The Axe Factor: A Jimm Juree Mystery (Jimm Juree Mysteries)

by Colin Cotterill

  Fortunately, the doctor was in. I was shocked that faced with a lifeless dog and two tearful owners, Dr. Somboon could remain so calm. He took another sip of his beer and told us to put Gogo on the operating table.

  “Is she dead?” I asked.

  “Getting there,” he said.

  I expected him to run over to the table with defibrillators and yell for us to get clear. But he walked casually to his medicine cabinet and took out a vial of the same drug cocktail he gave for every ailment: worms, mange, liver flukes, lice, and now, apparently, death. The only consolation was that I doubted he’d waste fifty baht’s worth of medicine on a dead body. He injected his home-made brew into Gogo’s meatless carcass and dropped the used needle into his pedal bin. He rolled her onto her back, put his hand on her chest, and slapped gently and rhythmically at her rib cage like a drummer at a wake. Arny and I backed him up by sobbing pathetically. Gogo’s eyes looked like raisins glaring out of a Rastafarian fruitcake. After all we’d done for her, this was how she repaid us? She didn’t even give Mair a chance to say goodbye.

  The vet stopped tapping and reached for his beer. I had no idea what good the tapping had done, but stopping it seemed so … defeatist. We’d had a mechanical bathroom scale in Chiang Mai that used to lie about my weight. I’d pick it up and give it a good shake and it would turn out just fine. We’re all just bathroom scales under the surface, so I stepped up to the table, grabbed the little bitch, and shook her like a cocktail. Those chemicals needed to get where they were going in a hurry.

  “Yeah, that might work, too,” said Dr. Somboon.

  It wasn’t exactly CPR, but I wasn’t about to wrap my lips around her snout. Gogo didn’t respond. She hung there in my arms like three-day-old spaghetti. We’d hated each other from day one. She had no manners or respect, but still I fed her. I’d spent time on my balcony telling my problems to her rude backside. Tears gathered on my chin like some aqua-goatee. I pulled her body to my chest, hoping I might be able to channel the last few heartbeats. The final pulse. But Gogo was gone. Until …

  Do you remember the scene in The Exorcist where Linda Blair throws up in Technicolor? Well, Gogo cast out the devil from three orifices simultaneously. Most of it landed on me. She coughed, then breathed. Satan had left the body.

  “That’s not a bad sign,” said Dr. Somboon.

  My cell phone rang. It was in the front pocket of my jeans; coincidentally the pocket that most of Gogo’s fluids had drained into. I put the dog onto the table. She was now panting heavily after her flight from death. I took out the phone. It was still functioning. I could see a Samsung TV ad in this. I wiped my thumb over the screen and there was his name, Conrad Coralbank. I really didn’t want to put the phone up to my mouth, but opportunities had been lost through a bout of squeamishness.

  I splashed “Speak.”

  “Hello?”

  “Jimm? It’s me.”

  “What a nice surprise.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  I looked down at the 3D art installation on my T-shirt.

  “Not hugely. Why?”

  “I’m making dinner.”

  “You can cook?”

  “That’s for you to decide. Can you come over?”

  “It’s not English food, is it?”

  He laughed.

  “When you taste my mum’s cooking, you’ll never make fun of English cuisine again. But, no. Paella.”

  Had he just invited me to meet his mother?

  “Oh, good. I love French food,” I said.

  “Actually, paella’s—”

  “I know. I’m kidding. What time?”

  “Sundown would be fine. It’s informal. Come as you are.”

  I laughed and pressed “End.”

  With Arny carrying Gogo in the towel and me wearing a white doctor’s coat with my jeans and T-shirt in a plastic bag, we thanked Dr. Somboon and walked through to the waiting room. There were two characters in there … waiting. They stood when we appeared and wagged their tails. It’s difficult to hate dogs, you know? I hadn’t noticed Sticky and Beer stow away on the back of the Mighty X, but it was unlikely they’d chased us all the way into Lang Suan. Arny lowered Gogo for them both to get a sniff, and they tongue-lashed her till her face was soggy.

  UNPOSTED BLOG ENTRY 3

  (found two weeks too late)

  Just the thought of what I can do.

  That button I have my finger on.

  It’s such a rush of adrenaline.

  I can’t look at her without the feel of the axe in my hand, her parts all around me. I’m seeing her this evening. It’ll be casual. Friendly. I’m in no hurry. I’m more inclined to stretch this out, but if it happens tonight, it happens.

  C.C.

  8.

  Intercourse for Beginner

  (english language CD)

  I was agonizing over how to look informal. I had all my clothes spread out on the bed. There was nothing that said “I didn’t go to any trouble.” My phone rang. I’d wiped it with Dettol antiseptic, but it still stank of exorcism.

  “Sissi, what should I wear?”

  “Go with the gingham dress.”

  “He’s already seen me in dresses. Twice.”

  “Jimm, whoever he is, you aren’t going to do better than a dress. Your arse is too big for jeans and your tits are too small for a tank top. A dress is like a burka. He’s never quite sure what he’s going to get until you’re unwrapped.”

  “Why the gingham? It makes me look like Elly May Clampett.”

  “Exactly. See what an education you got from my cable channels? Gingham’s like school uniform. Sensuality in a shroud of innocence. The clothes say virgin. The body says, don’t pay any attention to the clothes. So, who is it?”

  “The writer.”

  “I TOLD YOU.”

  “I know. It just seemed too good to be true. But I’ve been over all the possibilities. He isn’t after me so he can get his hands on the family wealth, because I imagine his royalty check from Bulgaria alone is three times our gross earnings for the year. He isn’t after me so he can ride my fame. He might want me for a casual fling because he misses his wife.”

  “Win-win.”

  “Exactly. However long it lasts, I spend time with someone who isn’t preoccupied with the cost of palm oil or which domestic animal produces the best manure. Someone who’s in contact with the fascinating world of literature. Who jets off for conferences in St. Louis, Cape Town, and Bristol, meets adorable people, and drinks cocktails, none of the ingredients of which were produced in a kettle out the back of Old Winai’s prawn farm. Why are you calling, by the way?”

  “I’ve found out who paid your pediatrician’s per diem and travel expenses, plus a sizable speaker’s fee.”

  “Do we have to do this now?”

  “There’s not really a ‘this.’ I just tell you, unless I’m overwhelmed with the ingratitude, in which case I hang up.”

  “No. Don’t. I’m sorry. I’m just getting ready…”

  “I know. That’s why I’m forgiving you. The speaker was paid by the Thai Food Corporation.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s an umbrella group that covers a lot of overseas companies and their local concessions. It’s a sort of members’ club for the multinationals. A paper partnership with a nonexistent Thai sister company. They have a sort of clearing-house bank deal, so that any payments come through TFC and can’t be traced back to the original company.”

  “Why would they need to do that?”

  “A lot of reasons: tax breaks, dishonest contracts with politicians, any dealings that might be picked up by the international press as a conflict of interest. It’s a sort of money laundry. That’s as far as I got. I can’t seem to narrow it down to the specific company that made the payment. It’s the same brick wall with the Bonny Baby NGO. As far as I can find out, they’re just a group of concerned doctors and health-care workers that set up training programs in the provinces.”
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  I thought of my conversation with Constable Ma Yai and the DNA conference.

  “I have an idea,” I said. “Find out what they were giving away.”

  “Aha.”

  “There may have been a conference bag or handouts or gifts mailed to the midwives’ offices.”

  “And this burden is placed on me because…?”

  “… it’s urgent and I can’t do it because I don’t have the participants’ addresses and I’m on my way to a killer date with a perfect man who adores me.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” she said. ’Life has a way of kneeing you in the gonads.”

  “I ask you, Siss. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

  E-MAIL TO “CLINT EASTWOOD” FROM JIMM JUREE

  Dear “Clint,”

  I can’t tell you how excited Sissi and I were to receive your e-mail. It was refreshing for us to see that someone of your stature is not too proud to use an Internet café. We hope you weren’t mobbed by fans in the cappuccino queue.

  We were a little surprised that you didn’t mention our “last screenplay” by name, considering you loved it so much. But perhaps you were rushed when you left your executive office in Burbank and scooted all the way up the coast to Santa Cruz, to the Mocha Rocker Coffee Lounge and forgot to take your files with you. We all suffer from absent-mindedness from time to time.

  The other point that really threw us was that you seem to have forgotten you have a big family get-together planned for Christmas week, and as far as Sissi could tell from the encrypted files at Jet World Travel—your regular agent—you didn’t have any flight bookings purchased until the New Year. Or perhaps you were planning on coming by ship. A surprise cruise for the family?

  So, you see, Liced, there were so many holes in your story, we started to wonder who might have connections to Malpaso and hate us enough to undertake such a cruel hoax. And through the magic of the Internet, we found your name on the exclusive list of Gold Blend members at the Mocha Rocker. As they say, we put two and two together. The only thing we weren’t sure about was what you planned to do with us once we came out of hiding. We doubted we were a big enough threat to national security to activate the CIA Internet Crimes Division. So, on a whim, Sissi checked air bookings out of LAX. As you’re currently unemployed, she focused on the budget airlines and found you on a Turkish Airways flight to Bangkok stopping on every bit of dirt between there and here. Evidently, you and someone called Paco were due to arrive on the 23rd.

  Although we’d like to think this is just a romantic getaway with a husky lover—we found Paco’s Facebook page. He bulked up nicely during his stint in prison—there is always the chance that you are considering some sort of Guatemalan payback. You had a high-paying job you weren’t exactly qualified for, but you thought your future was assured. You probably have an extended family at home relying on that income. Then, some cyber-nerd transsexual hacks into your system and screws up your world. Totally unfair.

  So, here’s what we’ve done. Sissi canceled both your air tickets with full reimbursement. (Paco wouldn’t have survived in our hood anyway.) She sent an application on your behalf to Sony Pictures with a slightly inflated résumé. All of the references will pass the standard background check. There’s a glowing reference from Clint included. And, congratulations, you’re on a shortlist of four to be interviewed for an executive secretary position in production. You’re the only Latina applicant, and Sony has just received a memo from Equal Opportunities complaining that the company has too little ethnic representation in senior positions. As long as you don’t screw up the interview, we feel you’ll get the job. It pays a lot more than Malpaso.

  If, on the other hand, you’d prefer to beat us over the heads with a baseball bat, we can arrange a meeting. Naturally we’d prefer that you were successful in your new career and let bygones be bygones. Sorry for losing your job for you.

  Jimm

  P.S. Clint would never use the word “peachy.”

  “It’s from Aranyik near the old capital of Ayutthaya,” he said, holding up a straight-bladed sword. “It’s nothing like the swords you see in the dramas. They found that at crucial moments the curved blade would get stuck in the scabbard and you’d be run through even before you got your weapon out. The tip is flat rather than pointed to give stability to the blade. They wanted to be sure they didn’t have to take too many swings to behead the prisoner at the execution.”

  I never thought for a second I’d be fascinated by a knife collection. But Conrad obviously loved them. It was so much more macho than collecting stamps or Star Wars memorabilia. He’d built an air-conditioned concrete room with a thick door to stop the old metal ones going rusty. And he knew them. I mean, every one of them had a story attached to it. He was on to a dagger carried by the lady courtiers in Sukhothai to kill themselves, should they be overrun by randy Burmese.

  His paella had been perfect and the wine that washed that fancy old seafood fried rice down a treat. To my relief, the maid and gardener didn’t live in. They had a hut down in the temple grounds. Temples technically weren’t allowed to rent out rooms, but you could make monthly donations. I’m not a person affected by alcohol, but the sweetness of the wine had made me a little heady. Or perhaps it was the company. He’d loved my dress. Loved what I’d done with my hair. (I’d washed it.) Loved having laughter at the kitchen table again. I was a successful dinner guest, and when he suggested we come and look at his blade collection, I’d rather been hoping he’d have them on racks around his bedroom. I know. Giving a bad impression of Thai women. Added another fifty charter flights of horny old Europeans right here. But wait, before you book, we, and by that I mean normal Thai women, are not interested in people like you. If we wanted beer-swilling, pot-bellied, stupid guys, we have a country full of them. Being sexually active doesn’t mean lowering standards. If you are repulsive in Rome, you’ll be just as repulsive in Bangkok. Conrad, however, was classy whatever way you looked at him.

  So, to cut a long story short, as we stood staring at the actual axe King Naresuan the Great had carried into battle, the weapon that cost two million baht at auction, I took hold of Conrad’s hairy forearm and squeezed.

  “I’ve never been this close to history,” I said. “Not to mention two million baht.”

  It was either the wine or the money that caused my heart to flutter and me to look up into his Manchester City blue eyes and say, “I’d like to see the rest of the house now.”

  * * *

  Having sex is one thing. Describing it in writing is another. I tried. I really tried to make it sound like more than humping. But the Guardian Bad Sex Award was always at the back of my mind. They give an annual prize—I think it’s a chastity belt—for the worst lovemaking description, and I didn’t want to get famous for making sex sound like plumbing. But every time I tried to write what happened that night, it came out in S-bends and spurts and dribbles and suction. That’s what happens when you think too much about it. When you’re actually having it, when it actually works—which is rare—you aren’t present at the scene. The “doing it” becomes subliminal. Your mind is off swimming in a tub of friendly jellyfish. It is—it should be—the ultimate out-of-body experience. So I can’t write about my night with Conrad Coralbank because I wasn’t there.

  When I got back, a jellyfish buzz the length of my body, I was in bed with him naked. He had his arms around me, and the breath from his nose was blowing directly into my left ear. He was asleep and I didn’t want to move. We’d done the deed and he was still there. Not even my husband had stuck around once his duty was done. He’d be over on the East Berlin side of the bolster, snoring. Most of the casuals had one leg in their jeans before the final thrust.

  But my author, my old, modestly equipped, good-smelling author was holding on to me and smiling in his sleep. I wanted never to have to leave that bed. Those arms. That moment. Because deep in my stomach I felt it would never happen again.

  * * *

>   “I didn’t know whether you ate meat,” he said. “So I had A make a few alternatives.”

  When I awoke the second time, finding myself alone on the enormous bed, with a view of the entire Gulf including the Vietnamese delta and the tip of Borneo twelve thousand kilometers away, I’d walked naked through the stroll-through closet and into the black-and-white-checked bathroom. I’d taken a rain shower, applied natural herbs, put on my crumpled gingham dress, and walked down the arty staircase to breakfast. A awaited me. The look she gave me suggested she had no idea how helpful my family had been to the Burmese community. All she saw was the Jezebel whore slut descending from the love nest that should have been hers. If she’d been holding a skillet of boiling oil rather than a Scotch-Brite foam pad, I was sure she would have thrown it at me.

  “I eat anything,” I said so as not to appear deliberately confrontational.

  In fact, there were many things I didn’t eat. The pork rissole A slammed down in front of me was one of them. Conrad was across the large table from me, eating muesli and drinking fresh carrot juice. His lips were orange.

  “Sleep well?” he asked.

  He was in a singlet and shorts, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been for a morning jog already. Whereas I wouldn’t have a need to exercise for a very long time. The euphoria was wearing off, and I could feel aches in all my muscles.

  “Very well,” I said.

  A full glass of orange juice sort of bounced down in front of me, spilling on the table.

  “Steady, A,” said Conrad.

  “Sorry,” she said in English, then in Thai she added, “I’m a housekeeper, not a waitress in a short-time motel.”