Colin Cotterill - Killed at the Whim of a Hat

It was the perfect location at the perfect time.

“All right, then assuming I’m not lying, and I really didn’t tell anyone,” I said, “how could the perpetrator know that Phoom had the camera? Did the sergeant have any idea?”

“He’s still unconscious,” said Mana. “But we didn’t actually invite you here to conduct an interview. We just want you to answer our questions and leave the inquiry to us.”

“And there I was thinking I’d been helpful,” I said.

“You have,” said the paunch. “Did you happen to note down the make of the camera?”

“Yes.”

He produced a piece of paper from his folder.

“Do you remember if it was a Nikon DSLR D3555?”

There was something going on between Bangkok and our Major Mana. They glared icicles back and forth across the room. I wondered why the police needed to ask me about the make of the camera. I have a good memory for little facts with numbers and letters in them.

“That’s the make that I wrote down,” I told them.

“Are you sure?”

I wished he’d stop asking me if I was sure. If I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t say anything, would I now?

“Yes. Why?”

“Because, according to our detective friends from Bangkok, here” — Mana smiled — “the camera details that both you and I wrote down are wrong.”

“We didn’t say they were wrong,” said longan skin. “All we said was there was no such camera listed in the Nikon catalog. We’d have to contact the company and have them run a check on it. It may be a discontinued line.”

“And you’re sure you didn’t make a copy of the film?” asked the paunch.

If only I’d had a machete on me…

“Sir,” I said, earnestly, “not all reporters are rebels. I worked for a responsible newspaper and they taught us ethics. My grandfather was a member of the Royal Thai Police force for over forty years. He taught me the difference between legal and illegal.” I noticed Arny duck out of the room. “My mother is a religious woman. She taught us all the difference between right and wrong. Please don’t insult me by suggesting I’d do anything underhanded.”

See? I didn’t exactly say, no.

“Then that’ll be all,” he said. “We may have to contact you again.”

I was dismissed. The meeting broke up. The detectives and city cops retired to Lang Suan and I heard Major Mana’s souped-up truck growl out of the car park. I didn’t know where Arny was. He was probably in the temple opposite, sulking. Lies weighed heavily upon him even if they belonged to somebody else. My lieutenant had told me to meet him in his office in five minutes and I was sitting on his side of the desk enjoying its neatness when he arrived. He was carrying two suspiciously non-steaming mugs and put one down in front of me. I gazed into it and saw the stain on the bottom. “Water?” I asked.

“Vodka tonic.”

“They’ve got tonic down here?”

“Tesco. They’ve got everything at Tesco.” My entire family had gone to the opening of Tesco Lotus out on the highway. It was the biggest thing to happen to the province since…no. It was the biggest thing to happen to the province. Our own superstore and the first possibility to find cream cheese and wine and made-in-Vietnam Chez Guevara T-shirts for forty baht . They had palm oil made from our own local palms via Bangkok on special at twenty baht a bottle, cheaper than we could make it ourselves. They had chocolates from Switzerland and skin whiteners from Malaysia. Except we hadn’t been able to get in that day because there’d been so many people nobody could move in or out. We got to within four meters of the door and Arny lifted me onto his shoulders and I could see a lake of heads spread out before me. But it was a stagnant lake and I doubt any of those people made it out of there before the week was out. But, meanwhile, back at the police station, “Should we really be drinking vodka tonic on duty?” I asked.

“It’s almost midnight and they called me in from a very promising soiree. They owe me. So?”

“So?”

We sipped our drinks. The tonic barely troubled the vodka.

“Brother?” he said.

“Oh, ho. Don’t. Don’t even…”

“He doesn’t look straight.”

“He’s no shape at all.”

“He’s gorgeous.”

“Forget it.”

“I’ll take your word for it but I may involve him in fantasy moments if you think he wouldn’t mind.”

“Go for it.”

We sipped again.

“You and I need to make an appointment,” he said.

“What for?”

“To view the you-know-what.”

“No, I don’t know what.”

“Certainly you do. You wouldn’t want me to say it out loud, would you?”

“Weren’t you listening before?”

“The Chiang Mai Mail taught you ethics, Granddad taught you the law and Mummy taught you morals. How’s that?”

“And why didn’t it register?”

“Your granddad was in traffic for forty years. Your mother did a three-week Buddhism refresher course, and newspaper ethics…?”

This man was starting to make me feel uneasy.

“Do you have a remote camera in my bathroom too? You know nothing, trust me.”

“I know you made a copy of what was on that camera memory card.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Because it’s exactly what I would have done. And you and I have a lot in common.”

“We’re both girls deep down?”

He lingered before his next sip. I wondered if my knee had landed a blow.

“We’re both more capable than people around us give us credit for,” he said.

He’d dusted off my powder-puff attack without a flinch.

“If you don’t want your career to flush completely down the cesspit,” he continued, “you need someone here at your local police station providing information. I need your back-up to make me more than just a pretty face around here. It’s a simple professional trade-off on friendly terms.”

I knocked back the remainder of the drink. My mouth was too small to take it all but I was determined not to choke in front of him.

“You presumably know where we live,” I said.

He smiled.

“Ten a.m.,” he said.

I spent what sleep time was left of that morning in a nightmare of graphically epic proportions. The colors were so loud I couldn’t hear any dialogue. There were nuns and monks in there and noisy bougainvilleas. Yuppies in yellow shirts were vacuuming. Purple heads in plastic bags were swaying at the ends of ropes. Chompu was dancing. John the dead dog was bleeding in B-movie red everywhere. It was the kind of dream you needed ski goggles to get through or else you’d wake up blinded. I came around at six, more exhausted than I’d gone to bed. The sunrise was shocking pink.

I was apparently still seeing life through the lens of that very expensive camera when I arrived at Pak Nam’s mini hospital. The outpatients area was ablaze with color: the dull yellow of hepatitis, the scarlets and crimsons of recent motorcycle accidents, the mauve of football injuries, the pale greens of food poisoning, and the various shades of pink from pregnancy right through the color chart to the weak pallor of anemia. I sat with my hand shading my eyes waiting for the nurse to take me to Sergeant Phoom and I thought about logistics. If it really had been the killer who ran the sergeant off the road and stolen the camera, he had what he wanted now and had no reason to stick around. There would have been a sudden departure. I took out my cell phone and called the hotels I’d visited a few days earlier. My suspects in Lang Suan hadn’t checked out. So I tried the resorts. Nobody picked up the phone at the Tiwa Resort. I talked to the receptionist at the 69 who told me only the Korean lady had left the previous day. A group of Korean electricians had moved in and had spent their lunchtime drinking in the restaurant so there might have been some conflict. It was anyone’s guess. Dr. Jiradet was scheduled to check out that morning and the receptionist also hinted that she thought the teenager might have moved in with the German.