"Don't be ridiculous," they said. "Of course this is a Lao matter. Enough of this nonsense."
Broken Vietnamese faces notwithstanding, the matter was finally resolved. On their way back in the jeep, police inspector Phosy had appeared to be as annoyed with Siri as he was with the entire nation of Vietnam.
"Did I do something wrong?" Siri had asked.
"No."
"Come on, Phosy. Something's eating you with a fork."
"You didn't get my message last night?"
"The 'need to see you urgently' message?"
"Yes, that one."
"Not until early this morning. Madame Daeng saw it as an amber rather than a red alert."
"Oh, did she? And this morning?"
"I had a swimming lesson."
"Don't make fun of me."
"I'm serious. The Seniors' Union has a class on Saturday mornings. They cleaned all the gunge out of the Ian Xang pool."
"You're learning to swim, at your age?"
"I've found the god of drowning is particularly insensitive to the age of his victims. I've had one or two narrow escapes in water lately. I thought it was time to master the element. And if I suddenly have the urge to swim across to Thailand, I could — "
"And your swimming lesson took precedence over my request to see you?"
"Phosy, you have to admit you've become a little oversensitive since you became a father. You've had me drop everything and rush to the police dormitory for…for what? A little wind? A touch of diarrhoea? A small — "
"You can never be too careful."
"Your wife's a nurse. And she's a very competent one. She can handle all these things."
"Dr Siri, Dtui comes from a bloodline of disaster. Her mother lost ten children during or shortly after birth. Our country has a horrible record. Twenty per cent of kids don't make it to their first birthdays. Forty per cent don't reach eleven."
"And I guarantee not one of them had a mother who was a qualified nurse and a father who could afford to put regular meals on the table. The only danger little Malee has, as far as I can see, is that her father's going to coddle her to death. Tell me, what was last night's emergency?"
"If you aren't going to take it seriously…"
"Come on. I'm listening."
"She's yellow."
"All over?"
"It's hepatitis."
"What does Dtui say?"
"She doesn't know. She's got other things on her mind."
"What does she say?"
"She said it's the light through the curtains."
"What colour's the curtain?"
"White."
"Phosy?"
"Creamy white."
"It's yellow, Phosy. I've seen it. Yellow with cartoon dogs or some such."
"The baby still looked yellow when I took her outside."
"Then stop taking her outside. Goodness, man. It's the rainy season. She'll catch a real disease. Then you'll have something to complain about."
Phosy hadn't appreciated the lecture. He'd sent two of his men with Siri to offload the corpse and retreated to his office to write his angry report. Madame Daeng had taken the motorcycle home from K6. Siri would be a little while settling poor Dew in at the morgue, then he'd walk back. He wished he could be home with his lovely new books but he needed time alone with the corpse to organise his thoughts. Dew still had a lot of talking to do, he decided. She knew her killer. That much was certain. Their midnight sauna pointed to the possibility that they were lovers. This rendezvous, he decided, was passion. The type of passion that makes you crazy enough to risk your career and your freedom for a few moments of pleasure. When he was young, Siri had known that passion himself.
He hadn't had time to search for a false compartment in which the killer might hide a sword. But he was convinced he wouldn't have found one. If you were planning to kill a lover, there were far more convenient — and much shorter — weapons that would have been easier to conceal. It was almost as if the epee was symbolic, perhaps even part of the ritual. He wondered if the epee was the message itself. What if it wasn't hidden at all? What if the girl knew she was about to die? Had she wanted to be killed? Had she brought it herself?
As often occurred in these confusing, ghost-ridden years of his life, Siri felt a familiar anger. He was the host, like it or not, of a thousand-year-old Hmong shaman by the name of Yeh Ming. It was like a gall-bladder infection, but of the soul. There was nothing tangible inside to operate on. He was stuck with this presence and still hadn't mastered the art of living with his ancestor. He'd wondered often whether the fault lay in his failure to grasp the true essence of religion. If he'd been a better Buddhist perhaps he could beat the eight-fold path to his spiritual back door, burst into the projection booth and catch old Yeh Ming tangled up in a thousand years of celluloid. Couldn't they then have sat down together, organised everything into reels, and canned and labelled them? Neither of them would have been confused. Then perhaps, just perhaps, he'd have some control over the spirits that flickered back and forth across his life. Perhaps Dew's soul could stroll up the central aisle and calmly explain why she was lying before him with a sword through her heart.
But, as it stood, Siri's connection to the afterlife was held together with old string. And, once again, he had to resort to the resources of his own mind, cover the dreams and premonitions in a blanket, and look at the facts. See what was right there in front of him. He used a pair of salad tongs to pick up the towel from its steel tray. That towel had worried him since he'd first seen it. What was it doing there on the floor covered in blood? No, not covered exactly. He laid it out across the second gurney and looked at the pattern. It was less saturated than he'd first thought. The blood had gathered at the centre like an ink blot test and all the corners but one were white. It didn't make sense to him. If it had been used to clean up after the murder, the stain would be patchier, streaked. This looked as if blood had merely seeped into it from one corner.
If he'd been in France or England he could have taken samples of the woman's blood, and samples from the towel, rushed them off to Serology and had a result — match or no match — before dinner. But he was in Laos and what Mahosot Hospital classified as a blood unit was old Mrs Bountien and an antique microscope. And she had a market garden of yams to look after so she only came in on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Siri considered walking over to the dormitory and inviting Mr Geung to help him with the autopsy but he decided to let his assistant enjoy his leisure hours in peace. Siri turned on the noisy Russian air-conditioner, put on his attractive green Chinese overalls and his rubber gloves, and turned towards his corpse. Dew had the build of a short, 48-kilogram-class weightlifter. She was attractive but not classically pretty. She was strongly built, not unlike Siri's first wife. He got the impression she could have looked after herself in a struggle. He took hold of the handle of the sword and was beginning to wonder whether he'd have the strength to remove it.
"Y…you'll hurt your b…back."
Siri turned and smiled. The Mr Geung radar never failed. Siri only had to stroll past the morgue on a weekend and Mr Geung would know. He'd be there like a shadow beside him. The morgue and the life and death it contained was Mr Geung's home.
"Mr Geung," said Siri. "Looks like we have a guest."