‘And where’s the live-in girl now?’ asked Phosy.
‘Long gone,’ said the skinny girl. ‘Probably still running if I know her.’
On the journey back to Vientiane Dtui and Phosy had gone over the story looking for logical, non-supernatural explanations for what had happened. In his pocket, Phosy had the bullet the headman had gouged out of the front post. That was real enough. Their suggestions were even more far-fetched than the events themselves. But, short of the entire village stringing them along in an elaborate joke, there was no explanation. It jarred every joint, nipped at every nerve in his policeman’s body, but Phosy was forced to agree with the remote likelihood that Madame Keui was indeed a born-again medium. It was not an admission he’d be sharing with anyone at police headquarters. And, besides, there were still a number of smaller questions pending that begged an explanation. He often found that pulling on a loose end unravelled the whole story. But, for the meanwhile, the note Dtui and Phosy would be sending upriver with the next boat would be to the effect that, although their investigation had discovered layer upon layer of mystery, they had uncovered no obvious deceit. As far as they could tell, and as bizarre as it sounded, Madame Peung, aka Madame Keui, was everything she claimed to be. As it turned out, it was a note that would never be sent.
The Vespa pulled up in front of the police dormitory where a small throng of uniformed policemen stood. Upon seeing Phosy they hurried over to him. They were supposed to salute a senior officer, even if he was wearing Bermuda shorts and a nylon jacket. They’d had training courses on police etiquette. But this was often forgotten, especially during moments of urgency.
‘Brother,’ said Sergeant Sihot. He was solid as a tank and permanently dishevelled. ‘There’s been a crime committed. Two, if you count them separately.’
‘Sihot, can you not call me brother in front of the men?’
‘What?’
‘The training?’
‘Oh, right. But, someone’s torched Madame Daeng’s noodle shop.’
‘What?’ shouted Phosy and Dtui at the same time. They were too shocked to dismount.
‘It and the buildings either side of it are gutted.’
‘What makes you think it was torched?’ Phosy asked.
‘Strong stink of petrol in the upstairs rooms,’ said Sihot. ‘And, look, Brother Phosy, I … I don’t suppose you know where Dr Siri and Madame Daeng are right now, do you?’
‘They’re off in Pak Lai,’ said Dtui.
‘Oh, well. That’s a relief.’
He turned to smile at his men. They all seemed suddenly delighted that Daeng’s shop had been burned to the ground.
‘How could that be a relief?’ Phosy asked.
‘Because there’s a body in there.’
8
It wouldn’t officially go on record as Nurse Dtui’s first solo autopsy. Judge Haeng had reluctantly given the go-ahead but there would be no permission slip with his signature on it. If anything went wrong he would know nothing about it. That was good enough for Phosy.
After an idle month, the morgue smelled … well, like a morgue. Opening the doors and windows did nothing to remove the musty stench. Turning on the light in the late evening succeeded only in filling the place with flying beetles the size of pecan nuts and a cloud of mosquitoes. Only the corpse would escape this onslaught as it had no blood to suck. It had arrived in a large tote bag and been poured on to the cutting room table with the sound of mah-jong tiles. The bones were black. The few that had still been connected at the site were now separated. It was more a puzzle than an autopsy.
‘What do you need to know?’ Dtui asked. She wore a fresh, green operating theatre robe that reached her feet. Four hundred of them were stacked in the corner, donations from the Soviet Union. There were a matching number of masks and twice as many little rubber boots but she hadn’t bothered with them.
‘Who he or she is,’ said Phosy.
Dtui leaned over the pile of bones and poked around with a pencil.
‘Oh, well. We’re in luck,’ she said. ‘Look at this.’
Phosy leaned in to look.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s his name card. It miraculously survived the fire.’
‘All right. Then just tell me whatever you can.’
‘That’s more like it.’
While she was shuffling the parts around she came across the pelvis.
‘I’m quite good at the easy parts,’ she said. ‘And this is one pelvis that was never designed to give birth. And this little fellow over here is probably an eye ridge. All of which tells me our friend here, is … or was, male.’
One femur was intact. She measured it. She hmmed.
‘I was about to suggest it was a child,’ she said. ‘He’s short. But there’s a lot of wear and tear on these joints. And look, the sternum end of the clavicle is fused. So our man here was over thirty. There’s a lot of pitting on the rib so he might even have been over forty. So it’s a short, middle-aged man.’
‘Good job, Dr Dtui,’ said Phosy. ‘Anything else?’
She liked that title. With a broad smile on her face she swatted a menagerie of flying beasts away from the standard lamp and swung its arm over the bone pile. She picked out fragments of the skull and started to put them together. It was particularly difficult. But after ten minutes of shuffling she looked at her husband.
‘I don’t think he was killed by the fire,’ she said.
‘You don’t?’
‘Well, to be certain we’d have to look at his lungs. As his lungs are deep-fried and indistinguishable from his kneecaps, we’ll never know. But I’m prepared to stake my reputation on it. And don’t say I don’t have one.’
‘OK, let’s hear it.’
‘If he died in the fire I can’t think of any reason why anyone would wait until the charred building was cool enough to clamber up to the second floor with no wooden staircase and beat the living daylights out of a corpse.’
‘He’s been hit?’
‘Blunt object. Half a dozen times. Maybe more.’
One problem with communication between Vientiane and Sanyaburi was the absence of a telephone line. Phosy had tried to link through military channels only to discover there were no army units stationed there. It would have been easier to call Thailand on the solitary Lao overseas telephone line and ask someone to run a message across the border. His last hope had been a channel directly to the helicopter which had transported the Minister of Agriculture to Pak Lai but the crew had closed down the equipment for the night. Few boats plied that section of the river after dark as there were still bandits about. So it wouldn’t be until the next morning that a message could be sent to Dr Siri and Madame Daeng telling them that their home and all their possessions were gone.
After the autopsy, Phosy had combed through the skeleton of the shop and found nothing of importance. He’d watched them spoon the remains of the victim into the large bag. At the back of his mind was Dr Siri’s story about the midget from Housing and the late-night raid. The man had probably lost his job as a result of Siri’s complaint. If the body were his it would look very bad for the doctor, especially as there was no way of estimating the time of death. One more thing the inspector had noticed before heading for home was a car parked some fifty metres away on the river bank. Obviously somebody of influence had got wind of the fire and come to observe. The sleek government ZiL limousine sat in the shadows like the devil’s own hearse. Nobody got out to discuss matters and Phosy wasn’t about to tap on the window and say hello. It was best left alone. It was late and nothing else could be done. Perhaps, by morning, some loved ones would have reported the disappearance of a completely different short, middle-aged man.
How far could they have gone? he wondered. Not for the first time. Herve Barnard sat in the driver’s seat of the black ZiL. Its windows were so darkly tinted he could barely see the statuette on the bonnet. But the point was that nobody could see in. It was a politburo car he’d stolen directly from the parking lot behind the parliament building. The ZiLs the Russians sent to their Third World comrades were a far cry from those that travelled in their own lanes in downtown Moscow. These shoddy rip-off versions leaked petrol and were incredibly easy to break into and hot-wire. The Lao, not realizing this, had felt it safe to leave a fleet of them unguarded behind a bamboo gate.