Number Five

by Colin Cotterill

  Granddad Jah raised his eyebrows. He’d had enough of the game.

  “I don’t think we-,” he began.

  “Yes, we do,” I said.

  I took the black garbage bag from the back of the truck and spread the contents on the ground.

  “Recognize it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said the boy. “It could be anyone’s. Right?”

  “But these are the brands you use?”

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “What about this?” I asked, using a stick to fish the broken bra from the trash.

  The girl giggled.

  “Yours?” I asked.

  “Looks like,” she said.

  That’s when I knew I had them. The boy started edging backwards towards a stack of wood.

  “Let’s just make sure,” I said, and pulled the pill sachet from my shoulder bag.

  “Did you buy any antibiotics at Medici Pharmacy?”

  “I don’t think so,” said the boy now beside the woodpile.

  “Yeah, you did,” said the girl.

  The boy stared at her angrily the way Granddad Jah liked to look at me when I screwed up.

  “Maybe we did,” said the boy. “We get colds down here a lot.”

  “So, you’re a member of the Medici Pharmacy at Tesco?”

  I held up the label.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “That’s mine.”

  “But the membership’s not in your name.”

  “Yeah, I mean, no. It’s in my gran’s name. I just didn’t bother to change over to me after the death.”

  “Her name’s Bounsri Chansiri?”

  “Yeah, that was her name.”

  “Nickname, Toy?”

  “That’s corr…how could you know that?”

  He was standing beside a custard apple tree where the sharp end of a machete was embedded in the trunk. He yanked it out and started in my direction.

  “Go ahead, use it,” said Granddad.

  I had no idea he’d been travelling with his service revolver under his shirt nor when it found its way into his hand. But it was an effective deterrent to stop the boy doing something stupid. He froze and dropped the knife.

  “You can’t just come here to our house and wave a gun about,” said the girl.

  “Oh, but we can,” I said. “Because I bet it’s not your house.”

  “Bullshit,” said the boy.

  “And I bet up there in one of those boarded up rooms we’ll find your Granny Toy. And, I hope, for your sake, that’s she’s alive and well.”

  *

  “So, why didn’t they just kill the old lady?” asked Chompu, my favourite effeminate police captain.

  We were sitting in the food court at Tesco with a view of the pharmacy.Chom was wearing his civilian clothes although nobody would dare call them ‘plain’. Constables Mah Yai and Mah Lek were seated at another table drinking milkshakes and looking tastefully incognito.

  “They needed her alive,” I replied. “She’d been a senior civil servant so she was on a full pension. That and her private mutual account brought her in a healthy chunk of money every month. The grandkids were living a good life thanks to granny’s income. They had to front her up at the bank from time to time to sign cheques in person.”

  “Why did she let it happen?”

  “Well, don’t forget she was suffering from dementia. Half the time she had no idea what was going on. But she became aware every now and then. She knew she was being held against her will. That’s when she started to send out the pleas for help. They weren’t written with a crayon. She used lipstick.”

  “But if they took her to the bank and the post office she’d have ample chance to tell someone what was happening to her.”

  Chom had just come back from a training programme in Bangkok and had missed the whole Granny Toy story.

  “That’s where the dog came in,” I said. “She loved her dog. They’d been together for almost twenty years. That would make the dog 140 years old if you believe the internet. I don’t know whether the grandkids planned all this before they came south to visit granny or whether the idea came to them when they realized she was losing it. But one key element to the plan was the dog. Look, Chom, I know you’re squeamish about these things so I won’t go into detail, but they’d tortured that dog for leverage with the old woman. When she didn’t do as she was told they’d hurt the dog. They did some horrific things to him.”

  “I really don’t want to know,” said Chom.

  “You know I’m not really a dog person,” I said. “But just one look and it was pretty obvious that the dog was being abused. The claws were-.”

  “Enough, already,” said Chom. “I get it. But how did you make the leap from abused dog to abused granny?”

  “I don’t really know what it was,” I said. “It was more like a collection of little facts that merged together into one big one. If you don’t like a dog you just open the cage and let him go. Only psychopaths would keep him locked up there. Then there was the boarded up top floor and the antibiotics to keep her healthy and the lipstick notes and the fact I didn’t like the kids. And I suppose this whole scenario appeared in my head like a fully-formed hypothesis. We’d assumed Toy was a kid. Once I reversed the ages it all made sense. I didn’t-.”

  “Okay,” said Chom. “It’s all wonderful but I have to stop you there. Don’t turn around but our woman has arrived.”

  I really wanted to turn around. The white coat woman in Medici had been taught two signals by our little SWAT team. The first, moving an empty trolley away from the front of the shop was the signal that the agent had arrived. Mah Yai scratched his eye to let us know he’d indentified her. Then we had to wait for a second signal, the unbuttoning of the white coat, which would tell us that the order had been placed and the agent would return to her car and collect the merchandise. Medici relied on a number of sales reps from different pharmaceutical companies to keep their shelves stocked. This particular agent was the provider of two types of malaria cures, Artesunate tablets, which were provided by the original company, and Artesunate capsules, which were distributed privately by the rep and her gang. The capsules were half the cost of the tablets which made them particularly attractive to our poor Burmese. Artesunate capsules contained nothing but flour. I’d taken my sample to the lab in Chumphon that day where the contents were quickly identified and the police notified. I was invited along to the sting by my captain as a thank you. I also had an exclusive on the article that would put my name back up there in lights.

  We followed the rep to her Benz parked in the handicap zone. She was a large woman in tight high-heeled shoes that made every step look like a circus trick. At the car we confronted her.

  “Are you Arunee Panaboot?” asked Chompu, holding up his identification card to her face.

  Her silk suit and glary makeup made her look like the wife of a politician.

  “What’s it to you?” she asked.

  “Because you’re under arrest,” said Chom.

  “On what charge?” she asked.

  “Premeditated murder,” said Chom.

  The police had spent time with their law specialists to be sure they could get a conviction for murder. In fact, all the evidence was against her. In her car she had the fake capsules and the packet blurb openly stated the contents cured malaria. There was a list of ingredients that were not present. The sick took her fake medicine believing it would cure them but actually it offered no help at all. Fake medicines had begun to flood the pharmaceutical market in Thailand and the government was keen to wipe the trade out. Workers who would have recovered by taking the actual Artesunate were dying. And Arunee and her cohorts were killing them. They would spend most of their lives in jail.

  But, meanwhile, the rep wasn’t prepared to go quietly.

  “I take it you do not know who I am?” she said, shuffling along the side of her car.

  “I’m assuming you’re Arunee Panaboot,” said Chom. “Unless that’s
an alias. In which case you’d be charged for that too. And if you’re someone important, which I doubt, it won’t make a shred of difference. We have a warrant for your arrest and another warrant to search your car. We have your signature on the Medici invoice and witnesses from here and from twelve other pharmacies in Lang Suan stating you provided them with fake medicine.”

  To our amazement she started to run. None of us thought to give chase because she looked so comical in her high-heeled shoes all we could do was admire the sight. She ran as if she’d never run in her life before. First one heel, then the other snapped, but still she ran. Her hair attachment worked loose and flopped over one ear. She hugged her handbag to her ample chest and scanned the car park for an escape route. Like bushmen waiting for a wounded elephant to submit to its wounds, we stood and watched patiently until there was no more fight in her. She dropped to her knees and cried. She’d gone no more than twenty metres: her last twenty metres of freedom.

  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.