Killed at the Whim of a Hat

“You mean apart from all of Lang Suan, seventy-two percent of the province and approximately half the south of Thailand?” Chompu asked.

“All right, yes,” I agreed. “But why send it to me and not you lot?”

“Because nobody trusts the police,” said Granddad, matter-of-factly.

“That’s the truth,” said Chompu, “but I wouldn’t be surprised, given the events of last night, if this note isn’t part of a…deeper story.”

I noticed how Chompu liked to leave dramatic gaps, probably so they could edit in music bites later.

“What happened last night?” I asked.

“Of course, I’m not at liberty to divulge details of an ongoing case, but I can probably, at a pinch, tell you that they found your Tan Sugit handcuffed naked to a bench at the Lang Suan train station early this morning.”

“Dead?”

“Stop it. They can’t all be dead. We have a three-body-per-decade quota. No, he was bruised and woozy from some drug and he had the words sa som — ‘deserved’ — written on his belly in some animal blood. But he was very alive and thoroughly embarrassed. He told Lang Suan police it had been a terrorist attack. That they’d threatened to kill him but he’d been able to play on the sympathy of the kidnappers — a technique he’d learned, he said, from many years of dealing with southern insurgents — and they’d let him go unharmed.”

“But chained naked to a train station,” I pointed out.

“A symbolic gesture. A small victory.”

“What did he say they were after?”

“He hinted he might have been in possession of some sensitive documents on the new government policy for dealing with Muslim separatists.”

“Bunch of cow dung,” said Granddad.

“But you think it has something to do with my note?” I asked.

“Coincidences such as this only happen on television.”

We’d turned onto the highway and were heading north.

“Do you know anything about Sugit having a daughter?” I asked.

“Yes. I imagine you’d have seen her if you went to the house.”

“The fat girl? He treated her more like a maid.”

“She’s been living with him for several months, I heard. I think it’s important that we find out what she knows.”

“So, if you think the daughter is a key factor in solving the case, why are we heading away from Lang Suan?”

“All right, I’m not at liberty, et cetera, blah, blah, but I might have committed a slight error yesterday. Following our very pleasant lunch, I decided to follow up on your Sugit’s violent reaction to wicked Auntie Chainawat. I was curious to know why he disliked her so much. So I went over to Ranong.”

“And you’re afraid your visit was the reason for Sugit’s kidnapping. You think you’ve sparked a Chinese mafia war between two of the south’s most dangerous clans and that soon the entire region will be a battleground of blood and revenge.”

“I wouldn’t have put it quite as dramatically but yes, I may have hinted that Sugit had referred to the Chainawat family in less than glowing terms.”

“So, we’re going there now, as a team, heavy back-up, to accuse them of kidnapping and torture.”

“No, you’re going there as an innocent young lady and her elderly but very competent grandfather. I’ll be parking several blocks away. I can’t be seen there again, just in case I’m right about the feud. You just happened to be in the neighborhood and you had such a nice time when last you met them, you thought you’d stop in to say hello. You just need to get a sense of whether you think they had anything to do with last night.”

“And why should we do that?”

“Because you’re both as curious as I am.”

“And what if we’re right and they throw us in a cellar and cut us up into little pieces?”

“Then that’s proof that they’re up to no good. I’ll be able to wear my captain’s stripes to your funeral and shoot real bullets in the air. Can you believe I’ve never fired live rounds outside the shooting range? Such a shame. I’m a terribly good shot.”

Granddad Jah was grinning like a crocodile in the front seat. He loved all this. It was as if his life had been recharged. Me? I was wondering whether we’d make it to lunchtime.

“My mother wants to know why she should answer any of your questions.”

The son’s face had become even more enchanting since the last time I’d seen him but he was using his smile less generously. We were sitting at the same coffee table with probably the same uneaten rambutans and peanut snacks in front of us. The old lady’s fuse was shorter than ever without a uniformed policeman beside us. It had taken a very long time for her to grant us an audience and I could tell she wouldn’t be staying long. The question had been simple, “Do you know Koon Sugit Suttirat?”

With thoughts of torture and disembowelings in my mind, I planned to tread a very diplomatic path. But Granddad Jah headed off into the jungle again.

“Because Sugit says your family’s as corrupt as a Burmese general,” he said. “He told the press you couldn’t be trusted, then, a few hours later, he was kidnapped and tortured to within an inch of his life. That puts you way up there on the list of suspects.”

It was fascinating. I sort of admired my granddad and wanted to hit him over the head with a blunt machete at the same time. The son started to translate but Granddad interrupted him.

“Enough of that,” he said. “The old witch has been in the country forty years. She understands everything that’s being said, don’t you, dear? Yes. I’ve seen enough of these fake translation dramas to last me a second lifetime. You aren’t fooling anyone. It doesn’t make you look or sound like you’re somebody. You’re just another foreigner, no more or less important than those day laborers you employ out there.”

There followed several seconds of chilled silence.

“I more important than Burmese,” the old woman spat in clipped Thai. “More important than you, old man. Who are you?”

“None of your business,” he said.

That was it. That was when the hands clap and the coolies rush in with knives between their teeth and they bundle us down to the dungeon. Good one, Granddad. I held my breath. But it didn’t happen. She glared stiffly at my granddad until a horrid betel nut smile filled her little mouth. There was almost a flirt in her eyes.

“Sugit is bastard,” she said. “I happy his face break. I shake hand this kidnap man. Sorry he not dead, old Sugit.” A pause to calm her excitement, then: “But is not me.”

And, for some peculiar reason, I believed her. I didn’t like her. I didn’t trust her. But I believed her. Once she’d exhausted her Thai language supply she reverted to speaking through her son although he no longer needed to translate what we said. She understood everything. She had a lot of dark tales of broken land deals and underhanded profiteering. She smiled when she related victories she’d had over Sugit and even spat betel on the floor at one stage as she recounted his dishonesty. I saw it as a turf war between two old Thai Chinese bandit empires. They’d each assumed an air of respectability in modern times but deep down they were all crooks. I didn’t favor one camp over the other but neither did I see a connection between this rivalry and the little plot of land at the back of Old Mel’s plantation. I dared ask the question again as to why she’d sold that small sliver of land. The answer was different this time and she answered personally.

“People who make connect past and future may know the present,” she said.

It sounded like a fortune cookie. I had no idea what she was talking about. It must have been an inscrutable Chinese thing that I could never hope to understand. In the police truck on the way back Granddad Jah and I tried to recall every small detail of our discussion. Did we believe her? Who were we to say? But…no, not all, not completely. Did she have Sugit abducted? I didn’t think so. Her final riddle stuck with me for some reason and it’s just as well it did.