Police Colonel Suthep nosed his car into the narrow space between vendor carts and stepped out into the sweltry night, narrowly avoiding a dead rat in the gutter. At a makeshift stall on the footpath, an old woman wove animals out of palm leaves, a small child asleep on her lap, both oblivious to the heaving crowd of drink-flushed men and barely dressed women behind them. Suthep checked his watch - eleven o'clock - and…