“I hired a bicycle samlor. It stank the thing up completely. It’ll have to be fumigated. I had to ride the bicycle along behind him with a peg on my nose. I gave him a nice tip.”

“And you’re really not going to tell me what it’s all about?”

“A man has to have a hobby that’s all his own, Daeng. Can you watch the drum for me? Keep the fire going for another couple of hours?”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“I told Phosy I’d take a look at the red Ferrari,” said Siri. “It just got back.”

The Ferrari had finally been dragged from the fish pond and towed to the city behind a tractor. It was parked looking a little sorry for itself in the police parking lot. Phosy and Bruce were standing in the shade of a maiden’s breast sandalwood tree when Siri arrived on his bicycle, followed shortly by Ugly. Captain Sihot was standing guard.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Siri. “Bending spoons. Boiling bones. You know how it is. Time got away from me.”

Phosy and Bruce stepped up to the car.

“We’ve been over it once,” said Phosy. “We just needed your coroner’s insight to take another look.”

“Has anyone interfered with it since it went in the water?” Siri asked.

“No,” said Sihot. “I accompanied it all the way home. Nobody’s been anywhere near it apart from our police mechanic, and I was with him the whole time.”

“And what was his conclusion?” asked Siri.

“He said the brakes and the steering were in great shape for an old car. Somebody obviously loved it and took care of it. He said he doubted it left the road due to some mechanical malfunction. He did offer a sort of explanation as to why the two of them couldn’t get out. The lock latches were rusty. You couldn’t open the doors from the inside. You’d have to wind down the windows and open them from outside. But with the pressure on the glass from the water it would have been hard to open them.”

“Were the latches tampered with?” Siri asked.

“Didn’t look like it, Doctor. Just natural rusting over time.”

“I doubt anyone could have planned to have the car leave the road exactly where it did,” said Bruce.

“That’s right,” said Sihot. “It’s got all the signs of an accident.”

“But what made the driver leave the road at all?” said Phosy.

“Drugs?” said Siri. “Booze? Speeding? Asleep at the wheel? Without an autopsy, we’ll never really know.”

“Was there anything inside?” Bruce asked.

“There’s a bag behind the driver’s seat,” said Sihot. “We didn’t touch it. There were beer bottles on the floor, so it’s pretty obvious they were drinking. I think the driver just lost control.”