“But who was she with that last night?” Daeng asked. “Maen swears it wasn’t him.”
“He might be lying about being there because he knew he’d be accused,” said Civilai.
“Well, that ploy didn’t work, did it?” said Dtui. “He might as well have told the truth.”
“What if our Russian found herself another boxer?” said Siri.
“You think she’s going for a record of her own?” Dtui asked.
“You think she’d be successful catching a man every night?” said Civilai.
“Are you serious?” said Daeng. “A big, beautiful blonde putting out sexual vibrations to a boy from the village? It’s the type of fantasy they talk about around the bonfires.”
•••
At exactly 4 a.m. on the morning of day five, Siri sat up in his bed the way they do in the movies—an act rarely witnessed in real life.
“How stupid could I be?” he said.
Daeng was only half awake beside him.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
“Nowhere,” said Siri. “I’ve been right here thinking about windows.”
“That’s lovely,” she said, hoping he would take his window thoughts back into the land of nod. But, as had happened many times, she turned her head to find her husband putting on his trousers.
“We’re going somewhere, aren’t we?” she said.
•••
At exactly 4 a.m. on the morning of day five, Civilai also sat up in his bed but didn’t say anything because he was alone. But he did get up and put on his trousers because he’d worked it out too.
•••
Siri and Daeng roused the courtesy twenty-four hour Olympic Village shuttle driver. They flashed their IDs and showed him a bit of paper with an address on it. It took him a while to come around and recall where he was but eventually he sighed, put in his false teeth and headed off in the opposite direction to the city.
•••
Civilai walked down the emergency staircase because he still didn’t trust elevators after midnight. He went to the boxers’ apartment suite, the door of which was wide open. He walked into Maen’s room and turned on the light. Anou, the roommate, emerged from a deep sleep like a sloth pulling itself out of a barrel of Vaseline.
“He hasn’t come home yet,” he slurred. Word of the arrest hadn’t made it down to the competitors. Civilai knew the Soviet police would have already searched this room when everyone was off at events. But they wouldn’t have been looking for what Civilai needed.
“Where’s Maen’s stuff?” he asked.
Anou swayed.
“Maen’s stuff?” Civilai repeated.
“It’s all gone,” said Anou. “Think he must have run off with that Korean.”
Civilai looked through the drawers, the closet, under the bed. There was nothing. The police had erased the boxer. Not that far down the line, nobody would remember who he was.
“Damn,” he said.
He was about to turn out the light and leave when he looked at the back of the bedroom door. Two ID tags hung from the hook. He took them down and looked closely at them.
“My ID,” said Anou. “It’s where we hang ’em.”
“Then who does this other one belong to?” asked Civilai.
“Some guy, I guess. No idea.”
The photo was of a slim Asian man with long hair. Civilai let out a whoop.
“It isn’t Maen,” he said.
“No. Can’t think why it’s there,” said Anou.
“I can,” said Civilai.
He went over to Anou’s bed, grabbed the boxer’s ears and gave him a kiss on the forehead. It was fine. He wouldn’t remember it next time he woke up.
It was too early still for the crone on the fourth floor to respond to the sounds from the crunchy staircase even though the sun was already rising. The building’s front door had been simple enough. A quick insert of an Olympic Village Souvenir Shopping Card and the latch was unfastened. It didn’t surprise them how easy it was. This was a building you’d want to break out of, not into. On their earlier visit, Siri had left a wedge of paper lodged between the crime scene door and the frame, so re-entry was no problem either.
“For me it was part of the training,” whispered Daeng. “But tell me again where a doctor learned the art of breaking into people’s houses.”
Siri closed the door behind them.
“Paris,” he said.
“You were housebreaking to cover your school fees?”
“Not exactly. One of the speakers at a Communist Party conference—it might have been Ho himself—suggested we take advantage of our study opportunities and sign up for apprenticeships that might further the cause of the revolution.”
“And you took housebreaking?”
“I saw myself more as a detective solving mysteries for the insurrection, but there were no courses so I trained with a locksmith on weekends.”
They were in the bedroom tapping the walls with their knuckles. They’d established that the rear wall was made of hardboard and that the wallpaper there was comparatively new compared to the rest of the apartment.
“And when exactly did this revelation come to you?” she asked.
“The seed began to germinate when we were down on the street yesterday looking up at the old woman,” he said. “Her apartment was directly below this one. Why did she have two windows and this apartment have just the one? The answer was obvious. Ah, here it is.”
Siri was on his knees in the corner of the room. He knew there had to be a trap door or a flap and he found it behind the padded chair. There was a small rectangle where the wallpaper didn’t exactly match. He pushed at its center and there was a click. The hardboard rectangle fell forward.
“Nice carpentry,” said Siri. “Wasted on blackmail.”
He scurried through the space on his hands and knees. The actual rear wall of the apartment was three meters beyond the hardboard partition. To the left there was a window blocked with cardboard. He peeled it off to get some light there. The video camera stood on a tripod directly behind Lenin’s Op Art two-way mirror. A still camera, an expensive Leica, was on a stool beside it. On a small table sat trays of developing solution and distilled water. Several still photographs hung from strings across the room. Siri and Daeng started to unpeg them and put them in their shoulder bags. The jig was up.
•••
In spite of everything that had already happened on day five it was only breakfast time at the Olympic Village. Both Siri and Civilai had returned to the dormitory eager to share their news. They met up in the canteen. Roger was enjoying his first Olympic hangover and was on his third cup of coffee. Dtui was tackling a Russian breakfast. But food and drink very quickly gave way to elation. Siri gave Daeng the privilege of describing their return visit to the crime scene. They’d recorded everything on their instamatic but had not yet reported their findings to the police. They needed to discuss the potential pitfalls before doing so. And if they were being honest, the discovery did not necessarily clear Maen of any guilt. There was still a murder to account for.
Civilai believed he could help in that regard. He told them of his early morning visit to Maen’s room.
“There was nothing there,” he said. “The police had removed all his belongings. But behind the door hanging on a hook were two official nametags. One was his roommate, Anou’s. But the other was not Maen’s. That’s why the police didn’t take it. But what was that tag doing there? Nobody recognized the man in the photograph. The name and country code on the tag clearly indicated he was Vietnamese. So I started to expand my theory. Maen said he’d used his nametag to get a ride back to the village on Sunday night. But what if the Vietnamese had forgotten his name tag at the Russian’s apartment the night before? What if Maen picked up the wrong tag? He wouldn’t have c
hecked it.”
“Right,” said Daeng. “He goes to the room with the girl. They do their calisthenics. She asks for a little rough and tumble. He obliges in some small way. He’s a boxer. Violence isn’t such a big deal. The cameraman takes his movie and a few photographs. That’s all they need. She tells him to leave. It’s dark. He gets dressed. He reaches under the bed, finds the Vietnamese boxer’s tag and puts it on. When you’re expecting to find something you don’t look at it too closely.”
“But his own nametag is in the bathroom or wherever,” said Dtui.
“He goes to the street and flags down a truck,” said Siri. “The driver sees the Olympic ID so he gives him a ride home. He doesn’t have any reason to compare the man in the photo with the man beside him.”
“Asians is Asians,” said Daeng.
“Exactly,” said Civilai. “The Vietnamese in the photo was all hair and smiles so he could very easily have been mistaken for our boy. In fact, Maen wakes up the next day and continues to use the wrong nametag. He has his date with the North Korean and comes back to the dormitory. He puts his nametag behind the door and goes to bed. Next thing you know he’s being dragged out of the room by the police with no idea what happened.”
“Oh, Lord, I am surrounded by genius,” said Roger.
“Not yet you’re not,” said Daeng. “Genius is when we find a way to put all this conjecture together and prove it. Genius is when they release our boxer.”
“But it’s simple, now,” said Roger. “We just go to the police and tell them what we’ve found.”
“That’s the end plan,” said Civilai. “But first we need to collect a little more evidence.”
“And we’ll have to set up an insurance policy or two so the police don’t ignore us,” said Siri.
“But why would they?” said Roger.
“They haven’t been very thorough in their investigation so far,” said Siri. “In fact once they had their suspect they stopped digging. It’s as if our man’s life wasn’t important to them. Admittedly they were under no pressure to investigate the crime because they’d already planned to snow over it. Now here’s a small gang of country bumpkins about to tell them they did a bad job. And we’ll be giving them new evidence about a crime committed by their own nationals against IOC country members. They won’t like that.”
“Do we actually know what the blackmailers intended to do with their films?” asked Roger.
“I think so,” said Siri. “They focus on smaller countries. Innocents like us. Someone claiming to be from the police or the KGB meets with the NOC representatives from those countries. He plays up the embarrassment angle just like Elvis did with us. He brings photos of a pretty Soviet athlete bruised and bleeding and shows the film of their boxer beating her up. The shame for their country would be too much for them to bear. The National Olympic Committee asks how it can avoid the disgrace. The negotiations begin. A sum of money is agreed on and the NOC arranges for a transfer from its embarrassed government at home.”
“How do you know all this?” Roger asked.
“I don’t,” said Siri. “I’m guessing.”
“But he’s a really good guesser,” said Daeng.
“Then how can . . . what can you do to make sure our police listen to you?” asked Roger.
“To be heard,” said Daeng, “you have to be loud. And many voices are louder than one. So you increase the population of shouters.”
“I’ll go to see the Vietnamese,” said Civilai. “And I’ll talk to the Bahamians again. From their reaction to me yesterday I get the feeling they’ve already been approached by the blackmailer. It shouldn’t be hard to convince them we’re all in this together. In fact I imagine they’ll be grateful to hear it was a sting.”
“But who did it?” asked Roger. “Who murdered the girl?”
“It’s looking bad for whichever Asian she took home on Monday night,” said Siri. “But that isn’t our problem. What’s important is that we can remove the evidence against Maen. The name card. The unreliable eye-witnesses. They don’t have any proof that Maen was there at the time of the murder. That should be enough to get him released.”
“I don’t know,” said Dtui.
“You don’t know what?” said Siri.
“I’m sorry to rain on your fireworks but isn’t it still possible Maen went back for seconds on Monday?” she said. “That he was pissed off she’d thrown him out the night before and went back to murder her?”
There was a moment for thought.
“It’s not impossible,” said Daeng. “But it didn’t happen.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve killed people,” said Daeng. “I know what it takes.”
There was only one Lao to cheer on day five. One more boxer. All the Lao athletes except for the shooters went along to Olympiisky to support Siwit the bantamweight. The boxing crowds had started to look forward to bouts that involved Lao fighters because the atmosphere was party-like. Only the Soviet supporters failed to let their hair down. They looked on mystified. What joy was there to be had from losing?
The administrators and Roger had stayed behind at the Village because they’d set up a meeting. They’d insisted that Elvis and his team attend. On the telephone to police headquarters Roger had used the expressions “international outrage” and “humiliation for the Soviet Union.” As there were three NOCs in attendance and the Lao had threatened to call in the press the police had little choice. But even so, Elvis took his time. It was midday before the entourage arrived. The door burst open and the Senior Detective and his herd of suits and uniforms quickly filled the room.
Instead of taking the seat offered to him, Elvis pointed at Siri and Daeng and spoke gruffly to the men in uniform. Two of them stepped forward. Roger asked for an explanation.
“He wants to arrest you,” said Roger. “A police car detail saw you leaving the murder scene building early this morning. They took your photograph.”
“You’d better warn him,” said Siri, “that if anyone lays a hand on my wife it will be at the end of a broken arm.”
Once their translators had passed on the policeman’s intention, the Bahamian and Vietnamese delegates got to their feet and blocked their path. There was a tense moment when two of the plainclothes men reached inside their jackets but sanity arrived in the unlikely form of Roger. He held up his hands and said, “Your men have made a terrible mistake. If you refuse to listen to these people there will be a scandal you’ll never recover from.”
“These two foreigners broke into a crime scene which had been marked off-limits by the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” said Elvis.
“And it’s just as well for you that they did,” said Roger.
He pointed to the pin board on the wall with its display of Siri’s instamatic photographs freshly developed by the ever-helpful kiosk ladies. They had asked no questions.
“How are you going to explain that your detectives missed this?” asked the translator.
Elvis and his backing group walked to the wall and studied the photos. He recognized the apartment and could clearly see the false wall, the trap door and the camera set-up. There were some twenty-four pictures in all.
“We’ve mailed copies of all of them to our countries just in case these get lost,” said Siri.
It was as if the air had been let out of the Soviet delegation. They sat at the meeting table muttering amongst themselves. Their arrogance was gone.
“Tell me,” said Elvis.
The young Russian translator was very thorough and spoke slowly so the other translators could keep up with him. Dtui did her best even though the vocabulary was a way beyond her ability. In fact, Roger was so succinct the Soviets had no need to stop him speaking so they could ask questions. They sat opposite like overly-large grade school children at story time. When the tale was told Elvis whistled like
a kettle and shook his head. That was when Siri handed over the prints from the Leica they’d found in the hidden room.
Chapter Fourteen
The Twenty-Kilometer Amble
“How are you, boy?” Civilai asked.
The boxer looked stunned. The cockiness and conceit were gone. Maen put his hands together in a deep, respectful nop and bowed in front of each of the Lao team administrators. He cried uncontrollably, which drew tears from Dtui and Roger. One condition of the release was that he told nobody of his arrest for murder. If anyone asked, he was to tell them he’d been staying with a girl. Given his state of mind after two nights in a Soviet prison, they doubted he’d be boasting about such a thing ever again.
The Soviet investigation was ongoing and the Lao had agreed to keep mum about the blackmailing. The police were in no position to set conditions but it was clear any leaks might damage their inquiries. Elvis promised to keep Siri and his team informed of developments. It was a promise the Lao would have to see to believe.
In the van on the way back to the village Civilai asked Maen, “Do you want us to cancel your fight tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” said Maen.
“I’m guessing incarceration isn’t the best preparation for a world event,” said Daeng.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” said Maen. “I was sure I was going to die. All the time in there when I had nothing to do but imagine what might happen to me, I wished I could have my time over. You know? I wished I could ask the ancestral spirits for a second chance.”
“No harm in starting a new life with a good memory,” said Dtui.
“Even without all this I wasn’t going to win my fight, but if you don’t mind I’d like to try.”
“You’ll have the loudest supporters in the stadium if you do,” said Daeng. “We’re being nominated for the Crowd of the Year award.”
Maen’s smile faded quickly but his eyes shone.
The Rat Catchers' Olympics Page 14
