The Axe Factor: A Jimm Juree Mystery (Jimm Juree Mysteries) (28 page)

The bridge over the Ga River had been washed away, so we had to turn around and take a route via Bangladesh to get home. We were in a comparatively jolly mood considering, but all we really needed was a good day’s sleep. Or two. In my case, they could wake me up at New Year. On the way we slalomed around roof tiles and tree branches. Lost dogs in collars sat beside the road looking for their owners. Bamboo sheds lay flat, and signposts were bent over like old ladies. Ignoring all this, the sky was a magnificent crimson, not unlike the floor of the operating theater the night before.

We drove through six centimeters of mud as we forged up to Kow’s palm plantation, although plantation was far too grand a word for the small patch of land he’d carved out of the jungle on the side of a hill. Mair and the dogs came running to greet us with their tongues out. The cows ignored us. My mother had been cut off from the outside world when the nearest cell-phone tower slid down the side of the mountain with several hundred rubber trees. So she hadn’t slept either. Arny and Grandad traveled in Kow’s motorcycle sidecar combo, while Chompu and I in the SUV updated Mair on all the fascinating news. The dogs sat on the backseat and, to Chompu’s dismay, all threw up within the space of ten minutes. Knowing Chom, I expected him to buy a new car rather than disinfect this one.

We headed to the coast. We crossed the little bridge that forded the stream that had always meandered gently behind the Lovely Resort. But, oddly, like an incomplete memory, the stream, not gentle at all now, meandered at speed directly into the sea. To the west, the house of our neighbor, Guy, usually hidden behind a bank of thick bushes, now had an unrestricted sea view. To the east, a still-snarling surf threw itself onto a ribbon of beach strewn with bamboo and garbage. We all instinctively looked behind us to see whether we’d taken a wrong turn. Had we been so befuddled with fatigue that we might have come to entirely the wrong beach? But there was the end of the bay with its distinctive rock formation. And there was the quaint bridge we’d planned to turn into a tourist attraction for Japanese honeymooners. And there, tossing around on the waves some fifty meters out, was Grandad Jah’s coffin.

We were in the right place. Everything else was where it should have been. But the Gulf Bay Lovely Resort and Restaurant was gone.

Also by Colin Cotterill

The Jimm Jurree Series

Killed at the Whim of a Hat

Grandad, There’s a Head on the Beach

The Dr. Siri Series

The Coroner’s Lunch

Thirty-Three Teeth

Disco for the Departed

Anarchy and Old Dogs

Curse of the Pogo Stick

The Merry Misogynist

Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

Slash and Burn

The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die

About the Author

Born in London, COLIN COTTERILL has worked as a teacher in Israel, Australia, the United States, and Japan before he started training teachers in Thailand. Cotterill now lives in a small fishing village on the Gulf of Siam in Southern Thailand. He’s won the Dilys and a CWA Dagger, and has been a finalist for several other awards.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE AXE FACTOR.
Copyright © 2013 by Colin Cotterill. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein

Cover photo-illustration by Hugh Syme:

photograph of woman with axe © Rob Wood-Wood Ronsaville Harlin, Inc.; border © Tratong/
Shutterstock.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Cotterill, Colin.

    The axe factor: a Jimm Juree Mystery / Colin Cotterill.—First U.S. Edition.

            pages cm.

    ISBN 978-1-250-04336-8 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-1-4668-4169-7 (e-book)

  1.  Women journalists—Thailand—Fiction.   2.  Missing persons—Thailand—Maprao—Fiction.   3.  Serial murderers—Thailand—Maprao—Fiction.   4.  Domestic fiction.   I.  Title.

    PR6053.O778A97 2014

    823'.914—dc23

2014003807

eISBN 9781466841697

First published in 2013 in the United Kingdom by Quercus UK

First U.S. Edition: April 2014