The Woman Who Wouldn't Die

by Colin Cotterill

  He glanced at the final paragraph above THE END and read her hurried note there.

  I feel his presence. He is here to kill me and he, has arrived with a lifetime of hatred as his weapon.

  Until that moment, Siri had felt secure in his decision to bring Madame Daeng to Pak Lai. But something in those words sent a chill across his shoulder blades. The words ‘The End’ suddenly took on a more ominous note. He left the room and ran across the lawn to the guest house with Ugly at his heels. He climbed the outside staircase to his old room and looked around. The space was crowded with partygoers but neither Civilai nor Daeng was there. He went back down a floor and banged on Mr Geung’s door. The guest house had no locks but something was wedged against the door handle from the inside.

  ‘I … I … I’ve gotta gun,’ came Geung’s voice from inside.

  ‘Geung,’ called Siri. ‘It’s me.’

  Mr Geung freed the door.

  ‘Have you seen Madame Daeng?’ Siri asked.

  Geung turned the colour of a Mekhong sunset. He stepped back.

  ‘You can … can … can search,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not an accusation, Geung. Just a question. Have you seen Madame Daeng?’

  ‘Come in and look,’ said Geung.

  There was no time to repair Geung’s feelings this time. Something had happened to his wife. Of that he was certain. Siri hurried back down the stairs and walked double time around the guest house. Ugly fell in beside him with the same urgency. A full moon was rising gently beyond the river. It picked out the smiling faces of the boat crews walking aimlessly, just as they had rowed. Siri and the dog completed a circuit of the guest house grounds and were met by Mr Geung who had put his trousers on back to front in his hurry to follow the doctor.

  ‘Comrade Civilai is at the te … mmmple,’ he said.

  ‘Of course, that’s where Daeng will be,’ said Siri.

  Siri’s lungs no longer filled completely and he had to stop several times on his way to the temple. But he felt that every missed second was condemning his wife to some unavoidable disaster. The last night of the races had produced a desperate surge of fun before normal life resumed the following day. Siri, Geung and Ugly waded through the thick crowd, blocked here and there by villagers who’d stopped to look at the sideshows or try their hands at throwing hoops and shying at coconuts. Siri could no longer hear the music nor sense the gaiety. It wasn’t a vast temple, but one complete circuit took fifteen minutes. At the end of it he sat on the stupa steps, his chest wheezing, his eyes red with tears.

  ‘Where is she, Geung?’ he asked. ‘What’s he done with her?’

  Mr Geung sat on the step beside the doctor.

  ‘Com … Comrade Daeng won’t come to a party without her doctor,’ he said.

  ‘You’re right,’ Siri agreed. ‘This would be too much for her. She’d look for somewhere quiet. Somewhere she could …’

  Siri got to his feet and stumbled down the old stone steps.

  ‘I know,’ he said as they exited the temple grounds. ‘I know where she’ll be.’

  He stole one of the lighted torches that stood beside the gate and broke into a trot across the green, back in the direction from which he’d first come. He ignored the pain in his old lungs. There was a buzz now that ran through his nerves. This was more than concern. This was fear. His body was on alert. He ran along the side of the French residence building and into the garden at the rear. He could see the wooden swing by the grey light of the moon. It still rocked slightly as if caught in a strong breeze, of which there was none. Ugly reached it first but braked suddenly as if he’d run into a wall. His ears tucked back. His tail drooped. He turned and slouched behind Dr Siri. The moon passed behind a cloud and the only light now came from Siri’s torch.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘No, please.’

  He held the torch forward and approached the swing. At night, lit by fire, blood tended to stand out like oil. The swing and its supports and the sand beneath it were as black as charcoal. As black as murder. There were shards of broken glass all around. Siri couldn’t find enough oxygen to fill his chest. He felt faint. He knew someone had died in this place not a few minutes before. At any second he expected the spirit of his wife to come to him, caress his cheek before heading to the waiting room. Perhaps she would speak to him. He was empty of hope.

  Ugly, whose sense of smell was deficient in many ways, had picked up a scent. He stood at the point where the lawned garden abutted the jungle and he barked. It was the first time Siri had heard him do so. The doctor had no strength to follow him. No will.

  ‘Geung, go and look,’ he said.

  Without questioning, Mr Geung took the torch from the doctor and followed the dog into the bushes. Siri lowered himself to the ground where he sat cross-legged, eyes closed, searching desperately through the lost souls for one he might recognize. He could not continue in the world without Daeng. She had become everything to him. She was his raison d’être.

  ‘Com … Comrade Doctor,’ came Geung’s voice. ‘Not dead yet.’

  Siri was across in a blur. He ignored the branches that thrashed at his face as he made his way to the flame.

  ‘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 pop
ular 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

  The French Letter That Leaked

  ‘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.

  ‘I was covered in his blood but once the adrenalin wore off I couldn’t get my legs to walk or my hands to stop shaking. I was crying, of course. I felt nothing in my heart but tears came to my eyes every time I killed a man. I never learned how to stop them. I’m not heartless, you see. Some subconscious part of me wanted to grieve for all the victims. When, at last, I had my limbs under control, I took the knife to the river and threw it as far as I could. I stripped off my bloody clothes and I bathed. That combination, naked and victorious, was just too seductive. The celebrants had left inner tubes and paddles on the bank so I went upstream on one. I felt I could paddle all the way to China. I went until I really had no more breath in me and that was when the calm draped itself around me. I threw away the paddle just as the moonlight illuminated the river. I lay back on the tube and let old Mother Khong take me where she wanted.’

  Mr Geung was looking away.

  ‘You. You must not. Not …’ he began.

  ‘Be stark naked in public?’ Daeng asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I probably won’t do it again,’ she said. ‘It was a one-off.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry I missed it,’ said Civilai. ‘I was embroiled in a serious game of rummy with the abbot. If I’d known …’

  Siri leaned across and flicked his friend’s lobeless left ear with his finger.

  ‘Ouch,’ said Civilai. ‘So tell me. I consider myself something of an authority on the region, but I fail to see what difference the London document made to events in Dien Bien Phu?’

  ‘As long as there was a possibility of Allied airstrikes,’ said Daeng, ‘the Viet Minh was reluctant to place field guns in strategic positions for fear they’d be wiped out by an air attack. With that threat in mind, the Vietnamese had to keep their objectives modest; just to hold the French. It would have been a long campaign with a lot of casualties on both sides, but with no resolution. But once they knew there would be no additional support, that the French had to go it alone, it gave the Viet Minh the green light to go on the attack. They went all out for victory. The leaking of that document lost the French their war.’

  16

  The Phasing Away Party

  Nurse Dtui had an hour before her Intermediate Russian class. An hour seemed barely enough time to thank someone for two lives. Barely enough time to explain how everything from that moment in the morgue had been a gift. How long would it take to say that every second until those two lives met a more natural end would be dedicated to that good Samaritan?

  But what a revelation it had been. Not until her conversation with Dr Siri the previous evening had the possibility crossed her mind. Of all the men in Vientiane, he would have been the least likely. She’d never heard him speak and, although Inspector Phosy and the others claimed to have heard him utter a few words on one occasion, she doubted he had the ability to conduct a conversation. But Dr Siri was adamant. On the day he d
eposited Ugly the dog at the Happy Dine Restaurant, he’d taken Crazy Rajid to one side and entrusted him with a task. The Indian was a young man who spent his life wandering the streets of Vientiane. He walked endless circles around the Nam Poo fountain and slept beneath the stars.

  Siri had told him, ‘If you see a tall Westerner, an old man with a star over his right eye – don’t let him out of your sight. Don’t let him see you but don’t lose him. He’s up to no good and you could be the only person around to stop him doing harm.’

  When he had spoken those words, the doctor hadn’t been certain the young man had heard him. Nor had he realized how true the prophesy would be. At some point, Crazy Rajid had found the Frenchman, probably too late to prevent the fire. He’d followed him to the morgue. He’d heard the threat and he had acted. The young man was no mute. His was a psychological silence caused by a family disaster. Inside his troubled head was a poet, a linguist, a mathematician, and a hero. The gun? Perhaps a result of his fascination with fireworks. A Chinese cracker or two? Again, who would know? But Siri had been certain of one thing. It was Crazy Rajid who’d saved the lives of Dtui and her daughter.