"That is a very bad sign," Daeng decided.
"And where the hell is everybody from this place?"
"Twelve o'clock," said Daeng, pointing north. The policemen turned to see a bedraggled couple in their fifties coming toward them. Given the ghost-town feel of the surroundings, they could easily have been the curators of a haunted historical site. They had all the attributes.
"Good health," the man said, although he obviously hadn't been blessed with it. He was pitted with childhood smallpox scars and had a yellowish sheen to his skin. His anorexic wife made him look like a paragon of health by comparison.
"Good health," said Phosy, reluctantly shaking the man's hand. "We were hoping to see Comrade Buaphan."
"He left," said the host.
Phosy thought, 'damn' but said, "When?"
"Around midday. Went off in the truck. Left me in a pickle, he did. We've had census collection volunteers coming down from the hills all afternoon to hand in their papers and get their fees. I didn't know what to tell them."
"Did he do anything like that the last time he was here?" Phosy asked.
"He did take the truck a few times, but he was usually back in time to talk to the collectors."
"Where does he sleep when he's here?"
"Up there," said the man, pointing to a solitary hut on a hill. "We told him he could stay with us in the main house but he preferred it up there by himself."
"How many of you live up here?" Daeng asked. Phosy didn't bother to reprimand her.
"Just us and our kids," the man said. "One house. This used to be a busy community during the war. But after the ceasefire there wasn't much of a reason to be here. We're a long way from running water, you see. This settlement was always more strategic than natural."
"So why are you still here?" she asked.
"Got nowhere else to go," he told her honestly. "The government wants to relocate all us hill tribes to the plains but we wouldn't know how to survive down there growing paddy rice. This is where we're comfortable, up in the clouds."
They started up the hill to the lone hut, all but the wife, who stood like a solitary stalk of rice in the clearing.
"Does the truck spend a lot of time up here?" Phosy asked as they walked.
"Well, they only just came today, but when they were here two weeks ago it was in and out all the time. We got the idea it was supposed to be collecting forms from the other bases. When Comrade Buaphan took it out, the driver used to sit with us and have a laugh about him. The boss had the poor fellow counting papers and loading stacks of questionnaires in cement sacks. They weren't often here at the same time."
"But the truck wasn't here that often at night?"
"Hardly at all."
"And you're certain you saw Comrade Buaphan and the driver leave at midday together?"
"No, Comrade. I didn't see that at all."
"You said…"
"I saw Comrade Buaphan leave by himself. There was no driver with him."
"So where's the driver?" asked Daeng.
"I don't know." The man seemed to think about it for the first time. "Haven't seen him since this morning. I suppose he could be up in the hut. There aren't many places to hide."
They were surrounded by bush, so Daeng noted that that statement wasn't true at all. They arrived on top of the butte. The hut was a thatched box with door and window shapes sliced out of the front like a child's drawing. The five of them filled the room. There was a military sleeping bag rolled up against the rear rattan wall and an empty American-issue knapsack standing beside it. Buaphan's few possessions were laid out on top of a bamboo bench.
"The simple life," said Daeng. "I'd say he didn't have too many parties up here."
There were two white shirts folded the way the Chinese laundries preferred, one pair of black trousers rolled to keep out creases, a small heap of underwear and socks, an expensive-looking watch, an English language novel book-marked halfway through, a Thai handbook of local birds, a pair of binoculars, and a small stack of kip.
"Wherever he was going he didn't need his watch or his money," Phosy said, looking at the engraving on the back of the watch. "From your loving parents," he read.
"Rich family by the look of it," said one of the police officers.
"So it is possible he bought his way into the job," Daeng said, recalling Siri's theory.
"And there's only one reason a man with money would want to go off into the wilderness," Phosy said.
"He might just have wanted peace and quiet," Daeng suggested.
"No, he put himself out here in this isolated spot and worked out a regimen where nobody knew where he was at any one time. It's why he was so annoyed about having a driver attached to the project. He wanted the truck to himself. And look, he's right out here at the end of the chain. Logically, the project coordinator would be based in the centre, down at the Nahoi intersection. But that was too busy. There were too many witnesses to his comings and goings. This place is ideal."
Everything fitted in Phosy's mind. The only thing missing was the driver.
"You're absolutely certain the driver wasn't in the truck?" he asked again. "I mean, he might have been asleep in the back or hunched down on the seat."
"There's nothing wrong with my eyes," the man said. "I was up on the other butte. I saw Comrade Buaphan walk down from his hut large as life, climb in the truck and drive off. There was nobody else with him."
"Perhaps he ran off," said the other officer.
"Why would he do that?" Phosy asked. "He's got a cushy government job. He doesn't have to do a lot of work."
"But he didn't get along with the section head," one policeman reminded him.
"We all of us have to work with people we don't like, Officer. You don't just run away in the middle of nowhere like this. You wait till you're in a city where there are options."
"He could be out hunting, though," Daeng said.
"Good point," Phosy said. "In which case he'll be back soon. It'll be getting dark. On the other hand, he could be dead."
They all turned to look at him.
"Why?" Daeng asked.
"Assume Comrade Buaphan has set up his next victim. He was here two weeks ago working it all out, laying the foundations. All he needs to do is drive to the next victim's village. But, as usual, there's one person in the way. He tried again to get the driver kicked off the project but failed. He's the only one who can verify when Buaphan took the truck. He's the only witness. There's conflict between them and Buaphan knows the driver would gladly give evidence against him if news of the murders got out. He's a liability, so the comrade makes him disappear. He goes off in the truck, kills his next victim, and at the end of the mission he puts in a report that the driver ran off. Nobody could question it. It's a logical next step. He might have even done away with other project drivers. We could check with — "
He was interrupted by a woman's scream. It was the type of scream used in the mountains to alert rather than to alarm. They rushed out of the hut. The ailing sun had bled the sky crimson and in its glow they could see the jeep in the clearing and the man's wife standing beside it. She was pointing to the top of the track where three undernourished children stood beside the road like marker stakes.
"Who are they?" Phosy asked.
"Our kids," the man answered proudly. The children were jumping up and down and pointing and beckoning for the policemen to come down.
"It looks like they've found something," said Daeng.
"And if it isn't the body of the driver I'll eat the truck, starting at the wheels," Phosy told her.
They walked down the hill and across the clearing. They arrived at the top of the road where the children stood. In front of them some of the thick wayside plants had been flattened, leaving a narrow cave of leaves.