“And I see this as a beginning, rather than an end. It certainly can’t hurt to have a reporter with such lofty connections just ten minutes down the road. I can see us forming quite a formidable alliance. A little bit of information here, a mention in a report there.”
“I was hoping for exactly the same.”
“But…”
I’d been waiting for a ‘but’. He was leading me toward the beach with one hand gently annoying the small of my back.
“…you did me a great disservice.”
“I did?”
“My favorite restaurant. Staff who know and respect me. A regular customer taken ill in the bathroom and his female acquaintance flees the scene. Not at all good for a senior policeman’s reputation.”
“I assumed you’d been called away on a case. I waited twenty minutes.”
“I was disturbed to find you gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s only one way to make up for it.”
Surely not.
“I know,” I said. “You should come and have lunch here someday.”
“Wouldn’t work, Nong Jimm. That wouldn’t clear my besmirched name at my favorite restaurant, would it now?”
I suppose I did owe him.
“All right. I’ll just have to clear it with Ed.”
“Ed?”
“My fiancé.”
His hand didn’t leave my back but it stopped massaging.
“Very sudden.”
“Not really. Ed was the reason I…we all moved down here.”
It was a ploy that usually worked but Mana was a slimy one.
“Very well,” he said. “Clear it with Ed. I’m at Lang Suan tomorrow so we should make it the weekend. I’ll call you re the place and time.”
He was bulletproof. He hadn’t even met Ed and he’d already dismissed him as small fry. He didn’t even know the man cut grass for a living. Arrogant. But wait…Lang Suan?
“Actually, Thai Rat have asked me to look into the Wat Feuang Fa murder,” I said, as casually as I was able. He was a dark-skinned man who was suddenly flushed vanilla.
“You? They what?”
“Abbot Winai’s killing.”
“How could you possibly…?”
“Lofty connections.”
“The press knows about it?”
“Just us at the moment. But we have plenty to run with when I’m ready.”
“When you’re ready?”
The guilty hand fled from my back and rejoined its colleague behind his.
“You know. Right place right time. Just ten minutes down the road. I think it would be a very good idea for us to swap notes over lunch. There’s so much I need to know.”
I could see the word ‘leak’ spill out of his brain one letter at a time. I knew he’d been warned not to have anything to do with the press on this case. And here I was, his pet reporter. Where else would I be getting my information from?
“Ah, look,” he said. “We should certainly liaise on this in the future. But perhaps now isn’t such a good time. As I hear of developments I’ll pass them on to you, of course. In the meantime it would probably help both of us if you sent me your notes on the case. Then I can fill in the gaps for you. I’m playing a key role in the proceedings.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.”
“My source tells me Pak Nam isn’t in the loop anymore. Something about not being trusted. I heard you even lost one of the Lang Suan crime-scene cameras.”
“That is not true. I have no idea where that rumor began and I can refute it categorically. I’ve talked to the forensic department at headquarters. I went there in person. It’s a very small department. One man, in fact. Not only did he not lose a camera at the crime scene, he was off getting rabies shots that day and didn’t even visit the site.”
“Interesting.”
“So I would appreciate it if that rumor did not find its way into the newspapers.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” I was alpha now and snarling.
“Are they still holding the Abbot Kem in Lang Suan?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “He’s back at the wat. They have him under house arrest there.”
“How’s it looking for him?”
“Not good,” Mana confessed.
“Murder weapon?”
“Not so far, but there are any number of places to toss a weapon over there.”
“Any other suspects?”
“No. Look, I really can’t…”
“Car, motorcycle sightings around the time of the killing? Strangers in town?”
“No.”
“Anyone with a grudge against the Bangkok abbot? I mean, his job was to investigate wayward monks and make recommendations for them to be disrobed. There may be a cause for revenge there.”
“We haven’t found anything. That is to say, no comment.”
So much for our new open relationship. Either the Bangkok detectives had shut him out, or there really were no other suspects or motives, or he was lying to me. I didn’t like people lying to me. He leaned too close to me and smiled.
“I could arrange for you to interview Abbot Kem,” he said.
“I already have,” I said, haughtily.
He looked at me with awe. The press had climbed several rungs in the power rankings of his admiration and I knew there’d be no more hanky-panky lunches with the good major. He doffed his cap, vowed to recover our lost TV, and even waved at me as he climbed into his truck.
♦
Abbot Kem was back home and living in his stilted hut at the rear of Wat Feuang Fa. Two uniformed constables from Lang Suan had been assigned to watch him, but when I cycled past them in my disguise – baggy flower-patterned shorts way past my knees, Red Bull T-shirt under a long-sleeved gingham shirt, flip-flops and straw hat – they barely looked up from their comics. I was so obviously nobody to admire or fear that I depressed myself.
I found the abbot alone. He was sitting on the same front step drawing patterns in the hot air in front of him. The dogs sat at his feet watching his fingers sculpt.
“Good morning,” I said.
He turned to me and smiled. There was no evidence on his face that the murder inquiry was causing him any grief at all. But I guess that’s what it’s all about. When you get to warp-factor gamma three on the self-discovery orbit, worldly worries bounce off your defense shield. I envied him. I could use a little karma when the handlers brought their monkeys to collect coconuts and the wicked beasts deliberately threw them down onto my vegetable nursery. I wish I had the patience to take it all seriously, this religion thing. But I have sacrilegious ideas rushing through my mind all the time like a continuous, graffiti-laden subway train passing through a station. There’s no way I can eviscerate the troubling thoughts and leave myself with purity. I’d implode.
“So, they let you out, I see,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Did they treat you well?”
I was mired in clichés, too. I needed a good clean out.
“Yes.”
“I’m assuming they didn’t actually charge you with anything.”
“No.”
“Can I ask you some more questions about that day? The day you found the body?”
I hoped I could come up with a question or two that evoked more than one word answers.
“Yes.”
“Did you notice anything odd about Abbot Winai when you found him lying there on the path?”
“Odd?”
“Incongruous, illogical, downright weird.”
“Are you talking about the hat?”
Bingo.
“I am.”
“I mentioned it to the detectives. It’s been on my mind since that afternoon. The officers dismissed it. They said it was a hot day – late afternoon glare of the sun. The abbot could be forgiven for slipping on a hat, they said.”
“But you don’t agree.”
“I know how strictly my friend follo
wed the regulations. That’s why he was elected to conduct inquiries on behalf of the Sangka. It’s clearly stipulated in the Disciplines, book five, regulation four, that a monk cannot wear a hat.”
This was starting to feel rather silly.
“So what do you think would possess him to break with tradition and put on a hat?”
“That’s just it. He didn’t. We had been debating my prickly situation with regard to the precepts…”
“Arguing?”
“More like a philosophical discussion. We’d been mulling over points for two days already. It was his habit to walk and digest his thoughts, then return with more questions. He was a very logical and fair man. He stood and stretched and told me he would be back soon and began to walk along the concrete path. As soon as he stepped out of the shade of the fig tree he readjusted his robes and covered his head with one flap of material. He wasn’t wearing a hat, of course.”
“Perhaps one of the gardeners left it there? He could have picked it up on the way?”
“What for?”
Good question. I had no idea.
“So, when you reached him, that was the first time you’d seen the hat?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of hat was it?”
“It was very bright orange with a red flower.”
If I’d been wearing glasses, I would have looked down them at him.
“Orange?”
“Bright orange. Like the traffic cones.”
“And the police didn’t see anything odd about that?”
“Again, they assumed he’d grabbed the first thing he could find to go on his walk.”
“But you told them…?”
“I am a suspect. They were more interested in the abbot’s investigation of me.”
“Do you want to talk about that?”
“There is nothing to talk about.”
“But you were engaged in long philosophical discussions with a man who was killed. It’s all relevant.”
“Philosophy has no personal investment. We discussed theory.”
“The theory of a relationship between a monk and a nun.”
He smiled. That was always a bad sign with an abbot. I could see he was rearranging his sandals with his feet for a quick getaway. I was about to lose him.
“There is nothing there of relevance,” he said, and stood.
“One last question, then,” I said.
“You must be heavy with answers by now.”
“I can squeeze in one more dessert. Do you remember seeing a camera?”
“Where?”
“At the crime scene.”
“No, but I was far away.”
“You didn’t approach the body?”
“No.”
“You didn’t kneel down? Feel his pulse?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know he was dead?”
He smiled as he started away from me.
“Of course, I knew,” he said.
He walked so evenly across the dirt ground it was as if he had little hover jets on the soles of his sandals. If only I’d paid more attention in Religious Instruction. Of course he knew? Why? Because he’d killed him? Because he’d witnessed his girlfriend kill him? How do you know a man’s dead without touching him? I could see why the detectives still had their doubts.
Abbot Kem was gone and the nun was nowhere to be seen and I decided there was nothing more to be learned from Wat Feuang Fa. I had things to do elsewhere, starting with a lunch to cook. A peculiar family to feed. It was time to get back on my bicycle and head off home. It would be another long cycle but I was starting to enjoy the rides. I could feel tone in muscle that I’d long since given up on. I was sleeping whole nights rather than segments. Exercise had its place. I was starting to see myself as this Maprao-based Agatha Christie character pedaling off to solve crimes on her two-gear shopping bicycle and modeling in her spare time. I reached down for my flip-flops and found just the one. I looked around at the frogs-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth expressions of the half-dozen dogs that hadn’t left with the abbot. They were all as ugly as sin, Fellini dog extras: silvery eyes bulging, sores gleaming, this or that limb missing. These were the dogs who came to temples to see out their final days. But, as is always the case, the most innocent-looking suspect is invariably the culprit. And Sticky Rice sat at the corner of the hut with an obviously fake expression of innocence on his face. He was sitting on my flip-flop as if it was a surfboard and he wasn’t about to give up his ride. When I reached for it he tore off, my sandal between his teeth.
I hopped after him to the rear of the nuns’ quarters and homed in on the back of a hut I knew to be one of his stash houses. There was no sign of cute but fat Sticky R. and I really wasn’t in the mood to play. I considered leaving my flip-flop behind and riding home without it but it was the principle of the thing. I’d watched The Dog Whisperer on Animal Planet once when there was nothing else on. If dogs think you’re weak they’ll take control of your world. I had horror visions of them walking through police lines and taking over Government House. I needed to stop the revolution right here. I lowered myself into a push-up and stared into the forty-centimeter gap below the hut. The shadows were dark but, sure enough, one black eye like that of a rogue panda stared out at me from the gloom. The pup let out an unconvincing juvenile growl which failed to terrorize me. I growled back. I edged forward on my belly and he retreated with my sandal. Edge, retreat. Edge, retreat. The farther in I crawled the darker it became so I took my cell phone out of my back pocket and turned it on. A warm blue glow emanated from the screen.
In this swimming pool light I could make out Sticky Rice backed into a corner. He was trembling. It made me feel like a terrible bully. I was sure if he kept up his current regimen of eating everything he saw, he’d soon outweigh me, but at that moment he was still a little fellow.
Life hadn’t been kind to him. Barely six months on the planet and he was already in the doghouse. An inmate of the mutt penitentiary where all bad street dogs came to die a slow death. I decided I wouldn’t thump him with my shoe once I’d retrieved it. He’d suffered enough. But he was still a meter from my grasp. Luckily I was wearing clothes I could throw away when I got home because I had to crawl through grime to get to him. I emitted those clicking sounds that are supposed to make dogs feel at ease but I positively refused to engage him in a Mair-type conversation. I knew if I could just reach out and touch his ear like the nun had done he’d regain some self-esteem. I was now close enough to my shoe but the fat kid refused to give it up. I walked my fingers to it and he snapped at them. I growled again and he trembled. Mexican stand-off.
That’s when I was distracted by the sight of a small black shape off to my left side. I moved my cell phone to get a better look. Eureka and bejabers! It was a camera. Half the Nikon label was visible although it had been almost completely chewed off. The whole thing looked as if it had been attacked by sharks. It seemed a little upmarket for the usual Pak Nam crowd: a fancy lens and dials and what have you. Would it have been too much to hope that I’d found the elusive crime-scene camera? Was it likely that an overweight pup would have the energy to drag it all the way back here from the concrete path? Sticky answered that himself. He abandoned my shoe and leaped to defend his camera. He bit into what was left of the strap and started to drag his booty away from me. But that little prize was mine and, puppy or no puppy, I was prepared to fight him for it.
♦
“I don’t know. It’s jammed or something.”
“You should have given it to the police.”
I swore that if Arny said that one more time I’d push him out of the truck and drive myself.
“I will,” I said again. “Just as soon as I’ve seen what’s on it.”
“No, I mean, you should have given it to the police as soon as you found it.”
If ever my mother retired from mothering, I knew I’d always have brother Arny to take her place. How could three siblings come
from such different planets? We were on Highway 41 heading into Surat. It was a monotonously straight stretch of road and it was only the surprise arrival of holes or lumps that kept you awake at all, which is probably why they were never repaired.
“Arny, listen,” I said. He was driving, so he had no choice. “Do the police know I found the camera? No. Has anyone actually reported it missing? No. If I handed it over tomorrow, would they have any way of knowing I hadn’t just that very minute discovered it? No. Is the fat pup going to fess up? I don’t think so. So, relax.”
“We know. Our consciences know.”
Honestly, if Lieutenant Chompu had been available, I would have asked him to drive me. It was his case, after all. But he’d gone to Prajuab to the army base where they’d taken our bodies. He wouldn’t be back until late. I needed back-up so Arny was my only choice and on long-distance drives he could be like one of those self-help tapes stuck in the player on a loop.
I had the camera in a transparent plastic bag and I’d tried everything I could to play back any photos it contained. But somewhere between the dropping and the dragging and the chewing, and probably a good helping of saliva, the temperamental piece of equipment had lost its ability to display. The only markings I could make out between the scars were the letters DSLR and the beginning of a code, D3555. It looked like a very expensive camera, sturdy but not too heavy. It wasn’t the type of thing a regular tourist would carry around. Our photographer at the Mail had a Canon that looked similar. I’d get Sissi to look it up. But, right now, I wanted to see pictures. I took my laptop out of its case and switched it on. I couldn’t get into the camera but I could take out its memory chip and display it on my computer.
“Arny,” I said.
“Mmm?”
“The laptop.” It was open on my lap and dead as a jellyfish.
“I don’t know anything,” he lied. Only my mother lies with less conviction than my brother.
“Yesterday, this was fully charged.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
He folded like a deckchair.
“I just took it down to the beach for a few minutes.”
“I hope you had a very good reason.” My teeth were grinding together.
“I listened to music.”
Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat Page 12