Everyone Burns (12 page)

According to his statement, Peter had last seen Anthony around 9.00pm the previous evening when the brothers had parted company after dinner at their hotel, each to go to his own separate pleasures. In Peter’s case that meant picking up two girls at the
Lolita Bar, paying their bar fines and taking them back to his room for a night of sweaty passion. The girls had corroborated Peter’s story. But where Anthony had gone, his brother didn’t know.

Photographs of the missing man were downloaded from Peter’s digital camera and given to the police; but a time of frustration and anxiety was inevitable. Since the island police have seen it all before – the missing man who turns up a couple of days later after being holed up with some attractive girl – there is a waiting period before the lawmen will even fill in any paperwork, let alone start looking for a missing person.

As it happened, Anthony did turn up before the police started looking for him, but not in a good way.

A young Australian couple on a motorbike had taken a wrong turning off the Samui Ring Road outside Lamai, believing the concrete surface would lead them to one of the island’s waterfalls. Instead it had lead to a dead end, and a grisly discovery among the coconut trees.

Peter had been called in to identify the body, which must have been quite a task considering its condition. There were a few things to go on: his brother had lost the tip of the little finger on his right hand, had a metal plate in his left leg as the result of a motorbike accident, and had prominent canine teeth. These points were enough for a preliminary identification. The burnt meat was Anthony Ashley.

There then appears to have been some desultory and half-hearted questioning of possible witnesses at the hotel and surrounding bars, but reading between the lines it looks as though Charoenkul and his boys were quietly burying an embarrassing episode which might be bad for the tourist trade. The interview with the old blind man is recorded, but as I already knew, he was oblivious to what had gone on.

I guess it might have been better if they could have fitted up the brother; but that would have been difficult, even assuming they’d intimidated the bar girls who’d supplied Peter’s alibi. Hardly surprisingly, there is no mention of Peter’s being ‘troublesome’ or of the considerable effort that must have gone into keeping the story out of the newspapers.

Forensics revealed that Anthony Ashley’s death had been caused by repeated blows to the skull. From analysis of the damage, these hits had been delivered
while he was lying face down. The body had been turned over onto its back, liberally soaked in standard-grade petrol and set alight. There was no trace of either the murder weapon or the receptacle(s) used for the gasoline. The report is silent on the subject of tyre-tracks, drag marks and footprints, and I’m guessing the inexperienced local plods had already contaminated the crime scene before anyone suitably professional had arrived. It doesn’t say whether Ashley was killed in situ, or whether he was taken there already dead. There was no abandoned vehicle around and, as already mentioned, Ashley’s hired motorbike was at his hotel.

In the absence of further trails to follow, the investigation had petered out.

According to the brother, so far as he knew, Anthony Ashley had no specific friends on Samui, and no business associates. He was simply your average tourist. Except that your average tourist doesn’t end up as charcoal under a coconut tree.

I look at the photographs of the body and am glad I am not eating anything. The pictures of the face with the burned-off flesh are particularly gruesome.
There are also pictures of the living version of Ashley, apparently taken recently in Samui. None of them has a Girly Bar Heaven backdrop as far as I can see, which does give some credence to the story that he had been behaving himself while he was here. Then again, maybe his brother had just been selective with the digital downloads. The images show a gaunt-faced man with slightly receding dark brown hair and pale skin. The prominent canine teeth give him a somewhat vampiric air. He is not, however, sporting a black, red-lined cape. A fuzzy copy of the passport page showing his photograph is included for good measure. Of course, that picture looks nothing like him.

The passport tells me he was born in London on 13
th January 1964, which makes him a Capricorn in the Chinese Year of the Water Rabbit. The characteristics of Rabbits, if I remember correctly, are that they are fanciful, affectionate and very lucky. I stop myself mid-stream. I need to focus on rational issues and not get side-tracked into Sino-centric metaphysics. My brain also needs a break before I start on the second file.

I ask Da to make me another coffee, strong and black; but when I take out my Marlboros she banishes me outside. Clearly she has not yet forgiven me for the state of the East Office.

“Da, this is a three-cigarette problem,” I protest, but this allusion to Sherlock Holmes is lost on her.

“Outside,” she says firmly. “Your coffee will be here when you get back.”

I go down the stairs, feel the sun’s intensity, and recoil back into the shade of the doorway like a denizen of the undead. Under this Samui sun, a vampire would crumble to a heap of ash before you could say
suck my neck
.

How did I get on to vampires?

I flick my lighter and look at the flame.

Enough thinking, already.

I light up and enjoy my cigarette with an empty head, idly watching the smoke curl about itself as it rises up into the heated air.

My nicotine level thus topped up,
I go back inside to the aircon, Da’s coffee and the second transcript.

Hannes Boehme’s file is thicker than Anthony Ashley’s, reflecting a greater degree of professional thoroughness and interest than with the first investigation. There are lots of witness statements, a thick bundle of photographs and a businesslike forensic report which must have been rushed through more quickly than usual. I put aside the Thai documents and work systematically through Kat’s English-language version.

The second victim was born in Utrecht, Holland on 10th October 1968, which makes him a Libran and an Earth Monkey (impish, enthusiastic and must do things his own way – in case you were wondering). Boehme was unmarried and worked as a trader in diamonds for a respected international organisation based in Amsterdam. He had been to Thailand a number of times before, but had not visited Samui for some years. So far as is known, he had no friends or contacts on the island, and was travelling alone. His arrival form into Thailand declared the reason for his visit as ‘holiday’. He had flown from Amsterdam to Bangkok where he spent three days before flying on to Samui. He had pre-booked over the internet for two weeks’ stay in a deluxe room at the plush Apsara Hotel, which sits on the hill to the north of Chaweng, overlooking the sea.

Eleven days after his arrival, Boehme’s body was discovered in the same spot as Ashley’s. The finder was Yai’s grand-daughter, Bee, who was taking groceries up to the old man’s shack.

The speed of response of Katchai’s investigation team was impressive. They had done a thorough job interviewing all the hotel staff, as well as Yai and Bee. They had also started showing Boehme’s photo around bars and restaurants in Chaweng. This last task was still ongoing due to the large number of establishments involved.

According to the hotel staff, the Dutchman had not brought any girls back to his room and had only eaten in their restaurant once. He had been polite but reserved, not mixing with the other guests. He was seen to swim in the hotel pool every morning before breakfast, after which he went out for the day in the car he had rented on first arriving.
That same car had been found parked on the main street in Chaweng, so the officers had concentrated their efforts there.

As for the other interviewees, Yai and Bee, as I already knew, had nothing of value to add to the investigation. A barman in one of the better bars in Chaweng thought he
might
have seen Boehme on the night he had been killed, but he couldn’t be sure. The manager of upmarket Zen Food
said he had eaten there a couple of times but was vague about when. None of this struck me as terribly surprising: farang faces must all start to look the same in high season around here, and Boehme didn’t seem the type to draw attention to himself.

The forensics showed that the Dutchman had been put to death under the trees by repeated blows to the back of the head. The murder weapon was identified as being made of metal and such was the ferocity of the attack that splinters of skull were found scattered around the grass by the body. Once dead, Boehme had been turned over onto his back with his arms out to the sides and thoroughly doused in petrol. He had not been robbed since, as Charoenkul had already told me, ashes of Baht notes and melted credit card
s were found on the body.

I was also interested to note among the details that the Dutchman was a fairly big man (there were no such details in the first file), and the autopsy revealed the presence of some alcohol, but none of the more common drugs were found. He had been dead around a day and a half when Bee found him.

The only living picture of Boehme among the photographs was the one from his passport, which showed a rather serious-looking Germanic face topped with sandy hair. Some of the post mortem photos were truly stomach-turning, particularly the ones of what was left of the back of his head with the exposed residual mess of brain.

I close the files and put them back in the envelope. Risking Da’s wrath, I light up a cigarette.

Two dead men, who had met the same nasty, brutish end.
I consider what linked them other than the manner of their deaths. Both had visited Samui before and were of a similar age. Both Europeans. Both travelling without significant others: Ashley had left his wife behind in England and Boehme was unmarried. If the Dutchman had a girlfriend back in Holland, he had gone on his travels without her.

What brings unaccompanied
farangs to this island? Business or girls, usually.

As to the former, if you want to do business here your choices are basically hospitality (bars, restaurants and small hotels) or property development. There’s not much else unless you’re resident and can keep a close eye on things. The victims’ visits to the island were not sufficiently recent or frequent to suggest a business connection, and according to the transcripts neither man was known on Samui. If the
ir interests were criminal, of course, that would be more difficult to track; but there is no rationale for following this speculative line.

Which moves us on to
girls
. This connection too looks problematical. According to Peter Ashley’s statement, his brother was not here on a shag-fest, although for a cynic like me that’s difficult to accept at face value. As the lead character in the TV series
House
says,
everybody lies
. However, even I have to accept there is no prima facie evidence of hanky-panky. Maybe the brothers did spend their days together and go their separate ways after nightfall. Again, according to the staff at Boehme’s hotel, the Dutchman hadn’t taken any girls back to his room – although there are other places here to make the beast with two backs.

Neither victim had been robbed. What other reasons are there for a killing?

I take out my notebook and brainstorm possible generic motives for a murder.

I write:

Money
, Jealousy, Revenge, Envy

I look at the list for a while, which reads like a taster for the Seven Deadly Sins. No lights go on, so I get a little more fanciful:

Mistaken identity

Self-defence or defence of another

Acting while balance of mind is disturbed

To cover up another misdeed

Kidnapping that goes wrong

Blackmail

The last item on the list
makes me think of my own recent experience with the anonymous letters. If I could find out who was sending them, I’d certainly be tempted to take a blunt instrument to the back of the bastard’s head. I refocus. Nothing. Finding a reason for one killing is one thing, but for
two
? The logical part of my brain tells me this
should
be easier – just find the link between the two victims – but the emotional part of my brain is saying it’s time for another cigarette. But what if there is no link between the victims other than one of time and place: the fact that they both encountered their killer? I add another motive to the list:

Because the murderer likes killing

Having drawn a blank on motive, I move on to method.

I write:

Crude method of killing. Not a professional hit?

What instrument was used for the murders?

Was it the same one both times?

What is the significance of the location?

How did the victims get there?

It looks like methodology might provide some insight into the mentality of the
killer, but I need to marinate these questions for a while. I also need another cigarette. I close the notebook and take the files into the West Office where I lock them away in a drawer of the filing cabinet.