Before reaching the hospital he passed two of the new billboards. If 1977 had been the year of the drought, 1978 had to be the year of the government billboard. They'd sprung up everywhere urging the population to work harder, be honest, love the nation, and grow bananas. A kind critic might have called the artwork naive. Siri had three or four adjectives of his own to describe it. He believed if some archaeologist four hundred years from now were to uncover only billboards as evidence of an ancient civilisation, they would be forced to assume the Lao had been a wooden, asymmetrical, poorly proportioned race with no necks. Their schoolchildren, even at seven or eight years of age, had the traumatised expressions of forty-year-old addicts. And there was no way to distinguish between male and female adults apart from hairstyles or hats. Short-haired, hatless beings were asexual.
If there had been a department of billboards somewhere, it was very likely vying for the role of ministry because it was frighteningly prolific and without shame. At the entrance to the lane leading to Vientiane's largest mosque was a board encouraging everyone to breed pigs. Not twenty metres from the Lao Patriotic Women's Association was another board proudly boasting 'WOMEN — DEVELOPING OUR COUNTRY AS MOTHERS AND LABOURERS'. Siri had hoped the rains would erase all the silly propaganda and let the population think for itself. But they were standing up to the weather better than the leaning front fences and posts.
Inspector Phosy and Sergeant Sihot were waiting for Siri beneath the arch at the mouth of the lane that led into the hospital. The water was ten centimetres deep there and both men had their shoes in their hands and their trouser cuffs rolled up.
"Couldn't you have found a drier place to wait?" Siri asked.
"Your hospital's under water," Phosy complained. "Anywhere else and we'd need oxygen tanks. Are you ready?"
"Ready for what?" Siri asked.
"We thought you'd like to come out with us to visit the crime scenes," Sihot said.
"You have permission from K6?" Siri asked.
"Must have been good wine," Phosy said.
It was fortunate that the Intelligence Section's Willy's jeep had a high wheelbase and four-wheel drive because the road out to K6 was porridge. Phosy drove slowly and Siri sat in the rear seat with Sihot, catching up on the news of victim number two. Sihot was a solid, military type, more chipped out of rock than created. You wouldn't want to hit him on the head with a mallet for fear of damaging the mallet. He lost one page of his notebook in a stormy gust of wind but he assured Siri it contained nothing of any importance.
"Victim number two," he read, shouting above the roar of the troubled engine, "named Khantaly Sisamouth, nickname, Kiang. Age thirty-two. Single. Born in Xieng Khaw, way up north. Taught primary school in the liberated zone for ten years then was sent to Bulgaria to study library science."
"Who did she offend to get that assignment?" Siri asked.
"It sounded like hell to me, too, Doctor."
"Library science in Bulgarian. Poor thing."
"She was there for two years and came back with what they call a certificate in information technology."
"And how did you identify her?"
"Her mother, Doctor. Said her girl hadn't come home on Saturday night. She filed a missing person report at the local political office and they contacted us. She identified her daughter from our Polaroids."
"Did she know where Kiang went to on Saturday night?"
"She had no idea, Comrade. Told the mother she was off for some exercise in the evening. She was all dressed up in her tracksuit. Mother's just recovering from hepatitis so she went to bed early. When she woke up the daughter's bed hadn't been slept in."
"Any connections between the two victims?"
"None that we've found apart from them both studying in the eastern bloc."
"Lovers? Friends? Fencing connections?"
"We're looking into it. Right now, that's all we've got."
As if to emphasise the point, the next half-empty page flipped from his notebook and curled away in the slipstream of the jeep.?
At K6, a very reluctant Comrade Phoumi was there to meet them. The rain had started again, a depressing northern European sprinkling. The guards from the PM's protection team were lined up in front of the sauna. But, with so much military testosterone on display, there wasn't one umbrella between them. Dr Siri, who had fewer problems displaying his feminine side, emerged from the jeep hoisting a bright yellow umbrella with orange toadstools and lime-green goblins. No words were spoken.
Phoumi and Major Dung led the way to the door of the bungalow in whose yard sat the carport and the sauna. The windows were all open to ventilate a house that had obviously not been occupied for some time. Phosy and Sihot sat at the kitchen table with their notepads and it was agreed the security personnel would come to be interviewed one by one. As had been hastily arranged, Comrade Viset, a Vietnamese-speaking Lao attached to military intelligence, was to act as translator. As the first two interviewees were Phoumi and Dung, an atmosphere of belligerence and non-cooperation was established early on.
Siri was not privy to the events in the front kitchen. He had been encouraged by Phosy to 'float around' and pick up information outside. The unguarded sauna structure was his first stop. Somebody had replaced the burnt-out bulb, probably the investigators. He turned on the light and sat on the lower bench. As he studied the simple packing-case structure he became more and more convinced that neither of the weapons, the knife nor the epee, could have been concealed. For confirmation, he prodded and poked every wooden slat, every roof tile, every floorboard. It was what it appeared to be, a wooden box with a gas tank and a pile of stones. No secret compartments. No trickery. But, just as the burning light in the carport had worried him two days earlier, the light inside the sauna now gave him the same troubled feeling. The light had been switched on and had burnt out. It seemed very likely that once he had done the job, the killer had turned on both lights to…what? To attract attention? Had he wanted the body to be found quickly?
Siri went outside and located the Vietnamese sentry he'd spoken to on Saturday. He was standing towards the rear of the interview queue and Siri pulled him to one side. The doctor had a theory and he was about to test it with a blatant lie.
"We have a problem," Siri said to the young man after a few niceties. "I believe you know what that problem is."
The soldier looked at Siri and hesitated before he spoke.
"I don't understand, sir."
"You told me you'd stood behind your major and seen the state of the girl inside."
"So?"
"There was no light inside. From a metre beyond the doorway you couldn't have seen anything but her feet. Everything was in shadow. No windows."
"I saw her."
"I believe you did, but not then. Once he'd witnessed what was inside that room, the major closed the door and came looking for the head of security. He left you there and told you not to let anyone in the sauna."
"That's right, he did."
"And everyone left, apart from you."
"What are you trying to say?"
"That you were curious, so you went in and took a peek for yourself."
"That's a lie. No, sir. I would never do that."
"Is that so?"
"It is."
"Then, you see that up there?" Siri pointed to a box attached to one of the posts that carried the power cables.
"Yes."
"You know what that is?"
"It's a junction box." The soldier was sweating.
"Is it? You forget where you are. You've heard of the CIA, I assume?"