If his skin hadn't been on so tight he would have jumped out of it. He turned to see the hospital clerk in the doorway.
"Yes?"
"Doctor? Are you all right?"
"Yes."
"You have another phone call."
This time, Phosy was still on the line when the coroner reached the administration office. Siri wondered exactly how much red tape would have to be unwrapped to get a phone extension over at the morgue. He didn't need all this exercise. His lungs had been giving him trouble of late. He wheezed once or twice into the mouthpiece.
"Siri?"
"Phosy?"
"Any news?"
"Lots. Just let me…catch my breath. You go first."
"Nothing at all from the photo. I did meet a weaver who recognized the ribbon. She gave me the name of a shop in Vientiane that sells it. It isn't available up here apparently. That might lead to something. And I've been sharing your theory about the shrouded rice worker. I got some interesting reactions to that. I told people to spread it around and one farmer got back to me. He told me the driver of the truck that picks up his excess rice for the government tax mentioned something similar once."
"How similar?"
"Well, you know what stories are like up here. It was about a woman he'd seen working the fields who wasn't really a woman."
"And she was a…?"
"The locals told the driver she used to be a woman — and this is from him, not me — but she drank from a cursed pool, and it turned her invisible. So they wrapped her up from head to foot so she wouldn't frighten outsiders."
"And he believed them?"
"He's a truck driver."
"Did your farmer recall where this invisible woman was seen…or not seen?"
"He couldn't remember. But we're looking for the driver. We've got his name. It shouldn't take long. Are you ready to speak yet?"
"I am, and it's important. Let's hope we don't get cut off. I went to the lycee and met teacher Oum. I mentioned the condition of our corpse, and she'd heard the same story from one of her students over a year ago."
"The same story?"
"The beautiful girl, the strangulation, the tree, the pestle."
"Shit."
"Exactly. I went to meet the girl. She told me the story again exactly as she'd heard it: a mirror of our case. I followed the trail. We found the girl who'd told our girl and the boy who'd told her, and on and on. At last we arrived at a rather shy, quiet lass who'd started the whole ball rolling. She was from Luang Nam Tha in the north. The lycee's still pretty exclusive, but she'd been awarded a Cuban scholarship from Comrade Castro. She was reluctant to tell us where she'd heard the story, but teacher Oum bullied her into giving up her source. It appears she'd heard it from her sister, and her sister's a nurse."
"In Luang Nam Tha?"
"Yes, which attaches a grain of truth to the rumour."
"You have the sister's name?"
"And address. Am I not the complete detective?"
"You're Inspector Migraine incarnate."
"It's Maigret, Phosy. But thank you. Should I leave that avenue of investigation to you?"
"Of course. Siri, I can't believe this animal has committed the same atrocity more than once."
"Fortunately we live in a place where things like this are so scandalous people continue to talk about them."
It was the first chance to meet and speak in relative privacy. Phan had done his duty the previous evening. He'd charmed the immediate and extended family. The grandmother, eleven sheets to the wind, had declared him 'a very jolly boy who would be a great asset to the family'. The father had translated proudly for Phan. The others had shushed her and told her there was no such plan in the works but Phan knew they were all thinking the same thing. His foot was in the door. His was a skill many men yearned to possess and he had it in droves. He was now ready for the prelude to the kill.
"You shouldn't be here," she said.
Phan had driven the truck up a particularly troublesome hill to arrive at Wei's school from the far side. The track from the village was too narrow to navigate so a huge detour had been necessary to arrive there in the vehicle. But the old Chinese truck was a vital player in this drama. Phan arrived just as the bell sounded for the end of the day's lessons. The children gathered around the truck like ants on a wounded caterpillar. He did tricks for them: produced boiled sweets from their ears, made gooseberries vanish. He was the Messiah. Wei had walked out to meet him.
"I know. I apologize," he said. "I finished work early. I didn't have anything to do. I remembered your mother saying you'd hurt your toe. She said it was painful for you to walk."
"It's only half a kilometre along the track."
"Even so, I thought you might like a ride."
The other teacher had come out to watch the show with a big smile on her face.
"It…it isn't appropriate," she said. Wei's cheeks were as stained as rose apples.
"I mean you and the children, of course."
"By road, you have to go all the way around the mountain."
"I have to anyway. Look…" He leaned closer so the children couldn't hear. She smelled grease on him and some kind of disinfectant soap. "I didn't want to embarrass you, really. I just…I just thought I could help. If you prefer, I'll leave you to walk."
She looked at the children gathered expectantly around the truck, then back at him. So tall, so polite…so interesting.
"All right, for the children's sake," she said at last. "They don't get many opportunities to ride in a truck. It will be nice for them."
They screamed all the way back to the village. Wei sat in the passenger seat with a smile on her face that wouldn't go away. Their countryside, the scenery she knew too well, was suddenly unrecognizable. From the window of his truck it had become…magical. A feeling had come over her she couldn't understand. Part of it was physical, as if she needed to wee but knew she wouldn't be able to. Her insides danced. It was all part of the spell. She had suddenly been whisked up in a hurricane that blew through her world.
The children from outside the village were dropped off individually at their huts. They strode proudly from the truck as if a private limousine had delivered them. Phan saluted like a chauffeur when they thanked him. They would remember the experience for years. He dropped the children who lived in the village at the hand-pump diesel stand in the dead centre of town. The provincial roadway that passed through the village was barely two dirt lanes wide. Buses and military vehicles carried their own spare petrol so the diesel stand was largely for decoration. When Phan had filled up there twice he doubled the owner's monthly revenue.
Wei was about to follow the children but Phan touched her arm. "Wei, could I talk to you?"
"It isn't — "
"Appropriate, I know." He smiled. "We're in the middle of town. There are eyes everywhere. We have a hundred chaperones. How dangerous can it be?"
"I didn't say…" She was tongue-tied. She spoke all day for a living but here she was…couldn't put a sentence together.
Phan leaned against his door, as far from her as he could be. He clutched the wheel like a shield and stared at the road ahead. "I had…I had no idea, no plan," he began. "I came only to work. I've been to a hundred, two hundred towns like this. I've done my surveys, made my calculations, and left. I've enjoyed meeting the people, sharing jokes and experiences. But I've never…"
Wei was looking out of her own window so he couldn't see the crimson her face had become. "I don't think you should say any more." She pushed open her door a centimetre or two.
"No, I have to say this or I would never forgive myself. I have never felt this way before. I have to leave soon and we will probably never see each other again. And, if we don't, I want to leave you with this…this overwhelming emotion I've had since I first saw you by the pond. It's not…I wish I were more…wish I were better with words. Because when I saw you something flooded into me and I don't know how to describe what it was. You've changed me."