There followed another silence.
“You mentioned witnesses, plural,” said the nearest colonel.
“Yes, it’s astounding how many people have nothing better to do than sit and observe,” said the policeman. “I personally think we’re being too generous to the elderly. They should be put to work on the drains or digging ditches. But that’s just me. Once we had a witness who could describe the kidnappers it wasn’t so hard to work backward along the route they’d taken. We found people who’d seen the cyclist and others who remembered him being tailed slowly by two young military types on a motorcycle.”
“That’s speculation,” said the farthest colonel.
“You’re quite right,” Phosy agreed. “But we should know exactly what they look like soon enough. The Thais came up with a police portrait artist and the witnesses are really excited about the results. But listen to me. Here I am going on and on and not giving anyone else a chance to speak. I really do apologize for taking up your valuable time. I know you have a country to protect. I just wanted to keep you informed. Keep that old Armed Forces–National Police Force channel open. I’m so excited about the potential of us all working together in the future. Thank you.”
He stood and had completed another round of handshakes before anyone realized the meeting was closed. He went to the door, opened it and stopped in the doorway.
“Really, thank you,” he said. “I’ll see myself out.”
He sighed heavily on his way down the echoing staircase. Of course it was all fiction. Lies. His only witness was dead. There were no plaster casts or fingerprints or sketch artists. The police department didn’t even have enough whistles to go around. Two muggings over the course of a week would have been considered a crime spree. The slick police force he’d described to the soldiers was one he’d learned about from the stories of Dr. Siri. They had no forensics department. His only reason for exaggerating the progress on Noo’s kidnapping case was to poke a very short stick into a very scary hornet’s nest. Now all he could do was stand back and see if they’d bite.
But first he had to return to headquarters and arrange protection for his wife. Nurse Dtui looked passably like the dead cordial seller. If the killer thought he’d murdered the wrong woman, there was a chance he’d try again. And Phosy had set up his wife, even given them a location. If the military was connected to this whole affair as he believed, there’d be a visit to Madam Daeng’s noodle shop soon enough.
As he rode his lilac Vespa along Lan Xang Avenue, he reconsidered his actions. What was he doing? Could he be more irresponsible? What if the assassins shot first and asked questions after? And for what? For one man’s life. For a man he hardly knew. After so many years of bloodshed, who really cared whether one trouble-making Thai monk vanished from the face of the earth? Or a cordial seller? Or his own wife and child? And that, of course, was the key. The victims could have been Dtui or Mali. The re-educators had pummeled it into him back in the seminars. In this new system even the poorest, most feeble rice farmer would have the same rights as the greatest general. That’s what they’d said. That was the myth of socialism. It wasn’t the army he was up against; it was the sagging ideology. It was the duty of the community to protect its weakest members. He never thought he’d hear himself say it but, damn, it was the principle of the thing. Dtui was a fighter. She’d take it well. That’s why he’d chosen her as a wife.
•••
Before returning the Renault to its owner, Civilai filled the tank at one hard-to-find rusty pump and asked for directions to the high school. When he arrived he was too late for classes, but he hoped there might still be staff around. The school looked new and dilapidated at the same time. Unlike the French colonists, who weren’t huge on wasting education on the locals, the Americans veritably vomited schools all over the place. Their policy was to use local tradesmen and materials wherever possible, which explained why the buildings had already started to fall down.
As it turned out, there were a number of teachers engaged in after-school activities: the band, the vegetable allotments, after-hours political classes for the remedial and, although the light was fading fast, a football match was in progress. The two teams playing shirts against skins were just about to start the second half. Despite all his years of rhetoric in favor of women’s rights, he found himself surprised and disoriented to see that the referee was a young woman.
“Good game?” Civilai asked her.
“A bit one-sided,” she told him.
“Are you a teacher here?” he asked.
“Yes, comrade.”
“I’m looking for someone who might have been teaching in Pak Xan back in the old regime.”
“Then you’re looking for Teacher Grit,” she said.
Teacher Grit taught math and had been doing so, he said, since before the birth of Pythagoras. For all its lines and wrinkles his was a face anyone would want to nuzzle. He’d been at the school since it was built by the Americans, whom he remembered fondly. He dropped one or two English words into his reminiscences. In fact, they’d leveled his family compound in order to build the school and had relocated his family to a sturdy but cultureless home just opposite.
“We teach upon the hallowed ground of my ancestors,” said Grit. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we were sitting here above the potted ashes of my great-grandmother. They didn’t mark graves back then.”
“You’d remember the French then,” said Civilai.
“Bien sûr,” said Grit. “Those bastards wouldn’t let me go to school. They reminded my mother I was Lao and the French and Vietnamese were the elite classes. We were laborers.”
“Then how did you become a teacher?” asked Civilai.
“We crossed the river. My mother convinced the administrators over there we were Thai so my three siblings and I all studied in Beun Kan. I went on to the teachers college in Chiang Mai. Came back here and labored for the bastard French until the Americans turned up. Damned fine colonists, the Americans.”
“What do you remember about the French administration here?”
“Bastards.”
“Apart from that.”
“Pig ignorant. Arrogant.”
“I’m thinking specifically about the owner of a colonial home out in Ban Toop,” said Civilai.
“Ah, yes. Now you’re talking about the most arrogant and ignorant of them all, Administrateur Marche. He was based here for almost ten years.”
“And what was his connection to Ban Toop?”
“He was Ban Toop. He established the village. Nobody knew why he chose the place. Not beautiful at all. He had a fine house here in Pak Xan. He was like an emperor here. He was in charge of everything. When I returned from Thailand everyone was afraid of him. I offered to teach at the temple, and he laughed in my face and put me in a quarry.”
“Who built his house at Ban Toop?”
“He had a team of Vietnamese builders there for three months. When it was finished they returned to Vietnam and Marche had a fine house in the middle of nowhere. Really, there was nothing there. We assumed he wanted a country home like they do in Europe. Somewhere to escape. He’d drive out there on weekends with his assorted concubine whores.”
“What did he do there?”
“Heaven knows. He was a very secretive man. And there was something . . . dark about him. There were many rumors, but rumors are our national pastime.”
“Do you remember any of them?”
“There was talk of children disappearing. Never children from the town. Always the daughters of travelers.”
“You think he had something to do with that?”
“Who can say? When you dislike someone enough you will the gossip to be true. But I do know for certain he was removed from his post very suddenly by the French Protectorate. One day he was gone, and there were parties in the streets. But by then a small community
had grown around his house in Ban Toop. It continued to grow even after he left.”
“And what do you know about the place now?”
“You know? I’m not really the person to ask. I haven’t been there for ages.”
“You’re probably more trustworthy than anyone I’m likely to meet in an official capacity.”
The old teacher got to his feet and started to wipe the equations from the blackboard with a damp rag. “There are those who say Ban Toop is a law unto itself,” said Grit. “The local government cadres are afraid of the place. But in a way I can see why. After decades of minimal help from Vientiane, a community learns to fend for itself to survive. It builds walls. The next leader comes along and tells them, ‘We’re in charge now. You have to do what we say.’ But who knows who’ll be running the country next year, or next month even? So the local communities put on their armor.”
“You’re not shy about being an anarchist, are you?”
“When I came back from Thailand I was hotheaded and angry,” said Grit. “But I soon learned to keep my mind open and my mouth shut. Then you get to an age where your mind’s shut, and you can’t stop your mouth from running off. But by then everybody’s stopped listening.”
“You’re not wrong there, comrade. Do you know the headman at Ban Toop?”
“I’ve met him. He seems harmless enough. Why are you interested?”
“Just curiosity really. I went there on an official visit and he was too busy cockfighting to see me.”
“Yes, I’ve heard he’s not that sociable when it comes to Party activities.”
“It sounds like exactly the type of place for the government to be running back-to-back political seminars. Somebody needs to teach the Ban Toop leaders a lesson in good manners.”
Civilai stood and shook the old teacher’s hand warmly. “One last matter,” he said. “Would there be some type of local repository of documents dating from the French administration days?”
“There would if your crowd hadn’t marched into town and burned everything.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“But . . .”
“Yes?”
“If you promise not to set fire to it, there’s a . . . I wouldn’t call it a repository exactly, more like a suitcase.”
“A suitcase?”
“Two, if I remember right. I assume the last administrator had planned to take them with him when he left, but there wasn’t enough room in the getaway car. They’re in a cupboard in Sirimongkol Temple.”
“Do you suppose they’d let me take a look at them?”
“I doubt anyone would care one way or another.”
Civilai dropped off the Renault at the district council buildings, expecting the place to be deserted, but one lamp still burned inside. He went to the door to find the same greasy-faced clerk engaged in the endless pursuit of solving the world’s filing problems.
“Comrade,” she said, startled.
“Don’t you have a husband to go home to?” he asked.
She smiled for the first time. Her teeth were all over the place. “Last-minute duty,” she said.
“Do you know whether Vientiane got back to me about my fax?”
“Fax? Nothing as far as I know.”
“Who operates the fax machine?”
“Me, usually. But I’m sure Comrade Luangrat took care of it personally if it was important,” she said.
“Look,” Civilai put on his charm voice. “I can see you’re really busy, but I don’t suppose you could dig out a photograph of all the regional headmen by any chance?”
“A photograph?”
“Yes, you know. Headman seminar, workshop, pep talk. They always take pictures at the end of those things. Give out certificates.”
“Probably,” she said and walked directly to the correct cabinet. Filing was her life. “Here, October last year. Cooperative Farm Training Programme for Village Leaders.”
Civilai riffled through the photographs. A hundred men in three rows in front of the council office. None of them was smiling.
“Which one’s Comrade Noulak, the headman at Ban Toop?” he asked.
“Oh, he wasn’t here,” she said.
“Why not?”
“He had a cold, or malaria. I can’t remember which.”
“Then, his deputy?”
“He wasn’t here either.”
“Must have been an epidemic. Lucky the whole village wasn’t wiped out completely.”
She looked blank.
“Any other meetings?” he asked.
She produced graduation photos for the July Workshop on Water Management and Sewage, and the February seminar on Fruit for a Healthy Future. Again, she was unable to pick out the headman.
“He isn’t so enthusiastic about meetings,” she said.
“I’m astounded he’s still the headman,” said Civilai. “He has no choice but to attend.”
They looked at five more photographs of serious men at local government events, but the clerk was unable to point to anyone from Ban Toop.
“I’m beginning to believe he doesn’t exist,” said Civilai.
“Oh, he does,” said the clerk. “I’ve met him. He’s a very polite man. Perhaps . . .”
“Perhaps what?”
“They aren’t official photographs so they’re filed under ‘unofficial photographs,’ but I remember he was in town for the rocket festival last year.”
“The rocket festival that was banned?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Our official photographer wasn’t around but one of the Soviet experts from the road survey project had a camera. He made copies and sent them to us. Here they are.”
She pulled out a paper pouch with the name of the pharmacy that had developed them written on the front. It was in Thai. Only five months on, and the photos were already starting to fade.
“I’m sure he’s in here somewhere,” said the clerk, thumbing through the pictures.
Civilai was fatigued from the long day and the even longer life. Each evening reminded him he was no longer forty.
“Look, never mind,” he said. “I’ll probably never get to meet him anyway.”
“No, I’m sure . . . Yes, here he is.”
She handed Civilai the photograph. It depicted a typical Lao party scene. A lot of drunken men. Some equally drunken wives. In the background the words pak xan welcomes our soviet brothers had been cut out of polystyrene and glued onto the wall. And standing beside a ridiculously large black music speaker with a glass in his hand was the elusive headman of Ban Toop. The shot was a little fuzzy, and Civilai couldn’t tell whether the man was drunk or had merely blinked when the flash went off. He was wearing a traditional collarless Lao shirt that flattered his stomach, but there was no doubt in Civilai’s mind: Comrade Noulak, the headman of Ban Toop, and Maitreya, the imminent reincarnation of the Buddha, were one and the same person.
9
The Case of the File in the Case
Everything looked normal. But when you’re expecting trouble, when you have that voice in your gut that says, “Something’s coming,” even the smallest of abnormalities have to be checked out. They’d all seen the motorcycle earlier that evening. The rider stopped opposite Daeng’s noodle restaurant and had pretended to be looking out over the river. He was about thirty, fit, and he wore a baseball cap, but you could tell his hair was cropped close to his scalp.
As arranged, Mr. Geung had carried a bucket of slops across the empty road to dump on the riverbank. They’d told him to act as if he had mental problems. He’d been practicing all afternoon. Crazy Rajhid was perched unseen in the tree overhead for backup.
“Hey, retard,” said the man.
“Y-y-y-yes, comrade?” said Geung.
“That woman,” said the man, nodding in Dtui’s dire
ction. She was wiping the tables. “How long’s she worked here?”
“No noh, noh, noh, noh . . .”
“Oh shit.”
“Noh, noh, not long,” said Geung.
“What does that mean,” said the man. “A month? A week? A day?”
“Yes,” said Geung.
“Which?”
“I’m no, I’m no, I’m not very good with numbers.”
“Was she here last week?”
“Ta, ta, ta”—he could tell the stutter annoyed the man intensely—“ta, ta . . .”
“I’m not here all week, you moron.”
“Ta, ta, ta two or three days. Whaaaa why you asking?”
“I like the look of her,” he said. “Think I’ll ask her out.” The man smiled. His teeth were neat and white as a row of coconut chunks.
“She, she, she, sheeee’s sad,” said Geung. “Her sister die-die-di—”
The man revved the engine on his bike and kicked down the stand.
“Don’t worry, retard,” he said. “I’ll make her happy. She sleeping here?”
“Yes, comrade.”
Geung was left in a cloud of exhaust.
Agent Geung had been able to recite the conversation verbatim, which is why they were expecting a late night return from the motorcycle rider and his cohorts. Upon his arrival at police headquarters after the ministry bluff it had occurred to Phosy that he had no legitimate reason to request a squad of men to protect his wife. So he’d been left with his old friend and colleague, Sergeant Sihot, who was rarely busy in the evening, and Tumsin the butcher, who was so backed up on favors for the detective he’d need another lifetime to repay him. At the end of the evening noodle shift they’d sat around the restaurant with warm tea and Chinese donuts and weighed the odds.
“Hand grenade,” said Sergeant Sihot.
“That’s how I’d do it if I wanted to teach the restaurant owner a lesson,” said Phosy. “But this is an assassination. I’d need to confirm my target had been taken out. A hand grenade’s too random.”
I Shot the Buddha Page 14
