“No answer?” Chompu asked, unnecessarily.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said, and quaffed my mid-afternoon red.
“There is one eventuality we haven’t taken into account,” said Chompu.
“That we’re figures in a computer game and none of us is real?”
“How old is your grandad?”
“Two … maybe three hundred.”
“Well, we’re trusting his word that he saw your author in his house from however many meters while in a rowing boat on the high sea. It could have been the maid’s brother, for all we know, or a house guest, or some full-length cardboard cut-out of the writer for tourists to take photos with. Did Grandad Jah ever meet Coralbank?”
“Not that I know.”
“There you go then. We’re relying on the word of a senile, coffin-carving ex-cop. Perhaps we should give your man some leeway. Innocent until proven guilty. At least long enough to squeeze in one more session of scrumptious loving.”
I suddenly felt a whole lot better. I smiled. From my balcony we could see Mair planting potatoes on the beach. She argued that potatoes needed water to grow and salt to taste. She cited potato chips and French fries as evidence. So the logical place to plant them was in a spot where they’d get both. Damn, I wanted to blame her for depriving us of a real father, but although she was in there somewhere—that open-minded, independent, hippy single-mother—we could no longer untangle her from all the other Mairs she’d become.
“A bit early to start drinking, isn’t it?” came a voice.
The dogs barked half-heartedly, despite the fact outsiders had snuck up on us from the rear. Chompu and I looked back to see Ed the grass man with a small version of Shrek in a blue waistcoat.
“My fault entirely,” said Chompu, who had long adored Ed and was convinced the man’s infatuation with women was a phase he’d get over.
“We’re celebrating,” he continued. “Today was the final day of my course. I passed.”
“Congratulations,” said Ed. “What are you now?”
“Unambiguous. Second grade.”
Ed didn’t seem to understand or care.
“Who’s your friend, Ed?” I asked.
“This is Ad,” said Ed. “As you see from his waistcoat, he’s a motorcycle taxi driver. Ad’s got a sidecar, so he gets all the big jobs, the removals and family excursions. Ad’s got a story I think you’d be interested to hear.”
“Ooh, good. A story,” said Chompu. “I love stories.”
We unstacked two more plastic chairs and sat in a circle. Ad cleared his throat.
“I got a call on my cell,” he said. “Asking me to go up to that house up by Kor Kow Temple. Pick something up. It was a girl that called. Not Thai. Had trouble understanding her at first. Then I got it. I rode there at about eight. Dark as shit up there and me with only a taillight to see by. Then I reached the lights on the gate and some little boy was waving me in. I went in and down to the house and there was the woman standing in the driveway. Burmese, she was. She had two polystyrene ice chests wrapped up with masking tape. There was a smell. My nose is messed up after all them years in the methylated spirit factory, but that I could smell. Horrible, it was. Sweet and sour, like a dead body sprayed with air freshener.”
Me and Chompu sat spellbound.
“But money’s money,” said Ad, “and they helped me lug the chests onto the side car and told me to take them down to Uaychai bus terminal. Someone would meet me there and take possession, they told me. There weren’t any buses due, so the place was deserted. I did a circuit around the terminal, and suddenly this grubby-looking guy steps out of the shadows and jumps in front of me like he was going to rob me. I stopped and he handed me an envelope with money in it. The fee I’d agreed with the woman at the house. He unloaded the chests and I drove off. I could still smell the stink on me a week after.”
“Do you recall what date this was?” I asked.
“December the thirteenth. Birthday of Ban Sipan, national team midfielder.”
I thanked Ad, gave him petrol money for his trouble, and he rode off. That left me and Chompu and Ed staring at each other. A cold wind had just risen from the Gulf and Mair was no longer down on the beach.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said.
“Your mother said she saw the writer’s wife on the eleventh,” said Ed. “Nobody saw her leave the house.”
“Of course not,” I argued. “He would have taken her to the station or the airport in his truck.”
“Or sent her to the bus terminal in ice chests,” said Chompu.
“Oh, don’t you start,” I said. “Ed, shame on you for even suggesting it. I know what brought all this on.”
“And what would that be?” he asked.
“You’re jealous. You wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if you weren’t.”
“I am not. He’s bad news, Jimm. He’s dangerous.”
“And what evidence do you have to support that claim?”
“I can tell you things about him.”
“You know? I think I’ve heard more than enough already.”
“He’s had—”
“Like I say, Ed. You aren’t welcome here anymore. Go and get yourself a free perm or something.”
He looked at me as if I’d run over his favorite cat with a steamroller. He stood, and the plastic chair fell backward. He didn’t bother to pick it up. He stepped off the balcony and seemed to be carried off in a gust of wind.
“That was dramatic,” said Chompu, helping himself to another glass of red.
“Men!” I said.
“He went to a lot of trouble.”
“You only want the ones that you can’t get,” I reminded him.
“‘Desperado.’ Eagles. Timeless,” he said. “But what if he’s right?”
“You know what the only relevant part of that story was?”
“All of it?”
“No. The characters. Did you see Conrad in it? No. The Burmese. They called the taxi. They loaded the chests. If there’s anything dodgy going on up in that house, that’s where we should be looking. What if the pretty wife went down to the temple to say hello to her faithful staff and A brained her with a hammer? If Conrad had done it, why would he get the staff to clean up after him? He’d just drive her body off in his tinted SUV and dump her somewhere. No, it’s her, A. She’s the one who threatened me. Tried to poison our beloved dogs. If anyone did away with Conrad’s wife, she’s the one we should be looking at. The second threat said ‘I told you to keep off. This will happen to you if you don’t.’ What if A and her brother are clearing the field so A can move in? She’s educated. She’s probably attractive under all that powder gunk. And I have no doubt she’s fallen in love with him.”
“And you have evidence that connects her to all of this?”
“Almost.”
Mair’s arrival on the veranda changed the mood somewhat. The dogs went nuts with excitement.
“Who’s for a naked swim?” she said.
She was dressed in a white toweling robe with the words The One Hotel embroidered on the pocket.
“Mair,” I said. “If you take off that robe, I’ll shoot you.”
“It’s getting really choppy out there,” Chompu told her.
“You youngsters,” she said. “You’ve lost the spark. In Portugal I was bodysurfing waves taller than these coconut trees.”
As far as I knew, she’d never been to Europe.
“There’s a lot of sea junk flying around out there, Mair,” I said. “You might get crushed under a discarded tool-shed.”
“Nobody discards toolsheds,” she said. “Tools are very expensive, and you need a dry environment with a sturdy roof to keep them in good condition. And I didn’t come all this way to discuss such nonsense. I have something to tell you.”
“What?”
“Well, if you hadn’t tossed my mind around this way and that, I’d remember, wouldn’t I? Still, it will come to me eventually.”
<
br /> She turned to go, then stopped.
“No. I have it. There’s a message to Miss Jimm, in English, pinned to the front of the shop. That was it. Now. The captain’s waiting for me.”
She went off to join Captain Kow in the high tide garbage swill, and I did my lumpy version of “jogging” down to our shop. Chompu followed. The note delivery had been comparatively dull. There was no cleaver attached, just a single thumbtack. I looked for wires that might trigger underground mines, but there were none. It appeared to be just a note flapping in the wind. I took it down and read it.
Darling Jimm,
This is my surprise. I came back early because I couldn’t stand being away from you. Don’t tell anyone. You’ll see why later. Bring this note with you, so I can translate the words on the back for you.
I turned it over and there was what looked like a poem in French. Even illegible, it was terribly romantic. I turned back.
I’ll pick you up at the 21-kilometer marker at seven-thirty. I’ve arranged something very special.
Your lover,
CC.
I was excited and confused all at once. How could I ever have doubted him? How could I ever, even briefly, have conjured that image in my mind of him holding King Naresuan’s axe in his hand as he stood over his pretty wife?
“So?” said Chompu.
“So what?”
“What does it say?”
“Oh. False alarm. Nui the used-car guy wants us to pick up brown rice next time we go to Tesco.”
I put the note in the pocket of my shorts and walked past him. I should have known he wasn’t fooled. He followed me silently back to the veranda and into my cabin. The DNA test equipment was lined up on the shelf.
“This should prove it one way or the other,” I told him.
Following the manga instructions carefully, I took the two drippers and sucked up a small sample from each test tube. I laid the chemical blotter on the table and squeezed both drippers at the same time. They each made a blot that spread outward like fast-acting viruses. And where the two blots met … nothing happened.
“What does it mean?” Chompu asked.
“That I made a mistake somewhere. The point where the two meet is supposed to turn black.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“It’s not a match.”
“Or, in other words, the maid’s innocent.”
“It can’t b— No, wait. Of course. She didn’t use her own blood to make the fingerprint. She used the blood from the pretty dead wife. Wouldn’t surprise me if she hacked off the finger and used it like a rubber stamp.”
“I get the teeniest feeling you’ve become obsessed.”
“I have not. She did it. I’m certain she did. All we need is a sample from the wife. I’ll find something tonight. I can do this test again.”
“I can make an appointment with my psychologist for you.”
“I’m not—”
“And what are you two lovebirds doing?” came a voice.
I looked up to see Mair and Captain Kow standing arm in arm in the doorway in their matching bathrobes, their hair wet from the sea. It was like a commercial for a seniors’ spa.
“I’m making cocktails,” I said.
“Don’t you go drinking too much before your date,” she said and they turned to go.
“My…?”
I ran after them.
“Mair!” I called. “You stop right there.”
The happy couple turned around to look at me.
“Did you read my personal note?” I asked.
She did her Titanic smile.
“There was nothing personal about it,” she said. “Your name was on the front, that’s all.”
They marched off to her cabin. Leaves were being ripped off the bushes by the wind. The door slammed behind her.
“All right, hand it over,” said Chompu. “You know lying to a police officer is a criminal offense.”
I dug the note out of my pocket and handed it to him. He read it.
“It’s too bad Ed isn’t here to see it,” I said.
“This rather supports his case,” said Chompu.
“Of course it doesn’t. It means Conrad hasn’t deceived me. The text about being in Bangkok was all part of his surprise.”
“So why the note? And why the ‘Don’t tell anyone?’ It looks suspicious to me.”
“He’s a mystery writer. He’s playing a game. What’s so suspicious about that?”
The lieutenant grabbed his chin ’twixt thumb and index finger the way a television detective might do.
“It could be perceived as the establishment of an alibi,” he said. “As far as any electronic records show, he’s still in Bangkok. By leaving a paper note and asking you to bring it with you he could be cleaning up the paper trail. There would be no evidence that he invited you to his house today.”
“And I’m supposed to be the paranoid one.”
“Not at all. Why didn’t he phone to invite you? Or send another text?”
“Perhaps he did. Let’s see,” I said, searching around for my phone. “Perhaps that’s exactly why he left the note—because he wasn’t able to get my attention on my cell. Where is the bloody thing?”
Sticky Rice looked up with that familiar, Sim-cards-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth expression. I’d seen it too often to ignore it.
“Dog, if you ate my phone,” I said, “I’m going to deworm you twice a day till it comes out.”
He crawled under the table.
“Chom, have you got your phone with you?”
“Yes.”
“Call me.”
Chompu obliged, but “Mamma Mia” did not ring out from Sticky’s belly.
“Then he’s buried it,” I said. “The runt. But that’s it. That’s exactly why Conrad couldn’t get through. Okay, I’m not playing anymore. It’s all quite simple. There is no missing person. His wife ran off with a younger man. He’s cool about it. There’s nothing suspicious about him. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to prepare dinner before my date.”
I stomped off toward the kitchen with the wind buffeting me left and right like a dim sum in a pinball machine. Chompu held his ground, and as I discovered later, that was the moment a nefarious plot was hatched in my absence. According to my policeman, he had heard a commotion in the bougainvilleas beside the cabin and Grandad Jah emerged from the bush doing the Saint Vitus’ dance, slapping his bare head, stamping his feet. Red ants were very fond of bougainvilleas. His arrival on the veranda was greeted by a distant roll of thunder and a slither of lightning that snaked across the sky.
“It’s coming,” he said. “It’s going to be a big one.”
“Have you been hiding in the bushes listening to our conversation?” Chompu asked.
“Yes.”
“Very well.”
“The girl can’t see what’s clearly there in front of her face. Love does that to women. It turns them into bigger idiots than they already are. I suggest we set up a surveillance operation. Here’s what we’ll do…”
“I’m the policeman,” said Chompu.
“Have you got a plan?”
“I don’t even have a crime.”
“Prevention’s better than cure, young fellow.”
14.
Don’t Screw Up
(self-assembled furniture instructions)
Translation of Grandad Jah’s Surveillance Operation Notes
Hypotheses
1. Conrad Coralbank killed his wife.
2. The Burmese servants were in on it.
Supporting Facts
i. The note inviting Jimm for her date had to have been delivered by someone else. If Coralbank went to the trouble of setting up this alibi, he wouldn’t risk being seen putting the note on the door. The maid or her brother wouldn’t have been noticed. Nobody looks twice at Burmese.
ii. The Burmese were complicit in the dispatch of the wife’s body.
3. They plan to make Jimm their next victim.
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Supporting Facts
i. A rich guy who could get himself any woman he wants is seducing a plain girl that he can’t possibly find attractive. So there has to be another reason. As he is a crazed killer, there is no need for motive beyond blood lust. I know these types.
ii. He’s established an elaborate alibi.
iii. He collects weapons.
Methodology
The young fellow was right. We don’t have any concrete evidence of a crime. So we need to play along and let them make the mistakes. For that, we need more warm bodies on the ground. Reluctantly, as time was pressing, I called my good-for-nothing grandson, Arny, who was off with his old lady. Also, I had no choice but to recruit Kow.
Coralbank will be picking up Jimm on the main road, which is why he had arranged to meet her out of sight at the top of the lane. We do not alert her that we are observing as she may spill the beans to her “lover.” The policeman will follow at a safe distance to make sure Coralbank takes her to the house. With a storm coming, it should be overcast at six p.m. Kow will approach the property from the bottom of the hill at Coralbank’s land and establish a beachhead with a view of the house from the grounds. He will be equipped with a cell phone. I will be at the top of the hill near the gate, ready to enter the property over the wall when Kow gives the word (map attached). As Arny is next to useless in combat situations, he will be based at the resort where he will answer the telephone and make us sandwiches for when it’s all over.
N.B. Killers prefer to torment their victims. We will catch him in the act, hopefully before he’s murdered my granddaughter.
The Axe Factor: A Jimm Juree Mystery (Jimm Juree Mysteries) Page 17