Colin Cotterill - Killed at the Whim of a Hat

According to Dtor, during the night, the yellow shirts had strolled through police lines, staged a bloodless takeover of our seat of power and changed the curtains. The Bangkok middle classes had revolted. It might help to think of it like the Richard Branson party staging a sit-in at the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Couldn’t happen, right? That’s what I’d thought. But there they were. Thai politics. I’d had the opportunity to switch to the political desk. They’d told me crime wasn’t safe for a wee girl. I fought them out of the idea. The point was, in Thailand, murder and theft and violence were tangible. Politics was all smoke and mirrors and, basically, silly.

What worried me about the situation in Bangkok, apart from the fact we’d be a laughingstock in the world press, was that important things like police inquiries and monk murders and autopsies would no longer be getting any attention. All the policemen would be lined up around Government House in their macho black riot gear. And nobody knew who was in charge. The incumbent prime minister and well-respected television chef was being ousted for cooking on prime time while the country fried around him. Police chiefs were being replaced and dispatched to inactive posts with such regularity that there were more inactive police generals than active ones. So it seemed to me we’d be on our own in Pak Nam for quite some time.

Oh, and one more thing Dtor told me; the head in the plastic bag at the end of a rope? It was a suicide.

My second call of the morning was from Sissi. We had a bit of a chuckle about politics but finally moved on to something serious. The Chinese family, Chainawat, who had sold the land to Old Mel was based in Ranong on the Andaman coast. She gave me an address and several phone numbers for Chainawat Inc. and the personal number for Vicha, the current CEO. The family had, at one time, been involved in a variety of small businesses and investments but had recently amalgamated all their efforts into the fishing and real estate industries. They had some fourteen thousand hectares of land held in speculation in the south and operated a fleet of deep-sea beam trawlers that dragged enormous nets across the seabed and devastated the corals. Good for profits, sorry about the environment. Sissi hadn’t been able to find any other dirt about the company’s holdings but she was still digging.

Blissy Travel, the company mentioned in the ganja papers, was dissolved in the late seventies when the expected tourist boom in the south didn’t happen. Blissy had been set up by a local Surat businessman called Somjit Boondet. He seemed to have vanished after that for twenty-odd years until, in the year 2002, a Somjit Boondej arrived on the business registry as the district manager of the Surat branch of the Home Art Building Accessories Mega Store.

“I see this a lot,” Sissi told me. “These slight inconsistencies in spelling. It could be a legitimate clerical error — happens all the time — but if you’re an old cynic like me you’re more likely to suspect foul play and less likely to be disappointed. I know from experience how easy it is to lose your old ID card and apply for a new one. You slip the typist a thousand baht and her finger skids on the keyboard and, voila, you’re somebody else. Nothing from your past appears on a computer security check. So, I ran a background search using the old spelling, and what do you think I found?”

“Jail?”

“You’re good at this. Songkla Correctional Facility, 1979 to 2002.”

“Ooh, that sounds serious.”

“Manslaughter. Negligent homicide. And do you know why he’d had to serve the complete term? No pardon, no early release for good behavior? Because he killed a tourist couple.”

“What? That’s great. I mean, not for them, but, you know.”

“I knew you’d be pleased.”

“It evidently wasn’t serious enough to get him a criminal murder rap.”

“The prosecutor was certain. He pushed for life.”

“Sissi, you’re…”

“I know.”

The day couldn’t have started any better. Two leads and I hadn’t even started breakfast. I showered and dressed and stepped on Gogo on my way out of the hut. She shrugged as if being stepped on was her lot in life, and fell in behind. I wanted to know why she was sleeping in front of my room but, well, she’s a dog and I didn’t know how to find out. Apart from our five ‘luxury seaside cabanas’ (small conjoined concrete boxes with no refrigerators or ambiance) there were four less luxurious huts off the beach where our family lived. One apiece. According to Kow the squid-boat captain, the way the monsoons were chomping at the coastline every year, it wouldn’t be long before our back cabins were beachside and our cabanas were floating somewhere off the coast of Vietnam.

I didn’t see any movement in the other three huts. I was usually the first one up in the morning but that day Mair was in the shop working on what she called a display. It involved piling sardine cans into pyramids and putting a ribbon on the top. I pointed out that customers were less likely to buy the sardines because they’d be afraid of disturbing the ribbon. She told me that was nonsense.

“Ed came by again,” she said.

“Do I know Ed?”

“He’s the tall man who does the grass.”

He sprang to mind immediately: lanky with big untrustworthy eyes and a mustache that looked stuck on. Far too young.

“And?”

“He was asking about you.”

“Asking what?”

“You know. If you’re single.”

“But you told him, right?”

“Told him…?”

“What I told you to tell any man who starts to ask personal questions.”

“Well, I…”

“You didn’t, did you?”

“I can’t, child. It’s not nice. And you aren’t.”

“Mair, it doesn’t matter whether I am or not. It’s what they believe that counts. Men are worms, maggoty worms. They’ll keep on chewing away on you unless you put a bad taste in their mouths.”

Sometimes metaphors let me down when I need them most.

“He’s a nice boy.”

“I’m sure he is…a boy.”

“It’s not right, child. You’re still young. You should be having fun with men. A bit of a kiss and a cuddle would cheer you up.”

“Mair, do you really want to get into the ‘You need a man’ routine? Because I can play that as well, you know? So, did you tell him or not?”

“I might have said that you weren’t particularly interested in men at the moment.”

“Great. That’s not really the same as saying I’m a lesbian, is it now?”

“All right. I’ll try.”

“Thank you.”

“He has his own palm field.”

“Every man and his cow has a palm field. I wouldn’t call it financial security. You need ten hectares just to make enough money to pay the men to come and cut down the berries.”

Mair did her Titanic smile.

“What?” said I.

“It’s nice to see you developing an interest in the local markets,” she said.

I walked behind her, turning over all the tins she’d placed upside down.

“Come on, Mair. We aren’t catering to bats, you know.”

She stopped.

“Your father kept a pet bat.”

Hallelujah. My father, at last. I couldn’t believe he’d snuck in. How was I to react? What should I say not to nudge her off the track?

“What kind of bat?”

“Oh, you know. The usual ugly, hairy little bastard. It used to scare the daylights out of me. He let it stay in the bedroom.”

“What was his name?”

“Oh, I don’t think you need to know that.”

“I meant the bat.”

“Thanom, you know? Like the Field Marshall. Same eyes.”

I leaned on the bat story as heavily as I could. Her memory was intact when it came to Thanom but she skipped around my father with alacrity. I didn’t pursue it. I had my key word now. It was like the trigger hypnotists use to put someone in a trance. I felt I could return to that time and place with Dad just by asking her about bats. Patience. It had taken thirty-four years to get this far.