“You have an iPod.”
“Yeah, but the laptop’s got that program with the psychedelic animations that move in time to the music. It’s very restful.”
I counted backward from a hundred in Portuguese.
♦
“And the sink unit was cracked?”
“Right down the middle.”
“Well, you see? In such a situation, the customer would normally bring back the damaged unit for us to determine whether the crack was structural or whether excessive force was used on it.”
“What excessive force can you exert on a sink unit?” I asked.
He smiled at Arny with a slight rise in his right eyebrow. He was old school. His jacket was a little too large and his choice of tie made you think he didn’t have a wife at home, at least not a fully sighted one. He had ebony-dyed and moussed-back hair that curled up into a gutter at his collar and the look was rounded off with a pencil mustache, HB light.
“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you and your wife what happens on the spur of the moment in bathrooms.” He winked. Arny looked blank.
“I think you do,” I said, dumbly.
We’d arrived in Koon Boondej’s office at the Home Art Building Accessories Mega Store with our sink complaint as an excuse to get past the Service desk. We’d hoped to have the ex-con, ex-manager of Blissy Travel to ourselves, but the Quality Manageress had accompanied us and she was hovering. The realization seemed to loom above the manager that nobody was going to play along with his sex on the sink unit fantasy.
“We actually have people standing on the sink to paint the ceiling” was his escape. Not terribly convincing.
“So, how can you tell we didn’t stand on the sink?”
“We have experts who can determine that.” He smiled and looked at the quality woman. I guessed he meant her. I thought it was time to shake her off.
“So you have investigators?” I asked.
“In a way, yes,” he said.
“Are they the same people who check the qualifications of prospective staff members? People applying for administrative positions, that type of thing?”
His smile melted at the edges and his dark skin blushed mauve.
“Are…are you applying for a job?” he asked.
“It’s tempting,” I said. “Convincing newlyweds to buy taps has always been a dream career for me.”
“Then I think I can handle this myself,” he told the woman.
“What about the sink?” she asked.
“We’ll wipe off the footprints and bring it in for you to look at,” I said.
She walked out with a sideways frown at her boss. She wanted his job. I’d used that same frown myself. Once the door was shut the manager seemed to develop a nervous tic that unmoussed his hair one strand at a time.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I was concerned about the background of the management here at Home Art.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
A column of hair fell over one eye, leaving behind a slash of bald.
“Well, let’s just say that somewhere along the line someone by the name of Boondet with a Y gets muddled up with someone else by the name of, ooh, say, Boondej with a ‘j’?”
I paused for effect. All the features on his face seemed to be attempting to change position. I was in.
“I mean, could we, with a clear conscience, buy a Jacuzzi jet bathtub from a convicted murderer?” I continued.
He stood and walked to the door, looked out, twitched, put his hands in his jacket pockets.
“How much do you want?”
“I beg your pardon?”
I noticed Arny looking pale.
“I know what this is,” said the manager.
“What is it?”
“Blackmail.”
I considered the concept.
“In a way, yes, you’re right,” I said.
“I…I know people,” he said.
I knew what he was getting at but gangland figures didn’t take salaried positions at Home Art.
“No, you don’t,” I said. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you. We just need information. You tell us what we need to know and your life and your career are secure. You lie to us and I’m not so sure I’ll be able to keep Fang here on his leash. I’m sure you know what I mean.”
Arny’s hands were shaking on his lap. I suppose it could have been interpreted as pent-up aggression.
“Who are you?” Boondej asked.
“Fair-weather friends,” I said.
I couldn’t remember the name of the movie I’d lifted that from but it worked just fine.
“What do you want to know?” asked the manager. He was still at the door. I wondered whether he planned to bolt for it.
“Blissy Travel,” I said.
He looked surprised.
“What about it?”
“You tell me.”
He obviously didn’t know what to say. Didn’t work. New track.
“You were the manager.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Couples would stop by to sign up for tours?”
“Couples, singles, groups. That’s normal, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know. Is it?”
“Yes.”
On TV it was always a lot easier. They’d answer a question with a question and the suspect would tie himself up in knots. Soon he’d be singing like a caged dove. Arny had a pale green tint to his cheeks. I didn’t know how long I had before he threw up behind the manager’s desk. So I got to the point.
“Exactly how many couples did you kill, Koon Boondej?”
“Just the one.”
I admired, but was taken aback by, his honesty.
“Look, I’ve done my time,” he said. “I’m setting out on a new life here. I’m not a threat to society. Can’t you just…” He looked at Arny. “Is he all right?”
“The thought of extreme violence moves him,” I said.
I pushed the wastepaper bin in front of my brother and he took himself and the bin off to the executive bathroom.
“All right,” I said. I was suddenly feeling vulnerable but I spoke calmly to make the man think I was just as dangerous as Fang. “Just you and me now. I want to hear the whole story.”
“You’re press, aren’t you?” he said.
Busted again.
“Yes.”
“Oh, shit.”
“But you aren’t my story. If you can point me in the right direction, your name doesn’t have to be mentioned at all.”
So he told me about the couple he’d killed. After Blissy Travel collapsed, he’d run a boat trip out to the islands. One of the most popular cruises was to the caves of the nok nang an, the birds that built nests from their own spit. The trips were boozy and most of the tourists were sloshed by the time they arrived back at the dock. Boondej often missed the pier entirely. One day they went out to the cave, anchored a few hundred feet from the island in shallow water. The guests waded in to the caves, took pictures, waded back out and continued with the serious task of getting plastered. Boondej was a little more pickled than usual that day and he miscounted. One couple had gone deep into the cave and he left them there. The tide rose and they drowned. Culpable negligence. The husband was the son of a Scandinavian diplomat so Boondej served the whole eight-point-two-three meters.
Actually I’d been hoping for something more fiendish. The Home Art Mega Store manager didn’t sound like the serial killing type. So I brought up the topic of VW vans.
“I had two,” he said with pride. “I went down to Malaysia and got them secondhand. Hardly used. They were the only ones of their kind around then. I did a lot of business with them. They were all the go with backpackers in Europe. So when the hippies came over to Thailand they’d take the bus from Bangkok on their way to Ko Samui and pass right in front of my shop.”
Arny, a few shades lighter, re-entered the room. He replaced the waste bin and lowered himself slowly into
the seat.
“Go on,” I said.
“They, I mean the VWs, were on the road most of the time. They’d come back and, poof, the next day there’d be a new customer. I charged rental by the day. The customers paid for petrol. They’d invariably trip up one coast, then back down the other. Stop off in Chumphon and Ranong and Phuket, down to Krabi. I included a recommended itinerary in the cost of the rental with the names of guesthouses and resorts. But there were mattresses in the back of both vans so they could save money on accommodation if they liked. I tell you, if I’d been able to hang on to those vans I’d be a rich man today.”
“What happened to them?”
“Vanished.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Disappeared, both of them. Within the space of a week.”
“You reported them missing?”
“Of course I did. They were my cash cows. I’d always hang on to the passports and ID cards of the customers and take a security deposit. Once the vans vanished I showed the IDs to the police. You know what they told me? Fakes. Fakes, all of them. Thais, I tell you. Can’t trust ‘em. I should have stuck with foreign backpackers.”
“The vans were rented by Thais?”
“The police told me there was a car theft gang sweeping through the south, renting cars and motorcycles on false IDs and reselling them. I’m not sure if they ever caught up with the gang but I know I didn’t get my vans back. That’s what killed off the rental business for me.”
“So, do you have any idea why one of your vans might have been found buried under two meters of dirt in a field in Chumphon?”
Boondej attempted to replace the lock of hair that had been annoying me all this time. He had a look of genuine surprise on his face.
“Shit. Is that what this is all about?”
“Yes.”
“You came here just to ask me why one of my vans was buried in a field?”
“Yes. Well, there was also the fact that there were two bodies buried with it.”
That upset him.
“Damn. Do the police know about me?”
“Not yet.”
“They’d put two and two…”
“Afraid they would.”
“Just like you.”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t take any more of that. I’m not a criminal, but once you’ve got a record they pull you in for anything.”
“Then we should try to solve this before they get to you. I don’t suppose you remember the people who rented your vans?”
“I’ll never forget them. Two couples they were, both ripped from the same cloth. I’d seen their type before, young Thai kids pretending to be Western hippies. Long hair. Fluffy excuses for beards. Dressing like bums so people would think they were artists or musicians. Stench of musk. They walked in off the street looking so straggly I thought they were about to ask me for the cost of a cup of sweet tea. Then they handed over a wad of money to rent the van. Those musicians, you never could tell. So you had to be nice to all the bums just in case they were rich. I should have been suspicious that the two couples were so alike.”
“And why weren’t you?”
“I assumed the first pair had told their friends. Either that or there was some hippy music festival on somewhere. It was just a few days between the two rentings. Of course, it’s easy to be logical after the damage is done. No. I was just greedy. I’d rent the vans out to anyone with the money to pay for them.”
“And the IDs they left you?”
“Like I say, they were fake. The photos were a lot more respectable than the kids but there was a likeness.”
“Did you keep them?”
“No. I had to hand them over to the police.”
“Did the kids have any distinguishing marks?”
“Not really. Beards. Hairy armpits on the girls. Nothing soap and a razor couldn’t fix.”
“All right. I might have more questions but, if I do, I’ll phone you.”
“And you aren’t going to…”
“Koon Boondej, in my line of work you meet liars with varying degrees of skill. You have to recognize the signs. You strike me as a man forced into dishonesty by the system. So, no, I’m not going to tell anyone about you.”
“I appreciate it. There’s nothing else?”
“Well, yes. There is one more thing. I need five minutes with your computer without you in the room.”
“I – ”
“I’m not going through your files. I just need to open some photos. But they’re personal.”
The manager turned on the computer for me and left quite placidly. I clicked out the memory card from the camera and worked it to the rim of the plastic bag so I wouldn’t have to touch it directly with my fingers. I slotted it into the Home Art computer and waited for the machine to find it. I looked over at Arny. He was sulking but the color had returned to his cheeks.
The computer found the external link and asked me what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to save the photos on the computer so I opened them in ACDSee just to have a look. I clicked.
“Holy…”
It felt as if the office had sucked all the air out of me. My stomach was up somewhere around the fluorescent lights. Until I saw those pictures I’d always believed there couldn’t be a great deal of difference between your basic, six command, non-rechargeable digital camera and anything at the top of the line. Digital was digital. But, I tell you, I was wrong. I was in those pictures between the 3D layers, feeling every horror as if I were the victim. I swear I could hear the flies buzzing and smell the blood. I was mesmerized and horrified all at once by the awful clarity of the photography.
“Arny,” I said, “normally I wouldn’t show you pictures like these but, just in case anything goes wrong, I need you as a witness here. But I warn you, you aren’t going to like them.”
Eight
“Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat.”
—GEORGE W. BUSH, WASHINGTON, D.C., SEPTEMBER 17, 2004
Of course they’d affected me. How could they not have? All the way back in the truck Arny kept coming back to the fact I had no heart, no normal senses. That my work for the newspaper had turned me into a zombie.
“How could you sit there and look at those pictures without your heart being torn out?” he’d asked.
“It’s work,” I told him.
That’s what I always told myself. It’s work. People get mugged. People get caught. People die. They hadn’t touched your life before the crime. They don’t touch it after. They weren’t friends. You had no investment in them. Perhaps a little grief might leak through when you’re interviewing the loved ones of the deceased. You might shed a tear of sympathy even. But it was the worst day of someone else’s life, not yours. You write up your report in dull, unemotional language. Novelists cry into their keyboards. Reporters count words and watch the clock.
When I first looked at the photos on that previously untainted Home Art computer monitor, I’d been shocked, of course. Here was a murder in progress. A monk poses reluctantly for a photograph. Even by the second snap his hand is raised as if to say ‘enough’. His robes and his pale skin contrast elegantly with the tall bank of bougainvilleas behind him. In the third picture he looks down curiously at a hat that’s being offered to him, presumably by the cameraman. It’s an orange straw hat. A woman’s hat. In the fourth picture he has it in his hands, holding it like an alms bowl in front of him. His expression is one of amused suspicion. The camera is clicking continuously now and the hand of the cameraman is back in the shot. It appears to be gloved in a bright oven-mitt, shocking pink. But held firmly in its grasp is a knife. The blade is slasher-movie long. In some shots the afternoon sun glints off the blade and changes the quality of the photographs. As we step forward with the cameraman we are urging the monk to put on the hat. At first he smiles his incredulity, but as the blade touches his shoul
der, he relents. We step back. There is one shot of the hat perched uncomfortably on the monk’s head. Ridiculous. But it’s as if this one shot has been sculpted in color. It’s a frightening but artistic photograph, one which resonates with dread. Time had been taken over it.
And then the knife and the oven mitt re-enter the frames: one, two, three as we approach the abbot. And then the butchery begins. The cameraman and murderer are one and the same. The abbot falls to his knees, stares once at the unseen murderer, turns away as if attempting to crawl through the flower beds, then he is supine across the concrete path. The puddle of blood spreads beneath him and then, as if from out of nowhere, a dog enters the frame. Its eyes are red with rage. Then it’s a blur, halfway out of the picture and there’s a second dog with teeth bared. It fills the frame. It’s about to consume the camera. Then there’s sky. The blur of movement. Then…nothing.
Altogether there were forty-six photos documenting the brutal murder of a peaceful man.
Just work.
♦
The moon was almost full that cloudless night and the squid boats had all stayed home. Those romantic squid were drawn like mindless lovers to the glow of the moon rather than to the deceptive lights of the boats that lured them into their nets and onto their hooks. The moon made the beachscape glow pale gray but clear as day. Despite the absence of color around me, I couldn’t get the damned photographs out of my head. They were still vivid and loud in my mind. Neither could I free myself of the stupid theory that a senior monk had died at the whim of a hat.
I think I mentioned I was halfway through my M.A. at Chiang Mai University when THIS LIFE IS UNAVAILABLE flashed up on my screen. Half an M.A. isn’t really anything, you know? Who’d give you a job on the strength of just an M? The course was one of those money-making schemes the Education Ministry had become so fond of. Learning for rich people. Knowledge by the cubic centimeter. “Need a top-up on that degree, madam?” I didn’t think it would be that long before they had slots you’d have to continuously feed with ten baht coins to keep the lecturer talking.
But, anyway, our course was a weekender. Two days of classes and homework for the weekdays. Most of us were working Monday to Friday so you had twenty mature (said with a straight face) students like me with no social lives getting together at weekends to read out our essays on magical bloody realism in English and being critiqued by our peers. After three years of that, assuming you continued to pay your fees and could fight your way through a final dissertation that neither you nor the lecturers really understood, you ended up with a Master of Arts in Critical English. Stay with me. There is a point to this sidetrack.
Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat Page 13