Grandad, Thereэ's head on the beach

'Any more in the pot?' he asked.

The Southern Rescue Mission Foundation had a large car park in front and several sheds around the perimeter with spotlessly clean SUVs and trucks and towing vehicles parked facing forward awaiting the next emergency. While the child-care agencies struggled to pay staff and feed the hungry, the lords of the dead played cards in air-conditioned waiting rooms, ate healthy meals in their canteen, and emptied themselves in state-of- the-art, flushing, American Standard lavatories with free tissue paper you didn't have to dispose of in a pedal bin. I inadvertently parked our Toyota Mighty X in a position that might have prevented the rapid deployment of two, perhaps three shiny black SUVs not unlike the one the rats had driven. Petty? I know. But energizing.

The building marked RECEPTION was in fact a house, the design of which was lifted from the type of Home of Your Dreams catalog my ex-husband used to take into the toilet and drool over. It was a pink mansion squashed into a twenty-five-square-meter plot. I walked in through the front door, where I was assaulted simultaneously by an Alaskan air drift from four ceiling-mounted conditioners and a receptionist in a mini skirt, tights and a turtleneck sweater. She was fiftyish in make-up she probably thought made her look younger. She wai'd me violently.

'Welcome to SRM,' she said in a shrill, somewhat frightening voice. 'How can I help you?'

My nipples felt larger than my breasts.

'You couldn't turn down the A/C, I suppose?' I replied.

I hadn't seriously been expecting a result from my sarcasm but she immediately went for the remote.

'Chilly, isn't it,' she said and chirruped down the chill factor. She came around and pulled the chair out for me. She was very accommodating. I got the feeling I could have asked her to bake me something and she'd have run off to the oven.

'I'm here to inquire about the whereabouts of someone I…of a loved one,' I told her.

The features on her face suddenly drooped like a facelift's expiration date. She reached for her heart.

'I'm so sorry,' she said. 'This must be a terrible time for you. I sincerely hope that we at SRM will be able in some small way to relieve the burden on you and your family. Although we are a not-for-profit organization relying entirely on small donations from the general public, we do everything possible to make our accident victims comfortable before their next journey.'

It was memorized and cheesy.

'I'm so pleased,' I said.

'When did your…?'

I assumed she wanted me to fill in the gap.

'Uncle?' I said.

'Ah, uncles. So, so important to the harmony of a happy family. When did your uncle pass away?'

I hadn't seen her reach for the Tiger balm so I had to assume her tears for my uncle were natural. Impressive. I already had an urge to write her a check for twenty thousand baht to further the charitable work of the SRM.

'Two days ago,' I said.

'So sudden. So tragic.'

My loss sat so heavily on her shoulders she dropped onto her chair and sighed, then flipped open a plastic folder.

'And what was the name?' she asked.

'Mine?'

'Your uncle's.'

I hadn't thought that far ahead. I wondered then why I'd opted for this untruth. Why couldn't I simply have said, 'I found a head on the beach. Don't know who he was, but I was wondering how he's doing?' Why not? Because I wouldn't have made it past the sympathetic gatekeeper to the beyond, that's why. Not that I was doing that great with the lie.

'Somyuth,' I said. 'We heard one of your teams came to collect his…body from the beach.'

'The beach? My word. What were the circumstances?'

'Fisherman. Ehm…fell overboard. Snagged in the trawler ropes. Drowned…Very sad.'

'I feel for you, honestly I do. One of our cats was caught in the snake netting behind our house. Trapped, he was, for a week. Got so desperate he chewed off his own leg to get out. Limped home covered in blood, riddled with insects. He collapsed in front of us with his intestines all hanging out.'

I had a feeling there'd be a punchline.

'If only he'd had an organization like ours to clean him up and make him look presentable before'-she gasped-'before that horrible moment when my little daughter came running in to see her beloved Nunu dead and disgusting.'

She was good. Really she was. There was no way this woman was a mere receptionist. I bet she was the daughter or granddaughter of the venerable Chinese gentleman whose portrait hung behind her. I bet she'd drained millions from gullible relatives with this routine.

'I'm not that fond of cats,' I said.

'Of course. Some people aren't.'

'I just want to find Uncle…' Damn. I'd forgotten his name. 'My uncle. Take him home to the family. Loved ones. You know? Uncles. So important. Where is he?'

After I'd given her a bunch of made-up names and addresses and convinced her my national ID card was in the car, she led me out of the rear door. We found ourselves in two meters of clammy open air. In front of us was another door, this in the wall of a long windowless concrete building. We entered. She flicked a switch inside, but the door closed behind us, leaving us in a black hole. Total darkness often makes me want to wet myself. Don't know why. Something deep in my subconscious that needs analysis. I was about to evacuate when a bank of fluorescent lights above us popped into life one at a time. I don't astound that easily, but I was most certainly flabbergasted by what I saw in that building. It was exactly like being in the frozen produce section at Macro. There were open refrigerated units along both walls with a narrow aisle down the center. All it lacked was the trolleys. And laid out in the units were bodies shrouded in green plastic. Only the heads were exposed, some in the throes of an agonizing death, others so at peace they might have just fancied a quick lie down. But the thing I found remarkable was that every Head had its hair combed. SRM obviously had a stylist on staff.

I walked along the aisle with the gatekeeper behind me. Some of the green plastic shrouds hinted that the bodies beneath the groomed heads were not all symmetrical or complete. There were a few ways to die in Lang Suan-old age and boredom came to mind immediately-but such horrible deaths as these could only be attributed to the carnage of Highway 41. Our roads were single-handedly culling the population. There were twenty bodies all told, but not one of them was Uncle…my uncle.

'I don't see him,' I said.

'Did you look carefully? Sometimes the facial features can change after a terrible death.'

'I think I know what Uncle looks like.'

'Of course you do. Oh, well. Then, if it was the beach . ..'

'Yes?'

'Well, there might have been a mistake. He might have been put in with…them.'

'Them?'

I was put in mind of the Alien movies, tentacles and drool.

'It's almost as comfortable for them,' she said and led me to a door at the end of the building. 'And, of course, it's refrigerated.'

'Oh, good.'

'But it's a little…congested.'

It seemed unfair that all these bodies should be laid out with room to turn over, if they so desired, but that Uncle What's-his-name had to share a room. She opened the door, and I stepped up to take a look inside. It was like a skinny third-class train compartment. Two by four meters. Bodies were crammed in there on bunk shelves like pigs on their way to market. They were dressed in their own clothes, some bloody, others with no telltale sign of how they died. My uncle's head was looking down at me from an overhead luggage rack. He had a ticket attached to his left ear. I heard a voice from behind me.