Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat

“You met ‘em at the dig site. Remember? They’re around here somewhere. Thai Rat newspaper, isn’t it? My word, you must have lived an exciting life for someone so young, mixing with all those celebrities and political nobs.”
    I couldn’t hold back a laugh.
    “I was…am on the crime desk,” I told him. “I mix with exactly the same lowlifes that you do here: criminals, murderers…”
    “Here?” He looked surprised. “We haven’t had any serious crime here since they put the Burmese fishermen on a curfew in 2005. One murderer in the past three years and he was so drunk he couldn’t find his way from the crime scene. He was there waiting for us sleeping like a baby. We get the odd domestic dispute, kids smoking ganja and chewing on buzzy hai gratom leaves. That’s pretty much it.”
    My heart sank.
    “Otherwise, it’s community policing,” he continued. “A lot of meetings, traffic control, the young people’s club, football. But this VW thing, I tell you, this is the one we’ll all be talking about for years to come. Plus you being here, of course.” (I felt a lump of embarrassment.) “I’m afraid the major’s not around today. It’s supposed to be his day off but he was dragged away to Lang Suan for some emergency or other. I’m sure he would have liked to see you.”
    I wasn’t so sure, but I was relieved to see he’d made it out of the toilet.
    “So you’d be here on some type of update, I’d imagine.” Sergeant Phoom was a man who liked to talk. “We ran out and got some Pepsi when we heard you were coming. Hope you’re thirsty. We weren’t sure what you liked so we got Coke, too. Never can be too careful. Diet Coke, I think it is, just in case you’re on one. But I can see you have no need to be.”
    In all my years in Chiang Mai police stations I’d never been welcomed so warmly as a member of the press. The sergeant offered to take me up to the briefing room but he looked uneasy about leaving the desk unattended so I told him I’d find it. Most stations have a standard, unimaginative floor plan: open reception downstairs with bus station seats in front of the desk, interview rooms leading off to the right and the left, fines paid to a cashier behind reception, offices upstairs, briefing room at the end, couple of small cells out the back. It was one more example of the lack of individuality that typified Thai policing, in my mind. Where was the splash of color, the gay idiosyncrasy? The answer to that question I found at the end of the hall.
    The sign, BREIFING ROOM, over the door was so small you’d hardly notice the spelling mistake. The door was open and inside the room sat Constable Ma Yai and another officer with the stripes of a police lieutenant but the mannerisms of a fairy. He stood and clapped his hands delicately.
    “Our angel has arrived,” he said.
    I’d met gay policemen before. When Sissi was in her prime as a cabaret star she introduced me to a lot of her boyfriends. She had a thing for uniforms. She’d started with postmen, then worked her way up through the police ranks until reaching her ultimate high: an air force fighter pilot called Bin. But, excluding the postal workers, I’d never met a man in uniform who didn’t overcompensate on the side of male testosterone when he was on the job. This officer put up no such pretense. He introduced himself as Police Lieutenant Chompu and gave me a deep wai just short of a curtsy. I loved him instantly. I had no idea how Lieutenant Chompu had passed his medical and his oral exam and why he still remained active in a police force that rejected applicants for the most insignificant reasons, but at that moment I could only smile with admiration at a man clearly unembarrassed by his femininity. His posh central-Thai accent suggested to me that Chompu was at the end of the line, shunted further and further away from mainline stations until he could regress no further. Here he was at the Pak Nam siding with nowhere to go.
    We exchanged pleasantries and funny comments and sat down at the large Formica-topped table where upturned glasses, bottled water, small cellophane-covered packets of sweets, jumbo Pepsis and Cokes, and an island of artificial poinsettias waited for our meeting.
    “Constable Yai is our briefing person,” said Chompu. “He has a super speaking voice. Our lady typist almost melts when she hears it. So gravelly.”
    The constable blushed but he seemed to enjoy the compliment. He had a