Jimm Juree 01; Killed at the Whim of a Hat by Colin Cotterill Read Free Book Online Page A

Archive Registry. It was the elephant graveyard where old cases went to die. I’d done a piece on them for the Mail . Went down to Bangkok on the train and met up with the director. When any evidence of historical malfeasance came to light, they’d read the file and do a cursory cross-check through their computer banks. Unless a flag went up that it was connected to any ongoing inquiry, they’d bury it in an indexed grave and go on to the next. Don’t forget, they can’t even get the ongoing cases right. Who was going to care about thirty-year-old skeletons? The medusa had decided to trash that CSD piece, by the way, because it presented the police in a poor light. I didn’t bother to point out that most police lights were dim anyway.
    I knew the two sheets that Constable Ma Yai held in front of him were all we’d have to go on.
    “First,” he said, “the vehicle. Nothing.”
    “Nothing?” said I.
    “The registration plate is from 1972. The Surat motor registry department didn’t start to computerize their records until ninety-four. Everything before that was on card.”
    “Doesn’t he speak well?” said Chompu. “Wasted. Wasted as a constable. He should be on the radio.”
    I had to smile. I’d grown up with such out-of-order asides. I missed them.
    “Where are the cards?” I asked.
    “Well, you have to look at it like this. We’re in the south. Those cards have been through, what? Thirty monsoon seasons? Stuffed in sweaty old rusting file cabinets.”
    “They’re destroyed?”
    “Not by man, I’d say. By nature itself. Those that are still legible might be stored somewhere in boxes, but I’m not even sure where you’d look.”
    “The Surat motor registry department didn’t know?”
    “Said all their surviving card files were sent to Bangkok ten years ago.”
    “I suppose it’s possible some poor little secretary’s there copying old registration records onto a database,” said Chompu. “They probably pay her a pittance and treat her badly. Whip her, I shouldn’t wonder.”
    I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. There was a Stephen King short story about the edge of time where the past just crumbled away one step behind you. In Thailand, everything before computerization had joined the rot. There wasn’t a great deal of motivation to go wading back through all that musty, mildewed smelly paper. Anew. Afresh. Forget the mistakes of the past and let’s start making our brand-new mistakes for the future. But where did that leave us and our VW?
    “Do you have the engine and chassis numbers?” I asked.
    The two policemen exchanged a condescending look of admiration. You learned to live with it. Yai copied the two numbers from his sheet and handed the slip of paper to me.
    “Have you contacted VW Thailand?” I asked.
    “They’re in Bangkok,” said the constable, as if that were reason enough not to try. Long-distance phone calls. Funny accents. Reports to fill out. Hassle. They might as well have been contacting Rio de Janeiro. I told them I’d see if I could get through.
    “And that brings us to the bodies,” said the constable, flipping to his second sheet. “As there were no organs to examine, no flesh, no brain matter or stomach contents, the army pathologist in Prajuab could only say with any certainty that these were one male and one female. He wasn’t even sure how old they were. There were no visible traumas and, therefore, there was no obvious cause of death. But the head of the national forensic pathology institute is due down there in a few days and she might have a look.” He closed the file.
    “That’s it?” I asked.
    “Don’t you think it’s fascinating that they can tell the difference between male and female just from the bones?” Lieutenant Chompu said. “And they weren’t even connected.”
    “You don’t watch a lot of television, do you?” I suggested.
    “Lots. Why?” he replied. “How would that help?”
    Right. The countryside. All Thai