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

"So how do you think our friend here wound up on the beach without his body?" I asked.

Grandad shimmied across the sand and, to my amazement, picked up the head and turned it over, like an antique dealer looking for a manufacture date.

"Sharp knife?" he said. "Machete? Sword? Don't know. I wasn't a forensic scientist. I directed traffic."

I switched my cell phone to CALL mode and started to search for a number.

"Who are you calling?" he asked.

"Police."

He always assumed this lemony expression whenever I mentioned the police.

"Just go and tell Headman Beung," he said.

It turned out there was a protocol after all, and who better to deal with heads than the head man? I learned later that bodies and parts thereof washed up on the beach was not an unusual phenomenon. There were regulations about it posted on the clubhouse wall at the trawlermen's recreation facility. A surprising number of fishermen couldn't swim, and an even higher number imbibed stimulants of various kinds to stay awake through the night. A quart of Red Bull might just convince a man he was a dolphin. On the Gulf here, you'd need to get those images of eight-meter waves washing over the deck of pirate ships out of your mind. Three meters was our perfect storm, and you could roll over that in a rubber inner tube quite safely. We aren't ever going to see a tidal wave on the east coast. But every now and then a man might step over the side and be lost in the shadows of the squid spotlights.

On the occasion of encountering a dead body on the beach, the discoverer shall inform the village headman. (Regulation lib)

In our case, this was Pooyai Beung. Pooyai literally translates as "big person." So I sarcastically call him Big-man, in English, 'cause he's not. I've never had cause to put Beung on a scale, but if I ever did, I doubt he'd weigh much more than a haddock. He's in his sixties but remarkably upright. He dyes his sticky-up hair light brown, so he reminds me of a paintbrush. He has one wife here at home in Maprao, another lesser wife in Grajom Fy near the crematorium, and a girlfriend in Lang Suan. I doubt he has the stamina to trouble any of them between the sheets, but I don't suppose that was the point of his assembling his harem. Beung is all about show. He has a closet full of uniforms he wears at the slightest excuse: volunteer highway patrol, village security unit, coastal alert force, scout leader, village headman's association, and many more. I'd even seen him in camouflaged army fatigues putting manure around his palm trees. I hadn't spotted him at first. I doubt he's ever seen military service, but it seems anyone down here can dress up any way they like. On top of his uniform fetish and his odd looks, Bigman Beung is a sleazeball. So, it was with great reluctance that I rode Mair's shopping bicycle around the bay to his house.

"Aha! My favorite little starlet," he said. "Just in time. I was starting to feel a bit stiff. How's your massage skills?"

He was lounging on a wooden recliner on the balcony in front of his house. He was wearing a military cadet jacket and unrelated shorts. He had a can of Leo beer at his elbow. It was seven A.M. His major wife was a few meters away from him, plucking chickens. A woman built like an industrial washing machine. I'd never heard her speak.

"Pooyai Beung, there's a head on the beach," I said.

"Just here," he continued, pulling up one leg of his shorts to reveal a cadaverous thigh. "Real knotted it is. Must of pulled a muscle. Few minutes of massage should loosen it up…if it doesn't have the opposite effect. Hee hee."

I doubted very much he had any muscles, and I was starting to wonder whether he had ears. Hadn't I just told him there was a head on the beach? I tried again.

"Beung, listen. There's a human head just down from our resort. Washed up on the beach." I described it.

He smiled and his upper denture dropped like a guillotine. He used his tongue to push it back up.

"Got legs, has it?" he asked.

"What?"

"This head of yours. Has it got legs?"

"It's a head. If it had legs, it'd be a body and I would have said, 'Beung, there's a body on the beach.' What we have is a head. Understand?"

I suppose I should have shown more respect to our headman. There were people in our village who treated him with deference-only dared make fun of him behind his back. But there are thirteen villages in Maprao-population five thousand-and Bigman Beung was the grand overlord of village thirteen. At the most, fifty houses. Not exactly the mayor of New York City. And have I mentioned he's a sleazeball?

"If it's got no legs," he said, "it isn't going anywhere, is it? Won't be running off, will it? Still be there after the savings cooperative meeting. Not urgent, so no reason to call around to all the co-op members to cancel. Am I right?"

"Not urgent?" I was getting agitated. "It's somebody's head. It used to be attached to that somebody's body. He probably has family concerned about him. He could have been the victim of a murder. The perpetrator's walking around this very minute looking for victim number two. And all because nobody's reported a death. Doesn't that worry you?"

"Nong Jimm," he said. "Nong"- little sister-inevitably the launch pad for a condescending flight. I knew what was coming.

"Nong, nong Jimm," he repeated. He sipped at his breakfast beer and smiled with his tongue holding up his teeth to be sure they wouldn't snap shut again. "What worries me is that such a sexy child as you is so hung up on bad things. Murder and evil-doers. Crime. Rape. The little breasts of teenaged girls being fondled. If you don't mind me saying so, you're well away from that world. It's good for you to be here in our peaceful community so you can see how much love and kindness there is on the planet. We have loving for you, Jimm Juree. Right here." His hand dropped absently to his crotch. "Cool that hot heart of yours."

That world he was referring to was the world of crime reporting. I'd been one small kidney failure away from becoming the senior crime reporter at the Chiang Mai Mail. Over a year had passed since my cruel wrenching from the job, so I imagined the old head of crime was already at that big AA meeting in the sky. They'd have given the post to annoying Arkom-great speller, lousy journalist-and it should have been mine. Jimm Juree, Thailand's second female senior crime reporter. That sounded so right. Respected. Admired. Interviewed in Time Asia : "Thai Woman Achieves Greatness." And where do I end up? Cook and dishwasher at the Gulf Bay Lovely Resort and Restaurant. Nearest town, Lang Suan: a place you'd only come to if the train broke down.

"So, you aren't going to inform the police?" I said.

"Of course I will. Of course," he said. "It's a terrible thing. Head on the beach. Terrible. After our nine o'clock meeting I'll hurry down there with a representative of the Coastal Alert Force to verify that it's actually a head."

"You think I don't know what a head looks like?"

"Nong. Calm down. Of course you know what a head looks like. But you are merely stage one of the protocol, an unofficial eyewitness. Regulation fifteen states that all claims have to be substantiated by an incumbent official."

"So despite the fact it's only five minutes' motorcycle drive from your house and you have two hours to kill before your meeting, you're just going to leave the head sitting there till…what time's the meeting over?"

"Ooh, could be about eleven."

"That's four…?"

I got it. Of course. I was being a bit slow that day. Paperwork. It was November, a month of high tides. By eleven there would be no beach. The head would have been washed away along the bay in the monsoon musical chairs that pushed all the garbage south and brought us a different batch. Every day you got a chance to experience new flotsam. The head would be somebody else's problem by lunchtime. In my country a period of inactivity can solve almost every problem. I looked at my cell phone.