Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat

by Colin Cotterill

  One course was called Public Oration and Oral Improvisation. We called it Pooi for short. It was taught by an old ex-playboy Englishman who still thought he had what it took. He flirted a lot and held in his gut for an hour and a half. It must have been a relief for him to get home and breathe normally. At the beginning of the course he allotted everyone a case study. This came in the form of a famous person who gave a lot of speeches. The point was to select one of his or her speeches, or excerpts from several, and analyze the techniques following a style analysis chart handed out by the lecturer. I was envious of my friend, Ning, because she got Bill Gates and he kept his speeches simple to the point of sometimes dropping his audience into a coma. I was lumbered with George W. Bush. I tried to trade him for Condoleezza Rice. I’d always thought if an ethnic girl with the surname Rice could pull herself out of anonymity, we all could. But nobody wanted George, so for six months I studied the oratory skills of the President of the United States of America. And I hadn’t thought it was possible but Condoleezza was way down the if-this-one-can-make-it…inspiration table compared to George W. The poor man really wasn’t a public speaker and I wondered whether he could make real sentences in his private life. But George was a hit and I got an A for that course.

  Now, that was a very long way around explaining where I’d heard the phrase ‘killed at the whim of a hat’. George was in Washington, D.C., and he’d fallen off the edge of the teleprompter again and he was caught somewhere between ‘on a whim’ and ‘at the drop of a hat’ and ended up with terrorists killing one another ‘at the whim of a hat.” I’d spent a fortnight trying to work out what it meant. But it was the first phrase that came to mind when I heard about the abbot’s orange hat. For some reason, weird as it may seem, I knew that hat had a bearing on the case.

  Every log and shell and homicidal crab was picked out by the big full spotlight in front of me. I sat on the grassy lip where the sea had left off its sand supper last monsoon season. Gogo was beside me, absentmindedly munching at the hair on her haunches. I always got the feeling dogs had seen cats do it and thought it was cool without really grasping the concept. Dogs were all male when it came to cleanliness. It was midnight. I’d considered breaking open one of the wine bottles I’d brought with me from Chiang Mai but while I’d searched through the unopened packing cases for the missing corkscrew the question ‘Why should I?’ began to flash in front of me like a low-battery warning. Was I celebrating the comeback of crime journalist, Jimm Juree, or mourning the demise of my short-lived innocence? Would I be toasting the return of my hard-arsed self or bemoaning her arrival? Or perhaps I was hoping that, wine-drunk on a grayscale beach, I would no longer see those forty-six photographs in color. I thought that big, almost-full saucer in the sky – just a chip off the underside – might help me to think, to have something to tell Arny the next morning. Something more satisfying than:

  “It’s work.”

  But it just hung there and drained me of all my excuses and, for the second time in three days, I cried my eyes out in front of a dog.

  ♦

  I handed over the camera to Major Mana the next morning. I’d exchanged greetings with Sergeant Phoom at the desk and he’d waved me up. Mana was in his office talking on his cell phone. It was something personal judging from how he put his hand over the phone and turned to the window when I appeared in his doorway. He didn’t seem terribly pleased to see me. He finished his conversation and nodded for me to come in. I put the camera in its plastic bag on his desk.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Me, scratching your back,” I said. “I think this might be the camera nobody lost.”

  I told him how and where I’d found it earlier that morning and that I wouldn’t mind at all if he took credit for its discovery. I expounded my theory that the mystery person who’d called asking if anyone had retrieved a forensic camera from the crime scene, might, in fact, have been the killer himself trying to find a camera dropped during the attack. I could only hint that the dogs may have frightened the killer away as I obviously couldn’t tell him I’d already looked at the photos.

  Major Mana looked decidedly unenthusiastic about my theory. He thanked me for bringing in the camera and gave me a brief lecture on the importance of not touching evidence, as if the plastic bag had been a stroke of luck on my part.

  “Should we take a look?” I asked. I felt that a journalist who’d recovered a camera should be excited about what was on it.

  “At what?” he said.

  “The pictures on the camera. They might be important.”

  “Ah, no. We need to process the camera first.”

  “Process it?”

  “Check it for fingerprints and trace elements, you know…blood, fluids. We don’t have those facilities so we’d need to send it to Lang Suan who in turn would take it to Chumphon.”

  “Aren’t you just a little bit curious to see what’s on it?” I asked. “You know, once you send it to Lang Suan they won’t share their findings with you.”

  “Of course they will.”

  “All you’d have to do is turn it on and take a look. You’d be perfectly justified.”

  “There’s certain…protocol.”

  “Really?”

  “I promise, as soon as Lang Suan reveals the contents of this camera I shall pass the information on to you. I haven’t forgotten our deal.”

  That pretty much confirmed that I wouldn’t be getting any useful inside information from my major. I thanked him for his cooperation and wai’d as I reversed out of the room and walked along the corridor to Chompu’s room. He was enjoying a morning pla tong go dough puff and coffee whose color confirmed its instantaneousness. He looked up and smiled.

  “My journalist. I’ve missed you. Doughnut?”

  I sat opposite him and broke off a limb of dough.

  “I wasn’t expecting you all to be in so early,” I confessed.

  “Are you joking? Two murder inquiries? The province has sent us oil tankers full of overtime money. We’re supposed to be on call. If Lang Suan needs a manicure or a change of light bulbs, we’ll be there. You watch.”

  “I just stopped off at the major’s office. He didn’t seem pleased to see me.”

  “You probably interrupted his Amway dealings. Direct sales of unwanted products for the discerning housewife.”

  “He sells Amway?”

  “Not a lot of income from bribes down here. He has to make his money in other dishonest ways.”

  “How was the crime lab?”

  “Useless and marvelous. How was Surat?”

  The creep. How could he possibly know I went to Surat?

  “If you’ve fitted a GPS device to the bottom of our truck I’ll – ”

  “Tsk, tsk, little scribe. I’ve had a requisition for staples in the system for three months. How long do you think it would take me to produce a tracking device? You really should stop watching all that televised American junk. It’s all made up, you know?”

  “Then how do you know I went to Surat? You’re starting to give me the willies, Lieutenant.”

  “It’s all very simple. Imagine a world where there are no strangers, where everybody is either related or acquainted.”

  I resisted aristocracy jokes.

  “It sounds unhealthy,” I told him.

  “But it exists. My mother has a girl who does the garden. The garden girl’s husband drives fish from Lang Suan to Surat. The owner of one of the restaurants he delivers to has a daughter who works on the Dairy Queen stand in front of Home Art Mega Store. I’ve had her observe the manager for me. Collect gossip from staff, that sort of thing.”

  “That doesn’t sound particularly ethical.”

  “Everybody wants to be police. I’m just letting them live out their fantasy. And my Dairy Queen police lady reported to me this morning that she’d observed a woman with a bad haircut accompanied by the Incredible Hulk go into the manager’s office yesterday afternoon and stay there for a very
long time. She even took a picture on her cell phone. Technology continues to astound and frighten…You’re looking particularly depressed. Can I help?”

  “She said I have a bad haircut?”

  “Surat isn’t ready for the accidental-razor-attack look. It’s really you. Don’t let it ruin your life. She works in Dairy Queen, God bless her.”

  “But how the hell did you find out about the manager?” My voice had climbed into the soprano loft.

  “I’m a policeman,” he said with a straight face, and there was no evidence to the contrary. Lieutenant Chompu really was a policeman. You couldn’t let those minute traces of nail polish fool you. He knew his job. We made a deal. I’d tell him all about our interview with Koon Boondej and he’d share his findings from the lab in Prajuab. I decided not to tell him about the camera, out of spite, I suppose. I wanted to hold something back or there’d be no lollipops for negotiation. It was a mistake but I’m not immune from stupidity. I finished my tale first. He drained the last coagulants from the bottom of his coffee cup.

  “Well done,” he said. “No, really. Very well done.”

  “You understand it does rely on my instincts,” I told him.

  “No problem. Your instincts are super. But that does leave us at a nasty dead end as far as our VW goes.”

  “Not really. At least we know the couple in the VW weren’t just innocent tourists. They were involved in a criminal act. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did something to piss off old Auntie Chainawat and she got revenge on them.”

  “I don’t th – ”

  “In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if she wasn’t masterminding the whole carnapping caper and I bet she had a whole network of poor but dishonest couples out scamming rental companies. They’d drive the stolen vehicles to her place and she’d traffic them on to Malaysia or over to Cambodia or she’d break them down for parts.”

  “But presumably not bury them underground.”

  “What? All right. That doesn’t make sense, but – ”

  “I’m losing faith in your instincts.”

  “No, keep listening. One couple screws her out of some money so she makes an example of them. Lets all the other gang members know that insubordination won’t be tolerated. She gathers her people around her at the fish pond, slowly lowers the VW into the water. The doors taped shut. Everybody gets the point. She values loyalty. They walk away like relatives after a funeral.”

  “One or two bubbles rise from the pond,” said Chompu, dramatically, “then it is still. A lone white tern takes off and we follow it out to sea. It would make a stunning final scene for the movie version. I see Meryl Streep as the Godmother. They can do wonders with make-up now.”

  “It’s a hypothesis. You have to start with a hypothesis.”

  “What did that poor little old lady do to you?”

  “She glared at my running shoes disrespectfully.”

  “Oh, well. That’s it then. Send in the SWAT team.”

  “OK, your turn.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “It’s a deal.”

  “Very well. The lab at the barracks in Prajuab is stiflingly hot and showed distinct lack of artistic input in the decoration. The lighting was abysmal. They had our two skeletons side by side on one trestle table. It was quite sweet. I wanted to interlock their fingers but I was watched all the time. I wasn’t convinced they’d got the puzzle exactly right. We’d sent the couple mingled so I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d just thrown them together, first come first served. One of the technicians kept referring to a textbook, for goodness’ sake. He was pretending to educate me as to this or that phenomenon but I got the feeling he was checking his own work. They couldn’t tell me a thing about the cause of demise apart from the fact that they weren’t chainsawed, axed or machine-gunned to death. Nor were there any arrows or spears sticking out of them. Nor were they the victims of explosions or bone-eating diseases. But, in fairness, they were certain these two hadn’t died of old age. The textbook confirmed for me that they were quite young, early twenties.”

  “So, in summary, it was a complete waste of a drive.”

  “Not at all.”

  “How so?”

  “I was on my way out through security and this swarthy, top-heavy army captain came running after me. I assumed he was taken by my good looks and wanted my telephone number, but he had a large manila folder in his hand and he asked me, ‘Are you the lieutenant from Lang Suan’ My reputation had preceded me. I smiled and said ‘Yes’. Then he handed me the envelope and asked me to drop it off to Major General Suvit. I did my terribly formal salute for him and he didn’t know whether to nod or wag his tail so he saluted back and turned on his heel and fled. Not for the first time in my life, I didn’t realize exactly what a prize I held in my hand. I assumed it wasn’t terribly important because it wasn’t sealed, just tied with one of those string thingies.”

  “But even with the pressure of such a temptation, you didn’t take a peek?”

  “Of course I did. I mean, he didn’t make me swear not to look, did he? And it didn’t say, ‘For the eyes of Major General Suvit only’ And, knowing the military, it might have contained something illicit. It was my duty to look. And what do you think it contained?”

  “I give up.”

  “I’ll give you a clue or two: knife, blood, abbot…Oh, come on, you must have it by now.”

  “I thought they’d sent the body to Bangkok.”

  “It appears the legal system in the capital is busy at the moment so they rerouted Abbot Winai to Prajuab.”

  I scraped my chair close and he winced at the noise.

  “All right. What did they find?” I whispered.

  “I’m not sure I can tell you.”

  “You’d sooner face the embarrassment of being beaten up by a girl?”

  “That was threatening behavior toward a police officer. I could arrest you for that.”

  “Chompu?”

  “All right, but this really is not for publication. Thirteen stab wounds, no less. Seven were postmortem.”

  “No!”

  “All stomach and groin. Long, very sharp knife. Blade about thirty centimeters.” I knew that. I’d seen it. “Perpetrator probably shorter than the victim, left handed, no defense wounds so the abbot was, no doubt, taken by surprise.” I knew that, too. Shock, more like it. Completely bemused, but, as I recalled it then, not fearful. Just a look of resignation. And I doubted the killer was left handed. He just needed his right hand free to take pictures. “Victim otherwise in good shape. Died from exsanguination. No other marks on the body.”

  “What do you make of it?” I asked him.

  “From what little I know of the case I’d say the killer wanted to make a point. The first two wounds would have done the job so this was a statement. ‘Look what I’ve done.’ There was something bottled up inside the killer that needed to be let out. There’s madness there.”

  “Do you think another abbot could have done it?”

  “No.”

  His answer was crisp and definite.

  “Then why do you think the head of Wat Feuang Fa is still a suspect?”

  “If he is, and I’d have to take your word for it because nobody tells me anything, it’s because A, he has a motive, or B, he’s the only suspect they have.”

  That was a bull’s-eye on both.

  “I don’t believe he did it but all they’d need is a murder weapon,” he said, “and your Abbot Kem is well and truly defrocked.”

  Nine

  “I understand small business growth. I was one.”

  —GEORGE W. BUSH, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, FEBRUARY 19, 2000

  I arrived home just in time to start preparing lunch. I wondered whether my family might just happily starve to death if I didn’t bother to come home again. The nearest pizza restaurant that delivered was four and a half hours away. I’d even checked how far they’d be prepared to go. I tell you, I don’t make long-distant calls just to get laughed at.
That was the last hint of business they’d see from me. I was exhausted. I thought of all the male crime reporters around the country returning home about now to those wives in Understanding Thailand who greeted them with a smile and a table of food. Why didn’t I have a wife like that?

  I would start on the mackerel. I was sure they’d missed me, whereas Arny walked past and ignored me completely. I’d had the truck all morning, preventing him from going to his gym. I knew he’d be mad. Mair was in the shop slicing huge banana bunches into smaller banana bunches and writing the price, 5 baht, on the skins. Everybody in Maprao had banana trees so I couldn’t think who’d buy any. Across the road, Granddad Jah was sitting under the banana leaf roof on the bamboo platform watching traffic.

  I had nobody to tell about my morning. I’d been a busy investigator. There were four hotels and seven resorts in or around Lang Suan, eight if you included ours, but I can’t think why you would. After leaving the police station at Pak Nam I visited every one of them. I could have flashed my press card with my finger over the expiration date and gone that route, but I was sure the police would have been there already and told them to get in touch if anyone came nosing around. Someone would always call if they were approached by the press.

  So, I made up a story. I told them my family had taken over a resort and we didn’t really know what the hell we were doing. All right, perhaps I didn’t make it up, but I did say we were having trouble with registration. I had the stolen TV as a ready anecdote and I wondered how other places registered their guests to avoid such a dilemma. I started off general, was very friendly, laughed a lot, then got on to the subject of the guest register itself. Every one of them let me take a look. In fact they were all so forthcoming and amiable it was almost embarrassing to be deceiving them. I was looking for guests who’d arrived the day of, or the day before, the killing, then checked out after the attack on the guard. This was merely my attempt to eliminate out-of-towners from the list of suspects. Lang Suan wasn’t the kind of place you could spend a night in your car without being noticed so I thought I’d start with hotel guests: someone who’d registered with a car or a truck. The victim was from Bangkok and had only been scheduled to stay here for three days during his investigation. It was conceivable that the killer followed him here.