The Axe Factor: A Jimm Juree Mystery (Jimm Juree Mysteries) (8 page)

*   *   *

It was Wednesday when I got the call. I hadn’t given him my cell-phone number, but in Maprao you just had to ask someone who might know you and they’d happily pass it on. What point was there in having a phone if you didn’t want people to call you? My neighbors hadn’t yet learned the art of caller culling.

“Hello, Jimm.”

I quite liked my name without its correct high-rising intonation. It made me sound like a Sydney bricklayer. I was, I have to admit, excited to hear Conrad’s voice. But as they’d taught me in Aussie, “Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen.”

“Who is this?” I asked.

“It’s Conrad. Conrad Coralbank.”

“Er, how did you get this number?”

“From your mother.”

Traitoress. Happy to farm me out to any rich superstar.

“You’d rather I didn’t call?” he asked.

“In fact, I was about to call you.”

“Splendid.”

“My editor said you aren’t interesting enough. He didn’t accept my first draft. I need some dirt.”

“That’s too bad. I’m clean. I could be a Sunlight-washed soup tureen.”

“I don’t believe it. Everyone has dark secrets.”

“Perhaps you could hypnotize me and probe my depths.”

“You can lie if you like,” I said. “I just need something to sell newspapers and get myself a pay packet.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you. But not on the phone.”

“Really? I’m so disappointed.”

“Why?”

“The ‘But I can’t tell you on the phone’ line was voted the worst crime novel cliché of the millennium.”

“It’s unavoidable. If everyone spilled their beans over the phone, there’d be no meetings in dark warehouses. No body discoveries. No arriving in a room where one entire wall was dedicated to photographs of you, illuminated by candles. No meals at the Opposite the Train Station Restaurant.”

“There’s no such restaurant.”

“That might not be the name, exactly. But the sign’s in Thai and I’m only up to the written character for ‘soldier’ in my self-study program. It really is opposite the train station. What do you say?”

“I don’t have an entertainment budget.”

“My treat.”

So, that was it. The banter that led to the first date. It was lunch at the Opposite the Train Station Restaurant, and it did indeed have a view of the Lang Suan train station. On a good day you might get nine passenger trains on that single track between Bangkok and the deep south. Invariably, those trains would get derailed or blown up by southern terrorists or just break down because they were antique. If they survived all that, they could merely plow into a backhoe on one of the unmanned crossings or careen down into a flooded valley like a water ride at Disney World. A five-hour delay was a good day. In fact, the only real inconvenience about Thai rail travel was on those unique occasions when the train arrived on time. You see, nobody ever turned up at the hour stated on the timetable. Those trains would leave the station empty, and the railways would run at a loss. Bad scheduling made economic sense.

The reason I bother to mention all this is that our luncheon that day was accompanied by a cabaret. The eleven fifteen from Thonburi had arrived with a motorcycle entangled in its undercarriage. A shirtless, dark-brown man with a blowtorch had been entrusted with the task of removing it so the Sprinter could continue its sprint. The passengers were all out on the track giving advice, phoning ahead, and smiling violently at the station staff, who were largely innocent.

“Do you suppose the motorcycle rider’s under there as well?” Conrad asked.

Only a murder writer would garnish a meal with such bad taste.

“If he is, a blowtorch probably isn’t going to do him much good,” I replied, kind for kind.

Conrad laughed.

“During the floods the farmers park their motorcycles up on the embankment so they don’t get bogged down in the mud,” I said. “The train drivers usually slow down and beep their horns to give the locals time to move them. Some might just bump them off the tracks. Looks like this fellow was in a hurry.”

“How could you possibly know all this?” Conrad asked.

I smiled and took another spoonful of coconut fish soup. In my haste I accidentally took in a lemongrass leaf, which was part of the debris you’re supposed to leave in the bowl. I wasn’t about to spit it out. I chewed it a little and swallowed it. It’s probably still in my intestines.

“I’m a journalist,” I said. “I ask the right questions of the right people.”

It was my Lois Lane line. In fact, I didn’t imagine for one second the farmers would be so stupid as to park on a train track. I just wanted to impress him with some local color. I’d been prepared for the worst after his “somebody’s mistress” comment, but he’d apologized for that the moment we met in the restaurant car park. He’d offered to pick me up at the resort, but I’d made up some appointment and told him I’d meet him here. As it turned out, Grandad Jah wouldn’t let me have the Mighty X so I’d arrived on our motorcycle. It’s hard to look your best with insects stuck to your sweat and mud flecks on your face. The helmet plastered down my interesting spiky hairdo into a globule of fettuccini.

He’d still seemed pleased to see me when he stepped out of his SUV, Gatsby-cool even down to the brown loafers and chinos. When we’d walked past the waitresses, they must have thought I was being interviewed for a laundry position. My only saving grace was that I was wearing a dress. Scullery maids never wore dresses. The English sign over the cashier’s table said: WE NOT COSH CHICKS.

“I should hire you,” he said.

“What as?” I asked.

“Researcher. Cultural adviser. Odd-jobs woman.”

“You already have someone to hold your watermelons.”

“Right. That wouldn’t be in the job description.”

Not a flinch. I was expecting at least a blush. Men who defile their maids usually show remorse. I decided to keep pushing.

“Your handywoman seems very content in her work.”

“You think so? I really hope you’re right. I do try to keep her happy.”

Brazen.

“I’d hate to lose either of them,” he continued.

“Her and her son?”

He laughed so loud the four uniformed bank employees at the next table looked around.

“Did I say something funny?” I asked.

“No. You’re right. Jo does look so young. I thought the same when I first met him and A. But he’s her husband.”

“But he’s…?”

“Twenty-four. A’s twenty-seven. She graduated from Meiktila University. Literature. She spends a lot of her time typing. I gave her my old laptop. She speaks Thai and English as well as Burmese. Smart girl. And here she is, making beds and washing dishes. What a messed-up country Burma is.”

That’s when it first occurred to me that he might not be diddling her after all. Especially not with her baby-faced husband walking around the grounds with a machete. So, was her warning for me to stay away from him because she had plans to get Little Jo deported and move in on her boss? Or was there something else I needed to know? I had to get her alone and find out what she meant.

Most good Thai meals give way to periods where you’re enjoying the food too much to be bothered with conversation. We were in one of those vacuums. Fish
lahp
, prawns and broccoli in oyster sauce, spicy bamboo shoot and sweet basil, and cold Singha beer. He’d insisted I select the dishes. It was good to see a foreigner enjoy Thai food, even with sweat leaking out of him faster than he could throw in the beer. It was like perpetual motion. But even damp he looked adorable. With the maid issue sort of sorted out, I only had one more query to address before I’d allow myself to be seduced.

“Did you beat your wife?” I asked.

Again, no twitch, no tic, just a smile.

“Would it help sales if I had?”

“Either that or a transvestite lover. The editor seems to think, as it stands, you aren’t worth a headline. You promised me a dark side.”

“And you think my wife is the gateway to sensationalism.”

“Why did she leave?”

“Is this the newspaper asking or you?”

“That depends on the answer.”

He took a few sections of tissue paper from the roll and wiped his face dry. He gently flapped his hand at the flies waiting in the wings for his leftovers.

“She wasn’t ready for this life,” he said. “She was young. Your age. So you know exactly what I’m talking about. No decent cappuccino. No bars. No pizza. No variety or stimulation. Stuck with me in Eden.”

“Did she have a lover?”

“Several, probably. Is this on the record?”

“I’m going to embellish everything you say. But, don’t forget, nobody reads the
Chumphon News
.”

“Right. Then, it wasn’t the lovers. The desire for sex I could forgive. Understand even. But the deceit…”

A hood of gloom seemed to lower over him at that point. The toothpick snapped between his fingers.

“I’d made a commitment,” he said. “I’d never done that before. I promised myself to her. She wasn’t the easiest person to love, but I worked on it. I changed … so it would be successful. I gave up things I thought were sacred. I refurbished my id so it could accommodate another. All this was based on the fact that she said she loved me, and I valued that more than anything. A beautiful young woman loved me. So I gave her me. But that me wasn’t enough for her. She deserved what she got.”

I should have taken more notice of that last comment, but I’m a non-native speaker and I assumed it was related somehow to something he’d said earlier. But there it was. Momentary loss of control. I didn’t need to be native to recognize that. He looked up into my eyes, to see whether I’d noticed his nakedness. He stared into my face until it was almost uncomfortable, before his lips peeled back like mangosteen rind to show me the irresistible whiteness inside.

“What she got was a closed joint bank account,” he said. “A studio apartment with a view of the apartment block next door, and an Italian restaurateur named Giuseppe.”

“And how do you know all this?” I asked.

“She told me a couple of weeks ago. She turned up on the doorstep with the suitcase and the foam box she’d left with. She said she’d thought it over and decided her life would be better with me. I sat her down at the kitchen table with a gin and tonic and asked her how she’d been spending her nights since I kicked her out. I recorded the whole conversation on my phone. As a writer, you can never have too much original material. She relaxed. She thought that a confession—of everything—would cleanse her. Make her pure again in my eyes. But the woman I loved was already a character in a story. And the story ended and the character stopped being real. You may fall for Gatsby while you’re reading how great he is, but when you turn that last page, you have to draw the line between life and fiction. My wife had stopped existing.”

I looked into his damp blue eyes and my heart sagged. I hadn’t counted on this much honesty over lunch.

“So you shot her,” I said. Well, I thought the situation could use a little levity. His eyebrows rose and seemed to nudge his mind back to the here and now. He laughed. He was a good laugher.

“Drove her to the airport and put her on the first flight,” he said.

The under-Sprinter motorcycle was being removed in small pieces. Like Conrad Coralbank’s heart, I doubted they’d ever put it back together again. Beer tended to make me morose. I wanted to crawl through the empty plates and hug my old author, say “There, there” and stroke his hair. He was perfect. All but one of the questions had been answered. His wife was a heartless wench. Mair was right. She had seen her two weeks before on her way to beg forgiveness. Conrad was telling the truth, and now he was being stalked by an aggressive maid. He was doubly a victim. A poor soul. And so to the final question.

“Why did you agree to this stupid interview?” I asked.

We were sharing a plate of pineapple chunks on toothpicks at this point.

“I thought it might enhance my career,” he said, straight-faced.

I glared at him with one eyebrow raised. A month earlier he’d been featured in a five-page spread in
Cosmopolitan
. The
Chumphon News
wasn’t even a lifeboat on that great ocean queen.

“All right,” he confessed. “I didn’t agree. I like my anonymity. I always refuse local news and TV interviews. But your
Khun
Boot wrote back, saying he had a world-class reporter named Jimm Juree who was a near neighbor of mine and she was willing to do the interview. That’s when I said yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d—”

“Well, what a blast” came a high-pitched squeal from somewhere behind me. Conrad’s eyelids sprang open. I turned to see a slim man in the uniform of a police lieutenant mince across the restaurant floor like the opening act of Simon Transvestite cabaret. He put his hands to his cheeks.

“Jimm Juree,” he said. “I can’t believe it.”

Lieutenant Chompu was the only unashamedly camp police officer in Thailand. He certainly wasn’t the only gay policeman—not by a long pole—but his refusal to restrain his feminine side, particularly in moments of high drama, had resulted in his transfer to the last stop on the line: Pak Nam. It was a sad end for a man with keen instincts and brilliant policing skills. His timing, on the other hand …

He held out a limp hand to Conrad and, in surprisingly good English, said, “How you do? I’m Chompu.”

Conrad shook the hand but was unable to retrieve his own, even as my darling policeman sat on the bench beside my would-be darling author. He was clearly drunk.

“Where you come from?” Chom asked, gazing lovingly into Conrad’s eyes.

“I’m from England,” he replied with more politeness than the onslaught deserved.

“I’m come from Thailand,” said Chom. “Please to meet you.”

“And you.”

“Do you having sex with my friend?”

An invisible axe diced my face into small croutons.

“Chompu,” I shouted from behind my unreal smile. “What a nice surprise.” And in Thai: “What hole did you crawl out of?”

“You didn’t see me over there in the corner with my fellow crime-fighters?”

“No.”

“I’ve been watching your every move. You’re such a vixen. And look at this…” He switched to English. “Excuse me. Are you speak Thai?”