Killed at the Whim of a Hat

Six

Lieutenant Chompu and I were driving across the skinniest part of the country. If you looked at the map of Thailand we were at the very squeezed waist. Since the seventeenth century they’d talked about digging a canal from the Gulf to the west coast but to lift such a long-term project off the ground it probably would have helped to have an administration in power for longer than five months. If they ever did get around to it, this would be the perfect place. There was so much pretty nature to churn up. In an air-conditioned police truck with Mai Charouenpura on the CD player and a little strawberry-shaped bottle of air freshener on the dash, the journey from one coast to the other would take us forty-five minutes. Chompu drove like a beast.

Involving the Pak Nam constabulary in my inquiry had been a calculated risk. If we stayed here, I mean if my family didn’t move away or if we weren’t all arrested for complicity in Mair’s revenge killing, I knew I’d need friends at the local police station. I decided to share my information about the Chainawat family, and invite the lieutenant along on the interview. It couldn’t hurt to have a policeman beside me. As he was now officially in charge of the VW investigation he decided it would be a lovely day for a drive and we both agreed it was such a picturesque route. He talked about the weather and the lack of excitement in Pak Nam and the joy of being in one of the last places on the planet where men all wore mustaches.

I took a chance and asked him about the progress in the Feuang Fa temple slaying. He turned his head to me with his mouth wide open and almost ran off the road.

“How could you possibly…?”

“I find things out,” I told him. “It’s my job.”

“But it’s ultra top secret.”

“I know.”

“I shall have to watch my mouth.”

“So…?”

“Off the record?”

“Of course, unless it’s really interesting.”

“It’s not. Believe me. Feuang Fa temple is slap in the middle of our jurisdiction. All right, perhaps not slap, but it’s certainly more ours than those crustaceans at Lang Suan. My word, they wouldn’t know what to do with a murder if it crept up their trouser legs and bit them on the you-know-what.”

“So Pak Nam should be running that inquiry too?”

“Yes. But what do you know? Bangkok, that cauldron of anarchy and fashion disasters, decides this is too high profile for us to handle. They send down a few plainclothes super-detectives, put a media blackout on the whole thing, set up Lang Suan as their center of operations, and pretend we don’t exist. Rude, if you ask me.”

“So they don’t give you any feedback?”

“Not a whimper. Major Mana goes into Lang Suan every day because, technically, we’re all supposed to be coordinating our efforts, sharing information. And we all know how that works, I don’t think. They treat him like a motorcycle messenger. It’s all take and take and no give. It’s our officers doing the legwork, the interviews, the paperwork, providing the local color, but they don’t tell us a monkey’s back end.”

“So why do you think they’ve blacked it out? Isn’t it just ‘Abbot gets killed in rural temple.’ ‘Another monk goes bad.’ Page two of the Daily News. End of public interest?”

“What do I think?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I think. I think somebody is somebody.”

A statement like that probably wouldn’t have meant much to a non-Thai. But we lived in a country where being somebody, or being related to somebody, was far more relevant than what you did or how you did it. Sissi hadn’t got around to discovering what had caused the news blackout but the ‘connection’ angle was a likely one. During this great period of foolishness that pervaded in the capital, I could see a nod from a senior politician to a senior policeman suggesting, “We really don’t need any more bad press right now.” If either abbot was somebody’s brother or a member of a certain dynasty, there were those who’d exploit the connection for political gain. It would never work as a Hollywood movie plot device because nobody in the West would believe it, but it was one of the many cancerous growths in our culture and we’d come to expect it.

“Does your major tell you what snippets he’s picked up from Lang Suan?” I asked, ignoring the ‘somebody’ track for the time being.

“Well, like I say, they don’t give very much away, but Major Mana is livid. He thinks this case should be his career buster. He bitches about the whole thing. Before Bangkok came in and trampled all over us he’d handled all the initial statements, the crime scene photos, evidence searches, the lot.”

“You took photos?”

“Of course.”

“Can I see them sometime?”

“No.”

“Don’t be nasty.”

“No, I mean you can’t see them because they’re all gone, swept up in the great CSD evidence plunder. They even emptied our computer files and took our discs.”

“This sounds deep.”

“Doesn’t it.”

“Did you see the photos?”

“I’m afraid I did. I could never forget them. Blood’s never been my strong point.”

“Could you describe the scene to me?”

“Do I have to?”

“It might help.” Chompu pulled the truck over to the side of the road.

“What are we stopping for?”

“I need to use my hands.”

“To describe a crime scene.”

“It makes it more dramatic.”

“OK.”

“Well, he…the deceased, was lying facedown on the concrete path, feet pointing…it must have been east. His head was almost in the flower bed, blood puddled under him half a meter to either side.”

“What was his expression?”

“Couldn’t see it. His whole face was masked by his hat.”

“And his robes?”

“Normal enough. No wounds, no blood at the back. The major said he’d been stabbed at least a dozen times in the stomach.”

Chompu stabbed into the air in front of him.

“That sounds extreme.”

“We discussed that in the station once we were excluded from the loop. The frenzied stabbing ruled out a lot of small-time crimes. Unlikely to be a mugging, not that he’d have a lot of money on him. Unlikely the perpetrator was caught red-handed doing something he shouldn’t. Even a hired hit seemed unlikely. This was more a…a grievance. It was a hate killing, either of Abbot Winai personally or of what he represented.”

“Someone with a grievance against Buddhism?”

“It’s happened before.”

“What’s to hate about Buddhism? It’s the most nonviolent, forgiving religion there is.”

“You never can tell. A novice abused by a monk when he was young. Someone who believed his grandma was cremated before she was dead. An old feud. Land deeds. And, don’t forget, the temple’s quick to welcome ex-thises and thats into its fold without background checks. There are a lot of gangsters in saffron.”

“Was there anything in the evidence they took that might have pointed to a motive?”

“Nothing at all.”

“And that was the last you heard from Lang Suan?”

“Yes…well, no.”

“No?”

“There was a call asking if we’d picked up a piece of equipment they’d misplaced at the crime scene.”

“What type?”

A camera.

I had to laugh at that.

“That’s rich. Someone stole the police camera? Nobody’s safe. It’s a good job you took your own crime scene photos.”

“I imagine they’re accusing us of stealing it. We are just country policemen, you know.”

I stared out of the window and a landscape of thoughts panned in front of my mind. Mai was singing ‘I don’t want you to know’.

“When did they call?”

“Who’s that?”

“The people who lost their camera.”

“Oh, it must have been…Sunday.”

Perfect timing.

“Are you sure it was Lang Suan?”

“Why?”

That seemed like a fitting time to tell him about the attack on the guard at Feuang Fa temple on Sunday night. Given all he’d said about the lack of feedback, I wasn’t surprised he hadn’t heard. I reached into my shoulder bag and handed him a black plastic pouch containing an empty cigarette lighter. I told him where I’d found it and what my granddad had said about the likelihood of it being dropped by the attacker.

“Are you suggesting it was the killer who phoned to see if we’d found a camera?”

“It’s a theory.”

“And once he found out we didn’t have it…”

“He went back to the temple to look for it. He tore half the hedge down.”

“And, if your granddad’s right, his lighter ran out of fluid before he could find it.”

“Either that or he found it just as the lighter was running out, or after a fumble in the dark, in which case we’ll never know. But at the very least you might have the killer’s fingerprint on that lighter.”

“But if we didn’t find the camera, and he didn’t find it, that could mean someone else did.”

“The plot thickens. What are you going to do?”

“As soon as I get a moment I’ll call this in to the major. The first thing we need to do is confirm whether it was Lang Suan who phoned. Then we’ll see.”

We drove through the rich green hills of Phato, passed Pak Song in a blur and reached the west coast with hunger in our bellies. Before heading into Ranong we stopped off at the main intersection with highway 4 and ordered yellow rice and chicken and green curry soup and, although the lieutenant was on duty, I indulged in a small Chang beer. To my surprise it arrived so cold it poured like sleet from the bottle. The first sip froze my brain and loosened my tongue.

“Exactly how did you get into the force in the first place?” I asked him.

“How do you mean?” He smiled.

“I’ve seen the recruitment process. I’ve read the protocols. If you’d been this camp at the interview there’s no way they’d have let you in.”

I thought I’d overstepped. It wouldn’t have been the first time. I got the feeling he was angry and I was about to apologize, but…

“I acted,” he said. “I’d debated making an issue of it, you know? Inviting the TV stations to come. Getting someone on camera to explain why people with my characteristics wouldn’t be suitable for the police force. Nobody had ever attempted it. Of course there are lots of gays in uniform but they’re all in their respective closets, not daring to poke their heads out. But when it came down to the wire, I chickened out. I was afraid they’d pretend I had some other fault which was the reason I’d been rejected and embarrass me with that instead. I was afraid I’d make my point and lose my opportunity. So I took the job over the principle.”

“And spent your career being transferred to nowhere places like Pak Nam.”

“What makes you think I didn’t request this?”

“You’re a waste of talent, Lieutenant.”

“You’re too sweet.”

The Chainawat building was a modest two-story slab of bricks not far from the bustling dockland of Ranong. There were a number of places with the same lack of style in the dusty side street. The southern Chinese went for simple practicality in their workplaces until they’d made as much money as they possibly could, then built gaudy, furniture-filled homes to retire to. Then they found they still spent most of their time in the workplace because, actually, you can never make too much money. In Thailand it was the Chinese who’d developed the south. Without them, the native southerners would still be lying in their hammocks sipping coconut water. Well, no. Come to think of it the natives still were. But the Chinese liked to work. It was tin that attracted them in the seventeenth century. Once they’d exhausted that they put in the southern train line to transport rubber to the capital. Despite what Old Mel would have us believe, it was the Chinese who introduced the oil palm, closely followed by drugs, gambling and prostitution. And with all that revenue, legal and otherwise, it was only fitting for the Siamese court to send out Chinese accountants to count the money. A lot of them became so rich counting it that they dug in as governors. Money and power became inextricably tied. You won’t find too many prime ministers over the past two hundred years without some decantation of Chinese blood in their veins.

But for those of southern stock, refugees from Malaysia and India, there’s always been that dilemma — that unanswered question: “Why would you want to work eighteen hours a day just to make money when you could lie back and watch the terns skim across the surface of the water, when you could marvel at the height of a coconut palm or put mind bets on the layers of cloud that raced at different speeds overhead?”

Small fat children on bicycles played in front of the Chainawat building, watched by an elderly lady so white and crinkly she appeared to have been carved out of polystyrene with a box cutter. She glared at us. This street, like the whole of Ranong, smelled of fish. We walked into a large reception space with nothing but an island of clunky wooden benches arranged into a square around an un-matching glass coffee table. A small child played with letter bricks on the tiled floor. A cat rolled over and exposed her nipples at us when we walked past. The middle-aged man who appeared from a side room seemed not at all pleased to see a strange uniformed officer in his midst. Companies had their regular police to pay off and didn’t appreciate interlopers.

“Yeah?” he said. He looked like Jackie Chan’s accident-prone brother. We’d decided to let Chompu do the talking.

“We’re looking for Vicha Chainawat.”

“Yeah.”

It wasn’t clear whether we’d found him or if he’d merely understood the question.

“Are you Vicha Chainawat?”

“No,” he said, and headed off toward a rear office. We assumed we were supposed to trot after him. This was a busy place with peopled desks and tables and computer banks and, seen through the French windows, Burmese women in long sarongs packing dried fish into plastic bags. There really was nowhere in the south where you didn’t trip over our disadvantaged neighbors. Our escort abandoned us in the midst of all this. We stood there like hat stands until, a minute later, Jackie’s brother returned with an old lady and an absolutely gorgeous man. Memories of my incomplete love affair with Liu De Hua came flooding back into my underused heart. He wore a shirt so white and with such precisely ironed seams he looked like a wing of the Sydney Opera House in sunlight.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Oh, yes, I thought.

Chompu stepped in and introduced himself and gave his rank and offered up my name without any explanation. Vicha led us back to the wooden benches and the coffee table which had miraculously sprouted glasses of red fizzy Fanta, a plate of rambutan and several little peanut biscuits wrapped in greaseproof paper. Once we had sipped our drinks and ignored the rest, Chompu described our case to Vicha and the old lady. He told them about the VW and the fact that it had probably been buried at the time when the Chainawat family still owned the land. Throughout, the gorgeous man provided a simultaneous translation in Chinese for the woman who, it transpired, was his mother, the matriarch of the Chainawat clan. She was even paler than the polystyrene woman out front. She gave no sign that she was listening to her son or remotely interested in the story. It wasn’t till the description and the translation were exhausted that she came alive. Her cackled speech began like dry branches crackling on a fire. Then, one by one, someone threw fireworks into the flames. It was surprising that such a colorless woman could bang and whoosh and kerplonk with such splendor. We were all exhausted when she finished, and enjoyed the brief silence.

“My mother said our family had owned all the land in that area since back in the early nineteenth century. It was, of course, a land development investment because most crops planted so close to the sea would be inferior. As our family became more successful and better land became available, we started to sell off tracts around Pak Nam.”

“Does your mother recall the plot she sold to Mel?” Chompu asked.

“She remembers it,” said the son. “She has a very good memory.”

“Your family first sold seventeen hectares of land to Mel for a palm plantation but kept hold of the neighboring twenty-six hectares. Then, seven years ago, out of the blue, you asked Mel if he’d be interested in buying a small tract of land, just the three hectares attached to his field. Originally, it was included in the land deed of your plot but you’d gone to the trouble of separating your land into two deeds: one for three hectares and one for twenty-three. Why did your mother do that?”

Chompu had been doing his homework. Good boy. Vicha asked his mother and we ducked as the rockets flew.

“She says we needed cash in a hurry for another investment.”

“All right. Then why didn’t she just divide the land in half: two thirteen-hectare plots? Surely they’d be more salable. And Mel was interested in buying more.”

The reply was worthy of Chinese New Year celebrations, but the old lady was mostly bangers and crackers by now. She spat and fizzled and her eyes flicked angrily from mine to Chompu’s. Junior interrupted to clarify some points before translating.

“My mother didn’t think anyone would want to buy a plot of land that was hemmed in by other owners. She wanted to wait till one of the other neighboring land owners made an offer. She only offered a small plot to Koon Mel because she knew he wasn’t a wealthy man and she could help him by offering it cheap.”

My turn.

“That’s very neighborly of you,” I said. All eyes around the table were on me now. “You don’t happen to recall an open pit at the end of your land, a fish pond or reservoir?”

I’d looked straight at her when I asked my question. I’d begun to notice her hostility toward me from the moment she’d first set eyes on my running shoes, so I didn’t think I could work on the female bonding angle. She cackled a question.

“My mother would like to know who you are, exactly.”

“I am exactly — ” I began.

“Koon Jimm is my investigative assistant,” Chompu cut in.

The question ‘What’s her rank?’ was channeled through Vicha.

My lieutenant surprised me by sliding either into or out of character. He squinted and dropped his voice several octaves.

“Koon Vicha,” he said. “Please tell your mother we haven’t come to be interviewed. We are investigating two suspicious deaths on land that once belonged to you. Right now, she is our chief suspect. If she’d prefer, we can come back with two clerical assistants and go through every one of your deed records. Failing that, answer the question.”

He gave me goose bumps. The old lady sneered at the translation, then spluttered her answer.

“My mother says that our family never actually occupied the land. It was purely an investment. Nothing was planted there. The land was neither filled nor excavated. If any work was done there — or any funny business — it was done so without the knowledge or permission of the family.” The mother and son huddled again. “My mother says this interrogation has tired her out and wonders whether your lady friend here has any more questions before she goes to lie down.”

We were driving back across the picturesque hills of Phato. This had been the driest August on record but still the vegetation was lush and the roadside trees hung out their blossoms of lilac and yellow and orange like risque underwear on drying day. Spirit houses were wrapped in gaudy colored cloth. A bus stop was tied to a power pole with plastic string. Children not old enough to smoke were driving motorcycles. Unpainted concrete houses. Mountains of coconut husks. Royal Umbrella rice and eggs of different natural hues for sale in bamboo shops the size of cupboards. Things you only notice when you take the trouble to.

“She was lying,” I said.

Chompu turned down the screaming of Mariah Carey and discontinued his accompaniment.

“Now, how would you know a thing like that?”

“Because little old Chinese ladies always lie.”

“Ah, a sound investigative premise.”

“They do. They have a code. If they feel they’re in a corner they give you whatever answer they think you want to hear.”

“At what point did she begin to leave you in doubt as to her veracity, lady friend?”

“From the moment she started speaking. Don’t you think it odd that the company owns fourteen thousand hectares of land but she can recall the details of one little plot in the boondocks? And all that horse manure about helping out a neighbor. Did she give you the impression she was the caring type? No, she had a reason to remember that land. It meant something to her.”

“You’re a suspicious lady.”

“Crime reporters can’t afford to believe everything they hear.”

“Crime reporters aren’t that trustworthy themselves. Oh, there goes my mouth again.”

“Did you have any particular crime reporter in mind with that statement?”

“No, really, I shouldn’t.”

“It’s too late to turn back.”

“All right, let’s start with a charming reporter from the Chiang Mai Mail who flew down to pursue a case in the south.”

Busted.

“I didn’t actually use those words.”

“And you didn’t actually use the words ‘I quit my job and moved down to live in a rundown resort in Maprao,’ either.”

“People hear what they want to hear irrespective of what I actually tell them. Their mistake.”

I cast a sideways glance at the lieutenant who was smiling serenely at the scenery.

“How long have you known?” I asked.

“Since the day of your romantic lunch with the boss.”

“You checked up on me?”

“Call me nosy.”

“Do the others…?”

“Not sure about the major. He’s been hard to tie down lately. Can’t even get him on the phone. The constables? Well, they’re locals. Nothing happens down here that doesn’t spread like water hyacinths on a warm pond. Everyone knew about you the day you stepped over the provincial border.”

I pouted. I hated to get found out on a lie.

“You aren’t exactly lieutenant open-and-aboveboard yourself.”

“How dare you. I’m as honest as a mountain spring. Not that I actually know how honest mountain springs are. I imagine they’re quite unsullied, however.”

“Really? This morning? My phone call telling you I’d found the previous owners of Old Mel’s land? ‘Oh, can I come along?’ he says. ‘You’re so resourceful,’ he says.”

“So?”

“So we arrive in Ranong and you drive straight to the company. I hadn’t told you the address.”

“Oops. You hadn’t?”

“No.”

“Lucky guess?”

“You’re a man to watch, Lieutenant Chompu.”

He blushed.

“And talking about men to watch…” he said.

“Hmm. Lovely smile. And I bet he ironed his own shirt.”

“Too bad he’s his mother’s pet.”

“Reminded me of Liu De Hua.”

“Ah, scream. I had a crush on him for years.”

“Me too.” We slapped palms and the truck swerved dangerously onto the hard shoulder. “And there I was thinking I’d never have anything in common with the police.”

The family ate dinner that evening at the table nearest to Mair’s shop so she could keep her eyes open for a sudden unexpected rush. Arny watched over the two cabanas occupied that night: one by our largely absent ornithologist, another by a young couple who had arrived with no luggage on an old motorcycle. The television in the room was old and clunky and, frankly, not worth stealing, so Arny had taken cash in advance and didn’t bother to fill out the Tourism Authority of Thailand registration form. He considered it an unfriendly intrusion into the guests’ private lives. It was in Arny’s nature to trust everyone he met. I suspected his oversensitivity was a result of the constant beatings he’d taken from the gloves of disappointment. He never learned.

The last of the evening light was reflecting off the slimy backs of beached jellyfish: hundreds of them like macrobiotic UFOs forced into shallower and shallower waters by the over-fishing of the Gulf. Overnight they’d be cannibalized by our nascent community of tiny crabs that lived in pinprick holes in the sand. Once I’d seen what they could do to a jelly the size of a bin lid, I was loath to sit on the beach for longer than five minutes at a time. To a shortsighted crab, my expanding backside could very well have been mistaken for some washed up sea urchin.

“Anyone got any news or should we just sit here and eat in silence?” I asked, breaking Mair’s dinner rule by surreptitiously letting a prawn tail drop through a crack between the floorboards to where Gogo waited on the sand.

“I found a gym,” said Arny. “I mean, a sort of gym.”

“Good news, little brother,” I said insincerely. I knew a gym would drag him further away from his duties and leave more for me to do.

“Where is it, child?” Mair asked.

“Bang Ga. Just two villages away. It’s not exactly California Fitness. They’ve got weights and a Nautilus, but it’s better than rolling logs along a beach. Some old fellow donated money to the temple there and the locals couldn’t think of what else they needed. So, someone suggested investing in health rather than death. He figured everyone would be in better shape for the trip to the afterlife.”

“That someone sounds like a football coach,” I offered.

“Muay Thai boxing. I met him today. He asked if I’d be interested in joining his squad.”

Some hope of that. First kick in the ear and my little brother would be squealing. He wasn’t the fisticuffs type. It always surprised me that bodybuilding was classified as a sport. It had its own categories in the national games. All the strutting and posing. I would have put it in the same category as hairdressing. I wouldn’t dare mention that to Arny, though.

“And what did you tell him?” I asked.

“Said I’d think about it.”

“Good for you. Don’t make any rash decisions. How about you, Granddad Jah? What have you been doing today?”

I hoped we’d be able to build on the previous day’s uninterrupted flow of speech but I guess he’d exhausted himself. He looked up from his rice and grunted. He needed inspiration.

“Fine,” I said. “Then it’s my turn.”

I didn’t dwell on the visit to Ranong, if only because it wasn’t that interesting. Instead I described the crime scene at Feuang Fa temple as recounted to me by Lieutenant Chompu. There’s nothing like a murder scene description to keep the family engrossed during a meal. At one point, Granddad Jah looked up and I thought he was about to make a comment. But he had second thoughts and continued to shovel food into the hatch of his mouth. Granddad Jah had good solid bones but you could see most of them, so I had no idea where all that food went to.

“And Mair,” I asked, “how was your day?”

“Ed stopped by again,” she said. I wished I hadn’t asked. “He was on his way to put up a roof.”

“I thought he cut grass.”

“He’s a carpenter, too. He asked after you again.”

“I hope you told him…you know what.”

“It was against my principles, but, yes I did.”

“Good Mair.”

Granddad Jah grunted and pointed his fork. We followed the direction of the prongs. Someone was outside the shop waiting. Mair put down her utensils and went to attend to the customer.

“Business is booming,” said Arny. He collected the plates from the table and carried them to the kitchen. It was his turn to wash up. Granddad Jah refused to give up his bowl and spoon. He was apparently attempting to scrape the pattern off the ceramic. I wondered if he had the same worms as Gogo.

“There are two avenues,” he said, unexpectedly. Again I was surprised to hear his voice. “One,” he continued, “is when you go to a crime scene and look for what isn’t there, what’s been stolen: knives missing from drawers, computer discs removed. You’ve seen those scenes.”

Right. Now he was telling me how to look at a crime scene. The only crime scene he’d ever worked involved bent bumpers and squashed truck drivers. I’d attended more crime scenes than he ever would. All right. Respect for the elderly. Humor him.

“You follow the victim around and make a list of all the things that should be there but aren’t,” he continued. “Then there’s the second avenue. You go to a crime scene and you look for things that are there, but shouldn’t be: footprints would be one example, cigarettes in an ashtray, a forgotten umbrella, that kind of thing. And sometimes, what shouldn’t be there is so obvious you don’t see it.”

I didn’t know whether this was a general lecture or whether he had something specific in mind.

“Was there something the police didn’t see at Wat Feuang Fa, Granddad?”

“There was, Jimm. There was.”

“And what was that?”

“A hat.”

“A hat?”

“You said Abbot Winai was wearing a hat. It obscured his face.”

“That’s the way the lieutenant described it to me.”

“And how many monks have you seen wearing hats?”

I had to think about it. In the north there were some.

“The monks wear little woolly beanies all the time up in the mountains,” I said.

“That’s true. There are those that get away with it. But it’s more for survival. Better than freezing to death. But it’s still against the regulations. You won’t see any monks down here wearing a hat in the daytime, especially not a high ranking abbot.”

“It was hot, Granddad. And he was old.”

“It’s hot everywhere, and most abbots are getting on in years. But you don’t see it. And that’s because it’s clearly laid out in the Monastic Code that you can’t wear a hat. You can put up a saffron umbrella, even pull your robe over your head, but a senior abbot who’d reached that level of responsibility would never dream of breaking the rules. There’s no way he’d wear a hat.”

Granddad took up his bowl and spoon and went off to the kitchen.

“Thanks, Granddad.”

I sat on the rattan seat on my veranda, the seat that always creaked rudely as if I weighed eighty kilograms, and I slapped mosquitoes against my bare arms. I told myself a story. “An abbot’s about to go for a walk in the afternoon heat. The sun burning down on him. There happens to be a nice straw hat on a hook so he grabs it. Nobody watching. No harm done. And he strolls off to enjoy the blossoms.” Why complicate something so simple? Mair was a born-again Buddhist; I decided to ask her.

I walked to the shop. Mair was sitting at the round concrete table out front talking to someone. I could only see the shadow of his back against the shop lights. He was slightly built and wore a cap. Mair saw me coming and said something that made her guest rise quickly and head off along the road into darkness.

“Who was that?” I asked.

“A customer,” she said.

“Mair, you did a three-week intensive meditation course at Wat Ongdoi to make yourself a better Buddhist, and I know for sure that on the door of your cabin, number four on the Top Hot Precepts list, if I remember rightly, was, ‘Abstain from False Speech’.”

“I’m not lying. It was a customer.”

“It was Meng the plastic awnings man. Maprao’s own private dick.”

“He bought a box of matches.”

“Distortion is just a breed of lying. What did he have to tell you?”

“Nothing.”

“Mair?”

“Really. He said most people have poison of some type or another. It’s too broad a field. We need to narrow it down.”

“Mair, you’re trying to find out who it was that killed John. What good will that do you? You aren’t going to bring her back to life. And forgiveness is a blessing, or something, isn’t it?”

“I can forgive. I just need to know who it is I should be forgiving. I think the perpetrator needs that release from guilt.”

“You want to know who poisoned John so you can tell him John forgives him?”

“Yes, exactly.”

I felt one of those Maprao migraines coming on.

“It’s late, Mair. We should shut up shop.”

I scooped an embarrassingly small sum of money from the takings drawer, turned off the light and helped Mair pull down the shutter. We walked down to the water’s edge, found a spot with no jellyfish and sat on the sand. Crabs eyed us hungrily. I started the timer on my watch. Mair was smiling at the moon as it slipped in and out of the clouds. She really could find beauty anywhere. I told her about Granddad Jah and his new-found detecting aspirations. I expected her to laugh along with me, but instead she took my hand.

“Your Granddad Jah didn’t get beyond the rank of corporal…”

“I know. That’s why I was so shocked he — ”

“…because in all the forty years he was with the police, he refused to take bribes.”

“He…?”

“He passed his exams but no stations wanted him because of his reputation. He had a philosophy, a moral code. He vowed never to break it. If something was against the law it was against the law no matter who the perpetrator was. It wasn’t affected by interference from influential figures or pressure from senior police officers. Eighty-seven percent honest was dishonest in his book. He’d been one of the brightest recruits of his year and would have been fast-tracked for the higher ranks if only…But all a clean policeman succeeds in doing is showing all the others just how dirty they are. Nobody trusted him. Your granny tried to convince him to take the odd bribe, just to fit in, but he wasn’t having any of it. So, for forty years he blew his whistle and directed traffic.”

I could feel tiny claws nipping at my rump. It was long past the safe period for beach sitting. Mair had left me to my thoughts and gone to bed. It was just me and the back end of Gogo and the crabs. A longtail boat was passing slowly. The crewman was thumping the calm water with a heavy plunger to scare the sandfish out of the holes and into the nets. The steady rhythm was like a buffalo’s heartbeat. My own pulse had quieted some. There really was never a dull moment in our household. Why had Mair or Granny or Granddad Jah himself never told us about his moral code? Did they think we’d laugh at him because of it? Was honesty such an embarrassment? Why, I wondered, were we such a family of secrets?