“Saturday was when she died.”
Neung nodded and his eyes glazed over.
“She didn’t show up for our lunch date on Monday.”
“You weren’t curious why not?”
“Of course.”
“Did you make any effort to find out why she didn’t turn up?”
“We had an agreement. I wasn’t to contact her. I couldn’t go to her house or the library. I didn’t even have her phone number. All the contact came from her. It’s the way she wanted it.”
“And that arrangement was all right with you?”
“I had a wife. I wasn’t really in a position to insist on visitation rights. And I was crazy about her. She could have done and said anything and it would have been fine with me. I was just glad to be around her. I loved her.”
“And your wife?”
Neung nodded.
“You’re a generous man,” Siri told him. “So much love to share with so many women. Which brings us to victim number three, Jim.”
Neung sighed with frustration.
“There isn’t much to tell,” he said. “I vaguely remember her pottering around K6 when she was a kid. She was podgy then. One of those keen young things who follow you around asking questions. I heard they’d taken her on as a trainee at a clinic up north. I didn’t see her at all after that until Germany. I was on the fencing team at my college. There were local and regional competitions every weekend. And who should show up at one of them but Jim. I was totally surprised. I didn’t recognise her at first. She’d lost a lot of weight. In fact she was looking very fit. She told me she’d come to Berlin to study medicine. That didn’t surprise me. I knew she was smart. But what did surprise me was that she could fence. And she was good. Really good, and strong as an ox. She’d obviously put a lot of time into it.”
“Where did she learn?”
“I asked her, of course. But her answers were always vague. Things like, ‘I can’t tell you all my secrets so soon’. I assumed the Americans…but I never really found out for certain. She asked if I had time to tutor her, work on her techniques. I told her I’d be happy to.”
“I bet you were. One on one, was it?”
Neung glared. “No. She attended a class I helped out at. It was a fencing school for local teenagers. I was a volunteer. The instructor and I agreed that Jim had potential. In fact, the instructor had a friend from one of the big clubs come to look at her. It was one of those serious places, the type that gear you up for the Olympics. They agreed that with the right coaching she could have a future in fencing. They made her an offer. They said they could arrange for a permanent visa, perhaps even citizenship if she made the grade.”
“But she didn’t go for it.”
“She was good but I could tell her mind wasn’t in the sport. The difference between competence and greatness is in the heart. She didn’t have a heart for fencing.”
“Odd, considering she’d obviously put a lot of effort into it.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Do you recall her talking about another man? A boyfriend. Someone who might have been showing an unhealthy interest in her?”
Neung put his fingers against his face as if he were raking for a memory or two.
“I don’t remember anything specific,” he said. “But I did get the feeling there was something troubling her. She’d lose concentration now and then as if she were on another planet. It was a little bit worrying when you’re playing around with swords. It might have been because of a boyfriend but I don’t know. It wasn’t the type of thing I talked about with my students. We really weren’t that close.”
“Did you see her again after Berlin?”
“Once. Recently, in fact. I was surprised to see her back in Laos so soon. I thought she’d be in Germany for another four years. She was outside the bookshop when I came out one Saturday. I asked her what was wrong and she told me she’d failed her exams and they’d sent her home. She didn’t seem that upset about it. In fact, I got the impression she was happier than I remembered seeing her in Berlin. Being back in Laos seemed to have freed her soul somehow. She said there was some matter she needed to discuss with me, urgently. She was always asking this or that question, usually about things that weren’t really important, so I didn’t take it too seriously. She gave me her number at Settha Hospital. I meant to call, but with all the work out at K6 and family life…”
“And Kiang.”
“And Kiang, yes. I forgot all about calling Jim.”
Neung’s brow arched as a realisation seemed to drop over him. “I wonder, if I’d phoned…” he said. “If she’d wanted to talk about her problem. I wonder if I could have prevented her death.”
“I wonder.”
Siri sat silent. It was a great line. Convincing. The doctor wasn’t about to be sucked wholly into Neung’s version of events, but he’d earned himself a second hearing.
On his way out of the station, Siri woke up Phosy at his desk and told him, “Tomorrow, when you’re feeling fresh, I’d like you to go and listen to that boy’s story one more time. Just listen.”
14
A HINT OF ROUGE
The Shaanxi Y-8 lifted off from Vientiane’s Wattay airport three hours after the scheduled departure time. No plane, no bus, no donkey cart ever left on time in the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos. Timetables were in the same section of the government bookshop as legends and folklore. They were fictional beasts that lied without trepidation. Yet, despite this knowledge, no passengers ever came prepared for a wait. Nobody ever brought books or puzzles or letters to write or darning or weaving or embroidery to fill in the hours. It was as if, deep down, the Lao believed that today would be different. A miracle would happen. Today, a flight would leave on schedule. So they sat staring hopefully at the runway, at the rain on the window, at the other passengers, and then they dozed. And they awoke with a refreshed belief. Always disappointed.
Siri had arrived with stories to fill the hours. He’d informed Comrade Civilai in great detail of the neat slotting of engineer Neung into the evidence of the épée case. He’d left nothing out, neither fact nor feeling. Civilai, in clean but not necessarily ironed clothes, had sat nodding as he watched an incoming aeroplane break through the pudding clouds and splash along the runway like a stork in pursuit of a giant snakehead. Unlike his usual self he had nothing to ask, no clarifications to seek. Siri had done a very thorough job. The doctor was just about to tell his friend about the meeting with Neung at police HQ when a Lao Aviation official stood in front of the eleven passengers with a megaphone and yelled an announcement that flight CAAC23 would be leaving in twenty minutes. Passengers were invited to bring their luggage out to the runway and to help the pilot load it into the hold.
Siri and Civilai travelled light. What you wore today you washed tomorrow. All being well, it would be dry by the following day. The only thing of any substance in Siri’s shoulder bag was his Camus compendium, a sort of greatest hits volume. He’d debated not bringing it but he was certain there’d be long periods of waiting or listening to speeches when Monsieur Camus could entertain him.
Madame Daeng had enjoyed no more than four hours with her husband between jail and the airport. But she’d found the time to ask whether somebody along the trail might take objection to the writings of a man who had converted from communism and proceeded to argue heatedly about its futility. Before attempting to steal an hour or two of sleep, Siri had assured her that nobody would dream of looking in his bag. He was a representative of Laos: a makeshift ambassador, and, as such, he would have makeshift diplomatic immunity.
Their parting words, which both of them would later come to rue, had been;
Siri: “See you in a few days.”
Daeng: “Don’t forget your noodles for the flight.”
No pledges nor confessions of emotion. No hopes. No fears. Just noodles and an imprecise calculation of time.
The only thing of substance in Civilai’s shoul
der bag was a wad of five hundred dollars rolled into a secret compartment in the thick handle strap. He always travelled with it ‘for emergencies’ and it was no secret to Siri. To date they hadn’t had cause to use it.
They were scheduled to spend the night in Peking before their onward journey. The hosts really outdid themselves. A permanently smiling Lao-speaking cadre, who appeared to have no idea who Civilai and Siri were, had been assigned to look after them for the evening. They were stuffed with food and drink and given little time to burn it all off between courses. In the car back to their ostentatious hotel – the Sublime – the cadre had asked whether they might enjoy fourteen-year-old girls before they slept. Neither Siri nor Civilai could envisage what they might do with a fourteen-year-old girl other than a quick game of badminton. It was late and they were tired so they had returned to their adjoining suites alone.
Civilai knocked on the common door at exactly the same time as Siri.
“I feel like a hastily put together tractor on an assembly line,” Civilai said. He went to sit on Siri’s trampoline-sized bed. “Is it my imagination or has the world speeded up considerably?”
“I’m still dizzy,” Siri confessed. “It’s as if we’ve just been given the next month’s intake of food and drink and we’ll have to live off it till June.”
“I certainly could,” Civilai agreed. “We were five plates in before I realized we hadn’t yet seen the main course.”
“Do you think there’s a point to it?”
“Absolutely. Stick with the Chinese and you can have all the food, drink and virginity you can handle. They think we’ll go back and push for a bilateral trade agreement. Maybe hand them a province or two in thanks.”
“But we aren’t anybody. We couldn’t push for a hand cart.”
“They don’t know that. They assume that if our country has selected us they’ll listen to us when we go home. They’re canny, the Chinese. They know when it comes down to it, it really has little to do with policy or diplomacy. When a politburo member makes a casting vote, at the back of his mind is the night he spent with identical triplets in a tub of honey. We’re men and it’s a proven scientific fact that eighty per cent of the decisions in our lives are made with our stomachs and our sexual organs.”
Siri thought back.
“I don’t – ”
“Of course, I’m not including you and me, Siri. We’re men of integrity. Our lives have been complicated by the burden of conscience. But we are freaks. Ninety-six-point-three per cent of males are born without.”
“That’s what I admire about you politicians. Figures at your fingertips. Debates won at the drop of a made-up number.”
He found his hand caressing the silk coverlet.
“I really had been expecting something more austere,” he confessed. “You know? A wooden cot in a concrete room. That strikes me as more fitting for Chinese revolutionaries.”
“That really wouldn’t have achieved anything, would it?”
“Do you suppose we’re being…?” Siri mimed headphones and a microphone.
“Probably. And…(Civilai mimed the use of a hand-cranked movie camera) no doubt.”
“So, then romance is out of the question?”
“Wait, I’ll turn out the lights. Our love cannot be denied.”
Both men laughed at the thought of the poor translator reaching this point in the tape and rewinding, and rewinding. Were the two old men speaking in code or were they actually…?
Sobering up, Siri finally managed to describe his meeting with mass-murderer Neung.
“Very impressive. He’s either a very very good liar – and don’t forget, psychopaths can convince themselves to believe what they’re telling you, even fool lie detectors – or…”
“Or somebody really did set him up.”
“And you believe the latter.”
“I didn’t say that. But I convinced him…at least I think I did, to tell his story to Phosy exactly as he’d told it to me. He was reluctant. I think Phosy had given Neung short shrift during the interrogation. But I told him Phosy was a friend and a good policeman. Then I woke Phosy and told him to shut up for half an hour and just listen to Neung’s version of events.”
“Too bad we won’t be back in time for the trial.”
“No, but we’ll only be away for four nights. We should be back in time for the execution.”
“Mm. Something to look forward to.”
“No, I mean it gives us time before the execution to follow up on some of Neung’s claims. I’m hoping Phosy’s sense of fair play might push him to reconsider whether this is a closed case and take another look at the facts.”
“Good. That’s settled then. And, in the meantime we enjoy a little holiday, drink a bit too much, embarrass ourselves and our country, and take lots of nice tourist shots as evidence that we actually went.”
“Hear, hear to that.”
∗
The enthusiastic Lao-speaking guide who’d offered Siri and Civilai fourteen-year-old badminton partners the previous night knocked on their doors at six a.m. He forced them into partaking of a full morning of breakfast, sightseeing, meeting people who didn’t want to be met, and early lunch. The meal was another eight courses with fruit wine which left the Lao delegation so bloated they were certain they’d exceed the baggage allowance on the afternoon flight. Scheduled to leave at three forty-five, the airplane left at three forty-four and, as far as they knew, nobody was left behind at the airport.
Their fears that Civilai might embarrass the Chinese delegation, and himself, were put to rest when it became apparent the Chinese diplomats were all in the front section of the plane, separated from Siri and Civilai and a number of state media representatives who had the rear all to themselves. A red curtain – polyester rather than bamboo – had been drawn between them even before take-off. The members of the media spoke amongst themselves. They’d brought their own dinners on plates clamped together and tied in cloth. They seemed to know there would be no service, no meal, and certainly no in-flight film. All three lady air cadres were busy in first class.
When they landed on the bumpy tarmac at Phnom Penh airport, the Chinese left the plane first. Civilai watched through the window. Five jet-black limousines had driven out to meet the plane with their headlights blazing. Three heavy-set Chinese-looking men and two dowdy Chinese-looking women were at the bottom of the portable steps to shake hands and hug the delegation. They hung limp mimosa lei around the visitors’ necks and smiled a good deal. On the short walk to the cars, the Chinese either handed the smelly necklaces to their aides or surreptitiously dropped them on the runway. The cars consumed the guests, turned in formation, and headed in a direction that appeared to contain nothing but the beams of the limousines.
“Is this our stop, do you think?” Siri asked.
“I didn’t see a sign,” Civilai replied. “In fact there’s nothing outside the window but blackness.”
The press corps had fled at some stage and none of the Mao-jacketed stewardesses had brought them barley sugar to suck or little metal aeroplane badges to pin on their lapels. In fact, but for the propellers whirring slowly, there was no sound. The two old comrades laughed.
“Do you think we should get off?” Civilai asked.
“I’m not going out there to stand on a dark wet runway,” Siri said. “If they want us, let them come and get us.”
After five more minutes the pair was starting to believe they weren’t wanted. But then a short man appeared from behind the red curtain. He was dressed in black pyjamas and had sandals made of thick chunks of old car tyres on his sunburned feet. Around his neck was a faded black and white checked scarf. His hair was slick and angled across his forehead in the style of Adolf Hitler. But his face was boyish, not yet ready for a moustache. In his hand was a large grey card with the names Dr Siri Paiboun and Comrade Civilai Songsawat written in pencil, camouflaged, grey on grey. In the wrong light it might have been illegible but the cabin lights ref
lected silver off the carbon letters.
Siri and Civilai raised their hands and the young man nodded. They collected their baggage from the overhead container and followed him down the steps and across the runway. The old fellows attempted one or two questions along the way, in Lao, then French, then Vietnamese. Then the odd phrase in Burmese, English, Chinese, and Mauritian Creole (Civilai had learned to say ‘I would like to meet your sister’ from a very personable Mauritian he’d met at a conference in Havana.) Their guide responded to none of these.
Their own limousine was parked beside a wire fence. They sat, the three of them, in the rear seat, the scent of the leather hinting that the cow had not long been slaughtered. Siri and Civilai exchanged a glance and chuckled. The limousine, lit only by the distant lights of the aeroplane, was missing a driver.
“I’ve read about this,” Civilai whispered. “They’re remote controlled. This fellow pushes a button and it heads off all by itself.”
But then a skinny man with a cigarette hanging from his bottom lip, wearing his black pyjamas and scarf with less panache than their guide, walked out of the darkness adjusting his crotch. He stopped, looked at the shadows in the back seat, and took one last puff of his cigarette before flicking it over his shoulder He climbed in the driver’s seat, slammed his door and started up the car. He glared into the rear-view mirror with eyebrows hacked from old door mats.
“If they ever come to visit us I’m not sure we’ll be able to match a reception like this,” Siri whispered.
“I can’t begin to imagine all the planning and expense that went into it,” Civilai agreed.
The new limousine started silently and the gear lever danced from first to second without effort. When they reached and passed the fortified guard post, the guide also slipped into gear. His Lao was fluent but accented. Somewhere from the border up towards the Kong Falls. The product of a mixed marriage, they guessed, although something about him suggested one of his parents was a machine.
Dr Siri Paiboun: Love Songs from a Shallow Grave (2010) Page 18
