Colin Cotterill - Grandad, Thereэ's head on the beach

"Hence the wigs."

"I'll leave it till the last moment to decide which Sissi I shall be."

It was perverted but so much better than self-imposed imprisonment in a luxury condominium.

"I want to see all the photos," I said.

"There's just the one problem," she said.

"What's that, Siss?"

"I have to pass through Bangkok."

"Wear a mask."

"No, I mean the demonstrations."

A pause here to explain what was going down in our nation's capital. For a month, an army of yuppies with undisguised connections to the aristocracy and the military had been occupying our government house. Had they been merely motorcycle taxi drivers and papaya salad vendors, they would, and some would argue, should, have been mowed down in a barrage of police gunfire. These quiche-eating miserables were making a mockery of our political system. A system, I may add, that had no problem making a mockery of itself. But what these yellow shirts represented made them bulletproof. A baton to the head of any one of them would have left a dent in the kingdom's heritage. So those arrogant yuppies strolled through police lines and set up a holiday resort at that Italo-gothic mansion in Dusit.

Meanwhile, the rightful residents sneaked out the back gate. Led by the brother-in-law of the ex-PM-telecommunications tsar who'd threatened to make us Thailand Inc., the government jumped on the bus and skedaddled out to our old airport at Don Muang. There they were currently conducting the business of running the country in a room behind left luggage. It was all so humiliating I wanted to apply for Lao citizenship. At least the Lao had a nice oligarchy where everyone knew where the lines were drawn.

But that was why my sister Sissi was wary of passing through our hotbed of anarchy and anti-anarchy.

"Come on, Siss." I laughed. "You fly domestic to our brand-new airport at Suvarnabhumi. You travel along the moving walkways to your transit gate, and you flash your first-class documents at the smiling Thai Airways official who whisks you off to the first-class lounge. There you drink complimentary champagne until you're led onto the aircraft. You don't even have to leave the airport. You'll be oblivious to all that violent Ping-Pong and popcorn-making that's going on in Dusit. And, I mean, I doubt very much whether those coffee shop entrepreneurs and middle-aged ladies with expensive perms will be marching out to the airport to throw themselves down in front of your jumbo. You really do worry too much."

"You're right."

"I usually am. Now, to business."

"Why do you never phone me just to say hello?"

"Sorry. Hello! Now, Grandad and I were wondering whether you'd be kind enough to trace a car engine number. It's a Honda B15B9009554."

"I stopped doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Engaging in illegal activities on the Internet."

"No you didn't."

"I did."

"When?"

"A week ago. I have a loving public now. I'm adored. I don't want to endanger my standing. I want my awesome power to be used for good instead of evil."

"You can't be serious."

"I am."

I was devastated. Sissi of all people going straight.

"Well, then. This isn't technically illegal," I tried. "It's just accessing public information."

"It's hacking into the databank of an international company and stealing."

"All right, it's a little bit illegal. But no more illegal than pretending to be the Disney Corporation and having agencies send you baksheesh so their clients get first crack at a new script."

"I don't do that anymore."

"And what are you living on?"

"Savings."

"All ill-gotten."

"When it runs out, I'll get an honest job."

"And what could be more honest than crime fighting? Your awesome power already put one murderer out of business. You're the Sherlock Holmes of cyberspace. Legless Elena your alter ego is the heroine of the Police Beat law enforcers' social network."

"It's a dating site for ex-cops and old hookers."

"Ex-cops with a hundred lifetimes of policing experience. You have a world of detection at your fingertips. There's no end to what you and the old doughnut guys can achieve.

Forget make-up tips for teenyboppers. Join me in the fight for justice and fair play."

"No."

Waste of a speech.

"Please."

"What did he do?"

"Who?"

"The car owner."

I told Sissi about our mystery guests in hut three. When I'd finished, there was a pause, during which I knew she was nodding her head. I could hear her seashell earrings jangling. She could no sooner pass up a mystery than I could.

We were sitting at dinner that evening when the hand grenade went off. It was just after Mair had asked everyone if they fancied a bowl of mixed-friends ice cream. Hut three spent so much time eating with us it was almost inevitable they'd sprout names. We doubted the names were real. They certainly lacked imagination. They insisted we call them Noy, the mother, high-tone, and Noy, the daughter, low tone. Thai is a wonderful language that leaves many a foreigner ripping out chunks of hair. It has the ability to change a dog into a horse, a skein of silk into a bush fire, an entire town into an irrigation ditch. And all at the mere drop of a tone. For a Thai, when speaking, Noy and Noy were two completely different words. But as I had to write this down I anticipated problems. So I decided to call them Noy and Mamanoy to make everything easier. They had taken to spending every meal time with us in the cluttered kitchen. There were restaurants of a sort a mere ten-minute drive away in Pak Nam, our nearest town, but they never went anywhere. Their car was already caked in salt and had taken a coconut hit on the back bumper. Between meals they hardly left their room.

Our mealtime conversations were all of the tell-us-about-life-on-the-Gulf variety. They were so focused on asking questions and pretending to be fascinated by our answers that they left no gaps for us to talk about them. The few comments they made about themselves were so obviously untrue that only Arny believed them. Noy, having learned that Arny was attached to another woman, became at ease in his company. His fiancee, Gaew, was off in Hong Kong on the seniors bodybuilding tour. She was in good shape for a fifty-eight-year-old, but I wouldn't ever want to see her in a bikini. Muscles on old people started to look like oil-saturated barnacles. Noy's questions to Arny-training, competition, steroids, fan adoration-all seemed sincere. I wondered whether she might have been developing a crush on him. He was a sweet man. Couldn't blame her. And she was closer to my brother's age. A more natural match. I quite liked her, despite the fact that she was a lying little calf. I liked the cow too. The fact that they were on the run made them even more fascinating to me.

"You poor thing," said Mair to Mamanoy. "You must be missing sex terribly."

Mamanoy's spoon clunked onto her plate.

"What?" she said.

"Sex," Mair repeated loudly, as if it was the volume at fault rather than appropriateness.

I looked at Arny. His eyes were closed. We knew Mair was about to launch into one of her bawdy tales from the annals of her long, fascinating life. Sometimes we'd shut her up. Other times we'd ride it out. On this evening I decided a story from Mair would help convince our guests we were all mad and therefore posed no threat.

"I don't-" Mamanoy began.

"You don't have to tell me," said Mair. "When you're away from your man, that's all you think of. Sex, sex, sex."

Grandad Jah looked up and attempted a half-hearted chastisement.

"Girl," he said. "Don't."

But he didn't put a lot of menace into it because he knew our mother wouldn't take any notice of him. Unfettered, Mair burst into her story.