Killed at the Whim of a Hat

I don’t think she was being sardonic. I think she really believed she could do it all alone.

“It’s only a small resort,” she said. “Just the five rooms. No harder than bringing up four lively children.”

Unless there was something she hadn’t told us, there were only the three of us, but numbers were getting a little complicated for our Mair. In fact a lot about life was starting to confuse her. So, that’s why there we were, two months later, middle of the monsoons, victims of filial obligation, hanging on desperately to the end of the earth; Mair, me, Arny and Granddad Jah. Sissi moved into a studio apartment in Chiang Mai with her computers and her scrapbooks. She has issues, you see. One of those issues involves not being seen in public, a bit like what’s-her- name in Sunset Boulevard. And ‘public’ especially applies to sweaty rural fishing communities. She was torn between familial duty and life. This wasn’t the first time she’d been torn so she knew how to handle it.

Arny and I resiliency dedicated our deeds to looking after Mair and our words to bitching about everything wrong with our lives. We’d moved to a village surrounded by coconut groves called Maprao. That means ‘coconut’. We’re in the middle of a bay called Glang Ow, which means ‘middle of the bay’ and our nearest small town is at the mouth of a river. It’s called Pak Nam. I probably don’t need to translate that one for you. Pak Nam sits at the mouth of the Lang Suan river which runs through Lang Suan district from Lang Suan town. Lang Suan means ‘behind the garden’, so we can only assume that the river once flowed through someone’s backyard.

There are twenty-eight villages called Maprao down here, thirty Thai Bays, thirty-four Middle Bays, and thirty-nine River Mouths. In the south 1,276 villages are named after fruit and vegetables. Exactly 2,567 bear the name of a person who used to live there. It is precisely this absence of imagination that epitomizes the south for me. I doubt anyone down here would even care enough to sit in front of a computer screen and work it out. If southern Thais had colonized Australia I imagine the year 2000 would have seen the opening ceremony of the Big Harbor Olympics.

The computer-generated Gulf Bay Lovely Resort and Restaurant was terminally flattering. The actual place was a dump: girded with mosquito-ridden bogs, bombarded by monsoons three months a year, miles from the nearest tourist route, and…depressing. Each storm season the sea claimed a little more of the beach so when we arrived everything was lined up along a crest of sand with the potential to drop into the next high tide. As if ignorant of the place’s failings, Mair worked in the sparsely stocked resort shop and sang a lot. Arny managed the accommodation, and I drew the short straw and ran the kitchen. And, for almost ten months, I had tolerated, withstood, and suffered, not exactly in silence, until that wonderful day when Captain Kow rode into town on his Honda and announced that two bodies had been found buried in a VW Kombi.

After asking directions for ten minutes and not really understanding the replies, I had somehow managed to stumble upon Old Mel’s plantation. None of the palm fields are fenced down here. Anyone could pull up in a semi- trailer and make off with forty trees if they so wished. But they never did. I was sweaty and wobbly from the ride and I wheeled Mair’s bike up the sand track. There were dogs. I’m not a big dog fan and these two weren’t going out of their way to convert me. They snarled and salivated at my ankles all the way to the rear of the plot. There was a police truck parked up ahead and a gaggle of onlookers beyond it. In the U.S. you might have found a police cordon with a sentry but Pak Nam’s finest were posing for photographs in front of a rapidly expanding pit. All the neighbors had brought along a hoe or a pick and were slowly digging out the VW as if it were some long-interred dinosaur.

They’d concentrated on the front end and the driver and his companion were staring out through a surprisingly clear windscreen. I could appreciate the fact they were skeletons at this stage but they had all the appearances of a perfectly calm couple out for a weekend drive. The driver clutched the wheel, and although his seat belt buckle and his beard had long since dropped onto his lap, his plastic John Lennon cap continued to hold his long hair in place. His date hadn’t been so fortunate. She was as bald as a cue ball and only her stature and a thick lei of glass and plastic beads around her neck gave away her gender.

The diggers and posing policemen ignored me at first and I had a feeling I could have clambered all over the half-buried vehicle and taken any picture I wished. There obviously wasn’t a great deal of crime scene investigation going on. It was a situation crying out for order so I decided it was worth a try. I marched up to the policemen, stood between them and the clicking cameras, and said, “Officers, my name is Jimm Juree, deputy crime editor at the Chiang Mai Mail (I deliberately omitted tense) and I’m here to report on this case.”

There was a palpable hush from the photo takers and the diggers hoisted their weapons. I doubted the two young men had heard of the Mail or, for that matter, ever read a newspaper, but I held my ground and allowed my hand to hover like a gunslinger’s over the camera hanging from my shoulder. After several seconds I was starting to wonder whether they were mute, but the younger of the two finally spoke up.

“I’ve got a cousin in Chiang Mai,” he said. “Kovit.”

I was afraid he might ask me if I knew him but instead he surprised me by telling me his cousin was the deputy director of the zoological gardens who had turned down lucrative offers from Europe and opted to stay in Chiang Mai where they were attempting to mate pandas. He meant with one another…I think. The constable’s partner added the little known fact that pandas live for twenty years and the females only have a three-year window when they’re fertile enough to get pregnant. He added that they weren’t very fond of sex and the females decided when and where to ‘do it’.

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