Colin Cotterill - Killed at the Whim of a Hat

Small fat children on bicycles played in front of the Chainawat building, watched by an elderly lady so white and crinkly she appeared to have been carved out of polystyrene with a box cutter. She glared at us. This street, like the whole of Ranong, smelled of fish. We walked into a large reception space with nothing but an island of clunky wooden benches arranged into a square around an un-matching glass coffee table. A small child played with letter bricks on the tiled floor. A cat rolled over and exposed her nipples at us when we walked past. The middle-aged man who appeared from a side room seemed not at all pleased to see a strange uniformed officer in his midst. Companies had their regular police to pay off and didn’t appreciate interlopers.

“Yeah?” he said. He looked like Jackie Chan’s accident-prone brother. We’d decided to let Chompu do the talking.

“We’re looking for Vicha Chainawat.”

“Yeah.”

It wasn’t clear whether we’d found him or if he’d merely understood the question.

“Are you Vicha Chainawat?”

“No,” he said, and headed off toward a rear office. We assumed we were supposed to trot after him. This was a busy place with peopled desks and tables and computer banks and, seen through the French windows, Burmese women in long sarongs packing dried fish into plastic bags. There really was nowhere in the south where you didn’t trip over our disadvantaged neighbors. Our escort abandoned us in the midst of all this. We stood there like hat stands until, a minute later, Jackie’s brother returned with an old lady and an absolutely gorgeous man. Memories of my incomplete love affair with Liu De Hua came flooding back into my underused heart. He wore a shirt so white and with such precisely ironed seams he looked like a wing of the Sydney Opera House in sunlight.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Oh, yes, I thought.

Chompu stepped in and introduced himself and gave his rank and offered up my name without any explanation. Vicha led us back to the wooden benches and the coffee table which had miraculously sprouted glasses of red fizzy Fanta, a plate of rambutan and several little peanut biscuits wrapped in greaseproof paper. Once we had sipped our drinks and ignored the rest, Chompu described our case to Vicha and the old lady. He told them about the VW and the fact that it had probably been buried at the time when the Chainawat family still owned the land. Throughout, the gorgeous man provided a simultaneous translation in Chinese for the woman who, it transpired, was his mother, the matriarch of the Chainawat clan. She was even paler than the polystyrene woman out front. She gave no sign that she was listening to her son or remotely interested in the story. It wasn’t till the description and the translation were exhausted that she came alive. Her cackled speech began like dry branches crackling on a fire. Then, one by one, someone threw fireworks into the flames. It was surprising that such a colorless woman could bang and whoosh and kerplonk with such splendor. We were all exhausted when she finished, and enjoyed the brief silence.

“My mother said our family had owned all the land in that area since back in the early nineteenth century. It was, of course, a land development investment because most crops planted so close to the sea would be inferior. As our family became more successful and better land became available, we started to sell off tracts around Pak Nam.”

“Does your mother recall the plot she sold to Mel?” Chompu asked.

“She remembers it,” said the son. “She has a very good memory.”

“Your family first sold seventeen hectares of land to Mel for a palm plantation but kept hold of the neighboring twenty-six hectares. Then, seven years ago, out of the blue, you asked Mel if he’d be interested in buying a small tract of land, just the three hectares attached to his field. Originally, it was included in the land deed of your plot but you’d gone to the trouble of separating your land into two deeds: one for three hectares and one for twenty-three. Why did your mother do that?”

Chompu had been doing his homework. Good boy. Vicha asked his mother and we ducked as the rockets flew.

“She says we needed cash in a hurry for another investment.”

“All right. Then why didn’t she just divide the land in half: two thirteen-hectare plots? Surely they’d be more salable. And Mel was interested in buying more.”

The reply was worthy of Chinese New Year celebrations, but the old lady was mostly bangers and crackers by now. She spat and fizzled and her eyes flicked angrily from mine to Chompu’s. Junior interrupted to clarify some points before translating.

“My mother didn’t think anyone would want to buy a plot of land that was hemmed in by other owners. She wanted to wait till one of the other neighboring land owners made an offer. She only offered a small plot to Koon Mel because she knew he wasn’t a wealthy man and she could help him by offering it cheap.”

My turn.

“That’s very neighborly of you,” I said. All eyes around the table were on me now. “You don’t happen to recall an open pit at the end of your land, a fish pond or reservoir?”

I’d looked straight at her when I asked my question. I’d begun to notice her hostility toward me from the moment she’d first set eyes on my running shoes, so I didn’t think I could work on the female bonding angle. She cackled a question.

“My mother would like to know who you are, exactly.”

“I am exactly — ” I began.

“ Koon Jimm is my investigative assistant,” Chompu cut in.

The question ‘What’s her rank?’ was channeled through Vicha.

My lieutenant surprised me by sliding either into or out of character. He squinted and dropped his voice several octaves.

“ Koon Vicha,” he said. “Please tell your mother we haven’t come to be interviewed. We are investigating two suspicious deaths on land that once belonged to you. Right now, she is our chief suspect. If she’d prefer, we can come back with two clerical assistants and go through every one of your deed records. Failing that, answer the question.”

He gave me goose bumps. The old lady sneered at the translation, then spluttered her answer.

“My mother says that our family never actually occupied the land. It was purely an investment. Nothing was planted there. The land was neither filled nor excavated. If any work was done there — or any funny business — it was done so without the knowledge or permission of the family.” The mother and son huddled again. “My mother says this interrogation has tired her out and wonders whether your lady friend here has any more questions before she goes to lie down.”

We were driving back across the picturesque hills of Phato. This had been the driest August on record but still the vegetation was lush and the roadside trees hung out their blossoms of lilac and yellow and orange like risque underwear on drying day. Spirit houses were wrapped in gaudy colored cloth. A bus stop was tied to a power pole with plastic string. Children not old enough to smoke were driving motorcycles. Unpainted concrete houses. Mountains of coconut husks. Royal Umbrella rice and eggs of different natural hues for sale in bamboo shops the size of cupboards. Things you only notice when you take the trouble to.

“She was lying,” I said.

Chompu turned down the screaming of Mariah Carey and discontinued his accompaniment.

“Now, how would you know a thing like that?”

“Because little old Chinese ladies always lie.”

“Ah, a sound investigative premise.”

“They do. They have a code. If they feel they’re in a corner they give you whatever answer they think you want to hear.”

“At what point did she begin to leave you in doubt as to her veracity, lady friend?”