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

"If you don't get killed."

"The only way I can see getting killed here is in the rush for the Ladies'."

"In that case, I hope your flight gets canceled."

"Thanks. Gotta go."

For the first time since we'd arrived in Maprao, I had back-to-back call-waiting. It was just like the good old days. Aung was hanging on. I wondered if he'd decided for us to get together before the effects of the antidepressant wore off.

"Aung?"

"You really want to help?"

"Absolutely."

"Shwe. They've taken him."

I sat in Aung's little living room with Grandad Jah, Arny, and Ex-Police Captain Waew. Aung seemed uncomfortable to have so many Thais in his house. He'd almost fled through the back door when he saw us arrive en masse at the front.

"Aung, it's me," I'd called out. "This is my family. We're here to help."

Once we were all seated on mats on the floor and had been served lukewarm water in six different drinking vessels, Aung's wife, Oh, left us to it. I don't think it was a matter of this not being a woman's business. Even without the benefit of understanding their language, I could tell she was distressed. I got the feeling she'd attack her husband with a wok as soon as we left. She was a mother of five children, and her husband's decision to bring in the Siamese was inviting danger.

"So, what happened?" I asked Aung.

Once more the Burmese looked nervously at Grandad, who'd not opened his mouth since our arrival. I hadn't introduced him as ex-police, so there had to be some scent about him.

"At about one o'clock," Aung began, "Shwe was on his way back to his lodgings. The rain hadn't let up, so there was nothing they could do at the fish-drying plant. Shwe was walking alone along the road by the fruit orchard when a police truck pulled up. Shwe was used to this. He stopped, wai'd- the police like it when we wai- and reached for his ID card. One of the policemen pulled out a gun, so Shwe dropped to his knees and put his hands on his head. We learn…"

He looked at Grandad Jah.

"We learn all the hoops to jump through for the police. Usually, it's just a game that we're encouraged to lose. But this time they bundled Shwe into the back seat of the truck and didn't even look at his ID. And they drove, not west to Ranong immigration, but north along the coast road to Sawee. There, they dragged him out of the truck, searched him, and locked him in a concrete shed with six other Burmese. None of them could speak Thai, so they had no idea what they'd been arrested for. Five of them had legitimate work permits and sponsors. Like Shwe, they'd been picked up off the street in broad daylight. Shwe knew in his bones that this was connected to the slavery rumors."

"How could you possibly know all this?" I asked.

"Shwe kept his cell phone taped to his lower leg," said Aung. "He was sick of getting his phones permanently confiscated by the local cops. Body searches generally miss the back of the leg. So he had his phone with him. He called me and told me what had happened."

"And he's still in Sawee now?" Captain Waew asked.

"Yes," said Aung.

"Do we have enough information to pinpoint the place they're being held?"

"No. One of the detainees knew the district they were in because she'd been there before. But not the exact location.

"They have women there?" I asked.

"Two in that group."

I wanted to ask why, but I feared what the reply might be.

"Are you still in contact?" I asked.

Aung shook his head.

"Here's the problem," he said. "Shwe's phone battery is really low. With all the power outages, he hasn't had a chance to charge it. He's got…I don't know…a few minutes left at the most. I told him to turn it off and only get back to me if he finds out their exact location."

"That was smart, lad," said Grandad, much to everyone's surprise.

"But it means that all we can do is sit around and wait," said Waew.

"Right," Grandad agreed. "And what then? Even if we know where they're being held, are we expected to go and raid the place? Us?"

Aung's face seemed to confirm the hopelessness of it all. He'd feared as much. What the hell could we do about it? Who was there to report to? I felt I was letting him down.

"Shwe said there were two policemen in the truck?" I asked Aung.

"Yes."

"Did he describe them?"

"That wasn't so important. He had a few minutes on his phone."

"Of course."

But it did mean there were other police officers involved. Egg wasn't alone in all this. If the kidnapping took place at one, it meant Egg wasn't in that truck. He was in the interview room with me. I started to wonder whether the whole station was involved. I also wondered whether anyone would bother mentioning seeing a police truck passing through Maprao a few seconds before our shop was bombed. Was it us against the police force?

Aung promised to phone me the moment he heard from Shwe. We secretly hoped that wouldn't be too soon because we weren't prepared to deal with such an eventuality.

As we were already in Pak Nam, I diverted us via the Internet shop. It was the worst possible time to be there. The place was crammed with Zelda warriors and online car-jackers and big-eyed Japanese searchers. We needed subterfuge, and my task force hounds needed exercise. Grandad Jah walked in first, like the head reservoir dog, and flashed his ID, putting it back in his pocket before anyone had a chance to notice it was his Lotus supermarket discount card. Arny and Waew fanned out behind him to make it look like a raid.

"All right. Everyone away from the computers," said Grandad.

Chair legs scraped and teenage arms rose.

"Who are-" began the owner.

"Haven't you been warned, son?" Grandad asked, looking rudely through the documents on the young man's desk. Waew began facing all the kids against the wall. Arny…looked menacingly uncomfortable.

"You think we don't monitor what goes on in places like this?" Grandad asked. "You want to see a list of all the illicit Web sites accessed from right here? Don't you know there are laws in place to prevent minors looking at filth and radical rantings?"

"I don't-" began the owner.

"No, you don't. But ignorance doesn't keep you out of prison, boy. Come on. Outside, the lot of you."

You'll notice Grandad hadn't actually claimed to represent any official body, but he had that presence. While everyone was marching out, I snuck inside and hijacked a computer that was already online.

Alb, I wrote. I desperately need an NGO working with Burmese that has some political and financial clout. Funding from overseas preferred. Urgent.

While I waited, I printed out Sissi's class lists on the communal printer. As I looked casually through them I noticed something odd about the names. Most of them were followed by an "m" or an "f" to denote gender. In the first semester, the Chaturaporn that Sissi had spotted on all Noy's lists was tagged as male. But in the second and subsequent semester, that had been changed to female. Given my own family history, it wasn't unthinkable that Mr. Chaturaporn had opted for gender reassignment, but I doubted anyone would leave a country with the best sex-change clinics in the world and go to Washington for a snip. It could have been a mere clerical error, but I'd get Sissi to follow up on it later. I was checking the weather forecast for the Gulf when Alb's reply arrived.

Contact Piper Porterfield at Hope for Myanmar, he wrote. I hear she's been sleeping with George Soros, the philanthropist. Lot of aid money to spread around for the Burmese cause. She's got nice tits too .

Men. Was there any hope for them? Fortunately, rather than a bra cup size, he'd added her phone number. I called. She picked up almost immediately.