‘Still alive,’ he thought. ‘A chance. A pinch of hope. I can save-’
But just then a cold damp wind blew into him. It was like a wet raincoat wrapping itself around him in search of a warm body. He recognized it as a brand new spirit, lost, as they usually were. Disoriented. If it was Daeng he didn’t want to remember her like this, because in a second it was gone and he was left with nothing more than a shudder.
He trudged the last few metres to where the body lay and the cloud pulled back for the moon to illuminate the scene like the opening of a theatre curtain. He sighed and looked down at the body. It was … wrong. Gory but wonderful. It was a long body. Siri’s heart clanged inside him like a pachinko ball. One rarely used the word tall when describing a man face down. The intestines trailed away from the body like the string of a downed kite. They seemed endless. One might have imagined him out here in the jungle attempting to gather together his wayward insides. The doctor had never been so delighted to see a dead body. Not even the corpses of his enemy on the battlefield had given him any joy. He wanted to fall to his knees and kiss both cheeks but first he had to see the victim. With Geung’s assistance he knelt beside the body and flipped him on to his back. He was surprisingly light, padded with several layers of clothing for the appearance of bulk. In reality he was little more than a skeleton. His face was white. Above his right eye was the starred scar of early smallpox.
It was a knife wound. The blade had sliced through four layers of cloth before slitting a neat gash across his stomach. It was a classic hara-kiri insert. Across and up. You would live to see your stomach spill out, perhaps even walk away with your insides cradled in your arms. But the loss of blood would defeat you soon enough. It was the expertise of a professional assassin and he only knew one. The souvenir that Madame Daeng had taken from Frenchy’s Elbow had not been a Buddha image. Of course not. She had returned for the Vietnamese man’s knife. The rock she’d coveted at the dock had been used to sharpen it to a razor’s edge. She’d known even then that her killer would come for her this night. But had she survived the battle? There had been a vast amount of blood at the murder scene. Was it too much for one person? Was she now lying wounded somewhere in this thick jungle? Once more, Geung’s logic overcame Siri’s fears.
‘When I worked in … in … in … the red tag bbbag room,’ he said, ‘the first thing I did after ehhhvery load was I washed off the blood.’
‘The river,’ said Siri.
They headed in the direction of the slow-moving Mekhong. The moon had turned the night into a grey afternoon. Everything was clear. The revellers had abandoned the riverside and gone to the temple to listen to the closing concert. Geung and Siri stood on the bank. They could hear first the generator roar, then the microphone screech, then the singer miss three notes on her way into a popular Thai song before being belatedly joined by a guitar.
‘See anything?’ asked Siri.
Geung and Ugly scanned the surface of the river. There was nobody.
‘Daeng!’ Siri shouted. ‘Daeng!’
He noticed that Ugly was focused on something upriver. The dog’s tail signalled that it wasn’t an unpleasant sighting. They heard a cheer from the drinkers on the guest house balcony. And there, some fifty metres away, was a tractor inner-tube rotating slowly as it followed the river. And at its centre was a grinning Madame Daeng. She waved as she passed them on the current. Mr Geung blushed and looked away because, by the light of the full moon, he had clearly seen Comrade Madame Daeng’s naked breasts.
15
‘No, I mean, not the result,’ said Civilai. ‘I saw the result. In fact I helped scoop the result into a plastic bag. What I’m after is the details. Exactly how did you avoid getting brained?’
The ferry was twenty minutes from Vientiane. Civilai had been hounding Madame Daeng the whole journey. They sat on their deckchairs with the last of the beers they’d confiscated as evidence from Governor Siri’s supply.
‘You might as well tell him,’ said Dr Siri. ‘You know he’ll never let up.’
‘I really don’t like to dwell over things like that,’ said Daeng.
‘Not dwelling, Daeng,’ said Civilai. ‘Debriefing is what it is. A necessary military tactic to bring a conflict to a satisfactory end. Look, I promise this is the last time. When next you slice somebody open with a fish knife, I swear I won’t even ask.’
‘I want to … to know too,’ said Mr Geung.
‘Oh, very well.’
‘Excellent,’ said Civilai.
He left his chair and sat at her feet like a handmaiden.
‘First of all, how did you know he was there?’ he asked.
‘They were all talking about him,’ said Daeng. ‘I heard them as we walked back to the administration building. Only a few people had actually seen him but word spread like foot rot. They called him “the tall Soviet”. Russians are the only Westerners they’ve seen here for the past three years so that was their guess. But I didn’t see any foreigners at the races or at the festivities and there was precious little point in being in Pak Lai if he didn’t want to enjoy the party. So I knew it was my Frenchman.’
‘Marvellous,’ said Civilai. ‘And how did you gut him?’
Siri laughed.
‘Be subtle, why don’t you, brother?’
‘I was on the swing,’ said Daeng. ‘I had our bathroom mirror tied to the swinging post in case he might come at me from behind. It was broken later. But I had a feeling he’d want to talk. When he first arrived in front of me I was leaning forward. My head was a clear target. I let him digest that fact. As we spoke I walked the swing backwards. The headrest was a few centimetres above the seat. With every step backwards I was reducing the angle of his first stroke. He didn’t notice because I continued to lean forward. A clear target. Of course he could have hit me from the side and then it would have been all over. But you men tend to cosh vertically. It’s a fallback to your days in the caves with your wooden clubs.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Siri. ‘And they run courses on this at the Women’s Union?’
‘Observation, my husband,’ said Daeng. ‘And the predictability of the male.’
‘Continue, my teacher,’ Civilai urged.
‘He could have finished me a lot quicker with a gun,’ said Daeng. ‘But the fact that he’d brought a chunk of iron told me he wanted that personal touch. And I was certain after all those years of bottled-up hatred he’d want to tell me what a cow I’d been. He’d betrayed his country because of a tryst with me and he hadn’t been able to tell anyone. This was his confessional. I was sure he’d want to stretch it out.’
‘Meanwhile, back at the disembowelling?’ said Civilai.
‘I had to be ready, Civilai. Ready for that split second when he decided there was nothing more to be said. And I had to be the one who pushed that button. I had to rile him enough to force his hand. But I needed to be ready for it. A younger man’s reflexes would have beaten me. But I saw Barnard’s shoulders dip before the bar rose and I pushed back on the swing with all my might. He was a tall man with long arms so the bar was coming at me in a wide arc. I leaned back. The metal crashed into the seat rest above my head. Smashed the wood. He was off balance but he brought the bar up for a second blow. That was my moment. I had the fish knife in the fold of my phasin. I’d honed it to a razor’s edge. I didn’t have the leeway for the blade to be blocked by his clothing. It passed through him as if he were butter. A thrust. A twist. A swipe. A spray of blood. It was over. I expected him to fall at my feet but he dropped the bar and stood there. It was an eerie moment. He had that look on his face. One I’d seen many times before. Amazement that the Lao could be trained to do anything right. Then he walked away. He didn’t stagger, which surprised me. He walked upright, quite naturally, into the jungle with his hand on his stomach. I knew he would soon die there.