“The girl?”
“The nun. Can’t remember her name but we only had the one.”
“Who took her?”
“Those scruffy Bangkok detectives, the tall one and his podgy mate.”
“Was she formally arrested?” I asked the monk.
“Must have had a warrant, I’d suppose. Not even Bangkok detectives can just kidnap a nun and whisk her off, can they now?”
“Do you think the abbot followed her?”
“You know I do a bit of palm reading on the side but I can’t claim my ESP’s all that hot. All I know is she’s gone and he’s gone and I’m left holding the fort. Just hope I can stay alive long enough to welcome him back. Wouldn’t want to be running a place this size all by myself.”
I thanked the old fellow and went outside to join my granddad. I was surprised to find both sandals there waiting for me although I did spot one black eye peering out from the bushes. We walked up to the crime scene along the concrete path. Granddad stood back for a few seconds and shook his head.
“If ever I saw a murderer who wanted to get caught,” he said.
“Open, isn’t it.”
“Look at it. Top of a slope. Well used road at the bottom. Bright flowering bushes advertising the location. Plain view from the temple. And you say the dogs attacked him?”
“Abbot Kem said he’d been alerted by the sound of the dogs barking.”
“Well then, anyone might have looked up once the dogs got going.”
“So he was lucky?”
“I’d say so. And where did he run? A man with a pack of dogs after him. He’s not going to head downhill into a wide open space. He’d have to go this way.”
Granddad Jah pushed his way through the unruly bougainvilleas and, for want of a better plan, I followed him. We emerged on the far side where the temple perimeter posts were lined up alongside a wood. There was no wall. To the left, the posts stretched all the way down to the road. To the right I could make out a small green roof.
“Any idea what that is?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He waited.
“Gonna tell me?”
“It’s the nun’s hut.”
“Well then.”
I’d suggested the possibility of the nun being implicated in the murder and done my best to make it sound unlikely. The concrete path meandered over the crest of the hill and approached the living quarters from the south. It was a very open track. But looking along the perimeter directly to the hut, I could see a case for someone concealing herself in the bushes and leaping out on an unsuspecting abbot. That’s when I decided to tell him about the photographs. Not that I’d downloaded them, but that Arny and I had seen them. We sat in the shade of a particularly tall bush and I hoped that my description of the crime might point the finger away from my sweet, love-struck nun.
“You still think she did it?” I asked.
“Well, if I was one of those modern, hi-so techno yuppie police superstars from Bangkok, I’d probably put all this information together and say, ‘Yes, she’s the common denominator’,” he said. “And I’d stop looking. But if I was an old, retired traffic policeman with not a single commendation or service ribbon to his name, I’d probably do this.”
And with that he headed off into the overgrown woodland straight ahead of us. He was fit for his age. It was all I could do to keep up with him. The branches he pushed past whipped back into my face and the ground was thick with roots and nasty nettles that bit my ankles. I doubted any other creature had entered this jungle since the dinosaurs. But some thirty meters from the perimeter fence, Granddad Jah and the vegetation stopped dead. I ran into his back. Before us was a red dirt track cut through the undergrowth. It was common enough down here where locals planted cash crops where they could and dug out trails through the jungle for access. The way was heavily rutted with what looked like truck tire and motorcycle tracks. Granddad Jah looked left and right but didn’t step out onto the dirt.
“All right,” he said. “It’s narrow. If, for whatever reason, I was to stop here in a car, I’d know some local farmer might need to get past to plant his palms or collect his berries, so I’d pull over as tight onto the verge as I could. About…there.”
He was pointing to a grassy area ten meters ahead. We picked our way along the edge of the wood, being careful not to step on the track, and stopped at the rough patch of weeds.
“What if he came on a motorcycle?” I asked.
He contemplated that possibility.
“Then we’re buggered,” he said. “But let’s go with the black Benz theory for now and see where that takes us. Ready?”
“OK. He parks here,” I said. “He cuts through the jungle, kills the abbot, for whatever reason, then comes back to…Wait! Look at this.”
I crouched down to get a better look. A cigarette butt in the grass. It was tipped and imported, not the type of thing Maprao locals would smoke. Granddad Jah knelt beside me and found another, then one more. We didn’t touch them.
“Three cigarette ends,” he said. “Now that’s either totally irrelevant or really significant. If the latter, it changes the theory completely.”
“It does?”
“Certainly. It either means our killer was so cool and collected that he felt he could get away with having a leisurely smoke or three, either before or after the murder…”
“…or he had an accomplice waiting in the car,” I added.
“Sometimes, Jimm,” he said, with one of his almost smiles, “I think you’re wasted as a girl.”
I held my tongue. In his mind it might have even been a compliment.
“You think that was good?” I said. “How about this? You’ve got a whacking great Mercedes Benz on a little dirt track and somehow you’ve got to get it out again. Sooner than reverse all the way back to the road, you keep going till you find somewhere to turn around so you’re facing the right direction for the getaway.”
He really smiled this time and squeezed my hand. I don’t remember him touching me since primary school.
“And that,” he said confidently, “is where we’ll find our perfect car tracks. Good girl.”
We hurried along the edge of the trail. There was one break in the tree line but the ditch there would have made it impossible to drive in. Then, around the next bend, we came upon forensic heaven 101. Sand, and one perfect M of tire marks, in and out. Forgetting myself briefly, I raised my hand for Granddad Jah to high-five me. He had no idea what I was doing and glared at me until my hand was back at my side.
That was the morning’s work, and now we sat waiting for Lieutenant Chompu at the empty Northeastern Seaside Restaurant. Opposite, local tourists paid thirty
Chompu arrived on foot. I was surprised. Pak Nam police station was only six hundred meters away, but policemen rarely walked. It made them look too common. I’d been nervous, I confess, about what Granddad Jah’s reaction might have been to this flowery policeman. He was hardly in a position to complain, of course. He’d indirectly sired one grandson who was the 1992 Miss Pattaya World, and one more who’d refused point-blank to have sexual relations unless it was a sincere love match, ergo, a thirty-two-year-old virgin. With a record like that, a man would have to have serious doubts about his own gene pool.
To my surprise, Granddad Jah stood and saluted when Chompu arrived. It didn’t feel sarcastic. The lieutenant generously returned the salute and removed his hat. We sat under the wooden canopy and Granddad and Chompu briefly exchanged professional backgrounds. I took the female role and ordered an assortment of
