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

"And fluent in Burmese. Wow. Where did you learn that? I've looked at the textbooks. It seems unfathomable. I reckon you have to be some kind of genius to pick it up."

I got a brief gloat out of him.

"You know, here and there," he said. "Some people just have an ear. What can I say?"

"I hope you don't mind me saying that you seem to be a very special human being, Lieutenant. An officer of the law. A linguist. A social worker. I've a good mind to rewrite this just as a feature on you."

Mistake.

I'd gone too far too soon. I could see him shut down. He stood and went to the door.

"None of that," he said.

"I don't have to use your photo."

"Nor name. Nor the story."

"Why not?"

He was already halfway out the door.

"I like to keep my altruistic side private. Modest that way, I am."

"Couldn't you…?"

But he was gone. I looked at the time on my phone. Twelve minutes. Depending on how long it had taken Chompu to open the cabinet, sprint downstairs, make copies of all the relevant files, sprint back up and replace them, then return the cabinet to its original state and rearrange his hair, I thought twelve minutes would be just about enough. That was if everything went according to plan.

I walked along the corridor to their office, where I found Egg standing with his hands on his hips, staring down at his filing cabinet where a nylon police-issue jacket, the type Chompu had been wearing to lunch, was hanging by one corner, wedged in the top drawer of the metal cabinet. Chompu sat at his desk wearing a smile that had seen better days.

The water in the stream behind our resort had risen above the banks and was spreading slowly. The sea in front of us was rising gently, now creeping beneath the door of hut number one. The gray sky sent down a steady sprinkle of rain. It was a humble invasion but one that would eventually drown us all. In Chiang Mai, our wise country folk built houses on stilts to keep their families cool in summer and dry in the rainy season. In the south, everyone built at ground level and laughed in the face of floods. It was the Rambo response to disaster. "Come and get me, nature!"

"It's only water," they say here. "We'll be dry in a week." They may have been right, but I'd already watched a table/ bench/straw roof set float off to the horizon. Our toilets were shipwrecked, my vegetable patch was being eaten by fish, and our new home, our only livelihood, sat on a sliver of land between the devil river and the deep gray sea.

I had to leave the motorcycle up on the road beside Captain Kow's because our carport was waterlogged. The water reached the top of the Noys' Honda wheels, but at least it was still there. That meant they must be too. Mair and Gaew were in the shop. It was an impressive sight. The ladies of the co-op had done an astounding job. They'd cleaned up and repaired and repainted. They'd replaced the smithereens of wooden shelving with neat bamboo racks, and the place looked every bit as good as it had before the blast. Admittedly, it hadn't looked that great before the blast. And all this they'd done without the aid of electricity. The power was off all over the district. A little drop of rain and "pop" goes the transformer. I went over to Mair and reached into the pocket of my poncho. I carefully pulled out little Beer. I swear she was about to spit at me until she noticed Mair standing in front of her. And before my eyes the dog became lovable. I offered her up in the plastic hood, but my mother took hold of the puppy in her bare hands and held it to her bosom. She stroked its head and gave it a kiss. I had to look away. I wondered whether Mother Teresa had a daughter who didn't care that much for lepers. Probably not.

"There," said Mair. "See? She'll be just fine. Do you want to introduce her to her brother and sister?"

I couldn't think of anything worse. Between them, they'd probably insult her, then eat her. Mair had too much faith in natural dog bonding.

"No, Mair. I've done my duty for the day. You serve her up yourself."

"Fair enough."

She kissed me on the forehead with the same mouth that had kissed the dog-of-the-living-dead. But what could I say?

"Your policeman friend phoned," she said. "Twice."

I'd forgotten that Chompu had Mair's cell phone number. I'd turned off my phone the minute I'd fled the Pak Nam police station. I suppose it was good news he was still able to press the numbers. It meant not all his fingers were broken. I know I should have stood by him. I should have told Lieutenant Egg it was me who forced Chompu to break into his cabinet. But I needed to keep that newsman's distance. The crime editor at the Chiang Mai Mail- when he was still sober-had told me, "You can only write about a gold shop robbery if it wasn't you that did it." It was conceivable he was speaking literally, but I was young and impressionable and I tended to prefer to see him as a wise seer speaking in fables. The lesson learned was that the journalist had to remain aloof, report the crime with enthusiasm but not to the point that she becomes a part of the investigation. It had been one of the most profound moments of my journalistic education, not at all diminished when the editor's brother was convicted of robbing a gold shop. Evidently, his masked accomplice had escaped. The editor had me write up the report. It was my first byline. A moment and a moral I'd never forget. I had faith that my cunning Lieutenant Chompu would have come up with a viable excuse as to how his jacket was trapped inside the other lieutenant's cabinet. The true answer probably fell somewhere between darned bad luck and stupidity. But it wasn't my call.

"Grandad not back yet?" I asked.

"Goodness," said Mair. "He's been dead for forty years. What kind of a sick question is that?"

"I meant my grandad."

"Oh, that one. No."

"Have you seen the Noys since breakfast?"

"Now that's a story," she said. "Usually they don't make it far from their cabin. Can't say I blame them with this weather. But it's nice to see they're getting more adventurous. They made it all the way to Pak Nam today."

They'd escaped?

"Mair, are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. I got a call from Boung at the bank. The power was out there too, so the ATM wasn't working. You know? A bank is rather like a block of soap when there's no electricity. All that useless equipment. I bet most of the girls there can't do sums in their heads."

"So, the Noys?"

"They couldn't use their credit cards, could they now? And it wasn't their bank. They could have had our bank phone their bank to get confirmation, but I imagine our Noys would be wary about making contact with anything connected to their real lives, wouldn't you? A few phone line traces and, zoom, helicopters descend on Pak Nam Lang Suan, men in black parasailing down wires."

"Why did the bank clerk phone you?"

"To verify I knew them and would vouch for their credit card."

"Wait! How did they get to Pak Nam? Their car's down there in the carport."

"Another story. Boung saw them pull up in front of the bank on the back of the drinking water truck."

"The man who delivers the bottles here?"

"Supachai."

"So they really were escaping."

"You know, I bet they were avoiding paying their bill."

"Mair, the deposit they left would have been enough to put Arny through law school. No, they were afraid it wasn't safe here anymore."

"The latrines?"

I hadn't told Mair the details of Noy's peculiar education in D.C.

"They don't trust us," I said.

"To be frank, I don't blame them," she said. "I don't trust us either."

"Well, it doesn't matter now, does it? They'll be long gone."