The Rat Catchers' Olympics

by Colin Cotterill

  “They went there by taxi,” said Siri. “The taxi rank is outside the security perimeter. Somewhere we should have a picture of Maen. And if we find a photo of the girl we can show it to the drivers until someone remembers taking them. They’re more likely to remember a pretty girl. If we don’t find any photos we just ask the drivers if they recall taking a pretty blonde Russian and an Asian boxer for a tryst on Sunday night. I get the feeling a red-blooded Moscow taxi driver would be less than delighted to watch one of his women flirt with an inferior.”

  “‘Being a doctor I doubt he knows that much about police matters,’” said Daeng in a Russian Elvis accent.

  “How do you think the Soviets will react to a bunch of foreign tourists re-examining one of their cases?” asked Dtui.

  “We aren’t tourists,” said Siri. “We’re Olympians.”

  There were so many photographs they could only pin a few of them onto the corkboards at the kiosk. They were beautiful colored prints so crisp and detailed they made the Lao instamatic look like a mallet and chisel. The bulk of the photos lay in long fat drawers. The athletes hadn’t yet got around to claiming them.

  “We’re looking for the morning of the twentieth,” Dtui told the girl behind the stand.

  If she was surprised to hear an Asian speaking Russian she didn’t show it. Dtui had a knack for languages. She’d taught herself English when there was still the chance of an American scholarship. Then she relearned all her old medical texts in Russian when she thought she might have a chance to study forensic medicine in the USSR. But then came the baby and there went the chance.

  The girl looked at the catalogue and opened the second drawer from the bottom. It was full. The date and time were recorded on the bottom right-hand corner of each print. Dtui and Civilai sat on two small bathroom stools the girl provided for their comfort and started to go through the photos for day two.

  “Maen claimed to have met the girl after breakfast,” said Dtui. “We were all in the canteen early so we should start looking at around six-thirty.”

  She got lucky almost immediately. She found the first photo of Maen timed at 7:10 a.m. He was alone and hamming it up for the photographer, doing his “staring off into nothingness” look. Dtui had to admit he was a good-looking man. Sixty photos of post-breakfast strollers later, they made a second breakthrough. In the foreground of the picture, three Indian Sikhs in turbans were posing in front of a fountain. In the background, an attractive blonde was sitting on the fountain lip admiring the sculptures. As the focus was on the Sikhs she was a little blurred. But it could have been her.

  There were no pictures of the hunt or of the capture but at exactly 8:15 a.m. the blonde and Maen had been photographed together. She held his arm and they were walking through the landscaped garden laughing. She was a foot taller than him. In the first picture they had been unaware of the photographer who’d snapped them candidly from the side. In the second picture the javelin thrower looked angrily at the photographer but Maen beamed a boastful smile. That was the photo they needed; a beautiful, perfectly focused couple. The kiosk girl wrote the reference number in her catalogue, removed the negatives and told Dtui they’d be able to make second copies in twenty-four hours. She seemed unconcerned that neither Dtui nor Civilai were in the photo.

  Dtui went off with the original prints to talk to the drivers at the official village taxi rank. Civilai decided to remain behind at the kiosk. He no longer had a specific date or time in mind but he did have a theory. He would begin his search on the day before the opening ceremony—what he supposed would be called Day Zero. He sat back down on the plastic stool and began thumbing through the thousands of photographs.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Asians Is Asians

  Siri and Daeng stood in front of a dirty grey five-story building in Severnoye Chertanovo, an area known for its depressing prefabricated skyscraper apartment blocks. Soon this old architectural relic too would be knocked down and replaced by something even uglier. Siri looked up at the weather-beaten bricks and the smoky window panes. In a fourth-floor window was the scary face of a wizened old crone frowning down at him. He poked out his tongue at her. A village van pulled up at the curbside and they watched Roger climb down from the back seat. Roger was a smart lad and Siri knew he didn’t have to explain why they’d arranged to meet him here. He could have opted out but he didn’t.

  “How did you find the place?” he asked, shaking hands with both Siri and Daeng.

  “We didn’t,” said Daeng. “It was Dtui. She took photos of Maen and the javelin girl to the taxi rank and in ten minutes she had an address. Dtui phoned us and we phoned you.”

  “You know when I was last in the Soviet Union,” said Siri, “you couldn’t even get a tour guide to crack a smile. Now you just have to click your fingers and the locals would do anything for you.”

  “I told you, uncle,” said Roger, “it’s the new spirit of openness. The world is our friend.”

  “You know, if you’d sooner not be here we’d quite understand,” said Daeng.

  “My Lao brother is in prison,” he said. “What kind of relative would I be to leave him there?”

  Daeng kissed him on the cheek and he blushed puce.

  The building was dilapidated but still inhabited. When they forced their way into the foyer through the bulky glass doors they weren’t surprised to find nobody manning the reception desk. It was obvious the caretaker had a lot to keep him busy. Siri looked at the steep staircase and sighed. There wasn’t even a lift to decline. They began to climb, allowing the doctor a rest on each landing. The stair carpet was of no identifiable color and it smelled of potatoes. Paint was peeling from the ceiling like impoverished Christmas decorations and the wooden banister had been worn into waves by generations of hands.

  On the fourth floor balcony one door stood open and a woman with many decades of ugliness behind her stood blocking their path. It was the crone from the window.

  “More Asians?” she said.

  “They’re not moving in,” Roger assured her.

  “What do they want?” she asked.

  “This is the President of Asia and his wife,” he told her.

  “Asians is Asians,” she said.

  Daeng asked Roger if this was the neighbor who’d identified Maen. He asked her.

  “It appears so,” he said.

  “Ask her what she saw.”

  “She says if you’re press she can’t tell you.”

  “We’re not press,” said Daeng.

  Easily convinced, the woman told Roger what had happened.

  “The Russian girl arrived with that Asian on Sunday,” she said. “I told her it was sinful what she was about to do. She yelled filth at me and I yelled filth back at her.”

  “How did she know what they were planning to do?” asked Siri.

  “It seems this wasn’t the first time she’d brought young gentlemen home,” said Roger. “But actually she means ‘mixing races with God’s lesser beings,’ not so much the sex.”

  “I see,” said Siri. “Did the blonde mix races very often?”

  “Brazen, she was,” said the ugly woman. “I saw her with all types.”

  “And she was with this Asian creature two nights?” asked Daeng.

  “Didn’t see them arrive yesterday,” said the woman. “Must have come during my nap time. But I saw him leave right enough.”

  “And she’s sure it was the same man?” asked Daeng.

  “Nothing wrong with my eyes,” said the woman.

  “And did she hear any sounds from upstairs?” asked Daeng. “Any arguments or screams?”

  “Huh?” said the woman. “This building was erected by Peter the Great himself. You could fire a cannon in here and nobody would be any the wiser.”

  They thanked her and started up the last flight of stairs. But after two steps Daeng s
topped, opened her shoulder bag and took out her purse. From one of the flaps she removed a photograph.

  “Ask her if this is the man she saw leaving the apartment,” she said to Roger.

  He took it from her and held it up in front of the woman’s face. Her glasses were hanging from a beaded lace around her neck. She put them up to her eyes, perused the photo and nodded.

  “She has no doubt that’s him,” said Roger.

  While he was picking the lock of the door to the murder scene, Siri asked casually, “You have a picture of Maen in your purse?”

  “And how would you feel if I did?” Daeng replied with a smile.

  “Some curiosity as to how you got hold of it, and perhaps questions about your sanity,” he said.

  “What woman wouldn’t want a photo of a gorgeous, fine-bodied young man in her purse?” she said and held it up for him to see. Siri smiled.

  “That would be me,” he said to Roger just as the door clicked open.

  They stepped inside.

  “And it would appear there isn’t a milligram of doubt that the thirty-four-year old Dr. Siri Paiboun was seen fleeing from a murder,” said Daeng.

  “Why, that’s splendid,” said Roger. “You have discredited a key witness.”

  “Why do you have a forty-year-old photo of me in your purse?” Siri asked.

  “You should be flattered that I have any photo of you at all,” Daeng said. She shut the door and they looked around the room. The only natural light came from the bathroom, as it was the only room with a window.

  There wasn’t much to see. The living area had a three-piece suite in some maroon vinyl-like material, a coffee table, a standard lamp. The kitchen was no more than an alcove beside the bathroom door with a sink, a single gas range, a cumbersome refrigerator—currently unplugged—and an empty wall cupboard. The bedroom was separated from the living room by a flowery cloth curtain on a rail. The only furniture in the bedroom, apart from the bed, was a large, ornate wooden chair. The wallpaper behind the bed didn’t match that on the other three walls. But there was a remarkably tacky op-art portrait of Lenin made of multicolored reflective glass.

  “She wasn’t exactly living a life of luxury,” said Daeng.

  “If it were a picture of me at seventy-six I’d be flattered,” said Siri, still preoccupied with Daeng’s purse.

  “Perhaps she was a prostitute,” said Roger.

  Daeng smiled. “You don’t have much experience with prostitutes, do you, Roger?” she said.

  “Well, I . . . no, not a lot,” he said. “Actually, none. Why?”

  “Because if you did you’d know that a beautiful woman could live a much more splendid lifestyle than this. And she’d know better than to go to the Olympic Village and come home with a poor boxer. She could have chosen a yachtsman or a horseman or one of the European government representatives. If nothing else, a hooker has a well-honed business sense.”

  “A photograph of the thirty-four-year-old me suggests you’re living in the past,” said Siri. “That you’d have preferred it if I hadn’t aged.”

  “So why do you think she was living in a place like this?” Roger asked.

  “We hoped we might find the answer to that by taking a look around,” said Daeng. “But this place is devoid of clues. It’s not unthinkable that it’s a short-term rental apartment and the girl really was here to compete in the Olympics. But there are no clothes. No equipment. No personal effects. Perhaps she was just a boxing groupie and she rented a room for a little nooky.”

  “It’s quite likely the police took everything away,” said Roger. “You don’t know how Soviet police work. I’m certain they would have already found the legal owner of the apartment. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes. Subletting is a very serious offense.”

  Siri stood in the bedroom admiring the glass Lenin.

  “No,” said Daeng.

  “No, what?” said Siri.

  “We have no room for it. Not in our luggage or in our life.”

  “It’s very attractive,” said Siri. “And we all know you prefer the new and the colorful to the old and dingy. But I wasn’t planning to steal it. I’m just uneasy about this room.”

  “It’s the tape outline of the body on the linoleum,” said Roger. “It gives me the willies, too.”

  “No, son. It’s not that.”

  On their way out of the building they were perhaps fortunate to bump into the caretaker/doorman. He looked moldy, as if his old clothes and old skin had been left in a damp dark corner for too long. Daeng showed him the young Siri photo.

  “Yes,” he told Roger. “That’s him. Saw him run out of here yesterday like a scared chicken.”

  “Did he have a knife?” Siri asked.

  “Didn’t see one,” said the man.

  “Any blood on him?”

  “Nah! Didn’t see no blood.”

  “But you’re certain this was the man?”

  “Never forget a face, me.”

  “Asians is Asians,” said Daeng as they stood in the street waiting for a taxi.

  Civilai had been in the photo booth for most of the day. He’d paused for lunch but brought his cafeteria tray back to the kiosk so he could continue to search. He was astonished at the number of photographs after only four days. A team of developers must have been working twenty-four-hour shifts at some hidden lab. The problem with finding what he was looking for was that he didn’t really know what he was looking for—or rather he knew but was aware he might never find it. Hypotheses could be annoying like that.

  But it was shortly after his lemon meringue pie dessert that he found what he wasn’t sure he’d been looking for. He’d been going through the photos of the day before the majority of athletes arrived, Day Zero minus One. Some teams had made special arrangements due to travel connections and had come a day early. Most of the facilities had yet to open so there were competitors and officials walking around with nothing to do. And it was on one of those aimless strolls that he found his Russian javelin thrower again. She was smiling at a well-built, dark-skinned man in sunglasses who was a head shorter than her. He had the type of blond hair that could only have come from a bottle.

  Civilai went through all the photos for that day and found one more picture of the blond man. He was in a group. There was no Russian in sight but the team’s uniforms stood out proudly. Blondie was from the Bahamas. Civilai had what he needed. He took the two photos to the village map and discovered that the Bahamian team was billeted in building E. Roger was off somewhere with Siri and Daeng so Civilai had no translator. But he reasoned French was a common enough language in the Caribbean. He was certain to find someone who’d understand him.

  His arrival at the Bahaman meeting room was very Olympic. The five officials at the conference table looked up when he entered and immediately noticed the “team leader” category B card hanging around his neck. They stood to shake his hand and smiled and said things, none of which amounted to communication.

  “Does anyone here speak French?” Civilai asked.

  “I do,” said the only female in the room. She was as rosy as an apple and her uniform was much too tight for her figure.

  Civilai introduced himself and they shook his hand one more time and invited him to sit. On his way there he’d decided to go for the jugular. He took out the photo of the blond Bahamian with his teammates and passed it around.

  “I’m looking for this man,” he said, pointing at the blond.

  “It’s Juno,” said one of the officials.

  “Light middleweight,” said another.

  But then, as if a dark cloud of apprehension passed over them, they lowered their heads and said no more. The team manager stiffened. There was a flicker of something resembling shame and Civilai knew his day hadn’t been completely wasted.

  “Is he in the building?” he asked.
“I’d like to see him.”

  “No, he’s not,” said the French-speaking woman. “Why do you want to meet him?”

  Civilai weighed the truth in his mind. It was a little too heavy.

  “If our boys make it through the first two rounds they’ll meet in the semi-finals,” he said. It was a lie but he was relying on nobody there having studied the fixture list. “It’s a Lao tradition for opponents to get together before a battle and wish each other good luck.”

  It was a tradition he’d just made up but the group seemed fractionally more relaxed. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out the second photo. This was the one that would confirm or deny his theory.

  “I have another picture of him,” he said.

  He put it on the table where everyone could see it. Juno and the Russian woman. Civilai looked from face to face. Everybody held the secret but nobody spoke. One man who had been silent since Civilai’s arrival stood and walked out of the room. He glared at the Lao as he left.

  “He just walked out,” said Civilai. “Just disappeared.”

  “That can be annoying,” said Daeng.

  “You didn’t confront them with your suspicions?” asked Siri.

  “I don’t have any suspicions,” said Civilai. “I just had a theory that this woman was preying on poor athletes from small countries. There are no Soviet athletes staying at the Village. But there was our Russian javelin thrower strolling around after breakfast. Why did she settle on the smaller weight classes like Maen when there were so many full-sized heavyweight boxers to choose from?”

  “We ruled out prostitution,” said Roger, who had been officially drafted into the think tank.

  They considered all the possibilities while Sergei delivered a new batch of cocktails.

  “And that only leaves the groupie theory,” said Daeng. “She had a thing for small boxers. And that’s even more likely now that she approached another one.”

  “And it gives us another suspect for the murder,” said Siri. “The Bahamian has a brief affair with a beautiful woman and thinks it’s love. He goes back to her apartment and she’s with another man. He lies in wait till the new fellow leaves and kills his lover in a fit of jealousy.”