Colin Cotterill - Killed at the Whim of a Hat

“Has your PA actually seen you or do you conduct all your business seated behind a red curtain?”

“Now, now. No sarcasm. Kin and I have long chats.”

“And she isn’t repulsed by the horror of you?”

“She’s Burmese.” Burmese weren’t easily repulsed. They needed the money. I was glad my ex-brother had someone to talk to but it worried me that she no longer needed to get any air, polluted or otherwise.

“We all miss you,” I said. “Why don’t you come down and stay with us?”

“Right. Pol Pot’s blog from hell. ‘It’s great. Wish you were here. We could all shovel burning excrement together’.”

I took that as a no.

Mair always insisted, once I’d fed the dogs, I had to take them for a walk along the beach. These are unchained, unfenced feral animals. I tried to argue with her that if they wanted an after-meal stroll to aid digestion, they’d do it with or without me. But she did the eyebrow thing and our morning and evening constitutionals became part of my routine. Me tramping through the soft sand with John throwing herself in front of me expecting constant tummy rubs, and Gogo twenty meters behind pretending she just happened to be walking in that direction anyway. It was a good time for putting ideas together. But on the Monday morning, John didn’t join us.

Arny was rolling his log and I was up in the resort kitchen making breakfast. We both looked up to see Ba Nok, the noodle lady, walking along the sand toward us. In her arms was the body of John draped limp like a long linked chain. Around John’s mouth was foam as if she’d been interrupted cleaning her teeth but, of course, she hadn’t. She was dead. Ba Nok handed over the corpse to me because Arny hadn’t stepped forward to volunteer. She said that she’d found the dog in front of her noodle stand that morning. She said she’d seen our mother sitting with the dogs often so she recognized it. She thought we might like to…

I asked her if she knew who’d poisoned our dog and she said no too quickly. I knew she was lying. I thanked her and turned toward the shop. Mair was standing out the front with her arms folded and her Titanic smile already pasted across her face.

“Mair, I…”

She laughed a little and came to take the body from me.

“There are any number of ways a dog can meet its Master down here,” she said, wiping away the foam with her hand. “A scorpion bite, a falling coconut, drowning, not to mention all sorts of diseases and insect infestations.” I didn’t hear ‘murder’ on her list. “It’s good that she had six months of happiness she hadn’t expected. So, if you’ll excuse us.”

She carried John very respectfully to the rear of the shop and we decided not to follow her. I squeezed Arny’s big hand and left him there with his damp eyes. We hadn’t had breakfast but I got the feeling nobody would be hungry on that morning of mourning so I went for my walk by myself. I almost made it to the far copse of coconut trees before an astounding grief exploded in me. Although I was sitting on a washed up raft of old bamboo it felt as if I was being thrown to the ground, thrashed around in the mouth of a crocodile. I couldn’t understand it. The tears wouldn’t stop. They just wouldn’t. I was pleased for once to be in this desolate place where nobody would pat me on the back and tell me it’ll be all right. I’d cried plenty of times since I was ripped from my twenty-first century but all that water had been for me. Sorrow for me. Pity for me. Poor, poor me. But this was the first time I’d shed tears for somebody else — something else — and I felt ashamed for all the selfish tears I’d wasted. I looked up and sitting a few meters in front of me was Gogo. Time for her walk. Life went on.

When I arrived at Feuang Fa temple on my bicycle I expected the security man to leap out from behind the water urn but he wasn’t there. I’d had to push the bike up the steep incline because the last time I was fit was in 1997: a brief three months of volleyball training I soon came to regret. I took the trail to the left that joined the concrete walkway and noticed that large chunks of the bougainvillea bushes had been ripped out in an apparent act of extreme gardening. I passed the semi-whitewashed wall and came to the nuns’ quarters. My nun was sitting on her front step watching the twenty or so temple dogs. They were politely jostling for places at the large tin tray of rice and sardines she’d laid out for them. I stood back to watch. I saw not one skirmish, heard not one growl. Not one fight to the death over the last fish bone. And I thought of John. I thought nuns were the types who’d run to a crying girl and offer her a handkerchief and a hug but this lady just sat and pretended not to notice I was bawling my eyes out. It was several minutes before I could find my voice and tell her what had happened. She tried to convince me it was John’s karma, fob me off with the likelihood she’d find a better life that would erase the tragedy of this one. I hadn’t really been thinking that far into the future. Someone had murdered our dog. I asked if revenge was still an option in this life. Predictably, she told me the killer would get his comeuppance in some later incarnation but it didn’t make me feel any better. I wanted him to get it here and now so I could watch.

I realized I was giving off too many bad vibrations for a temple and reminded myself why I was there. I inquired as to whether I’d be able to ask the jow a wat a few followup questions. She surprised me with,

“He’s at the central police station in Lang Suan.”

“Whatever for?”

I couldn’t see the old fellow as a flight risk.

“There was an incident last night.”

“What happened?”

“The local hooligan they’d recruited to stand guard over the temple — you met him yesterday — he was attacked.”

“Is he dead?”

I tried to temper my enthusiasm.

“No, but he was knocked unconscious. He’s in the hospital.”

“Do they know who did it?”

“The detectives are pointing their fingers at Abbot Kem. They reasoned he was trying to escape.”

I looked around. There was no wall, no perimeter fence. Anyone wanting to escape could set off in any direction.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Exactly, but they were clearly not in control of the situation here and decided it would be better for all concerned — meaning them — to have the abbot under lock and key.”

“So, who jumped the guard? Was anything stolen?”

“Nothing I could see. But, as you probably noticed on your way up, the flower bed has been vandalized.”

“What did Bangkok’s finest have to say about that?”

“That it was probably the dogs trying to dig up a lizard. They didn’t seem to think it was important.”

“I think I should take a closer look.”

I reached down for my sandals and found just the one. The partner was nowhere to be seen. The nun laughed.

“That would be Sticky Rice,” she said.

“What would?”

“He’s one of our pack. He’s the youngest and the naughtiest. He’s also a kleptomaniac.”

She collected her own sandals and walked around to the rear of her hut. I hopped behind her. There, looking smug, was a pudding-shaped pup with the markings of a Jersey cow, one eye black. He did look like a handful of glutinous rice. He had my shoe between his teeth. He yielded it reluctantly with a few yelps, then allowed the nun to squeeze his ear.

“He looks well fed,” I said.

“He eats absolutely everything: tree bark, insects, dirt, Styrofoam, plus a few unmentionables. I have no idea how he digests it all. We didn’t get to your sandal a minute too soon.”

We walked together to the vandalized hedge with the dogs trailing behind. The greenery was only disturbed in the area around the bloodstained path. The dirt wasn’t dug so I didn’t see how anyone could blame the mutts. Someone had just ripped out chunks of bush. The nun was standing over me with an enormous white umbrella that kept the sun off both of us. I was about to stand up when I noticed a cheap transparent plastic cigarette lighter lying in the gully beside the path. It was out of fluid. It probably meant nothing. Junk. A patron at a funeral takes a cigarette break and walks along the path. He runs out of fluid and chucks away the lighter. But it was either some country and western singer or Sherlock Holmes who’d said, “Nothing means nothing.” It’s been my mantra throughout my career so you’d think I’d know who said it. I rescued a black plastic seedling pouch from the flower bed opposite and scooped the lighter into it.