The Coroner's Lunch

by Colin Cotterill

“The Vietnamese delegation was here at the invitation of the Security Section chief. They were coming to identify a suspected traitor. It was all supposed to be very hush-hush. One of your Vietnamese had been involved in a covert operation in the south. There was an ambush and all the Vietnamese were killed, except for him. He’d been shot up pretty badly and everyone assumed he was dead.”

  “That’s Hok, the last fellow we found at the dam. He had a hole in him as wide as the Pha Ban cave.”

  “Well, he must have done a very good job of playing possum, because when the Hmong commanders came down to inspect the damage, they had no idea he could see them. According to your Hok, there was an elderly man there in plain clothes, acting as a sort of adviser. But Hok had seen him once, about two weeks before, in an LPRA uniform.”

  “Hok had a hell of a wound. How sure could he have been that it was the same man?”

  “He was positive. He’d seen him around at the Operations Headquarters up at the border. They’d spoken a couple of times. He was there the day they planned the mission that turned into a disaster. The VC found the aftermath of that massacre, and Hok, who was barely alive. They flew him back to Hanoi.

  “As soon as he recovered enough to be angry, he was telling everyone about the adviser. He must have convinced people in high places, because they took our ambassador to see him. He contacted us, and we invited Hok to come over and help us identify the man.”

  “Couldn’t they just send pictures?”

  “What pictures? The regimental yearbook? How many pictures have you had taken over the last twenty years, Siri? Anti-government rebels don’t pose in uniform as evidence for possible treason hearings.”

  “All right, all right. So, as soon as Hok was well enough to travel, they sent him here.”

  “With a Vietnamese colonel and a driver. They had top-level clearance.”

  “Well, that makes it even less likely we’d torture them, doesn’t it?”

  “Not necessarily. A Lao officer advising the Hmong! That doesn’t look good for us. The Vietnamese were already suspicious before this happened. And there was all the secrecy on this side. Not many knew about it, only the Security Section, a few top Party people, not including me, the prime minister, the president. The idea was not to alert the guy we were on to him.”

  “So, he’s still out there somewhere, and now there’s no one to identify him. Did we get any information at all?”

  “His rank. He was a major.”

  “Can’t we find out which of our majors were hanging around at the Operations Center when Hok was there?”

  “We’re working on that. But it’s a large center and people come and go all the time. It’s not like we have an efficient records system of placements and troop movements.”

  “Anything on the Black Boar?”

  “God, you’re so demanding. You’d better remember me in your will for all the help I’m giving you.”

  “You’ll be gone before me, pal.”

  “I don’t see anyone shooting at me.”

  “There will be, after today. I bet there’s someone with a long-range rifle up on a rooftop right now with you in his sights.”

  There was the crack of a branch from the tree above their heads. Both men moved faster than they had for many years. They were twenty meters farther along the riverbank before Siri looked back. He stopped and caught his breath.

  “Rajid. What the hell are you doing up there?” Civilai turned back to see the crazy Indian high in the tree, mouthing one of his silent laughs. He’d had his thrill for the day.

  “I bet he’s a spy. He’s probably fluent in six languages.” They put their arms around each other’s shoulders and laughed as they walked back to the log. They unwrapped their sandwiches and ate for a while until their nerves had settled. Siri spoke.

  “Now, Black Boar?”

  “According to my sources, Black Boar was the code name of an American Marine special operations unit. They did a lot of nasty stuff inside Vietnam during the war. They were out of uniform and nobody officially claimed them, but word was they were attached to the CIA.”

  “Wasn’t everyone?”

  “They did a lot of damage. Why did you want to know about them?”

  “What if they’ve moved over here?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Same kind of thing. Causing trouble.”

  “You think this torture mystery might have something to do with them? I can’t imagine a bunch of Americans living here without anyone reporting them.”

  “Why not? There are still a lot of Hmong villages to hide in. Goodness knows, the Yanks would love to see our regime collapse.”

  “Okay. Show me everything you’ve got so far. I’ll tell you how silly it all sounds, then I’ll go and pass it on to the Security Section.” He looked up at Rajid hanging still from a branch like a bat. “And keep your voice down.”

  The autopsy that afternoon took longer than Siri had expected because he was diverted by the fact that the elderly gentleman had a six-inch nail in his intestine. They photographed it and Siri spent a couple of hours working out how it could have killed him. In the end, it turned out it hadn’t. It had been in there for a considerable time, and how it got there would have to remain a mystery. He already had enough of those to solve.

  The cause of death, it turned out, was sexual intercourse. The man was scheduled for an appendectomy. Due to the shortage of nursing staff, friends and relatives were invited to sleep with patients overnight and look after them. This usually only involved curling up on the floor, but this particular gentleman had recently found himself a very young wife. Her close proximity on the eve of his big operation led to a spontaneous burst of sexual activity. He complained to her almost immediately of a splitting headache, but he endured it till time came to enter the operating room. As he’d been sedated beforehand, he was unable to alert doctors to his incredible pain, and just as they were about to cut into his stomach, he died of a ruptured cerebral aneurysm. His brain had popped. If Siri hadn’t wasted so much time on the intestine and had moved onto the brain, he would have found it right away. But it was obvious to his devoted staff that Dr. Siri’s mind was on other, more important things.

  “Anyway, let this be a lesson to you, Dtui. Sex can kill you.”

  “I should be so lucky.”

  Mr. Geung snorted.

  While they were clearing up, the mail arrived. It included a package from Sayabouri with two rolls of autopsy photos in it. When Dtui went up to type the report, she took them up to the library to file under “P.” But she was back, breathless, five minutes later.

  “Doc, there’s an urgent call from Vietnam.”

  Watching Siri and Dtui “run” to the administration block would have saddened even the most benevolent of athletic coaches. Siri thought about the man in the freezer as he ran up the steps, his head pounding. He wheezed into the phone mouthpiece, unable to catch his breath or hold his heart still.

  “Siri? Dr. Siri? Is that you?” Siri nodded his head. “Siri?”

  “Nguyen?”

  “Good God. What’s wrong?”

  “Ex…ercise. You…talk.”

  “What? All right. I believe this is what happened. I believe the men didn’t die as a result of the torture. Two of them, I’m quite sure, died of air embolism.”

  “Of what?” He didn’t know the term in Vietnamese.

  “They had air injected into their veins.”

  “We didn’t see any evidence of that.”

  “That’s just it. After seventy-two hours, most of the indications are gone. There’s a slight chance you’d notice something on an X-ray, but we didn’t have one at our disposal. Plus we weren’t really looking for it. It’s going to be very difficult to prove. I may have found puncture marks in one of the veins, but they’re all very badly deteriorated.

  “All three men have that same round bruise under the burning. I believe it’s the mark from the nozzle of some kind of pump, or a very large syringe. Th
ey would have had to punch it in to penetrate the muscle. Even then, it demanded a great deal of skill. I’m thinking they used the excessive electrical burns to cover up the marks.”

  “So why do you say only two died from this air embolism?”

  “Tran, the driver. He certainly died from the internal bleeding we found around the aorta. Perhaps because he was fatter than the others, they had trouble locating a vein. I still don’t know what caused the bleeding.”

  “I might know. Look into the possibility that he fell from a height, perhaps from an aeroplane.”

  “Do you know something?”

  “Just guessing right now, but I’ve got a friend checking reports of unauthorized air traffic three or four weeks ago around the reservoir. And listen, do you know where you can find Tran’s wife? Tran the colonel?”

  “His wife? I can find out.”

  “Try to talk to her. Ask her about her husband’s tattoos.”

  “What specifically?”

  “Get her to describe them. Maybe you could show her the photos. Ask her if there’s anything different about them. Whether they’ve been altered in any way. I imagine he—”

  The line was cut. That wasn’t such an unusual thing in those days, but in the current atmosphere of suspicion, he was ready to assume the worst. He waited another half hour, but Nguyen Hong didn’t call back.

  He walked slowly back to the morgue, weighing the new information against his hypothesis. In his office, he found Inspector Phosy waiting for him.

  “You look exhausted,” the inspector told him.

  “Hello, Phosy.” They shook hands. “I’m afraid the last few days have started to catch up with me. It’s hard to get my mind around everything. You just get back?”

  “No, I got in early this morning. Went home and caught up on some sleep.”

  “Seminar?”

  “They like to keep reminding me how lucky I am to be in the socialist system. But it wasn’t so bad. Did you get my note?”

  “Your note? Oh, goodness, yes. That seems so long ago. We have a lot to talk about.”

  “Good.”

  “You thirsty?”

  “Always.”

  The Disappearing Room

  Phosy bought a full bottle of Saeng Thip rum from the delighted bar mama, and commissioned a whole bucket of her magic ice. They sat at a table, away from anyone else.

  “Did you win the lottery?”

  “What’s the point of earning this huge policeman’s salary if you can’t go out and spend it every now and then?”

  “No. That doesn’t work. Our salaries are posted by our departments. Everyone knows how much you earn.”

  “Darn. Well, in that case, I did a bit of shady business up north.”

  “That’s more like it.”

  Mama fixed them generous drinks, and they told her they could take care of themselves from then on. She left them to their secrets. A fisherman in a huge hat was knee-deep in the water casting and re-casting his weighted net. They watched him untangle the small fish from the mesh and put them in a plastic bag tied around his neck.

  “So, what’s the big news you have to tell me?”

  Those were the last words Phosy spoke for half an hour. He could only sit in silence, sipping his drink as he listened to Siri’s tales. First was the account of the assassination attempt, then the whole trail that uncovered the truth about Mai’s murder. At the end of it, Siri reached into his bag and handed the policeman his autopsy report and recommendations.

  He sat back on his rickety chair and took his second sip of a drink whose ice had melted long before. Phosy looked down at the file and up at the smiling doctor.

  “How’d I do?” Siri asked.

  “That really was astounding.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I really had no idea you were…”

  “…a brilliant detective?”

  “Exactly. I raise my hat to you.” He lifted his imaginary hat. “Really. I’m very impressed.”

  “You don’t look very happy.”

  “I don’t? Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that I’d hoped this whole thing was over with, not just beginning. Were you able to estimate a time of death?”

  “No. Impossible. I didn’t see her until three days after she died.”

  “All right.” He finished his drink and poured another. “The game’s back on. Have you given Judge Haeng the original?”

  “No. I’ve been waiting for you to get back and tell me what to do.”

  “Good. Don’t do anything. I’ll ask at the girl’s apartment building and see who’s been hanging around there.”

  “Do you suppose Comrade Kham got someone to set it all up for him and left Vientiane to establish an alibi?”

  “It’s possible. But what do you say you leave a little bit of policing for me? Don’t forget, we still don’t have an iota of evidence that he’s in any way connected to either murder. The only way we could possibly implicate him would be by finding Mai’s killer and getting him to talk. Who else knows about this?”

  “My staff, me, and you so far.”

  “You haven’t told anyone else?”

  “No. Well, the sister. She’s taking the body back to Sam Neua. But she’s just glad Mai didn’t kill herself. She isn’t going to say anything to anyone.”

  “We can’t be sure. If she mentions it to anyone up there, it could get back to Kham. His people are all from Sam Neua. To tell the truth, we can’t be sure of anything. We’re back to the beginning. First thing we have to do is put the original report and the photos of the autopsy somewhere safe. Are they at your office?”

  “No, they’re in the hospital library.”

  “Where?”

  “Nobody ever goes there. Since they burned all the foreign books, there’s only crap up there. It was Dtui’s idea.”

  “Is the library open now?”

  “No. The building doesn’t open till eight tomorrow.”

  “Okay, I’ll come by then. Now, in the meantime, how are we going to keep you alive?”

  Siri pulled a crumpled shell from his pocket and put it on the table. Phosy whistled.

  “You know anything about bullets?” Siri asked.

  “I know it’s from a rifle, but I’m no expert. There’s someone at the office I can show it to. Where’s the other one?”

  “The other one?”

  “You said there were two shots, didn’t you?”

  “Oh. That’s gone to the Security Section. I mean, the army should have ballistics experts.”

  “Good plan. I’ll take this anyway and see what I can find.”

  They drank for a couple of hours and talked about things outside of crime and politics. Phosy insisted on taking Siri home. When they pulled up in front of the house, the policeman kept his light on. It lit the lane ahead, making all the dips in the dirt look like black pits. The eyes of cats blinked under bushes. But they spotted no assassins.

  “Want me to go inside and see if anyone’s lurking in the hallway?”

  “No. I think I’ve shared this with so many people, there’s no longer a point in killing me. If they did, they’d have to wipe out half the Security Section as well. I think my chances of making newspaper headlines are over. Besides”—he lowered his voice—“if any man were foolish enough to lurk in our hallway, I wouldn’t give him a chance against her.”

  The downstairs curtain shimmied.

  “All right. I’ll see you in the morning then.” They shook hands.

  “Thanks. Good night.”

  The bike growled away, leaving Siri in the lane in the dark. Despite his brave words, it was still an eerie spot. Around him there were a few yellow lamps, some candles in neighbors’ windows. There didn’t seem to be insect noises any more at night. People wondered whether the bugs had all escaped across the river, too. The sound of Saloop panting was an oddly comforting one. The animal loped along the lane toward Siri, stopped several meters away, and turned back.

  Si
ri knelt to greet him, but he didn’t approach. The dog again ran toward the doctor, then turned back. Siri recalled some black-and-white movies he and Boua had watched together in Paris. There was a dog, a collie or some such type, that used to save children from burning houses and catch criminals. He’d seen this act before, albeit from a more handsome dog, in better shape: Saloop wanted him to follow.

  “I’m tired. I’m not in the mood to play tonight.”

  But the dog continued to run round in circles, egging him on to follow. When he started to bark, Siri set off after him. He’d ruined enough silent nights for the neighbors over the past year. “All right. But this better be good.”

  Saloop immediately came to heel and walked proudly alongside Siri. They crossed the intersection and headed down to the river.

  “So, tell me, dog. Does this mean I’m not possessed any more, or did you just get over your fear of ghosts? Is there something else I should know about?” The dog didn’t answer.

  When they arrived at the river, instead of turning left or right, Saloop crossed the road and sat on the riverbank. Siri stood opposite, and the dog looked back over its shoulder at him.

  “I don’t believe it. This was the fuss? You wanted us to come down and watch the river together?” Saloop panted and Siri shook his head. With a chuckle, he crossed the empty road and selected a flat spot near his new friend. “Well, at least you make more sense than my usual river date.”

  Doctor and dog sat watching the Thai lights shimmer on the river. They looked at the small bats that flapped back and forth across the indigo sky. It wasn’t exactly romantic, but it was very pleasant. It was the last real peace Siri would know for a while.

  The explosion rattled the silence, and the ground trembled under him. He got to his feet and looked back the way they had come. An almost invisible cloud of dark gray smoke rose into the night sky about a block and a half away. He didn’t have to wonder where it had come from. He knew.

  He hurried back along the small lane that led from the river and over the wide cross-street. The area was already filling with householders in their nightwear who’d been jolted from their sleep by the blast. They seemed disoriented, as if they weren’t sure whether they’d dreamed of an explosion.