“Another solved case.”
“You haven’t … ?”
“We have. Not only do we have our fencer, we have irrefutable connections to each of the victims and to the three crime scenes. It’s all over.” He shook the doctor’s hand. “Congratulations.”
There were fewer and fewer places to drink of a night in a city whose sense of muan, of innocent pleasure, had been slowly wrung from it by two and a half years of socialism. The logical hot spots were roofless snack and drink stalls along the riverbank and as long as that one unstoppable April shower persisted, they would remain closed. There was the Russian club, a bustling, beery night eatery populated by Eastern European experts. But that was beyond the budget of a Lao policeman and a Lao doctor. So Siri and Phosy took their drinks under an umbrella at Two Thumbs’ humble establishment behind the evening market. They drank rice whisky and worked through a plate of steamed peanuts in soft shells. Siri knew he should have been packing, spending the night with Mme Daeng, but she’d always understood the power of celebration, particularly when victory was the prize.
“If we’d only checked sooner,” Phosy said. “Or if one of us had remembered the names on the lists. But why would we? We were only interested in the team leader on the rewiring project. I doubt we gave the other names on the Electricité du Lao work roster more than a cursory glance. But I’d arrived at the name Somdy Borachit on the subscriptions list and I read it out loud. And Sihot had just worked out his schedule to interview all the electricians on his list and he asked me how it was spelled. And, sure enough, it was the same name. We had him: Somdy Borachit, who everyone knew by the nickname of Neung. We drove over to Electricité du Lao and he was there, calm as you like. Confident. And I asked him if he had an acquaintanceship with the three victims and he admitted he did. No pretence at all. He came straight out with it.”
“That he’d killed them?”
“That he knew them all. I asked why he hadn’t come forward when he heard about the killings and he said, ‘It’s complicated.’ Complicated? You bet it’s complicated. We took him to HQ and questioned him. And it was as if every answer he gave tied him tighter and tighter to the murders. It was as if he didn’t understand the implication of what he was saying. Everything in this case points directly to him. Every damn thing.”
“He didn’t have an alibi?”
“Claims he was babysitting his son all weekend. His wife was off at a seminar. It’s just one more story that doesn’t work.”
“Start at the beginning, Phosy.”
“All right. You’ll never guess who Neung’s father is.”
“Then tell me.”
“Miht, the groundsman at K6. And when the Americans were still there he used to go to help his father with the gardening work.”
“So he would have met young Jim there. Attractive girl. Got chatting …”
“He admits it. Said he knew her before he went off to study. And where do you suppose he takes his scholarship course in electrical engineering?”
“East Germany.”
“Precisely where Jim was headed. And he studied not two blocks from her school. Amazing coincidence? I don’t think so.”
“So he could have been the mystery man who hounded her there. Followed her to Berlin, then stalked her.”
“Forcing her to come home early,” Phosy went on. “He returned at about the same time. Which brings us to victim number two, Kiang. It’s easier to do this in reverse order. In the beginning he told us he’d met Kiang at the government bookshop and they’d chatted about being overseas and he said he’d never seen her outside the reading room. Never socialized with her. And it was so obvious he was lying even Sihot could read it. I was certain we had our killer and decided I could push as hard as I liked at that stage. But Neung didn’t take much pushing. As soon as the word ‘murder’ came up in the interview, he admitted that he and Kiang were … ‘dating,’ I think is what he called it. I asked him why he’d lied and he said he hadn’t wanted word to get back to his wife. His wife? Can you believe it? He’s got a wife and a child and he’s dating. And it doesn’t seem like killing the girl was nearly as important as his wife not finding out.”
Phosy’s reaction surprised Siri but he decided that matter could wait.
“And is the school connected? The scene of the murder?” Siri asked.
“Is it ever? It’s where he went to school, Siri. It was his own classroom. He pinned his dead girlfriend to the blackboard he’d copied notes from for seven years. This is a very sick character, Siri.”
“How’s he taking it?”
“You know how they are. Denying this. Denying that. He had himself in tears at one point.”
“So he hasn’t actually confessed to anything?”
“He’s denied killing them but there’s no getting away from the fact that he knew them all. He met the wife of his boss through work. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was ‘dating’ her as well. And get this. The syrup on the shaved ice is that our Comrade Neung was a fencing star. He was the champion on the university team while he was in Munich.”
“No, wait. How long was he there? Two … three years? How do you get to be a champion in so short a time?”
“You don’t. He was already an expert before he left Laos. He learned from childhood from his own father.”
“Miht, the groundsman?”
“His father had grown up in a boys’ orphanage in Vietnam run by French priests. They had an extensive program of sports organized for the boys to keep them on the straight and narrow. One of the priests had been a fencing champion and he trained the most promising of his students in swordplay. It appears Miht was the star pupil. If the opportunity had come up he might have even been good enough to compete in Europe, but the war put paid to those plans. Miht came to Laos and put all of his efforts into teaching the skill to his son. Neung had the same natural flair as his father. The old man has a collection of swords at his home.”
Siri thought back to his relaxed conversation with the groundsman. His confident air. He recalled how the fellow had observed the crime scenes so intently. Siri wondered whether he’d known something. Whether he suspected his son might have been involved. Surely, when he discovered that the weapon was an épée …
“It does all seem to fit together,” Siri agreed, pouring the last of their half bottle into the glasses.
“Seem? It’s a perfect fit, Siri. Your Judge Haeng is so pleased about it he’s decided to make this his first open-court murder trial.”
“Wait! He’s what? We don’t even have a constitution. How the hell can he run a murder trial without laws?”
“Not sure, but he’s got the go-ahead from the minister and a couple of the politburo. A lot of people have been upset about all the killing that’s been going on lately. I get the feeling they want the country to know that justice is being done and criminals aren’t going to get away with it.”
“When’s the trial?”
“Next Tuesday.”
“That soon?”
“It is pretty open and shut, you have to agree.”
“There’s no physical evidence, Phosy.”
“You mean no fingerprints?” Phosy laughed.
“I mean no nothing. No eye witnesses, no blood matches, no connected murder weapon, no confessions—no nothing. But I suppose none of that matters if there’s no law. That doesn’t concern you?”
“Come on, Siri. There’s so much circumstantial evidence you’d have to be a half-wit to think he was innocent.”
“It’s called circumstantial because circumstances happen to coincide. And it’s almost as if he’s gone to a lot of trouble to point every finger at himself, circumstantially. But it isn’t proof. What was your impression of him, Phosy?”
“My what?” Phosy was getting frustrated.
“As a person. What did you feel? How did he affect you?”
“Siri, you’re taking all this philosophical, psychological bunkum a bit too far. This is a murderer.�
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“All right, forget psychology. What does your gut tell you? Your policeman’s instincts. You’ve met enough killers in your life. What did your gut tell you after a day with Neung?”
“You really want to play this game?”
“Humor me.”
“All right, I felt he’s very cool. That he knew we had all this evidence against him and he was smart enough not to lie about any of it. He was convincing as an actor. But men with the ability to plan and execute cold-blooded murder would have the ability to convince others …”
“Did you like him?”
“Some of the worst villains are likable, Siri.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Right. Is anyone representing him in this play trial?”
“I assume there’s somebody.”
“In a land without lawyers?”
“The military probably.”
“The military conducts court-martials and executions. This is a completely different thing. This is no war trial. This is an affront to democratic principles. This is a chance for the public to see Marie Antoinette’s head roll.”
“Who?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Siri, slow down. You sound as if you’re on his side. What are you playing at?”
“Not playing at all, Phosy. Looking at all the facts, I’d probably agree that he’s as guilty as the devil himself. Anybody would. Which is no doubt why Judge Haeng selected this as his opening number. Easy. No complaints. An evil killer gets what’s coming to him. Accolades all round. The only loser here is justice. The rightful course of law. Without that we have nothing to believe in.”
“What would you do, Siri? Lock him up till the constitution’s finished? He could be an old man by then.”
“Good point. Can I see him?”
“Who?”
“The accused.”
“What for? Why? When? You have to be at the airport by six.”
“How about now?”
Phosy laughed. Siri was staring at him with those emerald green eyes. No smile. No bluff.
A Hint of Rouge
The Shaanxi Y-8 lifted off from Vientiane’s Wattay Airport three hours after the scheduled departure time. No plane, no bus, no donkey cart ever left on time in the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos. Timetables were in the same section of the government bookshop as legends and folklore. They were fictional beasts that lied without trepidation. Yet despite this knowledge, no passengers ever came prepared for a wait. Nobody ever brought books or puzzles or letters to write or darning or weaving or embroidery to fill in the hours. It was as if, deep down, the Lao believed that today would be different. A miracle would happen. Today, a flight would leave on schedule. So they sat staring hopefully at the runway, at the rain on the window, at the other passengers, and then they dozed. And they awoke with a refreshed belief. Always disappointed.
Siri had arrived with stories to fill the hours. He’d informed Comrade Civilai in great detail of the neat slotting of engineer Neung into the evidence of the épée case. He’d left nothing out, neither fact nor feeling. Civilai, in clean but not necessarily ironed clothes, had sat nodding as he watched an incoming airplane break through the pudding clouds and splash along the runway like a stork in pursuit of a giant snakehead. Unlike his usual self he had nothing to ask, no clarifications to seek. Siri had done a very thorough job. The doctor was just about to tell his friend about the meeting with Neung at police HQ when a Lao Aviation official stood in front of the eleven passengers with a megaphone and yelled an announcement that flight CAAC23 would be leaving in twenty minutes. Passengers were invited to bring their luggage out to the runway and to help the pilot load it into the hold.
Siri and Civilai traveled light. What you wore today you washed tomorrow. All being well, it would be dry by the following day. The only thing of any substance in Siri’s shoulder bag was his Camus compendium, a sort of greatest hits volume. He’d debated not bringing it but he was certain there’d be long periods of waiting or listening to speeches when Monsieur Camus could entertain him.
Madame Daeng had enjoyed no more than four hours with her husband between his visit to the prisoner in jail and the airport. But she’d found the time to ask whether somebody along the trail might take objection to the writings of a man who had converted from communism and proceeded to argue heatedly about its futility. Before attempting to steal an hour or two of sleep, Siri had assured her that nobody would dream of looking in his bag. He was a representative of Laos, a makeshift ambassador, and, as such, he would have makeshift diplomatic immunity.
Their parting words, which both of them would later come to rue, had been:
Siri: “See you in a few days.”
Daeng: “Don’t forget your noodles for the flight.”
No pledges or confessions of emotion. No hopes. No fears. Just noodles and an imprecise calculation of time.
The only thing of substance in Civilai’s shoulder bag was a wad of five hundred dollars rolled into a secret compartment in the thick-handled strap. He always traveled with it “for emergencies” and it was no secret to Siri. To date they hadn’t had cause to use it. Aboard the nonpressurized plane, even leaning so closely into Civilai’s ear that he left lip prints, Siri struggled and failed to describe his meeting with mass-murderer Neung. It would have to keep.
They were scheduled to spend the night in Peking before their onward journey. The hosts really outdid themselves. A permanently smiling Lao-speaking cadre, who appeared to have no idea who Civilai and Siri were, had been assigned to look after them for the evening. They were stuffed with food and drink and given little time to burn it all off between courses. In the car back to their ostentatious hotel, The Sublime, the cadre had asked whether they might enjoy fourteen-year-old girls before they slept. Neither Siri nor Civilai could envisage what they might do with a fourteen-year-old girl other than a quick game of badminton. It was late and they were tired so they had returned to their adjoining suites alone.
Civilai knocked on the common door at exactly the same time as Siri.
“I feel like a hastily put-together tractor on an assembly line,” Civilai said. He went to sit on Siri’s trampoline-sized bed. “Is it my imagination or has the world sped up considerably?”
“I’m still dizzy,” Siri confessed. “It’s as if we’ve just been given the next month’s intake of food and drink and we’ll have to live off it till June.”
“I certainly could,” Civilai agreed. “We were five plates in before I realized we hadn’t yet seen the main course.”
“Do you think there’s a point to it?”
“Absolutely. Stick with the Chinese and you can have all the food, drink, and virginity you can handle. They think we’ll go back and push for a bilateral trade agreement. Maybe hand them a province or two in thanks.”
“But we aren’t anybody. We couldn’t push for a handcart.”
“They don’t know that. They assume that if our country has selected us they’ll listen to us when we go home. They’re canny, the Chinese. They know when it comes down to it, it really has little to do with policy or diplomacy. When a politburo member makes a casting vote, at the back of his mind is the night he spent with identical triplets in a tub of honey. We’re men and it’s a proven scientific fact that eighty percent of the decisions in our lives are made with our stomachs and our sexual organs.”
Siri thought back. “I don’t …”
“Of course I’m not including you and me, Siri. We’re men of integrity. Our lives have been complicated by the burden of conscience. But we are freaks. Ninety-six point three percent of males are born without one.”
“That’s what I admire about you politicians. Figures at your fingertips. Debates won at the drop of a made-up number.”
He found his hand caressing the silk coverlet.
“I really had been expecting something more austere,” he confessed. “You know? A wooden cot in a concrete room. That strike
s me more fitting for Chinese revolutionaries.”
“That really wouldn’t have achieved anything, would it?” “Do you suppose we’re being … ?” Siri mimed headphones and a microphone.
“Probably. And”—Civilai mimed the use of a hand-cranked movie camera—“no doubt.”
“So then romance is out of the question?”
“Wait, I’ll turn out the lights. Our love cannot be denied.”
Both men laughed at the thought of the poor translator reaching this point in the tape and rewinding and rewinding. Were the two old men speaking in code or were they actually … ?
“Do you suppose relating my conversation with Neung might get us in trouble?” Siri asked.
“I doubt it. How did he strike you?”
“Dazed. Perhaps even shell-shocked. It took him a while to acknowledge I was there outside the bars. Phosy had let me go back to the cells by myself. I asked him, ‘Are you Somdy Borachit? Also known as Neung?’ He looked confused as if everyone must surely have known who he was by then. He asked me who else he might be stuck there in a cell. Naturally, he wasn’t in the best of moods. He was tall, strongly built, nice looking. But his face was soft. The type a woman would find more attractive than a man. It was the face of a child whom some would feel an urge to mother. I put a question to him I doubt anyone had asked directly. I wanted to see his reaction.
“‘Did you kill Hatavan Rattanasmy, Khantaly Sisamouth, and Sunisa Simmarit?’
“He looked at me coldly and asked me who I was. I didn’t tell him right away. I said if he’d answer my question, I’d answer his. Finally he replied, ‘Why would I want to kill three people I hardly knew?’ It was a bad answer. A murderer’s answer.
“I told him it wasn’t true he hardly knew them. One he was having an affair with. Another he’d known since she was a child. He’d traveled to Germany with her. He got defensive.
“‘We didn’t travel anywhere together,’ he said, ‘and I’m not answering any more of your questions until you tell me who you are and what you’re doing here.’
“I reminded him he wasn’t exactly in a position to call the shots but I had no objection. I told him my name and pointed out that I was the man who’d conducted autopsies on the three women he’d killed. With a speed and ferocity I hadn’t expected, Neung smashed the heel of his right hand into the concrete wall of the cell. I took a step back. I was certain he’d broken several small bones in his hand. But there was no pain on the man’s face, only anger.”
Love Songs From a Shallow Grave Page 17