‘Ah, Siri,’ said Judge Haeng. With his pimples and watery eyes and green safari shirt, the prematurely middle-aged man looked more like a frog at a desk than the head of the Public Prosecution Department. He stood and offered his hand to the white-haired doctor but, as always, avoided staring into his deep green eyes. He’d had nightmares about those eyes sucking him inside that cantankerous old head full of horrible things. Siri gave a cursory shake to the outstretched hand because he knew this show of politeness came as a result not of love for his fellow man but of blackmail. The doctor was a collector of news, you see. He had the goods on a number of senior officials gleaned from eve-of-battle confessions, records of embarrassing medical procedures, and access to official government files written in French, which few in the ruling Pathet Lao could read. He had come across information that, should it fall into the wrong hands, might signal the end of the judge’s very comfortable lifestyle. It might even lead to a spell of re-education in a distant province from which many did not return.
Judge Haeng was the type of man who would happily arrange for an accident to befall a blackmailer. But Siri was the cordon bleu of blackmailers. All his news was stored in a number of ‘Open in the event of my untimely death’ metal deposit boxes in Laos and overseas, a fact that all his victims were made aware of from the outset. A fact that was a total fabrication. They were under his mattress. Apart from his wife, nobody else knew this tasty information. But Siri used this weapon not for evil or for financial gain, but for good. There was nothing like a little incentive to keep a government official on the straight and narrow.
‘I … er … read your complaint,’ said Haeng. ‘I haven’t yet submitted it to the Ministry of the Interior.’
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ Siri asked. ‘You’ve had it three days.’
‘I know. I know and I’m sorry. I just … Why don’t you take a seat?’
Siri remained standing.
‘I was just wondering whether you might reconsider,’ said the judge.
‘What’s to reconsider? I’m taking a bath in the comfort of my own house when suddenly this army of nincompoops led by a midget comes charging in. And Shorty flashes his camera at my private parts, no less. I half expect to find my image pinned to every telegraph pole across the city.’
‘Siri, Comrade Koomki is just short of stature. If he were legally a midget he wouldn’t have been given the role of Head of Housing Allocations.’
Siri raised his bushy eyebrows and shook his head. What was going on in the mind of this Soviet-trained bureaucrat?
‘Judge,’ he said, ‘I don’t care whether he’s legally a midget or not. What I care about is that he invaded my house and my privacy. He deserves to lose his job. I’m entitled to make an official complaint.’
‘It could be … embarrassing.’
‘The redder the faces the better.’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I could be inclined to submit it …’
‘Good.’
‘I could be inclined to submit it … if you could see your way to lending your country a hand just one more time.’
‘What?’
‘Lending a hand.’
‘A man has only so many hands, Judge. Would you accept a finger?’
‘Now, Siri, there’s no need for that attitude. Until his final breath, a good socialist will always have enough oxygen to give resuscitation to a drowning comrade. No matter how choppy the sea. I’m well aware of the services you have selflessly performed for our nation. But I know too how much you enjoy the occasional junket. These little trips around the country at the expense of the committee.’
‘I’m retired.’
‘A perfect time to see the sights. A few days in a scenic guest house. One or two cold beers and good food. You could take Madame Daeng along. Call it a second honeymoon.’
Siri hesitated.
‘Where to?’
‘Sanyaburi. The boat races at Pak Lai.’
‘The races were last month.’
‘Down here they were. It’s up to the cadre in charge in each province when the workers would most benefit from a few days of joy and recreation. Luang Prabang doesn’t have theirs until November.’
‘I don’t know. On my last junket I was caught in the middle of a massacre. The one before that I was tortured and left for dead. Joy and recreation seem to have escaped me somehow.’
‘This will be different, Siri. A couple of hours of work then you’re free to stay as long as you like to enjoy the countryside. You can take the two-tier ferry up there and hop on one coming back.’
‘What’s the catch?’
‘You’re always such a sceptic. Why should there be a catch? You’d merely be there as a … what shall we call it? An observer. This would really be easier if you’d take a seat.’
Siri remained standing.
‘An observer of what?’
‘Something quite ridiculous, to be honest. Even so, I wouldn’t doubt it’s right up your alley.’
‘What alley might that be?’
‘Oh, you know. Ghosts and the like.’
‘Why should I be hanging around in any alleyways with ghosts?’
‘Come on, Siri. There are those who believe you like to dabble in the supernatural.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘That’s what I tell them. He’s a man of science, I say. There is no place for superstition in the mind of a medical man. But you know what this place is like for rumours. Even the Minister of Justice seems to think you might enjoy this ghost hunt.’
Siri sat. The rickety wooden chair creaked beneath him. He considered standing again.
‘And whose ghost might I be hunting?’
‘The brother of the Minister of Agriculture.’
‘Really? And who exactly is the Minister of Agriculture this month?’
It was a response that would normally have caused Haeng to reprimand the doctor for his lack of respect for the longevity of government appointments. But, with so much resting on the success or failure of the current farming cooperative programme, the role of minister in charge of such a mess was something of a revolving door.
‘General Popkorn,’ said Haeng.
Siri sighed. He knew them all. Natural commanders in the field of battle and clueless behind a desk.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘His brother was presumed killed in a covert military operation. They never retrieved the body. The general’s wife is Vietnamese and she believes there’s disquiet amongst the ancestors because her brother-in-law is unsettled and that’s causing problems in the family. Personally I think the family problems are caused by the fact she’s a nasty cow but don’t quote me on that. She believes the brother wants to come home and be afforded his just rites.’
‘Where was he presumed to have died?’
‘Hmm. That’s not such an easy one to answer. He was operating under cover, mostly organizing guerrilla attacks on royalist-held bases. The last dispatch they got from him was from Luang Prabang in June 1969. There were suggestions he might have been discovered and killed there. But there was no mention of him in royalist reports.’
‘If he was under cover they wouldn’t have known who he was. I doubt he’d have been carrying his citizen identification card.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Then he could have died anywhere.’
‘Also true.’
‘Then how on earth are they going to return his body if they don’t know where it is?’
‘The minister’s wife — and feel free to laugh at this — has hired a witch.’
‘Does she come with a broomstick?’
‘What?’
‘Never mind.’
Civilai was perhaps the only person in Laos who got all of Siri’s funny lines. Haeng got none of them. Not even the ones that were culturally inclusive.
‘Tell me about the witch,’ said Siri.
‘The locals call her Madame Keui — the used-to-be woman. She’s what they call a ba dong,’ said Haeng. ‘She claims to be able to locate the bodies of soldiers killed in battle. They say she’s good. Give her an object that belonged to the departed one and she’ll draw you a map to where his remains are. It’s all nonsense of course but the minister obviously has no control over his wife and she’s insistent. She dragged her husband off for a meeting with the witch last weekend. The old woman did some mumbo-jumbo incense burning gobbledegook, performed a couple of magic party tricks and hey presto, they’re both sucked in. According to the witch the body’s a few kilometres upriver from Pak Lai.’