The Bangkok Asset

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So I’m at my desk in the open-plan area of District 8 Police Station when a rumor blows through the room similar to a gust of wind in a rice paddy. Like Big Data, Big Rumor has no obvious source or contact point and is not coherent until you join up all the different packets of information: Behind the station; In the market square; Male or female? Not sure; Young or old? Unclear; So, what? Dead; How? Murder or natural causes? Unclear; When? Who knows? Who found the corpse? Dunno.

One day someone will produce an award-winning thesis to show why information that arises from close in is invariably more garbled than that which comes from a distance. In a more remote case I would have expected precise detail and a named informant and clear orders to investigate. Here, though, with the scene of crime less than five minutes’ stroll away, cops and staff simply turn their heads and stare at me. Pretty soon everyone including the tea lady has turned to look at the only homicide cop in the room on duty and available. I shrug and stand up, ready to do my duty: even if there was no foul play, in a case of sudden death you still need a murder cop to say so before anyone will believe it. Anyway, I’m as curious as everyone else. And, yes, it is easier to descend the emergency stairs to leave the building by the rear entrance and cross the soi to the market and ask the first vendor I see where the body is than to wait for some official order to investigate.

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