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

"They don't?"

"Not at all. We weren't having lunch with them today. We still don't have any guests. In fact, if you moved our truck over, I bet we could squeeze their car under our carport too. Put one of those silver gray plastic covers on it and nobody would even notice it was there."

My little brother looked uncomfortable. He lowered his voice.

"There's something suspicious about them, isn't there?" he said.

"Yes. But if Pak Nam's finest come by in force, it might just frighten them away and we'll never find out what the Noys have been up to. It wouldn't surprise me if they were in their room packing as we speak. And whatever mess they've got themselves tied up in will only get worse if they flee past the entire population of Maprao in their unregistered car."

"I should tell them not to panic."

"Good boy. Tell them to go for a blustery stroll along the garbage-strewn beach, like good tourists, and not to come back till the excitement's died down. Tell them…I don't know. Tell them we don't want to lose our only paying guests of the month. Don't, and that means, do not tell them we think they're suspicious."

The last witness tampering I'd have time for was Mair. I knew everything would depend on who or where or when she was at that particular moment, but it turned out she was way ahead of me…or somebody.

"Sissi, darling," she said. "You know I've never condoned dishonesty in any of my five children."

"Yes, Mair."

"But this is a family matter. It's my father's life."

"I didn't see him fire a gun," I said.

"What? But you were standing right there."

"No, I mean, wink wink I didn't see him fire it."

"Oh. That's right. You didn't. It was a tern."

"What was?"

"A tern, disoriented by the northeasterly wind, was thrown into the side window of the big black car, which caused the glass to smash. It had been flying so fast it might have been mistaken for a bullet. A tern flying at high speed makes a similar sound to .41 caliber gunfire."

"Either that or we don't know anything about a broken car window."

She gave that a lot of thought.

"Yes," she said. "That might work too. If it happened, which I doubt it did, it didn't happen here. Good. Then there's the situation with the older and younger Noys."

"I've never heard of them."

"Is that a wink wink?"

There were eleven police officers permanently attached to the Pak Nam station. Nine of them came to investigate our explosion. Life could be dull for crime fighters down here. The charge was led by Major Mana, who had obviously been having a slack day in his Amway direct-sales dealership- which afforded him the time to investigate a crime at last. Alighting from the truck with him were constables Ma Yai and Ma Lek and a skinny officer with a Nikon, all of whom I was acquainted with. Then came the fat fellow with the cheap toupee, with whom I was not but felt I needed to be.

Right behind the truck were two motorcycles carrying two uniformed officers apiece. The only one I recognized was Lieutenant Chompu. He was riding pillion with his arms locked around the good-looking young driver.

"Little Jimm," said Major Mana for everyone to hear. He was middle-aged, shiny brown and short. Yes, I'd once rejected his clumsy attempts to seduce me, but I'd also made a name for him on a case a few months before. He owed me a favor. But he had a short memory and wandering hands. "You know? Ours was a very peaceful little district before you and your family turned up here."

His hand was already kneading the small of my back.

"Right," I said. "And look. Here we are blowing up our own shop just to mess with your statistics."

"I'll be the judge of that," he said, the sarcasm sliding past him like an oiled eel.

They set to work, although most of them seemed to have been assigned gawking duty. Chompu was chief interviewer. We sat together on my porch. He led with:

"Nice one, Jimm."

"I know who did it," I told him.

"Well, hooray. That makes our jobs just that much easier. Who?"

"A couple of goons from the SRM. They came to pick up the head nobody's investigating."

"And why would they want to damage your shop?"

"They were rude cretins with knives. They threatened us."

"And did you make a complaint to the police about that threat?"

I laughed, then he laughed. Reporting a threat to the Pak

Nam police would have been like reporting a mosquito bite to the provincial health authority.

"We chased them off, so I imagine their noses were put out of joint."

"How?"

"How what?"

"How did you chase them off?"

"Well, there was me, Arny, Grandad Jah, and Mair. We outnumbered them."

"A fearsome foursome indeed. I'm surprised they haven't already brought out a comic book about you all."

"Don't make fun. We can be pretty frightening. Look at Arny."

"Ooh, I have."

"Right. If you didn't know he was a hamster…"

And talking of animals, out of the corner of my eye I saw Sticky carrying something large and dirty in his mouth. He was heading toward the crime scene. I had a bad feeling about it. I called out to him, but he didn't exactly know his name yet.

"Give me a minute," I said to Chompu. "Go interview Mair."

I went after the dog, who looked back over his shoulder and started to run. Running for me was as alien as discipline was to him. But I felt there was a need. I swore I could make out the shape of a handgun wrapped in rag. Sticky was heading straight for the major. He stopped directly in front of him, dropped his booty, and barked proudly. The policeman turned around to find Sticky staring up at him and drooling. Like most southerners, the major was wary of strange dogs. He backed up. Sticky nudged the package closer.

"Will someone call this mutt off?" said the policeman.

"Looks like he brought you a present, Major," said Constable Ma Yai. "Hey, little fellow. What you got there?"

He bent down to pick up the package, and Sticky snapped at him. Ma Yai recoiled. I arrived at that moment. There's something slow-motion about me running. I threw myself to my knees and grabbed the gun and the dog. Over the sound of Sticky yapping, the major asked:

"What is that?"

"Hairdryer," I said. "It's a game we play."

I laughed. They laughed. Sticky barked. It was pretty clear the dog had been Eliot Ness in a previous life. It probably really pissed him off that he couldn't make words anymore.

"You buried it?"

"Yes."

"That was your grand idea for hiding the gun?"

The police had gone, and I had Grandad Jah cornered in the toilet block. He'd been unclogging a drain. It was a good feeling to be reprimanding him for screwing up. I didn't get the chance that often. He nodded. His overconfi-dence had given way to humility at last. All at once he was forty-five kilograms of decaying osteoclasts, and I felt like a bully.

"Well, consider yourself lucky our local police force can't tell a magnum from a hairdryer," I said. "I bet they raid a lot of beauty salons."

"Idiots."

I knew it was too much to expect an apology from the old man. I sat on the sink and heard a crack. Time to think seriously about that diet. With the monsoons, I'd stopped cycling, and every meal, every flagon of Chilean red, every mini-Mars Bar was setting up home in my hips.

"So where do you think it'll go from here?" I asked.

"The police will bring the two hoodlums in for questioning. They'll deny they threatened us. They might or might not mention the gun, but my guess is they won't."

"Why not?"

"Because we don't look like gunslingers, so the police would laugh at 'em. And they don't have any evidence."

"Thanks to me."

He ignored that.

"They'll probably come up with an alibi," he said, "and technically the police would check it out. But knowing our lot, they'll probably accept it and apologize to the hooligans for taking up their valuable time."