Everyone Burns (14 page)

Getting out of the car, I walk up the slight incline towards the tape. Yup. Plenty of light to see what you are doing.

The murderer would have needed to see what he was doing. His blows were savage, but precise. There was no damage to the spine or the shoulder bones of either victim. Only the backs of the heads had been smashed like eggshells. The men can’t have been moving around or there would have been collateral damage. Maybe the first unexpected blow had rendered them unconscious and they were finished off on the ground. Or maybe they were already unconscious before their heads were pulped.

How had Ashley and Boehme got here? This remote grove is an unlikely spot for a rendezvous – unless you’re a drug dealer – and the victims’ bike and car respectively were found in a different town altogether. Had they driven here voluntarily with their killer in his car? They couldn’t have come on a bike surely: how would the murderer have carried the petrol and the heavy blunt instrument?

Perhaps their killer had forced them to drive his car here at gunpoint or knifepoint. But if so, why not stab them or shoot them? Wouldn’t a single gunshot just be taken for a backfiring car? Other than Yai, who would have heard it anyway?

I go on foot to the main road and look back towards the scene, confirming what I’d suspected: because of the topography the headlights are not really visible,
unless you’re looking for them
.

I walk back to the jeep. From the back seat I take some old towels and a number of cardboard boxes folded flat. I carry them into the trees and scrunch the material into an untidy lump, hoping nothing in the grass bites me in the meantime.

As I straighten up, something whizzes past my head and I jerk with fright. The jeep’s headlights catch a circling bat, and squinting upwards I see another one overhead. Not a winged spirit after all, but close. Easy to understand how superstitious locals might combine the death of Yai’s son with the presence of these nocturnal predators to create a flying demon. (There is reputedly a small island off Samui where no dogs can live because the high-pitched noise of the large bat colony there drives canine critters mad. Mind you, that story could be just so much
guano
.)

I remove from the jeep three glass bottles of
petrol and carry them to the mound of towels and cardboard.

If Charoenkul is trying to stitch me up, now would be the time for his policemen to leap out from behind the trees and arrest me for murder. Explaining my presence at a multiple crime scene carrying gasoline at three o’clock in the morning would be, to put it mildly, somewhat challenging. But no-one appears. Even the bats have gone.

I pour the contents of the bottles over the towels and drop a match. The resultant blaze will hardly mimic the burning of a human body, but that is not the point of the exercise.

I hurry to the car, taking my empties with me, and drive back to the main road. The glow of the fire can be seen, but would it cause anyone to stop and investigate? There are no live-in neighbours and certainly at this hour of the night little passing traffic.

My jeep reeks of gasoline. Unless the killer wanted his vehicle to smell the same he must have ditched the empty bottles quickly: I suspect one may find broken glass among the building site debris. But would that be of any forensic use?

Twenty minutes later I park the jeep on my drive, and leave all the windows open to get rid of the smell.

I doubt it will rain tonight.

5

“Four things happen to the thoughtless man

who takes another man’s wife:

he lowers himself, his pleasure is restless,

he is blamed by others, he goes to hell.”

Lord Buddha, The Dhammapada

Last night I had a bad dream. I know I did, even though I don’t know what the dream was. When I awoke – which I did with a start, as though someone had hammered on my chest – the bedcovers were soaking and the sweat was running off me
in rivulets. The alarm clock registered just after nine: I’d only slept for about four-and-a-half hours. I felt like crap.

I took a cold shower, shaved, dressed and went downstairs in search of headache pills. No Claire
and no Wayan to be found. I drank two glasses of water from the cooler to rehydrate and swallowed a couple of tablets.  Wayan had left out croissants from the French bakery, which I coated with butter and jam and swilled down with a glass of orange juice.

It was time to get over to Sinclair’s. I hoped the pills would lessen my headache before I arrived since I needed to be in a positive frame of mind when I met the Geordie.
I could really do without this today
, I thought, feeling a smidgeon of annoyance at Da and Wayan. I was sure the discomfort would pass, however, as soon as I’d had my first cigarette of the day. Unfortunately my packet of Marlboros was empty.

I grabbed my notebook, checked my appearance in the mirror and tried a smile. Not very convincing. Last night’s activities were etched in dark circles under my eyes, in artistic contrast to the scabbing scar on my left cheek. I was going to have to take a
nap later if I was going to get through the day.

I put on my hat and went out to the jeep which, I was happy to note, did not smell of gasoline. The sun was already well up in the bright blue sky. No rain today, unsurprisingly.

I drove to the nearest convenience store and bought cigarettes, smoking one and checking Sinclair’s address before I headed off.

Sinclair’s house is near
Na Thon on the far side of the island. Of course on Samui, ‘far’ is an extremely relative term. The whole Ring Road only measures about fifty-five kilometres, so in practice wherever you are you’re pretty close to beer, seafood and female companionship.

As the light traffic pootled its way around, I tried to convince myself to adopt a more benevolent attitude to the Northerner. In truth, I couldn’t think of any coherent reason why I should dislike him, aside from the fact that he’d once interrupted my meal – which, let’s face it, is rather lame. There was just
something
about him. I’m usually a good judge of character, but then Da is too: so one of us is off in our reading of Sinclair. (Wayan tends to see the good in everyone, so I discount her viewpoint. I don’t understand how she can maintain this outlook in the face of the overwhelming evidence that mankind is selfish, violent and screwed-up. But she does. Luckily, she has a cynic for an employer who can watch out for her.)

Sinclair’s house was easy to find and I arrived a few minutes early. I parked the jeep alongside Sinclair’s big black SUV, took a deep breath and ventured a warm-up smile in the rear-view mirror to see if my face would crack. It didn’t. I got out of the car and knocked on the door.

The style and decor of the Northerner’s house testified to the influence of a Thai wife with a taste for the traditional. Neither the wife nor the son appeared to be around this morning. Wives seem to go missing regularly on Samui, I’ve noticed.

An ancient maid showed me through into the large garden where Sinclair was deep in conversation with some horticulturalist. He wasn’t wearing socks with his sandals today. He must be making a special sartorial effort just for me.

The subject of their discussion was the pests damaging his coconut trees. I tried to look interested as the expert waxed lyrical on the coconut hispine beetle,
Brontispa longissima
(which can be eradicated by releasing a beetle-eating insect called
Asecodes hispinarum
at the top of the tree), and the Rhinoceros beetle (which is countered by mixing grains of rice coated with the fungus
Metarhizium anisopliae
in the fertiliser you spread on your plantation). All fascinating stuff, no doubt, if you’re into biological agents of mass destruction – which I’m not. From my perspective, I was inclined to think the biggest threat to coconut trees on the island came from some guy with a penchant for burning gasoline; but I kept this opinion to myself.

With a promise to contact the Surat Thani Pest Control Centre on his client’s behalf, Sinclair’s expert departed with a respectful
wai.

“These Rhino beetles are bloody destructive
,” Sinclair opined taking the lid off a plastic box he had with him. “Look at the hardware on this bugger.”

The insect did look, well, like a rhino: dark tough body armour and horns straight out of Africa. For a moment my mind zipped back to a holiday with Claire in Zambia where we’d seen the country’s last two surviving white rhinos, presents from the South African government. Both dead now, killed by poachers for their horns.

“I’ve been plagued by these beetles recently. I don’t know where they’re all coming from. It’s like somebody’s bringing them in by the truckload and dumping them in my garden. You know in Northern Thailand the natives stage fights between Rhino beetles and bet on the outcome. They probably do it here too for all I know. Thais will bet on anything.” He put the lid back on the box.

“You grow all sorts of stuff by the looks of it,” I said indicating the surrounding flora and fauna.

“Aye,” he said, “My missus got me interested in it.” He gestured with an arm. “Over here I’ve got
sator
– ‘stinky beans’ to you. Very popular with the Thais even though they make you fart and give your pee an interesting smell. Pineapples and mangoes there, and over that way some durian trees. Can be tricky to get the durians to fruit. They’re finicky: it’s to do with their pollination system. You like durian? The ‘King of Fruits’, as they say. For me, eating a durian is like eating a creamy yoghurt while standing in a public toilet.”

“I’m afraid the only thing I know about the durian is that the Thais pick them while they’re on the trees while the Malays wait until they fall to the ground. Or so my father told me
. He was a planter in Malaya after World War II. He attributed the difference to Malay laziness – they couldn’t be bothered to climb the trees. Sounds a bit racist nowadays, of course.”

Sinclair chuckled. “Well, I didn’t know that. Let’s go sit in the
sala and I’ll get you something cold to drink. We don’t get that many people to the house so I’m out of practice at social hosting.”

His sun-weathered body disappeared into the house, leaving me to my thoughts amid the luminescent greenery and fire-red
Birds of Paradise.
Fire-red
. I didn’t want to think about fire at the moment. Then a vision of Kat’s naked body stretched across a bed came into my mind. I didn’t want to think about that either. I lit a cigarette and let images of bats, coconut trees, non-barking dogs, rhinoceroses and fighting beetles meander through my head. And Claire was in there too. Claire when I first met her, Claire on our wedding day, Claire when Catherine was born, and later ...

“Coconuts,” said Sinclair, interrupting my reverie. “It seemed appropriate.” He set down a tray groaning with two enormous decapitated specimens with straws sticking out of them.

Since it’s hard to look dignified and professional bent over a coconut sucking on a straw, I exchanged a few more pleasantries and finished the milk before proceeding to business.

“So,” I said sitting back, “
why did you want to see me, Mr. Sinclair?”

“Call me ‘Geordie’, please.”

“Geordie.”

He rubbed a hand over his head then scratched his stubble. I
noticed how big his hands were, how callused, how the nails were bitten down: some internal stress was at work on him. His bonhomie had quickly drained away, the enthusiasm for his garden forgotten. He was no longer making eye contact. He cleared his throat and put his left hand on his chin.

“It’s
… um … it’s a matter of trust.”

“It usually is.”

If he was a smoker he would have lit up now. But he wasn’t. So he didn’t. Instead he scratched his chin again.

“You presumably know I have three businesses: realty, car hire and a car repair shop. In each one I have a Thai partner. The car hire and the repair businesses are
complimentary; as I’m sure you appreciate. My realty company, Euro-Siam Properties, is a bit of an oddity which I kind of fell into through contacts of my wife’s. Property sales and long-term lets to Westerners. Not really my thing, but ‘accidentally’ starting businesses happens a lot on Samui.”

“I know. It happened to me. It’s unusual for anyone to have just one business here. Does
Euro-Siam do any property development? Most Europeans dabble in it at some time.”

He shook his head. “No. I had a bad experience with that once, so I’ve steered clear.”

“Anyway,” I ventured, “even if you’re just selling real estate, you probably know a friend of mine, Prasert Promsai, the builder.”

“Aye, I do. Genuine bloke. He’s done some fixing-up for some of my clients. Quality work. I know his slimy little brother too.”

I waited, but he didn’t elaborate.

Instead Sinclair said, “Anyhow, it’s not the property side I want to talk to you about
: it’s my car hire business, Smiley Cars Samui.”

This dour-looking, grizzly Northern caveman was about the last person on the planet I’d imagine owning a business called
Smiley Cars, but I kept a straight face and said, “Yes, I’ve seen your stand at the airport.”

“Straightforward business,” he sniffed. “I’ve always been in transport, one way or another. I had a haulage company back in Geordieland before I came to Samui. Though that seems like a lifetime ago now.” He looked like he was about to say something significant, but then changed his mind and shrugged. “So, we cater for the tourists. Simple proposition: we guarantee a cheaper price than
Avis, Hertz, the big boys. And our cars are properly maintained, not like some of the death-traps you can hire from the locals without even having to show a driving licence.”

I waited patiently for the advertising to finish and for Sinclair to get to the point.

Eventually he blew his nose and went on, “A few months ago I gave a job to the nephew of my Thai partner. Nothing too responsible, you understand. He just looks after some of the paperwork and does routine checks on the vehicles. But this means he has access to the car keys. He can’t hire out the cars – our systems are too tight for that – but I think he might be taking a car out once in a while.”

“Where are the cars garaged when they’re not hired out?”

“Well, certainly not at the airport, that’d be too damn expensive. No, we have a compound nearby at Bang Rak.”

“Any CCTV?”

“Nothing so high tech. We have a security guard.”

“So the guard would know if a car was being taken out?”

“He
would
, but I very much doubt he’d shop one of the bosses’ nephews. Not to a farang. Even though I pay his wages.”

I asked a few pertinent questions about the guards’ shift rota and the nephew: Kwanchai Ramsuwan,
twenty-eight years old, handsome, charming, and too clever by half for his current job. I made a few notes in my book then came to the more interesting questions.

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Catch the bugger taking a car out.”

He leaned forward animatedly. “I’ve thought it through how you can catch him. You’ve got a laptop with an internet connection, right?”

I nodded.

“And a set of binoculars?”

“I
am
a private investigator,” I replied somewhat testily.

“Then here’s the plan. First, I give you read-only remote access into a limited section of our company database, so you can see which cars are hired out and therefore which ones should be in the compound.”

“So I watch the compound and count wheels.”

“Exactly.”

“Before we get into discussing the logistics of 24-hour surveillance, I’ll need to know exactly where this place is so I can find a suitable observation post.”

Sinclair clasped my wrist and laughed, both of which irritated me.

“Already sorted, David. I presume I can call you ‘David’?”

This also irritated me.

“Presume away.”

“Right. Well, one of my property clients that I do lettings for is having his swimming pool re-done
– by Prasert’s company, as it happens. While that’s going on, the house is empty. One of the back balconies overlooks my car park. You can sit out on the balcony and snap shots with your telephoto lens – I know you’ve got one of those.”

“Sounds like you’ve thought it all through.”

“Aye, it’s the dog’s bollocks, isn’t it?” he said cheerily.