Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach

by Colin Cotterill

  From the seventies there were various regulations introduced as to when the boats were allowed to go out, what nets they could use, and where the spawning grounds were. Anything over seven meters had to register for a license and pay an annual fee. Currently the big boats weren’t allowed out for the first three months of the year, and anything over fourteen meters had to stay beyond the 3,000-meter mark for the rest of the year. But the policing of those waters was poor, and most of the bigger boats ignored the regulations.

  “So, in other words, what you’re saying is the bigger boats can do whatever they want,” said Grandad Jah, if only because he hadn’t said anything for ten minutes or so. “So, none of what you told us is helpful.”

  “It always helps to know what the rules are, so you can tell how far they’re being bent,” said Captain Kow.

  There was a short Q and A on communications, crew numbers, and registration necessities, which Kow handled well. Since the squid-boat captain wasn’t a member of our task force, I thanked him for his input and showed him out. On the veranda he touched my arm, smiled as much with his eyes as with his mouth, and set off into the downpour as if he hadn’t noticed it was raining. I could visualize him on the deck of his boat, rocking and rolling and hauling in the nets. It was a romantic but thankfully not erotic image.

  Back in the room the two old men were engaged in a hushed conversation. They looked up at me like chipmunks caught in a headlight beam. It was a bad sign. I had to rein them in.

  “Whatever you’re planning, stop,” I said.

  “It was nothing,” said Grandad. “We were just agreeing that those SRM boys would have a lot to tell us if we just put a bit of pressure on them.”

  “You are not going to torture the rat brothers,” I told him.

  “It’d save us a lot of time in the end.”

  “No.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?” he asked.

  “Look,” I said. “We know Egg’s set up this elaborate system for clearing bodies off the beaches. When he met up with the village headmen, he specified Burmese. Now, why would he do that? He’s not selling spare parts. He has the body snatchers take them off to the SRM and stick them in a broom cupboard. There are no investigations. The victims remain nameless. What reason could he have other than protecting the slavers who throw their unwanted Burmese overboard? If it was an accident on a legal boat, the captains would report missing crewmen. They’d have to account for the Burmese they hire legitimately. I think you two should go talk to the Thai boat owners. I don’t mean interview them. Just find out where they eat or drink or play pool and get into casual conversations with them. See if you can pick up any rumors about deep-sea vessels. Make a few—”

  “You don’t need to tell us how to extract information,” Grandad Jah snapped.

  Right. All those illegal parking interrogations fine-tuned a policeman for situations like this.

  “You’re right, Grandad. Sorry. I’ll find out what I can from the police and take another stab at the Burmese. I think the more I can get them to trust me, the more they’ll open up.”

  Before concluding the proceedings, I decided to tell the two old fellows everything I’d learned about the Noys. I thought all their years of experience might help solve that mystery too. They seemed far more interested in that story than in keeping a few Burmese alive. But they agreed we needed to go ahead with caution so as not to frighten off the two women. The old men grabbed their umbrellas and walked off in the direction of the truck. I gathered my wet-weather gear with a view to taking the motorcycle into Pak Nam. Grandad had reminded me that I was young and could withstand a soaking far better than they could. Pneumonia, you know. I was closing my door when, through a curtain of rain, I spotted Arny in front of his cabin. He was sitting on a deck chair flanked by the dogs.

  “Hello, little bro,” I said.

  “You’re up to something,” he said.

  “I’m always up to something,” I reminded him.

  “You and Grandad and the old policeman. You’re doing something. I want to know what it is.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  I jogged across to his cabin, shook my hair dry, and sat on the balcony railing. As always, Gogo turned her rump to me. I don’t know what I ever did to that dog.

  “Yeah, why?” I said. “Why do you want to know? If I tell you it’s nothing, you’ll get upset because you’ll assume we’re lying. If it’s something, you’ll get upset because … well, because it’s something.”

  “You make me sound like some emotional disaster.”

  I thought it best not to respond to that.

  “Is it about the grenade?” he asked.

  “Indirectly.”

  “The head on the beach? The Burmese slaves?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Why won’t you tell me?”

  I didn’t know how to break it to him. Honesty had its good points, but in the wrong hands it could be cruel. I really didn’t want fragile Arny involved in all this. Just by looking the way he did, he was likely to get knifed down there by the docks. I went the honesty route.

  “Arny, you’re a wimp.”

  To my horror, he burst into tears. It was awful. Even the dogs backed away in embarrassment. Surely I’d insulted him worse than that in all our sibling years together. This was about something else. I knelt down and put my arm around his thick neck.

  “Arny?”

  “I think … I think she’s going to leave me,” he said through the tears.

  “Gaew?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You two are great together. You’re engaged, aren’t you?”

  I brushed away his tears with the back of my hand, sorry I didn’t have a tissue for his runny nose. He’d waited thirty-two years for this first love. It was a bit late in life for a first dumping to go with it.

  “It was … was so right at first,” he said. “I loved her. We almost had sex so many times.”

  “I know you … You what? I thought you said…?”

  “We did all the foreplay. She wanted to … you know … but I said no. It has to be just right. You know?”

  “Of course.”

  “But I think … I feel she needs more from me. She wants me to be more of…”

  “A man.”

  “Yes.”

  “She said that?”

  “No, but…”

  “You feel it.”

  “Right. She’s a big Jackie Chan fan.”

  That threw me.

  “You do know he’s only thirty-seven centimeters tall?” I said.

  “But he’s so macho.”

  “So you feel you need to make a statement.”

  “Right.”

  “By getting involved in our battle with the slavers.”

  “Is that all right?”

  I wasn’t sure.

  “You might have to—I don’t know—hit people. Dodge bullets. Face danger.”

  He paled.

  “I can do that,” he said with no conviction.

  Against my better judgment, I yielded.

  “All right,” I said. “You’re on the task force. Don’t let me down.”

  He started to cry again. This time with happiness.

  * * *

  Before I could get to the motorcycle, I got a call from Sissi.

  “Hey, Sis.”

  “I’m out of the condominium.”

  “Well done.”

  “I’m in a taxi.”

  “I knew you could do it.”

  “It smells.”

  “That’s the scent of reality.”

  “I just wanted to remind you that you won’t be able to avail yourself of my services for a week.”

  “I shall survive.”

  There was a pause.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Barely. How are you feeling?”

  “I’m surprisingly excited. And you can keep your eyes on the road, you pervert.”


  I assumed that wasn’t directed at me.

  “There’s something you need to remember before you leave the country,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You never stopped being beautiful.”

  There was another long pause, and I knew she was smiling.

  “I’ll call you from Seoul,” she said.

  “Bon voyage.”

  I sometimes wondered why they hadn’t come up with a new bon. Nobody voyaged anymore. At last I made it to the motorcycle and was about to head off when Mair ran out of the shop holding some kind of deflated pink football bladder.

  “Monique,” she said, “where are you going?”

  “Pak Nam.”

  “I need you to go via Lang Suan.”

  “Hmm, a mere thirty kilometers out of the way in the pouring rain. Why not?”

  “It’s an emergency,” she said. “I want you to stop by Dr. Somboon’s place and ask him to take a look at her.”

  She held her handful aloft and there it was. Something.

  “What is it?”

  “A puppy.”

  “Not again. Is it alive?”

  “Do you think I’d ask you to take a cadaver to the vet?”

  “Mair. We have too many dogs already.”

  “Child, every rule book has a final page. But the kindness bus has no terminal.”

  She dropped it into my poncho’s detachable hood, which I’d just been about to attach. The animal was hairless and riddled with disease.

  “Where on earth did you get it?”

  “She came to me, darling. Like all the creatures do. Like Mohammed, she floated down the river on the bulrushes. I pulled her from the water and gave her resuscitation.”

  I cringed at the thought of Mair applying mouth-to-mouth to an almost-dead dog.

  “And look,” Mair went on, “she survived. All the sick and dying creatures of the earth will find their way to me.”

  I had no choice. I folded the creature into the poncho pocket, still wrapped in the hood, and left Mrs. Noah standing in the rain waiting for the giraffes to arrive. I stopped at the bridge, surprised at how quickly the humble stream had swollen to a gushing torrent. I wished then that I’d bought an iPhone when I still had an income back in Chiang Mai. Discovery Channel paid well for home videos of natural disasters and I sensed the Gulf Bay Lovely Resort was about to become one.

  * * *

  “What’s that moving in your pocket?” Aung asked.

  “Dog,” I said.

  “Beer” was feisty for a dying pup. She was mad at all the shots Dr. Somboon had speared her with and the pills he’d forced down her throat. I couldn’t blame her. I’d named her Beer because the vet was drinking a can of Singha when I arrived. I think he’d had a few. It was just a stop-gap name. I couldn’t imagine her surviving the night. Not in this weather. To his credit, Aung didn’t ask me why I had a dog in my pocket. He wasn’t shirtless today, but he was soaked to the skin and his T-shirt stuck to his muscles like paint. I fought back my urge to rip it off him with my teeth.

  “Aung,” I said. “I know you don’t trust me.”

  Throw that line at a Thai and he’d be on his knees denying it. Aung’s expression said, “Yeah. You got me.”

  “But here’s what I think,” I continued. “I think Burmese are being kidnapped and ferried out to deep-sea vessels, where they’re enslaved, ill treated, and killed if they make too much trouble. I think the head that arrived on our beach was just one example. I think you and your community know about this, but you feel helpless because you aren’t able to do anything about it. I think you all live in fear that one day it’ll be you or your wife whisked away.”

  A long silence followed.

  “So?” he said.

  “That’s all I get? A ‘so’?”

  “Look. Even if you know. Even if you have proof. Even if you’re out there on the big boats taking photographs. What do you think you could achieve? What Thai prosecutor really wants to go to the trouble of prosecuting Thais for crimes against the Maung? We’re dispensable.”

  “Well, that’s one thing we can achieve. Make you less dispensable. Put names and faces and family backgrounds to the slaves. Talk to loved ones. Show that—”

  “Nobody would give you a name.”

  “OK. So I’d make it up. Photoshop a loved one. Hell, who’s going to rush down here to prove me a liar? Aung, this is Thailand. We manipulate public opinion all the time. The masses feel what Channel Nine tells them to feel. If I couldn’t splash up a wave of sympathy for the poor country boys chained to the oars of a galley, I wouldn’t be much of a journalist, would I now?”

  “Who do you work for?”

  Damn, the man just refused to get caught up in the splendor of the rhetoric. And he’d hit another nerve.

  “I’m freelance. That means I can work for anybody.”

  “Or nobody.”

  I was starting to see why we hated the Burmese.

  “All right. Here’s the deal. My family and I are going to fight this. We had a grenade thrown at us because we refused to give in to bullies. If you aren’t into human rights, fair enough. Somehow we’ll get evidence and somehow I’ll write about all this and somehow it’ll make the eyes of the world. And I do this with you or I do it without.”

  Clint would have put some background music in there. Violins rising to a cello and kettledrum crescendo is my guess. All I had for emphasis was the belch of a tugboat horn. I hoped it would be enough for Aung to sense my sincerity.

  “Good luck.”

  “That’s it?”

  “You’ll need it. You don’t know what you’re up against.”

  “So I can’t count on any help from you?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’ll give you information when I can. As long as it’s off the record.”

  “That’s big of you. All right. Information. Give me some now. Explain how your people are lifted from the street in broad daylight without anyone seeing.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Then why do you think nobody sees?”

  “Thais down here may be stubborn, proud to a fault, but they have a sense of justice. If they saw someone being bundled into a truck, they’d do something about it.”

  “Not if that truck was brown and cream with a flashing police light on top.”

  * * *

  “What’s that in your pocket?”

  “Dog.”

  “You don’t say. How does it breathe in there?”

  “I lift the flap from time to time.”

  “If it’s a shih-tzu, I’ll take it off you.”

  “You like shih-tzus?”

  “Who doesn’t? Those broken little Chinese noses. Those pus-filled squinty eyes. And they do so attract the boys. ‘Ooh, what a lovely little doggie.’”

  I was having lunch with Chompu at Pak Nam’s famous chicken and rice restaurant, called The Chicken and Rice Restaurant. The chicken and rice were average, but the sauce—passed down through Yunnan dynasties—was what brought in the customers. They traveled from as far away as Lang Suan to eat there. The place was never empty.

  “Even so, it appears to be quite agitated,” Chompu observed.

  “Look, will you stop whining about the dog? It’s a survivor. I’m asking about the Pak Nam constabulary picking up Burmese off the street.”

  “Happens all the time.”

  “Ha. You admit it.”

  “Hard to deny. Random ID checks. Work cards. It’s policy.”

  “To harass?”

  “You know? With the right interior decorator, they could really make something of this place. I’d go Japanese. Bamboo on the wall. Short-legged tables with—”

  “Chom!”

  “Perhaps we harass a tad. But nicely.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, those without work permits hand over a fine.”

  “Which is signed for, paid into the police fund, and sent to the police ministry in B
angkok, naturally.”

  “Which goes directly into the wallet of the harassing officer to be spent on base desires such as karaoke.”

  “And you think that’s OK?”

  “We aren’t paid very much, you know? And it’s better for them than going to jail. Paying the fine is the penalty they opt for when they decide not to go through legal channels. They know the risk.”

  “I have witness statements that Burmese were stopped on the street and bundled into police vehicles, never to be seen again.”

  “Uh-oh. Hold the Pulitzer. That isn’t exactly a secret either. It happens every day, darling. After our random stops, if the migrants don’t have work permits and don’t want to contribute to our pleasure fund, they’re invited into the truck and whisked off to immigration in Ranong. We have to keep up our quota. We’d look suspicious if we didn’t have any illegals at all, wouldn’t we now?”

  “How many?”

  “Six to a dozen a week.”

  “So what would you say if I could prove these vanishing Burmese had work permits and sponsors?”

  “I’d say, ‘Bring me the witnesses.’ And you’d say, ‘Ooh, they aren’t comfortable speaking to the police.’ And I’d say, ‘Mm, I’m not surprised, considering they’re all figments of your imagination.’”

  “Don’t you be so sure.”

  “Oh I’m sure. If they were Thais, they’d have no idea whether the Burmese we picked up were illegal or not. So that leaves only the Burmese themselves. And the only way one of them would step up and accuse the Royal Thai Police of kidnapping a fellow countryman is if he was certifiably insane. In which case his statement would be inadmissible. Ta-daa! I rest my case.”

  “All right, so—and this is hypothetical—if I could prove a legal Burmese was kidnapped by the police and sent to the deep-sea vessels, would you file the report?”

  “Let me see now. You’re asking whether a smart, virile young police officer, a-k-a me, who carries a burden of sexuality that makes his tenure in the police force tenuous if not feeble, would pursue a criminal case against his friends and colleagues in order to bring justice to the citizens of a country none of us particularly likes?”