The Woman Who Wouldn't die dsp-9

by Colin Cotterill

  He’d been too quick to accept Dtui’s opinion that this was an example of the supernatural. He sharpened his pencil and made a list of more earthly possibilities on the back of the incident sheets.

  The widow was not killed, only injured in the first attack. The bullet did not damage any vital passages in her brain, in fact it gave her heightened sensitivity.

  There was a mix-up of bodies at the temple and the person the villagers took to the pyre was not in fact the widow.

  The burning of the corpse was symbolic rather than actual.

  The person who was killed was not the widow but a friend who looked like her.

  The widow was killed and replaced by an imposter who claimed to have psychic powers for the purpose of … (He drew a blank on that one.)

  The whole thing was conspired by the villagers for the purpose of … (He had no idea how to get out of that one either.)

  This was a rather humble list but it made Phosy feel better that there were straws to clutch at. And there was one more straw. The brother. Why hadn’t they seen him in the village? Was he holed up in the house that whole time, afraid to go out? He wondered whether any of the bereaved families who visited the witch had seen anything or anybody in the house. He’d need to contact them. Yes, a start. He went straight to the communications room and sent a wire to his counterpart in Ho Chi Minh. The wire would be diverted via the Vietnamese Secret Service Unit in Vientiane where it would be translated. A background check would be run on Phosy and eventually the request would be sent off to the Department of Justice in Vietnam. All this just to find out what Madame Peung had been doing on her last visit to Ho Chi Minh. Did she upset anyone enough to want her executed? It was one of Phosy’s favourite ploys to start with the paranoid and work backwards. Conspiracy theories weren’t always far-fetched. Not in this day and age.

  The underground movement against the French was expanding. The Lao Issara organized acts of sabotage. We collected intelligence on troop movement through networks of observers in the villages. We lured the clumsy French militia into the jungles where they were ill-equipped to compete with nature. A platoon could often be defeated by dysentery alone and we would retreat not from the enemy but from the stench. We left the politics to the elders. Our job was to remind the French that they weren’t welcome. To let them know that Laos was no longer a cushy posting. We were angry and we wanted to fight. Once or twice our cell would meet up with the medical unit of Bouasawan and Siri. It was heartbreaking. He loved his wife so much he, couldn’t see me at all. He was the first man I’d loved and he had no idea.

  The guerrilla skirmishes went badly. We suffered losses. Then came a war in Europe. The French were distracted. And suddenly there was another monster in the mix. South-east Asia was invaded from the north by the Japanese. In no time at all, that little Asian country had taken over half a continent. If nothing else, the Japanese dominance around that time showed us that Asians could be more powerful than Europeans. They gave us hope. But they frightened me even more than the French. We were told to cooperate with them but they didn’t look at us … at me, like an ally should. We were still not equals and our fighting girls were seen as fair game by the randy Japanese. I once had to kill one to remind them we had rights and we deserved respect. By then, killing had become second nature to me, but this was the first time I’d had to use my knife on what was technically a partner. I knew he would have gladly done the same to me once he’d had his way, so it was no great moral jerk. But he’d worn those three stars on his shoulder and it was suggested I disappear for a while. I became quite adept at disappearing. In fact, although I was in contact with my commanders the whole time, I only reappeared once during that period.

  In October 1945 we all joined together in Savanaketh town and heard the joyous announcement that France, somewhat tired after fighting off Germany, had graciously granted us a flimsy independence. We were a sort of free nation. I kissed Nurse Bouasawan on the cheek that afternoon and shook Dr Siri’s hand. I could feel his palm in mine for many months after. It was the last time we would meet for over thirty years. I loved again after that but never as deeply or sincerely as I had with my doctor. We all celebrated long and hard and started to plan the new nation. But it turned out to be a brief freedom. With the war in Europe won, the French returned to renew old friendships. And this was when the horror years started. The Japanese were defeated. The French returned in great numbers and the clearing up of troublesome elements began. The Frenchmen still had blood in their teeth from the European campaign and they swept through Laos like angry dogs reclaiming their bones. We were scattered off to the jungle where we had to rethink, replan, reorganize. It was there that the whore in me was born.

  Barnard had pushed his luck far enough. He was starting to question his strategy. It was Monday morning and he knew they’d be missing the car soon. He couldn’t sit there indefinitely. He assumed that if the old couple was in Vientiane they would have come by to inspect the damage. So they must be away and he needed to find out where. He was used to having people around him who could gather information. Spies who could move about unnoticed. Technology that would allow him to listen to private conversations and interpreters who could fill in the gaps. But here he was alone and conspicuous and he had little to fall back on but experience and the fact that he had nothing to lose.

  The short man had told him that the husband was a doctor at Mahosot Hospital. Siri, his name was. That would be the next move. He removed the lighter fluid from his bag and sprinkled it around the interior of the limousine. He wound down the window, opened the door, and stepped out into a blinding sunshine. He looked up and down the deserted road, struck a match and tossed it into the car which was puddled with petrol from the slashed feed pipe. No point really but old habits died hard. He was a block away when he heard the petrol tank explode.

  The hospital had been built by the French and all the signs were still posted in the French language. But as he didn’t know in which section this Dr Siri worked, he had no choice but to ask. He produced his most charming smile and stopped an elderly nurse.

  ‘I am looking for Dr Siri,’ he said, in French.

  She shook her hands as if to wave off this foreign attack and hurried away. But then, her steps slowed. She seemed to have gleaned something from the question. She turned.

  ‘Dr Siri?’ she said.

  He nodded.

  ‘La morgue,’ she said.

  It took Barnard only five minutes to find the small building, its impressive French name plate with La Morgue written in comic green and red letters over the door. He reached into his bag and took hold of the tyre iron. It should take him far less time to beat the information he needed out of the staff there.

  The preliminary heats of the boat races started early. Two boats would start together to the sound of a pistol shot. They travelled five hundred metres to a point where the judges sat on a tin barge anchored midstream. For the finals the teams were dressed in gaudy almost-matching uniforms and an array of straw hats. As the Peace Hotel blocked the view from the administration buildings, the governor and all his guests invited themselves to Siri’s balcony. The only good news was that they arrived with several crates of beer. The close proximity to Thailand meant the governor had a healthy supply of exotic foods and drinks on hand. The size of his gut suggested the Singha Beer importation was not a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence. The man had no shame. He stood at the railing with his bottle in his hand saluting the peasants below like some red-nosed Mussolini. A month earlier he’d announced to these same peasants that the boat race festival would be dry this year. Due to the rice harvest disaster, no rice had been diverted for the production of whisky. Anyone caught moonshining would be arrested. Yet, to the trained eye, it was clear the boat crews and their cheerleaders were ‘on’ something.

  The guests had brought along a few dozen stackable chairs but Siri and Madame Peung had grabbed two of the comfortable deckchairs and were deep in conversation, ignoring the r
aces below. His wife, Madame Daeng, hovering a few metres away, squeezed the paper cup that contained her beer until a little tsunami of foam splashed over the rim. The previous evening, with her husband locked in conversation with the witch at the dinner table, she’d been forced to listen to the other Siri amusing his hand-picked guests with bawdy stories. The thought of it brought about another involuntary squeeze of the cup. Another spill.

  ‘Steady, old girl,’ came the overly familiar voice of the governor from behind her. ‘That stuff doesn’t come cheap, you know?’

  ‘Sometimes I don’t know my own strength,’ she told him without looking around.

  ‘So, are you going to tell me, or not?’ he asked.

  She turned towards his ruddy face.

  ‘What do you need to know, Comrade Governor?’

  ‘What this top secret mission of yours is all about. I’d ask your husband but I can never tear him away from his girlfriend.’

  ‘There is no mission,’ she said angrily. ‘We’re all just here to enjoy the races.’

  ‘Bull. There’s more to it than that. A week away from race day and I’m requested … no, I’m bloody ordered to give up my two best rooms to important people from Vientiane. I even have to give up another room to a moron. None of you seem to be reaching into your pockets as far as I see. Where am I supposed to get the budget to cover the lost tourist revenue, eh?’

  She eyed the distance to the railing and wondered whether he weighed as much as he appeared to.

  ‘And after all this generosity,’ he went on, ‘I’m not even let in on the secret. Clandestine flights upriver. Special transportation requests. Hushed Vietnamese conversations late at night. And now I’m told to expect a unit of army engineers that I’m supposed to feed and billet somewhere. Again, I ask, where’s the bloody money coming from?’

  She turned square on and pulled back her shoulders.

  ‘You have resources, you slimy man.’

  ‘What did you …?’

  ‘Illegal smuggling, for one. A thriving import business no doubt paid for from illegal logging. Perhaps the odd gem. I’ve seen all those crates in the chicken shed. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve been trafficking girls over the border to brothels on the other side. That would be your style. But, we’ll get you. When my report goes in you’ll-’

  ‘Listen, you …’

  ‘Yes, I know what you’d like to say but, how sad, you can’t say it because you don’t know just how VIP we are, do you? You’ll just have to suck up to me for another day or two. And that includes making sure I have enough to drink.’ She was about to turn away but had an afterthought. ‘And this is a “love me, love my dog and my Down Syndrome friend” deal. If I hear of you kicking either of them, I promise you there will be a full-scale enquiry into where all this booze came from. You do understand what I’m saying, don’t you?’

  She smiled at him. His mouth was ajar enough to see the brown roots of his teeth. He most certainly was not used to being spoken to in such a manner. She could see the rage in him. He wanted to kill her. That was a particularly common male way of solving a problem. But she knew she held the bloody plums in her hand.

  ‘Were they women’s voices?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’ He wiped the drool from his lips.

  ‘The hushed Vietnamese voices. Were they female?’

  ‘I don’t … Yes. One was, I suppose.’

  ‘Good boy,’ she said, and turned her back on him. ‘You can leave me alone now.’

  She marched across the balcony on heavy legs to where her husband was sitting. She could see him transfixed by the face of the beautiful witch, adoring her words. It was disgusting.

  ‘Excuse me, dear Madame Peung,’ she said in Vietnamese. ‘I am in need of a husband.’

  She hooked a finger into the neck of Siri’s collarless shirt and yanked. He laughed, apologized to Madame Peung and took Daeng’s hand as they walked across the crowded balcony. Their room was filled with even more strangers so they kept going out the door and down the staircase.

  ‘What’s so urgent?’ Siri laughed.

  She didn’t speak until they reached the landing one flight down.

  ‘Siri,’ she said, stepping up to his face. ‘Do you trust me?’

  ‘Absolutely not. You’d kill me as soon as-’

  ‘Siri. Stop it. I’m not joking. Do you trust my judgement?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Will you listen to me without saying, “But, Daeng!”?’

  He laughed again.

  ‘I swear,’ he said.

  ‘That woman.’

  ‘Madame Peung?’

  ‘She’s up to something.’

  Siri was nodding.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ said Daeng.

  ‘What did I do?’

  ‘That sympathetic counsellor nod. You do it when you’re talking to idiots.’

  ‘I do not, and you’re not, so why …? All right. What makes you think she’s up to something?’

  ‘You said you trust me.’

  ‘And I do.’

  ‘Then, if I say she’s up to no good — as a loving husband you would simply tell me you believe me and be in my corner.’

  Siri reached for her hand but she pulled it away. He smiled.

  ‘Daeng,’ he said. ‘I’m seventy-four. I have all the woman I need in you. It’s sweet. In fact it’s very flattering, but surely we’re both a bit over the hill for jealousy. There’s noth-’

  ‘You ass!’ she said, and started down the stairs, passing Ugly on his way up.

  ‘But Daeng? Daeng?’ he called. She didn’t stop. He considered going after her but he wasn’t certain what rules they were playing under here in the wilds. Even though there hadn’t been any punches thrown, this probably counted as a fight. It was their first. He sat on the step. As the staircase was open, Ugly didn’t consider it part of the building. He sat beside his master.

  ‘I take full responsibility,’ Siri said to the dog. ‘In fact, if there were a flower stand and a retailer of chocolates, I would spend the last of my wages on them. It always worked with my first wife. Jealousy is a fleeting emotion. Of course, all she’s seen here is me with a very attractive other woman whom I suppose you could say I pursued. Engaged her in lengthy conversations. And that, my dear Ugly, is why Daeng was angry. But anger is just one more incarnation of love. She loves me and that makes me happy. I shall repair the damage. But not yet. I’m too close to answers to give up on my witch.’

  Ugly, as may have been expected, licked his undercarriage noisily.

  10

  Hanoiance

  ‘Do you speak French?’ asked the man.

  The baby was awoken by his gruff voice and started to cry. Nurse Dtui went to comfort her. After the autopsy it had been two a.m. before mother, father and daughter finally got to sleep that morning. But, as always, they were up with the chickens and working on the police vegetable lot with the other families. This was the first chance Dtui had found to put her daughter down to catch up on her sleep. The morgue was usually such a quiet place. She had bones to label and a report to write. Her classes didn’t begin until the afternoon and she’d been giving thought to the state of the skull on the aluminium table. The ferocity of the attack. The number of unnecessary blows when one or two probably did enough damage. But the attacker had continued as if to vent some pent-up anger. She wouldn’t want to meet such a person.

  With her hands around the tiny fingers of Malee she looked up at the tall Westerner who stood in the doorway. He was probably seventy but she’d never been able to estimate the age of foreigners with any accuracy. He smiled warmly and she wondered whether the neat teeth were his own. He’d probably been a handsome young man. Not even the star of an old smallpox scar over his right eyebrow detracted from his natural good looks. But she had no idea what he was saying.

  In Lao, she said, ‘Who are you looking for?’

  She tried the same question in Russian but the look on his face suggested
they were to be marooned on their separate islands in a vast linguistic sea.

  But then, in English, he said, ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance you speak English?’

  Dtui’s English came from a dictionary and several textbooks. She had few chances to use it. The phonetic alphabet had taught her how the words were supposed to sound but few speakers of English consulted the phonetic alphabet. Consequently she had a problem with accents. It took her some time to digest the Westerner’s words. He was reaching for something in his satchel.

  ‘I speak a little,’ she said, relieved to have removed the cork that held in her English.

  ‘Then you must be Vietnamese,’ said the man.

  ‘Vietnam? No. I am Lao.’

  ‘Well, wonders will never cease.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I …’

  ‘Never mind.’ Again the smile. ‘I was hoping to find my good friend, Dr Siri,’ he said.

  ‘You know Dr Siri?’

  ‘We were best friends, before. In France.’

  ‘Really?’

  Malee had continued her gentle wail. It was unusual for her not to fall back into the depths of sleep. Dtui was concerned as a mother but failed to recognize the animal instinct with which a baby is born but sheds over time. The awareness of danger.

  ‘Is he here?’ the man asked, looking around the room.

  ‘No. He is in Pak Lai.’

  ‘Is that far?’

  ‘Is it …? No. On the Mekhong about seven hours.’

  ‘Oh, too bad. Then perhaps I can talk to his wife?’