Killed at the Whim of a Hat

Granddad took up his bowl and spoon and went off to the kitchen.

“Thanks, Granddad.”

I sat on the rattan seat on my veranda, the seat that always creaked rudely as if I weighed eighty kilograms, and I slapped mosquitoes against my bare arms. I told myself a story. “An abbot’s about to go for a walk in the afternoon heat. The sun burning down on him. There happens to be a nice straw hat on a hook so he grabs it. Nobody watching. No harm done. And he strolls off to enjoy the blossoms.” Why complicate something so simple? Mair was a born-again Buddhist; I decided to ask her.

I walked to the shop. Mair was sitting at the round concrete table out front talking to someone. I could only see the shadow of his back against the shop lights. He was slightly built and wore a cap. Mair saw me coming and said something that made her guest rise quickly and head off along the road into darkness.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“A customer,” she said.

“Mair, you did a three-week intensive meditation course at Wat Ongdoi to make yourself a better Buddhist, and I know for sure that on the door of your cabin, number four on the Top Hot Precepts list, if I remember rightly, was, ‘Abstain from False Speech’.”

“I’m not lying. It was a customer.”

“It was Meng the plastic awnings man. Maprao’s own private dick.”

“He bought a box of matches.”

“Distortion is just a breed of lying. What did he have to tell you?”

“Nothing.”

“Mair?”

“Really. He said most people have poison of some type or another. It’s too broad a field. We need to narrow it down.”

“Mair, you’re trying to find out who it was that killed John. What good will that do you? You aren’t going to bring her back to life. And forgiveness is a blessing, or something, isn’t it?”

“I can forgive. I just need to know who it is I should be forgiving. I think the perpetrator needs that release from guilt.”

“You want to know who poisoned John so you can tell him John forgives him?”

“Yes, exactly.”

I felt one of those Maprao migraines coming on.

“It’s late, Mair. We should shut up shop.”

I scooped an embarrassingly small sum of money from the takings drawer, turned off the light and helped Mair pull down the shutter. We walked down to the water’s edge, found a spot with no jellyfish and sat on the sand. Crabs eyed us hungrily. I started the timer on my watch. Mair was smiling at the moon as it slipped in and out of the clouds. She really could find beauty anywhere. I told her about Granddad Jah and his new-found detecting aspirations. I expected her to laugh along with me, but instead she took my hand.

“Your Granddad Jah didn’t get beyond the rank of corporal…”

“I know. That’s why I was so shocked he — ”

“…because in all the forty years he was with the police, he refused to take bribes.”

“He…?”

“He passed his exams but no stations wanted him because of his reputation. He had a philosophy, a moral code. He vowed never to break it. If something was against the law it was against the law no matter who the perpetrator was. It wasn’t affected by interference from influential figures or pressure from senior police officers. Eighty-seven percent honest was dishonest in his book. He’d been one of the brightest recruits of his year and would have been fast-tracked for the higher ranks if only…But all a clean policeman succeeds in doing is showing all the others just how dirty they are. Nobody trusted him. Your granny tried to convince him to take the odd bribe, just to fit in, but he wasn’t having any of it. So, for forty years he blew his whistle and directed traffic.”

I could feel tiny claws nipping at my rump. It was long past the safe period for beach sitting. Mair had left me to my thoughts and gone to bed. It was just me and the back end of Gogo and the crabs. A longtail boat was passing slowly. The crewman was thumping the calm water with a heavy plunger to scare the sandfish out of the holes and into the nets. The steady rhythm was like a buffalo’s heartbeat. My own pulse had quieted some. There really was never a dull moment in our household. Why had Mair or Granny or Granddad Jah himself never told us about his moral code? Did they think we’d laugh at him because of it? Was honesty such an embarrassment? Why, I wondered, were we such a family of secrets?

Seven

“ First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren’t necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn’t mean you’re willing to kill.”

— George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 19, 2003

I was awoken early the next morning by the sound of someone banging on my cabin door. I opened it to find Arny dressed in only a towel.

“They’ve gone,” he said.

“What?”

“The guests in room two.”

“They paid in advance, didn’t they?”

“Yes, but…”

Constable Ma Dum was the poor man assigned to investigate the loss of our television. He was honest in his appraisal that, as we didn’t ask for personal details of the couple in room two, nor did we insist on holding on to their motorcycle license until they checked out, we shouldn’t become too excited about the possibility of recovering the stolen TV. True, there may have been witnesses who saw a couple on a black’n’rust Suzuki fleeing with a large television, but as the sheets, towels and curtains were also missing, one could assume that the television was disguised in some way. People piled their motorcycles with all kinds of junk in these parts.

So, our TV was as good as fenced. A very small crime. Room — two-hundred baht. Sale of secondhand TV — five hundred baht maximum. Profit, about the cost of a Starbucks mocha supreme and a vanilla slice. When I’d phoned Pak Nam to report it, Sergeant Phoom had instantly recognized my voice. My name found itself on a report card which was checked by Major Mana. He turned up at our place at ten a.m. in his shiny truck. He was extremely uppity.

“So,” he sniffed, walking around with his hands behind his back like a very confident bullfighter. “Flew to the south for the VW case, decided you liked it so much you convinced your family to move down here permanently, uh? Swift move.”

“I didn’t actually say — ”

“Deceiving a police officer.”

“Which isn’t a criminal offense unless I’m a witness or a suspect,” I told him and immediately bit my tongue. “As I’m sure you know.”

“Of course. And I’m willing to forgive you.”

That didn’t make sense but I’d take it.

“Thank you.”

“After all, you did spell my name correctly in three major newspapers.”

I knew it. I bet he went out and bought all the dailies the morning after our interview.

“Spelling’s one of my strong cards,” I told him.

“And I see this as a beginning, rather than an end. It certainly can’t hurt to have a reporter with such lofty connections just ten minutes down the road. I can see us forming quite a formidable alliance. A little bit of information here, a mention in a report there.”