Killed at the Whim of a Hat

Seven

I was awoken early the next morning by the sound of someone banging on my cabin door. I opened it to find Arny dressed in only a towel.

“They’ve gone,” he said.

“What?”

“The guests in room two.”

“They paid in advance, didn’t they?”

“Yes, but…”

Constable Ma Dum was the poor man assigned to investigate the loss of our television. He was honest in his appraisal that, as we didn’t ask for personal details of the couple in room two, nor did we insist on holding on to their motorcycle license until they checked out, we shouldn’t become too excited about the possibility of recovering the stolen TV. True, there may have been witnesses who saw a couple on a black’n’rust Suzuki fleeing with a large television, but as the sheets, towels and curtains were also missing, one could assume that the television was disguised in some way. People piled their motorcycles with all kinds of junk in these parts.

So, our TV was as good as fenced. A very small crime. Room — two-hundred baht. Sale of secondhand TV — five hundred baht maximum. Profit, about the cost of a Starbucks mocha supreme and a vanilla slice. When I’d phoned Pak Nam to report it, Sergeant Phoom had instantly recognized my voice. My name found itself on a report card which was checked by Major Mana. He turned up at our place at ten a.m. in his shiny truck. He was extremely uppity.

“So,” he sniffed, walking around with his hands behind his back like a very confident bullfighter. “Flew to the south for the VW case, decided you liked it so much you convinced your family to move down here permanently, uh? Swift move.”

“I didn’t actually say — ”

“Deceiving a police officer.”

“Which isn’t a criminal offense unless I’m a witness or a suspect,” I told him and immediately bit my tongue. “As I’m sure you know.”

“Of course. And I’m willing to forgive you.”

That didn’t make sense but I’d take it.

“Thank you.”

“After all, you did spell my name correctly in three major newspapers.”

I knew it. I bet he went out and bought all the dailies the morning after our interview.

“Spelling’s one of my strong cards,” I told him.

“And I see this as a beginning, rather than an end. It certainly can’t hurt to have a reporter with such lofty connections just ten minutes down the road. I can see us forming quite a formidable alliance. A little bit of information here, a mention in a report there.”

“I was hoping for exactly the same.”

“But…”

I’d been waiting for a ‘but’. He was leading me toward the beach with one hand gently annoying the small of my back.

“…you did me a great disservice.”

“I did?”

“My favorite restaurant. Staff who know and respect me. A regular customer taken ill in the bathroom and his female acquaintance flees the scene. Not at all good for a senior policeman’s reputation.”

“I assumed you’d been called away on a case. I waited twenty minutes.”

“I was disturbed to find you gone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s only one way to make up for it.”

Surely not.

“I know,” I said. “You should come and have lunch here someday.”

“Wouldn’t work, Nong Jimm. That wouldn’t clear my besmirched name at my favorite restaurant, would it now?”

I suppose I did owe him.

“All right. I’ll just have to clear it with Ed.”

“Ed?”

“My fiance.”

His hand didn’t leave my back but it stopped massaging.

“Very sudden.”

“Not really. Ed was the reason I…we all moved down here.”

It was a ploy that usually worked but Mana was a slimy one.

“Very well,” he said. “Clear it with Ed. I’m at Lang Suan tomorrow so we should make it the weekend. I’ll call you re the place and time.”

He was bulletproof. He hadn’t even met Ed and he’d already dismissed him as small fry. He didn’t even know the man cut grass for a living. Arrogant. But wait…Lang Suan?

“Actually, Thai Rat have asked me to look into the Wat Feuang Fa murder,” I said, as casually as I was able. He was a dark-skinned man who was suddenly flushed vanilla.

“You? They what?”

“Abbot Winai’s killing.”

“How could you possibly…?”

“Lofty connections.”

“The press knows about it?”

“Just us at the moment. But we have plenty to run with when I’m ready.”

“When you’re ready?”

The guilty hand fled from my back and rejoined its colleague behind his.

“You know. Right place right time. Just ten minutes down the road. I think it would be a very good idea for us to swap notes over lunch. There’s so much I need to know.”

I could see the word ‘leak’ spill out of his brain one letter at a time. I knew he’d been warned not to have anything to do with the press on this case. And here I was, his pet reporter. Where else would I be getting my information from?

“Ah, look,” he said. “We should certainly liaise on this in the future. But perhaps now isn’t such a good time. As I hear of developments I’ll pass them on to you, of course. In the meantime it would probably help both of us if you sent me your notes on the case. Then I can fill in the gaps for you. I’m playing a key role in the proceedings.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

“My source tells me Pak Nam isn’t in the loop anymore. Something about not being trusted. I heard you even lost one of the Lang Suan crime-scene cameras.”

“That is not true. I have no idea where that rumor began and I can refute it categorically. I’ve talked to the forensic department at headquarters. I went there in person. It’s a very small department. One man, in fact. Not only did he not lose a camera at the crime scene, he was off getting rabies shots that day and didn’t even visit the site.”

“Interesting.”

“So I would appreciate it if that rumor did not find its way into the newspapers.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” I was alpha now and snarling.

“Are they still holding the Abbot Kem in Lang Suan?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “He’s back at the wat. They have him under house arrest there.”

“How’s it looking for him?”

“Not good,” Mana confessed.

“Murder weapon?”

“Not so far, but there are any number of places to toss a weapon over there.”

“Any other suspects?”

“No. Look, I really can’t…”

“Car, motorcycle sightings around the time of the killing? Strangers in town?”

“No.”

“Anyone with a grudge against the Bangkok abbot? I mean, his job was to investigate wayward monks and make recommendations for them to be disrobed. There may be a cause for revenge there.”

“We haven’t found anything. That is to say, no comment.”

So much for our new open relationship. Either the Bangkok detectives had shut him out, or there really were no other suspects or motives, or he was lying to me. I didn’t like people lying to me. He leaned too close to me and smiled.

“I could arrange for you to interview Abbot Kem,” he said.

“I already have,” I said, haughtily.

He looked at me with awe. The press had climbed several rungs in the power rankings of his admiration and I knew there’d be no more hanky-panky lunches with the good major. He doffed his cap, vowed to recover our lost TV, and even waved at me as he climbed into his truck.

Abbot Kem was back home and living in his stilted hut at the rear of Wat Feuang Fa. Two uniformed constables from Lang Suan had been assigned to watch him, but when I cycled past them in my disguise — baggy flower-patterned shorts way past my knees, Red Bull T-shirt under a long-sleeved gingham shirt, flip-flops and straw hat — they barely looked up from their comics. I was so obviously nobody to admire or fear that I depressed myself.

I found the abbot alone. He was sitting on the same front step drawing patterns in the hot air in front of him. The dogs sat at his feet watching his fingers sculpt.

“Good morning,” I said.

He turned to me and smiled. There was no evidence on his face that the murder inquiry was causing him any grief at all. But I guess that’s what it’s all about. When you get to warp-factor gamma three on the self-discovery orbit, worldly worries bounce off your defense shield. I envied him. I could use a little karma when the handlers brought their monkeys to collect coconuts and the wicked beasts deliberately threw them down onto my vegetable nursery. I wish I had the patience to take it all seriously, this religion thing. But I have sacrilegious ideas rushing through my mind all the time like a continuous, graffiti-laden subway train passing through a station. There’s no way I can eviscerate the troubling thoughts and leave myself with purity. I’d implode.

“So, they let you out, I see,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Did they treat you well?”

I was mired in cliches, too. I needed a good clean out.

“Yes.”

“I’m assuming they didn’t actually charge you with anything.”

“No.”

“Can I ask you some more questions about that day? The day you found the body?”

I hoped I could come up with a question or two that evoked more than one word answers.

“Yes.”

“Did you notice anything odd about Abbot Winai when you found him lying there on the path?”

“Odd?”

“Incongruous, illogical, downright weird.”

“Are you talking about the hat?”

Bingo.

“I am.”

“I mentioned it to the detectives. It’s been on my mind since that afternoon. The officers dismissed it. They said it was a hot day — late afternoon glare of the sun. The abbot could be forgiven for slipping on a hat, they said.”

“But you don’t agree.”

“I know how strictly my friend followed the regulations. That’s why he was elected to conduct inquiries on behalf of the Sangka. It’s clearly stipulated in the Disciplines, book five, regulation four, that a monk cannot wear a hat.”

This was starting to feel rather silly.

“So what do you think would possess him to break with tradition and put on a hat?”

“That’s just it. He didn’t. We had been debating my prickly situation with regard to the precepts…”

“Arguing?”

“More like a philosophical discussion. We’d been mulling over points for two days already. It was his habit to walk and digest his thoughts, then return with more questions. He was a very logical and fair man. He stood and stretched and told me he would be back soon and began to walk along the concrete path. As soon as he stepped out of the shade of the fig tree he readjusted his robes and covered his head with one flap of material. He wasn’t wearing a hat, of course.”

“Perhaps one of the gardeners left it there? He could have picked it up on the way?”

“What for?”

Good question. I had no idea.

“So, when you reached him, that was the first time you’d seen the hat?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of hat was it?”

“It was very bright orange with a red flower.”

If I’d been wearing glasses, I would have looked down them at him.

“Orange?”

“Bright orange. Like the traffic cones.”

“And the police didn’t see anything odd about that?”

“Again, they assumed he’d grabbed the first thing he could find to go on his walk.”

“But you told them…?”

“I am a suspect. They were more interested in the abbot’s investigation of me.”

“Do you want to talk about that?”

“There is nothing to talk about.”

“But you were engaged in long philosophical discussions with a man who was killed. It’s all relevant.”

“Philosophy has no personal investment. We discussed theory.”

“The theory of a relationship between a monk and a nun.”

He smiled. That was always a bad sign with an abbot. I could see he was rearranging his sandals with his feet for a quick getaway. I was about to lose him.

“There is nothing there of relevance,” he said, and stood.

“One last question, then,” I said.

“You must be heavy with answers by now.”

“I can squeeze in one more dessert. Do you remember seeing a camera?”

“Where?”

“At the crime scene.”

“No, but I was far away.”

“You didn’t approach the body?”

“No.”

“You didn’t kneel down? Feel his pulse?”

“No.”

“Then how did you know he was dead?”

He smiled as he started away from me.

“Of course, I knew,” he said.

He walked so evenly across the dirt ground it was as if he had little hover jets on the soles of his sandals. If only I’d paid more attention in Religious Instruction. Of course he knew? Why? Because he’d killed him? Because he’d witnessed his girlfriend kill him? How do you know a man’s dead without touching him? I could see why the detectives still had their doubts.

Abbot Kem was gone and the nun was nowhere to be seen and I decided there was nothing more to be learned from Wat Feuang Fa. I had things to do elsewhere, starting with a lunch to cook. A peculiar family to feed. It was time to get back on my bicycle and head off home. It would be another long cycle but I was starting to enjoy the rides. I could feel tone in muscle that I’d long since given up on. I was sleeping whole nights rather than segments. Exercise had its place. I was starting to see myself as this Maprao-based Agatha Christie character pedaling off to solve crimes on her two-gear shopping bicycle and modeling in her spare time. I reached down for my flip-flops and found just the one. I looked around at the frogs-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth expressions of the half-dozen dogs that hadn’t left with the abbot. They were all as ugly as sin, Fellini dog extras: silvery eyes bulging, sores gleaming, this or that limb missing. These were the dogs who came to temples to see out their final days. But, as is always the case, the most innocent-looking suspect is invariably the culprit. And Sticky Rice sat at the corner of the hut with an obviously fake expression of innocence on his face. He was sitting on my flip-flop as if it was a surfboard and he wasn’t about to give up his ride. When I reached for it he tore off, my sandal between his teeth.

I hopped after him to the rear of the nuns’ quarters and homed in on the back of a hut I knew to be one of his stash houses. There was no sign of cute but fat Sticky R. and I really wasn’t in the mood to play. I considered leaving my flip-flop behind and riding home without it but it was the principle of the thing. I’d watched The Dog Whisperer on Animal Planet once when there was nothing else on. If dogs think you’re weak they’ll take control of your world. I had horror visions of them walking through police lines and taking over Government House. I needed to stop the revolution right here. I lowered myself into a push-up and stared into the forty-centimeter gap below the hut. The shadows were dark but, sure enough, one black eye like that of a rogue panda stared out at me from the gloom. The pup let out an unconvincing juvenile growl which failed to terrorize me. I growled back. I edged forward on my belly and he retreated with my sandal. Edge, retreat. Edge, retreat. The farther in I crawled the darker it became so I took my cell phone out of my back pocket and turned it on. A warm blue glow emanated from the screen.

In this swimming pool light I could make out Sticky Rice backed into a corner. He was trembling. It made me feel like a terrible bully. I was sure if he kept up his current regimen of eating everything he saw, he’d soon outweigh me, but at that moment he was still a little fellow.

Life hadn’t been kind to him. Barely six months on the planet and he was already in the doghouse. An inmate of the mutt penitentiary where all bad street dogs came to die a slow death. I decided I wouldn’t thump him with my shoe once I’d retrieved it. He’d suffered enough. But he was still a meter from my grasp. Luckily I was wearing clothes I could throw away when I got home because I had to crawl through grime to get to him. I emitted those clicking sounds that are supposed to make dogs feel at ease but I positively refused to engage him in a Mair-type conversation. I knew if I could just reach out and touch his ear like the nun had done he’d regain some self-esteem. I was now close enough to my shoe but the fat kid refused to give it up. I walked my fingers to it and he snapped at them. I growled again and he trembled. Mexican stand-off.

That’s when I was distracted by the sight of a small black shape off to my left side. I moved my cell phone to get a better look. Eureka and bejabers! It was a camera. Half the Nikon label was visible although it had been almost completely chewed off. The whole thing looked as if it had been attacked by sharks. It seemed a little upmarket for the usual Pak Nam crowd: a fancy lens and dials and what have you. Would it have been too much to hope that I’d found the elusive crime-scene camera? Was it likely that an overweight pup would have the energy to drag it all the way back here from the concrete path? Sticky answered that himself. He abandoned my shoe and leaped to defend his camera. He bit into what was left of the strap and started to drag his booty away from me. But that little prize was mine and, puppy or no puppy, I was prepared to fight him for it.

“I don’t know. It’s jammed or something.”

“You should have given it to the police.”

I swore that if Arny said that one more time I’d push him out of the truck and drive myself.

“I will,” I said again. “Just as soon as I’ve seen what’s on it.”

“No, I mean, you should have given it to the police as soon as you found it.”

If ever my mother retired from mothering, I knew I’d always have brother Arny to take her place. How could three siblings come from such different planets? We were on Highway 41 heading into Surat. It was a monotonously straight stretch of road and it was only the surprise arrival of holes or lumps that kept you awake at all, which is probably why they were never repaired.

“Arny, listen,” I said. He was driving, so he had no choice. “Do the police know I found the camera? No. Has anyone actually reported it missing? No. If I handed it over tomorrow, would they have any way of knowing I hadn’t just that very minute discovered it? No. Is the fat pup going to fess up? I don’t think so. So, relax.”

“We know. Our consciences know.”

Honestly, if Lieutenant Chompu had been available, I would have asked him to drive me. It was his case, after all. But he’d gone to Prajuab to the army base where they’d taken our bodies. He wouldn’t be back until late. I needed back-up so Arny was my only choice and on long-distance drives he could be like one of those self-help tapes stuck in the player on a loop.

I had the camera in a transparent plastic bag and I’d tried everything I could to play back any photos it contained. But somewhere between the dropping and the dragging and the chewing, and probably a good helping of saliva, the temperamental piece of equipment had lost its ability to display. The only markings I could make out between the scars were the letters DSLR and the beginning of a code, D3555. It looked like a very expensive camera, sturdy but not too heavy. It wasn’t the type of thing a regular tourist would carry around. Our photographer at the Mail had a Canon that looked similar. I’d get Sissi to look it up. But, right now, I wanted to see pictures. I took my laptop out of its case and switched it on. I couldn’t get into the camera but I could take out its memory chip and display it on my computer.

“Arny,” I said.

“Mmm?”

“The laptop.” It was open on my lap and dead as a jellyfish.

“I don’t know anything,” he lied. Only my mother lies with less conviction than my brother.

“Yesterday, this was fully charged.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

He folded like a deckchair.

“I just took it down to the beach for a few minutes.”

“I hope you had a very good reason.” My teeth were grinding together.

“I listened to music.”

“You have an iPod.”

“Yeah, but the laptop’s got that program with the psychedelic animations that move in time to the music. It’s very restful.”

I counted backward from a hundred in Portuguese.

“And the sink unit was cracked?”

“Right down the middle.”

“Well, you see? In such a situation, the customer would normally bring back the damaged unit for us to determine whether the crack was structural or whether excessive force was used on it.”

“What excessive force can you exert on a sink unit?” I asked.

He smiled at Arny with a slight rise in his right eyebrow. He was old school. His jacket was a little too large and his choice of tie made you think he didn’t have a wife at home, at least not a fully sighted one. He had ebony-dyed and moussed-back hair that curled up into a gutter at his collar and the look was rounded off with a pencil mustache, HB light.

“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you and your wife what happens on the spur of the moment in bathrooms.” He winked. Arny looked blank.

“I think you do,” I said, dumbly.

We’d arrived in Koon Boondej’s office at the Home Art Building Accessories Mega Store with our sink complaint as an excuse to get past the Service desk. We’d hoped to have the ex-con, ex-manager of Blissy Travel to ourselves, but the Quality Manageress had accompanied us and she was hovering. The realization seemed to loom above the manager that nobody was going to play along with his sex on the sink unit fantasy.

“We actually have people standing on the sink to paint the ceiling” was his escape. Not terribly convincing.

“So, how can you tell we didn’t stand on the sink?”

“We have experts who can determine that.” He smiled and looked at the quality woman. I guessed he meant her. I thought it was time to shake her off.

“So you have investigators?” I asked.

“In a way, yes,” he said.

“Are they the same people who check the qualifications of prospective staff members? People applying for administrative positions, that type of thing?”

His smile melted at the edges and his dark skin blushed mauve.

“Are…are you applying for a job?” he asked.

“It’s tempting,” I said. “Convincing newlyweds to buy taps has always been a dream career for me.”

“Then I think I can handle this myself,” he told the woman.

“What about the sink?” she asked.

“We’ll wipe off the footprints and bring it in for you to look at,” I said.

She walked out with a sideways frown at her boss. She wanted his job. I’d used that same frown myself. Once the door was shut the manager seemed to develop a nervous tic that unmoussed his hair one strand at a time.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I was concerned about the background of the management here at Home Art.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

A column of hair fell over one eye, leaving behind a slash of bald.

“Well, let’s just say that somewhere along the line someone by the name of Boondet with a Y gets muddled up with someone else by the name of, ooh, say, Boondej with a ‘j’?”

I paused for effect. All the features on his face seemed to be attempting to change position. I was in.

“I mean, could we, with a clear conscience, buy a Jacuzzi jet bathtub from a convicted murderer?” I continued.

He stood and walked to the door, looked out, twitched, put his hands in his jacket pockets.

“How much do you want?”

“I beg your pardon?”

I noticed Arny looking pale.

“I know what this is,” said the manager.

“What is it?”

“Blackmail.”

I considered the concept.

“In a way, yes, you’re right,” I said.

“I…I know people,” he said.

I knew what he was getting at but gangland figures didn’t take salaried positions at Home Art.

“No, you don’t,” I said. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you. We just need information. You tell us what we need to know and your life and your career are secure. You lie to us and I’m not so sure I’ll be able to keep Fang here on his leash. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

Arny’s hands were shaking on his lap. I suppose it could have been interpreted as pent-up aggression.

“Who are you?” Boondej asked.

“Fair-weather friends,” I said.

I couldn’t remember the name of the movie I’d lifted that from but it worked just fine.

“What do you want to know?” asked the manager. He was still at the door. I wondered whether he planned to bolt for it.

“Blissy Travel,” I said.

He looked surprised.

“What about it?”

“You tell me.”

He obviously didn’t know what to say. Didn’t work. New track.

“You were the manager.”

“Yeah. So?”

“Couples would stop by to sign up for tours?”

“Couples, singles, groups. That’s normal, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. Is it?”

“Yes.”

On TV it was always a lot easier. They’d answer a question with a question and the suspect would tie himself up in knots. Soon he’d be singing like a caged dove. Arny had a pale green tint to his cheeks. I didn’t know how long I had before he threw up behind the manager’s desk. So I got to the point.

“Exactly how many couples did you kill, Koon Boondej?”

“Just the one.”

I admired, but was taken aback by, his honesty.

“Look, I’ve done my time,” he said. “I’m setting out on a new life here. I’m not a threat to society. Can’t you just…” He looked at Arny. “Is he all right?”

“The thought of extreme violence moves him,” I said.

I pushed the wastepaper bin in front of my brother and he took himself and the bin off to the executive bathroom.

“All right,” I said. I was suddenly feeling vulnerable but I spoke calmly to make the man think I was just as dangerous as Fang. “Just you and me now. I want to hear the whole story.”

“You’re press, aren’t you?” he said.

Busted again.

“Yes.”

“Oh, shit.”

“But you aren’t my story. If you can point me in the right direction, your name doesn’t have to be mentioned at all.”

So he told me about the couple he’d killed. After Blissy Travel collapsed, he’d run a boat trip out to the islands. One of the most popular cruises was to the caves of the nok nang an, the birds that built nests from their own spit. The trips were boozy and most of the tourists were sloshed by the time they arrived back at the dock. Boondej often missed the pier entirely. One day they went out to the cave, anchored a few hundred feet from the island in shallow water. The guests waded in to the caves, took pictures, waded back out and continued with the serious task of getting plastered. Boondej was a little more pickled than usual that day and he miscounted. One couple had gone deep into the cave and he left them there. The tide rose and they drowned. Culpable negligence. The husband was the son of a Scandinavian diplomat so Boondej served the whole eight-point-two-three meters.

Actually I’d been hoping for something more fiendish. The Home Art Mega Store manager didn’t sound like the serial killing type. So I brought up the topic of VW vans.

“I had two,” he said with pride. “I went down to Malaysia and got them secondhand. Hardly used. They were the only ones of their kind around then. I did a lot of business with them. They were all the go with backpackers in Europe. So when the hippies came over to Thailand they’d take the bus from Bangkok on their way to Ko Samui and pass right in front of my shop.”

Arny, a few shades lighter, re-entered the room. He replaced the waste bin and lowered himself slowly into the seat.

“Go on,” I said.

“They, I mean the VWs, were on the road most of the time. They’d come back and, poof, the next day there’d be a new customer. I charged rental by the day. The customers paid for petrol. They’d invariably trip up one coast, then back down the other. Stop off in Chumphon and Ranong and Phuket, down to Krabi. I included a recommended itinerary in the cost of the rental with the names of guesthouses and resorts. But there were mattresses in the back of both vans so they could save money on accommodation if they liked. I tell you, if I’d been able to hang on to those vans I’d be a rich man today.”

“What happened to them?”

“Vanished.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Disappeared, both of them. Within the space of a week.”

“You reported them missing?”

“Of course I did. They were my cash cows. I’d always hang on to the passports and ID cards of the customers and take a security deposit. Once the vans vanished I showed the IDs to the police. You know what they told me? Fakes. Fakes, all of them. Thais, I tell you. Can’t trust ‘em. I should have stuck with foreign backpackers.”

“The vans were rented by Thais?”

“The police told me there was a car theft gang sweeping through the south, renting cars and motorcycles on false IDs and reselling them. I’m not sure if they ever caught up with the gang but I know I didn’t get my vans back. That’s what killed off the rental business for me.”

“So, do you have any idea why one of your vans might have been found buried under two meters of dirt in a field in Chumphon?”

Boondej attempted to replace the lock of hair that had been annoying me all this time. He had a look of genuine surprise on his face.

“Shit. Is that what this is all about?”

“Yes.”

“You came here just to ask me why one of my vans was buried in a field?”

“Yes. Well, there was also the fact that there were two bodies buried with it.”

That upset him.

“Damn. Do the police know about me?”

“Not yet.”

“They’d put two and two…”

“Afraid they would.”

“Just like you.”

“Yes.”

“I couldn’t take any more of that. I’m not a criminal, but once you’ve got a record they pull you in for anything.”

“Then we should try to solve this before they get to you. I don’t suppose you remember the people who rented your vans?”

“I’ll never forget them. Two couples they were, both ripped from the same cloth. I’d seen their type before, young Thai kids pretending to be Western hippies. Long hair. Fluffy excuses for beards. Dressing like bums so people would think they were artists or musicians. Stench of musk. They walked in off the street looking so straggly I thought they were about to ask me for the cost of a cup of sweet tea. Then they handed over a wad of money to rent the van. Those musicians, you never could tell. So you had to be nice to all the bums just in case they were rich. I should have been suspicious that the two couples were so alike.”

“And why weren’t you?”

“I assumed the first pair had told their friends. Either that or there was some hippy music festival on somewhere. It was just a few days between the two rentings. Of course, it’s easy to be logical after the damage is done. No. I was just greedy. I’d rent the vans out to anyone with the money to pay for them.”

“And the IDs they left you?”

“Like I say, they were fake. The photos were a lot more respectable than the kids but there was a likeness.”

“Did you keep them?”

“No. I had to hand them over to the police.”

“Did the kids have any distinguishing marks?”

“Not really. Beards. Hairy armpits on the girls. Nothing soap and a razor couldn’t fix.”

“All right. I might have more questions but, if I do, I’ll phone you.”

“And you aren’t going to…”

“Koon Boondej, in my line of work you meet liars with varying degrees of skill. You have to recognize the signs. You strike me as a man forced into dishonesty by the system. So, no, I’m not going to tell anyone about you.”

“I appreciate it. There’s nothing else?”

“Well, yes. There is one more thing. I need five minutes with your computer without you in the room.”

“I — ”

“I’m not going through your files. I just need to open some photos. But they’re personal.”

The manager turned on the computer for me and left quite placidly. I clicked out the memory card from the camera and worked it to the rim of the plastic bag so I wouldn’t have to touch it directly with my fingers. I slotted it into the Home Art computer and waited for the machine to find it. I looked over at Arny. He was sulking but the color had returned to his cheeks.

The computer found the external link and asked me what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to save the photos on the computer so I opened them in ACDSee just to have a look. I clicked.

“Holy…”

It felt as if the office had sucked all the air out of me. My stomach was up somewhere around the fluorescent lights. Until I saw those pictures I’d always believed there couldn’t be a great deal of difference between your basic, six command, non-rechargeable digital camera and anything at the top of the line. Digital was digital. But, I tell you, I was wrong. I was in those pictures between the 3D layers, feeling every horror as if I were the victim. I swear I could hear the flies buzzing and smell the blood. I was mesmerized and horrified all at once by the awful clarity of the photography.

“Arny,” I said, “normally I wouldn’t show you pictures like these but, just in case anything goes wrong, I need you as a witness here. But I warn you, you aren’t going to like them.”