Killed at the Whim of a Hat

Mair had a way with idioms. Chompu looked from me to Granddad Jah and we both shrugged.

“Well, then here’s to villain Daeng,” said Chompu, raising his glass and downing the contents. I clinked my glass against Mair’s and sniffed her cheek.

“Well done, Mair,” I whispered in her ear. She threw back half her drink and smacked her lips and fluttered her eyes.

“General Chompu,” she slurred, “do you know I once tied a police officer to a bamboo raft and set him off down the Kok River? It was — ”

“All right, girl. You’ve had enough,” said Granddad Jah, taking her half-empty glass. “She makes up stories when she’s drunk.”

“I do not. His name was Police Sergeant Major Grit Maleenon. He was naked because he — ”

“Mair!”

She grabbed back her glass and laughed. We were saved the rest of the story by the arrival of our truck. In fact, hearing Mair’s story might have been better. It was a moment I’d been secretly dreading, so I can’t imagine how Mair felt. Arny had invited his girlfriend (and I use the term with generous caution) for dinner. The spread in front of us was all cold. Arny was half an hour late.

“Ah! Cue for the handsome and discreet officer to depart,” said Chompu.

Arny and a big woman had emerged from the truck. They were half in shadow but she appeared to be wearing a parachute. Luckily it was white rather than camouflaged or we might have lost sight of her completely as they walked, arm in arm, across the car park. I leaned over the table.

“Not on your life, Lieutenant. Either you sit and eat with us or I’m telling the police ministry you lip-sync Maria Carey on duty.”

“Bitch.”

I felt Mair slide back on the bench and into the shadows. Granddad helped himself to a dozen or so new Pipers. The happy couple was holding hands by the time they arrived at our table. When Arny’s face nosed into the table-lamp light I could see the full beam of a smile and a touching look of pride as he dipped his head in the direction of his betrothed. I’d never seen that look before. Mair obviously noticed it, too. She leaned out of her shadow and smiled.

“Who do we have here?” she asked.

Arny’s companion stepped up to the table and pushed her hands together into a very respectful wai. We all returned it, apart from Granddad Jah who grunted and took a drink instead. She was a very handsome woman, dark from the sun, with a nose that I’d seen often on carved wooden native American sculptures. Her hair was as thick as tarmac and it hung down her back like a stodgy dark cape. Yes, her head was good. I’d give it an 8.2, but I couldn’t begin to score her body because of the parachute. It was somewhat worrying. It was as if she’d dropped from an airplane into a nearby field and hadn’t had time to untangle herself before dinner.

“Sorry we’re late,” said Arny, who for some reason had decided to wai us also. “We were arm wrestling about what we should wear to such a high-class dinner.”

He giggled. It was an Arny joke, made worse by an iron bar of nervous tension that was apparently welded to his spine. Granddad Jah didn’t help.

“Well, she obviously lost,” he said.

I turned to glare at my granddad and inadvertently kicked Chompu in the shin. He squealed. And that was the moment it could have all gone wrong. Arny’s face imploded, Mair’s smile became a patch of Scotch tape, and I fumbled desperately through my bag of journalistic tricks to find something diplomatic to spray on the scene. But then the girlfriend laughed. It was like the grand opening of a showroom of shiny teeth. Somewhere in the back of her throat they were smashing crystal glasses and chandeliers. It was the type of laugh that left you absolutely no choice but to join in with.

“I brought some real clothes,” she said. Her southern accent was musical and earthy as a saloon. “They’re in the truck…Unless you’d prefer to put it to the vote.”

Mair leaped to her feet and grabbed the woman’s hand.

“I’ll show you where you can change.” She smiled and we all applauded. All except for Arny who stood with his lips aquiver as the two women retreated into the darkness.

“I thought she looked nice,” he said.

I went over to him and hugged as much of him as I could.

“Nong,” I said, “you selected that dress for your lady friend, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You went shopping together and she let you choose a dress.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ve got good news for you. Any woman who’d go out in public wearing that dress, just because you were sweet enough to buy it for her, has to love you very much.”

The expression on his face passed through confusion before finally alighting on joy. He laughed and I wrestled him down onto a seat. Granddad Jah fixed him a drink. By the time Mair and the girlfriend returned they were the best of friends. They probably had a lot of ancient pop songs in common; used the same brand of arthritis cream. But perhaps I’m being cruel. Arny rose to greet his lady love. She was wearing a nice shiny top that showed her toned shoulders, and huggy trousers. She certainly hadn’t let herself go since the competition days. I found her rather attractive myself but I’d never admit that to Ed’s sister. Her name, we learned, was Kanchana Aromdee, nickname, Gaew, and she was one of the most interesting women I’d met in a life spent meeting people. Even Granddad Jah took a shine to her. She entertained us with her anecdotes and listened attentively to ours. All the while she held Arny’s hand and smiled at his profile when he spoke.

The Pipers were down to a dozen, and we’d eaten, and the time had tumbled on by and nobody seemed in a hurry to go home. Mair told some of her most bawdy and hilarious stories, fired by the taste of whiskey on her lips. She let slip the odd curse that drew censure from Granddad and consternation from the gallery. We talked about our Gulf Bay Lovely Resort and how we could turn its fortunes around: how we’d be the Club Med of the Gulf in six months. At one stage, Chompu had received a call from Major Suvit telling him that Mika Mikata had, in fact, traveled to Thailand on her real passport to attend an international photographic symposium in Haad Yai. Our own Pak Nam fell almost to the decimal point directly between Haad Yai and Bangkok. We toasted Granddad Jah and made him an honorary Police Major General for the night. Chompu let him wear his hat. Gaew lip-sticked an insignia on his coral white undervest and he didn’t put up a fight.

It was almost midnight when I got the call I’d been hoping for. I staggered down to the water’s edge to leave the noise of the party behind me. I sat on the sand and listened. I heard calls for my return to the table but I ignored them. Crabs were sizing me up but I didn’t care. I listened and I cried and I said thank you and returned to the table where Gaew was demonstrating an unbreakable armlock on the lieutenant. Mair asked me why I’d been crying and all attention turned to me. During the meal, we’d briefly talked about the killing of the abbot and the subsequent investigation, and now I had what I hoped would be the final kill.

Sissi had found a way, via impenetrable firewalls through invisible wormholes…and various other jargon I’d not understood, into Mika Mikata’s Web site. There, she’d found the most horrific gallery of murder masquerading as art: the step-by-step pool murder of the orange-hatted worker in Guam, an underwater assassination in the Great Barrier Reef set amid some of the most glorious colored corals and sea creatures, the aviary slaying in Taiwan, and the recently posted killing of an abbot in Thailand. In an attached blog, some arty farty pseudo-poetic nonsense about destiny. A location pinpointed on a map. A vague sense that saffron was calling to her. That her inner soul and the whim of the orange hat would finally come to select the perfect tableau to showcase her art. Mika Mikata was a dead duck. The Juree family had its first notch.

That night, as I was filling in the details of my story, I paused to consider the victim for once. Abbot Winai would undoubtedly have seen this as his karma. He’d probably visited the moment during meditation, walking on that path beside the flowers at that particular time when Mika Mikata passed by in her rental car. He probably knew before she burst through the hedge, before she forced him to don the hat. There had been no fear in his eyes and that would have been a terrible disappointment to the crazy Japanese, the woman who crafted death.

Sissi had posted the link to the members-only Orange Gallery on the Sangka Council’s Web site. It couldn’t be traced back to her. She knew the outrage would fuel its way to the police ministry