Colin Cotterill - Killed at the Whim of a Hat

“I’ve hired a man,” Mair said.

“To do what?”

“He’s a private detective.”

“You hired a…?”

I was astounded. Not so much that Mair had need of one but that in a place like this she’d been able to find one. And when?

“You didn’t say anything last night,” I said.

“I hadn’t hired one then.”

“Mair, I saw you go to bed. How and where did you find yourself a private detective between then and now?”

“Ed the grass man knew somebody.”

“And you’ve contacted him already?”

“Ed stopped by his house on his way home. You’d be surprised how much is going on in Maprao early in the morning. We should all get up earlier.”

“Are you telling me there’s a private detective in Maprao?”

“Meng.”

I dredged through the names I’d heard. It shouldn’t have been that difficult. According to the official register there were five thousand residents in our district but I got the feeling that figure included everyone who’d ever died here. I was sure I’d seen every face there was to see. A couple of hundred at the most.

“Not Meng the plastic awnings man?”

“That’s him.”

“Mair” — I sat on the little stool at my feet — “he’s the plastic awnings man. He attaches plastic awnings. That’s his job.”

“And window shades.”

“Same difference. Tell me, where does he find time in his busy awning schedule to squeeze in private detecting?”

“There isn’t a lot of detective work here.”

“Of course not.” I lowered my voice. “Of course there isn’t a lot of work for a private detective who puts up plastic awnings. Who’s going to hire him?”

“Ed did.”

“Ed the grass man hired Meng the awnings man as a private detective?”

“He said he’s very good.”

I suppose a day that started like this one only had one direction to go.

“What, Mair, did Ed hire a detective to do?”

“To find his wife.”

“Oh, super. Super. You’re trying to fix me up with a married grass man.”

“He’s not married anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because Meng found his wife. She was living with a glazier in Lang Suan. Meng took photographs. They’re divorced now.”

I was exhausted.

“You found this all out this morning?”

“I think we should get up with the sunrise.”

“How much does this private detective awning man charge?”

“He said it’s up to me. I can pay what I like. Whatever I think the information’s worth.”

“Well, that’s a relief. And what information are you looking for, exactly?”

“Just local gossip.”

She was so transparent I could see the sardine tins behind her.

“Mair?”

“Basic information, that kind of thing. Who lives where? What do they do for a living? If they have a boat or a truck. Where you can get hold of basic goods and materials like bricks or manure or cement…”

“Mair?”

“…or rat poison.”

Lieutenant Chompu and I were driving across the skinniest part of the country. If you looked at the map of Thailand we were at the very squeezed waist. Since the seventeenth century they’d talked about digging a canal from the Gulf to the west coast but to lift such a long-term project off the ground it probably would have helped to have an administration in power for longer than five months. If they ever did get around to it, this would be the perfect place. There was so much pretty nature to churn up. In an air-conditioned police truck with Mai Charouenpura on the CD player and a little strawberry-shaped bottle of air freshener on the dash, the journey from one coast to the other would take us forty-five minutes. Chompu drove like a beast.

Involving the Pak Nam constabulary in my inquiry had been a calculated risk. If we stayed here, I mean if my family didn’t move away or if we weren’t all arrested for complicity in Mair’s revenge killing, I knew I’d need friends at the local police station. I decided to share my information about the Chainawat family, and invite the lieutenant along on the interview. It couldn’t hurt to have a policeman beside me. As he was now officially in charge of the VW investigation he decided it would be a lovely day for a drive and we both agreed it was such a picturesque route. He talked about the weather and the lack of excitement in Pak Nam and the joy of being in one of the last places on the planet where men all wore mustaches.

I took a chance and asked him about the progress in the Feuang Fa temple slaying. He turned his head to me with his mouth wide open and almost ran off the road.

“How could you possibly…?”

“I find things out,” I told him. “It’s my job.”

“But it’s ultra top secret.”

“I know.”

“I shall have to watch my mouth.”

“So…?”

“Off the record?”

“Of course, unless it’s really interesting.”

“It’s not. Believe me. Feuang Fa temple is slap in the middle of our jurisdiction. All right, perhaps not slap, but it’s certainly more ours than those crustaceans at Lang Suan. My word, they wouldn’t know what to do with a murder if it crept up their trouser legs and bit them on the you-know-what.”

“So Pak Nam should be running that inquiry too?”

“Yes. But what do you know? Bangkok, that cauldron of anarchy and fashion disasters, decides this is too high profile for us to handle. They send down a few plainclothes super-detectives, put a media blackout on the whole thing, set up Lang Suan as their center of operations, and pretend we don’t exist. Rude, if you ask me.”

“So they don’t give you any feedback?”

“Not a whimper. Major Mana goes into Lang Suan every day because, technically, we’re all supposed to be coordinating our efforts, sharing information. And we all know how that works, I don’t think. They treat him like a motorcycle messenger. It’s all take and take and no give. It’s our officers doing the legwork, the interviews, the paperwork, providing the local color, but they don’t tell us a monkey’s back end.”

“So why do you think they’ve blacked it out? Isn’t it just ‘Abbot gets killed in rural temple.’ ‘Another monk goes bad.’ Page two of the Daily News . End of public interest?”

“What do I think?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I think. I think somebody is somebody.”

A statement like that probably wouldn’t have meant much to a non-Thai. But we lived in a country where being somebody, or being related to somebody, was far more relevant than what you did or how you did it. Sissi hadn’t got around to discovering what had caused the news blackout but the ‘connection’ angle was a likely one. During this great period of foolishness that pervaded in the capital, I could see a nod from a senior politician to a senior policeman suggesting, “We really don’t need any more bad press right now.” If either abbot was somebody’s brother or a member of a certain dynasty, there were those who’d exploit the connection for political gain. It would never work as a Hollywood movie plot device because nobody in the West would believe it, but it was one of the many cancerous growths in our culture and we’d come to expect it.

“Does your major tell you what snippets he’s picked up from Lang Suan?” I asked, ignoring the ‘somebody’ track for the time being.

“Well, like I say, they don’t give very much away, but Major Mana is livid. He thinks this case should be his career buster. He bitches about the whole thing. Before Bangkok came in and trampled all over us he’d handled all the initial statements, the crime scene photos, evidence searches, the lot.”