The Coroner's Lunch

by Colin Cotterill

  “Ma’s got cirrhosis. I told you about it.”

  “Yes. Good health, Mrs. Vongheuan.” It seemed peculiar to be wishing good health to a woman who was clearly not healthy at all. But such was the national greeting. The woman had been ill for years from a liver fluke she had picked up in the north.

  Dtui took hold of the doctor’s arm and led him outside. Knickerless toddlers ran amok and rolled in the dust. A dog growled instinctively when Siri passed it. Dtui led him up toward the stadium wall where there were no neighbors to overhear. Siri had an apology prepared, but she beat him to it.

  “I’m sorry, Doc. I was up all night with Ma. I didn’t mean to lose it. I was….”

  “I just came by to ask you if you’d do me the honor of being my apprentice at the morgue.”

  “Ah, no. You’re just saying that because I went nutty. You don’t have to do—”

  “I’m serious. I was thinking about it just before I rode your bicycle into the wall of the Presidential Palace.”

  “You…?”

  “I think you need to get those brakes looked at.”

  “I never go fast enough to need brakes. Did you really…?”

  “It’s downhill all the way from That Luang, and it didn’t occur to me to check the brakes before I set off. I shot through the center of the Anusawari Arch, and I was traveling at about 120 kilometers an hour by the time I passed the post office. It was a bit of a blur.”

  “Doctor.”

  “I confess I didn’t actually crash into the palace. But that was only thanks to the poor man selling brooms and brushes beside the road. I decided he’d be much softer than the wall. We both came out of it quite well: I didn’t break anything, and he sold three brooms to the morgue.”

  “And the bike?”

  “The Chinese aren’t very good at making shoes, but they put together bicycles you couldn’t destroy with mortar fire. So will you?”

  “Will I what?”

  “Be my apprentice.”

  “You’re damn right I will.”

  “Good. Before I leave, I may as well take a look at your mother.”

  “You fancy her?”

  “The cirrhosis, girl. The cirrhosis.”

  On Wednesday, Siri was the first one at work again. As if Geung weren’t confused enough already, he walked out back to the furnace to find his boss on his hands and knees in the concrete trough, putting dead cockroaches into a jar.

  “Morning, Mr. Geung. Any new customers today?”

  “No new customers today, Dr. Comrade.” Geung laughed but stood watching Siri. “That…that’s dirty. You shouldn’t play there.”

  “Mr. Geung, you’re quite right. This is where you put the bags before they get thrown in the furnace, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The janitor doesn’t seem to be around. Do you know if he burned our waste yesterday?”

  “He must. He must. It’s the rules. He must destroy all hospital waste no more than twelve hours from when it arrives. He must.”

  “Twelve hours. So what we threw out on Monday evening would have been sitting here overnight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Please put our little friends here in the refrigerator while I go and get cleaned up.”

  “Ha. Little friends.” Geung laughed and ran off inside with the jar.

  Siri showered, changed, and again left at about ten without telling them where he was going.

  He crossed the road in front of the hospital and picked up his lunch from Auntie Lah. Following Dtui’s comments on Monday, he took the trouble to notice a blush in the lady’s cheeks. For a second, he believed there may have been some truth in it. They exchanged polite conversation for a few minutes, and then he said “Good health” and walked on.

  “The hospital’s that way, brother Siri,” she reminded him.

  “I’m playing hooky. Don’t tell the director.”

  “You should play hooky with me sometime.”

  He laughed.

  She laughed.

  There was something.

  He walked along the river and turned onto one of the small dirt lanes. The Lao Women’s Union was housed in a two-storey building whose frontage was overgrown with flowering shrubs. They’d been tended to look natural but were kept under total control. The Union sign had been freshly repainted. A slight dribble of white descended from one letter.

  He walked into a bustling foyer where everyone seemed to have urgent business, and he wasn’t part of it. He had to throw himself in front of one fast-moving girl to ask his question.

  “Do you know where I can find Dr. Pornsawan?”

  She was flustered. “Oh, she’s around somewhere. Do you have an appointment?”

  “No. Do I need one?”

  “You should have phoned. It’s chaotic here today. The wife of the president of Mongolia’s coming.”

  Siri felt like he’d come to a strange foreign land. So much speed. So much activity. Appointments. Telephones. He didn’t feel like he was in Laos at all. His wasn’t an appointment culture: you’d turn up; you’d see if the person was there; you’d sit and wait for an hour if he was, go home if he wasn’t.

  Who were they, these women of the Union with their alien ideas? And why was there so much excitement about the wife of the president of Mongolia?

  After flustering two more busy women, he finally found Dr. Pornsawan in the canteen putting up decorations hand-made from plastic drinking straws. There was a huge banner behind the stage that said WELCOME TO OUR FRIENDS FROM MONGOLIA in Lao and French, two languages the president’s wife probably couldn’t read.

  Pornsawan was less flustered and more accommodating than her sisters. She’d heard of the famous Dr. Siri and had some unaccountable professional respect for him. But she still forced him to tie cotton threads to blue and red drinking straws while they spoke. She was a slender lady in her thirties, and she had no eyebrows. She’d briefly entered a nunnery where they had been shaved off and hadn’t ever grown back. She was so devoid of vanity, she didn’t bother to have new ones tattooed or even to draw them on. It left her with a very clean look.

  “You’re here about Mrs. Nitnoy.”

  “Yes. You were at the table with her when she died?”

  “Directly opposite.”

  “And she ate from communal plates?”

  “Ah. Now, this is intriguing.”

  “What is?”

  “You’ve done the autopsy and you still think she was poisoned.”

  Siri’s cheeks become a little more flushed than normal. “I don’t have any idea.”

  “Of course not. Sorry.” She smiled at the straws in her hand. “She ate the same food as all of us, and we’d already started when she got here. She took a few mouthfuls of sticky rice, dipped in chili and fish sauce. At about the second or third mouthful, before she could swallow it, her eyes seemed to cloud over. She spat out the rice, dribbled slightly, and collapsed onto the table.

  “I tried to resuscitate her, but I believe she died very suddenly. She didn’t choke, didn’t turn blue. She just died. I tried to massage her heart, gave her mouth-to-mouth, but I didn’t feel there was much hope.”

  “Do you know anything about gnathostomiasis?”

  “Yes. I’ve lost enough patients over the years to parasites. But that’s not what killed Mrs. Nitnoy.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s a very painful death. It comes upon you suddenly, but the last few minutes are agony. Mrs. Nitnoy was perfectly normal until a few seconds before she died.”

  “You’re quite right. You seem to have noticed a lot of detail.”

  “I was talking to her all the time.”

  “Do you know if she had a headache?”

  “Why, yes. It’s strange you should ask. That’s what we were talking about. She had a horrible hangover. Mrs. Nitnoy liked her beer, and there had been a reception the night before. She’d had a little bit too much and woke up with a splitting headache. If it hadn’t been for th
e preparations for today’s visit, she’d probably have taken the day off.”

  “Did she take anything for it?”

  “She had a bottle of painkillers.”

  “Does she have her own desk here?”

  “She had her own office, but you won’t find the pills there. She kept them in her handbag.”

  “That didn’t come to the morgue with her.”

  A supervisor glided through the room yelling urgent instructions.

  “No. It was here, but a serious-looking army officer in dark glasses came by to pick it up during the afternoon.”

  Siri raised his eyebrows. She responded in kind, only to a lesser degree. “He said she had some sensitive documents in her bag and he’d been instructed to come and pick it up.”

  “By?”

  “His superiors. I didn’t get any names.”

  “Did he take anything else? Anything from the desk?”

  “No. Just the bag.”

  “I don’t suppose you had a chance to look in that bag?”

  “Dr. Siri. What type of woman do you take me for?” She climbed on the chair and hung another chain of decorations. The stage was starting to look like a marquee that had been shredded in a monsoon. “Our design specialist assures us this is all beautiful. Do you think it is?”

  “I think it shows a great deal of failed initiative.”

  She laughed. “I take it your tact got you into the position you find yourself in today.”

  “Very much so, I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t be afraid. We need more people with the courage to say what they feel. It’s getting rarer.” She stepped down. “Slippers.”

  “What?”

  “She carried her slippers around in her bag. The Party insisted she wear black vinyl shoes with heels for public engagements. She hated them. They gave her blisters. So she had these soft slippers she put on whenever she could.” Siri smiled. “What is it?”

  “Nothing. What else did she have in there?”

  “Now you think I’m a snoop.”

  “Snooping’s good for the regime.”

  “Really? All right. Little stuff, mainly. Address book. Keys. Smelling salts. Balm. Name cards. That was about all.”

  “Did you look at the name cards?”

  “Doctor Siri.”

  “Sorry. No makeup, lipstick?”

  “Frowned upon, and quite expensive now.”

  “So, apart from the address book, there wasn’t really anything in there that could be called ‘sensitive papers’?”

  “No.”

  “And it was all carried off by the serious officer.”

  “…Yes.” It was neither a firm nor an automatic “yes.”

  “Dr. Pornsawan?”

  “Almost all.”

  “Apart from?”

  “Well, the reason I know what was in her bag was because I went into it to borrow her headache pills. One or two of the ladies were traumatized by what happened to Comrade Nitnoy.”

  “And you didn’t put them back.”

  “Medicines are hard to come by. And in all the rush….”

  “But the ladies you gave the pills to didn’t suddenly collapse on the table, so….”

  “So we may eliminate the pills as potential causes of death.”

  “I’d like to take what’s left, if you don’t mind. There may have been some allergic reaction. Not that I have the resources to find out what that might have been.”

  “I’ll go and get them. Can I ask you why you thought she might have had a headache?”

  “During the autopsy I noticed the smell of Tiger Balm. It was concentrated around her temples. That usually suggests a headache.”

  “Excellent. You know, this is all rather exciting. Could you hook this last chain up over the stage? Afraid we haven’t got any balloons.” She ran off and left him to hang the decoration.

  While he was up on the rickety chair hooking the straws over some convenient nails, he thought about what she’d said. It really was quite exciting, this inquiry. He had to admit he was enjoying the cloak-and-daggery of it all. He was glad to be out of the morgue talking to live people, exceeding his very limited authority. It was the first time since the job began that he could feel his adrenaline pumping.

  “There are only three left, I’m afraid.” Puffing and blowing, Dr. Pornsawan held out a small brown bottle. “That probably isn’t a wise choice of chair, the legs aren’t glued.” Siri got down in a hurry, leaving a strand of straws dangling above the podium. But it was too late to do anything about it.

  The frenzy at the Lao Women’s Union grew to a riot. Siri and Pornsawan looked to the door where a small army of men in ceremonial uniforms was slowly seeping into the almost-ready dining room. The men took up positions along the walls.

  “Oops. Looks like our guest is early. You may have to join us for lunch, Doctor.”

  “I’d sooner not. Why all the fuss about the wife of a Mongolian president?”

  “They’re giving the LWU a sizable grant to develop education for girls in the provinces.”

  Siri wondered what the Mongolians would be getting in return, but didn’t let his cynicism show. He thanked Dr. Pornsawan and headed toward the one set of doors leading into and out of the canteen. In the confused scrum at the doorway, he ran into a small woman whose features had all gathered at the center of her face. She was surrounded by larger people in suits and silks. The small woman, assuming, as he was a man, that he had to be someone important, reached out to shake his hand.

  Siri transferred his baguette to his left hand and returned the handshake. She had a good grip for a president’s wife. She looked beside her at the interpreter and asked him a question. He asked a similar question of the Chinese interpreter beside him, who finally asked the Lao/Chinese interpreter, who asked Siri who he was.

  “I’m the official food taster. You can never be too sure.” He bowed politely and walked on. By the time the Chinese whisper had made it back to the President’s wife, he was already out under the warm mid-day sun.

  The Boatman’s Requiem

  As he was quite a way from his riverside log, and hungry, he walked down to the nearest point on the Mekhong and found a shady spot under a tree where he could eat his baguette in peace. He particularly enjoyed his lunch that day. He was overcome with a peculiar feeling that, as he didn’t feel the way he normally did, he probably didn’t look the same either. He imagined himself to be in disguise.

  During his stay in Paris decades before, he’d taken delight in the weekly serializations of one Monsieur Sim in the L’Oeuvre newspaper. They followed the investigations of an inspector of the Paris police force who was able to solve the most complicated of mysteries with the aid of nothing more lethal than a pipe of tobacco.

  By the time he got to Vietnam, Siri was more than pleased to learn that Monsieur Sim had restored his name to its full Simenon, and that Inspector Maigret mysteries were now appearing as books. The French in Saigon had shelves of them, and a number found their way north to be read by those communist cadres who’d spent their formative years in France.

  Siri had been able to solve most of the mysteries long before the detective had a handle on them—and he didn’t even smoke. Now, below the swaying boughs of the samsa tree, he felt a distinct merging. The coroner and the detective were blending. He liked the way it felt. For a man in his seventies, any stimulation, should it be kind enough to offer itself, had to be grasped in both hands.

  He walked back along the river, but when he reached the intersection that would have taken him back to his morgue, he responded not to obligation, but to instinct. He flagged down a songtaew, one of the dwindling number of taxi trucks plying the Vientiane streets. He told the driver where he wanted to get off, and squeezed amid the zoo of villagers already crammed inside. The songtaew followed the river east, away from the town. It was never so full it couldn’t pick up more passengers.

  Twenty minutes later, Siri was helped down by a strong girl who held a
cockerel under her other arm. He paid his fifty liberation kip to the driver, crossed the road, and stood for a moment in front of the newly christened Mekhong River Patrol, wondering what he was doing there. The MRP, a navy of sorts in a landlocked country, had the near-impossible task of policing the long river border.

  The pilots of the hurriedly converted river ferries were army men, trained in two weeks to operate boats that were so noisy you could hear them a mile off. Anyone crossing the river illegally, unless they were stone deaf, could easily hide themselves until the armor-plated craft chugged on by.

  Siri was directed out back to the boat captains’ dormitory. There, the night-shift skippers sat playing cards, or stood in circles kicking a rattan ball back and forth. He was in luck. Following an unfortunate accident, the person he sought had been transferred to the night patrol. Siri found Captain Bounheng rocking back and forth on a cane chair, like an old man. He was only in his twenties.

  Siri introduced himself and shook the young captain’s hand.

  “Do you mind if we take a walk?”

  Bounheng was confused but followed Siri out across the dry rice fields. “Is this normal?”

  “For a coroner to follow up on cases? Oh, yes. It happens all the time. I spend as much time interviewing as I do looking at dead bodies. It’s all very mundane. Reports. You know.”

  Bounheng seemed a little more at ease after that. “He never should have been there.”

  “The longboat man?”

  “We were docking. He was fishing in an illegal spot.” The captain was deliberately striding ahead of Siri, who was hard pressed to keep up with him.

  “I understand. The old fool. These fishermen are an ignorant crowd. Never do what they’re told.” He jogged round in front of the fleeing man. “Can I ask about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. How long had you been…in control of your boat?”

  There was a long hesitation. “I mean, this is a new unit. Only just been set up.”

  “I understand. So? Months? Weeks?”

  “A week.”

  “And I imagine it’s really stressful work.”

  “Stressful?”

  “I’d say so. Patrolling against attacks from anti-communists from across the river.”