We got to the scene at the table beside the short-time hotel and the victim was a mess. Long gone. Throat open and the head almost detached. The other foreigner was still inebriated in shock and incapable of communicating. Laid out opening and closing his mouth next to his rice porridge of vomit. My officers found the assailant fifty metres down the soi, under a covered shop opening behind a concrete table shivering and making small incoherent sounds. He still had the weapon. The notes record the cane cutter on the floor by him, not in his hand. I ask the suspect what happened.
The flourescent tubes of the interview room are bright. And his eyeballs are easy to read; bloody round the irises. Lips a dull brown matching his face. In large doses daily lao-kao does that. Ya-ba too.
‘He disrespect me.’
‘You drunk and high, Mot?’
‘He disrespect me.’
‘Music too loud.’
And now both intoxicants are legal here. The drink turns you stupid, although it gives you a boner. I know what the tablets do. First you talk shit all night, then you clean your house all night, play with your significant other all night. Then, when the dose gets to be daily, you neglect your house, rant at your significant other, and scheme about your neighbours. Excessive amounts of ya-ba will likely make the addict psychotic. I recall the image doing the rounds on social media a few years back of the dead pregnant woman with the kitchen knife in her belly.
‘Were you polite?’ I say.
‘I ask them turn it down, they disrespect me, many times.’
Then it turns your brains to a vacant lot. For sure, Mot didn’t think much when he pulled the blade across the victim’s throat.
I sighed. ‘We’ll sort out a brief for you in the morning.’
‘He disrespect me.’
‘Sure.’
