Colin Cotterill - Killed at the Whim of a Hat

Now, my out-of-shape intellect was having to juggle buried hippies and stabbed abbots and battered policemen, and grand television larceny…and crazy, revenge-seeking mothers. All this on top of my cooking, gardening, and chicken feeding duties. I parked the bicycle out of view from the road under a sprawling deer’s ears tree and sat on a block of polystyrene. In the monsoons, the Gulf spewed up so much of the stuff, some mornings the beach looked like the frozen coastline of Alaska. But we can all rest assured that, thanks to man’s inventiveness, that same indestructible polystyrene will be washed up on other beaches for many decades to come. Why did I always get distracted by issues when there was a life to live here?

I needed that moment. I’d seen it often in the cinema. The weathered old cop, mired in a case of unspeakable horror, drops everything and takes his rifle and his case files off to a cabin deep in the woods where nature has lain unchanged for thousands of years. And after emerging from a week-long affair with a case of rye, the answer comes to him. “It was the twin brother suffering from amnesia that done it.” That was the moment of clarity I craved. I called to the trees, to the ferns, to the god of polystyrene for an answer. The cell phone in my back pocket rang. I was impressed. Mother nature had gone high tech. I pressed the green phone icon.

“Jimm speaking.”

“Hello, little sister.”

“Sissi?”

“Wachadoin?”

“I’m in a jungle retreat cut off from all forms of communication.”

“All right then. I won’t keep you long. I’ve been reading the personal e-mails of a number of senior members of the Sangka .”

“Do you feel okay about that?”

“I checked. There’s nothing about hacking in the precepts. It doesn’t count as a sin.”

“Then tell me all.”

“Your abbot, the live one, he’s got a relative in high places.”

“Well, that might explain the media blackout. Would this relative be a leading light in the current board games in Bangkok by any chance?”

“Right up there between the bishop and the rook.”

“OK. So it would be very helpful if this relative in saffron wasn’t accused of stabbing another monk to death at this particular time.”

“Any other time and nobody would say a thing.”

“I get it.”

“It would be very, very convenient if the investigators could produce another suspect in a hurry.”

“Would a nun do?”

“Ah, so your mind’s already there. There’s been some research commissioned on your nun. An agency was hired to dig for dirt.”

“I’m not sure I really want to hear this.”

“She was a singer.”

Lot of implications there.

“Nightclub?”

“No. Molum . Thai country. Quite a following, evidently. Then one day she shook off the spotlights and announced she was leaving the profession. The record people tried to sue her, but she was outta there.”

“Did she give a reason?”

“Nope. And six months later she was hairless and didn’t have to worry about the colors running in her washing machine anymore.”

“When was that?”

“Thirty-two years ago.”

“She’s been a nun for thirty-two years?”

“In fourteen different provinces.”

“Ooh, that’s a lot of walking.”

“It is. But, at this point, let me take you back to a time when Sister Bia was just flat-chested Nong Bia, a high-school student in a little village in Burirum. In her class was a young fellow called Kem.”

“Abbot Kem?”

“Don’t spoil the story.”

“They’re about the same age? I don’t believe it. He looks twenty years older.”

“It appears he picked up the odd skin-ravaging disease during a prolonged stay in the jungle. But you’re pushing me ahead of myself. Kem wasn’t the most handsome boy in the class even before the leprosy. But he was sincere and honest. He obviously had something the other boys didn’t have because Bia spent a lot of time with him. There were those who speculated that these two might even get married. But on the final graduation night, when all the other couples were rushing off into the bushes to celebrate their arrival at adulthood, Kem announced that he was entering Thamathiraram temple and would be ordained as a monk.

“Imagine her surprise. She continues to sing with her family troupe and soon makes a name for herself. But, whenever she’s in Burirum, she visits her old flame at the temple. She becomes famous for a love song she wrote herself called, ‘My Love Is Draped in Saffron’.”

“You’re kidding? I’ve heard it. It’s beautiful.”

“I’m sure. It thrust her into the serious ranks of molum celebrities.”

“Did she wear a hat?”

“What sort of hat?”

“An orange one. A sort of a prop, like Michael Jackson?”

“I didn’t see one. I downloaded pictures of her on stage. I didn’t notice a hat, but I tell you, she was something. You’d have to be one serious monk to turn your back on a babe like that. There were quotes from her manager. He said she was a difficult client because she insisted on regular returns to Burirum in her itinerary. And, on one fateful trip to the temple, Kern’s no longer there. He’s gone on a pilgrimage. For years nobody knows where he is. Bia’s career plummets. She lacks the confidence and motivation to continue and so she makes the astonishing announcement. In her late twenties she becomes a nun and begins her trek from province to province.”

“In search of Kem.”

“Isn’t it sickly?”

I would never have admitted to the tears in my eyes just then and I knew Sissi would keep her mouth shut about hers.

“So, when did they get back together?” I asked with a sniff.

“Four months ago she arrived at Wat Feuang Fa.”

“Any record of them getting together in those interim years?”

“None.”

“Then finally she finds him and refuses to leave and he accepts her as a nun in his temple until the Sangka IA bangs down the door.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?”

“But she said they’d been in touch, letters, phone calls…”

“No evidence of it.”

“And what did the council make of the murder and all?”

“That the Bangkok monk arrived in Maprao and told the nun she’d have to leave. That she’d been searching for her love for over thirty years and she wasn’t going to go without a fight.”

“So she hacks him to death with a carving knife?”

“That’s the way they’re seeing it.”

“It’s all wrong.”

“It may be but that’s the version they’ll be passing along to the police.”

I’d looked at the photographs. I didn’t see it as the work of a broken-hearted woman. It was premeditated, cool, not hot blooded. It was no crime of passion.

“Sissi, there’s something wrong here.”

“Perhaps, but don’t you think it would make a fabulous movie?”

I thought about it.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“I could play the lead.”

“The abbot?”

A silence gushed out of the end of the phone in a scolding blast. I sometimes forgot how hairy was the trigger upon which her finger rested. You’d never know what might cause it to twitch.

“That was a joke,” I said.

Ever-increasing silence. I expected to hear a click and the groan of a dead line.

“Come on, Sis. Laugh!”

“Not funny.”

“I know. I’m sorry. But to make this movie work for Clint…” We both had a burning admiration for Mr. Eastwood — we’d seen all his stuff on pirated DVDs. All right, perhaps we didn’t admire him enough to contribute to his royalties but we did like him. “We can’t send Sister Bia to the chair.”