Ugly, as may have been expected, licked his undercarriage noisily.
10
‘Do you speak French?’ asked the man.
The baby was awoken by his gruff voice and started to cry. Nurse Dtui went to comfort her. After the autopsy it had been two a.m. before mother, father and daughter finally got to sleep that morning. But, as always, they were up with the chickens and working on the police vegetable lot with the other families. This was the first chance Dtui had found to put her daughter down to catch up on her sleep. The morgue was usually such a quiet place. She had bones to label and a report to write. Her classes didn’t begin until the afternoon and she’d been giving thought to the state of the skull on the aluminium table. The ferocity of the attack. The number of unnecessary blows when one or two probably did enough damage. But the attacker had continued as if to vent some pent-up anger. She wouldn’t want to meet such a person.
With her hands around the tiny fingers of Malee she looked up at the tall Westerner who stood in the doorway. He was probably seventy but she’d never been able to estimate the age of foreigners with any accuracy. He smiled warmly and she wondered whether the neat teeth were his own. He’d probably been a handsome young man. Not even the star of an old smallpox scar over his right eyebrow detracted from his natural good looks. But she had no idea what he was saying.
In Lao, she said, ‘Who are you looking for?’
She tried the same question in Russian but the look on his face suggested they were to be marooned on their separate islands in a vast linguistic sea.
But then, in English, he said, ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance you speak English?’
Dtui’s English came from a dictionary and several textbooks. She had few chances to use it. The phonetic alphabet had taught her how the words were supposed to sound but few speakers of English consulted the phonetic alphabet. Consequently she had a problem with accents. It took her some time to digest the Westerner’s words. He was reaching for something in his satchel.
‘I speak a little,’ she said, relieved to have removed the cork that held in her English.
‘Then you must be Vietnamese,’ said the man.
‘Vietnam? No. I am Lao.’
‘Well, wonders will never cease.’
‘I’m sorry, I …’
‘Never mind.’ Again the smile. ‘I was hoping to find my good friend, Dr Siri,’ he said.
‘You know Dr Siri?’
‘We were best friends, before. In France.’
‘Really?’
Malee had continued her gentle wail. It was unusual for her not to fall back into the depths of sleep. Dtui was concerned as a mother but failed to recognize the animal instinct with which a baby is born but sheds over time. The awareness of danger.
‘Is he here?’ the man asked, looking around the room.
‘No. He is in Pak Lai.’
‘Is that far?’
‘Is it …? No. On the Mekhong about seven hours.’
‘Oh, too bad. Then perhaps I can talk to his wife?’
‘Madame Daeng, also …’
‘In Pak Lai?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then that’s all I need you for.’ The smile was gone. ‘Far too easy,’ he said, and walked to the table where Comrade Koomki lay in charred lumps.
‘I …’ Dtui had started to pick up the anxiety in her daughter’s tears.
‘You are a doctor?’ he asked.
‘Nurse.’
She took a step backwards to the dolly where her instruments were laid out.
‘A nurse?’ he repeated. ‘And such a pretty nurse.’
Dtui had a scalpel in her hand behind her back. She tried to make the three steps to Malee’s hammock look natural but her bladder suddenly ached and her legs began to wobble. Acting natural could only be acting at this point. The foreigner picked up a short length of bone with his left hand and again reached into his satchel with his right. To Dtui’s disgust, the man put the bone between his teeth and began to chew.
‘No better combination,’ he said. ‘Calcium and charcoal. The arsonist’s snack of choice. But, of course, as a nurse you know this already.’
His right hand emerged from the satchel holding a metal bar. He looked at Malee suddenly silent in her hammock. Dtui stepped between her and the man and held the scalpel in front of her. Barnard laughed.
‘Ooh! Such a small knife compared to my big iron,’ he said. ‘Nurse of the morgue. Nurse who deals with the dead. Do you know what cancer is, my pretty nurse? Certainly you do. Cancer is a contract that states categorically how long you have remaining to complete all of your business. It allows you a small portal of time to avenge all the wrongs you have suffered. To find peace from the demons that live beneath your skin.’
He took a step towards Dtui. She held her ground and brandished her scalpel. He seemed not to care. He had a lot to say. Dr Siri had often told her that it’s only in the movies that crazed killers explain everything before that final blow. That actual killers just got it over with and fled. She had no idea what the Frenchman was saying but she was certain he had murder in mind.
‘And when you realize your future is measurable in hours rather than dreams,’ he continued. ‘That is when you seek out the moment in time when everything changed. When everything became shit. You go back to that moment and do what you can to delete it so you can sleep through those infinite hours of death without nightmares.’
With no warning, he smashed the tyre iron on to the aluminium dolly, sending the bones flying across the room. Those that were left he crushed with three manic blows. Dtui swept her daughter into her arms and stepped back to the wall. She knew the tiny blade would offer no defence at all against this maniac with his metal bar. Her only hope was to attack. Thus far, the man’s face had shown no emotion, no anger, no excitement. His was a temperate, dull expression like the mask of the dead.
He turned to her as if suddenly remembering she was in the room.
Dtui lunged with the knife.
He held up his left hand like a policeman stopping traffic.
She lunged again and the blade cut a ribbon of red across his palm.
He looked disappointed. His hand gushed blood but he seemed not to care.
Dtui felt this was all without hope. He was a living cadaver and there was nothing she could do to frighten him. Still he talked.
‘It is a shame,’ he said, his bloody dripping hand still held aloft. ‘Two generations of lotus eaters gone in one small massacre. It will never make the newspapers in Europe.’
He took that decisive step forward just as the louvres above Dtui’s head shattered, sending a hailstorm of glass across the room. The Frenchman showed no defensive instincts. It was as if he were staring into snow. Glass pierced the skin of his face as he looked up towards the source of this interruption.
‘You’re surrounded,’ came a deep male voice speaking English from beyond the window.
This was followed by the sound of a gunshot.
‘We know you’re in there. Come out with your hands in the air.’
Barnard sighed. He looked at the mother and daughter as if contemplating whether he might have time to beat them to death. He twirled the metal bar around like a conductor exercising his baton and he pouted. Then, he turned and walked calmly to the door with his weapon held above his head.
Dtui’s knees buckled and she slid down the wall to the concrete floor. Malee, who had held back her tears this whole time, suddenly released a flood. Dtui willed her own breath to return. Her heart to beat. The ink blots to clear from before her eyes. She waited for the sounds of yells and gunshots from outside. Of a chase. Of a killing. But there was nothing. In fact there were no sounds beyond the cries of her daughter. She calmed the girl with a lullaby and, some five minutes later, eased herself back to her feet. She placed Malee in her hammock and walked on unsure legs to the exit. She peeked nervously around the door frame. There was nothing untoward. Mahosot was its normal sleepy self. There was no sign of the crazed Frenchman.