"Black stone. Looks expensive," Siri agreed.
"I'll have someone show it around, too, and see what we can come up with. Does the body tell us anything?"
Siri walked to the corpse and pulled back the plastic wrapping. He held up the callused fingers and indicated the sunburned ankles. He and Phosy ping-ponged ideas back and forth for almost an hour but still they were unable to come up with anything plausible. The state of the corpse left them both baffled.?
Dtui usually put her foot firmly down on any plans her husband might have to work on the weekend, but this case had become personal to her. She'd told him to do everything he could to avenge the girl's death. He would leave that afternoon for Vang Vieng to join Sergeant Sihot. Siri vowed to invest more thought into the condition of his Madonna while the policemen were away.
To the great displeasure of many, Madame Daeng's noodle shop was not open on Sunday. This was Siri's day off and she insisted on spending every one of its twenty-four hours with her husband. He had no objection whatsoever. They both loved to walk but Daeng's arthritis limited their treks. Invariably, they would head off on Siri's motorcycle to beauty spots that in another era would have been crowded with happy people. These days they often enjoyed their picnics alone.
But Siri had designated this Sunday a Vientiane day. The capital was somewhat ghostly when they set out at nine. Stores were shuttered, many for so long the locks had rusted to the hasps. Houses were in permanent disrepair. The dusts of March had settled on the city like a grey-brown layer of snow. Roads, even those with bitumen surfaces, looked like dirt tracks. There were no obvious colours anywhere, only shades. Even the gaudiest billboards had been reduced to a fuzzy pastel. The most common sounds they heard as they cruised the streets were the sweeping of front steps and the dry-clearing of throats.
Theirs was not an aimless tour of the city. Siri and Daeng passed all the spots at which Crazy Rajid had been a feature: the Nam Poo Fountain, the Black Stupa, the three old French villas on Samsenthai, and the bank of the river. As far as they knew, that was the young man's territory. Siri stopped at every open door he passed and chatted with neighbours. Yes, they knew Crazy Rajid, although not by name. Siri began to wonder whether he and Civilai might have christened the poor man themselves. Some had given the vagrant food; most had offered him water at one time or another. Some had tried to engage him in conversation, but it appeared that nobody other than Siri, Civilai, and Inspector Phosy had ever heard him speak, and even to them he had uttered only a word or two.
Everyone considered him a feature of their landscape and all agreed, "Now you come to mention it, I haven't seen him for a while." The last time anyone recalled a sighting had been the previous Thursday. That meant the local crazy man had been absent for ten days. Details were sketchy at best. Nobody makes a note of seeing a street person. But the account of one witness was accurate enough to give Siri cause for concern.
Ba See sold old stamps and coins from a tiny shopfront near the corner of Samsenthai Road and Pangkham. It was unlikely she made a living from it but she enjoyed sitting on her threadbare wicker armchair and watching the street.
"Every Friday," she said. "Regular as clockwork for the past two years he'd turn up at five thirty a.m. on the dot. Don't know how he managed it. Never saw him wear a watch, or much else for that matter. He'd go over to the first of them colonials across the street." She pointed to three ancient French buildings behind a low white wall. At one time they'd been white, but time and weather had turned them as ugly as a smoker's teeth.
"He'd go over and bang on the door," she continued. "No point in it at all. There are six families living in there, government workers from the provinces, and they've all got their own rooms. The front door's never locked. But he didn't ever go in. He just stood there knocking. People came down to see what he wanted but he never wanted anything. Only wanted to bang by the looks of it. Every damned week. Then, last Friday, he didn't show up. I was waiting for my regular five thirty bang but he didn't come. It surprised me. Even some of the women in the house came down and looked out the door like they were expecting him. Day before yesterday, he didn't come again. Must be something wrong."
Siri and Daeng went to the old building and asked the few people who were home. They supported Ba See's story. Nobody had any idea why he knocked on the door every week, and nobody had seen him for the last two Fridays. Siri leaned his head against Daeng's shoulder blade. They were sitting on his bike. No greater love has any man than to let his wife have a turn at driving his beloved motorcycle.
"So what do we do next?" Daeng asked.
"If we had TV we could put an artist's impression of him on the evening news."
"Failing that?"
"Failing that I think we've come to the end of our leads for the day. Let's mark it down as ongoing and move on to the next impossible situation."
"Your house?"
"Are you up for it?"
"If you are."
They pulled up in front of Siri's old bungalow and conducted a quick surveillance of the property. There were some six children frozen like statues in the front yard. Daeng turned to Siri, who could only shrug. On the roof was what looked like a handleless red-and-white-polka-dot umbrella forming a dome in the centre of the tiles. A makeshift clothesline had been strung up between a tree and a very ornate spirit house, one that hadn't been there on Siri's last visit. An assortment of brightly coloured ladies' undergarments hung from the rope like distress flags on a ship. Thai religious music filled the street in front of the house, and one of the front windows bore brown tape in the shape of a cross.
"I don't know," Daeng said. "Fighting the French in the jungles is one thing…"
"Be brave, ma Pasionaria. A warning, though: I may have to feign anger. I'd appreciate it if you didn't burst out laughing."
"I'll do my best."
Siri's habit of collecting strays had begun when his original lodging was blown up and he was relocated to the suburbs. It hadn't seemed logical for a single man to live alone in such a mansion. Several down-and-outs had passed through over the previous year. Some had stayed. On the current roster, as far as he knew, were: Mr Inthanet, the puppet master from Luang Prabang; Mrs Fah, whose husband had been haunted to death, and her two children, Mee and Nounou; the two hopefully inactive prostitutes, Tong and Gongjai; Comrade Noo, the renegade monk fleeing the Thai junta; and a blind Hmong beggar, Pao, and his granddaughter, Lia, who had been swept from the road in front of Daeng's shop before the police could tidy them away. Then there were the baby twins, temporarily named Athit and Jun, awaiting collection, and that was a story in itself.
Siri and Daeng walked toward the front door and paused to look at the frozen children.
"I think they're dead," said Daeng.
"Stuffed probably," Siri added.
"You could do anything to them and they wouldn't feel it."
"You mean if I stick my finger up one of their nostrils…?"
Nounou, beneath the young lumyai tree, burst into laughter, and the others came to life giggling and pointing at their playmate.
"You lost," they shouted.
"That's not fair," Nounou pouted. "Grandfather's not in the game. He's not allowed."
Siri laughed, put his hands together in a polite nop of apology, and escorted Daeng inside. The source of the music was a large cassette recorder in the front room. It was so loud the machine was dancing back and forth on the concrete floor. Siri bent down and turned it off. Halfway down the hall, the handle of the roof umbrella hung down from a hole in the ceiling with a bucket attached to it. Through the open bedroom door to their left, they saw Pao and his granddaughter lying on a mattress. The old man's eyes stared wide at Siri even though the sound of snoring suggested he was in a deep sleep. Lia smiled and waved.