The Axe Factor: A Jimm Juree Mystery (Jimm Juree Mysteries)

by Colin Cotterill

  I suppose I could have ended with, “And they all lived happily ever after,” but trouble was brewing. The rightly aggrieved losers in this heist had donned red shirts and were seething and simmering in the background. The rural community, stirred by the ousted PM and his mates, were not going to lie down and whimper. In my sweet Buddhist country, there was nothing like a good class war to bring out the crazies. I saw nothing but bloodshed on the horizon. We were primed for a civil war.

  That’s why I didn’t want to talk about it.

  “All I said was that I reckon he’d be really hot in the sack,” said Sissi.

  “I’m sure that was on his résumé. Now, to business. Sis, I need you back here.”

  “I’d sooner OD on gin and paracetamol and drown in my Jacuzzi.”

  “Good. So you’ll think about it then?”

  “Never.”

  “Come on. You had a good time here.”

  “I had a good time at Hong Kong Disneyland, but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

  “You were liberated in Maprao. You shape-shifted regularly between attractive middle-aged woman and mascara-bearded, baseball-capped brother, and nobody judged you.”

  “Nobody noticed. They thought I was two different people.”

  “Everybody noticed. It’s just that nobody gave a toss. It put all this Sunset Boulevard, reclusive ex-beauty queen, locked away in her penthouse apartment in Chiang Mai into perspective. You aren’t a celebrity. Nobody, and I mean nobody, would remember you from your six appearances in a prime-time soap in 1994.”

  “Seven appearances.”

  “Sorry. But it doesn’t matter if you hosted your own show and appeared in FHM magazine every week and had a well-publicized affair with the prime minister. Because two weeks after your last news byte, they’d all have forgotten you and moved on to the next star.”

  There was a long silence, the type that invariably ended with her pressing “End Call.” But I guess Maprao had toughened her up.

  “It has nothing to do with fame,” she said.

  “Then what?”

  “Jimm, you wouldn’t have experienced this, but back then, whenever I walked down a street, every man I passed wanted me.”

  I loved it when she was being candid. There was no button on my phone that said “Slap the bitch.”

  “I was sexy,” she went on. “I was desirable. Men would drive into the backs of slow-moving trucks because they couldn’t take their eyes off me. Now do you know what happens when I walk down a street?”

  “No, I give up.”

  “Men turn their gaze from me. Nobody desires me. I’m repulsive. Nobody loves an old transsexual.”

  I was surprised nobody had used that as the title of a country tune.

  “I come home and cry for hours,” she confessed.

  “Then why were you so happy down here?”

  “Because in Coconut Grove I didn’t care whether anyone found me attractive. I didn’t want to be a fisherman’s pin-up girl. In fact, it was an advantage to be unattractive there.”

  “Really? You seemed to be very fond of Ed the grass man.”

  “That’s just because I thought he was yours. Friendly sibling rivalry. I could have had him, of course. Down there I could have had any man.”

  She’d lost her big city mojo, but her little village arrogance was working fine. I knew she was just looking for a dream to hold her together. I played along.

  “It’s true,” I said. “I had at least a dozen men inquire about your availability.”

  “I know.”

  “Should I send some up?”

  “I’d never get the smell of squid out of my bedding.”

  “I’ll break the news to them. But as you won’t be doing any entertaining, perhaps you could do me a little favor. It may involve some illegal computer tampering.”

  “Fire away.”

  I told her about my missing doctor and the incident at the Chumphon conference. As I didn’t have a scanner at home, I told her I’d go immediately to the Pak Nam computer shop, scan the conference documents, and send them to her. I often made unnecessary and complicated plans like that, forgetting I was in the twenty-first century.

  “What was the name of the conference?” Sissi asked.

  “Nurture and Nutrients,” I said. “It was organized by a group called the Bonny—”

  “—Baby Group. Yes, I’ve got it on the screen now.”

  My sister typed faster than I was able to think.

  “I have the speakers list here,” she said.

  “And there I was looking forward to the bicycle ride. You see the pediatrician from Bumroongrat?”

  “Dr. Aisa Choangulia.”

  “She was the one Dr. Somluk asked her question to. She wanted to know who paid for her to attend the conference. Is there any way we can find that out?”

  “Hmm. Too bad it was in Chumphon.”

  “Why?”

  “If it was somewhere with an airport, I could trace her ticket back. But as Chumphon is neither here nor there, I’d guess she drove or was driven down. That’s not so easy. They might have transferred her fee into her account, but banks can be a bit snotty about being hacked. It’s easier here than, say, Switzerland, but it still has its problems. I’d be better off going through her credit card, that way—”

  “Let me put this another way,” I said. “Is there any way we can find out who paid her, and you just doing it without going through all the reasons why it’s difficult?”

  “Then how would you appreciate just how clever I am?”

  “You know I idolize you. You make felony across borders sound so easy.”

  7.

  Prohibit Carrying Dangerous Germs, Pests, and Other Baleful Biology

  (tourist attraction)

  I had this idea for an informal workout DVD program called Riding My Bicycle into the Wind. It was full-body aerobics with bonus facelift. Or perhaps not “lift” exactly. More of a slipstream facial. Your features get swept back over where your ears used to be. Your skin is sandpapered by the salt in the air that comes at you at 100 kph. Your underarm flaps are hardened by holding onto the handlebar for all you’re worth, and your bum and your thighs are so pumped, you leave a trail of liquid fat on the bitumen. All this and you don’t exactly get anywhere.

  I could have taken the motorcycle that day, but I was in desperate need of a tone-up. I had—and as yet there was still nothing in writing—a suitor. A celebrity stalker. Of course it would lead to nothing, but there would be no tears. It’s better to have had it and lost it than never to have had it at all. I looked that up. Tennyson almost had it right. I felt an obligation to have flexed muscles and be twenty centimeters taller, but all I was getting was tired. It felt like three and a half weeks later that I reached the Lang Suan Bridge. The wind had turned into a gale, and there were clumps of salty water tangled up in it. I even had to pedal on the downward slope. I crawled across the Times Square intersection and was on foot and pushing by the time I reached the local police station. The English sign beside the gate said: PLICE.

  There’s a lot to be said about our police station, but I’ve said it all in previous stories and, well, I have to live here and we wouldn’t want to upset the gentlemen in brown, would we now? Suffice it to say that you’d have to be very naughty or lacking in faculties to be transferred to a rural station in Thailand. But every now and then you find a place that goes two years with no violent crime, and that type of station attracts a softer type of policeman. A man who prefers planting poppies and training the lads’ football team to chasing criminals. Such was Pak Nam. Every now and then they’d transfer a celebrity police wrongdoer from a big city station. But those thugs merely curled up and died from boredom within the month. Our Pak Nam station was so laid-back they had a timetable which listed the officers’ part-time jobs and when they’d be available for duty. Such was the case with the leader of the pack, Major Mana. He was the head regional Amway direct-sales representative. He rarely left
a crime scene without having sold a water purifier or anti-aging supplements to the witnesses. Coincidentally, since my family had arrived in Maprao, there had been three murders, four unexplained deaths, a hand-grenade attack, breaking and entering on four of our unlocked cabins, and a monkey-napping. Major Mana held us directly responsible for this upheaval in his crime-free precinct and also accused us of being to blame for the sudden slide of his sales unit from fifth to twenty-third on the provincial dream-team chart.

  My retort was that crime had been here all the time but the police had been too busy to notice. A station that puts two months’ preparation into the Lang Suan boat race procession really wasn’t concentrating on crime fighting. Pak Nam’s arrest record was currently 2,344th in the country. Without a shred of shame, Mana took credit for most of the crime-fighting victories that should have been attributed to my family, but there was still the air of “Tell her I’m not in” whenever I stopped by.

  “Ahh, Nong Jimm. Our famous reporter,” said Sergeant Phoom. “The major says he’s out.”

  “How about Lieutenant Chompu?” I asked.

  “He’s still on his mental retardation leave.”

  I’d been afraid of that.

  “Can I leave you this letter to give him if he pops in?”

  “No problem.”

  “So, is there anyone here who…”

  I couldn’t say it with a straight face. The Pak Nam station didn’t even have a functioning computer or a lock-up. What were the odds of having a crime lab?

  “… might be able to do a DNA test on a blood sample?”

  He smiled at me.

  I turned to go.

  “Constable Ma Yai would be your man,” he said.

  I laughed. Ma Yai lived in a one room unpainted brick house along the bay from us with his wife and six children. They took in laundry.

  “He’s a lab technician?” I asked.

  “He did a course.”

  “On DNA?”

  “He’s our specialist.”

  “In that case I’d like to file a criminal complaint and have Constable Ma Yai on my case.”

  “A complaint?” said Sergeant Phoom.

  “I’ve been threatened.”

  He laughed from a place where all his cigarettes’ tar had coagulated.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Disaster seems to seek you out, Jimm Juree.”

  It was the second comment in two days that suggested I was a misadventure magnet. I wondered whether I really was the hub of a crime industry in Maprao or the wiper who cleaned the windscreen so people could see what was actually there. Perhaps they didn’t want to know. I felt in my backpack with my Handy Pandy and pulled out the cleaver and the still-attached note.

  “Ooh,” he said, and reached for it.

  I pulled it away.

  It wasn’t a huge police station. Sergeant Phoom shouted, “Ma Yai! You around?”

  “Out back” came the faint reply.

  “Get out here.”

  Constable Ma Yai walked through from the rear of the station in shorts and a sweat-stained singlet. He was built like a ballerina.

  “Hello, Nong Jimm,” he said and smiled.

  “Kung Fu practice?” I asked.

  “Cockfight,” he said. “Just warming up Beauty for the bout tonight.”

  It didn’t surprise me. Cockfighting was against the law. That they’d be raising a fighting cock in the yard behind the police station should have been a contradiction. But I’d met Beauty, who was officially the police mascot. He was the Mickey Rourke of chickens. Beaten, bloodied, and deformed but as tough as crab claws. He really gave you the impression he was fighting for the honor of the department.

  I sat at one of the six empty desks while Constable Ma Yai took my statement. He took it slowly. Two fingers on the typewriter. A dog with no hair walked up the steps and lay at my feet. Birds were nesting in the corner beams. A sign beside a staff-only staircase read: PLEASE USE THE STAIRS ON YOUR BEHIND. I simplified events as much as I could and only used words I thought he wouldn’t have to look up in his old battered dictionary. When I got to the part about the thumbprint, he stopped typing and opened the drawer. To my surprise he pulled out his own fresh pack of Handy Pandy washing-up gloves, ripped off the top, and put one on. He gently flipped the note over and stared at the print.

  “It could be chocolate,” he said.

  “It’s blood,” I assured him. “Smell it.”

  “Nong Jimm, my nose isn’t my best functioning organ,” he confessed.

  He had six children, so there was no doubt which organ took that prize.

  “So how do we go about analyzing it?” I asked him.

  He nodded knowingly.

  “I carefully put it in a zip plastic bag,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “And post it to Bangkok together with this statement. There it will be analyzed and we will be sent the results. But don’t forget, a DNA test can only be useful if we are able to compare it with the DNA of the suspect. Do you have a suspect in mind?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “That’s very good news,” he said. “I can add it to this package. Do you have any blood or body waste of the suspect?”

  “Not on me,” I said. “But I can get it really soon. Maybe a day or two. Once we’ve got both samples, how long will it take to get the results?”

  “Hmm.”

  He nodded wisely.

  “Technology’s come a long way,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a definitive answer by May.”

  “May—the month?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s December.”

  “Little cases like this aren’t a priority. You’ll be bumped down the queue every time a big news story comes in. It would have helped if you’d been killed.”

  “Helped?”

  “Hurry the lab work through.”

  “Can’t you do anything? I thought you were the expert here.”

  “I have a certificate.”

  “Right, so what did you have to do to earn that?”

  “Two week course in Pattaya. All expenses paid. I tell you that was one serious booze fest. The wife was sure I’d been unfaithful. I’d thought about it, but—”

  “Ma Yai, two weeks of DNA methodology and all you learn is how to put evidence in a plastic bag? Didn’t they even give you a station DNA testing kit as a going-away present?”

  “No. But they did mail us something later.”

  “Chemicals?”

  “Might have been, but we didn’t open it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Terrorism. We had strict instructions. We haven’t opened any parcels since they blew up New York. Plus, there’s no point. I don’t get any financial reimbursement for being a DNA expert. Just the headache of more paperwork. And what if I made a mistake?”

  “Ma Yai, you didn’t actually attend any of the lectures, did you?”

  “I went to the opening speech. That was compulsory. I mean, you had to sign your name. But after that there was stuff going on in two or three rooms all the time. They couldn’t trace you. They had a pool.”

  “Where’s the kit?”

  * * *

  The storeroom at the Pak Nam station was a dusty museum of files, unopened packages, stolen goods and, to my surprise, three lifelike Japanese love dolls in police uniform. My guide wasn’t prepared to tell me what they were doing there. He blew dust off the package he said had been sent by the DNA training organizers. I carefully slit it open with my Swiss Army knife and emptied the contents onto the table. The box inside was labeled in English: DNA HOME PATERNITY TEASING KIT. I assumed they meant TESTING.

  “They sent you this?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I explained to him what it was. He didn’t seem to care.

  “Do you want it?” he asked.

  I considered the unlikely event that I’d need to test more than one man to be sure which was the father of my child. But DNA was DNA. Wh
y wouldn’t I be able to test blood with it?

  “You sure you won’t get in trouble giving it to me?” I asked.

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know. Stealing police property.”

  “It wasn’t sent by the police. It came directly from the sponsor.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Okamoto.”

  “The condom people?”

  “Yeah.”

  * * *

  The cycle ride home took about eleven seconds. Grandad Jah’s plastic poncho acted like a sail. I left the ground eleven times, like Mary Poppins. When I arrived at the resort, the shop shutters were down and Arny sat, head bowed, at our concrete table.

  “I just flew,” I said as I dismounted.

  Arny looked up and there were tears in his eyes.

  “Where’s Mair?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Still on the boat, I guess.”

  “Then…?”

  “Gogo,” he said. “She’s gone.”

  * * *

  The tail end of the Mighty X made sparks on the road. The license plate was long gone. We’d tried to remove the log, but it wasn’t worth the hernia. We wrapped the dog in a towel, leaped into the cab, and caused untold damage to the truck in an attempt to get the body to the vet before it became a corpse. The odds were against us. Gogo was cold, her tongue was purple, and she had no pulse. But I remembered once waking up at four a.m. in exactly the same condition after a night on margaritas. It was only by putting a mirror in front of her nose that I could tell she was breathing at all.