Everyone Burns (22 page)

“Katchai’s forensic
team has finished their immediate work and gone. I suggested my officers supervise the transport of the body to the morgue, so there are three of my men at the scene. We’ll have to move it soon, so you need to get over there
now
.”

“Same place?”

“No. Our killer has switched locations. I’ve sent a car for you. It will be there in a few minutes.”

“Fine. I’ll just cancel all my appointments for today, shall I?” I say sarcastically.

“Yes, obviously,” he replies. “And one more thing. Ring me as soon as you’ve finished, before you leave the scene, right?”

He cuts off without waiting for a response.

I call Sinclair’s cell again. There is still no answer. I call his office: he hasn’t called in today and no-one has seen him.

I’m wondering if he’s dead.

*       *       *       *       *

It is an evasive and shaking DTs that drives me
slowly to the scene: I assume his partner is one of the three policemen standing guard over the crispy stiff.

All the way there while my driver navigates twitchily and mutely through the traffic, I’m praying silently in my head that the body’s not Sinclair. If it is, I know that sucker’s ghost is going to squat on my shoulder for the rest of my natural. In the car I call the Northerner’s phone another three times: nothing.

We take the Ring Road as it heads north, then circles west. About half-an-hour after we’ve left my office and we’re through Mae Nam, DTs indicates left and we slip off the main route onto a dirt side road bordered by an unkempt scrubland of trees, wild grass and heaps of dumped rubbish. After a few metres the dirt road takes a sharp turn behind a derelict wooden store-house, and there our journey ends amidst more discarded junk, undergrowth and police warning tape. DTs parks next to the other police car, switches off the engine and looks nervously ahead, determined not to engage in conversation with me.

PC is leaning against a tree smoking and looking bad-tempered. There are two other policemen whom I don’t recognise standing beside a plastic-covered shape
that I’m also hoping I won’t recognise. Happily there are no gawping spectators.

As I climb out of the car, PC flicks away his cigarette end with a gesture of contempt and says, “The ambulance will be here soon. You’ll have to be quick.”

“What can you tell me?” I ask.

“Nothing,” he says helpfully. “I’ve not been here long, but these two –” he reluctantly indicates the other policemen, “– were here for some of the time while the forensics were busy.” He walks off back to his tree and lights up again. DTs shrugs and turns his face away.
Thanks a lot, team
.

Fortunately the other two have been instructed by the Chief to be helpful to me, although clearly they are bemused as to what a foreigner is doing here. But if they are Charoenkul’s ‘men’, I’m sure they get orders to do all sorts of things that they know better than to ask about.

The taller of the two – whom I notice drags his right foot as he walks – is the more talkative. He tells me the body was found yesterday evening, but he doesn’t know by whom. Katchai’s team had been called out as soon as it was realised it might be another ‘burning’ murder, and they’d been busy until about an hour ago. Listening in on their talk, he’d gathered the provisional opinion was that the victim had been killed sometime late on Saturday night or very early on Sunday morning.

“Anything else you can tell me?” I ask, scribbling in my notebook and putting off the moment when I’
ll have to look at the corpse.

“They found a hotel key on him from the
Samsara Hotel
in Chaweng, so it’s probable he was a guest there.”

It’s not Sinclair. At least, probably not
.

He goes on, “And a credit card.”

“Was the name legible on the card?”

“Yes. Lewis Carroll.”

“You’re kidding me.
Lewis Carroll?
”

He looks puzzled. “Yes.”

“Next you’ll be telling me he’s an Anglican deacon, writes nonsense poetry and books for children, and is over 170 years old.  Not to mention that ‘Lewis Carroll’ is a pseudonym and his real name is Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.”
Also, he was slain by a Jabberwock while the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe
. I don’t say this last bit since it’s not translatable into Thai.

The policeman looks at me like I’m mad.

I sigh. “Sorry, long story, bad day. Never mind. Let’s have a look at him.”

The shorter policeman pulls back the plastic sheet to reveal a sight that makes me want to dry retch.
Hi there, Lewis Carroll. Welcome to Wonderland
.

One good thing that can be said for the vision before me is that it is
not
Sinclair. That is in fact the
only
good thing that can be said for it.

Aware that four pairs of police eyes are scrutinising my face to gauge my reaction, I have to maintain a dispassionate air. I take out a small plastic jar of Vaseline from my trouser pocket and dab a couple of blobs under my nostrils. The tall policeman looks impressed. I offer him the jar but he shakes his head and steps back: he isn’t planning on getting that near the dead man. I hunker down and look at the corpse which is lying on its back.

The face has been burned off. A few blows of something heavy has caved in the nasal bones and shattered a few front teeth, ruining some pricey dental work. Unburned hair behind the corpse’s ears is brown in colour. I’m guessing he was maybe in his thirties, not younger. A farang, of course. Leaning down I can see the trademark shattering of the back of the skull and masses of coagulated blood, which has also soaked into the surrounding earth. Killed on his front, turned on his back. Just like the others.

The burning over the body is irregular
. The hands and lower arms have been comprehensively torched – as has the face – but the torso and legs are lightly and patchily flamed: a half-hearted immolation.

The clothing is not standard-Samui-beach-issue. The shirt is linen, the trousers are chinos and the shoes are brown leather loafers, almost new. I inspect the charred hands: no wedding ring or jewellery of any kind. Impossible to tell whether the watch on the left wrist was a good one or not, it’s too damaged.

I stand up and light a cigarette. The tall policeman looks at me expectantly.

“Yep,” I say, “He’s dead all right.”

PC snorts cynically. DTs is still standing by the car looking at his feet, studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone, as usual.

I take some photographs of the late Lewis Carroll for later reference then tell the short policeman,
“You can cover him up.”

I look around. There are no dwellings close by. The derelict building conceals the immediate site from the road: no witnesses but the silent trees. The dirt road beneath my feet is compacted and hard from weeks without rain.

“Any tyre tracks?” I ask. “Or footprints?”

The tall policeman tells me the forensic team
took some imprints, but he’d gathered from their conversation that they weren’t very hopeful.

I remove the Vaseline from my nostrils and walk over to the ruined store-house to call Charoenkul. Before I can do so, my cell
phone rings. The display tells me it’s Sinclair.
Why the hell couldn’t he have phoned me earlier and spared me the stress?

“David Braddock here.”

“Hello, David, it’s Geordie.” His mouth sounds like it’s full of cotton wool. “I saw the missed calls from you. Sorry, I was at the dentist’s. I chipped a lump out of one of my teeth yesterday and had to book an emergency appointment this morning. Excuse me if I sound as though I’m eating a pillow, but the anaesthetic hasn’t worn off yet.”

I’m relieved to hear his voice. Even if he is a
git. At least he’s not a dead git.

“Don’t worry about it. I wanted
to check if you’d received my email.”

“Oh yes, I did. Glad the system works.”

“Just while I’ve got you on the line,” I add trying to sound casual, “perhaps you can help me with something.”

“OK,” he responds cautiously.

“You mentioned when we last spoke that you know Prasert Promsai’s brother, Nikom. I wondered, Geordie, whether that was in connection with a property development?”

He makes a strangulated laughing sound. “Ha. No way I’d trust that weasel on a property investment. Naw, I got to know him through cock fighting. I used to be into that stuff a while back. Nikom’s a guy who welches on his bets. It gets him into trouble.”

“I see. It’s just that you said you’d had a bad experience in property, and I was thinking perhaps it was that development outside Lamai that Nikom was involved with.”

“No. I don’t know anything about that. My property disaster was in Spain, donkey’s years ago. But I’ve not been interested since. Once bitten, as the saying goes.”

“I understand.”

“Why?” he asks. “What’s up with Nikom? Is he being a naughty boy again?”

“Maybe. He’s fallen out with his brother.” I consider it preferable
slightly
to betray a minor client confidence than to tell him what my real suspicions were. “Anyway,” I continue, “thanks for calling back. I’ll speak to you soon when you’re not partially anaesthetised.”

I end the call.

So much for that panic
. Nikom’s not after Sinclair. I open my mental Not-To-Do-List and add
Do not let your imagination run away with you
underneath the note on not meeting Nittha Rattanakorn outside of the office.

Now I can go back to being suspicious of the Geordie and disliking him guilt-free. The metaphorical conscience monkey jumps down from my shoulder and climbs to the top of a nearby coconut tree, from which vantage point he watches me sadly.

I select Charoenkul’s number from my cell phone contacts list and press the button. He answers immediately.

“I’m finished here,” I say. “Shall I come to your house? I can be there in about ten minutes.”

“No,” he replies. “I’ll meet you at your house in an hour.”

“At
my
house?” I ask, but he’s already gone. I walk back to the car, where the twitching one continues to inspect his footwear. PC is deep in conversation with the other two policemen and ignores me.

“OK, driver, I’m done
,” I say to DTs. “Take me away from all this.”

*       *       *       *       *

On the wall of my study hangs a large framed print of the Wheel of Becoming. The Wheel is a visual teaching aid and a summary in pictorial form of the Buddhist ideas on samsaric existence. The core concept is that the world as we perceive it is an illusion, and unless we can rid ourselves of our mistaken viewpoint and understand the true nature of reality, we will remain forever locked in a repeating cycle of death and rebirth.

Taking the Old Monk’s advice, I examine the intricate and colourful painting before me. At the hub of the Wheel are the three motive forces of human behaviour that lead to suffering: ignorance, desire and hatred, represented respectively by a pig, a rooster and a snake. Surrounding this hub is a ring divided into two – a black half and a white half – with figures ascending or descending depending on whether their karmic habits were good or bad.

Radiating outward, next come the spokes of the Wheel partitioning the six samsaric realms into which we can be (re)born: the realms of gods, demons, animals, hell-beings, hungry ghosts and humans.

The rim of the Wheel is separated into twelve segments representing
Dependent Origination
, the chain of causation which ensures that the Wheel of Samsara keeps spinning; the dozen linked elements that lead from ignorance to suffering and death.

Holding the Wheel in its clawed hands is a monstrous apparition with three eyes and large fanged teeth. This is Yama, the Lord of Death, and on his head he wears a crown of human skulls. Yama has power over those who live in samsara: his hold can only be broken when we free ourselves from the delusions of this life.

I remember the Old Monk telling me once that the Wheel can also be seen as a mirror. We find our own reflection somewhere on it. Causation, logic, karmic action and reaction.
Paticcasamuppāda
.

Because of ignorance, volitions arise;

Because of volitions, consciousness arises;

Because of consciousness, mind and body arise;

Because of mind and body, the six senses arise;

Because of the six senses, contact arises;

Because of conta
ct, feeling arises;

Because of feeling, desire arises;

Because of desire, attachment arises;

Because of attachment, becoming (worldly existence) arises;

Because of becoming, (re)birth arises;