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

by Colin Cotterill

  “They were real?”

  “Probably not. It didn’t matter. The Thai Medical Council would have been obliged to suspend her while they investigated the claims. The TMA isn’t the FBI. It would have taken a year at least. And all that time, Dr. Somluk would have been unemployable. I thought that was unnecessarily cruel.”

  “So you killed her. Not nearly so cruel.”

  “We came here. This was just a concrete bunker then, but the ante-room was kitted out with its fancy equipment. There was a cabinet with a hose, and that beauty.” She pointed to the axe. “We’d had a couple of glasses of wine to make up. I took out the axe and we were playing. She was confident she’d won me over. I promised sincerely that once the operating theater was complete, I would discontinue my relationship with Medley. To cement our reunion and my decision, we drank a toast to breastfeeding. Just as in your case, the opiate was already in the glass when I poured the wine. A quick swirl and it was absorbed.”

  I felt relieved that even a doctor would fall for it.

  “My mistake,” she said, “was that I killed her when she was unconscious. It was a cowardly thing to do. But she was my first. It was the lowest point on the y axis of my learning curve. My sponsors had asked me to shut her up. It was freeing. It was as if they’d recognized my need to take a life and given me a pass. I had permission to live my dream.”

  “How did you dispose of the body?” I asked.

  “The simplest thing,” she said. “There’s a system. We have foam boxes that are officially labeled ‘Hospital Waste.’ They contain the bits that fall off or are sliced off, the stomach contents. The stomach itself. We send them to a ratified temple where they are blessed and cremated. Nobody thinks to look inside those boxes.”

  “And me?” I asked. “Why am I here?”

  “You didn’t respond to the warnings, dear. I told you to keep off. I warned you what would happen, but you kept on probing.”

  “So the cleaver in the kitchen door and the poisoned dogs were you?”

  “You failed to read the signs.”

  “You should have been more specific. You aren’t the only one threatening me, you know?”

  “My sponsors suggested I should use whatever method had been successful with Somluk.”

  “You do realize they probably weren’t aware you were cutting people up with an axe?”

  “‘Whatever it takes,’ they said. I am certain they wouldn’t have been disappointed.”

  “Given what they do for a living, I have to agree with you.”

  She stepped down from her chair, checked her blood-spattered watch, and went for the axe. It was apparently time.

  “And who was that in the next room?” I asked.

  “Ah, no, Aladdin. Your two wishes have already been granted.”

  “They usually come in threes.”

  “Then let us just say that some nosy parker came looking for you.”

  My heart dropped into a sinkhole.

  “I said you weren’t here,” she continued, “but some people can’t take no for an answer. I had wanted my second kill to be more refined. A little banter, something like this—perhaps a touch more intelligent—and then a dissection without the benefit of anaesthesia.”

  I wanted to say something like, “You heartless bitch,” but everything I came up with had been used before. I didn’t want my last line to be a cliché. There were so many nosy parkers in my life. Who had she chopped up? Was it somebody I loved like Arny or Mair or Chompu or, yes, even Captain Kow? Or a new friend like Nurse Da or my darling Conrad? Or one of the villagers, or …

  I hadn’t cried for so many years it had occurred to me I might be heartless after all. But there’s nothing better than being strung up for the slaughter to bring out the weak girlie in one. It was all so hopeless. And what a way to go. Whoever remembered the names of the victims of serial killers? I certainly didn’t. And I didn’t want to go without knowing who I’d be meeting in limbo on his or her way to the next life.

  “Who was it?” I asked through the embarrassing tears.

  “No. Now you’re being greedy.”

  “Come on. Man? Woman?”

  “None of it matters.”

  “Not to you it doesn’t. You’re at the beginning of your notoriety. You’ll be going on to have Michelle Yeoh play you in a biopic on HBO in five years. But me? I just vanish. It’s worse than death to not have the answer to a riddle. Who’s in the next room?”

  She took up the axe again and knelt at my feet. I should have been petrified with fear as she started to explain what cuts she’d make in me. What parts might be too large and too long to fit in a foam ice chest. But I firmly believe that finding oneself tied naked to the floor of a deserted operating theater at the feet of an insane woman with a sharp axe was a defining moment. What I did then … that’s how I would be remembered. I could tell as I looked into her eyes that my time had come. If you’re certain you’re about to die, you really don’t want to waste time begging. You don’t scream for help or for forgiveness or mercy or whatever it was that got you in that mess in the first place. You do a knock-knock joke.

  “What?” she said.

  “I said, ‘Knock-knock.’”

  “You aren’t really taking this seriously, are you?”

  “I’m just trying to lighten the mood a little bit.”

  “Lighten the…? You do understand what I’m saying here, don’t you? You do know what’s going to happen? Or are you completely stupid?”

  “Not completely. I still have a couple of months of the course to go.”

  That pushed her over. Nobody likes a smart arse. She got into a position that would make chopping more comfortable.

  “What temple?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “You said you’d be sending my parts to a temple for cremation.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters. I’m fond of this body. I want to know where you’re sending it.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Make me.”

  That line works better when the person you’re talking to isn’t holding an axe over her head. But I did notice her hesitate. There’s a difference between butchering a dead body and slicing up a live one. At least I hoped so.

  “The tiles,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You’ll crack the tiles.”

  “Damn it.”

  She threw down the axe and ran into the other room for the sheet of metal she’d been so pleased with. She dragged it into the operating room. It was dripping with blood.

  “I hope you’re going to wash that down,” I said.

  “No. What does it matter?”

  “It’s disgusting. I’m not lying down on someone else’s blood.”

  “Just lift up a fraction.”

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps you’ll cooperate if you have a little incentive.”

  Almost before I knew what was happening, she’d grabbed the axe and brought it down on my hand. It grazed my knuckles and made sparks on the tiles. I have no idea how I’d been able to retract my fingers in the split second she’d given me.

  “Good reflexes,” she said.

  She used her free hand to try to pry open those fingers, but I was as stubborn as she was nuts.

  “You know I doubt whether your toes have the same reaction time,” she said, crawling on her knees across the floor.

  She was right. My feet were rock bottom on the flexibility chart. I don’t mind telling you I was at my maximum level of petrifaction by then. All the knock-knock jokes on the planet wouldn’t have cheered me up at that moment. I was a mess. I had a small bladder accident. She grabbed my shin, raised the axe, and there was not a thing I could do about it.

  “Stop right there” came a familiar Thai voice from the direction of the doorway. Dr. June and I turned our heads at the same time to see Arny standing there like some comic book hero. Ex
cept he was as white as the tiles on the floor. I knew why straightaway. He’d seen a sight in the ante-room that probably turned his stomach inside out. I knew that expression on his face. He was about to pass out. He was already swaying.

  Dr. June got to her feet and charged at him with the axe raised. She let out a frightening scream. She truly was mad. She swung her axe downward at a forty-five-degree angle just as Arny sank to his knees. The blade took off a layer of his scalp and a tuft of hair, and the momentum sent the axe all the way round its arc until it sliced through the doctor’s left foot just below the ankle. I imagine she’d sharpened the blade beyond what the fire marshal considered necessary to chop down doors. That was evident from the ease with which it severed her foot. Arny, by now facedown on the floor, was spared the nightmare of an open faucet of blood pouring from the doctor’s leg. At the sight of her own blood, Dr. June also passed out. And there they lay, the pair of them, unconscious on the tiles and me tied to the floor. It was what they called “an awkward predicament.” Should Dr. June come to first, she might summon the strength to use her axe on Arny.

  I yelled my lungs out, “Ar-ny! Ar-ny!”

  He didn’t move. The doctor coughed.

  “Ar … ny!”

  She was conscious already and increasingly aware. She slowly pulled the green scrub jacket up over her head to reveal the largest bra I’d ever seen on a small-breasted woman. With deep controlled breaths she wound the shirt around the remains of her bleeding foot and knotted it tightly with the sleeves.

  “ARNY!”

  His eyelids fluttered. He needed something to wake him up. There was nothing to hand … or foot. If he hadn’t interrupted us so soon, I could have thrown a toe at him.

  “Arn—”

  He looked up. Saw the blood. Saw the doctor reach for the axe. Lift it. Lunge. And he smacked her one in the kisser with a magnificent right. She dropped like a bag of suet pudding. I had nothing free to applaud with, so I whooped. I’d never seen him throw a punch before. It was another major breakthrough. Admittedly this was a small, middle-aged woman with one foot, but you have to start somewhere.

  “Arny,” I said. “Get over here and untie me.”

  “I’m feeling a bit…”

  “I don’t care. Untie me first and you can faint for as long as you want. One wrist would be fine.”

  The knots were too tight to untie. All he had was the axe to cut my bonds, but it was bloody and he refused to look at it, which made him every bit as dangerous as Dr. June. But after a little back-and-forth gentle sawing he had my right hand free and the rest I could do myself.

  “Arny, take off your shirt.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m naked.”

  “Oh, right.”

  His T-shirt was a cocktail dress on me, and it was dramatically stained with the blood that ran from my brother’s head wound. I tied Dr. June’s hands behind her back using my own bonds, conscious of the fact she might bleed to death but not really caring that much.

  “Who’s in the next room?” I asked Arny.

  “It’s … it’s a body. I couldn’t look.”

  “I understand. But I want you to avert your eyes as you walk back through that room and keep going till you find a doctor. This is a hospital, so it shouldn’t be that difficult. Tell him or her to get over here immediately. And get someone to look at your scalp. Do you have your cell phone with you?”

  “It’s in the Mighty X.”

  “Right. Then I want you to call the Lang Suan police station. Tell them we have a murderer here who’s bleeding out. If they take their usual sweet time, they won’t have anyone to beat a confession out of. When you get back here, you can tell me how you knew where to find me.”

  “OK.”

  He started off on wobbly legs, a small piece of skin on his head flapping open like a trapdoor.

  “And Arny…”

  “Yes?”

  I walked up to him and squeezed him so tight he might have even felt it through all those muscles. I whispered in his ear. “In your own usual weird Arny way, you saved my life. Thank you.”

  I kissed him. He usually spat when I kissed him, but he accepted this one with good grace. He smiled and headed off through the ante-room. I checked Dr. June’s pulse and tightened the wadding around her stump. It was odd that all the floor tiles should end up red after all. It was amazing how much blood one person could shed. Her severed part, complete with toes, lay off to one side wanting nothing to do with her. I summoned what little was left of my courage and walked into the ante-room.

  The body lay in pieces in front of the coffee vending machine, both human and appliance in a pool of blood. Dr. June had stripped her victim and begun the dissection. I recognized her straightaway and was embarrassed to feel relief at the sight of a dead body. It was not one of my loved ones. I’d only seen her once. It was the woman with the wrong initial. Chompu’s friend, Dr. Niramon.

  * * *

  A sign at the front of the vending machine said OUT OF CONTROL.

  17.

  Snow White & The Seven Pygmies

  (T-shirt)

  The storm was so malicious it seemed to render the events of that night insignificant. Arny and I drove to the Lang Suan police station in a cream and brown highway patrol vehicle so old it could have found a niche in the law enforcement museum at the ministry. The water in some places was deep enough to seep into the cab through the rust holes. We saw people being blown against walls. Umbrellas leaving earth. Power lines draped like spaghetti along the pavements. Zinc roofs flapping. I remember thinking what a relief it would be to finally arrive at a solid concrete structure.

  On the way I’d used Arny’s phone to let everyone know I was all right. I’d heard snatches of bizarre news from the surveillance team, but I hadn’t been in any fit state to take it all in. It wasn’t until the horrendous encounter with Dr. June was over that the shakes set in. My body had been drained by the effort of being cool. Arny had hugged me all the way to stop me shuddering completely out of the truck. I could see his reflection in the window. With his head shrouded in a white bandage, he looked like a muscle-bound Q-tip.

  “So tell me,” I said from the rock-hard pillow of his chest.

  “What?”

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  “I was driving around looking for you,” he said. “And I wondered what would possess you to head off on the worst night of the year on a bicycle. I mean, I know you’re nutty, but that was outrageous even for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You had to have gone somewhere close, and most of our village had shut down to prepare for the storm. So I thought about your story of Dr. Somluk.”

  “You pay attention to my stories?”

  “Of course I do. Don’t be rude. I listen to all your cases. You’re my lifeline to the exciting world I don’t live in. I’d been hoping you’d ask me to help find her, but you never did.”

  “You were always off with Gaew.”

  “Only because I didn’t have a purpose at the resort. Cleaning rooms that nobody stays in. Sweeping a beach that gets a new batch of garbage every day. But, anyway, I wondered whether your running off had anything to do with Dr. Somluk. So I called Nurse Da.”

  “You had her number?”

  “Yes … I…”

  “I know. I bet you’ve got a lot of numbers of single women.”

  “I don’t ask for them.”

  “I know you don’t, and you’re too polite not to key them into your phone when they give them. So, anyway…?”

  “So, anyway, she told me about your meeting with Dr. Somluk. As you’ve been working on it so hard, I thought that would be a big enough reason to go out in this weather. I went to the health center and I found your bicycle. Grandma Nida, who lives opposite the clinic, told me she’d heard an old pick-up truck drive into the car park about five forty-five and then drive out again a few minutes later. This was just before all the power went off. The
whole district was blacked out. So, being a nosy old dear, she had her head out the window watching the truck leave. She couldn’t see who was in the cab, but she did recognize the hospital sticker on the tailgate.

  “It was the only clue I had, and Grandad Jah and Chompu had turned off their phones, so I took a chance. You’d already mentioned Dr. June, so I went to her office, but it was dark and there was nobody there. The guard said the doctor must be working late in the new complex again. She usually locked the door, he said, but I found it unlocked when I got there and a bunch of keys still in the lock. I suppose … she must have opened it. The dead woman.”

  “Yes, mate. So it seems.”

  I kissed him again and thanked him for being related to me. I promised I’d involve him more closely in future cases. He didn’t say anything, but I caught the reflection of his smile in the window.

  I was wide-eyed conscious of the fact that I should have been dead rather than drinking hot tea in the office of a nice policeman with sideburns. I should have been dead because I’d missed the clues. I should have been dead because I’d allowed myself to select a likely antagonist and ignored everything and everybody else. Really, I should have been dead.

  The captain who interviewed me was a bit out of his depth with axe murderers. He was clearly relieved when Major General Suvit arrived, dragged from a reception at the Kangaroo Hotel. I’d heard about the tough, apparently clean policeman they nicknamed Ridgeback, but this was the first time we’d worked together on a case. I mean, him asking questions. Me answering.

  “You do know you can’t print any of this?” he said once he’d heard the entire, ridiculous story. We had six other senior officers sitting around us with notepads.

  “Well, indeed I can,” I told him.

  “It’s an ongoing case. I can block anything you care to write.”

  I smiled at him. He was probably in his fifties but unmarked by time. A good jaw. A trim figure. Kind eyes. Chompu had hinted that he might even be incorruptible, which was a bit like saying dolphins don’t necessarily need water.