Everyone Burns (36 page)

His mouth drops open and then he swallows hard. His eyes are bulging out of his head.

“Yes,” he stammers, “
it is. But – but – how did you find her? How did you
know
?”

“Now listen to me very carefully, Peter. I don’t
know
anything. Not yet. I have a number of suppositions and some very tenuous connections. But I have no
evidence
. And what is more, I have already made lots of foul-ups and errors so far on this case; which could have resulted in one or two completely innocent men ending up in the police cells.”

“But you know who the girl is. You can take me to her.”

“So you can do
what exactly
?” I say with a hard edge to my voice. “Beat her up? Get yourself arrested?
No
, you need to wait.”

“You must be fucking joking. Wait for what?”

I realise I have to keep Ashley away from the Ocean Pearl tonight; its last night before it closes for refurbishment. I need to make sure he doesn’t bump into Jingjai. That could wreck everything. The last thing Samui needs now is an angry English vigilante prowling its streets.

“Wait for
me
. Wait here until I talk to a man about a dog.”

“What sort of a dog?” he asks suspiciously.

“A dog that doesn’t bark,” I say.

Why would a dog not bark at a stranger in the night-time? Answer: because the person he detects is not a stranger. For the same reason, in fact, that a policeman on night duty in the police box outside Lamai might not remark on a police car driving by, even one with a slumped figure in the back seat.

And why might a spinning pool cue haunt my subconscious? Perhaps because of who came into the
Mosquito Bar after the cue had been spinning; because of the violence represented by both the broken cue and that person.

And finally, why might the murderer
of the farangs choose
that
particular coconut grove in which to dispatch his victims?

I phone an old blind man, and I ask him, when his son died, d
oes he remember any of the policemen who came to investigate? And he tells me, yes, there was one
particular
policeman. One who was morbidly obsessed with his son’s death by fire; a very large, thick-necked policeman. And I ask him if he remembers the man’s name. And he does.

*       *       *       *       *

I double-check DTs’ address from the paper that Charoenkul gave me which I had stuffed in the back of my notebook.

I have parked the jeep in a run-down and
badly-lit area on the outskirts of Chaweng, a stone’s throw from a cluster of cheap massage joints which glow red in the darkness. Dust alternately hangs and swirls in the air, kicked up by the steady stream of bikes and battered vehicles bouncing over the rutted road.

I walk up a quiet unsurfaced side-road, light a cigarette and prop myself against a weathered wooden post while I watch what I take to be the policeman’s home. As my eyes become accustomed to the dark, I scrutinise the house which looks old and careworn, its walls stained, its small garden neglected. Lights are on inside and I can see movement.

It had taken all my persuasive powers – and then some – to convince Ashley to stay in his hotel
again
. Unsurprisingly, trust is a scarce commodity with him these days. I told him there was someone I needed to see, that I had to go alone, that his presence would likely hinder my investigation. For a while his stubbornness held sway, and I thought he might try to pummel Jingjai’s details out of me. In the end he capitulated with bad grace, but only after extracting from me a promise that I would return later and give him a full report.

“I will likely be
very
late,” I’d warned.

“Do you think that matters?” he’d asked sarcastically. “It’s not as if I’ve got anything else to do.”

I take in a deep lungful of cigarette smoke and remember Rattanakorn’s description of Jingjai’s minder:
a local policeman, although rather an unpleasant one. Something of a gorilla
.

But I have no
proof
of anything. I’ve merely connected some dots: perhaps the picture that has emerged is still the wrong one.

I’m on my second cigarette of the watch when I see the weasel-frame of DTs illuminated in one of the downstairs windows. The master of the house is at home.

I stub out my cigarette, walk the short distance to his front door and knock on it loudly.

There
are some raised voices from inside then DTs cautiously opens the door, just wide enough so he can look out. He is wearing an old Manchester United replica football shirt, and some shapeless grey pants. I catch a whiff of alcohol from his breath. A snot-nosed, dirty-faced little boy is hanging onto his legs, looking up at me as if I’ve climbed out of a spaceship.

When DTs realises it is me at the door, he looks alarmed.

“Good evening, Officer Tathip,” I say smoothly in Thai. “I’m sorry to interrupt your evening, but I need to speak to you on an urgent matter.”

“Can
’t it wait until tomorrow?” he asks in a high-fluted voice which takes me by surprise. Thinking about it, I’m not sure whether this is the first time I’ve actually heard him talk.

“
I’m afraid it won’t wait. It concerns the farang murders.” I look at him pointedly and register satisfaction at the barely-suppressed panic I see in his eyes. “Is there somewhere we can go to talk privately? I wouldn’t wish to intrude on your family.” The little boy is mining one of his nostrils with an index finger.

Seeing I’m not about to leave DTs says reluctantly, “There is a
sala at the back. I will be out in a couple of minutes.”

As he tries to close the door I put my foot in it. “Excellent,” I reply, “
but please don’t make any phone calls in the meantime. It would not be in your or your family’s interest. If you understand me?”

He nods and I remove my foot from the door. With a trembling hand the policeman ushers his son back inside and pushes the door shut.

I walk around to the back of his property and make my way through the dark overgrown garden to a sad, semi-dilapidated sala. After a moment a fluorescent light comes on casting a harsh glare over the squadrons of flying insects. I am glad I’ve sprayed up: this looks like Mosquito Central. I take a seat in the most serviceable of the rickety wooden chairs.

DTs closes the back door behind him and joins me, sitting with some reluctance. His pock-marked face looks even more unhealthy than usual in the unforgiving strip-light. A child’s face is pressed curiously against one of the house windows until an adult arm pulls it away and
the curtain closes.

“I think,” I say trying to emulate Rattanakorn’s understated menace, “That you are in a lot of trouble, Officer Tathip.”

He squirms in his chair, and pleads ignorance in as unconvincing a fashion as I have ever seen. He is clearly terrified. For months he has held out waiting, presumably petrified, for the axe to fall. On reflection, I’m surprised his rodent nerve hasn’t already snapped. I guess he fears his partner’s retribution more than he fears discovery. That’s a hard place to be. My main concern now is whether he will have a heart attack or some form of seizure before we’ve finished our little talk.

That would be
unhelpful
.

“I know who murdered the
farangs and set them alight, Tathip.” I pause for effect, although that’s probably unnecessary. I’m sure I already have his attention. “Your partner did. Officer Preechap Chaldrakun. And he did it with your help.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he pipes. “We are police officers. What you say is an outrageous accusation –”

“Shut up,” I hiss at him, “or I will have to slap you hard.”

He looks at me in shock.

“Chaldrakun killed the farangs because they were paying too much attention to the girl in the Ocean Pearl; the one he was minding for the Lamphongchat family. He took the first two to a coconut grove outside of Lamai that he knew from a suicide investigation he was involved in. Perhaps the method of that suicide – self-immolation – was what gave him the idea for setting fire to the farang corpses.”

DTs’ face is deathly pale; and not just because of the lighting.

“In any event, Chaldrakun used his position as a police officer to get the foreigners into a police car, and then he took the men to those remote sites, and he killed them by beating their heads in. He probably ‘arrested’ them on some local technicality to get them into handcuffs and after that they would have been helpless. Whether he drugged them initially, or only after he arrived at the killing sites I don’t know – probably before.”

Tathip starts to gabble something, but I raise my hand.

“When I want you to talk, Tathip, I’ll let you know. For now, I want you to know what
I
know.”

He sits panting and trembling. I almost feel sorry for the little s
quit. But not quite.

I continue. “He burned the lower arms of his victims to conceal any marks that might have been left by the handcuffs, and he made the face unrecognisable to buy time, not ultimately to conceal the man’s identity.
He just couldn’t take the chance of the girl in the bar seeing a familiar phizog in the next day’s newspaper.

“
And of course Chaldrakun couldn’t have done all this alone. He needed to be on duty, in uniform, with the police car. And that means, as his partner, you must have been with him.”

I look into DTs’ eyes.

“
You
helped him.”

“You’re mad,”
he squeaks. “Even assuming what you say is true. Why would I do that?”

“Because you’re shit scared of your partner,” I say casually lighting a cigarette. “And I suppose I can hardly blame you. He’s a scary man.”

“That’s just nonsense –”

I cut him off. “I do, however, know a
n even scarier man. His name is Peter Ashley, and he’s the brother of your first victim. Ashley, being ex-army, is a
professionally trained
killer. What is more, he’s here on the island. Would you like me to introduce you to him? By the way, I don’t think he’s too particular about following legal due process. It was all I could do to stop him coming here tonight and breaking your neck.”

OK, so I’m improvising a bit. But I need Tathip to be more frightened of my threats than those of Chaldrakun. Tricky, but let’s see how we go.

DTs puts his head in his hands. Then he sits up and looks at me wildly.

“What are you going to do?” he asks.

I take a draw on my Marlboro, and blow smoke in his direction in what I hope is a gangster manner.

“Well, that depends on you?” I reply languidly.

“What do you want
me
to do?”

“First, tell me about the girl. What does she know about all this?”

“Nothing,” he says decisively, “nothing at all. I don’t believe Preechap’s even spoken to her. He’s just become … obsessed with her. He told me once she reminds him of his ex girlfriend, the one who ran off with a farang. That’s why he hates you all so much,” he adds a little spitefully.

Charlie Rorabaugh’s words come back to me.
Everyone falls in love with Jingjai
.

Somewhere in the twisted head of the gorilla some attachment had grown, some hopeless yearning for a tender relationship way beyond his reach.
Or maybe it was just plain lust, of the unrequited variety. He had taken his resentment and his futile longing and mixed them into a lethal Molotov cocktail. The spark that had finally ignited the conflagration was not some cheap cigarette lighter.

It was a love
match
.

“And the drugs? Chaldrakun did drug all three victims, right?” DTs nods. “What drug was it and where did your partner get his hands on it?”

“I don’t know the name of it. But he injected them with it. He said he got it from his brother in Bangkok.”

“What a charming family.” I remark drily. “And the burning of the bodies
… that wasn’t solely about destroying evidence, was it? There was contempt there too.”

Tathip looks at his feet.

“I need a drink,” he croaks.

“In a minute.
What did he use to beat in their heads and faces?”

“A tyre wrench,” he replies quietly.

“The wrench
from the patrol car?
That sounds like an improper use of official police equipment. He could get into trouble for that.”

“No, not from the patrol car. He has his own wrench.”

“Especially for these occasions, presumably. Nice.”

I study
Tathip.

“So what exactly was your role? Helping him carry the unconscious body into the trees? Keeping lookout? Or something a little more hands-on with the deaths, perhaps?”