Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat

know.”
    “It’s all over. The game’s up.”
    I had the strongest urge to laugh but I felt there was some method to this particular madness.
    “Mair, what have you done?”
    My mother was shaking like a rat at a lab interview. I reached under the counter and hugged as much of her as I could.
    “Mair, the policeman’s here to see me. He’s a friend of mine. We’re working on a case together. There’s nothing to worry about.”
    One by one the shakes subsided and I heard a couple of recovering breaths, then a rapping sound. She was tapping on the underside of the counter with her knuckles.
    “I’ll have to get Ed in,” she said.
    “What?”
    She reversed past me and climbed stiffly to her feet. She started to knock now on the top of the counter.
    “Everywhere, they are. Little bastards.”
    “Who?”
    “Termites.”
    I really had to laugh then.
    “Mair, that down there had nothing to do with termites.”
    “Don’t be silly, child. What else would I be doing on the floor?”
    “Hiding out?”
    “Such an imagination. You should be writing novels, girl, not reporting on other people’s failings.”
    I watched her banging her fist on the plastic counter-top and knew it was the time for me to go and have a talk with the awning detective. But, first things first. I walked outside and collected my lieutenant and had intended to ignore Ed, but the beanstalk called out to me,
    “ Koon Jimm?”
    I was afraid he’d shout something embarrassing so I left Chompu tapdancing on the gravel in the driveway and walked casually back.
    “Yes?”
    “I need to speak with you,” he said. He stood up and towered over me like a palm tree.
    “I don’t need any grass cutting,” I said. I mentally took a long run up and kicked myself in the backside. There had been no need for rudeness, but it was said so I couldn’t take it back.
    “It’s not about grass.”
    “As you can see, I’m rather busy.”
    His hands were in front of him holding his cap like some farmhand talking to the wife of the prime minister. I looked up at his face glaring at me, tangled in the rays of the sun. It was the first time I’d looked him in the eye. His mustache didn’t suit him and his hair was either uncombed or uncombable. But his eyes were molten dark chocolate. I wished I hadn’t looked into his eyes.
    “I can wait till you’re free,” he said.
    “It might be a while.”
    “I can wait.”
    “Don’t you have some important weeding to do, or something?”
    I already had welts on the cheeks of my mental bottom.
    “The weeds will still be there tomorrow,” he said, and he smiled. If the eyes hadn’t been bad enough, the smile…
    “Suit yourself,” I said. “I’ll be finished when I’m finished.”
    I left him standing there. He really was far too tall to be taken seriously and annoyingly persistent. I collected Chompu and we went to my hut. Unless there’d been another power failure – daily now; a concerted education project provided by the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand to show us what life was like in the Stone Age – my laptop should have been fully charged. Just in case it wasn’t, Chompu had brought his own. A darling little Dell in puce. We sat on the veranda with the laptop on my cane table and us on the rattan chairs that squeaked and creaked like mouse S&M. I offered him a can of beer from my bar fridge but he said he was watching his weight and settled for an iced water.
    As we waited for the computer to come to the boil, I told him about my visit to the hospital and the Benz. It didn’t surprise me at all that he’d already heard. He’d been following events on his truck radio and he’d passed by the hospital in my wake. The driver of the Benz had long since departed and the police were following up on both the name he’d registered under and the license plate of the car. He said he’d pass on the theories about Sergeant Phoom’s injuries.
    I plugged in my USB onto which I’d copied the photos from the computer at Home Art. When the ‘select file’ message popped up, I hesitated to click. The pictures were still heavy in my otherwise lightweight heart.
    “This isn’t family viewing,” I told him.
    “I imagine I’ve seen worse,” he said.
    I doubted it. I clicked, and one by gruesome one the slides appeared on the screen. He watched the entire show with his hand over his mouth but the pupils of his eyes active, darting from point to point on the screen. I’d had my fill