Don't Eat Me

by Colin Cotterill

  “We got a name, didn’t we? Comrade Vilai.”

  “Whitey’s going to tell him what happened. They’ll know it was you that threatened him.”

  “What are they going to do? Call the police?”

  “I thought you were just going there to ask about the girl in the crate.”

  “The truck driver delivers the crates to the airport then stops off at the agents to pay them off and load up new stock. You saw the condition of his cages. There was nothing there they’d allow on a plane. No, our new friend Comrade Vilai does all the export packing at his secret location. That’s where we ask our question.”

  “We still don’t have an address.”

  “I’m a detective. I can find it. Then we can go over there and have a little chat.”

  “Phosy, you don’t have to do all these excursions yourself. You’re the chief inspector. You have men and women who work for you. Siri was right. You have to start delegating responsibility.”

  “I will, but not for this case. Since my appointment, I haven’t exactly achieved much.”

  “It’s not something you can hurry,” said Dtui. “You have to rebuild the team from the bottom up. Bring in new blood that hasn’t learned the art of corruption from their corrupt superiors. Train the right sort of people. It takes time.”

  “The republic needs results, Dtui, not hope for the future. We need a victory to start the right sort of momentum. Make people proud of us. High-profile arrests early on will win us the time to build. Right now, we’re an unknown quantity but we’re about to bring down a judge. We’re a short hop from naming the killer of our crate girl. Shutting down a sleazy businessman who thinks he’s above the law will be the icing on the cake.”

  “You don’t think you’re taking on too much?”

  “Relax. I’m in control.”

  Dtui couldn’t relax and it wasn’t only because of the insects battering her face and the lousy Vespa shocks. She had one of her feelings. They were wrong sometimes, which was why she didn’t always share them. She loved and trusted her husband, but she was worried that he, in turn, trusted too few of his officers. A thousand ants could move a tree branch but none would attempt it alone.

  It wasn’t the grand colonial home one might expect of the continent’s most notorious trafficker of wildlife. In fact, the little house was dowdy and lacking both character and maintenance. It was a bungalow with an uncared-for front yard. There were chickens pecking at the dirt and a characterless dog on a leash that was in turn looped around a length of rope stretching from one side of the yard to the other. If the dog ever felt so inclined he might run to ward off visitors, but he’d long since learned there was nothing to be gained from it.

  From Siri’s point of view there was much more to the house than just the flaky stucco walls and the flowers dead in their pots. The place was ghostly. It was as if the building were wrapped in pelts, layer upon layer rotting slowly but constantly replenished with more pelts. The outer layer dripped with blood. Madam Daeng could not see this but she could sense her husband’s apprehension. She knew there was a presence.

  On the front porch was a sturdy rocking chair surrounded by a halo of empty beer bottles. The front door was open but there were no sounds from inside.

  “Monsieur Yves?” Siri shouted.

  A wall lizard tutted. The dog didn’t stir.

  “Monsieur Yves?” Siri tried again. “We’ve brought you a bottle of cognac.”

  “Good luck,” came a voice from the depths of the house. It was a common Lao toast. “I’m coming.”

  The zoo keeper had described Monsieur Yves as a magnificent human specimen with a body to make women melt and men feel threatened.

  “He’s tall with a sea of blond hair,” Chong had said, “and could wrestle a bear to the ground.”

  The Monsieur Yves twenty years on who staggered out to the balcony could barely have overwhelmed an elderly chicken. His blond hair was white and oily and the seas had parted to reveal a passage of liver spots. He was as rotund as a planet but still wore a Diana Ross and the Supremes T-shirt that was several sizes too small. His Lao fisherman’s pants clung to the outer limit of his girth. It was midday but he was clearly out of his head.

  “Ah, my friend,” he said in a slurry version of French.

  He charged toward Siri like a musk elephant.

  “It is such a long time since I saw you.”

  Madam Daeng’s French wasn’t nearly as accomplished as that of her husband, but it seemed to her the Frenchman was struggling to remember a language he hadn’t used for many years.

  “How have you been?” he said, kissing the doctor’s cheeks repeatedly but ignoring Daeng.

  They might have mentioned that Monsieur Yves was mistaken, that he and Siri had never met, that perhaps he bore a resemblance to someone from the trafficker’s past. But Siri decided to canoe the rapids and see where they ended up.

  “So, my friend,” he said, “what have you been doing since last we met?”

  Thence began a disoriented account of the Frenchman’s adventures in Africa and his fiancée back in France and hemorrhoids and Charles de Gaulle. Daeng took the opportunity whilst being invisible to enter the house where, in the unsanitary kitchen, she came upon a woman of perhaps her own age. She was the type of Lao who’d advanced from her teenage dawn to her current dusk without fundamentally changing shape. Along the way, she had not learned to dress appropriately for her advanced years. She wore a black halter neck top and red hot pants. She stood several centimeters above Daeng on what they called platform heels. Given the state of the floor Daeng regretted having left her own shoes outside.

  The woman turned to face Daeng, not at all surprised to see her standing there, and smiled. Her lips were rouged, her eyelashes mascaraed and her skin crumpled. She’d been dicing tomatoes so her fingers were damp and pink but Daeng accepted a limp handshake. And with no introductions, the two women sat at the kitchen table chatting as if it were the most natural thing. They talked about the change in temperature and the dearth of food at the market, and Daeng listened to a short list of medical conditions her Frenchman was currently struggling through.

  “I’m surprised your husband’s still here,” said Daeng.

  “Why?” the woman asked. Her voice was a cigarette growl from deep in her throat.

  “He’s French.”

  “They’re not all the enemy,” said the wife. “There are others allowed to stay. Men with families who are still in a position to support them. They’re dotted around. Tolerated. Forgiven. We don’t socialize with them much.”

  “Children?” asked Daeng.

  “Grown and gone.”

  “I heard your husband dealt in animals.”

  “Loved them, he did. We have so many stories from the good old days.”

  “And he sent them overseas?”

  “Wanted the world’s children to learn to love exotic animals as much as he did.”

  “Why did he stop?”

  “Ah, look at me,” said the wife, “where are my manners?”

  She stood, hobbled to the sink on her platforms and opened the cupboard. Inside, Daeng could see an armory of spirit bottles on a rack. The wife pulled out a half-full gin bottle.

  “You must be parched after your long journey,” she said.

  Monsieur Yves had dragged a second rocking chair to the balcony and he and the doctor were swigging cognac from the new bottle. It took some time for Siri to maneuver the Frenchman’s mind around to the sixties and his trade in wildlife but once there it wallowed and dwelled.

  “Oh, brother,” said Yves, “I was rolling in money. Didn’t know what to do with it all. I had eighty regular customers in zoos around Europe and no end of pet shops and private individuals with enough money to set up their own menageries. I couldn’t keep up with the demand.”

  “Th
en we took over and spoiled it all for you,” said Siri.

  “I gave it up long before that,” said Yves.

  “Why?”

  The Frenchman looked around the yard to be sure they were alone, and he leaned closely into the doctor’s ear. Siri could smell a cocktail of drinks and drugs and body odor.

  “You ever have a nightmare?” Yves asked.

  “Too often,” said Siri.

  “Then you’ll know, brother. They never go away. They’re always there watching you, the dead ones. You’d think having sent them so far off that the spirits wouldn’t be bothered to find their way back, but they come. They’re all here.”

  “Your house is wrapped in their skins,” said Siri.

  Yves leapt frantically from his chair and dropped the bottle. “That’s right! That’s right!” he shouted. “You can see them, right? Most people can’t. Some nights it’s so stifling we can’t breathe. We have to camp out here under the tree. One day they’ll suffocate us in our bed.”

  Monsieur Yves was pacing back and forth. The dog moved way to the end of its rope.

  “I thought I was a good one,” said the Frenchman. “The Thai dealers, the Chinese, they were heartless. They didn’t cull out the sick and dying animals. They sent everything and claimed they’d got their diseases in transit. Blamed the airlines for the deaths. I fed mine. Gave shots to the sick ones. Nursed them back to health. If I didn’t think they’d make the journey alive I held them back. I used to think I loved animals. I had pets. I set up the zoo so the locals could understand nature. But you know? In my soul, I knew what suffering I was inflicting on the beasts. I ignored my soul. Now my soul is repaying me. The trade has quadrupled since I gave it up but they haven’t learned from my experiences—from my mistakes. I know the dealers will see out their lives in purgatory, but there’s no convincing them now. They see only profit. This trade will only cease when there are no more animals to torture.”

  Monsieur Yves wheezed from the effort of ranting. He held his heart, waiting for the beat to slow. He leaned down to rescue the cognac bottle and took a long swig as if it were medicine.

  “How do we stop it?” said Siri.

  “The trade? You can’t. There are laws, international agreements, but there will always be countries like Laos that don’t recognize animals have rights. This country is the center of regional trade because, unlike Thailand and Vietnam, they’re not even pretending to introduce regulations. They’re proud of what they do. I made my fortune because I could slip a few dollars into pockets here and there, and the officials didn’t even think they were doing anything immoral.”

  “Isn’t the new regime clamping down on trafficking?”

  Yves laughed. The bottle was his now and he wasn’t sharing it. He took another swig and swayed left and right.

  “You know what clamping down means?” he asked. “You tax the trade. You charge for veterinarian certificates guaranteeing the animals left Laos in good health. Those documents are printed in the Ministry of Agriculture for twenty dollars each. You just fill in the gaps. You have a spokesman who tells foreign governments that Laos is at the forefront of animal protection and you gladly accept their grants. Do you see the government allowing any of those do-gooder animal rights NGOs to set up in Vientiane? Not on your life. The country’s got such a reputation we import illegal animal parts from fucking Africa. You get hundreds of kilos of tusks and horns and skins every week. It’s all shipped up to China and over to Vietnam for the witchdoctors to mix with whisky and convince all those impotent old bastards that they’ll be stallions.”

  “And yet there you were fine-tuning the trade,” said Siri. “A lot of what’s happening now is down to you.”

  Monsieur Yves flopped down onto his chair which over-rocked so violently it threw him against the wall. Only Siri’s swift hands prevented the Frenchman from hitting the deck. This time he held on to the bottle. Once the chair was still and Monsieur Yves calm, he began to cry.

  “Brother, look at me,” he said through the tears. “Do I look like someone who’s found peace on his planet? I don’t get any forgiveness nor do I deserve it. I’ve dedicated my old age to righting the wrongs I’ve committed. I’ve produced articles. I wrote a book. I’ve given most of my money away to organizations fighting the trade. But still I’m deteriorating. Some things are not repairable. I won’t be around much longer. I certainly won’t be here long enough to make amends.”

  “Who took over your business?” Siri asked.

  “They were like cockroaches,” said Yves. “I announced I was stepping out and there they were. Everyone wanted a piece of it. The Commies shut down a lot of them or sort of amalgamated them into bigger units.”

  “Who’s the biggest?” Daeng asked, stepping out from the house. She had pink cheeks so Siri knew she’d been tippling.

  “Who are you?” said Monsieur Yves.

  “Friend of your wife,” said Daeng. “So? Who’s the biggest dealer in wildlife at the moment?”

  “His name’s Vilai Savangkeo,” said Yves. “Biggest by far. He made his money during the war exchanging wildlife from the PL soldiers for contraband arms. He’s got a big complex over in Hong Tong. Right on the river. Really convenient for bringing in stock from Thailand. He’s started breeding tigers too. Hundreds of them out at Thakhek. Nobody’s ever going to make a dent in that empire. The place is guarded like the mint, and he has some very influential friends. He’s the only one with a license to fly wildlife out of Wattay these days.”

  “Then he sounds like our man,” said Siri.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Polar Opposites

  Two odd things happened as Siri and Daeng walked back to their motorcycle from Monsieur Yves’ house. First, they passed an elderly Lao couple coming the other way. The man carried a bottle wrapped in paper. He looked nothing like Siri and the woman bore no similarity to Daeng. They nodded as did Siri and his wife. When they were out of earshot Daeng asked, “Do you think . . . ?”

  “I guess all old people look the same to an alcoholic,” said Siri. “Let that be a lesson to you not to drink in dark kitchens at lunchtime. I bet . . .”

  Daeng looked back to see why her husband had stopped talking but Siri wasn’t there.

  “All right, I get it,” said Siri.

  He was walking on the lane from Monsieur Yves’s house, but there was now a layer of crunchy snow on the ground. He looked back over his shoulder and saw that the bungalow had become an igloo. The figure walking ahead was no longer Madam Daeng. It was Auntie Bpoo in her polar bear skin coat.

  “And what is it you think you’ve got?” she asked without bothering to turn around.

  “I should be talking to the bear,” he said.

  That was clearly the abracadabra she’d been waiting for. The bear’s head, which until that moment had hung loose like a hood, began to lift. The neck cricked left and right, the eyes opened, and there before Siri a miraculous transition took place. Auntie Bpoo was no longer wearing the bear skin. A magnificent polar bear was wearing the skin of a transvestite fortune teller. The hairy arms were pulled around the bear’s neck like a scarf. It was not a pretty sight.

  “About bloody time,” said the bear.

  “Sorry,” said the doctor. “I’m still quite new at all this symbolism malarkey. I’d prefer something a little bit more—you know—simple.”

  “You should have chosen a different spirit guide,” said the bear.

  “I didn’t actually choose . . . oh, never mind. What’s next?”

  “You tell me what you think this is all about, and if you’re right I give you your badge and you move on to the next test.”

  “I get a badge?”

  “It’s a figurative badge.”

  “How many other tests are there?” Siri asked.

  “Depends on what path you choose,” said the bear. “Path one has
twelve-thousand and eleven. Path two has six.”

  “What do you get at the end of path two?”

  “It’s a sort of laissez-passer to the other world.”

  “And path one?”

  “Same thing.”

  “Then, why . . . ?”

  “Some people like puzzles,” said the bear. “Look, can we get on with it? It’s freezing out here.”

  “All right,” said Siri. “Here we go. There I was talking to Auntie Bpoo and although I might have thought to myself what an attractive bear skin she was wearing, I didn’t give a thought as to how or why you became a coat.”

  “And the connection to your other world is . . . ?”

  “We’re trying to solve a mystery of a dead woman,” said Siri. “But we aren’t seeing the bigger picture. She was in a crate of civets but we didn’t give a thought as to how they got there or where they were going. I know now. The death of one woman shouldn’t be our main concern. Humans will be around forever. You and your pals won’t. Message: If you can’t see us, how can you feel compassion for us?”

  They stared at each other.

  “How’s that?” asked Siri.

  “Yeah, good enough,” said the bear.

  Siri was momentarily distracted by a wall of day fireworks that whizzed and banged black against the blue sky to celebrate the passing of his second test. And when he looked down, there was Madam Daeng sitting on the motorcycle in a snowless landscape.

  “Been anywhere nice?” she said.

  “I passed my second test,” said Siri.

  “Good boy,” said Daeng.

  When Phosy walked along the corridor of the Ministry of Justice he couldn’t help but notice the expressions on the faces of the people he passed. Some looked away; others appeared embarrassed. He’d not leaked the results of his investigation of Judge Haeng but clearly someone had. In Laos, holding on to a secret was like trying to keep a length of greasy noodle on a spoon. One of the most senior officials at the ministry had been involved in, at the very least, covering up a murder. Once a story like that got around it broke the faces of everyone who worked under the perpetrator. In some ways, a policeman could be considered their enemy too.