Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat

and make off with forty trees if they so wished. But they never did. I was sweaty and wobbly from the ride and I wheeled Mair’s bike up the sand track. There were dogs. I’m not a big dog fan and these two weren’t going out of their way to convert me. They snarled and salivated at my ankles all the way to the rear of the plot. There was a police truck parked up ahead and a gaggle of onlookers beyond it. In the U.S. you might have found a police cordon with a sentry but Pak Nam’s finest were posing for photographs in front of a rapidly expanding pit. All the neighbors had brought along a hoe or a pick and were slowly digging out the VW as if it were some long-interred dinosaur.
    They’d concentrated on the front end and the driver and his companion were staring out through a surprisingly clear windscreen. I could appreciate the fact they were skeletons at this stage but they had all the appearances of a perfectly calm couple out for a weekend drive. The driver clutched the wheel, and although his seat belt buckle and his beard had long since dropped onto his lap, his plastic John Lennon cap continued to hold his long hair in place. His date hadn’t been so fortunate. She was as bald as a cue ball and only her stature and a thick lei of glass and plastic beads around her neck gave away her gender.
    The diggers and posing policemen ignored me at first and I had a feeling I could have clambered all over the half-buried vehicle and taken any picture I wished. There obviously wasn’t a great deal of crime scene investigation going on. It was a situation crying out for order so I decided it was worth a try. I marched up to the policemen, stood between them and the clicking cameras, and said, “Officers, my name is Jimm Juree, deputy crime editor at the Chiang Mai Mail (I deliberately omitted tense) and I’m here to report on this case.”
    There was a palpable hush from the photo takers and the diggers hoisted their weapons. I doubted the two young men had heard of the Mail or, for that matter, ever read a newspaper, but I held my ground and allowed my hand to hover like a gunslinger’s over the camera hanging from my shoulder. After several seconds I was starting to wonder whether they were mute, but the younger of the two finally spoke up.
    “I’ve got a cousin in Chiang Mai,” he said. “Kovit.”
    I was afraid he might ask me if I knew him but instead he surprised me by telling me his cousin was the deputy director of the zoological gardens who had turned down lucrative offers from Europe and opted to stay in Chiang Mai where they were attempting to mate pandas. He meant with one another…I think. The constable’s partner added the little known fact that pandas live for twenty years and the females only have a three-year window when they’re fertile enough to get pregnant. He added that they weren’t very fond of sex and the females decided when and where to ‘do it’.
    It was all very fascinating and obviously a matter they’d discussed at great length, but would it get me an exclusive on the subterranean VW? The answer arrived in a second brown and cream truck from which stepped Police Major Mana, head of the Pak Nam station. He was a middle-aged man whose dark face seemed as polished as his shoulder badges. He was short and walked as one would imagine a panda in a very tight uniform would walk. I wondered if the two constables had the same thought.
    Also stepping from the truck was a skinny young officer with an old-fashioned film camera that seemed to weigh more than he could carry. Major Mana spent several minutes putting on his hat and checking it in the side mirror, then walked past me and the constables to the dig site. He stood back and glared at the stalled excavation. The cameraman stepped up, adjusted his lenses and took what would probably be a fine photograph of his major surveying a crime scene – if it came out, if it wasn’t over- or under-exposed or the film hadn’t melted in the camera. Digital may not be for the connoisseur but at least you don’t have to wait a day to see what a cock-up you’ve made.
    His duty obviously done, Major Mana removed his hat, dabbed his brow with a cloth and headed back to his truck. One of the two constables stepped forward and saluted as he passed.
    “Major, sir,” he said. “This is Nong Jimm from the press in Chiang Mai.”
    I hated it when they called me ‘little sibling’. It’s as if, just because you’re short and not wrinkled,