Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat

piquancy for me in the past few minutes but it would have been suspicious for me to cry off.
    “And willing,” I said.
    ♦
    Old Mel was sitting on the back fence of his plantation wondering where all the peace and quiet had gone. He was admiring the water spraying from the heads of a dozen sprinklers. The blue PVC pipe upon which they perched snaked between the palms until it reached a sturdy Chinese pump. This in turn drew water from a newly dug pond at the center of which stood a rusty but surprisingly intact VW Kombi van.
    “Good morning, Mel,” said Lieutenant Chompu.
    “Morning,” said Mel.
    The old man remembered me from the previous day’s dig. He briefly slapped his hands together in response to my wai . I imagine he’d read my news report that morning, which largely ignored the thirty-minute interview he’d given me on Saturday.
    “Your well is surely the envy of the province.” Chompu smiled. “Such an attractive centerpiece.”
    “Right,” laughed Mel. “Until the rust kills all my palms.”
    “Nonsense,” said the policeman. “All that iron. They’ll flourish. You watch.”
    The old man had been in a hurry to get his sprinklers working. I looked around at the plantation. Deep ditches ran between the rows of palms all the way from the road to about twenty meters from the back fence. Each contained a shallow trough of water. It was a confusing layout. One that didn’t make sense.
    “ Koon Mel,” I said (selecting the polite ‘Mr.’ over the less-than-polite ‘Old’), “can you tell me why the ditches don’t extend all the way to the rear fence?”
    “Ah,” said Mel. “We dug the ditches fifteen years ago. I was a lot fitter then. Me and my brothers dug them by hand. None of that mechanized backhoe stuff. Everyone was still planting coconut palms back then. Only a few of us had the foresight to see the future of palm oil. Now everyone’s cutting down their coconut trees and planting palms. We were the pathfinders.”
    “So, why…?” I pushed.
    “Oh, right. Well, back then the ditches did go all the way to the back fence. But about seven years ago the owner of the land out there came by and asked if I’d like to buy another three hectares to extend our plantation. He said they had properties to develop and needed to sell off some of his scrubland in a hurry to grab some good building real estate in Phuket. He needed cash in hand so he was selling cheap. We had money in the bank so I said yes.”
    I walked to the pit and looked at the rusty VW.
    “So, this vehicle was actually buried on your neighbor’s land,” I said.
    “Yeah.”
    From the truck, Lieutenant Chompu had removed a large Government Savings Bank umbrella which he now held over us to keep off the sun. He remained silent as I continued my questioning.
    “And what do you know about your neighbor?” I asked.
    “Chinese.”
    I’d heard the word ‘Chinese’ on numerous occasions down here, not used as a description of ethnicity but more to explain a multitude of ills. In a lot of South-East Asian countries there were us – the natives – and them – the Chinese business community. Old Mel had decided that ‘Chinese’ gave me all the information I needed about his neighbor. The land beyond the fence was twenty-odd hectares of overgrown grass and shrub land. People parked their cattle there year-round to graze for free.
    “Did your neighbor offer to sell you the whole lot?” I asked.
    “No.” Mel shook his head. “I asked, but he wasn’t interested.”
    “Just the three hectares?”
    “Yeah.”
    Just the strip of land that incidentally happened to contain two dead bodies in a VW. Some coincidence. I decided it might not be a bad idea to locate the owner and have a little chat.
    “Fancy a paddle?” Chompu asked, nodding in the direction of the van.
    I couldn’t say I was fond of the idea but that was the reason the nice lieutenant had brought us here. I doubted the investigators had left too many stones unturned but I kicked off my sandals, rolled up the legs of my jeans to my knees and lowered myself into the warm, stewy pond. The water only came to my shins but the gunk below it was so soft I sank to my thighs. Jeans probably ruined. To his credit, the lieutenant was right there beside me. We waded one cursory circuit of the old van. Things were slithering around my feet. I wanted to go home. I half expected a Transformer moment where the old VW reared up on its hind wheels and snapped at us