"You are the one who speak French?" he asked in a poor version of the language.
"Oui," I said.
"Have they tortured you yet?"
"They're saving me for the dinner show."
The monk managed a laugh that quickly dilapidated into a dry cough.
"It will not be long, brother," he said. "It will not be long."
"Thanks for the encouragement. What are you in for?"
The conversation elated me after so long without warmth, only inhuman contact, only the smiley man and you ghosts. No offence.
"They found me," the monk said. "I am a monk. I was the last in the temple. I was responsible to protect the palm leaf scrolls. We have thousand, priceless, cannot be replace. I was in the vault under the hall of prayer. It was impossible to find it if you don't know where was it. I have the dry food, the running water that I can boil it. I could stay there for ever. I go out at night if I want the fresh food, fruit, the animal. But everyone was starve. Not much the food. Then they come, these rains. These miserable rains. And the flood make me to find a dry place for the scrolls."
"And they caught you."
"All monks are dead, brother. All. All die because they don't worship Brother Number One."
The monk was still holding my hand as he spoke. His soft voice was calming.
"Why didn't they kill you?" I asked.
"They will. They kill everyone here. They will kill you. Nobody come out of this place, S21, alive. But they think we know something. If we speak they kill us fast. Don't speak, they kill us slow."
"And do you know something?"
There was a silence that seemed to stretch out into the darkness.
"No," he said.
"Where did you learn your French?"
"Marseille. I was on the scholarship. Four year, but poor French even so, no?"
"You're an unusual monk."
The monk laughed and as he did so the lights came on. They blinded me. I threw my hands in front of my eyes to cut out the dazzle. I remember I opened my fingers slowly until I could focus in the glare. The monk slowly appeared to me. Dark veins stood out on his shaven head. He was solid, almost without a neck, the type of man you could tell had heavy bones even without weighing him. He wasn't dressed in saffron but wore black pyjamas like the guards, like the military, like everybody in the damned country. They were too small on him. The shirt pulled tight across his chest.
"Where are your robes, comrade?" I asked.
"They stripped me and burned them. Burned them in the same fire as the books, same fire as all the palm leaf manuscript."
There was no expression on the monk's face but I knew what he felt. I have…had my own cache of valuable old books and the thought of watching them burn fills me with sadness. The monk reached for the shackles at his ankle. He pulled at them angrily like a wild chained dog.
"I tried that," I told him. "No hope unless you've got an oxyacetylene torch there under your shirt."
"I would like to have met you under better circumstances," said the big monk. "What's your name, brother?"
"Siri."
"I'm Yin Keo."
We talked for an hour and the guards had come. They brought gruel for the monk and fetid water for me.
"This is all they give you?" Yin Keo asked when the guards left.
"I'm watching my weight."
"No, then take this," the big monk held out his bowl.
"I can't."
"Serious. Look at me. I have some layers of muscle to burn before I am hungry."
I took the bowl and handed Yin Keo the water.
"I won't say no, then. I'm a little short of nutrients. I'll pay this back in a future life, assuming we both make it through Nirvana."?
But now the monk sleeps and I wish I'd stuck with the water. I chip another corner off the charred blackboard and chew on it. I wonder how it got burnt. I imagine the pupils sneaking into their school in the dead of night and setting fire to it. I imagine how my teeth look. I imagine them to be as black as a cave in an impoverished limestone monument. See how poetic I'm becoming? Give me another month of this and I shall be a posthumous poet laureate. Then they'll honour me. Nothing like death for elevating a man to fame.
8
PERFUME? LIPSTICK STAINS?
They sat in Madame Daeng's noodle shop like ragtag generals in a sweet-smelling war room. Not many of the shops in Vientiane had electricity, even though the hydroelectric dam just sixty kilometres away was pumping out six megawatts of the stuff every day. Most stores and restaurants closed before nightfall so they hadn't bothered to petition their local cadres. But Daeng's noodle establishment was on the same grid as the Banque Pour le Commerce Exterior Lao as well as the Women's Association, so burning brightly above the generals was one very new strip light, not at all dissimilar to the two in Siri's cutting room at the morgue.
Around the table were Siri and Daeng, Sergeant Sihot, Civilai, and Phosy who sat opposite Dtui and the baby. In many ways this group was a small army. They'd fought battles, defeated guileful enemies and suffered wounds. It was Tuesday evening and each of the generals had been too busy in one way or another to get together before this. Spread across the table was a large sheet of sugar paper upon which the names of the three victims had been written like locations on a map. They were labelled with their nicknames and the order in which they'd been dispatched; Dew 1, Kiang 2, Jim, 3. The generals had all sent a discrete and silent prayer to Buddha for not sending them a number four or five over the past two days. The State frowned on soliciting favours from heaven but it seemed to have worked.
Supper over, it was Sihot with his famous frittering notepad who was the first to speak. He had three loose pages laid side by side in front of him on the table.
"Victim number three," he said, flipping up the third sheet. "Sunisa Simmarit, nickname, Jim. Twenty-four. Single. Was trained as a medic in Laos by the Americans. End of seventy-five she was sent to East Germany with the intention of being there six years to be trained as a doctor. Apparently didn't pass her second-year exams and was sent home. Still a medic."
"But a German-speaking medic with two years of medical training," said Civilai.
"More like one, comrade," Sihot corrected him. "First year was mostly language training. Came back in March this year. Was assigned to Settha Hospital, basic nursing duties plus translating for the East German personnel. Three half-days out at K6 looking after the minor ailments of the domestic staff."
"And how did she get that posting?" Siri asked.
Sihot flipped over two of his note sheets like a shell-game hustler looking for the pea. He found the answer under the third sheet.
"Here," he said. "Jim was a Vietnamese speaker. Father Lao. Mother Vietnamese. The old medic broke her leg and they needed someone to fill in for her. With all the Vietnamese out at K6 these days she was the obvious choice."
"So she was a second woman who could communicate with the bodyguards," Phosy reminded them.
"Specifically Major Dung," said Siri who had selected his favourite suspect. "Single woman. Not bad looking. Lao. Just his type."
"And a fencer, to boot," said Phosy.
Somebody let forth a long whistle.
"You don't say?" said Siri.
"And a very good one by all accounts," Sihot went on. "So good, in fact, she won a couple of local competitions in Germany. There was talk of her going on to bigger tournaments."
"All right," said Daeng. She stood up and refilled everyone's after-supper teacups. "We're getting close. We have two fencers and three women in Europe. We have almost enough connections. There's only one that doesn't fit. Any more news about Kiang?"
"Right. That's where the connection gets disconnected," said Sihot. "Kiang was something of a non-sporting type. She didn't take any physical education classes in Bulgaria at all. No self-defence. Nothing."
"That surprises me," said Civilai, "considering the number of life-threatening situations librarians find themselves in. (Dae
ng crinkled her brow but he pretended not to see.) I mean, overdue book, customer reaches for a machete in her handbag, quick karate chop to the solar plexus, thwack, down goes the rule-breaker, money retrieved. One more victory for Library Woman. Potential rendezvous with Socialist Man. I think I need a drink."
"We get the point, old brother," said Siri. "She does run against the rhythm. Three fencers and the case would be solved. Midnight duels. To the victor, the spoils."
Everyone looked at the two old men as if they were speaking a foreign language. They occasionally forgot where they were and brought one too many European delicacy to the noodle table.
"Odd, though," Dtui said, back at the noodles of the matter. "Two fit girls, both fencers, and one dorky but good-looking librarian." Malee munched obliviously on her mother's nipple and had nothing to add.
"And even more curious, that the only victim wearing sports clothes, heading off to exercise on a Saturday night, was the librarian," Siri pointed out.
"Is there anything to tie them together socially?" Daeng asked. "Any possibility they met up somewhere? Some orientation before they headed off to Eastern Europe?"
Sihot reshuffled his pages.
"Unlikely," he said. "They all left at different times."
Daeng persevered, "Some Eastern European reunion club when they got back? Communist college alumni association? Debriefing seminar?"
"Daeng, my old friend," Civilai chuckled. "Do you honestly believe we're that organised? We can barely keep track of who's off where. It's every ministry for himself. When their people come back they want them out in the field as quickly as possible, frustrated and frustrating because there are no words to describe all the bewildering concepts they've learned in all those exotic languages that they really didn't quite understand themselves. It's chaos. Life back here is far too complicated to sit down and draw up a programme for an 'I survived the Soviet Bloc Club'. And don't forget you need signatures and stamps from seven thousand middle-ranking bureaucrats just to get permission for a meeting with your own relatives to discuss who gets to use the bathroom first in the morning."
Daeng laughed.
"So, we'll forget the possibility they met up socially?" she asked.
"We should technically have a permit to be sitting here," he replied. "Did I mention I needed a drink?"
Siri slipped his arm around his friend's shoulder.
"You can all see why he was such a hit up at the parliament building, can't you?" he said. "A born diplomat. I'm surprised they found such a sweet man expendable."
"All right," said Phosy. "We have more important things to discuss, if you don't mind." He ran his finger over the victim map and allowed it to spiral to a central point. He picked up the crayon and wrote a 'Z' at the centroid of the triangle. "What if the perpetrator is a sword coach? He takes students, advanced and beginner. He offers classes, seduces his students and then impales them through the heart. Victim one is at intermediate level. Victim two is a beginner. Perhaps she was stimulated by watching competitions in Bulgaria but was too embarrassed to take classes there. But victim three is a champion and he gets into the type of fight he hadn't expected. She matches him. He thinks he's killed her but he doesn't know about her weird heart and she's still kicking. The shock gets to him, or maybe he's injured, so he stops his killing spree."
There was a moment of quiet as they all digested this possibility. At last, Siri spoke up.
"Brilliant," he said.
"It makes sense to me," Civilai agreed.
Phosy allowed himself a modest smile.
"And how would anyone go about finding themselves a fencing coach in Laos?" Dtui asked. "We don't actually have notice boards or newspaper advertisements. This isn't Thailand, you know."
"Word of mouth," he said, staring blackly back at her.
"Well, so far we haven't found any connection between the three women," Dtui continued. "Whose mouth did this magic word come from?"
"You begin with a theory and you work back from there," Phosy said, calmly.
"Oh, thanks for the lesson in police procedure," Dtui mocked.
The generals had been watching the exchange like the front row at the French Open. The couple felt the silence and looked down at the table with embarrassment.
"I could use a drink," Civilai said.
Daeng raised the teapot.
"I was thinking more of sugar-cane juice, Madame Daeng. The fermented kind." Civilai had successfully distracted everyone's attention by playing the rather rude guest. Civilai was, luckily for them, Civilai. Daeng laughed and went to the rear of the kitchen where she produced a bottle of Thai rum from a cupboard. Both Siri and Civilai watched with amazement as she walked back to the table.
"Have you found a cure for rheumatism?" Civilai asked. "You're trotting around like a young calf."
"It comes and goes," she said, returning to the table with the bottle.
"As do hangovers," said Sihot.
Siri said nothing. He knew that rheumatoid arthritis didn't come and go at all, especially not at his wife's advanced stage. Just that afternoon she'd been limping painfully, never complaining but certainly in discomfort. Now, here she was being brave so as not to embarrass her guests. She was some woman. The rum helped gather together the loose ends of the atmosphere and for reasons he couldn't work out, the kick of the alcohol reminded Sri about old Mrs Bountien's blood analysis findings.
"There are those of us at Mahosot," he began, "who believe she merely matches the colour, like on a paint chart; dark red, light red. But it was her considered opinion that the blood on the sauna towel belonged to Dew. She said there was only the one blood type."
"So, your modesty theory still holds," Civilai said. "She was covered with a towel out of propriety."
"It's the only possibility that makes sense," Siri continued. "Which would suggest the killer had some fondness for his victim. At least he showed some respect to the body. They appreciate that."
"Who do?" Sihot asked.
"The bodies," said Dtui. Sihot was about to inquire further but Siri had the floor.
"Then, next on my list is fingerprints…"
He was interrupted by hoots of derision. Thus far, he had failed to convince anyone of his qualifications to extract or compare fingerprints. Despite the fact that the western world had been using the system for hundreds of years, communist Laos was not yet ready for such an innovation. Siri remained firm that he would have the last laugh in this matter. He ignored the laughter and forged ahead.
"I have compared the prints I found on the first and third epees," he said, "with those of the victims. Although it's extremely difficult to tell (another hoot)…to tell without projecting the prints on some sort of screen — "
"…or buying a decent pair of glasses," Civilai laughed.
"…or comparing them under a microscope," Siri continued. "Sadly, Mrs Bountien did not allow me to use hers and the only other one I know of is at Dong Dok college, locked up. But, from the evidence of my naked eye I am convinced that the print on blade one does not belong to the victim, whereas the two prints I found on sword three, did."
Everybody applauded.
"And this tells us…?" Phosy asked.
"I'm not sure (he rode out the final jeers), apart from the fact that the print on sword one is likely that of the perpetrator."
"Who we don't have with us to compare it with," Dtui nodded.
"But we will. Trust me. Then you'll all thank me for having concrete evidence. And while I have the floor, the epees themselves are interesting. They aren't all the same."
Sihot found an empty page in his notepad and prepared to take notes.
"The first two," Siri said, "were very similar. About ninety centimetres long with a traditional triangular shaft. But somebody had gone to the trouble to hone the angles of the triangle into three very dangerous, almost razor-sharp rims. The third was quite unusual in that the blade was almost round. The angles had been filed smooth. It was more like the shaft
of an arrow. You could hardly inflict damage with it. But the tip had been sharpened to a point like a needle. Just touching it would be sufficient to draw blood."
"So, do you suppose they're different types of blades for different competitions?" Phosy asked.
"It's possible, I suppose. I don't know enough about the sport. It's likely the killer collected whatever type of weapon he could find wherever he happened to be, and brought them back to Laos. But there was something about all three of them that looked…I don't know, as if they'd been re-engineered. As if they were designed for a specific purpose."
"We need to find a fencing expert," Daeng decided.
"Apart from our assassin I doubt you'd find anyone in the country who could tell you which end to hold," Civilai suggested.
"That doesn't include the embassies," she told him. "I bet we'd find someone there with fencing experience. Someone who wasn't thrown out of fencing class after two weeks."
She smiled at her husband.
"Good point," Phosy decided. "Sihot, I want you to go to the European embassies tomorrow and hunt us out a fencer."
"The embassies?" Sihot said with a look of distress on his face.
"Don't worry, Sergeant Sihot," Daeng smiled. "They'll all have someone to interpret."
"And, Inspector Phosy," Civilai said with the early signs of a slur. "I'm sure you've thought of this already, but I think now would be as good a time as any to get to know the three girls more intimately. Talk to their families and friends. Trace their movements since they returned from — "
"As you say, Comrade," Phosy growled, "we're already on it."
"Excellent," Civilai beamed.
"And I think the fencing coach theory as a starting point is a very solid one," Siri decided. "In fact it's the only theory we have."
With a few more comments and suggestions which led nowhere, the meeting broke up, and then into small fragments. Phosy and Sihot went over their notes at the noodle table. Daeng invited Dtui and Malee to the upstairs junk room to engage in a little 'girl stuff'. Siri and Civilai took their drinks and two chairs and the remainder of the bottle out to the front of the shop where they sat beneath the narrow green awning. It had been raining so long the air was wet; not moist but sodden like a slop rag. A person might have expected the rain to wash away the mugginess, to rinse the humidity clean out of the air, but it didn't go away. It loitered under cover, inside houses, beneath temple eaves. It sapped your energy and made you want to go outside and stand in the rain.
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