they go when they get angry. Maybe he insisted on buggering her and she got mad—our girls can be picky these days.”
“But didn’t I hear someone say that he’s famous?”
“You mean it’s a paid hit? Maybe, but if it’s a hit, it’s bound to be by a Thai. In Thailand ninety-nine point nine percent of professional hits are by Thais,” he says patriotically.
“Is that an official statistic? Perhaps you are right, Khun Sukum. Mind if I look around?”
Mostly I’m staring at the dead American. His hair is long and gray and swept back in a ponytail; a gray beard expands an already gigantic face. His mouth is half open, and a little blood is trickling from one corner. When I shift my glance to the rest of the apartment, I immediately become mesmerized by the books. It occurs to me that Sukum has no English.
I take a couple of surreptitious steps in the direction of the bookshelves, which are thinly populated with a set of novels and screenplays. My eyes fixate insanely when I come to a collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. I turn my back so Sukum cannot see the intensely puzzled frown on my face, which only increases when I check the other titles. I finally manage to tear my eyes away, and pace the room for a moment. I am careful not to take any more notice of the bookshelves. For a moment my eyes rest on the cheap cathode-ray TV on a stand with a DVD player hooked up to it on a lower shelf.
“Khun Sukum,” I say, my hands clasped gently behind my back as I pace, “would you do me the honor of indulging a whim of mine? Would you open the victim’s mouth and tell me if you see there either a small pebble or an imago, or possibly both?”
Suspicious, Sukum opens the giant’s mouth and slips in his fingers, then pulls out a large black imago and a pebble. He is staring at me with fear, loathing, and envy-driven hatred. “How in Buddha’s name did you—”
“And I think, Khun Sukum, you had better examine the top of the victim’s skull, in the area of the fontanel; you might want to pull at the hair in that area, give it a good tug, that’s right.”
As he does so, a large circular section of the skull, which amounts to the whole of the top of the head, comes away with the hair. Now we have a clear view of the victim’s brain, still bright red under the protective membrane, but with a few folds missing from the left lobe.
When Sukum stares wildly at me, I allow my eyes to divert to a small and squalid coffee table on which a paper plate and a plastic spoon have been left. Now Sukum is shuddering involuntarily, Lek is astounded at my brilliance, and everyone is staring at me. I shrug. Sukum shakily replaces the victim’s scalp, carefully trying to fit it into place like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that might get damaged if he forces it, then looks up at me. “I don’t know how you did that; it must be your farang blood.” I feel bad for him as I watch his ambition sag, his identity crumple. Finally, with weary detachment after a heroic inner struggle: “Okay, it’s your case, obviously the assassin was a farang, we don’t have any Thai murderers that crazy.”
I shake my head and tut. “No, no, my dear Khun Sukum, I would not dream of standing between you and your life’s ambition of becoming a detective sergeant. Wouldn’t dream of it, my dear chap. Look, why don’t you simply use me as a resource—here’s my private cell phone number, call me whenever you get stuck, hey?”
Lek is pulling at my sleeve; he has something private and confidential to communicate. “Look, I’ve got to go now, let’s meet for a brainstorming session sometime soon. It’s okay, your name will be on the file, I don’t want any credit, just the honor of helping out in a spectacular case.” I smile as Lek pulls me out of the room. At the door I add, “I know you’ve thought of it already, Detective Sukum, but just in case it has inexplicably escaped your notice, the victim was not staying here. No clothes or other signs of habitation, you see, only a few books. I would check with all the five-star hotels hereabout, if I were you.” Sukum knows