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

"It was going all right. Sissi didn't help. Turning up like that."

"Why not?"

"Gaew's seen the genes now."

"Oh, don't."

"Now she knows what stock I'm from."

"It's a scientific fact that transsexualism isn't hereditary. You don't see me dressing up as…OK. Bad example. The fact is, you're all man, Arny. She knows that. And when the opportunity comes, you'll know it too. Look at you. You're on a boat in the middle of the sea. Miles from land. Who'd have thought that?"

His eyes rose in search of a cloud.

"I feel seasick again."

"Sorry."

I stood up clumsily and punched Grandad and Waew on their upper arms because I'd seen sports coaches do it on TV. It was for morale. They both complained. Said it hurt. I apologized. I returned to my computer and, I hoped, a small but faithful contingent of strangers on the Internet.

Even after Lieutenant Chompu's third passing of the Egg house, all seemed quiet and peaceful. The properties on either side were unoccupied and overgrown. Egg's house had a concrete front yard, which no doubt made gardening that much easier, and a low brick wall. One short driveway led to an open carport, and one other curved around and headed beside the house toward the rear of the property. The building itself was a two-story show house with all those extras that looked fine in ancient Greece but were over the top for Pak Nam. Despite its opulence, it wasn't a loved house.

Chompu hopped over the side wall and landed on empties: bottles and cans and supermarket bags of garbage. The cockroaches objected to this surprise arrival and scattered around the yard.

"Barbarians," he said, aloud.

He walked to the rear door and tried the handle. It was locked. Behind him, where the concrete ended and the jungle began, there was a dirt trail that extended from the driveway. He walked it to a sharp turn and a second carport. This one was mostly corrugated tin with a cloth front flap. He pulled back the corner of the cloth to see a brown and cream police truck in the dark interior. It looked familiar. He checked the plate. Chumphon 44619. It was one of the three trucks registered to the Pak Nam police unit. One was off getting a new carburetor. When he was leaving his office just twenty minutes earlier, he'd heard the second truck crew on the intercom explaining how they'd just stopped a pick-up truck with an elephant in the back. They wanted to know what the safe weight limit was for a Toyota Hilux. Nobody knew. But wait! Wasn't the third truck parked in front of the station when he left? Surely he couldn't have imagined that. And did that mean that in the time it took Chompu to complete his reconnaissance and hop over the wall, Lieutenant Egg had driven it home? Was he inside now watching this trespass through a back window?

Chompu walked up to the truck and put his hand on the hood. It wasn't hot. There was no engine ticking. It hadn't been driven for some time. So perhaps the third truck had been fixed and returned and…he'd just confused the plates? But Chompu wasn't the type to confuse three numbers he'd signed off for numerous times. Something particularly odd was going on.

He walked back toward the house and paused at the door before trying the handle again. It was still locked. He looked under the flowerpots that now contained the skeletons of plants, but there was no key. So he had no choice. Breaking and entering. He'd even thought to bring the mini-crowbar from his bike. The door popped open, and not for the first time, he considered how much easier his life would have been if he'd pursued a career of crime. There was no discrimination in the underworld. The mafia didn't hold you back because you liked Kylie Minogue.

The reconnoitre of the ground floor took all of two minutes. Apart from a tacky table/chair set in the kitchen and a sink full of plates and utensils, and smells emanating from a mountain of black plastic garbage bags in one corner, there was nothing else. The other downstairs rooms were unfurnished and empty.

Halfway up the stairs, he heard the scratchy reception of a short-wave radio. The volume was down, but it was clearly the same local band used by the rescue foundations. It was currently tuned in to the police channel. Chompu took out his pistol. It had only ever been fired at the range. It was an old Glock, and it made such a horrid bang. But he was scared. The gun was more to hide behind than to use. He wasn't the brave hero type. He was a thinker. He would have made a great detective but for this defect.

He walked past the first open bedroom door. A pig sty. Clothes piled everywhere. Dirty magazines beside the unmade bed. Empties. But the radio sound was coming from the next room. He edged along the tiled landing and stopped to steady his heart before peeking in through the half-open door. The blind was closed. There were two single beds. On one slept a young man in undershorts. He had cropped hair and was a wiry mass of muscles and scars. His mouth seemed to cave in on one side. The radio played him a non-stop lullaby of traffic reports and static, and he snored through it. Between the beds were two chairs, and draped over each was a full police uniform.

Two…

…chairs.

He felt the knife tip in the small of his back. It pricked his skin and probably drew blood. He yelped. He was sure he'd never get bloodstains out of that shirt.

"This is what they call a knife," said a husky voice not far from his ear. "It's sharp. The slightest shove and it'll carve your kidneys in half. So how about you drop that gun?"

The weapon clanged onto the tiles and woke the sleeping youth. This was Ben of the rat brothers. Half awake, he was an ugly and angry boy.

"What? What's happened?" he asked, jumping up from the mattress.

"We got a guest," said Socrates, the ear voice. "Didn't even have the politeness to ring the doorbell. And you know? I think when he saw you lying there all naked and sweaty- I think he had a mind to do you."

"What? Whadya mean?" asked the youth.

"Well, you know who this is, don't you?" said ear voice. "This is the queer one. Egg's office mate."

"What's he doing here?"

"I told you. He's come looking for your bum."

Ben was incensed. He paced the few feet between the beds as if he were trying to fathom it all. Chompu could see he was obviously experiencing some mental turmoil. Some inner yearning. He knew what to expect next. Ben, realizing he was barely dressed, grabbed a Thai manga comic from the foot of his bed and held it against his crotch. His modesty preserved, he fronted up to Chompu and poked a finger in his face.

"Is that it?" he shouted. "Is that what you've come for? You're a pervert. You're dead."

The second poke was directly in Chompu's left eye. The eye watered, but he was too numb to really appreciate the pain. The whole scene was as surreal as Janet Jackson's boob popping out at halftime in the Superbowl but perhaps a little more life-threatening. He was alert and aware but not as a participant exactly. There was a meditationlike clarity. Some mixture of Buddhism and shock. It was as if he were hanging on the wall with the lizards, observing his own impending humiliation.

Young Ben reached down to pick up Chompu's gun. He was shaking now. In a frenzy. Uncontrollable. Chompu felt the barrel bump into his temple, but there was still no here-and-now reality to it. No fear. In fact, he might have even smiled. The finger squeezing the trigger was seven centimeters from his eyes. It had a long dirty fingernail.

"Not yet" came the ear voice of Socrates.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm standing behind him, you thickhead."

Ben was in a red funk that Chompu doubted the calm voice of logic could ever penetrate. But after a shudder, the gun was lowered and the youth sent a gob of spit against the policeman's cheek. Chompu looked down at the uniforms. This was why there was a fake truck in the yard. Why Egg was on the radio all the time. He needed to know where the real police were so he could send out his fake ones to pick up Burmese. Impersonating police officers was a serious matter, and he knew, once they were found out, there was no way they could let him go.