Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat

but, of course, it didn’t.
    I reached the side where the sliding door had once been. It now lay beneath my feet, giving me some solid base upon which to stand and examine just how ruined my jeans were. I climbed into the belly of the beast and sat on one of the two stubs that had once been front seats. In no time, the salt air would consume this museum piece but today it stood defiant. The steering wheel poked out gamely before me. I grabbed it, half expecting it to crumble like the driver but it was surprisingly solid. A testament to German engineering. The seat, too, felt secure. The back had wilted but the square of springs beneath my bottom still squeaked when I moved. My feet were submerged in water still but I imagined that the water had only risen once the pit was dug; otherwise I doubted all this metal could have survived. The windscreen in front of me was intact. The view was a wall of dirt, but I had an active imagination: a hippy driver and his companion.
    “ You happy, babe? ”
    “ Blissful .”
    “ Glad you came? ”
    “ Yeah. You OK to drive? ”
    “ Sure. Not much traffic. Floating really .”
    “ Want another smoke? ”
    “ Why not, sweet baby? Why not? ”
    Mair had told me about the hippies, the cheap foreigners who came on her treks. They didn’t come for the nature or the culture. They came for the opium and the mushrooms. She didn’t say she’d joined in. That’s one of the gaps I had to fill in myself. But Mair was something special. She’d been a lot of things. I’m guessing she was a communist for a while – spent time hiding out in the jungle during the military dictatorships. I remember hearing she’d spent time as a karaoke lounge waitress. Then she grew pomelos out in Kanchanaburi and raised, I think it was, pigs. But what I remember most warmly is her time as a tour guide. That’s where most of her stories came from. Granny Noi was still alive then. She ran the shop in those days. Granddad Jah was with the police. They’d look after us when Mair was away on her tours. Her homecomings were like someone turning on a tree swathed in fairy lights. She’d have stories to tell us about exotic and weird places and even weirder people. She’d bring bags full of sweets and souvenirs, hand-crafted cloths that she’d sat and watched being woven, shells from the islands, animals crafted from straw and beautiful colored stones. I had a collection of dirt from every province in Thailand. It was New Year’s every time Mair came back. Then, one time, she came home and she didn’t go away again and, one by one, the fairy lights went out.
    But one thing I’ll never forget is Mair laughing about the resolve with which the stingy, locally labeled ‘bird shit’, foreigners hung on to their weed. Ganja was growing all around but in their drug-induced bouts of paranoia they’d protect their own personal stash with their lives. It was very Granddad Jah of me to assume that everyone in the seventies smoked dope. But the combination of Kombi, long hair and beads made me think I could get away with being prejudiced just this once. And I wondered where our VW couple kept their stash.
    “Who did the search of the van?” I asked Chompu, who was tugging the sliding door out of the mud.
    “The boss sent Senior Sergeant Major Tort to go over it.”
    “And he’s a forensics expert?”
    “No. He keeps our books in order.”
    “So, nobody’s really…”
    “Nope.”
    “And who’s in charge of the case?”
    “Me.”
    “So why haven’t you…?”
    “Because I was just bequeathed it by Major Mana in front of the toilet door in the upstairs corridor of the police station half an hour ago. He doesn’t want it anymore. Something else came up.”
    It certainly did. But the fact that nobody had really looked at the VW gave me new hope. The stash. The glove-box was a gaping hole. What was left of the mattress and all the trace evidence it contained was probably in a skip behind the police station. I didn’t have too many places to look. I felt under the seat and wished I hadn’t. It occurred to me later that this was where all the body fluids and loose parts would have found their way over the years. I wasn’t about to dive into the murky water and feel around. I was on the verge of giving up when I remembered the Web site. I’d had to look up the make of the VW before I could send my report. The site had photos of a renovation and there behind the driver’s seat was a mound – some