The Rat Catchers' Olympics

by Colin Cotterill

  Sergei the waiter had ordered in a buffet of Russian sweetmeats for his favorite, and invariably only, guests. The salted herring and pickles were the ideal companions for Ochakovo beer.

  “All right, let’s go through it one more time,” said Siri.

  “We’re eating,” said Civilai.

  “Some of us can eat and think at the same time,” said Siri. “And time’s against us. Phosy says the father already knows about his son’s killing, which confirms it happened. I’m assuming he didn’t learn it from the BBC. We’re in the same city as the explosion and we still haven’t heard a damned thing about it.”

  “Which begs the question, how did the father find out?” said Daeng. “As we only mentioned it in code we have to assume he has another informant here with better intelligence than us.”

  “And if that’s true, why’s he putting pressure on Phosy to find the killer?” said Dtui.

  “Unless,” said Siri, adopting his Sherlock Holmes chin grab, “he heard directly from the killer.”

  “You think the assassin would phone home to Laos and boast to the father about killing his son?” said Civilai.

  “Perhaps not the killer himself,” said Daeng, “but the individual or group that arranged the hit. This is politics. Once the perpetrator was certain the killing was successful he could have used it for leverage against the family.”

  “The Godfather,” said Siri.

  “Exactly,” said Civilai.

  As usual, Daeng and Dtui were lost.

  “Family honor,” said Siri.

  “You mean something like, ‘You mess with my business and I’ll blow up your son’?” said Dtui.

  “It’s not impossible,” said Daeng.

  “It might help to know who Thonglai’s enemies are,” said Siri.

  “I imagine he has many,” said Civilai.

  “Well, that’s not something we can find out here,” said Dtui. “And I’m not going to suggest Phosy starts delving into the old man’s business connections. My daughter’s father is in enough muck as it is. I know we were speaking in code but I could tell there was a lot he wasn’t saying.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Civilai looking beyond the bar. “I think we’re about to be arrested.”

  The others followed his gaze to see Elvis walking toward them. He was dressed to match the Olympic village wallpaper and wore a yellow tie as wide as a kipper.

  “Do you think it’s about the explosion?” Dtui whispered.

  “If it is we know nothing,” said Daeng.

  Elvis arrived at the table.

  “Ah, my little Asian friends,” he said. “I see you’re sampling our ethnic delicacies.”

  In Roger’s absence, Dtui took on the role of translator.

  “When in Rome,” said Siri.

  “Quite,” said Elvis.

  The inspector seemed to be in a particularly good mood. He sat in the empty chair. Sergei brought a fresh glass and Dtui poured a beer. Daeng spooned some hors d’oeuvres onto a plate for the detective. That was the Lao way, compulsory cordiality.

  “Aren’t you curious as to how I found you?” asked Elvis.

  “Anything to do with the note on our conference room door and the map?” asked Siri.

  “Very good, detective doctor,” said Elvis. “Then I should ask a more difficult question. Are you also curious as to why I have come to your secret haven to see you?”

  “We have one or two theories,” said Civilai.

  “But you’re looking quite pleased with yourself,” Siri cut in. “So my guess is that you’ve come to discuss a closed rather than an open mystery. You’ve solved the blackmail murder.”

  “Indeed I have,” said Elvis. “Indeed I have.”

  The Lao cheered and raised their glasses. Elvis nodded modestly.

  “If it were not so late I would share a bottle of my favorite vodka with you,” he said. “But I have a very powerful wife who would prefer to see me sober every now and then.”

  “Then tell us about it,” said Daeng.

  Elvis took a long draft of beer and leaned back in his comfortable armchair.

  “Well,” he said, “firstly I had to be certain your boxer hadn’t returned the following day and killed the blonde. For that I needed to re-examine his alibi more closely. I was able to do that by meeting the North Korean girl he claimed to have been with. After two hours of mild interrogation she conceded that there might have been a nighttime liaison with a Lao boxer but she couldn’t be sure due to the fact she had taken some very strong diarrhea medication which affected her memory. We jogged that memory by showing a closed circuit television recording of her disappearing into a bush with Mr. Maen. When asked if she had a tattoo of the glorious leader of the republic on her left buttock she admitted proudly that she did. There was only one way that Mr. Maen could have known such a thing. He’d mentioned it during his initial interview but that fact had regrettably been ignored.”

  “Here’s to the glorious leader,” said Siri, raising his beer. The others joined in the toast and Sergei refilled their glasses.

  “Next,” said Elvis, “I had to find out who was with the blonde on the evening of the murder. Both the downstairs neighbor and the superintendent had seen him leave and had described his appearance as ‘Asian,’ which in the Soviet Union could encompass many different visages. I assumed he would be a boxer as that appeared to be the target group. A small country easily overwhelmed by the threat of a scandal on the international stage. So I expanded the definition of Asian to include the Indian subcontinent and came up with a list of eight possibilities. Only four of these had boxers. I instructed my men to ask the NOC of each of these countries to account for the whereabouts of their boxers on the night of the murder. We were almost immediately successful.”

  “Where was he from?” asked Dtui.

  “Nepal,” said Elvis.

  “Asians is Asians,” said Daeng.

  “Our investigation also uncovered the owner of the non-matching identification tag you passed on to us,” said Elvis. “As you correctly stated, he was Vietnamese. He’d had a hell of a time getting back into the village without his I.D. tag. He said he’d dropped it along the road somewhere, which was a lie. Got the entire Vietnamese NOC out of its beds. The blackmailers had been prolific. They had claimed a victim for each day of the Games, even the Opening Ceremony and the day before it. On the eighteenth was the blond Bahamian, on the nineteenth the Vietnamese, his heart, as he said, snatched from the stadium car park. Then your man Maen and, at last, the Nepali. The latter had the same hairstyle as your boxer and was of a very similar build. He was also a nervous wreck. As soon as we sat him down in our interview room he was only too pleased to get it off his chest.”

  “He did it?” asked Civilai.

  “No,” said Elvis. “According to the Nepali boxer he met the blonde in the village and was overwhelmed that she’d find him attractive. She was, as he said, his fantasy woman in spite of her rather heavy makeup, which I assume was to hide the bruises from her previous beatings. He admitted she showed only minimal enthusiasm but he put that down to shyness. At the apartment they began to undress but the woman suddenly burst into tears. She gestured for him to leave but he was too far into the seduction to walk out on such a tasty dish. She became hysterical.

  “It was here that the Nepali’s version of events became a little farfetched. He said that the large chair in the bedroom suddenly started to move all by itself and it spoke. In retrospect we know that this was caused by the male accomplice leaving his lair. But the boxer was certain he’d offended the spirits and he gathered his belongings and ran out of the apartment. Behind him he could hear voices yelling. He knew it had to be the blonde talking to a ghost as she was the only one there. He sprinted downstairs past the neighbor and the superintendent and into the street, where he found a taxi to bring him back to the
village. We found the taxi driver who confirmed that he’d picked up the crazed Asian but that there was no blood on him. Our forensic pathologist assures me it would have been impossible to inflict such wounds to the neck without being sprayed by the blood himself.”

  “So it was the male accomplice who killed her,” said Siri.

  “It was indeed. He was inside the secret room taking photographs and filming events and he saw that his moll had lost interest in their plot. This was a disaster given the amount of money they were about to rake in from all the extortion. A fight ensued and he took his knife threats one step too far. When the superintendent came to the room the accomplice retired to his secret room and was probably still in there when the police came to conduct its investigation. When the coast was clear he packed his bag and hit the road.”

  “You found him?” Daeng asked.

  “One of the many advantages of our rather claustrophobic system is that we pride ourselves on knowing where most of our citizens are at any given time. Once we found the original owners of the apartment who sublet to our criminal, we had a name which led us to his criminal record. The NOC of the Bahamas confirmed from a photograph that it was he who had impersonated a police officer and attempted to extort money from them. We traced our perpetrator to a train journey to Novosibirsk where we found him staying at an inn. It is very difficult to be a successful criminal in this country unless you are inside the system yourself.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Big Bang Theory

  Day nine saw the last of the Lao events and they were all on the track. Unless, by some miracle, any of these runners qualified for the finals, this was the last chance for the stadium to hear the Lao Cheer. The first event was at ten but the Lao supporters were there at eight practicing. The final eight days of the Olympics would be devoid of Lao athletes but there was no need to deprive the crowds of their enthusiasm. It was time to choose favorites from amongst the other countries and to put their support behind them. The Thais were boycotting the Games so there wasn’t even anyone to boo.

  It had been forty hours since the unreported explosion and the men in suits had yet to come knocking on the door of the Lao administrators. The only mystery they had to consider that day was the disappearance not of Siri but of Roger. They’d sent him off forty-eight hours before and seen neither hide nor hair of him since. On this Saturday morning they were enjoying a leisurely breakfast at the Kabul Noodle Bazaar. Daeng, a potential Nobel Prizewinner in noodle preparation, assured everyone they were eating very healthy food. What it lacked in spicy it made up for in savory.

  And just after they’d finished making bets on what disaster had befallen their interpreter the small chime over the restaurant door tinkled. And who should walk in but Roger himself? He was sweaty, flushed and out of breath but glowing with excitement and eczema.

  “Roger, where have you been?” said Daeng. “We’ve been worried sick about you.” It was Daeng who’d bet ten dollars he’d been shot by the KGB.

  “I did it,” said Roger.

  He sat at the table and ordered a bowl of noodles and a shot of vodka.

  “You do know alcohol at breakfast time is the first step toward calamity?” said Civilai.

  Roger ignored him. “I went there,” he said. “I went to the building. The streets were roped off and even local residents weren’t allowed to stay in their homes. But I had my Olympic nametag which says I’m an official interpreter. I told the guards at the barrier that the KGB had contacted me at the village and told me to come.”

  “To interpret for a dead Lao,” said Civilai.

  “The police at the barrier didn’t know that. I gave them a fake name and number for the officer who’d called me and told them to phone him. Of course they were never going to do that.”

  “You were very brave,” said Daeng.

  “I was, wasn’t I?”

  The noodles and the vodka arrived together but the vodka left first. He ordered another.

  “I usually never stand up to people like them,” he said. “It’s amazing what a bit of confidence can do. A uniformed officer escorted me past another barricade and all the way to the building. You were right, Uncle Siri. The second and third stories on the west side had a huge bite out of them. It was obvious an explosion from below had destroyed most of Manoi’s apartment. There was still some danger the rest of the building might collapse. They told me to wait and sat me down under a makeshift tarpaulin on the street opposite. It was a sort of crime investigation center, I suppose you might call it. And while I was there I met an incredible . . .”

  To everyone’s annoyance he stopped talking and began to eat.

  “An incredible what?” said Civilai.

  “A fireman,” said Roger between slurps. “Or some kind of disaster investigator. I don’t know what you call them. I imagine he assumed if I was there I had to be somebody. He’d done his appraisal of the building and was waiting to be debriefed. He’d been up all night. He was the one who told me about the bomb.”

  Roger forked several more threads of noodle into his busy mouth.

  “What about it?” said Daeng.

  “PVV-5A plastic, Red Army issue explosive,” he said. “Detonator set off by remote control.”

  “From what distance?” said Siri.

  “He said you’d need to be within fifty meters from the building to be sure it went off.”

  “So if the bomber was that close he was most probably seen by someone,” said Daeng.

  “Very possible,” said Roger.

  “And if the bomber was Asian he would have stood out like a nun in a go-go bar,” said Civilai.

  “Did you get to talk to anyone who witnessed the blast?” Siri asked.

  “All the buildings around had been evacuated,” said Roger. “There was nobody to ask. But my fireman said the apartment on the second floor was registered in the name of an elderly couple. Their remains were scattered to the four corners of the earth. The bomber had laid the charge directly beneath Manoi’s TV room. He believed the murderer must have had inside information to know when the upstairs residents would be together in the same place.”

  “I’d guess live coverage of the twenty-kilometer walk with a Lao contender would be guarantee enough,” said Daeng.

  “What else did you learn?” said Civilai.

  “Ah, well now, that’s the moment that I was arrested,” said Roger.

  “For what?” asked Siri.

  “Just being there, I suppose. I was merely chatting with the fireman when this bull of a guy charges over and asks me who I am and what I’m doing there. I was intimidated by his enormous chest. Nobody really needs a chest that size. I told him I’d received a telephone message that the investigators would need a Lao interpreter. That I’d hurried over and there I was. He swore a little bit and had someone drive me to a room at the back of the Kremlin. It was a good experience. I’d never been inside before. It was a lot less grim than I’d pictured it. There was a sort of interrogation from an unenthusiastic agent who took my statement. I stuck to my story and they threw me into a cell for two nights. I was released and here I am.”

  “Do you think you might have been followed?” Civilai asked.

  “I anticipated that,” said Roger. “Back in the sixties it was the least you’d expect. So I went directly to my room at the Village, had a shower, jumped on a free bicycle and took the most convoluted route here: alleyways and staircases and one-way streets. It was all very cloak and dagger but, to tell the truth, I don’t think anyone was really that interested in me.”

  They let Roger finish his noodles and then ordered tea. The vodka and the adrenalin had made him hyperactive and they needed him calm.

  “All right, let’s go through the suspect list again,” said Siri.

  “Spectacular,” said Roger.

  “We’re down to two,” said Dtui. “
Both military. Sompoo was watching the race with his buddies, which rules him out. Sitti the pistol shooter was kind of nondescript and shy but as Civilai says, those might be the perfect characteristics for an assassin. And he’d left the barracks before the marathon.”

  “He’s my favorite,” said Civilai. “I finally got access to the military application forms. Sitti spent six months with the unit in Buagaew. That’s where my Major Lien was based. They had to know each other. It makes it even more likely that they recognized each other at Wattay airport. You know how I hate coincidence.”

  “But there’s also Colonel Fah Hai,” Dtui continued. “None of the team saw him that evening but he could have been watching the race with the Russians.”

  “But we’re sure it’s a soldier?” said Roger.

  “Not absolutely,” said Siri. “The fact that the explosive was Soviet Army issue should steer us toward the shooters but we didn’t actually monitor our team at the stadium. Anyone could have slipped out in the excitement. And it’s true that half the boxers were trained during their military service. Some of them have affiliations. Even the runners. Chom the rat catcher spent three years in the infantry. He certainly left the arena before the explosion.”

  “Maybe he got the scent of vermin,” said Daeng.

  “So have we officially counted out every disgruntled Soviet State terrorist bomber?” asked Civilai.

  “Old Brother,” said Siri. “If you’re going to make a political point you blow up a police station or an Olympic venue. You don’t put a bomb in an old building, especially if it doesn’t house a politburo member or a rock star.”