I introduce her to Kimberley. Dr. Supatra looks at her a little suspiciously; we’re all somewhat weary and wary these days of the Western superiority complex; but Kimberley is not quite like that anymore. We met on a case here in Bangkok about five years ago when she was a hormone-haunted manhunter. She’s a lot sadder and wiser these days. She’s even learned enough about Thai customs to press her hands together and raise them to her lips in a not-bad wai that acknowledges Supatra’s superior status in terms of age: she’s over fifty, no taller than five feet, slim and stern in her white laboratory coat. Now that Kimberley has shown humility, Supatra is prepared to open her heart, and she’s leading us out of the lab to the vault. As she walks with her head held contemplatively to one side, a technique that somehow compensates for her lack of height and makes it seem as if she is the tallest person around, she asks, “So, Sonchai, do you know who the victim is?”
A wince crosses my features so fast, Supatra doesn’t catch it. Kimberley does, though, with those merciless blue eyes.
“I checked her prints on the national database. A girl called Damrong, from Isakit.”
“A prostitute?”
“Of course.” Hm.
We have come to death’s filing cabinet, about one hundred man-size drawers set into a wall. Without needing to check the number, Supatra goes to one at about knee height and beckons to me to pull. It’s heavy but pleasingly mobile; a medium-to-hefty tug starts the drawer rolling, and Damrong comes out headfirst. Another wince on my part. Supatra assumes it’s my sensitive nature; the FBI has other ideas.
Even bloated in the face by the effects of asphyxiation, she still impresses. You can see the perfect line of her jaw, her high cheekbones, the Egyptian slant to her eyes, the infinite range of smiles available to those thin but sensual lips, the perfect white teeth, even that extraordinary something…
Who am I kidding? Of course the strangling has hideously altered the perfect balance of her features, bloating them almost beyond recognition; the others see only an ugly corpse-their minds are not prejudiced by prior knowledge. When the drawer is fully extended, though, there is no doubting the perfection of her limbs, the fullness of her breasts, the firm but yielding thighs. Her pubic hair has been shaved, and there is a silver ring set in one of her labia. The tattoo in the area of her navel is an unremarkable serpent coiling around a sword. Despite myself, I cannot help reaching out to her limp left wrist and turning it: a thin whitish scar no more than an inch long from a longitudinal cut into a minor vein. Dr. Supatra nods. “I saw it. An old wound. If it was an attempt at suicide, it was not a very serious one.”
“Yes,” I say.
Supatra has done a not-bad job with her stitching, which is famously neat. My eyes want to gloss over the great Y cut across the top of her chest, all the way down to her pelvis. All the organs have been removed, something I’m finding hard to assimilate, especially with the FBI now concentrating on my face rather than on the corpse.
“So,” I say, swallowing, “what can you tell us?”
“About the cause of death? In this case what you see is what you get. She died of strangulation by a nylon rope about one centimeter thick. The orange rope your men found around her neck is the rope the perpetrator used: the fibers correspond. There is no competition for cause of death-all her organs were in perfect condition, and there were no signs of other wounding or any viral or bacterial agents that might have contributed in any way to her demise.”
“No signs of forced penetration?”
“None at all. It seems as if a lubricant was used. Of course, that does not necessarily mean intercourse was consensual, merely relatively painless.”
“Sperm?”
A shake of the head. “Both vagina and anus had recently been penetrated, one assumes by a penis, in which case a condom must have been used. There is no evidence of sperm or male seminal fluid.”
I let a beat pass, because Supatra is holding out, playing the high priestess, saying nothing until asked, so I say, “And?”
“No recreational drugs. Whatever her state of mind when she died, it was not influenced by narcotics.”
“Signs of struggle?” the FBI asks hopefully.
Supatra shakes her head. “That’s what’s strange. You would at least expect some bruising somewhere on her body from attempted resistance, a few strained muscles at least. It’s almost as if she were strangled while tied up-except there are no indications of forced restraint either.”
“Damn,” Kimberley says. Supatra cocks an eyebrow. “I just don’t want to be convinced by the ending, I guess.”
“Ending?” Supatra wants to know. “What ending?”
Kimberley covers her mouth, but it’s too late. I come clean and tell Supatra about the DVD. Supatra nods; the total pro, she understands perfectly why I didn’t tell her about it before. She even gives a matriarchal smile.
“Indolence is a national weakness,” she explains to the FBI.
“Sonchai was afraid that if I saw the movie, I would get lazy and not do a thorough job.”
“I decided to keep back the disk before I knew you would be the pathologist on the case,” I explain.
“I think you decided to keep the disk a secret for other reasons too, no? A snuff movie fetches a lot on the international market, they say. You are holding a very valuable product.” Turning to Kimberley: “But what is it about the ending that you find so hard to cope with?”
Kimberley doesn’t want to answer, so I promise to show the whole video to Supatra, as soon as I’ve got time. The FBI has another question, though. “Dr. Supatra, have you ever before come across a case of strangulation where there were no signs of struggle at all?”
Supatra looks at her curiously, as if she has realized what this case might mean to a farang. “Not that I can recall, but you have to bear in mind this is a different culture, producing a different kind of consciousness.”
Kimberley frowns. “Different kind of consciousness?”
“Death,” the pathologist says, “the way a culture views death defines its attitude to life. Forgive me, but sometimes the West gives the impression of being in denial. The Thai attitude is a little different.”
“What’s so different about Thailand?”
“Oh, it’s not Thailand in particular. The whole of Southeast Asia has the ghost bug-the Malaysians are even worse than us. There are no statistics, of course, but to listen to Thais, you would likely conclude that the undead outnumber the living by a hundred to one.”
“But you don’t think that, Dr. Supatra. You’re a scientist.”
Dr. Supatra smiles and casts a glance at me with eyebrows raised. I nod. “I’m a scientist-but I’m not a Western scientist. With Sonchai’s permission I would like to show you something.” I nod again on Kimberley ’s behalf, and we follow Supatra into her office, which forms part of the morgue. Still maintaining an ambiguous smile, she takes her laptop out from a drawer, along with a Sony Handycam video camera. “This is what I do most nights,” Supatra says. She demonstrates how she points the camera at her office window, which gives onto the morgue, facing the rows of cadavers in their steel tombs, and records onto her hard disk. “Would you like to see last night’s collection?” She checks my eyes once more; the FBI is my guest, after all. I nod for the third time, feeling awkward. Am I giving in to the temptation to be mischievous? I’m suddenly nervous about this unannounced initiation; maybe the FBI will freak? It’s too late for second thoughts, however. Kimberley sits in Supatra’s chair at her desk while Supatra plays with the laptop for a moment. “There. I’m afraid I have to use infrared light, so the images are not very clear. Hard to explain scientifically, though.”
The FBI is finding it hard to believe what is happening. Only seconds ago it was a normal sort of day in the life of a cop. I’m watching Kimberley intently while the images start to play. Supatra has done this to me before, so I have a good idea of what the FBI is seeing, even though the screen is not in my line of sight. Kimberley turns pale, puts one hand to her face, stares at me for a moment, turns back to the laptop, shakes her head, then winces. She puts her hand to her mouth as if she is about to vomit. Supatra leans over her to turn off the video clip.