“Well, that’s one happy major,” said Chompu. “If this comes to something, you’ll have a friend for life.”
He raised his glass and we all clinked.
“Any news from your end?” I asked.
“Afraid there weren’t any prints on the cigarette lighter you gave us,” said Chompu. “But we’ve got word back on the camera. It wasn’t a make that can be bought.”
“You have to steal it?”
“Either that or you have to be a professional photographer. Canon has a policy of asking professionals to trial their prototypes. That brand number was a prototype. They make a hundred or so of each and ask the pros to test them.”
“So it should be possible to get a list of the people asked to trial the camera,” I said.
“Technically. But it involves contacting Canon offices overseas. That could take some time, given…”
“Given all the foolishness going on in Bangkok,” I said. “Any news about the Merc driver?”
“None of the mobile units spotted him on the highway heading in either direction,” he said. “And, as you both know, I’m not at liberty to divulge information on an ongoing investigation, et cetera, et cetera, blah, blah, but, between you and me, the daughter of the 69 Resort owner remembered the license number of the car.”
“Good for her,” I said.
“Even more impressive if you consider she’s four.”
“So we shouldn’t put too much faith in it.”
“No. I’m told she’s quite a prodigy when it comes to license plates. Anyway, they’re running the number. There are also developments on the attack on Phoom that I’m not at liberty to tell you about. The person who phoned in the accident on his cell didn’t stick around once the ambulance arrived. That’s quite common. Folks wanting to help but not to get involved in reports and interviews.”
“Better than not taking the trouble in the first place,” said Granddad Jah.
“Couldn’t agree more,” said Chompu. “But there was something. We had the local radio station, 106.50, ask for witnesses and a lady called in saying she’d passed an accident on the road. There were two vehicles parked already so she hadn’t stopped. But she saw a man and a woman leaning over the victim.”
“Two vehicles?” I said. “Really? Did she mention what types they were?”
“One pick-up truck and one car was all she remembered. No make or color.”
“Is there any way to trace the good Samaritan call to the hospital?” I asked.
“It’s not easy. We’d need a warrant from a judge.”
“But it can be done.”
“I’m assuming the major has already started the paperwork. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, suppose the killer bumps Sergeant Phoom’s bike, is afraid the sergeant could identify him and decides to stop and finish him off. He’s bent over the body with a tire lever when this lady in a truck comes around the bend and stops to help. Our killer pretends he’s just come across the accident and is aiding the victim. The woman phones the hospital and our killer flees the scene. The woman, for reasons of her own, also vanishes as soon as she’s certain the sergeant’s taken care of.”
“In which case, the woman would have been in close contact with the killer,” said Granddad Jah. “She could identify him.”
I hadn’t seen Granddad this animated since the great diarrhea onslaught of 2005. I liked him like this – without the diarrhea, naturally.
“Good,” said Chompu. “I’ll keep prodding the major on the phone records.”
“Remind him what a boost it would be to his career chances,” I suggested. “The man’s a bubbling volcano of ambition.”
“There’s one other possibility,” said Granddad.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The one you’re deliberately avoiding,” he said. “Somebody might want to call the hospital and ask whether it was a man or a woman who phoned in the accident.”
I got it immediately. I didn’t want to imagine my nun having a secret life outside the temple with wigs and fast cars and sharp knives. Granddad Jah was right. I really wanted the killer to be a man.
“I’ll get onto that first thing this afternoon,” said the lieutenant.
“Which brings us to the VW case,” I said.
“There’s more?” Chompu feigned horror. “Should I cancel my pedicure?”
“You should at least order us a couple more bottles,” I told him. “You could be here for some time yet.”
Again I left it to Granddad Jah to tell of his visit to demoted Captain Waew of the Surat police force. I kept expecting Chompu to say, “Of course, I knew all that.” But it was evident that he didn’t. He had his Paddington Bear notepad open on the table and was throwing down a rapid shorthand. Granddad excused himself at one stage to take care of his long-suffering bladder, and it gave me a chance to ask Chompu what he’d done about the photos.
“It’s difficult,” he admitted. “I considered leaving them at the front desk and running away, but I realized everything would fall back on you as you were the one who found the camera. I can’t plant them anywhere and it’s a bit late to discover them at the crime scene. So, I admit, I’m boggled. I’m hoping something will come up to make their appearance unnecessary. Meanwhile, they’re under my mattress.”
“I appreciate you doing this.”
“We’re partners in crime.”
I looked up to see whether Granddad had completed his ablutions.
“Which reminds me,” I said in my low, conspiratorial voice, “have you heard of any…serious crimes committed today?”
“How serious?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A killing?”
He laughed. “You’re insatiable.”
“So, have you?”
“No.”
“No missing persons? Almost fatal injuries? Suspected poisonings?”
“Be patient. All these things will come.”
I hoped in my heart that they wouldn’t, but it looked as if Mair might have got away with it so far.
“Oh, and I forgot,” said the lieutenant. “We traced your Dr. Jiradet the so-called adviser to the Pak Nam hospital. It appears he was there at the resort on a tryst with a juvenile harlot. They checked into separate rooms but nobody was really fooled, particularly his wife. Word has it that when her doctor left town the young lady in question found herself a tourist. You have to admire her opportunism, don’t you?”
Two more suspects dust-bitten. I was running out of possibilities. Granddad returned. I’d considered not telling Chompu about my visit to ex-MP Sugit. I supposed there’d be arguments made that I was interfering in police business and unduly alerting a potential suspect in a dual homicide inquiry. In Chiang Mai I would have been arrested for it. But this was Pak Nam, and Chompu and I were already up to our necks in evidence tampering so I figured, what the heck. When I was done, he closed his mouth.
“Unbelievable,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe how dull life was in Pak Nam before you lot arrived.”
I wondered at that moment whether he might be considering us suspects. Odd family turns up in town - bodies everywhere. But I got the impression he wouldn’t have minded that either.
“So, you aren’t angry?” I asked.
“Angry? I’m throbbing with excitement. Batman and Robin have arrived. Whatever will they do next?”
I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the analogy, especially if I was supposed to be Robin. But Granddad Jah continued to glow, both from the beer and the adulation. He rather spoiled the mood once the bill was paid, by informing me that we were both over the alcoholic limit for safe driving and insisting we walk half a kilometer to the 7-Eleven to get motorcycle taxis home. He ignored my pleas that most of the drivers were addicts or imbeciles and we were safer driving drunk. He then wasted another twenty minutes arguing with the freak circus that he wouldn’t allow them to go anywhere unless they put on helmets. I hadn’t seen a motorcycle helmet in all the nine months w
e’d been here.
Eventually, we arrived home with doggy bags of Esarn food for Mair and Arny and a peopley bag of scraps for Gogo. As we pulled up, I saw Mair in front of the shop talking to the same elderly lady I’d seen at the plastic awning detective agency. This, I remembered, was the mother of Maprao’s only known villain: an alliance I felt most uncomfortable about. I paused nearby for a moment but the two women were deep in conversation and seemed not to notice me. I went in search of Arny to give him his lunch but he was nowhere to be found. A family of four, young parents and two toddlers, were sitting in front of one of the cabanas. The door was open but their bags were on the front steps. I’d noticed a Suzuki Caribbean in the car park but I’d assumed its owner was walking on the beach.
“Excuse me, do you work here?” the father called to me.
“Kind of.”
“Hope you don’t mind,” he said, “but we couldn’t find anyone to talk to and the door was open.”
“Are you staying the night?” I asked. Iwo.
“No problem. I’ll find a key for you.”
“We could use a meal.”
I somehow managed to convince them that our plat du jour was delicious spicy northeastern food and went to heat up our takeaways. I ignored the whining from Gogo when I added the scraps and I was quite pleased with the finished meal. The guests didn’t complain either.
I called Sissi.
“iFurn executive line,” she said. “I’m Dr. Monique Dubois. Can I help you?”
She sometimes used this number for her IKEA II customers. She had a Web company called iFurn. Little i’s and e’s were really big in online sales evidently. She had an iFurn Web site with pictures of her exclusive furniture range which was actually cut and pasted from the IKEA site. The only difference was that her prices were three times theirs. Her slogan was IKEA looks but iFurn quality. She claimed to be the IKEA top end, the stuff they produced before they started cutting corners and downgrading materials. And people fell for it. When she got an order she’d pocket the remittance, rewrite the invoice, and send it to IKEA, paying the catalog price. IKEA dispatched it directly to the customer. The phone line was back-up in case anyone received their package and noticed the discrepancy in the invoice. It rarely happened, but when it did she’d explain that this was the company’s way of reducing the tax and, in turn, lowering the overall cost to the consumer. Her philosophy was that some people desperately wanted to pay too much for what they perceived as quality and were less likely to complain. She’d run this scam for two years. The phone connection was untraceable and the Web site was wired against intrusion. She’d know if anyone tried to shut it down. She was a diva.
“Hello,” I said. “I was looking for a card table that collapses as soon as you rest your arm on it.”
“Little sister.”
“You busy?”
“The world never sleeps.”
“Are you getting out to see that world, Sis? Breathing any of that air? Bumping into any of those world citizens on street corners?”
“We have a rooftop garden. It’s very airy at three or four a.m.”
“Restaurants? Bars? Bank queues? Crowded shopping centers? Society?”
“Are you channeling our mother?”
“I worry about you. What was that movie about the woman who stayed in the house all the time and ate and ate and got bigger and bigger till she filled the room, then she exploded?”
“Yeah. I remember. It was one of Audrey Hepburn’s best.”
“Sissi. I think Mair’s done something bad. I’m frightened.”
There was dead air on the iFurn line, then she said, “All right. Let me hear it.”
I told her the lot: John, the awning detective, the poison, the early morning ninja show by Mair.
“I have frightening visions of her wiping out anyone in Maprao who bought that particular brand of insect killer. And we’re talking hundreds.”
“Hmm. Hickville genocide. Have there been any reports of a death?”
“No.”
“Then, good luck to her. She’s getting away with it. She still has the savvy to cover her tracks, and we always encouraged her to get a hobby.”
“You think I’m being paranoid, don’t you?”
“No. I think you’re a complete idiot. Mair’s a little odd. But you don’t go from dotty to wiping out half a community with rat poison. What I do think is that you’ve been down there in oogaboogaland long enough. It’s time to come home. I have a spare room and a whole cabinet of movies you haven’t seen. We can drink Absolut vodka and watch old Wagon Train episodes on Utorrent and stuff ourselves with chocolate.”
I sighed. It did sound tempting. Almost a deal. But I had some unfinished business.
“All right,” I said. “That’s close to being an option. But let me sort out all these murders first. Have you had any thoughts about my abbot slaying?”
“I had a brainwave,” she said. “I’m a member of this Web site called Police Beat. It’s like Facebook but it’s for anyone with police connections. It’s mostly old cops, men, retired and active – unattractive police officers trawling for women with uniform fetishes. In fact, that’s why I joined. But it gets an interesting mixed clientele as well. Some female officers, public prosecutors, crime writers hoping for scraps, the odd hooker throwing in a discreet ad masked as a chat. But the fascinating thing is, it’s international. You get dialogues in bad English discussing law and swapping police techniques. I guess there are a lot of people out there who don’t realize what the site’s really about.
“My site identity is Elena. I’m a Russian homicide detective who lost a leg in a gang fight. But I’m gorgeous, you see, and all those noble police officers are prepared to ignore my stub. You’d be surprised what information one-legged Elena can elicit. But, anyway, there’s this chat-room for discussing cases. So I mentioned our temple killing and the weird thing with the hat and I sent out a plea for any other hate/hat related stories.”
“You mean, just in case there’s a worldwide serial killer who puts hats on his victims before he stabs them to death? Siss?”
“You asked me to think outside the box.”
“Not outside the planet.”
“Fine. You don’t want my help then I won’t…”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. You’re right. I mean, you’re absolutely right. So? Any luck?”
“Not yet. I had an alcoholic ex-detective in southern California tell me in great detail about a performance artist who used to put party hats on roadkill and photograph them. She had an exhibition. That’s as close as we’ve come so far. But this is a huge network. It’ll take time.”
“I trust you.”
“You should.”
“How’s the Web idol job?”
“We have conflict.”
“Already?”
“They want me to post my picture – pre-work. Me in the raw.”
“Naked?”
“My Webcam would never forgive me for such a thing. No, they want me to show my actual, time-ravaged face. They say it would inspire the youth.”
“Do they know your real name?”
“No.”
“So, do it.”
“Are you mad? What if anyone recognized me?”
“They’d send you an e-mail and ask how you’ve been, and you’d answer and that’s the last you’d hear from them. Internet reunions are fleeting and they tire fast. I’m serious. Do it.”
“I’d sooner die.”
Fourteen
“When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.”
—GEORGE W. BUSH, IOWA WESTERN COMMUNITY COLLEGE, JANUARY 21, 2000
Sugit Suttirat, ex-minister of the environment, parked his cliché red Corvette opposite the Olympuss in the space saved for him with two plastic shower stools. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror.
“Not bad. Not bad at all.”
Some might suggest it was his standing in society that made him so popular with the girls, but he knew there were those among them that found themselves uncontrollably turned on by his looks. They’d told him so, even after he’d handed over the money. Women were easy to read. He beeped the central lock and watched as his lights blinked him goodnight. They’d see him again at two or three, drunk as a porpoise on diesel fumes, sexually satisfied and satisfying sexually thanks to Ovariga. Ovariga was produced and packaged in Yunan, China, and every bit as potent as Viagra. He’d wake up the next morning and it would still be there. Sometimes he had to sit through two meetings with his notes covering his lap. Excellent stuff.
He started across the street. The Olympuss lights were beckoning in red and silver. The girls sat out front on a bench, watching traffic, their little skirts climbing up their thighs, their faces…well, who really cared if they had faces? He stood on the white line to let a slow-moving Milo chocolate milk van pass by but it slowed even more, then stopped in the middle of the road. He was expecting the driver to wind down the window and ask directions but the glass was dark and he saw no one inside. He cursed and walked behind the van. The left rear door was flung open suddenly and it smashed into his face. He heard his reconstructed nose snap and felt the blood flow over his lips.
“What the…?”
♦
I remember that Sunday in a blur, manure flying in every direction as if a ceiling fan had fallen into a tub of chocolate mousse. It began at six a.m. with a call from Sissi.
“Jimm, I’ve got one,” she said.
I was still fuzzy from the Romanian wine. I took my cell phone out to the veranda and squeaked down on one of the rattan chairs.
Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat Page 21