Love Songs from a Shallow Grave dp-7

by Colin Cotterill

  "They gave me the man's wallet as well. He had Thai baht. Lots of them. In Bangkok I strolled through immigration. The officer stamped the passport without even bothering to look at me. I found a bus to Nong Kai then travelled out to Si Chiangmai. I sat for a day opposite your shop, Daeng. It seemed so far. It should have been the easy part but I didn't know how to get across. I talked to fishermen. None of them was game to chance a trip over here. They'd all lost friends to Lao bullets. So I studied the current. I walked three kilometres upstream and selected myself a log and dived in."

  "You poor man. You've only had four swimming lessons."

  "That's true," he laughed. "But I graduated from the leg-kicking class. I was trusting the log to do the rest. Even so, it's a lot easier in a pool than at the mercy of her highness, the Mekhong, and this broken hand didn't help. I almost didn't make it. I was flying past your shop and I was still three metres from the bank. I made the mistake of leaving my log and attempting to splash my way ashore. I was sure I'd performed all the regulation arm and leg movements but they didn't appear to stop me sinking below the surface. I kicked like a mule, took in several litres of water and was washed up in front of the Ian Xang Hotel. I walked back here along the bank. I was a little confused by then. I couldn't remember where I lived until I saw the beach umbrella."

  "I thought you were Rajid."

  "You'd be surprised how much we have in common."

  22

  MY MAMA SOLD THE BUFFALO AND BOUGHT A ROCKET LAUNCHER

  The second coming of Siri was generally considered a miracle in Vientiane. He was met by smiles wherever he went. In fact, the doctor had returned to a more caring city. His Vientiane had a far greater appeal once it was compared to Phnom Penh. Yes, the regime had been infected with the same corruption as its predecessors. Yes, they incarcerated old royalists and killed the odd dozen here and there with hard labour. Yes, they were driving the Hmong from their homes. Yes, they forced everyone to study Marx and Lenin and no, they didn't have a crumbling clue how to run a country. But, odd as it seemed, deep down they had respect for their fellow man. It showed itself in peculiar ways, but the Lao — even after being slapped about by this or that oppressor for a century — still held on to their humanity.

  Siri had seen the dark side. He'd retrieved his amulet from a headless corpse in a high-school playground and he'd dug the body of a poet from the ground with his bare hands. He'd killed a man who probably didn't want to be doing what he was doing and the life of an innocent Japanese man had been taken purely for Siri's own convenience. And now, he'd had enough of death. It was time to step away from the spirits. Dr Siri had submitted his resignation along with his official report every month since the end of 1975. Every month it had been rejected, or, more accurately, ignored. But when he strode into Judge Haeng's office, slapped his resignation onto the desk and said, "You have three months to find a new coroner or do without one," nobody had any doubts that he was serious. Siri had earned his retirement. He had survived the killing fields. He was on life's overtime and nobody had the nerve to begrudge him.

  Police work? That was a different matter. That was fun. That wasn't messing with the dead. It was, in many respects, striving for the rights of the living. They couldn't keep a good closet detective down. It was a Saturday evening and Siri and Inspector Phosy were seated on a mat at the back of the evening market. Four glasses stood at various angles on the uneven ground in front of them, two were half full. Two Thumbs had obliged them by lowering their umbrella. There were stars in the sky at last and the drinkers wanted to see them. The first rule of cigarette and alcohol stall management was that the customer was always right until they ran out of money.

  "It looks like we're still recognizing the Khmer Rouge," Phosy said. He hadn't known whether to broach the subject of Kampuchea but he had questions he wanted answered.

  "Their embassy's still open but I've been smelling the odd scent of combustible chemicals from Daeng's kitchen," Siri smiled. "So, don't be surprised if you wake up one morning and there's a mushroom cloud where their embassy used to be."

  As often occurred in these encounters, Phosy was only half certain that was a joke so he ignored it.

  "It's hard to believe all that horror is going on right next door," he said. "But you've recovered from your ordeal remarkably. I thought you'd be a wreck for months after what you went through."

  Siri smiled and looked around. He had recovered quite remarkably. Since that first morning back he'd averaged twenty minutes sleep a night. And those tiny pecks of sleep were crammed so full of the most horrific nightmares he got more rest when he was awake. He hadn't been able to keep food down so he was on a diet of rice porridge. Anybody passing his bathroom would swear some farm animal was being strangled inside. He still couldn't write with his right hand and he was deaf in one ear. At the slightest unexpected sound he'd jump a foot in the air and his heart would race for five minutes before it could be stilled. He would put his hand to his face and find tears on his cheeks and, at any time of the day or night, images of the dead Khmer were inside his head. Quite a remarkable recovery.

  "There used to be an expression," he said. "'There's always someone worse off than you.' But when you get to the Khmer, you're at the end of the line, Phosy. It now reads, 'There's always someone worse off than you, unless you're Cambodian.' They call the system there Angkar. It's a political machine that has everyone hypnotised. Mindless. I can't believe there's any place worse than Kampuchea, Phosy."

  "How did…? Ah, never mind."

  "Go ahead."

  "How did you occupy your mind through all those hours of being locked up?"

  "It's pretty much the same as enduring political seminars. You've been through it. Songs. I sang a lot of Mo Lum country songs to myself and made up a few dozen more in my mind."

  "I'd like to hear them sometime."

  "I doubt that. Unless the title 'My mama sold the buffalo and bought a rocket launcher' appeals to you. Then there were word games and mathematics puzzles. Not to mention solving real life mysteries. I have to say there was a long period there when you squatted in my mind, Inspector Phosy."

  "Me?"

  "I was very afraid of the outcome."

  "Of the three-epee case?"

  "I was afraid you might miss the clues. I underestimated you, and for that I apologise deeply."

  "No need to apologise. You had every right to be afraid. My investigation concluded with half-a-dozen bullet holes in Comrade Neung. End of case. It wasn't until I started to think like you that I saw things the way they really were."

  "We can't think the thoughts of others, Phosy."

  "Maybe not. But we can open our minds and let other people's thoughts in."

  "I'm sure Comrade Neung will be eternally grateful you did. Tell me, at what point did you work it all out?"

  "When I read the diary. There were a lot of thoughts at the back of my mind. I'd wondered about the monogram. They'd called Neung Zorro over there. It was a sort of playful joke. But Neung was embarrassed by it. He certainly didn't give me the impression he was so proud of it he'd use it as his signature. He didn't tell anyone when he came back. Not even his father. So I wondered who'd know about it. It had to be someone he met in Germany."

  "So, by this stage you'd dismissed Neung as a suspect?"

  "Not out with the garbage exactly but certainly not at the front of the queue."

  "But it was while you were reading the diary that it came to you?"

  "As clear as day. The whole tone of her writing felt wrong. I mean, she was a dull, average-looking, short woman on the heavy side. And she's writing about a jock, a good-looking jock who's after her. Basically, a nice guy. I mean, she should be so lucky."

  "There are those who might accuse you of sexism with such a view, Phosy."

  "Stuff them. Human nature is human nature and I didn't see anything about Jim that would make a man leave his senses. She wasn't exactly the fascinating type. She didn't seem to have an enchan
ting personality. And he was a fencing champion. If he'd been that way inclined he wouldn't have gone after a girl from his home town. I'm sure he could have had all the hanky-panky he could find time for. And there was something eerie about her diary."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, I only got the translation, but it was like reading fiction, Siri. According to what she wrote she'd just been raped and she was using all this flowery language and smelling his sweat on her skin. I've never met an abused woman who'd rush off to write about it in her diary without taking a shower and a few days to recover. And she's calling him the devil taking her soul and, I don't know, it was just too much. And I started to wonder who was stalking who."

  "Bravo."

  "She'd known him since K6. She was a kid following around this good-looking smart older boy. Budding crush material. She knew what he liked to do. Where he went to school. Knew about his dad teaching him fencing. And he goes to study and she goes off to work at the clinic up north. And she's good. Smart as shit. Everyone knows she'll make a hell of a doctor. But the Americans flee the scene and Jim has the option to move to America. They offer her a scholarship. But she stays on at the clinic. Why would she want to do that? Love for the nation? Or love for something else?

  "Our people are desperate for doctors. They find this girl running a clinic. They turn a blind eye to the fact she was working with the Americans and offer to send her off to study medicine. The Russians offer her a good deal, the Cubans, the North Koreans. But it's not till they offer her a place in Berlin that she accepts. And why? Guess who'd gone to East Germany six months earlier? The love of her life. But he's got himself married since she went away, and has a child. Yet still she believes she's destined to live her life with Neung. She sees it in the stars or somewhere. Already we start to recognise the obsession.

  "I still have no idea where or how she taught herself fencing. I wonder whether she might have badgered Neung's father into teaching her after his son went off to study in the north. That would be ironic, wouldn't it? I haven't had a chance to ask him. But it's through Neung's fencing club that she 'accidentally' bumps into him again. He's kind. He tutors her. They spend time together. Her crush develops into a growth, a cancer. She wants him more than she's ever wanted anything. But she's a Lao woman. The advance has to come from him. And it doesn't come. She keeps a diary and through that diary her fantasy becomes real. Neung is pursuing her. She is the victim of his love. But time's running out. His course is coming to an end and she still hasn't turned her fairy story into reality. That's when the writing in the diary becomes darker Neung becomes this unknown evil character, Z. She's becoming more and more deranged. The whole rape scene sounds like a trashy Thai novel."

  "How do…?"

  "Not that I've ever read one. The point is she has to justify to herself why she's quitting her course. She couldn't imagine being in Germany without her fantasy lover so she deliberately fails her exams and gets thrown out. She blames it on some mysterious stalker. People feel sorry for her. So she…Siri, would you stop staring at me like that."

  "I'm sorry, Phosy. This is the detective I've been searching for all my life."

  "Sarcasm is the lowest form — "

  "Believe me, Phosy. I've had the last of my sarcasm beaten out of me. I'm a recovered sarcaholic."

  "Good, whatever, anyway, they're both back in Laos. Home territory. Jim besotted beyond reason. Beyond sanity. Neung still clueless. Jim follows Neung to the bookshop. He goes there often. She signs up also. By now she's built up the courage to confess her love. She tells him they need to talk. But he's too busy. He doesn't call her back. She stalks on, and that's when she sees Neung with Kiang. Probably follows them out to their love hotel. Bang. Her already troubled mind explodes. She wasn't that stable to start with but now, the man she's been in love with for fifteen years, the man she gave up her future and her dreams to follow home, Neung has a lover. A wife's one thing, expendable. She knows that men with wives take on lovers. Happens all the time. But this is an attractive single woman and Jim could smell the love in the air. It was all over for her. Revenge was the only option. Neung works at Electricite du Lao. Jim follows him around. She learns he's in a work team at K6. Coincidentally, the nurse attached to the K6 clinic breaks her leg. It appears someone pushed her off a balcony. They didn't ever find a culprit but I'm sure we all know who it was. And so she started to assemble her murder trilogy."

  "If I'm allowed to say," Siri smiled, "that was a brilliant piece of detective work. There I was, afraid an innocent man was about to be shot, but you had it all worked out. If I'd known, I could have concentrated on my incarceration with a lighter heart."

  Phosy wore a glow, not only of illegally imported Mekhong whisky, but of a policeman's pride. It suited him.

  "But I was still a pace or two behind the amazing Dr Siri, wasn't I?" he said.

  "How do you mean?"

  "You worked it out without the benefit of the diary or information from Germany."

  Siri blushed and lowered his voice. Two Thumbs had been edging his chair closer to keep up with the conversation.

  "I had nothing conclusive," Siri admitted. "Just a series of hunches."

  "Like the towel?"

  "Like the towel, yes. Covering Dew's lap with the towel after killing her seemed really incongruous. If you hate someone you don't give a damn about their modesty. It seemed like a gesture of apology. "I'm sorry I had to kill you." And it occurred to me as being a particularly feminine act. That's when it first entered my mind that the encounter in the shower might have been a homosexual one and that the killer might have been a woman."

  "The Vietnamese security people were convinced of it," Phosy said. "The Vietnamese girl on their bodyguard unit had quite a reputation for…lady to lady…you know. Someone had seen her together with Dew earlier that evening. When they found Dew's body in the sauna, they were sure it was their girl who'd killed her."

  "Which explains why they were so keen to cover it up," Siri nodded. "Now I see. And Dew's inclinations would also explain the relationship with her husband. Her parents had wanted her to get married and have children to continue the family lineage. It's really important for some people. They knew they'd be raising the children by themselves. It's all about face. Oh, I don't doubt they thought being married and having children might shake those silly gay ideas out of their daughter but it didn't work. I feel sorry for Comrade Chanti. He was duped all the way along the line. Can't say I blame him for shopping around for a new wife."

  "Do you think Dew and Jim were actually…?"

  "I doubt it. It was more likely that Jim, the medic, found out about Dew's leanings and decided she could take advantage of the situation. Dew's husband was Neung's boss. It was as good a start as any. The first nail in Neung's coffin. She had a narrow avenue of time to work in. She found out Neung's wife was away for the weekend and he'd be stuck babysitting. He wouldn't be able to run around building up alibis. It wouldn't surprise me if Jim hadn't built up a list of other potential victims, all of whom could be tied to Neung."

  "But Kiang had to be at the top of the list."

  "She'd certainly have to be one of her victims. I imagine Jim met Kiang at the bookshop and became friendly with her. She would have talked about fencing, perhaps suggesting that any man who fenced would be impressed with a woman who knew the fundamentals. Something like that. She offered to teach Kiang and said she'd be in touch when she was free. That way she could bring Kiang into play at any time. "Hello, Kiang, I'm free this evening. Would you like a lesson?" We'll never know for certain how it all came together, but there had to be a lot of planning involved."

  "And all for revenge. And she didn't even have the opportunity to sit back and gloat. You'd think a murderer would want to observe. To see whether their plans worked out."

  "Well, I…"

  "What is it?"

  "I mean, I read your report. It was very thorough, very well done."

  "But?"

&nb
sp; "My conclusion wasn't exactly the same as yours."

  "About what?"

  "It's really a very small thing."

  "About what?"

  "Your opinion was that Jim had committed suicide."

  "She ran a sword into herself. That's not suicide?"

  "It's only suicide if she dies as a result. I believe she didn't intend to kill herself."

  "Dr Siri, you're a real pain in the backside, you know that? How do you impale yourself on a lump of metal and not…? OK, go on. This better be good."

  "All right. I'll do my best. Yes, she impaled herself with an epee. But she did so very carefully. Look at the other victims. Epee straight through the heart. Jim knew her heart was on the wrong side. She must have done. If she wanted to do away with herself she could have run the epee straight through her right breast. But she went to great pains — pains against which she took a large slug of morphine — to insert the specially sharpened sword in such a way that it looked as if it had been aimed at her heart. She'd studied medicine. She knew where her lungs were. The blade passed in front of her lung and out the side. The marks on the wooden upright suggested she'd steered the blade by pushing herself against the sword. It was like a very large-scale injection. It looked awful and probably hurt like hell despite the elixir, but it wasn't life-threatening if she got to hospital in time.

  "Her mistake was the Z cut in her thigh. On the others she'd used a knife, made the cut after death. But for her own murder she had no time to conceal a second weapon. So she had to write with the tip of the epee. Don't forget she'd sharpened it to a fine point. It had no edge. She'd been wary of slashing a lung so she'd smoothed down the blade. Cutting into her thigh would have been like slicing across an orange with a needle. It would have been very messy and bloody. I imagine the morphine had started to work and she didn't notice how deep she'd made the cut. She certainly didn't notice how much blood she was losing until it was too late. She was intent on getting the blade inside her. My guess is that she envisaged a complete recovery and the opportunity to give evidence against the man who'd rejected her. She wanted to drain every last drop of revenge out of it. I think her own death came as a terrible disappointment to her."