The Axe Factor: A Jimm Juree Mystery (Jimm Juree Mysteries) (12 page)

I never thought for a second I’d be fascinated by a knife collection. But Conrad obviously loved them. It was so much more macho than collecting stamps or
Star Wars
memorabilia. He’d built an air-conditioned concrete room with a thick door to stop the old metal ones going rusty. And he knew them. I mean, every one of them had a story attached to it. He was on to a dagger carried by the lady courtiers in Sukhothai to kill themselves, should they be overrun by randy Burmese.

His paella had been perfect and the wine that washed that fancy old seafood fried rice down a treat. To my relief, the maid and gardener didn’t live in. They had a hut down in the temple grounds. Temples technically weren’t allowed to rent out rooms, but you could make monthly donations. I’m not a person affected by alcohol, but the sweetness of the wine had made me a little heady. Or perhaps it was the company. He’d loved my dress. Loved what I’d done with my hair. (I’d washed it.) Loved having laughter at the kitchen table again. I was a successful dinner guest, and when he suggested we come and look at his blade collection, I’d rather been hoping he’d have them on racks around his bedroom. I know. Giving a bad impression of Thai women. Added another fifty charter flights of horny old Europeans right here. But wait, before you book, we, and by that I mean normal Thai women, are not interested in people like you. If we wanted beer-swilling, pot-bellied, stupid guys, we have a country full of them. Being sexually active doesn’t mean lowering standards. If you are repulsive in Rome, you’ll be just as repulsive in Bangkok. Conrad, however, was classy whatever way you looked at him.

So, to cut a long story short, as we stood staring at the actual axe King Naresuan the Great had carried into battle, the weapon that cost two million
baht
at auction, I took hold of Conrad’s hairy forearm and squeezed.

“I’ve never been this close to history,” I said. “Not to mention two million
baht
.”

It was either the wine or the money that caused my heart to flutter and me to look up into his Manchester City blue eyes and say, “I’d like to see the rest of the house now.”

*   *   *

Having sex is one thing. Describing it in writing is another. I tried. I really tried to make it sound like more than humping. But the
Guardian
Bad Sex Award was always at the back of my mind. They give an annual prize—I think it’s a chastity belt—for the worst lovemaking description, and I didn’t want to get famous for making sex sound like plumbing. But every time I tried to write what happened that night, it came out in S-bends and spurts and dribbles and suction. That’s what happens when you think too much about it. When you’re actually having it, when it actually works—which is rare—you aren’t present at the scene. The “doing it” becomes subliminal. Your mind is off swimming in a tub of friendly jellyfish. It is—it should be—the ultimate out-of-body experience. So I can’t write about my night with Conrad Coralbank because I wasn’t there.

When I got back, a jellyfish buzz the length of my body, I was in bed with him naked. He had his arms around me, and the breath from his nose was blowing directly into my left ear. He was asleep and I didn’t want to move. We’d done the deed and he was still there. Not even my husband had stuck around once his duty was done. He’d be over on the East Berlin side of the bolster, snoring. Most of the casuals had one leg in their jeans before the final thrust.

But my author, my old, modestly equipped, good-smelling author was holding on to me and smiling in his sleep. I wanted never to have to leave that bed. Those arms. That moment. Because deep in my stomach I felt it would never happen again.

*   *   *

“I didn’t know whether you ate meat,” he said. “So I had A make a few alternatives.”

When I awoke the second time, finding myself alone on the enormous bed, with a view of the entire Gulf including the Vietnamese delta and the tip of Borneo twelve thousand kilometers away, I’d walked naked through the stroll-through closet and into the black-and-white-checked bathroom. I’d taken a rain shower, applied natural herbs, put on my crumpled gingham dress, and walked down the arty staircase to breakfast. A awaited me. The look she gave me suggested she had no idea how helpful my family had been to the Burmese community. All she saw was the Jezebel whore slut descending from the love nest that should have been hers. If she’d been holding a skillet of boiling oil rather than a Scotch-Brite foam pad, I was sure she would have thrown it at me.

“I eat anything,” I said so as not to appear deliberately confrontational.

In fact, there were many things I didn’t eat. The pork rissole A slammed down in front of me was one of them. Conrad was across the large table from me, eating muesli and drinking fresh carrot juice. His lips were orange.

“Sleep well?” he asked.

He was in a singlet and shorts, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been for a morning jog already. Whereas I wouldn’t have a need to exercise for a very long time. The euphoria was wearing off, and I could feel aches in all my muscles.

“Very well,” I said.

A full glass of orange juice sort of bounced down in front of me, spilling on the table.

“Steady, A,” said Conrad.

“Sorry,” she said in English, then in Thai she added, “I’m a housekeeper, not a waitress in a short-time motel.”

She laughed. I laughed. Conrad laughed because he hadn’t a clue what she’d just said to me. Among other things, I’d discovered during the night that Conrad had the type of very basic bar pidgin Thai that dispensed with grammar, pronunciation, and comprehension.

“Then maybe you should get out of the kitchen and go wash some underwear,” I told her in Thai.

I laughed. She laughed. Conrad laughed.

“What are you two gossiping about?” he asked.

“She asked me how good you were in bed,” I said.

“She…? She did not.” He blushed. The breakfast plates clattered in the sink. I believed I’d just declared war on Burma. It wouldn’t have been the first time, but Thailand had a habit of losing those wars. I wasn’t about to let history repeat itself.

*   *   *

When I arrived back at the resort, I was expecting to find a family frantic with worry that young Jimm hadn’t slept in her bed the night before. Perhaps the police had been alerted. The neighbors out with bamboo sticks in a long line probing the sand for my remains. At the very least, Arny and Grandad Jah unconscious with hunger because their breakfast was half an hour late. But the Gulf Bay Lovely Resort was deserted. The night shutters were down on the shop. The Mighty X, now trunkless, was parked beside it, her rear end with an irreparable sag and no plate. I walked to the family compound. The wind was still up. Sand blew into my eyes. Through tears, I admired the line of washed-up polystyrene that gave the beach a Nordic look. We also had a nice selection of adult diapers. I wondered whether some ill-advised seniors cruise had gone down in the bay. The family bungalows were unoccupied, all but my own. The door was ajar, and I found the damned dogs on my bed. Beer had turned the pillow to candy floss. Gogo looked up with a shrug. I can think of nothing worse than dogs sleeping on your bed. All right, perhaps being interrogated by the Taliban was worse, but this was unacceptable. My first instinct was to beat them with a broom, but I’d had sex, so the world was a much brighter place and all the Lord’s creatures deserved forgiveness.

I had to take another shower because the salt in the wind had penetrated my herb-scented skin. I dressed conservatively, black cords and a high collar, and took the truck into Lang Suan. It was like traveling by sleigh with the flatbed skimming the blacktop. I drove slowly, and the only radio station I could pick up was Lang Suan City 105 FM, the never-interrupt-good-advertisements-with-music station. So I gave up and used my driving time to think about … everything. About my mother, who was now into the second day aboard a rickety squid boat for the love of a wayward husband. They were probably out of canned sardines and living on raw mackerel by now. Wind-blistered. Sun-baked. Distilling seawater in an upturned Wall’s beach umbrella. Then I wondered whether she had her cell phone with her. They were only a couple of kilometers out. I decided I’d give her a call when I got back.

With Grandad and his mysterious tree and Arny with his senior fiancée, and Sissi back in her shell in Chiang Mai, I thanked Mazu, the goddess of the sea, that there was one person in our family having a normal relationship. I imagine some women out there wouldn’t consider a one-night stand to be a relationship at all. But I wager those women had never dated Mee, the airport taxi driver, out of desperation and the hope they might get a discount on airport transfers. Compared to that, I was perfectly happy to be referred to as a fame groupie. I understood now why women threw themselves at heavy metal lead singers even if they looked like clams on sticks. It was the thrill of being touched by greatness. Admittedly, Conrad Coralbank was no Rong Wong-savun, but he was a name and—

My thoughts were interrupted by the back axle falling off the truck.

*   *   *

I arrived twenty-eight minutes late for my appointment at Lang Suan Hospital and was pleased I’d decided to wear black. Twenty-eight minutes is hardly late at all in Thailand, but the woman I’d come to see made a point of looking at her watch every few minutes. Her name was Dr. June and she was the head of the Regional Clinic Allocations Department. She had that rubbery Thai/Chinese look you came to expect of administrators in the south. Their ancestors had come to the wilds, toiled, and sent their children to university to become doctors and politicians. Dr. June was clearly a product of those family values. She was my height, Mair’s age, with a minimalist low-maintenance hairstyle and expensive glasses.

“Sorry I’m late,” I’d told her when I arrived. “The back axle fell off my truck.”

Less serious women would have seen that as funny. She’d merely glared at the grease on my fingernails. The story had tickled a woman at a nearby table, but she’d reacted to Dr. June’s nod by leaving the room and closing the door behind her. Dr. June’s gaze returned to my fingers.

“And you were attempting to reattach it?” she asked.

“No. I just felt an obligation to remove it from the poor old fellow it rolled over. He was pinned down, and there was nobody else around. But, from then on, it was all good news. He wasn’t hurt and he had a mechanic on speed dial. So they’re down there now putting it all back together. I got a ride from—”

“This is fascinating,” she said, “but I have another appointment.”

I picked up an accent. Something deep south, but I couldn’t quite place it.

“Right,” I said. “Too much information about the irrelevant. It’s a bad habit of mine. Occupational hazard.”

She didn’t ask what my occupation was. In fact, she’d accepted my request for a meeting without asking anything about me. I’d assumed some people just craved human company, although you’d never know it in her case. She looked again at her watch, then the door, as if expecting the next appointment to walk in at any minute.

“I’ll get to the point,” I said.

“Thank you.”

I wondered why she was wearing a white coat. Was she active in the wards as well as being a chief administrator? I wanted to ask her, but I could tell she wasn’t one for small talk.

“Dr. Somluk,” I said.

“Yes?”

“She’s disappeared.”

“And?”

“And I was wondering whether she officially handed in her notice. Whether she gave a reason for having to suddenly stop work.”

I was surprised that she hadn’t asked me which Dr. Somluk I was referring to. It was a common enough name.

“And you are?” she asked.

“Jimm,” I said. “I’m a friend of Dr. Somluk’s nurse. They were close. She’s afraid something might have happened to the doctor. Apart from one message, she hasn’t been in touch.”

“And the message said?”

“Not to worry.”

“But you insist on worrying.”

“I’m a natural.”

Dr. June looked at her watch, then reached for a file on the desk in front of her. She flipped open the cover, and there was a photograph of Dr. Somluk. She peeled through a few more pages, stopping here and there to extract information, then closed the file.

“In fact,” she said, still not making eye contact, “this is a professional matter. Not an issue I’d normally wish to discuss with a layperson.”

I’d always wanted to be called a layperson. It was like a badge of nondenomination.

“But?” I said, hoping there was one.

“I think I owe it to her nurse to pass on my personal knowledge of Dr. Somluk, who has had a very checkered career path. She is what I believe they refer to as a conspiracy theorist. I have her record.”

Amazing coincidence that it should just be lying there on the desk.

“Do you realize she has never stayed in a job for longer than two years?” she asked.

“I’m not really in a position to know anything,” I said. “I’m just the messenger.”

At last, she looked at me over her glasses.

“Right,” she said. “Dr. Somluk’s résumé had looked particularly promising when I first read it. But once I got to the references, contacted them personally, it was always the same story. She was good at her job, but she got a bee in her bonnet about this or that. At one hospital, she was convinced the director was abusing his nurses. At another, she was convinced the pharmacy was ordering too much cold medicine and sending the bulk of it up to the border to make amphetamines. There was always something.”

“And is there no possibility there really was always something?”

“Young lady. Hospitals take these matters very seriously. They all conducted internal inquiries. Every one of her accusations was shot down. It was generally agreed she was unstable.”

“Then why would you have hired her?”

“As I say. Her doctoring was impeccable. It was only in personal conversations with her previous employers that I began to understand her character. I doubt you’d understand how hard it is to get qualified medical personnel to work in a remote outpost like Maprao. It was a question of hiring her, then waiting for the references to come in. After a few months, the pattern was quite clear. She was very competent, but doctoring wasn’t enough for her. She needed a cause.”