"I doubt that. Unless the title 'My mama sold the buffalo and bought a rocket launcher' appeals to you. Then there were word games and mathematics puzzles. Not to mention solving real life mysteries. I have to say there was a long period there when you squatted in my mind, Inspector Phosy."
"Me?"
"I was very afraid of the outcome."
"Of the three-epee case?"
"I was afraid you might miss the clues. I underestimated you, and for that I apologise deeply."
"No need to apologise. You had every right to be afraid. My investigation concluded with half-a-dozen bullet holes in Comrade Neung. End of case. It wasn't until I started to think like you that I saw things the way they really were."
"We can't think the thoughts of others, Phosy."
"Maybe not. But we can open our minds and let other people's thoughts in."
"I'm sure Comrade Neung will be eternally grateful you did. Tell me, at what point did you work it all out?"
"When I read the diary. There were a lot of thoughts at the back of my mind. I'd wondered about the monogram. They'd called Neung Zorro over there. It was a sort of playful joke. But Neung was embarrassed by it. He certainly didn't give me the impression he was so proud of it he'd use it as his signature. He didn't tell anyone when he came back. Not even his father. So I wondered who'd know about it. It had to be someone he met in Germany."
"So, by this stage you'd dismissed Neung as a suspect?"
"Not out with the garbage exactly but certainly not at the front of the queue."
"But it was while you were reading the diary that it came to you?"
"As clear as day. The whole tone of her writing felt wrong. I mean, she was a dull, average-looking, short woman on the heavy side. And she's writing about a jock, a good-looking jock who's after her. Basically, a nice guy. I mean, she should be so lucky."
"There are those who might accuse you of sexism with such a view, Phosy."
"Stuff them. Human nature is human nature and I didn't see anything about Jim that would make a man leave his senses. She wasn't exactly the fascinating type. She didn't seem to have an enchanting personality. And he was a fencing champion. If he'd been that way inclined he wouldn't have gone after a girl from his home town. I'm sure he could have had all the hanky-panky he could find time for. And there was something eerie about her diary."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I only got the translation, but it was like reading fiction, Siri. According to what she wrote she'd just been raped and she was using all this flowery language and smelling his sweat on her skin. I've never met an abused woman who'd rush off to write about it in her diary without taking a shower and a few days to recover. And she's calling him the devil taking her soul and, I don't know, it was just too much. And I started to wonder who was stalking who."
"Bravo."
"She'd known him since K6. She was a kid following around this good-looking smart older boy. Budding crush material. She knew what he liked to do. Where he went to school. Knew about his dad teaching him fencing. And he goes to study and she goes off to work at the clinic up north. And she's good. Smart as shit. Everyone knows she'll make a hell of a doctor. But the Americans flee the scene and Jim has the option to move to America. They offer her a scholarship. But she stays on at the clinic. Why would she want to do that? Love for the nation? Or love for something else?
"Our people are desperate for doctors. They find this girl running a clinic. They turn a blind eye to the fact she was working with the Americans and offer to send her off to study medicine. The Russians offer her a good deal, the Cubans, the North Koreans. But it's not till they offer her a place in Berlin that she accepts. And why? Guess who'd gone to East Germany six months earlier? The love of her life. But he's got himself married since she went away, and has a child. Yet still she believes she's destined to live her life with Neung. She sees it in the stars or somewhere. Already we start to recognise the obsession.
"I still have no idea where or how she taught herself fencing. I wonder whether she might have badgered Neung's father into teaching her after his son went off to study in the north. That would be ironic, wouldn't it? I haven't had a chance to ask him. But it's through Neung's fencing club that she 'accidentally' bumps into him again. He's kind. He tutors her. They spend time together. Her crush develops into a growth, a cancer. She wants him more than she's ever wanted anything. But she's a Lao woman. The advance has to come from him. And it doesn't come. She keeps a diary and through that diary her fantasy becomes real. Neung is pursuing her. She is the victim of his love. But time's running out. His course is coming to an end and she still hasn't turned her fairy story into reality. That's when the writing in the diary becomes darker Neung becomes this unknown evil character, Z. She's becoming more and more deranged. The whole rape scene sounds like a trashy Thai novel."
"How do…?"
"Not that I've ever read one. The point is she has to justify to herself why she's quitting her course. She couldn't imagine being in Germany without her fantasy lover so she deliberately fails her exams and gets thrown out. She blames it on some mysterious stalker. People feel sorry for her. So she…Siri, would you stop staring at me like that."
"I'm sorry, Phosy. This is the detective I've been searching for all my life."
"Sarcasm is the lowest form — "
"Believe me, Phosy. I've had the last of my sarcasm beaten out of me. I'm a recovered sarcaholic."
"Good, whatever, anyway, they're both back in Laos. Home territory. Jim besotted beyond reason. Beyond sanity. Neung still clueless. Jim follows Neung to the bookshop. He goes there often. She signs up also. By now she's built up the courage to confess her love. She tells him they need to talk. But he's too busy. He doesn't call her back. She stalks on, and that's when she sees Neung with Kiang. Probably follows them out to their love hotel. Bang. Her already troubled mind explodes. She wasn't that stable to start with but now, the man she's been in love with for fifteen years, the man she gave up her future and her dreams to follow home, Neung has a lover. A wife's one thing, expendable. She knows that men with wives take on lovers. Happens all the time. But this is an attractive single woman and Jim could smell the love in the air. It was all over for her. Revenge was the only option. Neung works at Electricite du Lao. Jim follows him around. She learns he's in a work team at K6. Coincidentally, the nurse attached to the K6 clinic breaks her leg. It appears someone pushed her off a balcony. They didn't ever find a culprit but I'm sure we all know who it was. And so she started to assemble her murder trilogy."
"If I'm allowed to say," Siri smiled, "that was a brilliant piece of detective work. There I was, afraid an innocent man was about to be shot, but you had it all worked out. If I'd known, I could have concentrated on my incarceration with a lighter heart."
Phosy wore a glow, not only of illegally imported Mekhong whisky, but of a policeman's pride. It suited him.
"But I was still a pace or two behind the amazing Dr Siri, wasn't I?" he said.
"How do you mean?"
"You worked it out without the benefit of the diary or information from Germany."
Siri blushed and lowered his voice. Two Thumbs had been edging his chair closer to keep up with the conversation.
"I had nothing conclusive," Siri admitted. "Just a series of hunches."
"Like the towel?"
"Like the towel, yes. Covering Dew's lap with the towel after killing her seemed really incongruous. If you hate someone you don't give a damn about their modesty. It seemed like a gesture of apology. "I'm sorry I had to kill you." And it occurred to me as being a particularly feminine act. That's when it first entered my mind that the encounter in the shower might have been a homosexual one and that the killer might have been a woman."