Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat

date and gone that route, but I was sure the police would have been there already and told them to get in touch if anyone came nosing around. Someone would always call if they were approached by the press.
    So, I made up a story. I told them my family had taken over a resort and we didn’t really know what the hell we were doing. All right, perhaps I didn’t make it up, but I did say we were having trouble with registration. I had the stolen TV as a ready anecdote and I wondered how other places registered their guests to avoid such a dilemma. I started off general, was very friendly, laughed a lot, then got on to the subject of the guest register itself. Every one of them let me take a look. In fact they were all so forthcoming and amiable it was almost embarrassing to be deceiving them. I was looking for guests who’d arrived the day of, or the day before, the killing, then checked out after the attack on the guard. This was merely my attempt to eliminate out-of-towners from the list of suspects. Lang Suan wasn’t the kind of place you could spend a night in your car without being noticed so I thought I’d start with hotel guests: someone who’d registered with a car or a truck. The victim was from Bangkok and had only been scheduled to stay here for three days during his investigation. It was conceivable that the killer followed him here.
    Either way, it was easier to start at this end of the investigation rather than knock on doors in ever-increasing circles around the temple. As it turned out, elimination was a lot simpler than I’d expected. Room occupancy everywhere was down to fifteen percent. Apart from the fact that nobody really wanted to come here in the first place, the downturn in the economy, the cost of petrol, and tourism killed off by the silly unrest in the capital, would have left the majority of the rooms empty anyway. Most of those who’d spent the night had been driving along the main highway, been overcome with fatigue, and pulled into the first place they could find. They’d invariably continued on their journeys early the next morning.
    From the hotels I ended up with a sketchy list of two: a salesman called Apirat who was booked into the Radree for the week and someone called Adul who was staying at the Uaynoi Grand and had put his occupation down as ‘tourist’. He had no definite departure date. He was traveling on a very large motorcycle. Nobody with a car or truck matched, or got anywhere close to, the dates I was interested in.
    The resorts were even worse. Even the high-end places were virtually empty during the week when very few Thais would consider staying there. I found just the two at the 69 Resort, a short ride from Pak Nam. One was a middle-aged man who’d signed in as Dr. Jiradet, and the other a teenaged girl called Nong Pui on the far side of the compound. They told me the doctor was an adviser for the Pak Nam hospital. There were two foreigners. One was an elderly Korean lady who smiled at everyone, which appeared to be her only method of communication. She’d chosen a room by the busy road rather than the beachfront which made the staff think she might be deaf or demented. Then there was a German man who sat drinking beer on the balcony of his room most of the day. The receptionist had no idea when either was due to check out. I nodded at the German who invited me to join him, I assumed in a little more than a drink, and I quickly exhausted my three words of Korean on the lady.
    At five other resorts there were no guests at all, although I was assured there was a good deal of ‘night traffic’ at all of them. I knew what that meant. But the Tiwa Resort, my last port of call, was my best bet of all. A middle-aged Japanese backpacking couple stayed in one of the cheapest rooms and were, according to the staff, living on instant noodles. They’d been their only customers for three days. But then a mysterious Thai guest in room seven had arrived in a very expensive black Benz the day before the killing. He’d retired immediately to the room and ordered room service from their restaurant. My interest had been piqued when the receptionist described him as a hit-man type. It was a fact in Thailand that criminals often went out of their way to dress and look like criminals. It made the job of identification a lot easier.
    He’d registered as Ny Wirapon and left all the other boxes in the form empty. He hadn’t yet checked out. I drove slowly past his room. There