They'd given everyone a slice of orange to suck on. In spite of all that shit blending and offal mushing, it had tasted like any common or garden bloody orange. And Civilai had looked along the rows at all the bananas and papayas and mangoes and lemons and pomegranates and jack fruit and star fruit and he knew what a lot he had to look forward to and how much more fun this fruit cocktail party would have been with his brother at his side. And would that he were with him now. There was something sinister about this country. It wasn't a comic parody of a socialist state, it was a deadly serious parody. It was as if they believed that this was how it was supposed to look. They'd read the Communist Manifesto and missed the point. Just as Christian and Muslim extremists found hatred and vengeance that didn't exist in their respective manuals, these Red Khmer believed Marx and Lenin had called for the obliteration of personality and pleasure and free thought. Believed that blind allegiance was the only way to proliferate their doctrines. Civilai had never read it that way because that wasn't how it had been written.
So far, he'd only seen what they wanted him to. Yet, instinctively, he knew that something unpleasant lurked below the surface. He felt it in his heart and he wanted to have Siri around to talk through his theories. He wanted to know what the little lunchtime drama had been about, whether Siri had learned anything more about this weird place. But, most of all, he wanted to be sure his friend was safe. As far as Civilai was concerned, their departure the following day couldn't come a moment too soon.
He was startled by a knock.
"Siri?"
There was no answer. Civilai hurried to the door and threw it open. Comrade Chenda stood there, pale and flustered.
"It is time to go down," he said.
"But what about Siri?"
"Comrade Siri might join us later."
"Where is he?"
"He's…It's time to go."
"What is it? What are you not telling me?"
"It's time to go down."
"You've already said that. Now perhaps you'd do me the courtesy of telling me what you know about — "
But the young guide had turned on his heel and was heading back towards the staircase.
"Everything will be explained," he said. "In due time."?
Phosy had spent the day interviewing, phoning, knocking on doors. He had all his notes spread around him on the floor and sat at their centre like a frog on a white lily pad. He had become more confused as the day progressed. Malee lay on the bed gurgling and laughing at the stars-and-planets mobile circling above her head. Her parents noticed she was particularly fond of Pluto. Phosy crawled across to the bed and took hold of his daughter's hand.
"What would you do in my situation?" he asked.
Dtui burst in through the door and threw her bag on the floor.
"If I have to go to one more Nurses for a Better Future meeting I'll scream," she said. "I hope you two aren't talking about me."
Phosy looked up at her with the hopeless expression of a pig on its way to the slaughter.
"He didn't do it," he said.
"Who didn't do what?"
"Neung. He wasn't the one."
"Malee told you that?"
She squeezed her husband's shoulder as she walked to the kitchen corner of the room.
"In a way, yes. Neung's wife was away on the weekend of the murders. He was looking after their son. He's six. Now, whoever killed those three women had gone to a lot of trouble, put a lot of planning into it. But there he was babysitting all weekend."
"So?"
"So why didn't he get his mother-in-law or a neighbour to look after the boy? He could have pretended to be working over the weekend. Why risk your son waking up in the middle of the night and not finding his dad there? Crying the damned house down? And how would he do it? Put the boy to bed, run off to K6 in the early morning, have a romp in a sauna with his boss's wife, stick a sword in her, drive home and kiss his son good morning?"
"He might have sent the boy off to a minder somewhere," Dtui suggested, pouring hot water on her instant noodles.
"That's what I assumed at first. But the neighbours remember hearing the boy at various times over the weekend. Someone else recalls seeing them at the market on Saturday. His wife said he'd come by the school to pick up their son on Friday. That wouldn't work out. To kill the first victim he would have had to be inside K6 at night. They wouldn't have let him in if he'd turned up late. What kind of electrician works at midnight? He had to have been there inside the compound, hidden away somewhere after his regular day of work."
"The wife might have been lying."
"I thought wives didn't lie."
"Good ones don't."
"Well, his wife's been camped outside the jail day and night, since Neung was arrested. She refuses to leave. She knows he was having a relationship with one of the victims but she's still there supporting him. I'd say that makes her a good wife, wouldn't you?"
"Dr Siri's got to you, hasn't he?"
"There are just too many 'Why would he?' questions. Why would he murder the women in places that could all be traced back to him? After all the planning, why would he not cover his tracks? And then there's motive. What reason did he have to kill them? I didn't find any conflict. He doesn't strike me as the type of person who'd kill just for the thrill of it. And this murderer really has to be some kind of psychopath."
"Somebody must have had a motive," Dtui said. She put a flat plate on top of her noodle bowl and let it sit until all the chemicals and flavouring and inedible carbohydrates decided to become food. She sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her daughter's hair. "If Neung didn't do it," she said, "someone must really hate him."
17
Z
The following day, Dtui's comment, "Someone must really hate him," was at the front of Inspector Phosy's mind. The rains were holding back but Vientiane was a swamp of mud. All the citizens he passed wore clogs of red clay like Frankenstein boots. Bicycle tyres swelled to tractor-tread thickness. Street dogs had become two-flavoured, caramel above, cocoa below. With all the slithering and sliding, everyday activities had turned to slapstick. The famous Lao sense of humour, bogged down in the socialist depression, found an outlet. Laughter could be heard all around the town. Bicycle-skid victims sat in the middle of the road and howled with delight. Children giggled as they skated across Ian Xang Avenue in their flip-flops. Big-boned ladies held on to each other as they attempted to ford a muddy lane, screaming with merriment.
Phosy witnessed this new mood as he drove back and forth across the city in his four-wheel-drive jeep. He recalled the days when laughter was as common as the chirrup of crickets and the clack of the wooden blocks of noodle sellers advertising their wares. He liked this Vientiane, and on any other occasion it would have cheered him up, but today he had a sombre mission. He had to find another suspect in a case he'd considered closed. He had to put together enough evidence to prevent an innocent man from facing the executioner. In his note, Siri had asked about the morphine elixir. Who was taking painkillers and why? Neung had no obvious injury, but one man on his list did. Comrade Phoumi, the security chief. Could Phoumi have injured his wrist in the first attack and been taking morphine to deaden the pain? It was his left wrist so he could still use his sword hand.
Then there was Major Dung, sword expert. He'd lied about his contact with epees. He was a ladies' man. Didn't like to be rejected. A career soldier, a trained killer. He didn't have respect for women, Lao women in particular. The alibi for both of these suspects, impossible to verify without Prime Ministerial intervention, was that they were asleep in their respective dormitories at the time of all three murders. Phosy decided it wouldn't have been beyond either of them to frame a Lao engineer for murders they'd committed. But again he was missing a motive.
Then, next on his list was Comrade Chanti, the husband of the first victim. A reply — long time coming — had arrived from Houaphan that morning. It was handwritten by the signatory at the military wedding of Chan
ti and Dew back in 1969. The writer was a colonel in the North-eastern Region 7 and a distant, and apparently not loving, relative of Dew. He wrote;
No idea why they bothered. They couldn't stand each other from day one. Definitely an arranged marriage. Parents wanted their kids to appear normal, I suppose. Put pressure on them to produce grandkids. Maintain the family name. Not sure how they ever got around to that. Wouldn't be surprised if the boy was a fairy. Lot of them around these days…
So, Chanti; resentful at being forced into an arranged marriage, then deserted. Left with the responsibility of paying for the children's upkeep. No mother around. The marriage obviously a facade. But how would that play out in a mass-murder scenario? Why would he need to frame Neung? Siri always encouraged Phosy to paint elaborate hypotheses. The accusation was only the view of an old soldier but how about this? Possible homosexual connection? Chanti meets Neung at the government bookshop and flirts with him? Neung mocks him and…Phosy always had a problem hypothesising himself into homosexual relationships. He was old school. He had a hard time imagining that such tendencies were possible. They certainly weren't natural. But, in this permissive age, even such an unpleasant concept had to be kept in consideration.
Who else did he have? He looked at the fringe players; Neung's wife and his father, the bookshop clerk, other members of the security detail, other readers at the bookshop. He had to admit, with such a clear-cut suspect it wasn't going to be easy to find anyone better. So he focused on Siri's list. He began with the question, Did Kiang see her affair with Neung the same way he did? He drove to Kiang's house to talk to her mother. The woman was cheerful and open but she denied that she had ever heard the name Neung. She assured Phosy that if her daughter had been involved in any relationship, she would have been the first to know.
Kiang's younger brother Ming was at home and Phosy found an excuse to talk to the boy alone. Once they were out of earshot of his mother, the brother admitted his sister was involved with a man. She'd sworn the boy to secrecy but even so, this confidence hadn't allowed him access to details. The brother didn't know the man's name or anything about him. All he did know was that the lover was very much like her old boyfriend, Soop. It was as if the dead soldier had come back from heaven to be with her, she'd said. Kiang had never been happier. The boy didn't know why his sister would want to keep the relationship a secret from their mother. Phosy did. He was certain the old lady wouldn't have taken too kindly to her daughter flirting with a married man. Everything fitted. Kiang did have a crush on Neung. His version of events was accurate.
Phosy mentioned another name, Comrade Chanti. The Electricite du Lao chief had denied knowing Kiang but he'd given them all the feeling he was lying. And, sure enough, he was. The brother recognised the name. Before his sister left for Bulgaria, Chanti had called several times at the house. Not quite the coincidence it sounded with so few educated women available to the large pool of unattached men. There had been a number of suitors, none of whom Kiang showed any interest in. Chanti had been very persistent in courting Kiang. But, although the mother had liked him initially, she'd made the astounding discovery that the blackguard was married and had two children. She'd sent him packing with a few choice words and they'd never seen him again. One homosexuality theory out the window. One suspect struck off the list, one more climbing the charts. Things were looking promising.
Phosy drove to Lycee Vientiane where he eventually found teacher Oum sneaking a cigarette behind the science building. She told him, although it was far from a hundred per cent accurate, that the test she'd administered on the stomach contents from victim number three, Jim, suggested traces of morphine elixir. It was quite possible she had taken, or been administered a large dose of the drug. This put paid to Phosy's theory of Security Chief Phoumi using the morphine to deaden the pain of an old injury. It also opened the possibility that Jim had been drugged. Neither Phosy nor Oum had medical training and they didn't know what effect a large dose of morphine might have on coordination or mental capacity. They needed Dr Siri to answer that one and he was off having fun overseas.
Phosy had reached the item on Siri's list which asked, What was the timing of Neung and Jim's respective arrival in?departure from Berlin? To answer that he needed to check the transcripts on his desk. It should have been a flying visit, but his return to police headquarters rendered all his other avenues of inquiry null and void. He would never get around to answering Siri's question. Sihot was at his desk with a banana fritter suspended in front of his mouth between his stubby fingers. He was so engrossed by the book open in front of him that he'd apparently forgotten it was there.
"Am I disturbing something?" Phosy asked.
His voice would normally have alarmed Sihot but the sergeant's head remained bowed over the text. The battered banana hovered.
"Sihot!" Phosy yelled.
The sergeant looked up, slowly.
"Yes, Inspector?"
"I trust what you're reading has some bearing on the case?"
"I don't think there is a case any more, sir."
Phosy approached the desk and saw what had taken control of Sihot's attention. It was a thick exercise book whose pages were filled with small, neat handwriting.
"This arrived from the East German embassy just after you left, Inspector," Sihot said. He flipped the notebook closed and Phosy stepped behind him to read the front cover. In Lao were written the words 'MY GERMAN DIARY' then something written in German followed by the name 'SUNISA SIMMARIT'. This was Jim's journal.
"Evidently it arrived a few days ago in a box of personal items Jim had sent from Germany," Sihot said. "She'd sent it surface mail addressed care of the East German Embassy, Vientiane. They didn't realise what it was till they'd opened it."
"So why are we only just getting it now?"
"Jim wrote in German. When he realised what it was, the attache took the liberty of translating the lines he thought would be relevant to the case. I have to say they're very into this investigation, the Germans. He said if there's anything else they can do just get in touch with him. The diary starts off pretty basic, he said, but as she gets more confident with the language, she starts to write more about her thoughts. The lines they translated are nearer the end."
Phosy took the notebook to his desk and flipped through the pages. The first translation he found was about ten pages from the end. It was written in red ink. The corresponding German was underlined.
Z has asked me again. He's very persistent, it read.
Two pages on was the line, I know that Z really wants me to be his lover here. He makes no secrets about it. He pretends to be interested in teaching me fencing but he makes comments often about my looks and my figure. I should be flattered but it makes me uncomfortable sometimes.
The next page. I know he's married but he comes to me almost every day now.
And the next. What do I have to do or say to persuade Z I'm not interested? He was here again today.
Phosy looked up at Sihot who smiled. The inspector skipped a few pages until he was almost at the last entry. The red ink was everywhere now, in the margins and above the original lettering. Z had clearly begun to dominate her life. The entries had become less girlish, darker.
Please stop. Please stop. Please stop. I can't accept you. Your passion is killing me. I can't think. I can't study. Your shadow is darkening my life.
Then the last entry.
Z has taken my virginity. I am spoiled. He forced himself on me in the most awful way. He was inside me. I begged for him to stop but I was a delicate flower pressed beneath him. His strong muscular body was too powerful for me to resist. I still smell him on my skin, his aftershave, his sweat, his passion. It is all over. This country is stained with the memory of this event. I have to leave here. My soul can never be free as long as he is in my world. But what if he follows me back to Laos? How can I ever escape him? He is the devil and he has ruined my life. I fear what he has turned me into.
At the bottom
of the next empty page was a signature and a note in red from the attache saying that this was a certified translation and offering further help if there were any more questions. Phosy looked up and tapped his fingers on the page.
"Bastard," he said.
"Her life must have been hell there at the end," Sihot agreed with a mouth full of banana fritter. "And then he does that to her. A lot of sick people in this world."
Phosy looked at the piles of paperwork on his desk, the charts, the pages of hypotheses, the interview transcripts. Until this moment they'd been shards of pottery that didn't fit together into any sensible shape. There was always one piece too many or one too few. But now, as he reread the last entry of an unfortunate woman's diary, all those fragments clicked into place and formed a most beautiful solution. The case of the three epees was solved.
18
LOVE SONGS FROM A SHALLOW GRAVE
When the unscheduled China Airlines flight touched down at Wattay Airport at two in the afternoon, the pilot was surprised to see a crowd of people waiting beneath a colourful copse of umbrellas in front of the dismal little terminal. If he'd known them, he would have recognised Dtui and Malee, Mr Geung and Mr Bhiku, Mrs Nong and Madame Daeng. But he didn't, so he was only left to wonder how news of the flight had made it around Vientiane so quickly.
It was a Lao whisper which, unlike a Chinese whisper, becomes more coherent as it's passed on. Somebody from Agriculture went home for lunch at K6 and was out feeding the chickens and mentioned to the neighbour that she had to hurry out to Wattay to receive a parcel from Peking. The neighbour was a secretary at Foreign Affairs. She knew that there weren't any flights scheduled from Peking and guessed it might have been the representatives returning from Phnom Penh. She was a friend of Mrs Nong, Civilai's wife who had recently returned from a stay at her sister's. The secretary rode her bicycle to Civilai's house and told Nong that her husband might be arriving on a flight sometime after lunch.
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