Phosy took a step to his left to eclipse Madame Daeng. “Have you seen him with any women? Girlfriends? Doing any socializing on these trips?”
“No, but like I say, apart from the journey out and back we don’t see each other that much. Why? What’s he done?”
Phosy ignored the question. “How do you get along with him?”
“He’s all right. He can be really charming at times. He knows some funny stories when he’s in the mood. But I don’t get the feeling he’s in this type of work for the social contact. I think it’s the isolation he likes, being up here in the hills. It can be addictive, I have to admit.”
Madame Daeng had sidled around to get shade from a cow’s-earring tree. She was biding her time until Phosy ran out of questions. Her chance came sooner than she’d expected.
“Well, thank you …, “ Phosy began. Daeng put up her hand. “What?”
“One last question,” she said and smiled too sweetly for him to refuse.
Phosy waved her on.
“There are women at your office?”
“Yes, about half a dozen.”
“How does Buaphan act around them?”
“Act?”
“Yes, is he friendly? Does he flirt?”
Ying laughed. “One thing I could never imagine is Comrade Buaphan flirting with the women at the office. If you wanted a playboy you couldn’t go past my office mate, Nouphet. He’s the charmer. But Buaphan, no ma’am. He’s really not that type.”
“What type is he?” Phosy asked.
“Well, he’s … don’t get me wrong. I get along with him OK. But Buaphan can be a bit … self-important. It’s as if he thinks he’s better than other people. It doesn’t worry me, but I know the clerks and the cleaner and the drivers complain about him treating them like servants. They gossip about him a lot.”
From Ying, the boxer, they learned at which of the three locations Buaphan was based. In order to get there they had to return along the track they’d just taken and go all the way back to the intersection with the main road. There they were to head north, away from Natan, until they arrived at the small village of Nahoi, where Comrade Nouphet, the playboy, was billeted. The village was at a second turnoff that led up into the mountains to the remote outpost where Buaphan had chosen to spend his time.
Phosy had yielded the driving to one of his men, who had his nose up against the windshield studying the rocks ahead. Phosy sat in silence, riding the bumps.
“I could drive if you get tired,” Daeng said.
“No!” snapped Phosy, still deep in his huff.
“You know?” Daeng said. “It doesn’t make sense. Something worries me about all this.”
“And something’s worrying me,” said the policeman, with a finger pointed at her nose. “And do you know what that is? It’s you. I swear, old lady, if I have to tie you up and duct tape your mouth to keep you quiet, I will have no hesitation.”
She wasn’t offended. He was a nice boy who had commanded men in the jungle. He was just a little too fixated on authority. She knew he’d get over it. She smiled serenely and watched the birds that fluttered from the bushes as the noisy jeep approached.
The main road was only marginally better than the track. At the first intersection they were only five kilometers from Natan and Phosy considered making that detour to drop off the heavy weight that had attached herself to their party. But the drive to and from the first base had taken four hours and he couldn’t afford to waste any more time. He reassumed the role of driver on the way to Nahoi and decided it would be wise to stop off there to check as to whether Comrade Nouphet had seen Buaphan or the truck. While Daeng and the two officers went to the small roadside market to buy food and drink for the next leg of their journey, Phosy walked into the village to find the second census collator.
It was an untidy place decked out all in brown, courtesy of the road dust. He was given directions by a six-year-old girl who had a two-year-old at her hip. She walked him up the dirt path to the headman’s house, where the man from Vientiane was staying. The headman was sitting on a homemade rocker on his porch. He was dark and bony like leather stretched over spare washing-machine parts. He waved as Phosy approached.
“Good health,” the man said in very strongly accented Lao. “You looking for the boy?”
“Good health,” Phosy replied. “The census collector, yes.”
“He’s up there someplace.” He pointed over his shoulder in the direction of the range of hills behind the village.”
“Far?” Phosy asked.
“Could be by now. He left at midday. Said there was some problem with forms or something. Somebody took the wrong ones, I believe. Same thing happened last time.”
“He walked up?”
“Took the truck. There’s a piddling little track goes up there.”
Phosy considered this for a moment.
“He took the census truck?”
“No, he took mine.”
Phosy looked at the poor surroundings. “You have a truck?”
“Some Royalist coward abandoned it here when he was fleeing the PL. I don’t get to use it much, what with gasoline being the price it is. It was just sitting growing weeds. When the boy was here last time he fixed it up. He gave us a few kip for petrol and said he’d have it back by tomorrow. He’s good with motors, that boy—wasted on paperwork. He could make a nice living as a mechanic, I reckon.”
The conversation on the way up to Buaphan’s encampment was exclusively about Nouphet and his truck. Phosy had allowed Daeng into the discussion only to recap Siri’s comments about the boy.
“The doctor said he was keen eyed, seemed to notice things,” she recalled. “He might have mentioned he was good-looking.”
“Might have?”
“I was cooking lunch at the time. But you do know what this means?”
“You’ll probably enlighten me.”
“I see we have not one but two suspects. Young Nouphet is good at fixing motors, and I’d guess every decent-sized village has at least one old truck lying around in need of repairs. He seems just as likely a suspect as Buaphan. I think you need to—”
“I know what my responsibilities are.”
“Of course you do, I’m sorry.”
“I’ll question Buaphan. If he’s our strangler, I’ll know.”
“Policeman’s intuition?” Daeng smiled.
“It’s a little like doctor’s intuition. I remind you we’re here following up on a guess by your husband.”
“It’s certainly more than a guess, Inspector. And I remind you your policeman’s intuition hasn’t done you much good so far in this case. Siri has a sixth sense about these things.”
“Then let’s hope his sixth sense hasn’t put him in a grave somewhere.”
He sucked air through his teeth as if to vacuum the words back, but it was too late. A veil had dropped over his passenger’s face. Phosy hadn’t meant to say it. She’d goaded him. Her constant interference had forced him to it. Her smile had become pinched and her glazed eyes stared at the sky. In an attempt to right his mistake, Phosy tacked on, “Of course, we all know how indestructible Siri is.”
But the damage was done. For the rest of the journey up the winding mountain road, Daeng had nothing to say.
There Goes the Bride
Phan drove slowly along the main street, beeping his horn at people he recognized. They waved back or held up a thumb as he passed: the returning hero. He went directly to see the headman and his wife. The old woman came running out to meet him and opened the truck door so he could step down. She squeezed his hand and told him how handsome he looked. He asked if she and her husband were well. He told her he was excited but joked that he was marrying the second most beautiful girl in the village. The headman had married the prettiest. She giggled and punched his arm and led him inside.
It was all so formulaic. People were boringly predictable. Once they’d worked themselves up into a lather of enthusiasm, they’d bel
ieve any shit you cared to toss their way. He handed a pile of papers to the headman, who didn’t even bother to read them. He just asked where he should sign. He said he’d invited the district political cadre from Natan and his wife, but it was far, and the wedding was late. The headman doubted they’d come. They’d done up the school very nicely for the reception, he was told. There should be a good turnout. They hoped he had a strong constitution because there was plenty of liquor. All the women had been cooking since sunup. The children had learned a dance, etcetera … la-di-da … blah-de-blah.
“All right,” Phan thought, “just get on with it. The sooner it starts, the sooner it’ll all be over.”
But nothing was due to begin until six so Phan asked if he could take a nap. He’d driven directly from Vientiane, he told them, and needed to rest up. He lay shirtless on the thin mat that covered the bamboo floor. His jacket was on a hook. Thirty-six degrees celsius, hot as hell, but he always gave them a jacket show. They’d remember the jacket long after he’d taken it off and rolled up his sleeves. There might be a camera. Someone probably took the bus to the town and used the money they’d all saved up to buy film to record the happy event. It was no problem. He’d insist on taking a picture of the guests. While they were lining up he’d briefly flip open the back of the camera and let in the light just long enough to leave them with twenty-four exposures of snow. Not a shred of actual evidence that he ever existed.
He waved the banana-leaf fan in front of his face. What a place. They lived beside a main road and didn’t even have electricity. How could anybody exist like this? How awful it was that somebody as special as he was had to mix with such people. So much had gone wrong already that day. He needed some good fortune. Never mind. A few more hours and he’d be driving back along that road to the honeymoon supper. Before midnight, he’d have his sex and be whole again. Not so long now. Not so long.
The sun’s glare filled up the windshield. The dust-jacketed jeep pulled into the clearing that marked the end of the track. There were a few unloved houses around its rim. It had the mood of a village that had seen bigger and brighter days. The clearing had two crude soccer posts at either end, but Phosy knew that the labor invested in preparing that land hadn’t merely been to give the children somewhere to play. He’d seen its like before.
“I wonder how many helicopter drops this place saw in its heyday,” Madame Daeng said to nobody in particular.
Phosy parked on the halfway line, and they all climbed from the jeep, slowly unknotting their joints. They carried a different type of tension with them also. They’d begun to feel it when the odometer announced they were two kilometers from their destination. They all knew what it was. There’s a gland somewhere in the human body whose sole purpose is to allow pessimism an outlet. It is particularly active when you’re on the doorstep of danger, when you know a homicidal maniac is somewhere ahead of you, one who is capable of unthinkable acts of cruelty. Real-life evil couldn’t begin to match the horrors the pessimism gland secreted.
Nobody was in a rush to come and greet the new arrivals.
“Anybody else not see what I don’t see?” asked Daeng.
“We’re missing a truck,” said Phosy.
“We didn’t see it on our way up,” Daeng agreed. “So, unless there’s another way out of here, and I don’t see that either, the truck had to leave over three hours ago.”
Phosy thought about it. “We’ve come from the two other collection points and nothing passed us going in the opposite direction. The only way it could have gone was north at the Ban Nahoi intersection, away from the census bases.”
“That is a very bad sign,” Daeng decided.
“And where the hell is everybody from this place?”
“Twelve o’clock,” said Daeng, pointing north. The policemen turned to see a bedraggled couple in their fifties coming toward them. Given the ghost-town feel of the surroundings, they could easily have been the curators of a haunted historical site. They had all the attributes.
“Good health,” the man said, although he obviously hadn’t been blessed with it. He was pitted with childhood smallpox scars and had a yellowish sheen to his skin. His anorexic wife made him look like a paragon of health by comparison.
“Good health,” said Phosy, reluctantly shaking the man’s hand. “We were hoping to see Comrade Buaphan.”
“He left,” said the host.
Phosy thought, “damn” but said, “When?”
“Around midday. Went off in the truck. Left me in a pickle, he did. We’ve had census collection volunteers coming down from the hills all afternoon to hand in their papers and get their fees. I didn’t know what to tell them.”
“Did he do anything like that the last time he was here?” Phosy asked.
“He did take the truck a few times, but he was usually back in time to talk to the collectors.”
“Where does he sleep when he’s here?”
“Up there,” said the man, pointing to a solitary hut on a hill. “We told him he could stay with us in the main house but he preferred it up there by himself.”
“How many of you live up here?” Daeng asked. Phosy didn’t bother to reprimand her.
“Just us and our kids,” the man said. “One house. This used to be a busy community during the war. But after the cease-fire there wasn’t much of a reason to be here. We’re a ways from running water, you see. This settlement was always more strategic than natural.”
“So why are you still here?” she asked.
“Got nowhere else to go,” he told her honestly. “The government wants to relocate all us hill tribes to the plains but we wouldn’t know how to survive down there growing paddy rice. This is where we’re comfortable, up in the clouds.”
They started up the hill to the lone hut, all but the wife, who stood like a solitary stalk of rice in the clearing.
“Does the truck spend a lot of time up here?” Phosy asked as they walked.
“Well, they only just came today, but when they were here two weeks ago it was in and out all the time. We got the idea it was supposed to be collecting forms from the other bases. When Comrade Buaphan took it out, the driver used to sit with us and have a laugh about him. The boss had the poor fellow counting papers and loading stacks of questionnaires in cement sacks. They weren’t often here at the same time.”
“But the truck wasn’t here that often at night?”
“Hardly at all.”
“And you’re certain you saw Comrade Buaphan and the driver leave at midday together?”
“No, Comrade. I didn’t see that at all.”
“You said …”
“I saw Comrade Buaphan leave by himself. There was no driver with him.”
“So where’s the driver?” asked Daeng.
“I don’t know.” The man seemed to think about it for the first time. “Haven’t seen him since this morning. I suppose he could be up in the hut. There aren’t many places to hide.”
They were surrounded by bush, so Daeng noted that that statement wasn’t true at all. They arrived on top of the butte. The hut was a thatched box with door and window shapes sliced out of the front like a child’s drawing. The five of them filled the room. There was a military sleeping bag rolled up against the rear rattan wall and an empty American-issue knap sack standing beside it. Buaphan’s few possessions were laid out on top of a bamboo bench.
“The simple life,” said Daeng. “I’d say he didn’t have too many parties up here.”
There were two white shirts folded the way the Chinese laundries preferred, one pair of black trousers rolled to keep out creases, a small heap of underwear and socks, an expensive-looking watch, an English language novel book-marked halfway through, a Thai handbook of local birds, a pair of binoculars, and a small stack of kip.
“Wherever he was going he didn’t need his watch or his money,” Phosy said, looking at the engraving on the back of the watch. “From your loving parents,” he read.
“Rich fami
ly by the look of it,” said one of the police officers.
“So it is possible he bought his way into the job,” Daeng said, recalling Siri’s theory.
“And there’s only one reason a man with money would want to go off into the wilderness,” Phosy said.
“He might just have wanted peace and quiet,” Daeng suggested.
“No, he put himself out here in this isolated spot and worked out a regimen where nobody knew where he was at any one time. It’s why he was so annoyed about having a driver attached to the project. He wanted the truck to himself. And look, he’s right out here at the end of the chain. Logically, the project coordinator would be based in the center, down at the Nahoi intersection. But that was too busy. There were too many witnesses to his comings and goings. This place is ideal.”
Everything fitted in Phosy’s mind. The only thing missing was the driver.
“You’re absolutely certain the driver wasn’t in the truck?” he asked again. “I mean, he might have been asleep in the back or hunched down on the seat.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes,” the man said. “I was up on the other butte. I saw Comrade Buaphan walk down from his hut large as life, climb in the truck and drive off. There was nobody else with him.”
“Perhaps he ran off,” said the other officer.
“Why would he do that?” Phosy asked. “He’s got a cushy government job. He doesn’t have to do a lot of work.”
“But he didn’t get along with the section head,” one policeman reminded him.
“We all of us have to work with people we don’t like, Officer. You don’t just run away in the middle of nowhere like this. You wait till you’re in a city where there are options.”
“He could be out hunting, though,” Daeng said.
“Good point,” Phosy said. “In which case he’ll be back soon. It’ll be getting dark. On the other hand, he could be dead.”
They all turned to look at him.
“Why?” Daeng asked.
“Assume Comrade Buaphan has set up his next victim. He was here two weeks ago working it all out, laying the foundations. All he needs to do is drive to the next victim’s village. But, as usual, there’s one person in the way. He tried again to get the driver kicked off the project but failed. He’s the only one who can verify when Buaphan took the truck. He’s the only witness. There’s conflict between them and Buaphan knows the driver would gladly give evidence against him if news of the murders got out. He’s a liability, so the comrade makes him disappear. He goes off in the truck, kills his next victim, and at the end of the mission he puts in a report that the driver ran off. Nobody could question it. It’s a logical next step. He might have even done away with other project drivers. We could check with …”
The Merry Misogynist Page 20