Number Nine

by Colin Cotterill

  Number Nine

  Maprao Syndrome

  A Jimm Juree Short Story

  By Colin Cotterill

  Number Nine: Maprao Syndrome

  Copyright © Colin Cotterill, 2019

  DCO Books

  eBook Edition published by

  Proglen Trading Co., Ltd. 2019

  Bangkok Thailand

  http://www.dco.co.th

  eBook ISBN 978-616-456-011-6

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and other elements of the story are either the product of the author's imagination or else are used only fictitiously. Any resemblance to real characters, living or dead, or to real incidents, is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Colin Cotterill

  Dr. Siri Paiboun series

  The Coroner's Lunch (2004)

  Thirty-Three Teeth (August 2005)

  Disco For the Departed (August 2006

  Anarchy and Old Dogs (August 2007)

  Curse of the Pogo Stick (August 2008)

  The Merry Misogynist (August 2009)

  Love Songs from a Shallow Grave (August 2010)

  Slash and Burn (October 2011)

  The Woman Who Wouldn't Die (January 2013)

  Six and a Half Deadly Sins (May 2015)

  The Rat Catchers' Olympics (August 2017)

  Jimm Juree series

  Killed at the Whim of a Hat (July 2011)

  Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach (June 2012)

  The Axe Factor (April 2014)

  The Amok Runners (June 2016)

  Other publications

  Evil in the Land Without (2003)

  Ethel and Joan Go to Phuket (2004)

  Pool and its Role in Asian Communism (2005)

  Cyclelogical (2006)

  Ageing Disgracefully (2009)

  Bleeding in Black and White (2015)

  Contents

  Introduction to Jimm Juree

  Maprao Syndrome

  Introduction

  Brief description of how the Jurees ended up in Maprao, the buttock-hole of the earth.

  I’ll keep this brief because it still irks me to tell our story. My name is Jimm Juree and I was, at one stage, a mere liver failure away from fame and fortune in Chiang Mai. But our mother, Mair, dragged the family down south to run a decrepit seaside resort on the Gulf of Thailand. I’m a reporter. A real one. And as soon as the head of the crime desk at the Chiang Mai Mail completed his impending suicide by Mekhong Whisky, I was to step into his moldy old shoes; only the second female in the country to hold such a prestigious position.

  Then Mair – nutty as peanut brittle – sold our family home without telling us and headed south. With her went her father, Granddad Jah, the only Thai traffic policeman to go through an entire career without accepting bribes or kickbacks, my brother, Arny, a wimpy lamb with the body of a Greek God, and me. The only one to pass up on family obligation was Sissy, my transsexual brother. Once a cabaret star, and briefly a TV celebrity, now an ageing recluse, Sissy had become something of an internet criminal and although I haven’t forgiven her for deserting us, I do find her skills useful from time to time.

  You see, although I would never have guessed it, Maprao and its environs is a hotbed of crime. Although I’m technically the part-time social events reporter for the shitty local newspaper, barely a week goes by that I’m not chasing down some misdemeanor or another. Our local police (who make the Keystone Cops look like the SAS) are of the belief that I brought all this crime with me from the city. I know that it’s always been here but our gentlemen in brown prefer not to notice it. As they say, and quite rightly too, they just don’t get paid enough to stand in front of a loaded gun. All we get from them are complaints about all the extra paperwork we’re causing them.

  So it’s down to our disjointed family to solve the mysteries and put the perps away. We’re a surprisingly efficient team of crime fighters but I have to confess we were hopeless at running a resort and deserved all the disasters that befell us. At the time of writing this, we still haven’t been able to salvage our monsoon ravaged bungalows from the depths of the bay and we’ve spent the past year doing odd jobs to make ends meet. The bank has been particularly slow in paying out on our disaster insurance claim. But we’re refusing to budge until they do.

  As it turned out, there was some method to Mair’s madness in bringing us down south, but in order to learn what that was you’ll have to fork out some money for the actual books that tell our sorry story. Details of those are below. I can’t say too much because Sissi and I are in a long ongoing dialogue with Clint Eastwood who probably wants to turn our family exploits into a movie. In the meantime, the files that I’m sending you in this series of shorts have been collated from the astounding cases I’ve been involved in since the floods. There is an expression, “Only in Thailand”, used freely by frustrated and frustrating foreigners who like nothing better than to complain about us. But, I have to confess, most of the cases I’ve been involved in here really could only have happened in my country. I hope you enjoy them.

  Novels most likely currently under option consideration by Malpaso Productions;

  Killed at the Whim of a Hat (July 2011) - Minotaur Books, New York ISBN 9780312564537

  Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach (June 2012) - Minotaur Books, New York ISBN 9780312564544

  The Axe Factor (April 2014) - Minotaur Books, New York ISBN 9781250043368

  The Amok Runners (June 2016) - CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform ISBN 9781533265289

  There’s also an exclusive short at Criminal Element called Hidden Genders that gives you some background on Sissi.

  It won’t help you much but the writer of these stories has a web page you probably shouldn’t bother going to.

  www.colincotterill.com

  Maprao Syndrome

  My mother, Mair, is nuts, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. I’m not sure where the borderline is between dotty and demented but she’s certainly straddling it. Wads of her memory began to fade away to be replaced by fabricated anecdotes and erroneous comments. I seem to recall she was a bit wacky even when my brothers and I were little. It tickled us back then just as it tickles us today, although now we’re tickled with those slight pangs of guilt that you get when making fun of people with disabilities. And I’m afraid we’re all destined to follow in her frenzied footsteps because we’ve started to understand her wiles and go along with her rewriting of history. Take, for example, the birdcage incident. Mair is certainly fonder of stray animals than she is of us. She habitually gets our names wrong but she’d never forget a Polly or a Gogo or a Butch. She rescued a bird once which she named Gravity, because it fell out of a tree. She put it in one of her cane ribbed dove cages and nursed it back to health.

  “Mair,” I said, “don’t you think you should shut the door on that cage?”

  “Why, Jimm?” she asked. “What did the bird do wrong?”

  “Well, nothing. But what’s stopping it from getting away?”

  “Common sense,” she said. “Would you fly away if you were being fed and cared for by Nurse Mair? If it hadn’t been for the war you know I’d have a medical diploma on that wall instead of your father’s fish recognition chart.”

  A few points emerged from that statement. The only way she’d have a medical diploma was if she’d stolen it, and no war would have affected that. The status of the father she mentioned was still under examination even though she’d dragged us from the north of Thailand to the south in order to be with the elusive Captain Kow. And, would we have flown away from Mair? Perhaps we should have. But we didn’t.

  The bird recovered, put on weight, and decided not to leave the cage for any length of time. She�
��d be away at night then come back for breakfast, and there she’d sit napping on her perch knowing the cats and the bloodsucking squirrels couldn’t get at her. She was very house proud too. None of that arbitrary pooing for her. Whenever she needed to use the bathroom she’d scan the tree for predators, flit over to a branch, do her business and be back home in seconds. And that was just as well because if she defecated in her own living room I’d never have found my lost case file. Yes, you knew there had to be a point to all this. In her search for scrap, unwanted paper to line the cage, Mair had gone to my desk and discovered a pile of documents. They were obviously not very important because someone had typed on one side of them and left the other side blank. They were just asking to be recycled. I remembered asking her at the time if she’d seen my very important documents and she’d denied pilfering them.

  As we live in an area where electricity seems to be a random act of occasional generosity from the provincial electrical authority (PEA) and computers had a cruel and voracious appetite for documents one sentence short of complete, I was given to printing out everything I wrote, just in case. Naturally, the files Mair stole from my desk had all been lost on the computer when the monsoon tide swept through our seaside resort and turned my Apple into flotsam. And that was extremely bad luck because I’d been translating for our Pak Nam police station and that was the only record of the work I’d done there. I got a news article out of it but our local policemen wanted an actual report. So, with a sigh of relief I rescued it from the birdcage, sprayed it with deodorant, and here it is.

  *

  While the political street battles raged in Bangkok and the partisans showed their feelings in the most un-Thai manner, the wise tourists headed for the provinces. Some got lucky. Others, like Gerri Jansen, should have stayed in the capital and taken her chances with ping pong bombs. She’d obviously picked out Lang Suan with a pin on a map, jumped on the daytime Sprinter and arrived forty minutes beyond schedule at our sleepy train station. She took a motorcycle taxi to the beaches and checked into the 99 Bay Resort. She decided to take a walk by the sea before her evening meal, for which she did not return. When darkness fell the resort owner, Khun Maew, sent her son off with a flashlight to see if he could find her, with no success. At 10pm, Khun Maew made a call to the Pak Nam police station. Sergeant Phoom, who was the duty officer that night, said he’d send someone to investigate, but told the owner that she should call back if the tourist returned. Tourists had a habit of being unaccountable, he reminded her.

  It was 9am when my dear Lieutenant Chomphu called me and asked if I could come to the station to read a letter for them. I’m not a graphologist. I have no particular skills in reading letters, but I do have a very good command of English. And the letter they wanted me to look at was written by hand and nobody there could make head or tail of it. I was shown into the meeting room where Police Major Mana Sachawacharapong sat at the head of the large table. There were two other officers there, Chomphu being one of them, Senior Sergeant Major Tort the other. And sitting against the back wall was a smiling man in a t-shirt and fisherman trousers. Constable Ma Yai sat next to him. He and Chom waved when I entered the room. Mana gestured to an empty chair.

  “JimmJuree,” he said, “I want to remind you that you are not a member of this or any other police force, a fact you often forget when we invite you here. Is that clear?”

  I could have stood up and walked out then. I’m not that fond of being lectured, especially when it’s me helping them. But a police station isn’t the sum of the brain cells of its commanding officer and I liked most of the men that worked there. We’d solved a few cases together, even without me being a member of that or any other police force. I stood, saluted, and sat down again.

  “Chomphu,” said Mana. “Please update Juree as to the events of yesterday evening.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Chom, tossing me a discrete wink.

  He told me about the arrival of Ms Gerri Jansen, American citizen, fifty-two years of age, in Thailand on a tourist visa. He described her friendly chat with the owner of the resort when she checked in and that Ms. Jansen had said how she was looking forward to eating some of the dishes she’d seen on the restaurant menu that evening. She’d headed off in a northerly direction. Some locals had seen her walking along the beach before the sun went down but there were no sightings of her after dark. Khun Maew, the owner, expressed the opinion that because Ms. Jansen was a rather large lady...”

  “She said, ‘fat’,” said Mana.

  “Exactly,” said Chom. “That due to her size it was unlikely she would have gone too far. In fact she was afraid the guest had exceeded her capabilities and had a heart attack on the beach. That’s why she sent her son out looking for her.”

  “She might have gone swimming and got in trouble,” I said.

  “You see?” said Mana. “This is exactly why I don’t want you acting as a policeman. We are quite capable of detecting without your help.”

  “If you-,” I began, but Chom cut in just in time.

  “We did consider her drowning,” he said, “but as you know, the sea is very shallow at this time of year. She’d have to walk quite a way before she’d find water deep enough to swim in. But we didn’t discount it. Not until this morning.”

  “Am I allowed to ask questions?” I asked.

  Mana held his palms towards me.

  “What happened this morning?” I asked.

  “We received this,” said Tort, holding up a sheet of lined paper apparently torn from a school exercise book. One side was covered in handwriting. The other had an amateurish cartoon of a googoo-eyed Japanese manga character in school uniform. Tort handed it to me. It was signed, Gerri Jansen, which I thought was odd for a ransom note. I looked around the room. Everyone was obviously keen for me to translate it.

  “My name is Gerri Jansen,” I said. “It appears I have been kidnapped. The man who brought me here just handed me some paper and a pencil but he hasn’t told me what to write. In fact, he hasn’t told me anything. I haven’t heard him speak. I was on the beach and I saw this man, the man who’s having me write this, digging for shellfish. I went to admire his work. He seemed very friendly. He was drinking something from a bottle. He invited me to share it with him. I didn’t want to be rude and I enjoy new drinking experiences, so I took a swig. It was some sort of rum. Quite sweet. Nice, in fact. And that’s all I remember. I’m in a small hut now chained by the ankle to a large metal ring thing embedded in concrete. It’s impossible to drag or lift. The floor is sand. I don’t know how I got here. He hasn’t molested me in any way. In fact, he’s been very polite. He’s given me a mattress to lie on and some water. Regardless, I’ve tried to call for help and scream but it appears we’re quite isolated as nobody has answered my pleas. I can only hear the sounds of nature. Birds and insects. No cars or motorcycles.

  I’m not sure what else to write or what he expects of me.

  Gerri Jansen

  None of the men around me seemed to know what to say.

  “How did you get this?” I asked.

  “Our friend over there brought it,” said Chom.

  I studied the fisherman’s face. He was lean, in his mid-thirties, handsome and tanned to a dark chocolate. He carried a smile that looked like it had seen a lot of coconuts.

  “Doesn’t he know anything?”

  “Right, I think that’s all we need you for, Khun. Juree,” said Mana. “We thank you for your cooperation.”

  He nodded for Chomphu to show me how to open a door.

  “You’re welcome,” I said to everyone apart from the boss. As he was shepherding me out the door, Chom whispered,

  “Ten minutes. Outside.”

  I was still fuming when he arrived.

  “Oh, Sweety, I know,” he said.

  Nothing like an effeminate policeman to make a girl feel better.

  “He’s such...”

  “I know. I know. We all know. Don’t let it get to you.”

&nb
sp; We sat at the foot of the big white Buddha in the temple grounds opposite. He’d picked up a couple of packs of fruit yoghurt drink from the station fridge on his way out. He gave me one.

  “So?” I said.

  “It’s not impossible that the smiley man in there is more than the courier.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s just that, well, we don’t know what he is. He just smiles. He hasn’t said anything. Doesn’t answer any questions.”

  “Maybe he can’t,” I said.

  “Possible. But it’s too much of a coincidence that the kidnapper doesn’t talk and neither does the man who delivers the note.”

  “Not really. The kidnapper knows he can’t communicate with the American so there’s no point in saying anything, right?”

  “You’re always right, Jimm. That’s why the major loves you so much.”

  “What’s the next step?”

  “Mana wants to let the courier go.”

  “Really? And I presume he’ll have someone follow him?”

  “Half the police station, probably.”

  “And you don’t think he’ll notice twenty cops on his tail?”

  “We had a four-day surveillance course earlier in the year. Australian special branch.”

  “You all dressed as kangaroos?”

  Chom laughed and stroked my ear.