He knelt beside her and turned over her bloody hand. There were deep scratches on her palms that he took to be defence wounds. What must she have gone through? She was a fighter, there was no doubt about it. Although the original colour of her shoes was unrecognisable, the tread seemed to match the footprints all around. The doctor was certain she'd have a lot more to tell him when they got her back to the morgue but he wanted to be certain he hadn't overlooked anything in the auditorium. He made one more slow circuit. He retraced the blood trail, taking note of footprints which could have been those of another person or merely skid-marks and distortions. He returned to the mats, imagined her leaning back against them, skewered with a sword but not dead. How could she have gone so far once her heart had been pierced? What was the murderer doing as she staggered around? Did he watch her? Had he already fled, assuming she was dead?
Siri would leave Sergeant Sihot to photograph the scene but the pictures would never capture the menace that lurked there in this musty room. Nor could they recall the scents of sweat and blood and fear. He walked to the door and, like a painter stepping back to admire his work, he turned around to take in the scene one last time. And that was when he saw it, a small white speck on the window ledge above the mats. He hurried back and dragged a balance bench over to them. He angled it against the window ledge, being careful not to disturb the mats or the pool of blood, and shimmied up it. As he neared the top he could see that the object was a small brown medicine bottle with a white label. He pulled a tissue from his pocket, took hold of the bottle by its cap and read the handwritten lettering: 'vitamins'.
In front of the auditorium, under the porch roof, Sihot and Phosy were questioning the woman who'd found the body. Her face was still blanched from the awful discovery. The Vietnamese were nowhere to be seen but on the far side of the street, beneath a small shelter, sat the gardener with his chin perched on the handle of his broom. He raised his hand when he saw Siri but the doctor felt oddly uncomfortable returning the wave. Siri approached the policemen and raised his brow to Sihot who broke away and went into the building to take his photographs. Phosy thanked the woman and she headed off into the rain on wobbly legs.
"Anything?" Siri asked.
"The witness is a cleaner here," Phosy said. "She recognised the victim. Says she's a medic, based out at the old Settha Hospital at Silver City. But she comes here to K6 three times a week to man a clinic they opened for the staff. She has a little office at the old youth club. Yesterday was one of her regular days. The cleaner unlocked the hall at eleven to get it ready for tonight's lecture. Any idea how long the medic's been dead?"
"I'd say sometime last night. Around ten?"
"Damn." He looked at the bottle in Siri's hand. "Find something?"
"It might not be connected. I found it on the window sill above the sports equipment. The label says it's vitamins but labels have been known to tell fibs."
"You haven't opened it?"
"Not yet. I want to take it back to the morgue…"
"And perform more of your fingerprint magic?"
"Don't mock. One day, that magic will solve one of your cases, Inspector."
"I'll believe that when I see it. So, is she ready to go?"
"As ready as she'll ever be."
"I'll go and take a look around. Did you find anything unusual in there?"
"It's all unusual, Phosy. All of it."?
Nurse Dtui and Mr Geung were still waiting in the morgue office when Siri and the third victim arrived. They'd been waiting all day, not knowing where their boss was. Waiting and bailing. There were steps leading to the front door of the morgue, which was just as well because the building was surrounded by sixty centimetres of water Most of the lower buildings were barricaded with sandbags and Mahosot was taking on the appearance of a hospital deep in the heart of Venice. X-ray had already brought in a rowing boat to ferry patients back to the ward. The morgue would have held up to the flood but for a slight crack in the back wall which allowed water to seep into the cutting room. Dtui and Geung had failed to patch it up with adhesive bandage so they resorted to surrounding it with a semi-circular orchestra pit of sandbags. It refilled every half hour and looked like a small ornamental pond.
They walked into the vestibule to watch the arrival of the new body.
"My adoring husband isn't with you?" Dtui asked Siri.
"He had to go straight to police HQ with Sihot," Siri replied.
"I'm sure he did."
On any other day, Siri would have followed up on Dtui's comment, but this was far from any other day. Two orderlies carried the corpse past the office door and into the autopsy area. The body was wrapped in a tarpaulin in an attempt to preserve the blood trails.
"Ano…another guest f…for room one," smiled Geung. He liked to keep busy. He followed the orderlies and barked at them to be careful.
"Oh, Doc. That isn't — " Dtui began.
"It's another one. Yes, Dtui."
"The same MO?"
"I get the feeling it would have been. Except this one fought back. She refused to go quietly."
"I like her already."
They removed the epee and placed it with the other two. There was something different about it, lighter or…But Siri would get to that later. They undressed the young woman as Dtui made notes about the bloodstains on her skin and clothing. The victim was physically fit, with a well defined musculature. Unusual for a Lao woman. Probably an athlete. They took their allotted three photographs. They washed the corpse and noticed immediately that the Zorro brand on her thigh was deep, much deeper than those of her predecessors'.
"In fact," Dtui said, looking closely at the wound, "I'd say one of these cuts is deep enough to have sliced an artery. What do you think, Doctor?"
When Dtui wasn't breastfeeding or burping or lulling Malee to sleep, Siri liked to have her comment during autopsies. He still had hope she'd secure a scholarship in the Soviet bloc and study to take over from him at the morgue. She already showed more enthusiasm and acumen than Siri himself.
"Let's have a look," Siri said, and leaned over the body.
He cut gently at the flesh around the Z and worked his way inward towards the slashes. The cuts were wild, almost fanatical. Completely different from the carefully carved thigh of the second victim, Kiang. It was the cross cut, the axis of the Z, that had dug deepest and had, in fact, nicked the femoral artery.
"Hmm. Now that's interesting," he said.
"This is where all the blood came from," Dtui decided.
"And, if that's the case…"
"The Z had to have been cut before she was killed with the sword."
"Otherwise?"
"Otherwise the wound wouldn't have bled like the Nam Pou fountain. How did he keep her still enough to sign her thigh? It must have hurt like hell."
Siri thought about the bottle of medicine. If it had contained some kind of sedative, that might have been enough. The killer drugged the woman and was signing her thigh when she came round. All possible. Once they were done with the autopsy Siri would spend time with the bottle and its contents.
"She might have been drugged," he said. "In fact they all might have been drugged. Teacher Oum's off at a mini re-education seminar and she's the only one with the chemicals to find out what our three ladies had in their stomachs, we won't know for sure until she gets back tomorrow. So, let's keep delving."
The medic had been a well-endowed young lady and the sword had entered her left breast from the south-west. After his Y incision, Siri and Dtui set about tracing the path of the blade. They arrived at the point where it had passed through the rib cage. The bones were unmarked so they had to assume the sword passed between the ribs without touching them. Enter Mr Geung. He wielded his rib-cutters like a ferocious Greek warrior. If one were to ignore his perm he might have been taken for a middle-aged Achilles. Siri and Dtui stood back to admire his work.