Colin Cotterill - Killed at the Whim of a Hat

It was all very fascinating and obviously a matter they’d discussed at great length, but would it get me an exclusive on the subterranean VW? The answer arrived in a second brown and cream truck from which stepped Police Major Mana, head of the Pak Nam station. He was a middle-aged man whose dark face seemed as polished as his shoulder badges. He was short and walked as one would imagine a panda in a very tight uniform would walk. I wondered if the two constables had the same thought.

Also stepping from the truck was a skinny young officer with an old-fashioned film camera that seemed to weigh more than he could carry. Major Mana spent several minutes putting on his hat and checking it in the side mirror, then walked past me and the constables to the dig site. He stood back and glared at the stalled excavation. The cameraman stepped up, adjusted his lenses and took what would probably be a fine photograph of his major surveying a crime scene — if it came out, if it wasn’t over- or under-exposed or the film hadn’t melted in the camera. Digital may not be for the connoisseur but at least you don’t have to wait a day to see what a cock-up you’ve made.

His duty obviously done, Major Mana removed his hat, dabbed his brow with a cloth and headed back to his truck. One of the two constables stepped forward and saluted as he passed.

“Major, sir,” he said. “This is Nong Jimm from the press in Chiang Mai.”

I hated it when they called me ‘little sibling’. It’s as if, just because you’re short and not wrinkled, you can’t possibly be as old as they are. It might have been because of the heat or a sincere respect for the fourth estate, but the major was suddenly overcome with charm. He was in such a hurry to throw his hands together in an undeserved response to my wai that he dropped his nice hat.

“ Nong Jimm,” he said, stepping aside for the two constables to retrieve his hat and dust it off. “Welcome to our province. If there’s anything I can do to make your stay more comfortable you just have to ask.”

I knew his type only too well: slick as a snake in engine oil. I decided to take advantage of his misapprehension before he learned I lived a thirty-minute bicycle ride away.

“Once I’ve looked around here I’d be grateful for a few words with you,” I said. I was dazzled by the sunlight off his teeth.

“Then let me take you for a working lunch,” he said. “When you’re done here, of course.”

It suited me. It was in my interest to know my local law enforcers and perhaps I’d get something to eat that couldn’t swim, for once. A nice piece of roast pork would make the day for me. A cut of ham. A few slices of venison. I’d suffer an hour of posturing gladly in exchange for a plate of anything that, a few days earlier, had been frolicking around a field. I was losing my carnivorous je ne sais quoi .

It surprised me how much I enjoyed my morning at the VW excavation site. In my year in Chumphon, for some reason I’d not had the pleasure of hanging out with a large group of local, apparently unemployed, men. Several were around Granddad Jah’s age but they swung those picks with the strength of men who’d carried wounded cattle across their shoulders. And everything was funny to them. Digging was a complete hoot. The repartee and laughter bounced back and forth but I would have needed a northern Thai/southern Thai simultaneous translation to appreciate the half of it. By far the funniest thing that morning was the forensic disaster.

I’d taken a number of instant digital pictures of the skeletal couple that I doubted papers like the Mail would use. But I was sure I could sell them to 191 , the ghoul magazine in Bangkok. Nothing was too gory for them. I was wondering how to spice up the photos somehow when Uncle Ly, the dig’s own stand-up comic, climbed down into the van through the hole in the roof and posed between the skeletons. His nephew took a picture with his cell phone and I was just lining up to do the same when the inevitable happened.

I suppose somebody should have asked why two skeletons could remain intact despite the absence of those physiological nuts and bolts that hold us all together. Whatever the answer, it was a poor glue, because as soon as Uncle Ly made his V sign over the shoulder of the driver, the latter collapsed like a stack of coins. We all fell silent. Then, as if they’d been joined by some unseen thread, the passenger — and I wasn’t the only one to see this — tilted her head slightly to the right and nodded before joining her beau on the floor of the cab like a faithful spouse. In sickness and in health and in pieces.

It was the sight of a thoroughly embarrassed Uncle Ly attempting to put the two bodies back together that had us in stitches. Constable Ma Yai and Constable Ma Lek came rushing over to the dig site and for a moment I was afraid they’d reprimand us for laughing at destroyed evidence, arrest us even. But first one, then the other officer made comments that merely stoked the hilarity of the onlookers and further flustered poor Ly. When it was clear the skeletons would never be the same again, the two young officers made a very good call. It was the vibration of the digging that had caused the couple to go to pieces, they decided. Everyone agreed. It seemed thoroughly unsociable not to. On my ride home I was mystified at how easily I’d become complicit in an act of deception. It must have been something in the air.

I arrived back at the resort at eleven fifty, which left me half an hour before my lunch date. As I’d deserted the mackerel half-gutted that morning, I broke the news to the family that this would have to be a Mama instant noodle day. I’d planned to have a shower after riding under a big-bellied sun for half an hour but the little god of electrical supply chose that exact moment to dig his trident into the celestial fuse box and the whole area was plunged back to the Ayuthaya period. This happened so often in our little dark corner of heaven that I’d long since stopped swearing under my breath. My choices were: a dip in the sea that would leave me itching through lunch, or a plastic dipper from the giant jar out back that was breeding more cultures than the natural history museum. I chose the sea.

Major Mana was as amenable as a Venus flytrap. I sat opposite him squirming in my seat as the salt dried on my skin. In my bag I had the bulk of my report written at the scene. After lunch I would make a few phone calls, type it up on my laptop and send it off from the computer game shop. Being a Saturday I could be sure of a skirmish with the teenagers but I had my first real story in a year and a few bruised children was a small price to pay. All I needed from the major were the compulsory names and ranks of all the officers involved and a quote that would instill faith in the community that the police were firmly in control. In Chiang Mai we had a stock of such quotations for the ranking officers to choose from because they were often stuck for relevant grammatical phrases. I didn’t have my list with me so I had to let Mana baffle readers with the murder/disaster/accident/suicide theory. The business side of our lunch had been concluded in ten minutes and I was eager to be away from there and send off my story. But as I was a visitor to the south from Chiang Mai, the major had ordered delicious local mackerel and sea bass and watched for my reaction as I consumed my meal. I managed a smile.

He had, as expected, presumed to have a bottle of ‘Hinnisy’ brandy placed on the table for our arrival as if it were a normal service of the restaurant. I knew from a report we’d done for the Mail that some of these fake rural liquors could cause deformities in the newborn and rot the teeth clean out of your mouth by the third glass. But Major Mana’s superglossed teeth gave me confidence and I matched him swig for swig through the meal. I can drink. I have no idea where my constitution comes from. My mother has to merely sniff a mosquito coil and she’s singing old Bird Thongchai Mclntyre ballads. So it has to be down to the genes of my mysterious missing father. Perhaps he was an alcoholic. Mair is ever mute on the subject. I have no recollection of him at all. Sissi, the eldest, remembers a handsome, funny man who came and went and came…and went. That’s all we have of ‘Dad’. No photos. No fond reminiscences from Mair. Just genes that don’t seem to match.