Everyone Burns (8 page)

“You have a spy in headquarters at Surat Thani?”

“I have friends everywhere.”

“I see.”

“You will only report to me personally. However, two of my men here will act as liaison for you, open any doors that need opening, etcetera. I am assigning officers Chaldrakun and Tathip to assist with immediate effect.”

Just great. PC’s company is about as welcome as a turd in a fondue
, and DTs will be less useful than a second appendix.

“Naturally they will have to carry on their normal duties, but feel free to call them any time you need anything.” He handed me a sheet with their addresses and contact numbers
, which I stuffed in my notebook.

“What do they know about the killings?” I asked.

“Very little. They are just regular policemen, and have not been involved in either investigation. However, both of them are very loyal to me. I have also made it clear that they must ensure not one word about your assignment leaks out. Their jobs depend on it.”

“I’m sure that will endear me to them.”
Small wonder they were more hacked off than usual when they arrived at my office.

“I’m also having extracts of the case files translated into English for you today to speed things along. I wasn’t sure how well you read Thai.”

“Whom are you trusting with the translation?”

“My wife.”

A tsunami of nausea rolled over me and somewhere in my head a red light started flashing. “Mrs. Charoenkul?” I said tightly, my mouth as dry as powdered alum.

“My wife has many virtues, Braddock, and many talents. It’s better that no-one here is involved: better for your anonymity. See how I look after your interests? You’ll see Mrs
. Charoenkul later today, anyway.”

“Will I?” I managed.

“I want Chaldrakun and Tathip to take you to the crime scene now for a preliminary look around. To help you with initial thoughts and impressions. To get your detective’s antennae twitching, as it were.” He gave a short laugh, pleased at his own witticism. He was back in control, his earlier wobble forgotten. “After that, I want the officers to bring you to my house for a quick debriefing. You will meet Kat there.”

A warning siren cranked up in my head to accompany the flashing red light.
This was screwing with my brain.

Hoping my face was as inscrutable as his, I said, “Wouldn’t it be better for us to meet here?”

He stretched his arms above his head and gave a yawn. “No. I’d rather you weren’t seen here again. Besides, later this afternoon I have promised myself a round of golf with friends. I think my wife is right: I have been working too hard lately. I’ll be changing at home, so it’s convenient for me to meet up there.”

“I see.
” I decided to let the game play out. “I presume your officers are taking me to the most recent crime scene, and that we’ll be visiting the other crime scene later.”

Papa Doc blinked at me. “How remiss of me,” he said, “I should have mentioned it earlier. There is only one crime scene. Both bodies were dumped at exactly the same place.”

*       *       *       *       *

PC accompanied me out through the main glass doors of the police station while DTs brought the car around from the side compound. They had tried to take me out the way we had come in, but I demurred, saying I wanted a cigarette. I was feeling rebellious and strangely light-headed having escaped from Charoenkul’s office with a complete set of genitalia and only minor brain damage. I even thought I might leave a business card with the attractive police woman on reception as we passed through, but unfortunately she had been replaced by some guy with big ears and a constipated expression. Geoffrey Rush had also gone.

Outside was like an oven, and the glare was blinding, but I lit up a cigarette anyway. PC lurked in the partly-shaded doorway.

Is it ever going to rain again?

DTs arrived with the car and PC squeezed himself into the passenger seat. While I was pointedly smoking the cigarette down to the butt, I phoned Da to let her know everything was fine, that I had not been arrested, and I was giving the local police some informal advice on a ‘Westerner problem’.

“What sort of ‘Westerner problem’?” she asked, half-relieved and half-suspicious.

“Well, apparently lots of European tourists have been demanding their money back, saying Samui girls are all ugly and not at all like the pictures in the brochures.”

“Don’t make jokes. I was worried. The way you were taken off, I thought there must be some burning issue.”

How right you are,
I thought.

“No. I’m just helping out with some cultural stuff: getting inside the
farang mind sort of thing.” This at least was vaguely true.

“Does that mean we get paid?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Will you be coming back to the office today?”

“Is there anything in the diary?”

“You know there isn’t.”

“I’m not finished here yet. Let’s see how the time goes. I’ll call you later.”

“Do you still want me to phone the ambassador?”

“Very funny.”

I rang off, flicked away my dead cigarette, and climbed into the car.

DTs drove us slowly out of Chaweng, heading south. We were pressed in by pavements overflowing with brightly-coloured stalls, Indian tailors, racking stacked with glass bottles
filled with petrol, women in polo shirts offering massages, double-parked motorbikes, panting dogs, and bemused tourists with peeling heads. The car bounced gently over dusty potholes as bikes weaved around us respectfully. PC read a newspaper while I tried to look inconspicuous. Being seen in the back of a police car is not a flattering character advertisement.

Reaching the Samui Ring Road, the tarmac widens, and the building frontages recede back, allowing the traffic to breathe. Tourist sellers give way
to more workaday commercial premises selling furniture, building materials, insurance and groceries. Intermittently, locals’ houses lean against each other for comfort, and spread naughtily into neighbouring vacant lots where greenery and cast-off rubbish grow and interbreed. As the road meanders slightly from side to side like a happy drunk, a view of sea will periodically break through on one side, and green hillsides muscle into sight above weather-worn roofs on the other.

Approaching Lamai, we passed a police box from where a bored policeman waved a greeting which my companions ignored. They were concentrating on their bearings.

“Just here,” said PC pointing ahead and to the right.

DTs slowed the car and indicated, waiting for a gap in the oncoming traffic before turning gingerly onto a concrete side road.

There were no inhabited buildings immediately in the vicinity of the turning, merely scrubland and some unhealthy-looking coconut trees. The concrete ran out after about a hundred metres, having rounded the grey skeletal remains of an abandoned building project. Presumably the road had been put in by the same overly-optimistic developer. The workmen having long since departed, nature was reasserting herself, and the unroofed structures were losing the struggle to stay above the rampant greenery. Part of the perimeter wall was, however, intact, although starting to crumble against the combined onslaught of plant and insect. It was behind this wall that the road stopped and, after a few metres, the ground began its climb towards the hills, and the coconut grove proper began.

DTs stopped the car on the concrete, put on the handbrake and left the engine running. He and PC both turned simultaneously to look at me. I looked back. “Well?” I said.

“Straight ahead,” grunted PC. “Even you can’t miss it.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“No. We’re going for some lunch. We’ll be back in about an hour to pick you up.”

I slammed the door closed. DTs turned the car around and drove off.

Now what?

I was alone under the early afternoon sun, equipped only with a cell phone, notebook, pen and full bladder. First things first. I relieved myself against the wall and, mindful of my karma
,
opted against flooding the teeming termite nest beside me. I lit a cigarette and took in my surroundings.

The wall and the trees concealed the clearing from the Samui Ring Road
. Though it was close enough to hear the traffic, the sound was muffled. There was no sign of any functioning human habitation. The tree-covered land rose quickly towards the hills. Surprisingly for an island cul-de-sac, there was no discarded litter, prophylactics or dumped dead electrical devices – which suggested the locals avoided the place.

Where the road ended, the earth was packed hard and dry as the Gobi. No imprint of tyre tracks, no cigarette butts,
zilch. A few metres ahead of me the trees began, and I could see coloured tape marking out the crime scene. Here there were some cigarette ends, but these could have been dropped by bored or cogitating policemen. The dry grass and undergrowth had been trampled by several pairs of feet, and any trail from a dragged corpse obliterated accordingly.

I ducked under the tape and examined the ground. Next to one of the trees, the grass was blackened and scorched over an area about the size of a tall man’s body. The killer must have used a fair bit of petrol because the flames had licked up the bark of the tree
.

The victim had either been bludgeoned to death here, or killed beforehand and dragged into the trees for the bonfire. Given where the body was found either hypothesis was credible. I hoped the file Charoenkul was preparing for me might provide some illumination on this point.

I lobbed fallen coconuts ahead of me to alert any snakes, and wandered around under the trees awhile looking for God-knows-what. I was grateful for the shade, and wished I had a bottle of water with me. I thought about the Chief, my benefactor, and tried to piece together the chain of events that had brought me here.

Assuming Papa Doc was not playing mind-games with me over his wife, he must be desperate. Why else involve an unqualified Brit in a murder investigation? I racked my brains for what I knew of the Royal Thai Police. If I remembered correctly, the organisation was headed up by a
Commissioner-General, and was broadly structured along military lines: all the ranks above constable were army classifications. Leaving aside the special units which dealt with threats to national security, border patrols and the policing of Bangkok, domestic law enforcement fell primarily under the Provincial Police Division. The Division was geographically subdivided into 9 Regions, to whom significant powers had been delegated from Bangkok as part of a reorganisation to improve effectiveness. As the Chief had said, Samui came under the Surat Thai Region (‘Region 8’), and the HQ was on the mainland in Surat Thani Town. I vaguely recollected some recent bribery scandal over police entry examinations held there.

After Charoenkul’s balls-up over the first murder, his superiors at HQ were evidently breathing down his neck; and the fact that they had sent in an investigation team must be a heavy blow to his prestige and promotion prospects. Now he could not ‘officially’ investigate the case – or rather cases.
If, however, with my help he ‘stumbled’ over the solution, he could not be criticised for acting against orders, and his reputation would be restored. That, of course, was a big
if
.

Wondering whether to light up another Marlboro, I found I was standing on a narrow dirt track that wound through the trees. It must have spurred off from the concrete road, but I had overlooked it because of the dried-out earth. Having nothing better to do, I decided to follow it.

It snaked its way west, rising quickly with the ground, and after a short way, rounded a very large boulder, the product of some prehistoric landslip. Atop the rock was perched a dilapidated wooden structure, sitting above the tree-line. I could see now it was to this shack that the path led. I scrambled up, sweating, and was surprised to see the building’s inhabitant.

On the dusty porch, soaking up the sun, sat an ancient-looking Thai man. His emaciated body was shirtless, his lower half wrapped in a faded sarong, and he wore mirrored sun-shades. He turned his head as I approached.

“Sàwàt-dii khráp,” I said rather breathlessly.

He returned my greeting without getting up. I could see he didn’t have many teeth left, and on closer acquaintance his skin was like a wrinkled walnut.
Also his left foot was malformed: a
devil’s hoof
it would have been called in less enlightened times.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I panted in Thai, “
but do you have any water? It’s a thirsty climb up here.”

“Yes,” he gave a short smile, “I don’t have many visitors. Help yourself, there’s water inside.”

I passed behind him into the wooden hovel, which smelled of heat and old age. There was one multi-purpose room which served as kitchen, dining room and lounge; a curtain presumably screening off a sleeping area; and a partially-open door revealing a primitive toilet. Small gaps in the roof let in some sunlight and, I surmised, rain during less dry days. The place was ramshackle but clean, and the floor had been recently swept. There were small shelves around the walls, on which were piled carved wooden boats with intricate markings of lotus flowers and demons. A very large plastic bottle of water stood on the side, next to a gas ring and some neatly stacked pots, pans, plates and cups. I gave one of the cups a quick dusting with my handkerchief and splashed in some water. It was tepid, but refreshing enough. I could hardly expect ice-cubes: the place had no electricity.