“What happened?”
“The local hooligan they’d recruited to stand guard over the temple — you met him yesterday — he was attacked.”
“Is he dead?”
I tried to temper my enthusiasm.
“No, but he was knocked unconscious. He’s in the hospital.”
“Do they know who did it?”
“The detectives are pointing their fingers at Abbot Kem. They reasoned he was trying to escape.”
I looked around. There was no wall, no perimeter fence. Anyone wanting to escape could set off in any direction.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Exactly, but they were clearly not in control of the situation here and decided it would be better for all concerned — meaning them — to have the abbot under lock and key.”
“So, who jumped the guard? Was anything stolen?”
“Nothing I could see. But, as you probably noticed on your way up, the flower bed has been vandalized.”
“What did Bangkok’s finest have to say about that?”
“That it was probably the dogs trying to dig up a lizard. They didn’t seem to think it was important.”
“I think I should take a closer look.”
I reached down for my sandals and found just the one. The partner was nowhere to be seen. The nun laughed.
“That would be Sticky Rice,” she said.
“What would?”
“He’s one of our pack. He’s the youngest and the naughtiest. He’s also a kleptomaniac.”
She collected her own sandals and walked around to the rear of her hut. I hopped behind her. There, looking smug, was a pudding-shaped pup with the markings of a Jersey cow, one eye black. He did look like a handful of glutinous rice. He had my shoe between his teeth. He yielded it reluctantly with a few yelps, then allowed the nun to squeeze his ear.
“He looks well fed,” I said.
“He eats absolutely everything: tree bark, insects, dirt, Styrofoam, plus a few unmentionables. I have no idea how he digests it all. We didn’t get to your sandal a minute too soon.”
We walked together to the vandalized hedge with the dogs trailing behind. The greenery was only disturbed in the area around the bloodstained path. The dirt wasn’t dug so I didn’t see how anyone could blame the mutts. Someone had just ripped out chunks of bush. The nun was standing over me with an enormous white umbrella that kept the sun off both of us. I was about to stand up when I noticed a cheap transparent plastic cigarette lighter lying in the gully beside the path. It was out of fluid. It probably meant nothing. Junk. A patron at a funeral takes a cigarette break and walks along the path. He runs out of fluid and chucks away the lighter. But it was either some country and western singer or Sherlock Holmes who’d said, “Nothing means nothing.” It’s been my mantra throughout my career so you’d think I’d know who said it. I rescued a black plastic seedling pouch from the flower bed opposite and scooped the lighter into it.
We walked back to my bicycle, the nun and I squashed together beneath the umbrella, her arm around me. An unannounced intimacy had crept up on us.
“Abbot Kem said he’d gone up to the path on Saturday because the dogs were acting up,” I said. “He told me he was afraid they’d come across a cobra.”
“There are a lot around here.”
I looked back at the funereal procession behind us. Only Sticky Rice with a coconut husk in his mouth seemed oblivious to the cross he bore as one of the doomed dogs of the apocalypse.
“This crowd doesn’t strike me as the excitable type,” I confessed.
“It’s hot,” she replied. “None of us has much energy this time of year.”
“So, what would spark a riot?”
The nun smiled and reminded me of Mair for a second. She reached up and lowered the umbrella. She folded it and handed it to me.
“Wait a few seconds, then walk after me,” she said and headed off down the path.
It seemed like a weird request but I did as I was told. First one, then another of the dogs at our feet looked at me with the umbrella in my hand. Then at the nun’s back. Then at me again. And suddenly I was in an alligator pit. Fangs and drool and frenzied howls and a sort of group ire that frightened the daylights out of me. I wanted to throw the umbrella down and run but the nun turned and walked to me and took back the weapon. The dogs tucked away their frenzy like cowboys holstering their guns and returned to their languid march.
“They’re very protective of us,” she said.
Five
“ I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.”
“It was Monday the seventeenth of June, 1978,” Mair began. “The second time I lost my virginity.”
Arny and I looked up from our squid fried rice, our spoons in mid-air. Granddad Jah continued to eat, either because he’d heard it all before, or he hadn’t heard it this time. I wasn’t sure I wanted Mair to continue, not over dinner.
“I was at the temple again today,” I said. It was the first thing that entered my head. I hadn’t planned on sharing news of my discreet investigation but this seemed like a good time.
“His name was Krit,” Mair pressed on.
“Why didn’t you say?” Arny asked. “I could have given you a ride.”
“Because I thought arriving on a bicycle wouldn’t alert anyone. And look at me, I’m already a kilo lighter and I’ve only been riding for a week. A month of this and I’ll be modeling bikinis.”
“He was very good looking,” Mair said.
When we were younger we’d let go of the leash and allow Mair to run wild with her stories. We’d travel with her through her confusing history. Her accounts often fizzled and died without a punchline or a point but we’d encourage her in hope that one day she might mention our father. But she never did.
“Mair, I’m telling a true story here,” I said. “Give me a minute.”
I hoped I’d be able to distract her long enough to forget her second virginity anecdote. I told them about the attack on the guard and the abbot’s arrest and the dogs and the cigarette lighter. Arny listened spellbound as he always had to my stories. Mair waited patiently for a gap. Then, to my surprise, Granddad Jah drank a swallow of water and stared at me, eye to eye like he was about to put a curse on me. Then he said:
“He was looking for something.”
Granddad Jah had spent forty years in the Royal Thai police force and never made it beyond police corporal, traffic division. I’d often considered there were those who were natural policemen, who climbed the ranks and passed exams and landed on a perch that was just a flutter above their ability. Then there were those who had money and could buy their promotions all the way to the top. Then there were people like Granddad Jah who just didn’t have a clue. Like, I really needed advice from a traffic cop.
“Who was?” I asked, just for the rare experience of engaging my grandfather in conversation.
“Abbot Winai’s killer,” he said.
Of course I’d considered this possibility. If this were a crime novel, every reader, even the educationally challenged ones, would have shouted, “HE WAS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING.” Thank you, Granddad.
“Well, if he found what he was looking for we’ll never know what it was,” I said. End of story.
“Maybe they had CCTV cameras,” said Arny, never the most astute of the litter. He had visions of a world
