Colin Cotterill - Killed at the Whim of a Hat

“She wasn’t necessarily Chinese at all,” said Granddad Jah in his annoying unexpressive tone. “She could very easily have been a Thai with a wig.”

I laughed.

“Why would she need a wig to convince anyone she was…? Oh.” I got it. “You’re still with the nun, aren’t you?”

“It all fits,” he said. “She sets it up to look like someone from outside has done it, puts on a disguise. Car rental. Sneaks in and out of the temple without being seen. Motive. Opportunity. Plus, she’s a classic psychopath, following this monk around for two thirds of her life. She takes my bet.”

I didn’t buy it. It wasn’t just because she was a nun who’d spent most of her life in pursuit of true love. It’s possible I might have empathized, but a good journalist is able to remove herself from a case. Even if I went along with Granddad’s scenario and I arrived at the point where I needed to exterminate Abbot Winai from Internal Affairs so I could be with my lover, it could never have been planned this methodically. I didn’t see the murder of the abbot as a mid-play act. This wasn’t the bumping off of a threat, the removal of a plot spoiler on the way to the final scene. I’d seen the photos. Abbot Winai was undoubtedly the star of the show and his demise was the climax. This was all about him, not her.

“I think it’s time to show your granddad the photos,” said Chompu.

I’d considered it myself, of course, albeit briefly. Granddad Jah had earned our trust, but this was more than just sharing information. It was sharing a secret. The lieutenant and I had deliberately withheld evidence. It was a criminal offense. Granddad Jah couldn’t even drink a beer without Breathalyzing himself. He was a stickler. He’d made his own life miserable by being honest. I had no idea where this would fit in his moral code book. Chompu could lose everything he’d fought for on this one throw of the dice, but he’d tossed the suckers anyway.

Granddad Jah was pensive for several seconds. His head nodded in time with the bleating of the ‘door unfastened’ buzzer. Then he looked at the policeman.

“I was wondering when you’d get around to it,” he said.

“You knew I’d downloaded the pictures?” said I.

“You didn’t think I’d be curious as to why a police lieutenant was going with you to your room at ten thirty in the morning?”

I should have had a snide answer to that but I was still in shock.

“Were you spying?”

“Just happened to be sitting in a bush, minding my own business. But I confess I wouldn’t mind seeing those slides from closer range.”

Granddad was in. We were safe. An alliance of three untrustworthy people.

“Well, if that wasn’t good enough news in itself,” said Chompu, “I have even more information to impart on our own modest VW inquiry. In his statement, Tan Sugit had mentioned being apprehended by four villains — sometimes stretching to six or eight depending on who he’s talking to — driving a refrigerated Milo chocolate drink van. The Milo company reported that such a van had been stolen the previous evening. Lang Suan police found it abandoned a few hours ago behind the clay urn foundry. The print people have been all over it but it seems to have been wiped clean. It all indicates that Tan Sugit’s abduction was not a figment of his imagination, after all.”

Chompu dropped us home and promised to call as soon as the results from the Benz driver interview came to light. I put Granddad Jah in front of my computer and showed him where to click. I was on my way to find Mair in the shop when I noticed our young family of guests back on the balcony. I noticed Gogo sitting with the kids, showing them her belly. She never showed me her belly. She seemed to like everyone except me.

“Would you mind if I asked you a question?” said the father.

I hoped it wouldn’t be anything difficult: the tides, the names of the islands you could vaguely see on the horizon, or the genus of the bright turquoise birds that sat regularly on our back fence. My local knowledge was remedial.

“Certainly.”

He walked leisurely beside me along the path behind the beachfront tables. He was cheerful, attractive in a young-married-man kind of way, and very polite, and the question he asked was a lot simpler than I’d imagined.

“Would you be interested in selling this place?”

My first reaction was that this crowd must have escaped from some maximum security family asylum. I looked back over my shoulder at the young wife and the happy children. They seemed normal enough.

“Why?” I asked.

“We’ve been driving down the coast,” he said, “looking for a little place to take over. My wife’s father passed away last year and left us a small sum we hadn’t expected. We have a modest dream to make a go of something on the coast. We aren’t rolling in money but I can make you a fair offer. We like it here.”

“You do? Why?”

“Haven’t you looked around?”

At his bidding, I looked around. The noncommittal weather of the past week had finally got its act together and a black pudding of a storm cloud was rolling toward us, filling the entire vast sky to the east. It was a Steven Spielberg moment. I instinctively knew I should have been egging the young father on, but all I could see were the faces of his children starving to death.

“Look. Really. This is the toilet plunger of resorts. We’ve been here nine months and we haven’t made enough money to get the truck tires pumped up.”

“But that’s because you don’t love it.”

“What?”

“None of you is really here. I’ve been watching you. I see you all come and go but your hearts aren’t here with you. A place like this, you have to work at. You’ve got no food in the kitchen refrigerator, no stock in the store. The cabins are sparse and uninviting. Nobody sweeps the beach.” (People sweep beaches?) “You’re all just staying here. I can make you an offer to give you all the chance to be where you really want to be, wherever that is.”

I walked into the shop and caught Mair darkening a white surgical mask with a black felt pen. It suddenly didn’t seem important anymore. I was in a state somewhere between excited and scared legless. I knew this would be the first engagement in a long-drawn-out battle but fate had armed me.

“Mair, you know the family in room two?”

“We’ve got guests?” she said, tucking the mask and pen into her apron. “That’s nice. Arny didn’t mention it.”

“That’s because he probably doesn’t know. He’s not here. He’s off romancing Granny. He’s hardly been here since the family arrived. They had to drive down the coast in search of lunch. They’re using their own towels. The guy fixed the cistern in the toilet. That’s embarrassing.”

“The cistern was broken?”

I sat beside her on the little bathroom stool and I took hold of her hand. I sighed a deep breath.

“Mair, listen. It’s not working. Whatever magic you thought might happen down here, it’s not. And the people in room two like it here. It’s a miracle, but they want to buy the resort. I know you — ”

“All right.”

“All right, what?”

“I’ll sell it to them.”

“Really?”

“If that’s what you all want. Yes, I can sell up.”

I’m not sure I can actually describe the feeling that slithered through my body when she said that, but I’ll try. I was ecstatic at first, elated, gold-plated. It was if a legion of warm maggots had been deployed into my veins. But, unexpectedly, their pace slowed and they grew heavy and cold and eventually froze. I had a body full of iced maggots.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Child, in Chiang Mai we were five people in a house. Five individuals with nothing in common but a surname. We were hemmed in by traffic and breathing soot. We floated in noise and aggression and other people’s troubles. We were all so inside ourselves we stopped living for each other. I hoped coming here might pump life back into us as a family. I wanted my children and my father back while I could still recognize them, before it was too late.”