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

"And did you find anything?"

"Not really."

"Chom!"

"Not a complete failure, however. I found no fewer than eleven official reports in normal script for beached bodies and body parts. These were cases he'd personally taken on. His success rate in finding relatives and solving the cases was-as far as I could see-zero. All 'Case closed, probably Burmese, domestic dispute.' "

"But he's only been here in Pak Nam for a month."

"Right. These reports go back six months to when he was stationed in Pattani. Your personal head is number eleven. It's his first up here."

"So if he's cleaning up, he's following a boat."

"Or a fleet. I checked out the movement of deep-sea vessels from Pattani to Lang Suan around the time of his transfer. There was a total of four that changed registration and fishing zones. One was a mackerel trawler bought by a conglomerate in Prajuab. But three others always traveled together. Same owner. Same catch records. They're now operating out of Pak Nam, but they spend most of their time at sea and transfer their catch to smaller boats. This deep-sea fleet has five local boats registered to collect and deliver. Doing good business, by all accounts."

"So somewhere out there are three big boats that don't come home much. I bet that's them. There I was imagining one slaver ship. Sneaking up on it in the dead of night. Surprising its sleeping crew. But three? You've just changed the odds."

"You mean from 'don't even think about it' to 'very don't even think about it'?"

"Why do I not feel a deep sense of police cooperation?"

"Jimm, there are three boats bobbing fifty kilometers from the nearest impartial witness. They'll each have burly, unshaven ex-convict types with automatic weapons patrolling the decks. They would have already massacred so many random Burmese that they'll not even consider murder to be a negative thing. They'll have spotlights on their boats, radar even. I have no idea how you'd sneak up on them without being cut into little bloody pieces. My love remains undying, but my cooperation ended with this report."

"You aren't even going to tell your boss?"

"Tell him what?"

"That…"

No. He was right. No evidence. No proof. No point.

"Chom. Don't you have an urge to see justice done?"

"It's not nearly as strong as my urge to reach forty with a complete set of limbs."

"Then do it for me."

"Valor, you mean? Chivalry?"

"Don't tell me it's dead."

"You know in your heart it is."

"Fine. Never mind. I'll die without a hero by my side. Without ever knowing what it's like to have a man stand up for me, put his life on the line out of love."

"So I'm excused then?"

"I suppose."

"Good. Oh, and there was a message from the post office."

"What? Are you moonlighting for the Royal Thai Post now?"

"They have my number because I receive a lot of FedEx packages in plain brown envelopes full of evidence, if you know what I mean. And they know that you and I are seeing each other."

"In the romantic sense?"

"Naturally. In a place like Pak Nam they always hold out hope that people like me can see the folly of our ways."

"So?"

"So, Nat the manager said he'd had a suspicious visitor. A woman. She wanted to get in touch with her sister who'd given the Pak Nam Lang Suan post office as her return address. He'd told her that the sender sounded like the girl and her mother who were staying at your resort."

"Oh great."

"After she'd gone, it occurred to him that they'd only typed that information into the system at eight this morning and the parcel wouldn't be arriving till tomorrow. So he couldn't see how anyone would know. He tried to phone your mother. As he was calling, a cell tone rang out from his pile of outgoing mail. He hung up and tried again. And it rang again. He found a letter from your mother with a phone inside. He wondered whether she'd put it there by mistake."

"When was the woman there?"

"Just before I called you."

"About ten minutes?"

"About."

"Damn. We need help."

How on earth could they have traced it that soon, and how could they get down here so quickly? It was fifteen minutes from Pak Nam to our resort, if you didn't get lost. Most people got lost. But I couldn't count on that. I ran to the Noys' veranda and interrupted the mah-jong tournament.

"OK, I don't want anyone to panic," I said.

My hands were shaking and my legs were wobbling. The mah-jong players stared at me curiously. I was the only one panicking. But my mind was clear.

"Noy and Noy," I said. "We might have had a security breach at the post office."

The clock in Mair's cabin chimed midday. Our calm was over. The afternoon of the big chaos had arrived.

"They've found us," said Mamanoy.

"We have about five minutes," I said. "This is what I want everyone to do…"

Once they'd heard me out, they set to work. The Noys apologized to the old men for interrupting the game and calmly collected the tiles. I jogged over to the shop, selected two members of the cooperative, and dragged them and Mair back to the cabins. I'd barely made it wheezing back up to the shop when a metallic gray BMW pulled into the car park. "Mamma Mia" rang out from my back pocket. I took out the phone. Sender-Aung. Not now. Please don't let it be the message from Shwe. I turned off my phone and went to greet the new arrivals. The four doors opened simultaneously, and three middle-aged men in gray safari suits and a young woman in a skirt and blouse leaped out. It felt like a raid.

"Can I hel-" I began, but the visitors weren't in the mood for my reception niceties. Mair walked across to intercept them.

"Where do you think you're going?" she asked, stepping in front of the meatiest of the men. He grabbed the wrist of the hand she laid on him and attempted to fling her to one side. He obviously hadn't figured Mair's jungle training into that rash decision. With some innate sense of direction, her knee found the nest of his testicles. He sank slowly to the ground and issued a sound like a slow puncture in a whoopee cushion. But his colleagues were unconcerned. They hurried on to the cabins. Two of them held short metal bars, they used to jimmy open first door number one, then number two. We stood back, amazed. At room three they dragged two screaming women out to the veranda. They were in a state of undress, but nobody listened to their pleas.

The raiders moved on to the back tier of bungalows, using their bars to prise open each door of our family cabins, even though none of them was locked. In one of these rooms they found two frail old men, and they too were dragged to the veranda of cabin three. All this was completed in less than two minutes. We'd been rounded up like cattle, and every room had been searched. All businesslike and silent. Not even the gang of local women at the water's edge, dragging their cockle trays through the sand, had noticed anything untoward.

I'd been hoping the young woman was the head of this invading army. I like to see my gender assume dominant roles even in illegal activity. But I didn't hear her speak at all, so I had to assume she was the terror-pretty of the group. "Pretty" had become a noun in Thai to describe women who use their sex appeal to show men how pathetic they are. The meaty man whose family jewels had been devalued by my mother walked uneasily up to the veranda. He was about fifty, short-haired, and I could smell military about him, about all of them. He glared at Mair, who gave him a glimpse of her Titanic smile.

"There's more where that came from," she said.

"Mair!" I shouted through gritted teeth. "Let's not antagonize our guests."

"All right," said Meaty. "Where are they?"

"Excuse me," I said. "But who are you, exactly?"

"The two women staying here. Where are they?"