Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat

been able to fit back in to society. Some of them set up communes that attracted younger kids. Most of them were just anti-establishment; others were playing at being flower children. There were a couple of farms down here in the south.
    “Blissy Travel was the sixth tour company to be hit by the gang. Then there was a similar establishment down in Songkla. Hiring out cars without drivers was a relatively new phenomenon here, so it wasn’t hard to chart all the establishments that offered rentals. It wasn’t possible to stake out all of them so Waew had to take a chance. Blissy Travel had reported a van of theirs hadn’t been returned on the agreed date. Their second van had been rented out two days earlier, also by what the owner called ‘a hippy couple.” Waew put out the registration information and got lucky. The second VW had been pulled over in Tha Chana the day after it was rented. The driver and his passenger had been charged with indecent exposure. They’d been found sleeping naked in the back of the van early that morning.
    “Waew went to meet the arresting officer and talk to the hippy couple. They made a deal. They would implicate the influential figure and give evidence against him in return for charges being dropped against them. Waew arranged a place for them to stay, what we would now refer to as a safe house, and they arrested the figure. Waew had his case, open and shut. They just awaited the trial date. Then, two days before the trial, the witnesses disappeared.”
    “They got cold feet?”
    “Not according to Waew. He said there were signs of a struggle and there were personal belongings and money left behind. All the things they would have taken if they’d just done a runner.”
    “Who knew about the safe house?”
    “Waew and his boss.”
    “Ahh. So do we assume the influential figure found an ally at the police department after all?”
    “No question about it. The case was dropped. Waew was demoted to captain, and the major general started driving round in a brand-new Saab.”
    “And our hippies?”
    “Nobody saw hide nor hair of them again.”
    “So there’s every possibility the couple we found under Old Mel’s land were the missing witnesses. They buried the hippies and the evidence in one foul swoop.”
    “Sounds logical.”
    “I don’t suppose there’s any way we’d be able to catch up with the influential figure?”
    “That wouldn’t be any problem at all.”
    “It wouldn’t? Why not?”
    “Does the name Sugit Suttirat mean anything to you?” It didn’t. “He was briefly the Minister for the Environment and then Rural Affairs in two, just as brief, governments in the late eighties. Long enough to make his fortune. He’s now the national chairman of the Awuso Foundation. He’s got a big house and an office right there in Lang Suan.”
    ♦
    After Granddad Jah had left I sat and watched the sea for a while. It was silver and languid like a lake of snot. There was a wall of weather on the horizon, a dark blue line like ranks of special effect ores about to invade our Minas Tirith. It didn’t do a thing to assuage my feeling that it was me against them. The last archer on the battlement. It was all there embedded in the system: get rich whatever way you can, use the money to get power, get richer. And there were no public outcryings because your average man in the paddy envied them their success. Those middle class yellow-shirted idealists playing ping-pong in our assembly building weren’t going to change anything apart from the flower arrangements around the fountain.

Eleven
“ I’m not really the type to wander off and sit down and go through deep wrestling with my soul .”
    —GEORGE W. BUSH, AS QUOTED IN VANITY FAIR , OCTOBER 2000
    I sat on a stool in front of Maprao Awnings, the shop belonging to the private detective, Meng. It was humiliating. He had a client. His wife had placed the stool in shadow and given me a cool pack of 30 % fruit juice but I was still visible from the road. I’d been in a funk since Granddad Jah’s story. I’d completely forgotten to make lunch so Chompu had driven back to Pak Nam and the family had been forced to make do with dom yam -flavored instant noodles with a side plate of dried squid. I couldn’t eat. I sat and watched them and wondered why I’d been so keen to beam myself back into the ugly twenty-first century. Once I could no longer stand watching them tuck into the fast food with the same relish they