“Young fellow?” he called again, half-heartedly.
There was still no response.
Mel wondered just how long was a suitable period of time before he should get anxious. He was in the middle of a plan. Go back to the shed. Get a rope. Tie it to the fence. Lower it into the hole, and…but there was his back problem. That wouldn’t work. He’d have to call his neighbor, Gai, to -
“Old Mel.”
The voice was odd, echoey, like that of a lone sardine in a tin can.
“Old Mel. You there?”
“What are you playing at down there?” Mel asked. “You stuck?”
“No, no. I had the wind knocked out of me, that’s all, but I chanced lucky. I’m on…a bed.”
“That’s what they call concussion, boy. You need a — ”
“No. I’m on a bed. Really I am.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I can feel the springs.”
“Plant roots, boy. Easily mistaken for bedsprings.”
Mel realized that in the nephew’s case, concussion wouldn’t have made a lot of difference.
“All right, look, I need to fetch somebody,” he said.
“You know, I can probably get myself out, Old Mel. I’m not so far from the hole. I’m looking up at it.”
“You injured?”
“No, but my shirt’s snagged on one of the springs. You should come down and have a look. This is odd, Old Mel. The more my eyes get used to the dark, the odder it is.”
“What can you see, boy?”
“Windows.”
Old Mel chuckled. “You’re on a bed and you’ve got windows round you? Sounds to me like you’ve found yourself an underground bedroom. What are the odds of that?”
He was wondering where the nearest psychiatric care unit might be. Whether analysis was included under the government
“And there’s…” the nephew began.
“A bedside lamp?”
“Oh, no. Old Mel. Old Mel.”
There was a real panicky timbre to his voice.
“What? What is it?”
“There’s skeletons down here.”
Mel was hoping he wouldn’t have to be responsible in some way for the young fellow’s rehabilitation. Whether he’d be obliged to employ him in some menial position in which his affliction wouldn’t be too much of a disadvantage. Scarecrow, perhaps? Maybe he could find a witness who’d swear the boy was already eight points brain-dead before he fell down the old well shaft. You had to be careful these days with so many unemployed lawyers around. Mean buggers, those lawyers.
“They animal bones, boy?” he asked, just to humor the lad.
“No, Old Mel. They’re people all right.”
“How can you tell?”
“One’s wearing a hat.”
That was as far as I managed to get with the fertile prose version. It takes it out of you, writing with heart. And it was just for me really. Sort of a confirmation to myself that my inner diva can still make love to the keyboard when she’s in the mood. I have to keep her roped and gagged when I’m writing for the newspapers. They don’t like her at all. They don’t want love. They want a quick tryst in a motel room that’s forgotten in a few hours. They want dates and times and figures and facts and stats. They want the names and ages of the victims and the perpetrators, the ranks of every police officer vaguely involved with the case, the verbatim quotes from experts, and the un-grammatical misinformation from eyewitnesses. They don’t care what I think. I’m just that peculiar woman on the crime desk or, at least, I used to be. I’d try to sneak in the odd metaphor from time to time but the
TWO DEAD BODIES IN BURIED VEHICLE
Chumphon province. Two unidentified bodies were found yesterday in a Volkswagen Kombi Type 2 camper van, registration number Or Por 243, from Surat Thani province, buried at the rear of a palm oil plantation in Bang Ka sub-district, Lang Suan district, Chumphon province. Police Major General Suvit Pamaluang of the Lang Suan municipality announced that the bodies were discovered at 0800 hours on the morning of Saturday 23 August by Mr. Mel Phumihan, the owner of the land. So far, the victims have not been identified and there have been no clues found as to how the vehicle became buried there.
At 1000 hours, constable Ma Yai and constable Ma Lek from the Pak Nam sub-regional municipality police station in Lang Suan sub-district were dispatched to Bang Ka following a call logged at 0923 hours. Upon their arrival at Mr. Mel’s palm plantation they were met by Mr. Mel (68 years old) and his day laborer, Mr. Anuphong Wiset (22). The two men had been digging a well and had encountered an unexpected obstacle beneath the ground in the form of a complete 1972 model Volkswagen Camper van popularly known in the West as a Kombi with traces of red and cream trimming. The description of the vehicle was wired to the Surat police station and officers are still attempting to trace any missing vehicles answering this description. Desk Sergeant Monluk Pradibat at the central motor registry in Bangkok informed this newspaper that, “This vehicle will be particularly difficult to trace as computer records of missing vehicles date back only as far as 1994. Any records before that would be filed on paper forms at our central warehouse.”
As to the identity of the bodies, Police Major Mana Sachawacharapong, the head of the Pak Nam police station, in whose jurisdiction the discovery was made, told our reporter, “The identities of the dead bodies and the causes of death are still being investigated. But I can tell you that this was either an accident, murder or an act of nature.” The captain was not, however, prepared to rule out suicide.
They always did that, Thai police. Cover all the bases. Shot four times in the face over a period of twenty minutes? Don’t rule out suicide. They’d recently found a head in a plastic bag suspended on a rope from a bridge in Bangkok and they hadn’t dismissed the possibility of suicide.
It gave those self-promoting senior policemen something to talk about to the press. Made them sound more important. Rather than admit “We haven’t got the foggiest idea,” the ranking officer of the day would go down the list of bloody obvious possibilities even if he hadn’t visited the site of the crime. As long as you spelled his name correctly he’d talk to you the whole day. Perhaps you can see I have a certain dark feeling toward our gentlemen in khaki.
But the good news is, I was back. All right, I didn’t get a by-line, the Thai dailies don’t encourage reporter egoism, but word would get out that I’d risen from the dead. I might be living in the buttock end of the world but I could still sniff out a story. After nine months of highway traffic pile-up reports and coconut yield statistics, I’d been thrilled when I heard they’d discovered the bodies. Please let them be murder victims, I prayed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a bloodthirsty person. I just needed reassuring that man hadn’t stopped displaying inhumanity to man. I’d begun to doubt it.
I’d been sitting in one of our grass-roofed huts overlooking the bay, gutting mackerel when I heard the news of old Mel’s VW. Unless we get a few sea bass or a tasty anchovy, mackerel gutting’s usually the highlight of the week in our cul-de-sac of a village. Kow, the squid-boat captain, stopped by on his Honda Dream with its fishball- dispensing sidecar. He’s our local Paul Revere. You don’t need a cell phone or Internet connection if you have someone like Captain Kow in the vicinity. I’ve no idea how he hears it all but I’d wager he’s a good hour ahead of the BBC on most news.
“You hear?” he yelled. Of course I hadn’t heard. I never hear anything. “They found a car with dead bodies in it under Old Mel’s back lot.”
He smiled. He’s got a sort of mail slot where his front teeth ought to be. It makes you want to doubt him but he’s invariably right. His southern accent’s so thick I needed a few seconds to decipher his words.
