"A month short of giving birth to what looks like a small bulldozer," Siri said.
"And the marriage?"
"They seem content."
"I meant yours."
"Me?" At last a happy thought. "I'm a very lucky man, old brother. I'd forgotten what a pleasure it was to watch a woman breathe in her sleep…see her chest rise and fall."
"Steady, you'll be writing poetry next." Siri was silent. "You haven't?"
"Only a short one."
"You're like me, Siri. Can't get through life without a woman. Too bad you'll have to settle for just the one."
"One what?"
"Wife. Our friends up at the roundabout are introducing a law against polygamy. I know the average lowland Lao in his right mind can't handle more than one wife, so it would appear to be one more kick in the testicles for the hill tribes."
"How do you find out all these things?"
"They keep me in the loop. A driver comes by once a week with politburo news, a copy of Lao Huksat newsletter, and a calendar of meetings I don't bother to go to. Want to know the highlights of the week?"
"Go on, make me laugh."
"My favourite is the fact that they've decided all spirit houses have to be registered."
"By the occupants?"
Civilai laughed. "Oh, and there's a new ban on contraceptive devices, not that anyone could afford one anyway. It appears they're offering rice tax deductions to families with more than three children. Got to shore up the dwindling proletariat."
"They offering to feed them too?"
"Not as far as I know. Then there's the usual list of Western paranoia measures: a moratorium on blue jeans to go with the one on long hair. And they'll be sending inspectors around to coffee shops to make sure the lighting isn't too dim."
"So you can see the stains on the tablecloths?"
"Dim lighting apparently leads to lasciviousness and lewdness."
"Which in turn leads to pregnancy and a higher population. I wish they'd make their minds up."
"It would all be hilarious if it weren't true."
"How's our old friend collectivism?"
"It's all in the advanced planning stage."
"They're really going ahead with it? They're madder than I thought."
"Collectivism: the gathering of farmers who have nothing to meet once a week to distribute it."
"That just about sums it up. The communists in Russia introduced it to help the peasants rise up against the oppressive landlords. We haven't got any oppressive landlords."
"They'll probably hire one or two before they start the programme."
"I'm sure I'd be on their list."
"How so?"
"I'm about to go to jail for absentee landlordism and pimping. A fifty-centimetre-tall official from Housing came by this morning and told me I have to give up my house."
"And all the freaks it contains?"
"They think I don't live there."
"You don't."
"I know."
The two old men smiled and shared a banana.
"Hot, isn't it?" Civilai said at last.
"Bloody hot."
"This place seems to switch from the cool season to the bloody hot season without passing through a tepid or a lukewarm season on the way. You'd expect to find Crazy Rajid stark naked in the river on days like these."
"Hmm, now you mention it, I haven't seen him walking aimlessly around town for a while."
"Me neither."
"I hope he's all right." Siri's brow furrowed.
"I'm not sure how you'd go about checking up on an insane homeless Indian. He might have just curled up and died and nobody would be any the wiser."
"I think I'll ask around. But for a few wonky genes here, and an overdose of vodka there, it could be you or me walking endless circles around Nam Poo Fountain in our underwear."
"Speak for yourself. You know what Nietzsche says about madness?"
"No."
"Me neither."
Siri laughed. "Ah, Civilai, you're a waste of perfectly good skin and body parts."
He took another swig of the vindictive spirits. He detected a hint of turnip but he really didn't want to ask what it was made of. It hurt his insides and he decided it was exactly what he needed. He decided also that it was time to tell Civilai about his morning.
All Siri wanted to do after lunch was go home and sleep, but he'd arranged to meet Inspector Phosy at the morgue. Saturday was officially a half day; so when he returned, Dtui and Mr Geung had already left. He unlocked the door and went directly to the cutting room. He unfastened the freezer and pulled out the drawer. His beautiful Madonna was wrapped in a blue plastic sheet that he rolled down as far as her neck. He took a step back and looked at her pale mask of a face. She had been so lovely. What had led to this? Why could he not rub some consecrated sticks together and summon her spirit? Why was his supernatural power so ineffective when he could most make use of it? One or two answers from the beyond and he'd have the bastard who did this. He hated his own psychic impotence every bit as much as he hated the maniac who had erased this beauty's life and stolen her dignity.
"She must have been very pretty."
Siri hadn't heard Phosy arrive. The inspector — upright, middle-aged, and muscular — looked none the worse for his seven months of marriage to Nurse Dtui. He ate like a horse, but it melted off. He had raven black hair that Dtui assured everyone didn't come from a bottle, and a keen, curious face.
"Did Dtui tell you everything?" Siri asked, forgetting his greeting manners.
"Yes, she was home for lunch. She wanted me to tell you she was sorry for — "
"I understand. Do you have any idea who'll be handling this case? I want to be involved."
"You already are," Phosy told him. "It's me."
"I thought you only handled political issues these days."
"It was Comrade Surachai's idea. He's the committee member who rode in with her this morning. He knew about me from Kham, my old boss. Surachai has some clout with my chief. The folks up at Vang Vieng are frightened there might be a killer on the loose. So let's get to it."
Siri was delighted. He'd worked with Phosy on a number of cases; he thought they made a splendid team. Siri had been ramrodded into the coroner's job, but it did give him the opportunity to vent his detective proclivities. As a penniless young medical-school student in Paris he had been deprived of the type of raunchy entertainment other men his age sought. Instead, he'd found solace in the two old-franc cinema halls and in libraries where Maurice LeBlanc, Gaston Leroux, and Stanislas-Andre Steeman took him on noir journeys through the nettle-strewn undergrowth of the criminal world. His hero, Inspector Maigret, had convinced him that there could be no better career than that of solving crimes and putting blackguards behind bars.
There hadn't been much detecting to be done in the jungles of Vietnam and northern Laos in his army days; so his dream, like most of the dreams men harbour, had turned to snuff and been huffed away by history. Until now.
"Where do we start?" Phosy asked, a question every closet member of the surete de police yearns to hear. Although brilliant in his own way, Phosy never pretended to be anything he wasn't. He knew his limitations.
"You already have a picture of the girl?" Siri asked, although he knew Phosy's subordinate, Sergeant Sihot, had arrived that morning to meet the body and taken a Polaroid instant photograph. The camera was one of the police department's latest crime-fighting tools.
"Sihot went back with the cadre to Vang Vieng. He'll show the picture around and try to get an identification."
"Good." Siri nodded. "Then I suggest we look at the pestle."
Rinsed clean now and tagged, the object sat innocently on a shelf above the dissection table.
"It's not your common or garden variety," Phosy noticed, weighing the heavy, blunt tool in his hand. "Unusual size; somewhere between a cooking implement and a medicine crusher."