The Rat Catchers' Olympics

by Colin Cotterill

  There were strict rules on what constituted lawful walking but nowhere in the annals was there a rule which stipulated how long a competitor had to complete the race. So it was that, unaided and still observing the accepted technique, the last walker entered the stadium to begin his lap of honor. The officials hurriedly cleared the track of debris. All eyes were on Khamon. His first hundred meters was met with polite applause. Many of the Lao were on their way to the exit with their drum. But once the screen found their man on the back straight the supporters quickly regrouped and yelled their approval. The applause rose to a cheer and by the time the Lao had reached the final straight even the announcer’s voice was drowned in the deluge. A close-up of Khamon’s smiling face towered above him. He performed a half-pirouette to wave at the crowd, which probably infringed some regulation, but there wasn’t an official on the planet who would disqualify him now. The winners, still on their podia, applauded the Lao as he passed them. Someone had found a measuring tape and had strung it across the finishing line. Khamon walked into it with his arms raised and a smile that made the front page of newspapers around the world. Khamon had become the most popular loser in the history of the Games.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A Lopsided Man

  In the good old days of cinema you’d get value for money. There’d be a newsreel and a cartoon, perhaps a short Western and an interval before the main feature. This gave you time to buy ice creams and sugary drinks from a lady with a tray hanging from her neck. Sometimes her bosoms would be too large to see everything on display. At least that’s what Siri remembered from the picture houses in Paris.

  In order to keep the seats full, cinema owners began to show more and more short dramas known as cliff-hangers. These were so named after a common episode ending where the hero or heroine was left hanging from a cliff, usually from a feeble branch. The only way you’d know whether your favorite star survived this impossible situation would be to come back the following week, which Siri always did. In all his years of study he didn’t lose one star.

  But all that experience doesn’t prepare you for a cliff-hanger of your own. Here he is in the cockpit of a doomed Aeroflot aircraft with the ceiling fan whirring overhead and a mountain looming up ahead. The audience gasps. His death is impending but he doesn’t have the option of coming back the following week to learn of his fate. Then he sees it—the handbrake. He dives for it. It sticks. He looks around for oil but there’s no time. The mountain is just meters away. He yanks at the handbrake one more time . . . and it works. The aircraft screeches to a halt with the nose cone nudging the rock face. He sits on the floor for a moment to catch his breath and savor the adrenalin rush.

  He’d almost completely forgotten Madam Daeng. He knew she’d be angry. They’d been on their way to a performance by the Moscow Classical Ballet State Concert Ensemble at the Village cultural center. She knew that ballet and floral crochet held the same fascination in her husband’s mind so he assumed she’d say he disappeared deliberately just to avoid it. He didn’t, of course. Not consciously anyway. He just hoped not too many people witnessed his passing to the other side. It never got easier to explain.

  So here he was in the cockpit of his large Soviet metaphor. He knew from experience he had limited time to ask questions and interpret the answers. Auntie Bpoo could have simplified all these encounters by just sending him daily memos but she was a pain in the backside. She’d told him he was the master of his own afterlife. It meant nothing. Stopping the plane in mid-air should have given him more confidence but he still doubted himself.

  He opened the cockpit door and there in the front row of business class sat Comrade Noo enjoying a martini. This was a disaster in itself. Siri only ever saw people in these cameos who were dead or as good as. The family back in economy—the only other passengers—was undeniably in the former category. They were a tangle of misplaced body parts and gore and discontent. Somehow they’d managed to press the attendant alert button, which flashed above their heads.

  Siri ignored them and sat beside Noo.

  “Noo?”

  “Siri? Peanut?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “You need to fasten your seatbelt.”

  “We aren’t moving.”

  “Right.”

  Comrade Noo sipped his martini.

  “I didn’t think you . . .” said Siri.

  “Desperate times,” said Noo. “I might even have a joint later. Amazing what you can get in business class.”

  “Are you . . . ?” Siri began.

  “Not yet.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course,” said Siri. “Why would you doubt that? I don’t want you dead.”

  The disjointed family in economy was getting rowdy.

  “Quiet back there,” Siri shouted.

  “I’ve failed,” said Noo. “All that damned tree-sitting and dirt-digging and muck-raking. What good was it? What did it achieve? I’m better off dead.”

  Siri thought about Mr. Geung’s message. Noo had lost his feet. He looked down and, sure enough, Comrade Noo had nowhere to put his shoes. Somewhere in his subconscious the monk was losing his faith. That’s why he was sitting beside Siri in business class. He was in search of a guru and here they were frozen at the top of a mountain. Nothing subtle about that. Siri got it. He was supposed to be Noo’s seer. It was probably time to give the monk a blast of wisdom that would inspire him back to life. But Siri was no philosopher. Philosophy didn’t ever stop you getting hit by a bullet. You needed someone to shout “duck.” What Comrade Noo wanted was a coach. He remembered the Notre Dame trainer’s words to Ronald Reagan.

  “Noo,” he said, “sometimes when the team is up against it and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go out there with all they’ve got and win just one for . . . Dr. Siri.”

  Noo looked blank and Siri realized he hadn’t chosen the most appropriate movie quote so he added a few lines of his own. He had no qualms about mixing sports metaphors.

  “Noo,” he said, “every game you enter, you leave a trail of goodness and honesty behind on the field. The little people love you because you speak for them. You stand up to the bullies. The oppressors beat you this time but it was a low-scoring round in a bout you’ll go on to win with a knockout. I want to be proud of you out there on the field. The team’s counting on you.”

  He wasn’t sure whether Noo got it. But the monk nodded, put down his martini, and walked to the emergency door on two perfectly functioning feet. That was a good sign. He read the instructions, pulled the red lever, opened the hatch and stepped off the plane. That was less of a good sign in Siri’s mind.

  “Eh, you,” came a voice from economy. “We need some attention here.”

  Siri was in control of the flight. He’d pulled the handbrake so he felt obliged to look after his passengers, even the poor ones. He walked along the aisle to the troublesome family. There were blood and guts everywhere. They still hadn’t sorted out whose parts were whose.

  “Can I be of service?” Siri asked.

  “You certainly can,” came a familiar voice from somewhere beneath the seat. “If you aren’t going to turn down the air-conditioning the least you can do is provide a blanket.”

  “Certainly, sir,” said Siri. “Would you like individual blankets or one large one? Or how about a plastic garbage bag?”

  It was when he leaned down to turn off the flight attendant light that he saw the remains of a French maid uniform.

  “I don’t know,” said Siri.

  He and Daeng were having a stodgy breakfast in the cafeteria. It was day seven. The Lao delegation was torn between supporting their competitor in the woman’s hundred meters at the stadium and the two soldiers in the rapid fire event at the Sportivnaya Range. The events were on at the same time. So the supporters had worked out a roster and ha
lf went to the range and half to the Lenin stadium to encourage Nah, the elder sister. She had an ant’s hope in a buffalo stampede of qualifying for the next round.

  Siri and Daeng had woken up with hangovers and were not likely to spend the morning in an enclosed space where people were firing guns.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” said Daeng. “Is he dead or not?”

  “We need to contact Phosy to be sure,” said Siri.

  “But?”

  “But there’s a chance I might have talked him out of . . .”

  “. . . of dying?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Bravo. So that makes you . . . what? A brown belt?”

  “I don’t think shamans have belts.”

  He looked once more at the sausage on his fork and put it back on the plate.

  “But you did actually talk to him,” said Daeng.

  “Yes. Back and forth. It was thrilling.”

  “You won’t forget me when they have you over there on the other side full time, will you?”

  “We might even be there together some day.”

  “I’d rather not. You’re much more accustomed to inspecting body parts than me. You’re sure it was them?”

  “The maid’s uniform was the first clue. Then I found the bouncer’s wrist tattoo. It was a cobra. I’m pretty sure it was them.”

  “But there was nothing to identify the student, Manoi?”

  “Nothing I recognized. But there were certainly three bodies. It seems likely one was him. And the voice seemed to be his. His head was under the seat. I wasn’t about to forage around in all that offal to get a confirmation.”

  “You realize how tricky this is.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “The son of an influential deal broker in Laos is killed. The only way we know this is because my husband met the victims in a . . . ?”

  “. . . supernatural event.”

  “In a supernatural event onboard an airplane frozen in mid air. And they were dismembered. And as your other world corresponds to events in the real world we have to assume they are actually dead. And that they died in a horrific manner. But how can we confirm that? The television and newspapers only report good news. We can hardly go to the police and make inquiries without incriminating ourselves. In fact we don’t even know how they died.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Siri. “Remember yesterday when the leading walker arrived at the stadium? There was the sound of a cannon. We assumed it was part of the entertainment.”

  “You joked that it was probably an electrical junction box blowing up,” said Daeng.

  “It happens all the time back home and it was comforting that not even the Soviets had been able to solve all their technological faults.”

  “Now you’re having second thoughts?”

  “Yes. I mean, who’s going to go to the trouble of firing a cannon for a walker? Even at the Olympic Games. What if it was an explosion in Manoi’s building? The apartment block he lived in wasn’t so far from the stadium. What if Manoi and his staff were gathered in front of the TV watching the race, and bang?”

  “Siri, the worst an exploding TV can do is spray a little glass.”

  “I don’t mean it was an equipment malfunction. I mean, what if someone planted a bomb there?”

  “How would they get it past the tattoo man?”

  “He wouldn’t need to. Manoi lived on the third floor. If the killer had access to the second floor he could have piled up a stack of dynamite directly underneath Manoi’s apartment.”

  They both stared at Siri’s sausage and pondered.

  “If it was a bomb, the authorities would assume it was an act of terrorism,” said Daeng. “Their first reaction would be that it was one of the restless Soviet states making a statement. They’d bring in the KGB and the anti-terrorist units.”

  “And to thwart the terrorists they’d say nothing about it,” said Siri. “But there’d be a huge behind-the-scenes inquiry and they’d identify the victims and pick up on the Lao connection. We might not be their chief suspects but we’d certainly be on their list. In fact they might even be able to place me at the apartment on that first day.”

  “So eventually they’ll come to see us,” said Daeng. “We’ve already given them grief over the blackmail scandal so they’ll be delighted to pin something on us.”

  “That blackmailing was hardly our fault,” said Siri. “In fact we made them look better. I imagine they’ll come to us to ask for our help in solving this murder as well.”

  “Siri, there are times I believe you see yourself as the main character in an international mystery series,” she said, “flitting off here and there to solve crimes. You aren’t as indispensible as you think you are, my husband. I want you to promise me you won’t offer them advice this time. When they come I want you to perform that expression you do so well.”

  “Which one?”

  “The look of total surprise when they tell you about the murder.”

  Siri tried it.

  “That’s the one,” said Daeng. “But if they appear not to know you were at the apartment I want you to offer up that information anyway.”

  “Tell them? Why?”

  “Because in a good Communist country there are spies on every corner. They have a photo of us leaving the blackmailer’s apartment. Someone could have seen you at Manoi’s. You have to assume they know everything.”

  “Not so much that they could prevent an explosion, obviously,” said Siri.

  “And I think we should consider Inspector Phosy’s position,” she continued. “He made contact with the young man’s father. He was worried. He asked us to help. We failed. He isn’t going to be pleased about that. I recommend we send Phosy some suggestions as to how he might sidestep any possible repercussions.”

  “I’ll get Dtui to compose an Arpy message.”

  They were interrupted by Chom the rat catcher, who’d spotted them across the cafeteria and come running in their direction. He was as stoked as a furnace.

  “Comrade doctor, comrade auntie,” he said. “You won’t believe what’s happened.”

  He sat down at the table and shadow-boxed away his excess energy.

  “I thought you’d be going to the track with everyone else,” said Daeng.

  “I was going. I was going,” he said, “when this guy from the Soviet Social Newsletter stops me at the front door. He’s with Roger. He tells me they’re proposing to have a competition.”

  “I assume he wasn’t talking about running,” said Siri.

  “No,” said Chom. “In the newsletter interview I was talking about Comrade Civilai’s idea that there should be an Olympics for rat catchers.”

  “I don’t think that was exactly—” Siri began.

  “So Yusov the Russian rat catcher picks up on that and tells the newsletter editor he’d win hands down if there was such a competition. Real boastful he was. So the newsletter editor says, “Why don’t we do it?” They asked Sammy from Botswana at the TV interview yesterday and he’s really up for it. And they found me this morning and asked if I’d compete. Naturally I jumped at the chance.”

  “You can’t be serious,” said Daeng.

  “Deadly,” said Chom.

  “And how are they going to organize such a thing?” asked Siri.

  “They’ll sort that out at the newsletter,” said Chom. “What do you think?”

  “We’re very happy for you,” said Daeng.

  “I’ll want some of that good old Lao Cheer,” said Chom.

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ll get that,” said Daeng.

  “Great,” said Chom and threw playful air punches at the old couple.

  He stood to leave but Siri said, “Why didn’t they ask you at the TV interview yesterday?”

  �
�What?”

  “You said they asked the Botswana fellow if he’d join the competition. Why didn’t they ask you then?”

  “Oh, I missed that,” said Chom. “Got on the wrong train going in the wrong direction. But never mind. I don’t have a face for TV.”

  And their sprinter merged with the early morning crowd. Siri and Daeng looked at their half-ignored breakfast.

  “How do you suppose we might go about finding a decent bowl of noodles in Moscow?” Siri asked.

  “Information desk,” said Daeng.

  They found a French speaker at the desk. They collected Dtui, Civilai and Roger, climbed in a mini-van and twenty minutes later they were at the Kabul Noodle Bazaar on Arbut. It sounded and looked a lot worse than it was. It was decorated in a style Civilai liked to call, “Fill up all the walls with bad posters and hang unrecognizable stuff everywhere.” From the atmosphere you’d never know the Afghans were being invaded by the Soviets. It didn’t stop them making damned good noodles or serving them with a smile.

  Both Dtui and Civilai knew with various degrees of certainty of Siri’s relationship with the spirit world. They’d both seen evidence although Civilai cultivated his logjam of denial.

  “All tricks,” he’d say.

  But Roger? Well, Roger sat with one strand of noodles dangling from his mouth as Siri described his meeting with the assorted parts of Comrade Manoi and expounded on his theory that a future Lao president had been assassinated. When the translator had first introduced himself at Sheremetyevo Airport, the Lao administrators had assumed he was KGB. Siri and Civilai considered it de rigueur for Soviets in professional contact with foreigners to work as informants. They hadn’t completely shaken off that belief but Roger’s intervention at the blackmailing meeting had, at the very least, brought him into their camp. And if he was a spy what damage would it do for the Lao to confirm for him that they were demented and therefore harmless?