The Woman Who Wouldn't Die

by Colin Cotterill

  ‘And do you honestly think that’s all there is to it?’

  ‘No. But I do think this whole thing can be explained if we can discover what happened in 1910.’

  ‘Where are we going to find an historian in Pak Lai?’

  ‘You know? I think there might be one sleeping in our bed this very minute.’

  11

  Wake Me Up Before You Gogo

  ‘I told him. I told him where they were,’ she said.

  Dtui and Phosy lay side by side and wide awake on their thin mattress on the floor. Malee was sound asleep. She was apparently not nearly as traumatized by the morning’s events as her mother.

  ‘Stop it,’ said Phosy. ‘You couldn’t know.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll go there.’

  ‘You can’t be certain. You know how hard it is for a foreigner to travel around the country unaccompanied by some Lao official. Even if he tried there are checkpoints all the way. Without a travel document he won’t get past any of them.’

  ‘He’ll find a way. I looked into his eyes, Phosy. He’s crazy but he’s calculating. I think he was talking about his cancer and how little time it had given him. I’m sure Dr Siri did something to him in the past and this insane man wants revenge.’

  ‘Look, first thing tomorrow I’ll go to the German embassy. They handle French visas now the French embassy is shut. I’ll see if they have copies of visa applications. They should have a photo attached. I’ll bring what they have and show you. We’ll find him.’

  ‘That’s no help at all to Siri and Daeng. I know what this man is capable of, Phosy. I was this close to the metal bar that beat the hell out of the fire victim. He burned down Daeng’s shop. He was going to kill your wife and daughter for no other reason than that I knew Siri. If it weren’t for the glass breaking …’

  ‘Stop thinking about it. You’re safe. Malee’s safe.’

  ‘But who could it have been? The voice?’

  ‘I imagine someone overheard the conversation and decided to help.’

  ‘Phosy. How many people do you know who speak English? I mean, those that haven’t already swum across the river. This man was fluent. And he had a gun. He saved our lives.’

  ‘And if we ever find him I’ll pin a medal on him. But, in the mean time, how about trying to get some sleep?’

  ‘I won’t sleep until I know they’re safe.’

  Phosy raised himself on to one elbow and smiled at his wife. By the light of the moon he could see the dark shadows around her eyes.

  ‘We’ll get them out of there and back to Vientiane long before the Frenchman finds them,’ he said. ‘I put Sergeant Sihot on a boat this afternoon. It’ll stop overnight in Xanakham but tomorrow morning he’ll be in Pak Lai. They can all take the first ferry back here. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t back already.’

  ‘How could they be?’

  ‘I contacted Comrade Civilai before he left Luang Prabang and told him about the fire. They have working telephones up there. He should have arrived in Pak Lai around midday. Once Siri and Daeng hear what happened I wouldn’t be surprised if they jumped straight on the ferry and headed home.’

  The only indication that Comrade Civilai wasn’t dead was the occasional fart loud enough to cause the boat-race guests to turn in his direction. Madame Daeng shook her head.

  ‘He’s not going to be much use to us until at least tomorrow morning,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ said Siri. ‘I reckon we could bottle that flatulence and sell it as cooking gas.’

  ‘There. That’s why I married you. Class.’

  ‘I thought you married me because I have an enormous intellect.’

  ‘I’ve known much bigger intellects,’ she smiled. ‘Intellects that can maintain their intelligence all through the night. Intellects that—’

  ‘All right. You’ve made your point most eloquently. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese invasion of Sanyaburi; how do you propose we find out what they’re really up to?’

  ‘I think we can arrange it so that the engineers tell you themselves.’

  ‘They’re hardly likely to just blurt it out.’

  ‘Not to you directly, but to each other.’

  ‘Ah! Once more she thrusts me into the enemy camp as a spy. No fear for my life.’

  ‘They didn’t hear you speak Vietnamese, did they?’

  ‘I wanted to. I bit my tongue.’

  ‘Then you should hang around them.’

  ‘What is my motivation? What Sherlockian disguise should I don?’

  ‘You could play drunk.’

  ‘Ah, a challenge.’

  ‘What challenge? You do it all the time.’

  ‘Do it, yes. But act it? That’s a different kettle of gin completely.’

  It was late evening. Siri and Ugly approached the small tent compound with two purloined bottles of Mekhong whisky.

  ‘If you insist on coming along,’ Siri whispered, ‘the least you can do is stagger.’

  When Siri started to trip over his own feet, Ugly did the same. Siri decided there was something particularly eerie about that dog.

  ‘One more step and you’re dead,’ came a voice. Siri looked to one side and saw a sentry sitting cross-legged beneath a Leaning-Egg tree, an AK-47 on his lap. He’d spoken in Vietnamese and, as Siri wasn’t supposed to know the language, he waved and staggered on. Not even the sight of the weapon being raised and trained in his direction caused him to halt. In fact it brought on a song which Siri belted out in grand voice for all to hear. The men sitting around the campfire jumped to their feet. Some reached for their weapons. Siri threw his hands into the air, a bottle in each.

  ‘I bring alms from the secret capitalists,’ Siri shouted in Lao, ‘to share with my Vietnamese brothers.’

  ‘What’s he prattling on about?’ someone asked.

  ‘No idea. He’s as drunk as a wonky fishing rod,’ said another.

  Good, thought Siri. They don’t speak Lao.

  He performed a little jig in the light of the bonfire.

  ‘Shoot him,’ someone said as the majority returned to their places around the fire.

  ‘Take the bottles from him and then shoot him,’ someone else suggested.

  Then he noticed Ugly.

  ‘Look at that damned dog. He’s even more drunk than the old fella.’

  From Siri’s lead, Ugly was reeling this way and that and enjoying the laughs he got from his audience. The only officer in the group stepped up to the old drunk and relieved him of his bottles.

  ‘You speak Vietnamese, Granddad?’ he shouted.

  Siri replied with the first verse of ‘They stand to conquer. They squat to pee.’ A rude song the Lao enjoyed singing about their Vietnamese counterparts. The young engineers had obviously never heard it. The bottles, uncapped, were working their ways in conflicting circles around the fire gazers. Each man took a generous swig to impress his mates.

  ‘OK, you can piss off now,’ said the officer to Siri. ‘Job done. Go back to your intestine-eating, monkey Lao.’

  Siri laughed heartily and repeated the sentence with awful pronunciation. The engineers cheered.

  ‘Monkey Lao,’ they toasted.

  ‘Monkey Lao,’ Siri laughed. He reached into his shoulder bag and produced a smaller bottle of whisky. He took great pains to unscrew the top. Once decapitated, he held the bottle aloft.

  ‘Monkey Lao!’ he shouted.

  ‘Monkey Lao,’ they all repeated.

  He was the star turn in this evening’s cabaret. The Vietnamese were laughing and pointing at him and his inebriated dog. Siri began to glug down the drink like a man with a great thirst. They all watched in amazement.

  ‘He can drink,’ said one of the soldiers.

  ‘Twenty dong says he falls on his face before he gets to the bottom of the bottle,’ said the officer.

  ‘I’ll take that bet,’ said one young man.

  He clapped a beat for Siri to swallow to and the others joined in
. The pace slowed as the doctor’s Adam’s apple began to rise and descend more laboriously but still he swallowed. And, with his eyes closed, he drained the last of the cold tea and overturned the empty bottle above his head. He smiled, bowed to acknowledge the applause of the soldiers, and fell nose first into the recently mown grass. Ugly took a few tentative steps towards him before lying down and playing dead.

  *

  The grass had actually been quite comfortable. Siri had fought off sleep until the last engineer had retired to his tent. He was about to return to the guest house when he looked to his left to see Ugly twitching through a deep dream and smiling as if it were a naughty one. Siri paused for a moment too long and he too was plunging through layers of places he’d never seen in real life, only to land in a den of iniquity. He was in a gogo bar in Thailand. The signs were in Thai. The girls on the stage in front of him were in bikinis and stiletto heels. It was certainly a step up from naked Frenchmen. All around him were Western men in loud Hawaiian shirts. But the greatest shock of all was the soundtrack. He could hear everything.

  ‘See all this?’ came a voice, shouted above the ear-splitting music.

  Siri turned to see an old man staring out over the dance floor. He was dressed well in a dazzling flowery tie and a starched white shirt, but there was little of him inside it. He seemed frail and used up. In his hand was something that looked like Coca-Cola but it was in a beer mug and had a straw poking out of it.

  ‘All this is mine,’ said the man. His voice was that of somebody who couldn’t hear himself talk. Like a man listening to loud music on headphones.

  Siri was delighted. Just as Madame Peung had taught him, by not fighting it he was able to attain other elements. The sound was unpleasant – some awful pop thing – but it was an achievement. He hardly dared talk to the old man in the hibiscus tie for fear that it would all go away. But he knew he had to.

  ‘Who are you?’ Siri thought he’d said, but nothing came out of his mouth. He yelled his question. ‘WHO ARE YOU?’ but again he produced not a sound.

  ‘Relax, Siri,’ he told himself. ‘Don’t fight. Enjoy the show. Smell the tobacco. Order something.’

  He looked around for a beer mat and a pen.

  ‘That one over there,’ said the old man, pointing at one of the dancers. ‘She arrived yesterday. She’s a beauty. I get to interview them all, if you know what I mean. She’ll be raking it in once she gets the countryside out of her skin.’

  Siri breathed. Relaxed. Paid attention. He looked around for clues. Why was he here? Madame Peung had told him to take charge of moments like these. Not to sit and watch the show but to direct it. So he left his seat. The scenery had trouble keeping up with him as he walked to the stage. Here and there he’d see a gap into the next dream. Fat men lined the bar like brooding chickens in a coop. Young girls, fresh from the farm, massaged the fat thighs and squeezed the fat cheeks. He looked at their faces. Did he recognize anyone? Would somebody pass him a note? What was the message here? He turned back to look at his seat and the old man in the white shirt sitting beside it. He was sipping his Coke through a straw. The strobe lights lit him in blues and reds and blinding whites and in one of those flashes, just for a second, there was something familiar about him. Where had he …?

  Siri smiled. He went to a vacant stool in front of the stage and watched the dancers. He had his answer. There was nothing to do now but enjoy the show. Or so he thought.

  He felt a tap on his shoulder – another new dream experience; touch. He turned to see Comrade Koomki of Housing with a beer in his hand. Only his head looked different somehow, as if it had been reassembled without care: a puzzle whose unmatching pieces had been forced to fit together. He had a marvellous suntan. Siri, for want of a better response, gave him a polite nop. It was courtesy. It seemed likely, having seen the comrade in two spirit dreams now, that the poor man was dead. Koomki did not return the nop. In fact he took a mouthful of his beer and spat it at the doctor. If it had ever been wet it was no longer so when it reached Siri.

  ‘I’m here because of you,’ said Koomki.

  Siri didn’t immediately see the problem. He was in a bar full of beautiful women and he had a cold beer. It was hardly purgatory. But, as yet, Siri couldn’t tell him so. With every second that passed, Koomki’s tan grew darker. It was currently burnt sienna heading towards oak. Siri willed himself to speak.

  ‘How did you die?’

  But nothing came out.

  ‘They say I have to tell you this,’ said the diminutive comrade. ‘They say it might chalk up a few points in my favour. You see? I might have inadvertently been responsible for something that will happen to Madame Daeng. I’m not particularly sorry but I put one of the living angels of hell on to her. He’ll be—’

  They were interrupted by an elderly woman in a miniskirt who asked whether either of them would be interested in the ‘special show’ that was about to start upstairs. Siri declined and she started to lick his nose. It wasn’t an unpleasant experience. Comrade Koomki was indigo and the bar had started to smell of hay. Ugly’s tongue was as soggy as an overripe durian. When Siri opened his eyes the dog stopped licking.

  ‘I got sound,’ Siri told him.

  Siri arrived at his room at six to find the door open, the floor littered with empty bottles and cigarette butts, and Civilai sleeping peacefully in the bed beside a rather good-looking man with a moustache. Both were, fortunately, fully dressed. There was no Madame Daeng to be seen but Siri wasn’t overly concerned. She had set out the night before with two more bottles of Mekhong whisky to lure the cruiser captain and his mate into a confessional. She had a way with sailors. Siri took his toilet bag down to the communal bathroom to shower and freshen himself for what would likely be a full day. When he returned to the room, Civilai was sitting up in the bed rigid as an old hinge, eyes bulging, with a ghastly pallor on his face.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Siri. ‘Are you going to introduce me to your boyfriend?’

  ‘Siri,’ said Civilai, ‘Madame Daeng’s shop has been burned down. Everything in it has been destroyed.’

  Siri stared at his friend, wondering whether he’d just returned from a frightening dream. He sat on the edge of the bed and tightened the cap of his toothpaste before returning it to the pink plastic container Daeng had bought for him.

  ‘I should have told you when I arrived,’ said Civilai. ‘God, how many days ago was that? I should have grabbed you both and taken you back to Vientiane on the ferry. I forgot all about it. I don’t know what they gave me on that boat but … Siri?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you in shock?’

  ‘I don’t believe so.’

  ‘You don’t seem that upset.’

  ‘If it’s true …’

  ‘It’s true. Phosy phoned me before I left Luang Prabang.’

  ‘Well, then it’s just a building. It wouldn’t be the first building I’ve lost. Do you know if the chickens got out all right? That’s the first thing Geung will ask.’

  ‘Siri, are you mad? All your papers. Your books.’

  ‘Just things. They came to me by chance. They left me by chance. Madame Daeng is safe. As long as nobody was hurt.’

  ‘Siri … there was a body in there.’

  Siri bowed his head and nodded.

  ‘Comrade Koomki.’

  ‘Good Lord. How did you know …?’

  ‘I had a visit last night. In a dream,’ said Siri. ‘I imagine he set fire to the place. Can’t say I blame him. He probably lost his job because of me. I’d most likely set fire to your house if you ruined my life.’

  ‘That’s good to know. But listen. Dtui did an autopsy on the—’

  ‘She did? That’s excellent. Good for her.’

  ‘But she seems to believe the little comrade was beaten to death before the fire was lit.’

  ‘Ah. Then it’s true.’ Siri nodded.

  ‘What’s true?’

  ‘The Frenchman.’

  ‘W
hat Frenchman?’

  ‘The one who came looking for my wife.’

  ‘That Frenchman?’ said Civilai. ‘Last thing I knew, that Frenchman was an old flame.’

  ‘Yes. It appears it might be a little bit more complicated than that. There’s a chance he might be here to … hurt her. If Dtui was right, and I’m certain she was, it wouldn’t surprise me if the Frenchman was responsible for both the fire and the death.’

  ‘You’ve been holding something back, haven’t you?’

  ‘I did a touch of research. My good lady wife has a file at the French embassy as thick as an Angkor lintel. Or, rather, the mysterious Fleur-de-Lis has a file. In all that time nobody linked Daeng to the famous spy. It was astounding how much chaos one woman can cause. I was barely twenty pages into the file and she’d already reduced De Gaulle to tears.’

  ‘Wait! How could you do research at the French …?’

  ‘The mind is such a terrible thing to steep in alcohol.’

  ‘That’s where you put them, you sly old bastard. That’s where you hid all your housemates. Slap in the middle of the city.’

  Civilai started to laugh but his throbbing head caused him to stand down.

  ‘My goodness, how I love you,’ he said.

  At this point the hungover bed mate slipped from the mattress, nodded and fled for the door.

  ‘I hope I haven’t come between you two,’ Siri laughed.

  ‘So, the files,’ said Civilai.

  ‘I had nothing to go on, really. I looked for the name Hervé Barnard. Nothing. I’m sure there’ll some day be a way to cross-reference piles of paper without licking your forefinger so many times you become dehydrated. I spent most of the night in the archive room. It was quite by chance that I found the letters. I didn’t want to waste time reading other people’s private correspondence, but there was one box file full of letters all from the same person. They dated back to 1956. His name was Olivier Guittard. The earliest was sent from Saigon and it asked casually whether the French post in Pakse had garnered any more recent intelligence on the person they referred to as the Fleur-de-Lis. I didn’t go through the whole lot but those I scanned read like a growing obsession. This Guittard character seemed to have been seeking out French officials and military personnel who were, or had been, stationed in the south of Laos. Even back then Guittard had started to collect reports and anecdotes. He’d taken it upon himself to reinvestigate every case that was attributed to Fleur-de-Lis.