Don't Eat Me

by Colin Cotterill

  “Because once you’re dead I’ll track down everyone with the same surname, and I’ll skin them and rip their hearts out too.”

  “I must say you have a lot of bold and unkind ambitions for a man tied to a chair on a burning balcony,” laughed Wee.

  “Try me,” said Vilai.

  “If I gave you my surname you’d find yourself skinning at least two Party members,” said Wee.

  “Don’t give me that, boy. You aren’t connected. I know all of them. I have ministers down here for hunting weekends. Two politburo members attended my daughter’s wedding.”

  “I bet you don’t know the chief of police,” said Wee.

  “Comrade Oudomxai,” said Vilai. “We play petong together when I’m in the capital.”

  “Must have been a while ago,” said Wee. “Oudomxai is rotting in jail somewhere up country.”

  “Ah, so that’s what this is all about,” said Vilai. “I heard about you lot from one of our dealers. The mysterious new chief who’s planning to take over my business. Better men have tried and failed.”

  “You aren’t so special,” said Wee. “You’re scum.”

  “You’ll regret talking to me like that. I’m a respected member of the business community.”

  “Respected? You call this business respectable? Too bad your victims don’t get a say in that. But we got lucky. You crossed the line from killing animals to killing people. We found your girl in the crate. That’s serious. My boss is going through your files as I speak. Won’t be long before we find a certain invoice for a box of civets dated around August fifteenth. That would be a potent piece of evidence in a murder inquiry. Or you could just confess right now.”

  “Listen, you freak,” Vilai shouted above the hiss of burning synthetics, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And whoever you lot are, I’ll get you for harassment and vandalism. I promise you I’ll not only have your boss’s job but I’ll have his balls too. Then I’ll hang his corpse from that banyan tree beside yours.”

  “I’m not an expert but I’d say that was a threat,” came a voice.

  Phosy had arrived on the balcony from the outside staircase. He held a box file and nodded at Wee.

  “Ooh, it’s hot up here,” he said. “You know, these brick places build up a lot of heat, but I prefer a good, old-fashioned wood-house fire. Can’t beat organic smells.”

  “Who are you?” Vilai asked.

  “He’s big on names,” said Wee.

  “Well, if you survive this accidental fire, here’s a name you’ll be hearing a lot of,” said Phosy. “I’m Chief Inspector Phosy Vongvichai, the man whose balls you’d like to be juggling. Threatening to hang my dead body from a banyan tree isn’t the best way to get on my good side.”

  “I don’t have to get on the good side of a tyke like you,” said Vilai. “What are you? Twenty?”

  “Yes, flattery might work,” said Phosy. “But a confession would make me happier. You see? I found this file in your cabinet downstairs. It says you shipped a crate of civets to Wattay on the fifteenth of August. The shipping number matches the one in my case report. What we don’t know is why it was stuck at Wattay for four days. Nor do we know why there was more than just civets in the crate.”

  Phosy cast a look at Wee. They’d decided earlier that the chief inspector would play the evil-bordering-on-psychotic cop. When he was younger he could have carried it off with more aplomb and less conscience, but with promotion came responsibility. He had to consider justice and political correctness. Burning down the house hadn’t been intended, but he had to admit it felt damned fine and it played into the drama of the raid. Without a confession, the actions of that day would have been hard to condone. But the decision had been his.

  “And, if you’re worried about my qualifications for this job, you’re asking the wrong question,” he said. “My age isn’t important. What you should wonder is how did I get to this position so early in life? How many people did I have to kill to get here? And I’ll tell you—a lot. And do I regret it? Not at all. My personal favorite is death by torture. I’ve had a lot of accolades for my torture over the years. When I look around your compound I can see you’re a fan of that too.”

  Vilai’s shirt was drenched with sweat, but still he held up his chin.

  “You don’t scare me, boy,” he said. “You won’t lay a finger on me. As soon as my friends in Vientiane hear what you’re doing here they’ll have you shot.”

  Phosy knelt beside the old man and pushed his face up close. “But that’s just the loveliest part of all this,” he said. “Your dear friends in Vientiane won’t ever get to hear your version of events. I was down here observing a movie production. We noticed a fire along the river road and we ran to help. But the gates were locked and we didn’t have a key. I ordered villagers to bring sledgehammers and we broke in through the wall. But, sadly, it was too late. The fire had already caught the dry hay and the house had been consumed. We recovered the body of brave Comrade Vilai who’d died trying to rescue his beloved animals. You’ll probably get a posthumous medal, but would it make up for the agony you’d suffered before you were consumed by the flames?”

  Phosy and Wee had turned the deckchair around to face the conflagration. Shards of fire were rising from the ground floor. Phosy noticed a moment—a look of recognition on the old man’s face that marked his transition from valiant invincible to probable fricassee. No number of influential friends would help him now.

  “What have I done wrong exactly?” he asked.

  The two policemen continued to push the chair toward the sliding doors. The glass leaned outward precariously as the frames began to melt. Phosy said nothing.

  “For god’s sake,” said Vilai. “If the point of this is to torture a confession out of me, at least give me something to deny.”

  “You’ve had the question,” said Wee. “You chose to lie about it. End of story.”

  “What question?” asked Vilai. “The crate? Is that what this is all about? I told you, you moron. We dispatch crates of animals. We don’t put bodies in our shipments. It’s bad for business.”

  “Don’t believe you,” said Phosy.

  The chair continued its slide toward oblivion.

  “I swear,” said Vilai. “Look. I check every shipment that leaves here personally. We weigh them. They weigh them again at the airport. We sell by the kilo. The shipping clerks are pedantic up there. They have to answer to European standards. They watch every bit of cargo get loaded onto the plane. They have to get the figures right or they lose their percentage. They know how much a crate of civets should weigh. If there was a body in there, they’d know. When it left here it contained nothing but civets. If you found the invoice downstairs, check the weights for yourself.”

  “Still the wrong answer,” said Wee, but Phosy had stopped pushing.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rajhid, the Grim Reaper

  The following day, Crazy Rajhid was feeling hungry. He could have walked along the empty street, but he preferred to fight his way through the vegetation that clogged the riverbank. He arrived at Madam Daeng’s noodle shop mid-morning, usually a good time to find Daeng less stressed than during the breakfast and lunchtime rushes. But the shop was shuttered and there was no sign out front to explain what had happened. He sensed calamity. He climbed the back wall and entered the building through the upstairs window. There was nobody there. The bed was made, but Mr. Geung’s room on the ground floor was disheveled as if there had been a skirmish. Nobody had made noodles that day.

  On this day, Rajhid was conservatively dressed in shorts and a red T-shirt. His father, Mr. Tickoo, the cook at the Happy Dine Indian restaurant, always left a set of clean clothes on the back fence in an attempt to preserve what little dignity the boy had left. Rajhid rarely took them and, if he did, never gave them back. But on this day, wearing clothes seemed more appr
opriate. He had a mission. He set off in the direction of the That Luang Monument, marched across the parade ground and arrived at Siri’s official house. The front door was open as usual but there wasn’t a soul inside. There were clothes strewn around and evidence of a struggle. In the kitchen, chairs lay on the ground, the table was set and there were seven bowls laid out for rice but the steamer was full. Two spoons lay on the floor. In the sink lay a plate that had broken neatly in half, and the tap water was running. There was no blood nor were there signs of life.

  For a young man whose mind was already muddled, this conundrum made his head throb. He went to the police dormitory where Phosy and Dtui lived, but all of the rooms were padlocked. There was no guard at the entry post. At the nurse’s college where Dtui taught, a woman he didn’t know was in her classroom. He was ready to explode from the incongruities. His last resort was police headquarters. He’d only ever been there once, under duress, but he knew where Phosy’s office was. That’s what he needed: a logical policeman to explain away all the weirdness. But on the door was a name other than Chief Inspector Phosy’s. And before he was shooed away by a frightening man with a pistol in his holster, Rajhid caught a glimpse of a fat man sitting at Phosy’s desk, comfortable, as if he’d been there for a long time.

  Rajhid sat naked in the Mekhong up to his waist in cool muddy water. His clothes were laid flat on the bank like a steamroller victim. He was surrounded by an enormous new reality. All the things he thought he knew were wrong. All the people he loved and admired, but to whom he had never spoken, were gone. And one thing dawned on him. What if people only existed if you completed the cycle of communication? By not speaking to them he had failed to anchor them to the earth. Because of his selfishness, he had exterminated an entire tribe of good people. It was all his fault. He, Rajhid, was the grim reaper. He had no choice but to undo the damage he had done. To bring everyone back to life.

  He went off in search of paper.

  Chapter Sixteen

  From Pig to Man and From Man to Pig

  Chief Inspector Phosy awoke from a troubled nightmare with a head like a lead block. He’d been in enough fights in his life to recognize bruised ribs and the smart of cuts and wounds about his face. There was congealed blood on his shirt. It was obvious what had happened, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember who’d beaten him up. Whoever it was, he or she had done a pretty thorough job.

  He tried to sit up and it was only then that he realized he was lying on concrete. He was in a cell with no furniture. The only door was barred. He used those bars to pull himself to his feet. He identified two, possibly three broken toes, perhaps a broken rib. There was one slit of a window high on the back wall, but all he could see was blue sky and cobwebs. It was daytime. It was hot. He was wearing soiled civilian clothes and he was sweating. Through the door, he could see that his was the last cell in a block of eight but all the other doors were ajar. He was alone. He had no idea where he was.

  “All right, I’m up,” he shouted. “Let’s get this over with. Whatever this is.”

  But nobody came. The only sound he could hear was the throb of a generator somewhere outside the building. He leaned against the wall and forced his mind to recall what had happened. He remembered their good day: the fake movie, breaking into the unmanned compound, the monster Vilai. Phosy could still feel how the disgust had seeped through his skin. Even now, the bile rose in his throat. He’d seen the tiger and bear skins piled high, one atop the other. There were bins of pangolin scales. He’d been unable to count the jars and bottles of bear gall bladder remedies and tiger aphrodisiacs, the animal parts in alcohol, the vials of powdered tusk, the ivory chunks cleaned and ready for carving.

  The walls of Vilai’s house had been decorated with the types of animal heads you’d expect to find on the walls of cowardly hunters. But the old man had done nothing to deserve the trophies other than wait for the enslaved beasts to die slowly in captivity. Some minion would skin them and sever their heads. It probably wasn’t the wisest decision to set fire to the house. Before setting light to the cellophane-covered sofa, Phosy had had the foresight to take out the metal filing cabinets from the home office along with any other papers that might have been of value. Even so, he’d not really intended to burn the place down. He’d just wanted to vent his anger on the ugly vinyl couch. He’d been surprised how rapidly the flames spread. It was significant that none of the members of Wee’s anti-trafficking team stepped in to take the burning torch from his hand or rushed for buckets of water.

  Phosy had found the invoice in the files. He could prove that the crate of civets originated from that compound. But even with the threat of a premature cremation, Vilai had refused to admit to killing the girl. Phosy had no choice other than to bring the old man back to Vientiane, handcuffed inside their bus. The bus—that was it. Something had happened on the bus. The mood had been light. The banter was chirpy. They all had their own reasons for being pleased. The movie extras were excited about their first day on the set and confident they’d be picked for additional roles. Wee’s team members were all running on adrenaline. They knew the animals they rescued had little hope of survival but, given the option, wouldn’t they sooner take their chances in the jungle than behind bars? And the police were certain this high-profile intervention would yell out a warning to other traffickers. To their minds it was a success.

  Siri and Civilai had been particularly bubbly on the journey home as they’d argued camera angles and lighting. Both imagined what the day’s film might have looked like if only the camera had rolled rather than sat idly. Daeng, following her cameo as production manager and her role in convincing Vilai to be in their film, was wagging her tail for the entire trip.

  Phosy could visualize every facet of that journey home in his mind. Only he had considered their day a failure. The skeleton that haunted his days still had no identity. He was no closer to working out where and when she was put in the crate. As a decent human being he might have joined the others in the celebrations, but as a policeman he’d overstepped the mark with his actions and he was embarrassed. He knew when he returned to the dormitory and told his wife, she’d shake her head and tell him she didn’t want their daughter to grow up in a lawless society. That he was the chief guardian of what was right in their country. And she would be correct.

  Except, he didn’t see her. He didn’t make it home and he didn’t know why. He could remember the bus slowing down, a roadblock perhaps. Roadblocks were common enough. But that was the last clear memory in his head.

  He had no idea how long he’d been sitting, leaning against the wall beneath the window coaxing memories from his battered head. But he was pulled from his thoughts by the sound from afar of a lock sliding open. This was followed by footsteps and another lock. The door at the far end of Phosy’s block opened on rusty hinges and three burly middle-aged men walked in. He recognized them. They were men he’d fired from the police force for various reasons. Things immediately became clear. This was some sort of vengeance. One of the men was holding a fold-up chair. He marched to Phosy’s cell and spent some time working out how to open it. Phosy laughed.

  “I see being a civilian hasn’t pumped up your IQ any,” he said.

  The man set down the chair and spit in Phosy’s direction. “You want another beating?” he asked.

  “I doubt you’d manage it if I’m conscious,” said Phosy.

  The man went back to join his colleagues at the door. They seemed to be waiting for something. All the activity had triggered one more memory in Phosy’s head. A roadblock. The bus stopped. He was about to leave his seat when he felt a sharp pain in his neck. Not a knife. A needle. He’d been given a shot of something that knocked him out. It was obviously injected by somebody on the bus. Perhaps the same sedative they’d given Vilai. There was only one possible reason for all this. Men who should have been in jail were now his jailers. There had been a mutiny. His head swam
. Who in this disorganized community could have orchestrated such a coup? He looked up. The men at the far door took a step back to let someone through. As he passed they saluted. He walked confidently up to Phosy’s cell and smiled.

  “I can’t tell you how long I’ve yearned for this moment,” he said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  A Haeng Jury

  The judge sat on the fold-up chair with his legs crossed and his arms folded. Phosy remained leaning against the back wall shaking his head slowly, a wry smile at the corner of his mouth. It didn’t take a genius to work out that something serious had happened in his brief absence. He didn’t speak, so he and Judge Haeng merely stared at each other from a distance. At last the judge chuckled.

  “I am enjoying this too much to spoil it with conversation,” he said.

  Phosy remained silent.

  “Did you honestly believe I’d sit back forever and allow you and your group of mutants to walk all over me? To humiliate me?”

  Phosy continued to smile.

  “You don’t reach the position of authority as a judge if you don’t have a logical mind.”

  “Or a wealthy father,” said Phosy.

  “Yes, keep it up with the smartarsed comments, mister policeman. You can joke your way to hell for all I care. I don’t mind anymore. Because now I have you exactly where I want you.”

  “Illegally locked away?”

  “In this country the term ‘legal’ is amorphous. You are about to feel what it’s like to be humiliated. To be convicted of more crimes than you can talk your way out of in a hundred years.”

  “Is that right? And what is it I’m accused of?”

  Phosy got painfully to his feet and staggered across to the door. Despite the thick bars between them, the judge leaned backward as if expecting an attack.

  “Oh, I’ll save that little surprise for your hearing tomorrow,” he said.