The Axe Factor: A Jimm Juree Mystery (Jimm Juree Mysteries) (18 page)

“Feeling better now?”

“Yeah. I’m probably just worked up because Gogo got to see me flustered.”

“Gogo was here?”

“He just arrived downstairs.”

“I missed Gogo? Damn.”

“He dropped by to remind me of our date tonight. I invited him up to meet a real newspaper reporter, but he couldn’t stop. He said to say hello.”

“I’ve probably seen him around. What does he look like?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“One hint.”

“He’s big. More than twice my weight. Eighty-five kilos. That’s all I’m telling you.”

I had to smile at the image of skinny Da walking around with her fat Thai boyfriend. Still, whatever makes a girl happy. But that led my mind to the looks I got when I walked into the restaurant with Conrad. They were probably thinking, “There’s no accounting for taste.”

“So, anyway. Do you have a music system here?” I asked.

“What?”

“Somewhere you can rest after your busy day and listen to music, read magazines?”

“We’ve got a staff room.”

“Lead me there.”

We walked to the end of the corridor to a room labeled STAFF RELAXATION CENTER. It was furnished with comfortable chairs, a carpet of all things, and a flat-screen TV. The whole center was typical of big-country politics on small-town pockets. Buy things. Build things. Re-lay perfectly good roads. But take a lot of pictures. Political advancement was about buying favors, and my modern nation’s elders had decided country people were easily swayed by the sight of shiny beads. You couldn’t take photos of human development so it took a backseat. Nurse Da had a shiny white health center all to herself with a glass cabinet, a DVD player, and a stack of music and movies.

I got to my knees, opened the smoked glass doors of the cabinet, and thumbed through the discs. The one I was looking for was at the back. There was nothing written on it.

“Did Lieutenant Chompu get this far?” I asked, gloating slightly and waving the unmarked CD.

“No. Looks like you win,” said Da.

We returned to the office, put the CD in the computer drawer, and I found it on the menu. There was one Word folder on it. When I clicked it, some thirty or forty Word files came up with names like
Letter One to Medley
.
Reply to Letter Four from Medley
. The first letter was dated April. That would have been two months before Dr. Somluk first started working at the Maprao clinic. When she was still at the Regional Clinic Allocations Department with Dr. June. I opened that first letter to Medley, and Da leaned over my shoulder to read it.

To Medley Regional Office, Bangkok

Dear Sirs,

My name is Dr. Somluk Shinabut and I am working at the Chumphon Regional Clinic Allocations Department based at the Lang Suan hospital in the south of Thailand. I have recently become aware, through my work here, that your rather forceful advertising campaigns on our national television stations and in the popular press are having a negating effect on our rural efforts to encourage women to provide breast milk for their infants.

I am enthusiastic about the use of your product (budget permitting) when, due to extreme conditions, a woman is unable to breastfeed. But even using your product as a supplement interferes with the natural process of suckling. Your company continues to promote formula as a supplement because you know that formula babies stop taking mother’s milk and the supply dries up sooner as a result. I am concerned that an increasing number of mothers are getting the wrong message from your ambiguous advertisements—that they should abandon breastfeeding in order to give their babies a better chance to be strong and healthy. You make astounding claims that formula babies have a higher IQ, are stronger, and have better digestion and immune systems. As you know, this is clearly not the case.

I also remind you that your formula needs to be mixed with water, and many rural communities still rely on well- or river-water and live in unhygienic conditions. This is clearly far more dangerous for babies than taking mother’s milk regularly.

In 1981 your company signed the International Code on the Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes, which was drafted to protect the culture of breastfeeding by controlling the marketing of formula products throughout the world. You are clearly not operating under the spirit of that agreement. In fact, you seem to have refocused your efforts on Third World countries, where you believe health workers are easier to manipulate. Well, health workers in Thailand are neither gullible nor stupid, and we will not allow you to endanger the health of our children in your quest for higher profits.

Sincerely

Dr. Somluk Shinabut

I scrolled down to find a reasonable English translation of the same letter addressed to Medley’s head office in Switzerland.

“Wow,” said Da. “She was…? Wow. And she sent that to Europe?”

“Looks like it.”

“She’s got balls.”

“She certainly has. And I doubt whether this stock reply from the Bangkok office shrank those danglers even the slightest.”

To Dr. Somluk Shinabut

Dear Doctor,

We at Medley always appreciate comments and opinions from health professionals in the field. We may be a multinational corporation, but one valuable suggestion from a doctor in even the smallest village in a developing country has the power to change an entire national policy.

We have noted your comments, and our Public Relations department is, at this very moment, making inquiries into the practices in your region and will pursue every effort to address any misunderstandings or misrepresentations.

As a result of this, we trust that matters will be resolved to your satisfaction in the very near future.

Yours sincerely

Medley Customer Relations Department, Bangkok.

“It was nice that they wrote back,” said Da.

“Da, are you kidding? They didn’t write back. They just cut and pasted Dr. Somluk’s name and the date on their form letter and returned it. I doubt anyone even bothered to read it. And Europe would leave these regional hiccups for their regional office to take care of. It was a bullshit response and Somluk knew it.”

I opened a later correspondence and scanned through it.

“Huh! And so we get to letter number thirteen,” I said. “She’s already left the regional office and been transferred down here to Maprao. And poor old Dr. Somluk knows that she still hasn’t been referred to an actual person who gives a monkey’s bum. She knows she can discard the politeness and be reckless. Perhaps then someone might take notice.”

I smiled as I imagined her typing this.

Dear Idiots at Medley,

Thank you for not replying in person to any of my letters, which have articulated why children in my region have been dying unnecessarily as a result of your illegal and irresponsible misrepresentation of facts. I thought you might enjoy one more anecdote from an insignificant rural doctor. Now that I’m working directly in the field, I see even more clearly how evil you are.

In the same aisle as your life-giving, godforsaken formula are your own dairy creamers, coffee whiteners with the same grinning teddy bear on the packet. The same packaging. But so much cheaper than formula, and such a better option. And congratulations. Word is out that children given coffee creamer from an early age are fatter and jollier than kids that aren’t. I even saw a TV spot from a famous actress who held up her bloated baby to the camera. And I see them here in the villages. They really are round and chubby, and every one of them is undernourished and suffering from anemia.

You are so clever. You’re getting away with murder. But I’m not going to rest until I let the world know how despicable you are. I’ll stop you, I swear I will. I have become involved with a number of online organizations that already know what you’re doing. My experiences have been posted there. Soon everyone will know. Remember this name. You’ll be hearing a lot of it.

Dr. Somluk Shinabut

“She’s starting to sound a bit…”

“Fanatical?”

“Yes,” said Da. “Paranoid, even.”

“Paranoid doesn’t always mean wrong,” I said, although that was probably an oxymoron.

“You’d have dealings with local health workers,” I said. “What do they say about all this?”

“They’re all really big on formula.”

“You think this is just another one of your Dr. Somluk’s mental symptoms?”

Da thought about it for a while.

“No. I don’t know,” she said. “She’s a troubled woman for sure, but she has a good heart. Ooh.”

“What?”

“Do you think she might be on the run from the Medley people?”

“I doubt multinational milk companies hire hitmen to deal with troublesome correspondents. But I guess they could make life uncomfortable. Look at this last letter from the Medley Legal Department.”

Attention: Dr. Somluk Shinabut

The Medley Corporation and its associates take personal threats very seriously. We would prefer to avoid pursuing legal proceedings against you, but if you continue with this personal vendetta based on groundless accusations and insinuations, we will have no choice other than to lodge libel charges with the police and pursue the matter in court.

“Looks like the doctor got somebody’s attention after all,” I said.

“She hit a nerve, right enough,” said Da.

“The Internet,” I said. “It can make a lion of the tiniest ant.”

That wasn’t my line. I think Donald Trump or somebody said it.

“Can I take the disc and go through it at home?” I asked.

“No problem.”

*   *   *

Back at the resort, I saw a familiar motorcycle sidecar combo in the car park. Captain Kow had presumably removed the fried-fish ball attachment to make space for his beloved to sit. Now that was class. I found the happy couple on Mair’s veranda, holding hands. Mair was gloriously pretty in a hibiscus print frock and an unashamed beaming smile. Sitting opposite were Arny and Grandad Jah.

“Well, at last you bother to show up,” said Grandad.

“Hello, Mair,” I said. “Sea too rough for you, was it?”

“I could have handled it,” said Mair. “But your father insisted I come ashore.”

I still couldn’t get used to that “Father” tag.

“How long did you last?” I asked.

“Half an hour,” said Grandad. “Some tough fisherman, he is.”

“So where have you been?” I asked.

“The One Hotel in Surat,” said Mair. “It was a first honeymoon. We never did have one back then.”

“And here we were worried frantic about you, and there you were fornicating on a bed in a sleazy motel,” said Grandad.

I don’t recall Grandad worrying or even mentioning Mair in all the time she was gone. But he did have a point.

“Couldn’t you have phoned?” I asked.

“I told her she should,” said the captain. “But you know what she’s like.”

I knew less and less what she was like.

“I wanted you all to get used to not having me around,” said Mair. “It’s like the mother hen leaving the hive and all the workers having to sort out where to store the honey without a technical adviser. And certainly without jars. It was such a lovely place and the staff were so polite.”

I assumed she’d stopped referring to the chicken hive.

“So are we having our family powwow at last?” I asked, and speed-dialed Sissi for the quorum. It was one of the few things I’d learned to do on that phone.

“Not exactly,” said Mair. “There’s just the one thing that I need to clear up.”

“Hang on,” I said. The phone took its time. “Siss? You busy? The seafaring mother has returned, and she’s got an announcement to make.”

“If she’s pregnant, I’m putting myself up for adoption,” said Sissi.

“Wait, I’m putting you on Skype and sitting you on a nice chair so you can see everyone. Comfortable?”

“Very. Hello, Mair.”

“Hello, darling,” said Mair. “Now, isn’t this lovely. We’re all here together. It’s quite exciting. Children, there’s something I need to tell you about your father.”

“Huh. Some father,” said Grandad Jah.

Mair steeled herself and took a deep breath, like a gymnast before a floor routine. There was no
Titanic
smile.

“Well, that’s just it, you see?” said Mair. “Here you all are having bad thoughts about poor Captain Kow when it’s me you should be blaming. The truth is I first met Kow here in Maprao thirty-eight years ago. Oh my. He was handsome and so virile. He could—”

“Mair, can we skip the details?” said the cell phone.

“I was so in love with him,” Mair continued, “but he was a common fisherman and I was a university graduate. He was terribly unworldly.”

Captain Kow’s face hardly changed its expression this whole time. There was still a slight crack of a smile between his lips. The merest shadow of the gap between his teeth.

“I thought how beautiful my children would be if he fathered them,” Mair continued. “But I didn’t want to live here. Oh my. If you think this is backward now, imagine what it was like thirty-eight years ago. It was prehysterical.”

I had visions of mad dinosaurs queuing up at the 7-Eleven.

“I wanted my children to grow up cultured,” Mair said. “To give them a good, international upbringing. And I wanted you all to grow up in Chiang Mai. I frankly didn’t think Kow would be able to advance you the way I hoped. I had your upbringings all worked out. Sissi, darling, I’m sorry you turned out female. I hadn’t reckoned that into my calculations.”

“That’s okay,” said the cell phone.

“If I’d married an educated man in the north, he would have insisted on a traditional upbringing for you. Whereas I wanted you to be children of the world. So … I hired Kow to come to Chiang Mai and be your father.”

“You what?”

On reflection, I think we all may have said that at the same time. It was the only instance I can recall us being coordinated as a family.

“Three years or three children. Whichever came first,” she said. “That was the deal.”