Number Two Read online

  ‘So, a 2015 Murano…?’

  ‘What? Oh, we were paying it off in installments. But, look, I really think we need to focus on the lack of signage, don’t you? It’s a disaster area, no barrier, no ‘stop’ sign, no ‘no through road’ sign, anyone who drives along that road will meet the same fate.’

  ‘You’re absolutely right,’ I said.

  ‘I want everyone to know,’ he said. ‘I’ve alerted the police who were very keen to dismiss this whole thing as an accident. I’ve made a formal complaint. I’ve delayed my wife’s cremation so we can conduct an autopsy. I don’t want anyone saying she was drunk or on drugs. No, it was that municipality that killed her’

  That was a dramatic transformation from husband in mourning to vigilante. It wasn’t the story I’d expected to come away with. I thought there’d be some reminiscences of a childhood romance and family life and…, well, you get it. I wasn’t sure how my editor would react. But I was on the case now so I could hardly back out, especially as there were so many aspects of the death that worried me. I had a lot of research to do. I climbed on my Honda Dream and putted past the slum where two dozen pairs of eyes followed me.

  The car had been taken to the Pak Nam Quality Garage after its rescue from the river. I knew Bob, the owner. The vehicular post mortem had been conducted by the Nissan head motor technician observed by a police mechanic and Bob, as an independent. Bob had been sworn to secrecy on the findings until the official report was released. But Bob’s brain and Bob’s mouth were often at odds with one another especially when he’d had a few drinks. I turned up there at sunset with a half bottle of rum and a six pack of Coke. Everyone had a fridge full of ice.

  ‘This is off the record,’ he said, having no idea what that meant.

  ‘I won’t tell a soul,’ I said.

  ‘There was nothing wrong with the car,’ he said.

  ‘Then why would you want to be off the record, Bob?’

  ‘Not with the car…,’ he said.

  ‘But?’

  ‘But the seatbelt had jammed. The driver’s door was unlocked so if she could swim she’d have a fifty-fifty chance of getting out of there before it sank. But she couldn’t get the seatbelt off.’

  ‘Is it still here?’

  ‘The belt? No. They took that with ‘em. They’ll be doing lab tests on it.’

  ‘Why was the passenger window open?’

  ‘Hot night. Perhaps she wanted some air.’

  ‘The car had a/c.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Any idea why she accelerated before she left the road?’

  ‘Could be panic,’ said Bob. ‘It was a manual transmission. A lot of people push down on the accelerator instead of the brake when they panic, especially women. No offence.’

  I took the offence.

  ‘Was there anything in the car?’ I asked.

  ‘No, just a few sheets of maps.’

  ‘Maps to where?’

  ‘Couldn’t tell. They were waterlogged. You could barely see they were maps.’

  ‘So it wasn’t a street atlas?’

  ‘No, just, you know, A4 size, loose sheets.’

  ‘Anything in the glove box?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No registration? No owner manual?’

  ‘Not a thing. It was like the car was brand new. Nothing personal in there either. You’d think a woman would have a handbag. But no.’

  That wasn’t such a mystery to me. A lot of wallets and handbags disappeared at the scenes of accidents. I went for a slow drive along the road to the river, the route Mrs. Grabong had taken that night. I went at exactly the same time. The husband was right. There were no signs. The surface was paved and had few potholes but that was to be expected on a road that went nowhere. There were about twenty houses spaced along the roadside but as we neared the river the houses grew fewer and the jungle thicker. The Lang Suan River was known to rise five meters in the rainy season so nobody with any sense built near the banks. There were squid traps and rope coils and even a fiberglass canoe marking the end of the road. I wondered whether the residents had put them there for fear of history repeating itself. I climbed from my motorcycle and went to stand on the spot from which the woman had launched her car. My headlamp beam caught the concrete jetty on the far bank, the place where I’d stood watching the car being raised.

  There are times I think there are little creatures living in my mind and they’re employed to collect the obvious and flush it down the brain toilet. Yet, there, at the end of a paved road, standing on one jetty looking at another, not even the toilet creatures could divert me from what was staring me in the face. At some point in the past the concrete jetties had been built as the first stages of a bridge. I didn’t know whether it had been cancelled like many other local projects, or whether it was still on the drawing board, but the fact was, the road should have continued all the way to Lang Suan. I didn’t know how or why that was relevant to this case but as sure as a squid can’t dance, I knew I was on to something.

  A handful of shanties had sprung up along railway land. The householders spent their time recycling garbage and producing bare-bottomed offspring. The heat on the corrugated iron roofs made it impossible to go inside during the day so all the inhabitants were on the street under makeshift umbrellas. An alluminium specialist in a Metalica T-shirt and one boot was sitting on a stool crushing empty beer cans.

  ‘How are you?’ I said.

  He stopped crushing and smiled. He looked like an unkempt monk.

  ‘I could say, “I can’t complain,”’ he said, ‘but, of course, I can.”

  ‘My family makes more scavenging on the beach than they do from their day jobs,’ I said, getting the empathy out of the way as soon as possible.

  ‘You were down there yesterday visiting him,’ he said.

  ‘You’ve got good eyesight.’

  ‘He’s had all kinds of people showing up there,’ he said.

  ‘You know what happened?’

  ‘They say his wife died in a car crash. Too bad. She was nice.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Miserable sod. Never said nothing to any of us. Works as a clerk in an office and there he is with his big posh car. Snob.’

  ‘I hear the wife liked to drive the car a lot,’ I said.

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘You didn’t see her?’

  ‘Didn’t see that car go nowhere. They took a motorcycle to work. Seems he had pleasure just parking the car in front of his house for all to see.’

  ‘But it’d be gone in the evenings or at night,’ I said.

  ‘Would it?’

  ‘The woman liked to drive after dark.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘You see that scruffy kid over there?’ he said.

  He pointed to a boy of about eleven smoking a roll up.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘The clerk gives him a few baht a week to keep an eye on his precious car. The kid can tell you when it was or wasn’t there.’

  It was round about then I came up with a hypothesis. The only problem was that it would only hold water – if you’ll forgive the poor taste in idioms – if there was a motive. And I could see none. In fact, even if my suspicions were correct, it would have been an incredibly convoluted crime leading to no benefit whatsoever to the perpetrator.

  My hypothesis was that Mr. Grabong killed his wife. It all began as a result of the scruffy kid’s assertion that both Mr. and Mrs. Grabong had gone out in the car the night she’d died. Of course it was possible she’d dropped her husband off somewhere and gone for her drive alone. But what if she hadn’t dropped him off? What if he was in the car with her when she hit the river? What if he’d directed her to that unsigned road and leaned over and slammed his foot on the accelerator just as they reached the end. He wasn’t sure if you could open the door to an electrified car under water. But what if he’d already arranged for her seatbelt to be jammed and he’d lowered the window so he could
swim away and leave her there to drown? What if he had a cell phone and a change of clothes and a bicycle on the far bank? What if it was Mr. Grabong who phoned in the ‘accident’? That was a lot of what ifs.

  I had no proof, of course. I’d exhausted all the usual ‘husband kills wife’ motives. One of our neighbours worked at the Land Office and had been friendly with Mrs. Grabong. The woman had no life insurance, no savings, and, unlike most of the officials at the Land Office, didn’t collect ‘tips’ to expedite a client’s paperwork. The neighbour said she was a very caring and tolerant woman who was committed to a rather obstreperous husband. It seemed she was an angel even before she died.

  That unproductive line of enquiries led me away from domestic strife and in the direction of the journey and the car itself. At a stretch, Grabong might have been able to extort some silence money from Nissan. If there was a rumour about the reliability of the seatbelts it would be a costly operation to recall all the vehicles that used that brand. He might also be able to claim compensation from the government for inadequate signage but the paperwork alone would take an age.

  No, I didn’t see either of those as being the grand payola. If he’d gone to so much trouble to set all this up he must have had a bigger fish at the end of the hook. I went back over the whole story to see if I’d missed anything and that was when I arrived at the waterlogged maps in the car. They were the only personal items left in there. Why? It was as if she or he wanted them to be found. As we didn’t have a landline at home I joined the high school kids in the queue at the Pak Nam Internet Café so I could get on-line. And it was there over a sugary glass of green Fanta and a donut that I found my motive.

  ‘Mr. Gabong,’ I shouted from his doorway.

  ‘Out back,’ came the reply.

  ‘Did you know your front door’s wide open?’ I said.

  He rushed through from the kitchen and looked around. He was still wearing the same pajamas and had a patchy beard.

  ‘Bastard kids,’ he said, running to the front door. He stood in the sunlight looking up and down the road. ‘Did you see anyone?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You think someone was in here?’

  ‘The little shits from the slum,’ he said. ‘Should have cleared that place out long ago.’

  ‘You think they got something?’

  ‘Shit. My cell phone. It was right there on the coffee table.’

  By the time he returned to the living room he was back in character. Tears welled in his eyes.

  ‘How can they do things like this when they know I’m in mourning?’

  He gestured for me to sit on the couch. It was vinyl and still covered in the plastic it had been delivered in. With a heat wave squeezing the juice out of everyone, the last thing I wanted to do was sit on plastic.

  ‘I thought you’d be back sooner,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I’ve been busy following up on your wife’s accident,’ I said. ‘You were right about that road.’

  ‘I told the local radio people this morning. It’s a crime. That’s what it is.’

  ‘If I were you I’d sue them,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t want to cause any trouble.’

  ‘Really? I thought your lawyer had already been in touch with the District Office.’

  That threw him.

  ‘How did…?’

  ‘Research, and a box of shortbread biscuits.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. My lawyer might have written to them. For my wife’s sake.’

  ‘The letter also mentioned a sum of money for taking your foot off the media frenzy.’

  ‘That’s…that’s just what lawyers do to show they’re serious.’

  ‘He was serious with Nissan, too.’

  ‘You talked to them?’

  ‘I’m very thorough,’ I said.

  My thighs were as slimy as hocks of pork in oil. I was sliding around on the couch. Embarrassing when you’re doing your best to act cool.

  ‘I was deeply affected by my wife’s death,’ he said. ‘I wanted to hurt the people responsible.’

  ‘With all that grief I’m surprised you could even summon up the strength to type. The letters arrived three days after your wife died. That means you sent them the day you were told about the accident.’

  ‘I didn’t send them. The lawyer did.’

  ‘Well, that’s another thing, you see. I’ve looked high and low for that lawyer of yours. I couldn’t even find an office. Looks like he works out of a post office box.’

  His demeanor changed like an angry wind before a monsoon.

  ‘Who do you write for again?’ he said.

  ‘Chumphon Gazette.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I’m expecting a real journalist to come for an interview.’

  He stood up. I didn’t, although I really wanted to.

  ‘Those were domestic, of course,’ I said. ‘The international express letter only arrived yesterday. But I imagine Google prefer to get their mail on-line. They’d already received your…sorry, I mean, your lawyer’s email sent on the day after the accident. Personally, I would have left it a week or so just to make it look credible.’

  He walked to the door, closed it and turned the key in the lock.

  ‘I didn’t make a note of your name,’ he said.

  ‘Jimm Juree,’ I said.

  ‘You seem to think you know something,’ he said.

  He walked to a cupboard against the far wall and rummaged around through a pile of junk until he emerged with a tyre iron. I confess my panic set in around then. I took a deep breath.

  ‘There’s what I know and there’s what I suspect,’ I said. ‘What I know is that you were with your wife in the car that night and you left her to drown.’

  He stood behind me. I could hear him slapping the bar against his palm but I was certain he’d want to hear me out before smashing my head in.

  ‘What I suspect,’ I said, ‘is that one day you were browsing through Google Maps and you came across the one for Pak Nam. And it showed a road that you knew to be incomplete. But on the map it was a through road with a bridge. I have no idea why they put a bridge there, especially seeing as the maps originate from satellite photos. But there it was. A major screw-up. And you saw it as a mega-dollar opportunity to sue an international organization that wouldn’t miss a million or two. You just needed a car and a dead wife to put pressure on them. And the sad thing is you might have got away with it. There was no warning that the maps might be inaccurate. They might have settled sooner than get involved in a long drawn out media battle and a court case.’

  ‘It’s just as well I left the plastic on this seat,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not going to hit me with that,’ I said, hopefully.

  ‘Why not? One more murdered woman isn’t going to worry me.’

  ‘You won’t until you know what evidence I’ve got against you.’

  ‘You have nothing.’

  ‘I’ve got this,’ I said.

  I pulled his cell phone from my bag.

  ‘You really shouldn’t leave your belongings lying about,’ I said. ‘I bet I can find the log of your call to the Rescue Foundation the night you killed your wife.’

  He laughed.

  ‘You stupid cow. You think I’d use my own phone? I rang them from a public call box.’

  ‘Well then, I’ve got this,’ I said, pulling Lieutenant Chompu’s smart phone from my bag.

  ‘Look. It’s on ‘record’. And you just confessed. The police have heard everything you’ve said here. There’ll be a knock at the door any second.’

  There was no knock.

  ‘I said, there’ll be a knock any second, but if that doesn’t work, I’ve got this.’

  On my budget I couldn’t afford pepper spray but I found mosquito spray was just as effective. I reached over my shoulder and let him have it full in the face. He was still screaming when they carted him off to the Lang Suan Jail. Lieutenant Chompu apologized for leaving me dang
ling in the void of impending death while he made sure Grabong’s confession was strong enough to convict him. I forgave him.

  I submitted my articles to Puk at the Gazette and he rejected them.

  ‘Too grim,’ he said. ‘Not suitable for a family audience. Offensive to the police and the local council. Trod on too many toes.’

  He was worried about my style, too. He said I should go in at weekends and he’d teach me how to write properly.

  That night from my balcony I saw a star slide across the night sky. I had my wish for Puk all planned out.

  THE END

  Jimm Jurree’s Short Stories

  Number One: The Funeral Photographer

  In this story, Jimm, exiled from the north of Thailand and just about surviving in the south, finds a new career by accident. Being Jimm, a crime is never far away.

  Number Two: When You Wish Upon a Star

  A car drives into a river and a woman is dead. A terrible accident and a broken hearted husband. Or it would be if Jimm’s sixth sense didn’t cut in.

  Coming Soon

  Number Three: Highway Robbery

  "First, my only appointment of the week phoned to postpone. Second, on the TV news in the evening I was astounded to see scenes from our own Highway 41 where an armoured security van had been deserted minus its cash. And, third, I was awoken just before midnight by the sound of groaning coming from the empty shop house beside mine. It was a while before I learned how these three events were connected."