Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach

by Colin Cotterill

  “How far out can the little boats go?” I asked.

  “Depends on the waves,” he said. “Two meters maximum for most of us.”

  “But if it’s calm?”

  “Go all the way to Vietnam or until the diesel ran out. Why?”

  I’d decided the previous night to tell the captain everything, from the head on the beach to the slave ships to the suspected involvement of the Pak Nam police force. He listened intently but didn’t seem all that surprised.

  “It’s not just here,” he said, when I was done.

  “What’s not?”

  “The slavery. Happens all around the coast. Except the recruiting’s done by agents over on the west. They put crews together, take their down payments, make promises, then vanish. The Burmese do a three-month stint, then queue up for their salaries only to be told that the wages are all handled through the agencies. It’s in the contract—in Thai. As the agents have all shut up and shipped out, that’s three months of free labor and nothing for the Burmese to send back to their families. Happens all the time.”

  I blame Buddhism, you know? Get yourself a soft religion and you can forgive yourself almost anything. No shame. No guilt. I’ll do my penance in the next life. No worries. I wondered whether Captain Kow was one of those mai pen rai characters. One of the “no problem, let’s not get worked up over nothing” majority.

  “I imagine you’re going to do something about it,” he said, and smiled.

  Damn. I wish I could have put some teeth in that gap. I knew it would have been a grand smile if it hadn’t been so vacant.

  “I’d need help,” I confessed.

  “I could get about ten, maybe fifteen small-boat men together, I suppose.”

  “You could? And why would they cooperate?”

  “They don’t like the big boats much. And they owe me favors.”

  “And why would you cooperate?”

  “Me?” He laughed. “I like your style, Jimm. I like your spunk. You’re a credit to your mother. I’d be proud to be there beside you.”

  You tend to assume old men are flirting when they overdo the rhetoric, but Captain Kow’s eyes sparkled and I really got the feeling he was up for the adventure.

  “You got a plan?” he asked.

  “Sort of,” I replied. “Do I have to tell you it?”

  “Too true you do.”

  * * *

  It was almost lunchtime when Lieutenant Chompu called me from the police station.

  “At last,” I said. “How long does it take to read a few documents?”

  “Ooh, what dominance,” he said. “I love a forceful woman. If it had been just words, I might have finished yesterday evening. But it wasn’t that simple. Our Lieutenant Egg uses his own shorthand, the type of which I’d never seen. It amounts to leaving out all the vowels and tone markers. So every word was a puzzle.”

  “But you cracked it?”

  “I have a reputation for inserting my key into otherwise impenetrable locks.”

  “But the documents?”

  “Yes, those too. I have entered his devious world, young Jimm.”

  “And did you find anything?”

  “Not really.”

  “Chom!”

  “Not a complete failure, however. I found no fewer than eleven official reports in normal script for beached bodies and body parts. These were cases he’d personally taken on. His success rate in finding relatives and solving the cases was—as far as I could see—zero. All ‘Case closed, probably Burmese, domestic dispute.’”

  “But he’s only been here in Pak Nam for a month.”

  “Right. These reports go back six months to when he was stationed in Pattani. Your personal head is number eleven. It’s his first up here.”

  “So if he’s cleaning up, he’s following a boat.”

  “Or a fleet. I checked out the movement of deep-sea vessels from Pattani to Lang Suan around the time of his transfer. There was a total of four that changed registration and fishing zones. One was a mackerel trawler bought by a conglomerate in Prajuab. But three others always traveled together. Same owner. Same catch records. They’re now operating out of Pak Nam, but they spend most of their time at sea and transfer their catch to smaller boats. This deep-sea fleet has five local boats registered to collect and deliver. Doing good business, by all accounts.”

  “So somewhere out there are three big boats that don’t come home much. I bet that’s them. There I was imagining one slaver ship. Sneaking up on it in the dead of night. Surprising its sleeping crew. But three? You’ve just changed the odds.”

  “You mean from ‘don’t even think about it’ to ‘very don’t even think about it’?”

  “Why do I not feel a deep sense of police cooperation?”

  “Jimm, there are three boats bobbing fifty kilometers from the nearest impartial witness. They’ll each have burly, unshaven ex-convict types with automatic weapons patrolling the decks. They would have already massacred so many random Burmese that they’ll not even consider murder to be a negative thing. They’ll have spotlights on their boats, radar even. I have no idea how you’d sneak up on them without being cut into little bloody pieces. My love remains undying, but my cooperation ended with this report.”

  “You aren’t even going to tell your boss?”

  “Tell him what?”

  “That…”

  No. He was right. No evidence. No proof. No point.

  “Chom. Don’t you have an urge to see justice done?”

  “It’s not nearly as strong as my urge to reach forty with a complete set of limbs.”

  “Then do it for me.”

  “Valor, you mean? Chivalry?”

  “Don’t tell me it’s dead.”

  “You know in your heart it is.”

  “Fine. Never mind. I’ll die without a hero by my side. Without ever knowing what it’s like to have a man stand up for me, put his life on the line out of love.”

  “So I’m excused then?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Good. Oh, and there was a message from the post office.”

  “What? Are you moonlighting for the Royal Thai Post now?”

  “They have my number because I receive a lot of FedEx packages in plain brown envelopes full of evidence, if you know what I mean. And they know that you and I are seeing each other.”

  “In the romantic sense?”

  “Naturally. In a place like Pak Nam they always hold out hope that people like me can see the folly of our ways.”

  “So?”

  “So, Nat the manager said he’d had a suspicious visitor. A woman. She wanted to get in touch with her sister who’d given the Pak Nam Lang Suan post office as her return address. He’d told her that the sender sounded like the girl and her mother who were staying at your resort.”

  “Oh great.”

  “After she’d gone, it occurred to him that they’d only typed that information into the system at eight this morning and the parcel wouldn’t be arriving till tomorrow. So he couldn’t see how anyone would know. He tried to phone your mother. As he was calling, a cell tone rang out from his pile of outgoing mail. He hung up and tried again. And it rang again. He found a letter from your mother with a phone inside. He wondered whether she’d put it there by mistake.”

  “When was the woman there?”

  “Just before I called you.”

  “About ten minutes?”

  “About.”

  “Damn. We need help.”

  How on earth could they have traced it that soon, and how could they get down here so quickly? It was fifteen minutes from Pak Nam to our resort, if you didn’t get lost. Most people got lost. But I couldn’t count on that. I ran to the Noys’ veranda and interrupted the mah-jong tournament.

  “OK, I don’t want anyone to panic,” I said.

  My hands were shaking and my legs were wobbling. The mah-jong players stared at me curiously. I was the only one panicking. But my mind was clear.

  “Noy
and Noy,” I said. “We might have had a security breach at the post office.”

  The clock in Mair’s cabin chimed midday. Our calm was over. The afternoon of the big chaos had arrived.

  “They’ve found us,” said Mamanoy.

  “We have about five minutes,” I said. “This is what I want everyone to do…”

  Once they’d heard me out, they set to work. The Noys apologized to the old men for interrupting the game and calmly collected the tiles. I jogged over to the shop, selected two members of the cooperative, and dragged them and Mair back to the cabins. I’d barely made it wheezing back up to the shop when a metallic gray BMW pulled into the car park. “Mamma Mia” rang out from my back pocket. I took out the phone. Sender—Aung. Not now. Please don’t let it be the message from Shwe. I turned off my phone and went to greet the new arrivals. The four doors opened simultaneously, and three middle-aged men in gray safari suits and a young woman in a skirt and blouse leaped out. It felt like a raid.

  “Can I hel—” I began, but the visitors weren’t in the mood for my reception niceties. Mair walked across to intercept them.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” she asked, stepping in front of the meatiest of the men. He grabbed the wrist of the hand she laid on him and attempted to fling her to one side. He obviously hadn’t figured Mair’s jungle training into that rash decision. With some innate sense of direction, her knee found the nest of his testicles. He sank slowly to the ground and issued a sound like a slow puncture in a whoopee cushion. But his colleagues were unconcerned. They hurried on to the cabins. Two of them held short metal bars, they used to jimmy open first door number one, then number two. We stood back, amazed. At room three they dragged two screaming women out to the veranda. They were in a state of undress, but nobody listened to their pleas.

  The raiders moved on to the back tier of bungalows, using their bars to prise open each door of our family cabins, even though none of them was locked. In one of these rooms they found two frail old men, and they too were dragged to the veranda of cabin three. All this was completed in less than two minutes. We’d been rounded up like cattle, and every room had been searched. All businesslike and silent. Not even the gang of local women at the water’s edge, dragging their cockle trays through the sand, had noticed anything untoward.

  I’d been hoping the young woman was the head of this invading army. I like to see my gender assume dominant roles even in illegal activity. But I didn’t hear her speak at all, so I had to assume she was the terror-pretty of the group. “Pretty” had become a noun in Thai to describe women who use their sex appeal to show men how pathetic they are. The meaty man whose family jewels had been devalued by my mother walked uneasily up to the veranda. He was about fifty, short-haired, and I could smell military about him, about all of them. He glared at Mair, who gave him a glimpse of her Titanic smile.

  “There’s more where that came from,” she said.

  “Mair!” I shouted through gritted teeth. “Let’s not antagonize our guests.”

  “All right,” said Meaty. “Where are they?”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “But who are you, exactly?”

  “The two women staying here. Where are they?”

  “Well, they’re right here,” I said, pointing to Ning and Somjit, neither of whom seemed the least embarrassed to be standing there in their underwear.

  “And the least you can do is allow them to protect their dignity,” said Mair.

  She pushed past one of the other gray safaris into the room and came out with sheets, which she draped around the grinning co-op ladies. Another safari came back from the carport and whispered into Meaty’s ear.

  “Enough of this,” said the boss. He was obviously used to striking terror into the hearts of people. Arny was off lifting weights at the gym; otherwise I knew he’d be quivering now at all this aggression. The rest of us weren’t particularly impressed, but we felt obliged to assume the submissive role of ignorant country folk.

  “I want the owner of that Honda, and I want her now,” yelled Meaty.

  He kicked the fence post in front of the cabin for effect. It shattered into a hundred shards. It was riddled with termites, so that wasn’t as impressive as it looked. But the sound woke the dogs, and seeing their pack leader in danger, they came chasing at Meaty from the rear. Theirs, too, was a silent attack. He knew nothing until they were on him. He looked down as these three little dogs ran circles around him barking laughably. They weren’t a fearsome pack, and he quite rightly ignored them. Sensing their failure, they lay down on the sand and scratched.

  “Well, if you know them, you stay right where you are, mister,” said Grandad. “If you’re a friend of theirs, you can just pay their bill for them.”

  “That’s right,” said Mair with an impressive southern lilt.

  “What?” said Meaty.

  “Those two stuck-up bitches drive in here with their posh accents and their snobbish airs, stay here for four nights, eat all our food and sleep in our luxury cabins, and the next thing you know, they’ve gone. Didn’t pay a damned baht and wrecked the TV to boot.”

  Way to go, Grandad.

  “When was this?” he asked.

  “Sunday morning,” I said. “We woke up and they’d gone.”

  “Why didn’t they take the car?”

  I hadn’t thought that far.

  “The heads had seized up in the cylinders,” said Grandad. “Happens a lot down here from the salt water. Japanese. What can I say? No idea how to make a decent car.”

  “And you are?” asked Meaty.

  “Retired mechanic,” said Grandad. “Stockholder in this establishment.”

  “I bet they got a bus out to the airport in Surat,” I said. “Probably long gone by now.”

  “Then explain to me why they were still in Pak Nam yesterday?” Meaty asked.

  “Those bastards,” said Mair. “I bet they’re ripping off one of the other resorts now. If only I could get my hands on…”

  At that moment, one of the safari suits tapped his boss on the shoulder and pointed toward the road. My hero in brown turned into the car park on his police motorbike and headed in our direction. Chompu should have stopped in front of the shop because the sand was soft out by the cabins, so his arrival wasn’t as impressive as it might have been. He got bogged down in the sand and fell over sideways. The safari suits exchanged glances while he got himself up.

  “They’re vandals, officer,” said Mair. “Look what they’ve done with our doors. Arrest them.”

  “What’s going on here?” asked Chompu in a particularly manly voice.

  Meaty sized him up, probably deciding whether to shoot him.

  “Come with me, Lieutenant,” he said and started to walk toward the kitchen block. Chompu stood his ground.

  “Tell me why I should be taking orders from you,” said Chompu.

  “Because you’d be very sorry if you didn’t.”

  Wisely, I thought, Chompu walked a few meters away and stood beside Meaty, who seemed to be getting something out of his pocket. They faced away from us, heads bowed while Meaty spoke in hushed tones. Chompu nodded, then wai’d. When Meaty returned to us, Chompu stayed back as an observer.

  “What cabin were the women in?” Meaty asked.

  “Two,” I said. And one of the safaris went immediately into that room without being told.

  “Did they leave anything behind?” asked Meaty.

  “A busted TV,” said Mair.

  The safari came out of the room shaking his head.

  “We’ll be back,” said Meaty. “You’re to do nothing. Tell no one about this visit. If the women come back for their car, you’ll call this number immediately.”

  He handed me a card with nothing but a cell phone number on it.

  “Mr.…?” I said.

  The unwanted visitors turned and hurried back toward the car.

  “Who’s going to pay for all this damage?” Mair shouted.

  I squeezed her
arm. The car doors slammed, the tires kicked up gravel, and they were gone. The engine sound soon blended into the growl of the surf. I smiled and walked around to each of the members of our cast and squeezed their hands. It had been a creditable ensemble performance. Chompu came over to join us.

  “My knight,” I said. “Thanks for coming, Chom.”

  “I’m not sure I helped at all.”

  “I don’t know. They were a scary bunch. Who were they?”

  “I’ve been ordered not to tell you that they were from Special Branch. But some elite faction that deals with—what he referred to as—higher matters.”

  “You’d better not tell us then.”

  “Sounds like the gray squad,” said Grandad. “They only come out when there’s something heavy-duty happening. And if they’ve been running checks on the banks and the post offices, that’s a lot of manpower. Exactly what have your two ladies got themselves tied up in?”

  “Exactly what two ladies are we talking about?” asked Chompu.

  I’d had very little time to explain the details of our resort resident problem.

  “I assume this has nothing to do with the Burmese?” he said.

  I remembered Aung.

  “The Burmese. Right,” I said and I turned my phone back on. “I tell you what, Captain Waew, why don’t you brief the lieutenant? We can’t have any secrets here now. I reckon we’ll have a couple of hours at the most before they’ve scoured all the resorts and come back here for a second round. We have to get the Noys to a safe house.”

  “We’ve got a little house out back,” said Somjit of the co-op. “It used to be our grandmother’s till the cow fell on her. It’s comfortable though. Not much of a hike to the outside toilet.”

  “They can wear disguises,” said Ning.

  The girls had no idea what was going on, but they were quick to get into the spirit of things. Even when we’d first dragged them over from the shop and told them the Noys were in danger, they’d been quick to strip off.

  “Call them up,” said Grandad.

  Waew let out an impressive whistle without the use of his fingers, and two of the cockle collectors looked up from beneath their broad cowboy hats. He gestured them over. The Noys walked up the sand wearing the sarongs and T-shirts the co-op ladies had been wearing earlier. Their cockle dredgers were cardboard election placards. Their shell harvest was unimpressive, but they had survived. All that remained was for them to collect their things from cabin three and prepare their escape. Mair kept watch in case the safaris returned. I dialed Aung.