Dr Siri Paiboun: Love Songs from a Shallow Grave (2010)

by Colin Cotterill

  “Damn,” he said. “Phosy, are your findings going to make this any more complicated?”

  The inspector hadn’t accepted a drink. Recently he’d become Phosy the temperate. Siri wondered how he would ever elicit secrets from a sober man.

  “I looked down the list of bookshop patrons you gave me,” Phosy said. “All three victims had subscribed to receive journals in their respective fields, paid for by the embassies that sponsored them. I showed the clerk Polaroids of the victims and he was certain he’d seen all three utilising the reading room. He said that Saturday afternoon was the most popular as Saturday was a half-day for most workers. There might be seven or eight customers in there at a time. People even sitting on cushions on the ground. I doubt they were all engrossed in the malt yield of the Ukraine. It was a sort of informal reading club. Of course, there’s no guarantee our killer put his name down to subscribe to anything, but we’re working our way down the list. It’s the best lead so far.”

  After the meeting, Siri wasn’t of a mood to sit and drink with Civilai. He had a room full of books and a limited number of years to get through them. But Civilai had insisted in that belligerent way of men who are starting to lean too heavily on the bottle. He seemed more out of control than usual. He didn’t even know he was putting on old clothes to go visiting. Only a man living by himself would be allowed to make such a mistake.

  “Where’s Mrs Nong?” Siri asked.

  “Surely you mean, how’s Mrs Nong?” Civilai said. They were sitting at the gingham Formica tabletop. Madame Daeng had gone upstairs. Phosy had left, presumably to pursue his nefarious late-night habits. A large purple gecko hung boldly from the far wall like an ornament. It had interrupted the conversation several times with its rude burps.

  “No, I mean ‘where’,” Siri confirmed. “She wouldn’t have let you out in this state.”

  Civilai laughed.

  “Am I in a state, Siri?”

  The doctor remained silent and stared at his friend. Even the gecko held its breath.

  “She’s visiting her sister,” Civilai said at last.

  “Her sister lives in Khouvieng,” Siri reminded him. “That’s a twenty-minute trip from your house.”

  “I mean she’s staying there for a few days. She’s not well. The sister. The sister’s not well.”

  Siri continued to stare. Rain dripped and splashed from the rear window shutter.

  “She likes to stay there sometimes,” Civilai added.

  Stare.

  “Quite a lot of times lately, in fact. She’s been gone a couple of weeks now. I’m starting to wonder, you know, wonder if she’s planning to come back at all.”

  He delivered it like a joke but neither of them laughed.

  Stare.

  “I do wonder, since that little bit of political hoo-hah we went through last year, I mean, since the…since my retirement, I do wonder whether I’ve been even more difficult to live with than usual. All this baking. Goodness, she’s barely been able to get into her own kitchen. I’d snap at her if she tried. She probably goes to her sister’s just for the opportunity to cook something. I wonder if I’ve been awful about a lot of things.”

  Stare.

  “I’m planning to get my act together. And you don’t have to tell me this stuff doesn’t help.” He symbolically pushed the glass away. “Alcohol is an ally to the contented but a foe to those with heavy hearts. Not sure who said that. I probably made it up myself. Damned good, I think. I still have flashes of the old genius every now and then. Moments of lucid thought. Increasingly cantankerous though. I imagine she’d say that.”

  He ran his finger across the cool plastic table top tracing the squares.

  “I’m going to see her, of course.”

  The gecko clicked like a clock.

  “Tomorrow seems as good a day as any. Don’t you think?”

  Stare.

  “Hmm, well, you’ve certainly put a damper on this party, Dr Siri Paiboun.” He lifted his wrist to look at a watch he’d forgotten to put on. “And just look at the time. I have shirts to wash.” He scraped back his chair, abandoned his drink, blew his young brother a kiss and meandered unsteadily between the tables to the open shutters.

  “Don’t forget to put your lights on,” Siri shouted as his friend slipped behind a curtain of rain. He sighed. Was it the weather? Did the constant grey turn everything negative? Why was everybody having so much trouble getting along? Half the world not finding love at all, the other half not knowing how to hold on to it. Or had it always been like this?

  “Things have to be sorted out before it’s too late,” he told the gecko.

  ∗

  Siri read until one a.m. The second Soviet strip light, newly installed in the second-floor library, had illuminated his book with such enthusiasm that he could see the flecks of wood fibre in the paper. His mind could have stayed up all night but his body craved sleep. He apologised to Monsieur Sartre and went to bed. For once, Madame Daeng didn’t stir when he joined her and, as soon as the ghost of his missing left earlobe hit the pillow, he was thrown into that nightmare. The same boy, wearing Siri’s talisman around his neck. The same moment of indecision. Would he laugh and walk away or would he pull the trigger? The moment dragged through time, allowing the panic to take hold. Will he blow off the doctor’s head tonight, or not? The finger twitches, then relaxes. The boy smiles and walks on. A sigh. Head on night. And in the distance he hears the voice. The melodic voice of love and promise. A sound so enchanting Siri is drawn to it like a night moth to the bright fire trail of a jet engine. No good can come of it. He reaches into his own dream and grabs for his stupid music-following self. “Don’t do it,” he calls, and he finds himself just in time and throws his arms around himself and drags himself out of his nightmare.

  And his pillow was wet with sweat because he knew that if he were to ever find the singer, all hope for mankind would be lost.

  “Bad dream again?” Daeng asked.

  “Something bad is going to happen,” he told her.

  She brushed back his hair and said, “It’s only a dream.”

  But it wasn’t.

  12

  FOUR MONKS AT A FUNERAL

  Sometimes, torture can be just the threat of torture, the promise of misery. The imagination can scroll through a menu of horrors more awful than anything a half-witted interrogator might come up with. There are those so petrified by what their own minds have envisaged that they’re shouting their confessions even before the torturer comes for them. It’s only just occurred to me what a weapon my own mind can be against me. My own gun pointed at my own temple. I am light-headed and weak already, certainly not thinking clearly. I can see, but cannot feel the bruises nor taste the blood but I know my right wrist is broken.

  They took me to a room and removed my blindfold. The smiley man and the heavy monk were there. There was a pervading stench of bitter blood and disinfectant. They chained me to an armchair without a cushion, sat me on the bare springs that cut into the backs of my thighs. It’s comical to think about it but those damned springs could nip like angry crabs. The torturers ignored me. They left me sitting and went about their business. Their business was a young girl, no older than fifteen. What kind of subversive could she have been? When they’d finished with her she was as good as dead. I had my eyes closed for the whole ordeal but my ears told me everything.

  Then it was quiet and the heavy monk pulled up a school seat and sat on it. He looked ridiculous, like an elephant in a baby’s chair. He was wearing black pyjamas that fitted him now. The charade was over. He flipped down the wooden writing arm that rested on his fat thigh.

  “This,” he said, “is your life. After you hear, you will indicate that you understand what it say and you will sign. You will sign today, or you will sign after the bones in your foot are broke one after one. Or you will sign the next day after we take out your eye. But some time you will sign. Better for us all to sign now.”

  My only though
t then was that if this man were truly to put on saffron robes, they would sizzle against his skin and catch fire. I grew up with monks. I know there’s more to being a monk than cutting off your hair and eyebrows. There’s deportment, manners, and a way of speaking that come from truly understanding the dharma. They’re not learned but acquired and the heavy monk had none of these traits. But I’d tested him anyway, just to be certain. I told him a story about the seven monks who chanted in front of my mother’s funeral pyre. He saw nothing wrong with the tale even though I pushed him on it. Any true monk would know that four monks have to chant in front of the pyre..I hadn’t bothered with any other tests.

  “My name is Siri Paiboun,” the fake monk read aloud. “I am an agent for the Vietnamese Liberation Army. I am Lao but I went to school in Hanoi where I was trained in espionage by the Vietnamese secret service. My cover is that I am a Lao medical doctor on a state mission. My objective for coming to Democratic Kamphuchea in May 1978 was to collect data for my comrades in Hanoi and to commit acts of sabotage against my enemies, the Khmer. I am ashamed of my actions and accept the punishment of death.”

  The heavy monk twirled the paper around on the writing arm and put one more blunt pencil on top of it. The poor man must have really been under pressure from somewhere to get my signature before he ripped off my head. But I was getting bored with all those pencils.

  “We find some interesting reading material in your hotel room,” he said. “This is enough evidence of your treachery. So we borrow your documents. Your travel paper do not have your signature. If it do, we can sign your name our self. We want only your signature, now. Simple. Not to eat the pencil or the paper. If you do this again I will cut off your nose here and now. You understand?”

  I nodded.

  “If I open the cuff, you will sign?”

  I nodded again and remained passive as the man reached over and slipped the hex key into the manacle slot. I was tired; physically tired and tired of all this. Tired of suffering and tired of the performance of these ignorant men…and tired of living. Yes, I was finally tired of the effort of staying alive. But I had one last burst of energy to share. I’d been a wrestler and boxer at university, the lightest weight class but I pack a good right. I just needed a clear target. Once my hand was free, I reached for the pencil but my unsteady fingers sent it tumbling to the floor. The heavy monk glared at me.

  “Sorry,” I said. When the man leaned down to pick it up I sent a mighty haymaker into that chubby cheek of his. Oh, it was a delight. There was a crack and a streak of pain shot down my arm. But I felt the cheekbone snap beneath my knuckle and the heavy monk fell across the floor like a collapsing stack of firewood. The man was stunned at first, not knowing where he was, then he looked up and focused on me. There was hatred in him. It shrouded him like a cloud of soot. He staggered to his feet and rammed into me, sending wild punches to my face and body. I had just the one arm free to fend off the blows and put in some more of my own. But I had no strength. If the smiley man hadn’t pulled the heavy monk off, there was little doubt I would have been beaten to death. The boy guards carried what was left of my resolve back to the classroom and dumped me here by the blackboard.

  And here I lay, too tender to move. I doubt the little guard creatures understood why my blood-bloated lips were smiling. It was because I had just seen the light. At last I understood. I’d been waiting for the phibob, baffled as to why they hadn’t come for me. But it’s obvious, isn’t it? What worse could they do to me? Even if they gave me their best shot, they couldn’t top any of this. You know it all, don’t you, my spirits? Yes, that’s right. Nod those heads. You know it all. I’ve had time to regret that I am still alive. But I want to go with a flourish. One last heroic act I’ll be joining you, I know I shall, but not just yet.

  13

  DON’T GO

  There would perhaps come a day when the information on a sheet of paper on one desk would automatically be drawn like a lonesome thumb to information on a sheet of paper on a desk not two metres away. It would set off an alarm to say, “Has anybody seen this?” But at Vientiane police headquarters, three days had passed and nobody had noticed a very significant connection. Sergeant Sihot had been focusing on K6 and the Vietnamese security people and the odd coincidence of victim three’s parents having worked at the murder scene of victim one. He’d been attempting to trace the couple through the lists of refugees their spies had sent from the Thai camps. He’d re-interviewed Miht, the groundsman, who admitted he vaguely recalled the couple but that he couldn’t be expected to remember everyone as the staff changed so often. Like Civilai, Sihot had a feeling the man was holding something back.

  After a long search, Sihot finally found someone with fencing experience. A young attache at the East German embassy called Hans had learned to fence in Gymnasium. He’d just arrived from Berlin. Through a translator, Sihot learned that the épées used in the three murders were far from normal and were totally unsuitable for competition. Fencing, the young man said, was a test of footwork and accuracy. Scoring was done electronically so there was no need for sharp edges or pointed tips on the weapons. The swords Sihot showed him had certainly been doctored to inflict the most damage.

  Finally, Sihot had talked once more to Comrade Chanti at Electricite du Lao and asked why he’d failed to mention the fact he was working on a rewiring project at K6. The engineer had simply put Sihot in his place by saying, “You didn’t ask.” He had been very cool about the whole affair and told Sihot he was busy and, “would that be all?”

  The list of Electricite du Lao employees involved in the project sat on the front right-hand corner of Sihot’s desk held down by half a cluster-bomb casing. The third name on that list was Somdy Borachit.

  Inspector Phosy had been focusing on the returnees who’d subscribed to magazines at the government bookshop. He was attempting to trace the names on the list. As they hadn’t been obliged to provide their addresses, it was a laborious process. He had been sidetracked at one stage after interviewing one bookshop customer: a member of the Women’s Association recently returned from Moscow. She had, she said, filed an official complaint against the bookshop clerk for making ‘improper advances’ towards her. Phosy’s enquiries led to the discovery that the poor man had merely asked her if she’d be interested to attend a cultural event with him. That was as far as the advance went and Phosy hadn’t seen anything improper about it. Unattached single man approaches unattractive single woman with hopes of romance. A flirtation. He wondered whether the complaint would have been made at all if the clerk had been better looking. He let it pass.

  Phosy had been receiving responses too from his Eastern European contacts. The Czech embassy had discovered that Dung, the Vietnamese major, had taken a course in fencing in Prague as part of the physical education component of his course. In fact, his Czech instructor had given him an A and commented that the Vietnamese was a natural swordsman. The major had lied at the interview. As a result, his name was moved to the top of the list of suspects. Over the years, Phosy had come to believe that when all the arrows pointed to one person, that was invariably your man.

  To Phosy’s surprise, word came back from East Germany via the embassy’s diplomatic pouch with regard to the third victim, Jim. Early reports were that she had been a friendly but studious woman who had impressed all her lecturers. She was the perfect student, doing extra research outside the curriculum, not wasting her time with nightlife or parties. Some of her classmates recalled that there had been a man interested in her but nobody remembers seeing him. They only knew from Jim that he was a student on a government scholarship. Jim had once commented with a smile how flattering it had been to have such an attractive man throwing pebbles at a girl’s window.

  As they’d approached the first round of pre-medical examinations, Jim’s comments had begun to sound more desperate. On one occasion, she’d told a classmate, “I’m starting to get a little impatient. He doesn’t take no for an answer.” Some of t
he Lao had jokingly suggested she invite her ‘boyfriend’ to one of the weekend balls and she’d become very agitated. “Really, there’s no relationship here. Just an annoyance.” Then, even nearer to the exams a classmate had found Jim walking around outside at midnight in the snow. She’d been crying. She’d said, “He really won’t leave me alone. He won’t let me study.”

  The classmate had suggested she tell the student representative but Jim had refused. The Lao student said she became concerned for Jim’s well-being after that night but Jim wouldn’t let her get close. And it was around then that Jim’s future came tumbling down. She failed her exams, but more than that it was as if she’d become an entirely different person. One girl commented, “She’d lost all her warmth. She didn’t speak. Didn’t answer any questions. Something terrible had happened to her. We thought it must have been him, whoever he was. We didn’t know what he’d done to her but she was clearly terrified of him.”

  Phosy had gone through the translation two or three times, astonished at what a transformation had come over the woman. Something had happened in Berlin to change a bright, straight-A student with a brilliant future into a frightened failure. In Phosy’s mind the killer had taken on a new, more sinister guise. What happened in Berlin might have been unrelated to the K6 murders but he didn’t believe so. He immediately demanded a list of all foreign students studying in East Germany in 1977.

  Apart from confirmation that victim two, Kiang, had taken no physical education classes and that victim one, Dew, had at one stage been selected to compete in a regional fencing tournament in a very small town in Bulgaria, no other information had arrived to bring him closer to his killer. His desk was a monument of paperwork; his own notes, interview transcripts, and telexes. But, on the front left-hand corner was the list of subscribers at the government bookshop. It was on the top of a pile, weighted down with a tiny plaster cast of Malee’s left foot age one month. Eleventh down that list was the name Somdy Borachit.