“The sun came up and we stopped in in in a little village.”
“And the driver and assistant got out and we got out and we didn’t know where we were.”
“B-b-b-but the driver wen-wen—”
“Went into a house and we see him hand over money to the woman in the house. A lot of money.”
“A l-l-lot.”
“And . . . but the house isn’t a house. It’s a big like, market beside and behind. And all these animal noises.”
“Un-untidy. Dirty. Smelly. And some other men came and and threw bags and boxes and crates on the truck and and the t-t-truck starts to go.”
“And we wonder if we should get back on the truck but it’s too late. So, we stay there.”
“There’s a foo a food shop down from the market and we got r-r-rice porridge and meat.”
“The food was horrid. The place was horrid. Everything was horrid. The woman in the shop talked to us like we’re little children freaks.”
“Like w-w-we’re stupid.”
“But we have to stay there ’cause we’re watching the market.”
“And so so so many animals come to that market.”
“Hunters and people with rattan cages and myna birds tied together by their feet.”
“And they they they’re all frightened and sick and they they they called for help but nobody heard them. It wasn’t f-f-fair. This is our garden. These are are our animals. They’re n-n-not f-for sale.”
“How did you get back here?” Daeng asked.
Geung and Tukta looked at each other and smiled.
“The t-t-two-head lizard show,” said Geung.
“I don’t understand,” said Daeng.
“You you remember we went to the T-T-That Luang festival and there was a two-head lizard in a g-glass case?”
“And a both sex monkey and stuffed five-leg dog,” said Tukta.
“And what’s the connection?” Dtui asked.
“We are t-two head lizards,” said Geung, and laughed again.
“We were sitting in the stall drinking coffee . . .”
“I shhhouldn’t drink coffee,” said Geung.
“And some man comes to the shop and the owner says, ‘Here they are. Aren’t they cute?’ and the man sits and listens to us and the owner says, ‘See? They can talk.’”
“And the man aaaahsks if we want a free trip aaaahround the country with him. And I ask, ‘Whhhere are you going?’ and he says he’s heading n-n-north. And I say, ‘Will you p-pass through Vientiane?’ and he says ‘of course.’”
“Not even offering money,” said Tukta. “Just food, like we’re goldfish. And I hear him talk to the owner, and she asks for a tip for finding us, and he gives her some kip, and he talks about dirty stuff he wants us to do.”
“He thought we were were deaf,” said Geung.
“But there you were getting a free ride back to Vientiane,” said Siri. “Who’s the stupid one in this story?”
“And we slept one night in his van with the stuffed animals with five legs and snakes in bottles and posters of people joined together,” said Tukta. “And we ask can we stop off at our shop to get our clothes . . . ?”
“And then we c-c-can be b-big stars in your freak show,” said Geung.
“And here we are,” said Tukta.
“And where is he?” Phosy asked.
“Outside,” said Geung.
Siri and Daeng looked at each other and smiled.
“You or me?” Siri asked.
“After a day like today, allow me,” said Daeng. She took off her pinafore, mussed her hair, armed herself with the number five carving knife and headed for the street.
A uniformed officer escorted Judge Haeng along the concrete corridor to the office at the end. For reasons best known to himself, in his hand the judge held a thick copy of The Communist Manifesto. The office door was shut which emphasized the fact that the room was air-conditioned. Haeng’s air-conditioning had been off for a month. The officer knocked and a faint “Yes?” could be heard through the old teak door. The officer opened it and somehow shoveled the judge inside without entering himself. The chief inspector sat at a splendid desk and looked comfortable behind it. The judge took three frog-march steps to the desk and stood at attention. The door clicked shut behind him.
“Firstly,” he said, “I do not come to you. You come to me.”
“And yet, here you are,” said Phosy.
“Secondly, I may remind you that I am a judge and the director of public prosecution, which means I am your superior.”
“Yet I was recruited and promoted by the Ministry of Interior which puts us on different tracks. You aren’t my boss and if I have my way you won’t be anybody’s boss by the end of the week.”
“And thirdly—”
“All right, we’ve had enough counting for one day,” said Phosy. “Sit yourself down and we’ll get directly to the reason I sent for you and the reason you came.”
“I will not have you bully me into—”
“Oh shut up and sit down,” came a voice.
The judge turned to see Siri and Civilai sitting on a vinyl couch against the far wall. They were shuffling through a pile of papers on the coffee table in front of them.
“What . . . are they . . . doing here?” said the judge, dramatically.
“All will be revealed,” said Phosy, “and as soon as you sit down and calm down we can start to answer each other’s questions.”
“I will sit but I want it to go on record that I strongly object to both the manner of this—”
“Haeng, put your puffy back side on that chair,” said Siri.
The judge did as he was told. The wooden guest chair swayed a little beneath him.
“I shall begin with the obvious first question,” said Phosy. “Why did you go back?”
“I think, in order to play this game, I shall need a little more input,” said the judge.
“You’d done it all so efficiently,” said Phosy. “The pickup at the airport. The drunken hijack of the Zil. It was almost a faultless performance. But the only thing we can’t understand is why you returned to the airport.”
“I really have no idea what you’re talking about,” said the judge.
“Here’s what we think,” said Siri.
Judge Haeng didn’t bother to turn around to look into his accuser’s fresh-grass-colored eyes.
“Is he a police officer now?” Haeng asked. “Because if he isn’t I don’t have to listen to him.”
“We think, for some reason, you were forced to do this,” Siri continued. “We think someone took advantage of the fact you had access to a government limousine and could travel at night at will.”
Siri stood and walked to a position where he had eye contact with Haeng but the judge continued to stare at the chief inspector.
“Hiring senior citizens to do your detective work now?” Haeng asked.
But the judge’s eyes were moist and the forceful tone he assumed from day to day to make himself more threatening was teetering.
“You know that we can release a document at any time that would have you kicked out of your position?” said Civilai, “but we haven’t done so.”
“Because it suits you all better to blackmail me and keep me submissive,” said the judge.
“Not, you have to agree, for sinister purposes,” said Phosy.
“We only blackmail you if we think you’re wandering off the path of righteousness and into the brambles of evil,” said Civilai.
“Nicely put,” said Siri.
“Thank you.”
“But what you did the other night was beyond our help,” said Phosy. “You are an accomplice to a murder, and—”
“That’s ridiculous,” said the judge. A small, barely noticeable bead of sweat had
begun to roll down his brow.
“And to make matters worse,” said Phosy, “if indeed they could be any worse, you go and falsify a document and use ministry funds to buy me an air ticket to the north.”
“That suggests to us that you’re desperate,” said Siri, “and you’re on your way down a very slippery slope. And even though the three of us dislike you a good deal, we are your only hope for redemption.”
By this stage, the judge’s neck seemed no longer able to bear the weight of his head. Siri went back to the sofa and continued working on the screenplay. From experience, he knew that it took time for a guilty conscience to surface. They waited.
“We were together in Moscow,” said Haeng, at last.
They all looked up.
“Some undergraduate work,” said the judge, “some language study. But I went on to law and he took public administration. We drank together. We had similar backgrounds: wealthy fathers investing in a socialist future. In our second year I . . . I did something . . . something terrible, and he was a witness to it.”
“Should we assume you’re referring to Comrade Maysuk at Wattay?” said Phosy.
“Yes,” said Haeng.
“What was it?” said Civilai. “What did you do?”
“I will honestly die before I tell anyone that,” said Haeng. “I will cut off my own head, rip out my—”
“Okay, okay,” said Siri, “we get it. So, what did Maysuk make you do to keep your secret safe?”
“He called me to the airport one day,” said Haeng. “We used to drink together in one of the small hangars across the runway from time to time. Talk about the old days. But that day we drank in his office—drank quite a lot, and it wasn’t till after dark that he led me to the hangar. He told me he had a secret. He unlocked the door, put on the light, and pointed. That’s when I saw the skeleton. It was in a sitting position against the far wall. It was surreal. She had hair but no face. Her bone structure was mostly intact like a lab skeleton.”
“So, what did you do?” Phosy asked.
“I had another drink,” said Haeng.
“That concerns me,” said Civilai. “You find a skeleton and your first reaction is to have a drink?”
“I was already drunk,” said Haeng. “The skeleton shocked me. I needed something to steady my nerves. Maysuk asked me how we might dispose of the body discreetly. He said she’d arrived in a packing case the night before and he—”
“Were there animals in the packing case with her?” Siri asked.
“I believe so,” said Haeng. “Maysuk wanted to avoid all the administrative red tape he’d be thrust into if the body was discovered.”
“You agreed to dispose of a body to avoid red tape?” said Phosy.
“No, of course not,” said Haeng. “Not at first. I positively refused to be a part of it. I am a judge. We have ethical standards. But . . .”
“But what?” said Siri.
“I might have suggested we move the body elsewhere.”
“Haeng, you’re a disaster,” said Civilai.
“I was drunk,” said Haeng. “Don’t tell me you haven’t made dubious decisions when you were drunk.”
“Of course,” said Siri, “but then the morning comes and you blame your stupidity on fermented rice and you re-enter humankind. You apologize and those you’ve wronged eventually forgive you. You don’t transport dead people when you’re sober.”
“I know,” said the judge. “I know. And the next morning I told Maysuk I wouldn’t be involved in a cover up. I said I’d contact the police and not incriminate him in any way. That’s when he brought up the incident in the USSR.”
“He blackmailed you,” said Civilai.
“He said if I didn’t keep my word he’d release the evidence,” said Haeng.
“So, you agreed to move the body,” said Phosy.
“I didn’t want the woman’s death to go unnoticed,” said Haeng. “That’s why I chose a public place.”
“Talk us through that day,” said Phosy.
“Would you like a Fanta Orange or something?” said Civilai.
“Civilai!” said Phosy.
“Sorry,” said Civilai, “just showing compassion for the condemned man.”
Haeng sobbed just once before describing his day.
“It was three days after our drunken night with the corpse,” said the judge. “I’d already booked the Zil for the airport and the Soviet do in the evening. I knew a vice minister from Vietnam was due in for the Soviet event. I also knew he’d not show up because he hates the Soviet justice minister. So, I took the limousine to Wattay early. On that first night with the airport director we’d put the skeleton in a freezer that had a lock. My Zil driver was drinking coffee in the canteen and having a good time with his friends so I went over there and told him I needed the keys. I said I’d been offered a few kilos of leftover Aeroflot meals and some duty-free booze and I needed to put them in the trunk. I said we could share them fifty-fifty. I said that as a government worker he couldn’t be seen loading contraband into an official vehicle. There were spies everywhere. I said I’d slip the key to an airport official to load them. The driver promised to keep it to himself and gave me the keys. I took the Zil to the loading bay and we loaded the skeleton. Bits were falling off all the time so we put them in a plastic bag and brought that along too. Maysuk made sure his workers weren’t anywhere near.
“I returned the Zil to the priority parking space with a few duty-free tidbits on the back seat for the driver. When I gave him the key ring, the trunk key wasn’t attached. He didn’t notice. I thought I’d got away with it.”
“It didn’t occur to you that this was more than a slight overreaction from the director?” said Phosy.
“What do you mean?” said the judge.
“That he’d force you to go to all this trouble just to sidestep some administrative bull?”
“Red tape can be debilitating for serious administrators,” said Haeng.
“Really?” said Siri.
“At the top level, just the requisition of a ladder can take up to a dozen forms,” said the judge. “Can you imagine how much paperwork you’d have to fill out to explain a corpse in your cargo?”
“You really are a fool,” said Civilai.
“Why?” said Haeng.
“Did it really not occur to you that the director might have been the one that killed her?” said Siri.
“I . . . ? No,” said the judge. “It’s . . . no, he couldn’t have. It was too . . . too elaborate. She was clearly killed by the animals in the crate.”
“You didn’t wonder why he involved you at all?” said Phosy.
“What?”
“It’s an airport,” said Phosy. “There are trucks in and out all day. What was to stop him throwing the body onto one of them?”
“Or even put her in his own truck, drive her off to the bush and dump her somewhere?” said Civilai. “He didn’t need you.”
“I’m a friend,” said Haeng. “He needed advice.”
“A friend doesn’t blackmail you into committing a whole charge sheet of crimes,” said Phosy. “But this all brings us back to the original question. Why did you go back to the airport after you dumped your girlfriend?”
“I didn’t,” said Haeng.
“The guard saw you arrive there,” said Phosy.
“I don’t mean I didn’t go there,” said the judge. “I mean it wasn’t after I deposited the body. I went there while she was still in the trunk.”
“Why?” asked Phosy.
“From the first moment, I’d been overwhelmed with remorse,” said Haeng. “I was ashamed of what I was involved in. I had betrayed the process of the law. I wanted to rewind time, put her back in the hangar with all her parts then call you lot to the crime scene. It was too much for me to bear.”
; “And why didn’t you?” asked Civilai.
“He was there, Maysuk. I wasn’t expecting him to be in his office that early in the morning. He heard me arrive and intercepted the car. He told me I was in it too deeply to pull out. That if he got into trouble it wouldn’t be nearly as serious as the trouble I was in. I’d moved a corpse from a crime scene and he could claim to know nothing about it. The devils were on my back. I hadn’t planned to put her at the arch. I drove back into town. My original idea was to leave her somewhere quiet and dark. But I couldn’t be sure she’d be found, afraid the locals would be too scared to report it, afraid the dogs might get her. I wanted her to be discovered immediately. No more humiliation. I wanted the process of law to start there and then.”
“So, you put her at the arch under the one functioning light bulb knowing one of the patrols would spot her soon enough,” said Phosy.
Haeng nodded. “What’s going to happen to me?” he asked.
“You won’t be a judge anymore; that’s for certain,” said Siri.
“But that’s the least of your problems,” said Phosy. “The big question is whether they’ll have you shot or just locked away for the rest of your life.”
The little judge lowered his head into his hands and sobbed uncontrollably. And in some peculiar way the three men who’d gone there that day to bully him into a confession felt sorry for him.
Chapter Eleven
Enough Perverts to Keep Us All Busy
The man with the Jerry Lee Lewis hairstyle and crocodile boots arrived in Ban Mapao on the back of a motorcycle. The driver was a young man in dark glasses, shorts and flip-flops. They pulled up in front of the headman’s house. The headman, a burly sixty-year-old with a potbelly, was sitting on the veranda with two other lowlifes.
“What do you want?” said the headman.
“I’m Beung,” said the passenger. “I think you’re expecting me.”
He had a central Thai accent, self-righteous, snotty. He climbed off the bike and brushed the road dust from his tonic mohair suit.
“And who are you?” the headman asked the driver.
“Name’s Hok,” said the boy. “Motorcycle rental.”
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