Grandad, Thereэ's head on the beach

away.

'Mair, I think the dogs are getting too excited.'

'Well, somebody didn't take them for their evening walk, did somebody?'

'Mair, I'm a little bit bogged down here with stuff.'

'I forgive you, darling.'

'Have you seen Captain Kow around?'

She twitched.

'No. Why should I have?'

'I just want to talk to him.'

'He won't tell you anything.'

I tell you. Weird is a difficult concept to get your head around. If I ever wanted to waste a few years on a Ph.D. I'd probably look at signs in early life that point to the inevitability of Alzheimer's. Mair had always been that fringe character. Like me, her school and university mates had liked her, I suppose. She was funny, friendly, but too odd to join those cliques that linger later in life. The old school network didn't have a seat for Jitmanat Gesuwan. Her communist jungle years put her in touch with like-minded outcasts, most of whom sought respectability once the armistice was agreed.

Mair never really lusted after respectability. That's what I'd loved about her. Her joy. Her total disregard for Thai etiquette. Not caring what people thought of her. She'd been so unlike all the other mothers. She'd turn up at parent-teacher meetings in shorts and a T-shirt and boots. Unmade up. Unadorned. Unencumbered by shallow considerations. No show at all. And if the headmistress said something stupid-and they all did and everyone in the hall would know it-it would be Mair's hand in the air.

Mair's voice saying what everyone thought. Damn, I loved her at those meetings. I didn't care that I was the daughter of the odd woman. I'd push it to its limits. My trademark dark brown nail varnish, for example. If anyone else had tried that, they'd be dragged in front of the discipline mistress. But me? I was 'the daughter.' I needed tolerance. They probably had teachers' meetings just about me. I was top in most subjects, so the mother-daughter relationship hadn't retarded me at all. It just made me culturally dubious. If Mair had been Chinese or farang-a white foreigner-the faculty would have had no problem at all in labeling me. Ostentation was commonplace in foreigners. My defect lay in the fact that I was Thai, born of Thai parents from a long, inexhaustible line of Thais. They put the accident of me down to my mother. Neither of us fit. We'd gone our own ways. Me, into the unquenchable fascination of study. Her, into-wherever she was now. She came back to visit us on Earth from time to time, but I knew she had a happier place. I just wondered whether I was headed there too.

The monkey, aka Elain, climbed down from the table and started to pick imaginary ticks out of my mother's hair.

'I've rented a room,' said Mair.

'For what?'

'Our Burmese school.'

'Mair, we don't have-'

'Don't worry. It was only a hundred baht a month.'

'Oh? What type of room can you rent for cheaper than a three-pack of toilet rolls?'

'Well, when I say room, perhaps I mean space. It's the unused back corner of the ice works down at the docks.'

The same factory I'd visited earlier.

'Wouldn't that be a bit noisy?'

'It's a start. And to start badly is better than never to start at all.'

That was, of course, so not true.

I doubted whether my TV would have been much more entertaining had there been power. I lay on my bed staring at it anyway. The screen reflected the tiny glow of the mosquito coil burning on the floor beside me. Beyond the window was a sort of final blackness. It suited my purpose: a clean slate.

Here we go.

The Noys. An upper-middle-class family. Father a successful businessman. Mother, the head of a large suburban middle school. Daughter, as bright as the Big Dipper. She gets a scholarship to study in the U.S. She struggles right up until the final year, when suddenly she outscores everyone on her finals. Far from being elated, she runs away without collecting her degree and reappears in Thailand, where her entire family is forced to flee, pursued by some mysterious 'they.' If I didn't have such a problem with cliches, I might, at this point, have told myself I was missing something. So I didn't. Even though I obviously was. I wondered whether the father's gambling debts had something to do with it. But how would that follow Noy to the States? I wondered whether Noy really was hooking to pay her way through school. What if, suddenly, she got serious about her studies and-I don't know-missed a date with some Saudi oil sheik? But how many D.C. pimps had a network that would hound the Noys all the way back to Thailand? And what about the mysterious sex-change boyfriend? How did the clerical department of one of the country's top universities stuff that one up so badly? That, I decided, was the place to start.

I flicked on my all-night rechargeable electronic hurricane lamp-made in Taiwan. Guaranteed eight hours of almost daylight. The picture on the box showed Saddam Hussein and his officers in an underground bunker, plotting by the light of the Shinomax. It momentarily bathed my room in an impressive warm light before fading down to dim. It was just enough to help me thumb through the pile of handouts Sissi had e- mailed me from Chiang Mai. She'd pretty much cleared out the Georgetown files. There were financial records, course registrations, and what I was looking for, the student lists. I found the name Chaturaporn on all of Noy's class files. He did indeed begin his academic life as a Mr. before reappearing as a Ms. by semester two. That would have remained a mystery to me had I not come across the list of deposit receipts from overseas students. I paused only to boggle at the cost of overseas study. No wonder my local education department sent me to Sydney Tech. Financial records rarely thrilled me, but that one list provided two fascinating discoveries that sent shudders through my knees.

First was the reason the clerks had initially classified our Ms. Chaturaporn as a man. They had condescendingly assumed that anyone from Thailand couldn't spell. Admittedly, we can't. But that wasn't the case in Chaturaporn's fee receipt. The name was not Mr. Chaturaporn but ML, Chaturaporn. The clerks had taken the liberty to adjust the spelling, but anyone who grew up in my country would know there was no error. The ML was an important clue. It painted the scenery an entirely different color.

I was about to put down the bank transfer details and move back to the lists when I noticed the second startling piece of information. According to the receipts, ML Chaturaporn had received her deposit via the Bangkok Bank Corporation. It made me curious about who had funded Noy s study. But I certainly wasn't expecting what I found. The wire had been from exactly the same account. The bank details for both girls were identical. And there, like that first ever orgasm from a totally unexpected donor, the stars burst before my eyes. I had it. I wanted to shout. I wanted to call the Chiang Mai Mail to remind them what a great head of the crime desk I would have made. But, of course, I could not announce what I had learned. I could, however, confront the lawbreaker.

My Shinomax offered little more than a gray puddle of light to guide me to the Noys. It felt like midnight in Transylvania, but my phone told me it was only 8:37 P.M. Candles still flickered behind the Noys' curtains. I knew what crime they'd committed and had an idea who was after them. I had to admit they were totally screwed. I didn't bother to knock. The Noys were on their beds, reading by candlelight. With no fan to cool them, they wore the flimsiest of sleepwear. But I didn't let their gorgeousness distract me from my task. They didn't seem at all flustered by my arrival.

'Sorry, ladies,' I said, and sat down at the end of Mamanoy's bed. They both knew the story, so I guess my purpose there that night was to confirm that I knew it as well.

'Here's the drama as I see it,' I began. 'A straight-A student is hired by a family to be a study friend to their eldest daughter while overseas. Of course, they didn't employ you for your social skills. You were there to attend every class together with your new friend. Perhaps we should call her…the duchess. I was confused that the registrar's office had her listed as a male in the first semester, then changed to female in the second. It didn't seem like the kind of error a university clerk would make But our Ms. Chaturaporn had indeed intended to write ML. As