Colin Cotterill - Killed at the Whim of a Hat

The afternoon stretched out like a long, nylon net with one single tangled sprat in its snare. Boats bobbed. Palms shimmied. Clouds stuck. How long could it take to interview a suspect in a murder inquiry? All right — weeks, yes. It could take forever. But this was just a rental car driver. He couldn’t have that much to say. Mair and I watched the family check out of room two and decided not to charge them. It was the least we could do for bursting their bubble. I was convinced we’d done them a favor. We thanked them for fixing the cistern and for offering us freedom. The father slipped me his name card just in case…I told him there was absolutely no way and put his card in my pocket.

And we waited, me and Granddad Jah. A loudspeaker van crawled by asking for old metal and bottles and tin cans and broken motors. The driver could have easily leaned out of the window and asked nicely, but he had the volume cranked up so high our windows vibrated and I almost missed the ‘Mamma Mia’ jingle. I clicked on the phone.

“Yes?”

“Me.” It was Chompu. “Lang Suan just e-mailed us the digital recording of the interview. I’ve sent a copy to your inbox.”

Something Chiang Mai in me was shocked that Lang Suan might have the concept of digital.

“What? Why? We aren’t online here,” I reminded him.

“Then get somewhere that is.”

We plodded along on the motorcycle, me on the back, Granddad Jah driving. I thought the excitement and urgency might prod him over sixty kph, but no. The law was the law. With such short notice we had just the one option to check my e-mail. It was three forty-five on Sunday and I knew the Internet cafe would be overrun with star troopers. I’d underestimated just how many there were. The line of motorcycles in front of the shop left us no choice but to park forty meters away. We pushed our way inside through a flock of young people with nowhere else to go. The owner, a young man with long hair and moon-landscape acne looked up briefly from his laptop when we entered, then looked back down again as if the door had merely been blown open by the wind. All five computers were in use, each occupied by two or three teenagers in the process of penetrating castles or massacring herds of villains.

“How long would we have to wait?” I asked the owner.

The man shrugged. It was his big profit margin period, early evenings and weekends. At twenty baht an hour he could clear, ooh, a hundred-and-twenty baht easy on an evening like this. In seventy-three years he’d have paid off the cost of the computers. It was a business that baffled me.

“All right,” I shouted. “Who’d be prepared to give up a machine for…fifty baht ?”

They all turned back to their games. I tried one hundred and two hundred baht and got the same reaction.

“All right,” I said. “How much would it take?”

One group huddled and came up with a figure of five-hundred baht . They weren’t open to haggling. It was extortion but I was desperate. I handed over the money, asked for an extra set of headphones and Granddad and I hunkered down to listen to the interview. It took fifteen minutes to download the file and, by then, Granddad was grinding his teeth. Just as well they weren’t real.

In.

The recording began with several minutes of personal questions: name, address, occupation, et cetera. Then Major General Suvit, who was interviewing, got down to the nitty-gritty.

MAJOR G:

Koon Wirapon, why did you come to Lang Suan last week?

DRIVER:

Had a job, sir. A client wanted a Benz for eight days .

MAJOR G:

Who was the client?

DRIVER:

It’s here, (crinkle of paper) Ming Xi Wu, from Hong Kong .

MAJOR G:

Description .

DRIVER:

Around fifty, short, in pretty good shape for her age, tight short perm, could have been a wig, typical Chinese face with those big old-fashioned sunglasses. Dressed in safari clothes and boots .

MAJOR G:

Where did she want to go?

DRIVER:

No plan really. Just look around. When she first contacted the company, the e-mail said she wanted to see temples and local birds. She was a birdwatcher. She had cameras and binoculars and stuff .

Granddad Jah and I exchanged a look. I knew his mind had gone directly to the ornithologist in our first cabana. Coincidence?

MAJOR G:

So, you just drove her around?

DRIVER:

Pretty much, sir. She’d ask to stop here and there and she’d hop out and take pictures or look through her binoculars .

MAJOR G:

Did you take her to Wat Feuang Fa?

DRIVER:

To tell the truth, sir, I’m not familiar with the names of the temples down these parts. I’m from Trat. This was my first visit to the Gulf .

MAJOR G:

You might recall it. It’s a small temple but it’s on the crest of a hill. You can see it from the road. There’s a bank of bougainvilleas to one side .

DRIVER:

Oh, yes. I do recall that. My passenger was particularly interested in that one .

MAJOR G:

What happened?

DRIVER:

It was the second day. We’re driving along and she sees this temple and it’s like it’s the best thing she’s ever seen and she’s babbling on in Chinese and I don’t know what she wants. I speak English well enough but she’s all single words: stop, go, slow, turn. She tells me to slow down at the temple but not stop. She directs me onto this dirt track a little bit farther on. I try to tell her we could just drive straight up to the temple but she’s not having any of it. Probably didn’t have a clue what I was talking about .

MAJOR G:

So?

DRIVER:

So she wants to take pictures of something or other, I’m guessing. Tells me to pull over on this little lane, gets her camera all set up, grabs her shoulder bag and tells me to wait. She runs off into the bushes. I turn the car round, come back and park off the track. About, I don’t know, fifteen, twenty minutes later she’s back and in a real state. Looks like she’s been in a fight. She’s all sweaty and her leg’s cut. And mad, oh, is she mad. And she’s going on in her language, on, on, on. I don’t know what got into her but I tell you she frightened me. She says, “Go, go,” so I drive her back to Pak Nam and drop her off .

MAJOR G:

Where was she staying?

DRIVER:

With friends, according to the e-mail. No idea where they lived. She always had me pick her up and drop her off at the hospital intersection .

MAJOR G:

How did you know when to pick her up?

DRIVER:

She’d either write down a time on a bit of paper or she’d turn up at the Tiwa. That’s where I was staying. She’d arranged that .

MAJOR G:

And when was the next time you saw her?

DRIVER:

The next night. I hadn’t seen her all day. Didn’t know what she wanted me to do. She turns up at the Tiwa at about eight p.m. And there I am enjoying a glass of Saeng Som and Coke on the veranda. I’m just in my shorts, aren’t I? Well, it didn’t occur to me she’d want the car at night. Not a lot of luminous birds out, you know? But she’s all smiley and she wants to go for a drive. So I think perhaps she’s in the mood for a little night life. I’m fond of the odd disco myself. But, no. She doesn’t want me along. She seems to think she can just take the car off on her own. But we’ve got regulations, you see. If someone’s renting the car to drive themselves we have to do security checks. The company hangs on to their passports and makes sure they’ve got international licenses. That’s the law, right? But this woman booked with a driver and so there was no background check. I couldn’t let her take it .