Bangkok Noir

Since 1990, Colin has been a regular cartoonist for national publications. A Thai language translation of his cartoon scrapbook, Ethel and Joan Go to Phuket and weekly social cartoons in The Nation newspaper. In 2004, an illustrated bilingual column ‘cycle logical’ was launched in Matichon Weekly magazine. Later, both comic strips have been published in book form.

In 2009, Colin Cotterill received the Crime Writers Association Dagger in the Library award for being “the author of crime fiction whose work is currently giving the greatest enjoyment to library users.”

Dolphins Inc.

Christopher G. Moore

1.0

Where are you?

Queen Sirikit Center, Bangkok, Thailand

Inside one of the smaller conference rooms, the air-conditioning blasting multiple streams over the audience. In the back a youngish Thai man—just out of his teens—his hair short, as if he’d recently disrobed as a monk or left military service. But he didn’t seem like the type for either the monkhood or the army. Chinapat had the soft, nerdy look of a man-boy slumped before a computer screen as a way of life.

He sat in quiet serenity, either meditating or somewhere online inside his skull, slowly rubbing his hands, moving his fingers together as if the meat locker chill temperature had seeped deep into his body or he had lost his concentration, hand on the mouse, the cursor frozen on the screen. Dressed in a suit and tie, and cheap black shoes from the Sunday market, the kind with thick rubber soles. Such shoes allowed Chinapat, like a phantom, silently and without notice, to disappear inside a room.

Inside the frigid room was the object of Chinapat’s first professional job.

A middle-aged Japanese man in dark glasses looked him over the way a father looks over a son, part pride, part doubt and disapproval, as if his expectations had been exceeded and dashed at the same time. The Japanese man showed him a photograph of Tanaka.

“Eliminate him,” he said.

Chinapat glanced at the podium. Mr. Tanaka, a representative of an obscure but well-financed Japanese film distributor, spoke to the early morning symposium. It was Friday at 8:30 a.m. Chinapat couldn’t remember the last time he’d been awake at 8:30 in the morning; no memory came back.

He watched as Mr. Tanaka began to read from his notes, looking up at a thin audience of no more than seventy-five people—a scattering of journalists, film students, some representatives from the Japanese embassy and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a few walk-ins who had read about the event in the Bangkok Post. Most of the audience had blue lips from the cold. They’d been paid a handsome sum to wrap themselves in coats and scarves to survive the arctic blast from the ventilation system. The first two rows of hard-looking Japanese men, with thick necks sticking like redwoods from their white shirts and dark suits, sat so still they looked like sculptures. Chinapat sighed, thinking as he examined the men in the first rows that he’d signed onto a very long payroll.

Mr. Tanaka had a thin moustache and gleaming teeth that looked artificial—hard, resilient objects that would outlive the man by centuries. The speaker appeared more Chinese than Japanese with his round face and large eyes. Chinapat wondered if this was the result of a deep flaw as Tanaka lowered his glasses, looked up from his notes and nodded at one of the men in the first row. Tanaka’s unsmiling stone-like face surveyed the audience. He spoke in English, his tone reserved and serious. Chinapat wondered what it was like to actually kill a man in the real world. And, in particular, what it would feel like to kill Tanaka.

“We resist outsiders who don’t know our history,” Tanaka said, looking at the audience. “Such people do not respect or honor our way of life, our traditions. Our history, like your history in Thailand, is both noble and ancient. Outsiders would try to destroy our culture. We have terrorists like the Sea Shepherd, saying that because we hunt limited numbers of dolphins and pilot whales we are wrong. How can that be?” Tanaka shrugged his shoulders, looking out at his audience. “How can the Japanese way of life be wrong? It’s not logical. It’s not scientific.”

Chinapat thought the speech sounded like something from the lips of an old analogue way of viewing reality. He opened one eye and glanced down at his watch before he closed them again. Waiting was the worst part of his job. Listening to a speech from Tanaka was the second worst part. He quite enjoyed, though, the planning, working out the details—place, time and, most important of all, the exit from the scene once the work was done.