replace the foam or whatever with a diluted form of sleeping gas. My information person in Chiang Mai suggested it could have been something like Carfentanil, a tranquilizer they use on large animals…like horses. Terrorists use it in attacks on innocent people. You were lucky you didn’t kill anyone. A millilitre too much and you’d be on a murder charge.”

  “No luck involved,” said the guard. “I knew what I was doing.”

  “I bet you did,” I said. “The army trains its people in no end of useful survival skills. I wouldn’t be surprised if they provided oxygen masks slim enough to wear unseen under your gauze. Am I right? You didn’t need a tank. Just enough to get you through the ten minutes it took you to rob the place. The extinguisher didn’t put out the fires. They died a natural death. But it did knock out the manager and her staff. You dragged out the first two and had it known there was some poisonous gas in the bank which stopped other would-be heroes from going inside. You went back, unlocked the rear doors with the manager’s keys to create a scenario that doesn’t involve you. You loaded yourself up with cash and probably opened your own locker and put the mask inside.”

  “Wow!” said Chom. The guard said nothing.

  “The piece de resistance is where you give yourself a shot of the gas from the extinguisher before you drag out the big girl. You stay conscious long enough to get her to the street where you collapse. Two ambulances come. We can’t afford paramedics down here so there’s no service on the ambulance. Your girlfriend makes sure you’re on the one with the unconscious women and the striptease begins. How was I? I might have got one or two details wrong but it seems to flow rather nicely, don’t you think?”

  “You can’t prove any of it,” said the guard.

  “I don’t have to,” I said. “I just write about stuff. Proving is the job of the police. But I’m sure they’ll find the oxygen mask and they’ll find your girlfriend, who, by the way, has probably absconded with the cash and is on some beach now with her fiancé. And they’ll find the pouches still covered in the DNA from your sweat. And there’ll be residue of the gas on the staff uniforms and your fingerprints on the keys and the rear doors. These things have a way of working themselves out once the ‘how’ has been established.”

  *

  I should have been elated that night. All those loose ends had come together after Sissy’s call. I knew they’d trace the money soon enough and Lang Suan would take the credit for solving the crime. I’d written two good articles already for the nationals and my denouement of the bank guard incident would be a four-page spread in Matichon Sudsupda. But I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate. Chom couldn’t convince me to join him for dinner and drinks at Malichoo. I went to bed early but couldn’t sleep. All the ways Beer might have met her end frog-marched through my head. I’d have to tell Mair and she’d do her nonchalant Titanic smile and say, ‘That’s all right, Jane. People make mistakes.’ And it would hurt more than a chisel in the eyeball.

  At last I slept but at 4AM my heart pounded and I threw off the covers and I shouted, “Shit!”

  I made a call. Birgitt didn’t sound like anyone who’d just been woken from a pleasant sleep. I asked her just the one question and she answered in the affirmative. My deepest fear was confirmed: Th
e Summer Solstice.

  I called Chom. He answered with, “I’m entertaining”. But I needed him more than the undoubtedly naked man beside him. When he arrived he was in full uniform with his gun nestled on his belt and he didn’t complain at all to have been rudely torn from his love nest. We drove first to the address Birgitt had given me for her part-time driver. I hammered on the door which was opened by an elderly lady who spoke Thai with an accent. She was dressed and was obviously an early riser. She seemed intimidated at the sight of a policeman at her front door. We asked her where her son had gone for the weekend. She went back inside and returned with a sheet of paper with an invitation and a map printed on it. Chom thanked her and wished her a happy day. He was a community policeman.

  The sun pulled itself above the coconut trees as we hurried along the highway to La Mae. Chom made calls. I tapped annoyingly on the dashboard. We turned past the new market and headed for the hills. The roads became steeper the further south we drove and before we knew it we were on a single lane dirt track that ended at a gate. The sign on the gate was written in Chinese. We couldn’t read it. There was a chain and a padlock but Chom had a metal cutter in his trunk that made short work of it. We were now officially breaking and entering. As we walked back to the car, two trucks pulled up behind us. Chom wasted valuable time by hugging the six burly policemen who piled out of them. Like he says, “Present company excepted, you’d never know gay policemen were gay in Thailand.”

  We entered the property and traveled on a gravel road and ahead we could see the main house. It was two-storey, wooden, surrounded by a number of tents. A few drowsy people were walking around aimlessly. Two large tarpaulins covered a long dining table. I could smell cooking and my gut wrenched. Something told me we were too late. Our vehicles blasted their horns and roused the remaining campers and drew the inhabitants from the house. Our raiding party was armed but greatly outnumbered. If the residents and their guests decided to protect themselves, we would have been wiped out in a matter of seconds.