Love Songs From a Shallow Grave

by Colin Cotterill

“When I read the diary. There were a lot of thoughts at the back of my mind. I’d wondered about the monogram. They’d called Neung Zorro over there. It was a sort of playful joke. But Neung was embarrassed by it. He certainly didn’t give me the impression he was so proud of it he’d use it as his signature. He didn’t tell anyone when he came back. Not even his father. So I wondered who’d know about it. It had to be someone he met in Germany.”

  “So by this stage you’d dismissed Neung as a suspect?”

  “Not out with the garbage exactly but certainly not at the front of the queue.”

  “But it was while you were reading the diary that it came to you?”

  “As clear as day. The whole tone of her writing felt wrong. I mean, she was a dull, average-looking, short woman on the heavy side. And she’s writing about a jock, a good-looking jock who’s after her. Basically, a nice guy. I mean, she should be so lucky.”

  “There are those who might accuse you of sexism with such a view, Phosy.”

  “Stuff them. Human nature is human nature and I didn’t see anything about Jim that would make a man leave his senses. She wasn’t exactly the fascinating type. She didn’t seem to have an enchanting personality. And he was a fencing champion. If he’d been that way inclined he wouldn’t have gone after a girl from his hometown. I’m sure he could have had all the hanky-panky he could find time for. And there was something eerie about her diary.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I only got the translation, but it was like reading fiction, Siri. According to what she wrote she’d just been raped and she was using all this flowery language and smelling his sweat on her skin. I’ve never met an abused woman who’d rush off to write about it in her diary without taking a shower and a few days to recover. And she’s calling him the devil for taking her soul and, I don’t know, it was just too much. And I started to wonder who was stalking who.”

  “Bravo.”

  “She’d known him since K6. She was a kid following around this good-looking smart older boy. Budding crush material. She knew what he liked to do. Where he went to school. Knew about his dad teaching him fencing. And he goes to study and she goes off to work at the clinic up north. And she’s good. Smart as shit. Everyone knows she’ll make a hell of a doctor. But the Americans flee the scene and Jim has the option to move to America. They offer her a scholarship. But she stays on at the clinic. Why would she want to do that? Love for the nation? Or love for something else?

  “Our people are desperate for doctors. They find this girl running a clinic. They turn a blind eye to the fact that she was working with the Americans and offer to send her off to study medicine. The Russians offer her a good deal, the Cubans, the North Koreans. But it’s not till they offer her a place in Berlin that she accepts. And why? Guess who’d gone to East Germany six months earlier? The love of her life. But he’s got himself married since she went away and has a child. Yet still she believes she’s destined to live her life with Neung. She sees it in the stars or somewhere. Already we start to recognize the obsession.

  “I still have no idea where or how she taught herself fencing. I wonder whether she might have badgered Neung’s father into teaching her after his son went off to study in the north. That would be ironic, wouldn’t it? I haven’t had a chance to ask him. But it’s through Neung’s fencing club that she ‘accidentally’ bumps into him again. He’s kind. He tutors her. They spend time together. Her crush develops into a growth, a cancer. She wants him more than she’s ever wanted anything. But she’s a Lao woman. The advance has to come from him. And it doesn’t come. She keeps a diary and through that diary her fantasy becomes real. Neung is pursuing her. She is the victim of his love. But time’s running out. His course is coming to an end and she still hasn’t turned her fairy story into reality. That’s when the writing in the diary becomes darker. Neung becomes this unknown evil character, Z. She’s becoming more and more deranged. The whole rape scene sounds like a trashy Thai novel.”

  “How do … ?”

  “Not that I’ve ever read one. The point is she has to justify to herself why she’s quitting her course. She couldn’t imagine being in Germany without her fantasy lover so she deliberately fails her exams and gets thrown out. She blames it on some mysterious stalker. People feel sorry for her. So she—Siri, would you stop staring at me like that?”

  “I’m sorry, Phosy. This is the detective I’ve been searching for all my life.”

  “Sarcasm is the lowest form—”

  “Believe me, Phosy. I’ve had the last of my sarcasm beaten out of me. I’m a recovered sarcaholic.”

  “Good, whatever, anyway, they’re both back in Laos. Home territory. Jim besotted beyond reason. Beyond sanity. Neung still clueless. Jim follows Neung to the bookshop. He goes there often. She signs up also. By now she’s built up the courage to confess her love. She tells him they need to talk. But he’s too busy. He doesn’t call her back. She stalks on, and that’s when she sees Neung with Kiang. Probably follows them out to their love hotel. Bang. Her already troubled mind explodes. She wasn’t that stable to start with, but now the man she’s been in love with for fifteen years, the man she gave up her future and her dreams to follow home—Neung—has a lover. A wife’s one thing, expendable. She knows that men with wives take on lovers. Happens all the time. But this is an attractive single woman and Jim could smell the love in the air. It was all over for her. Revenge was the only option. Neung works at Electricité du Lao. Jim follows him around. She learns he’s in a work team at K6. Coincidentally, the nurse attached to the K6 clinic breaks her leg. It appears someone pushed her off a balcony. They didn’t ever find a culprit but I’m sure we all know who it was. And so she started to assemble her murder trilogy.”

  “If I’m allowed to say,” Siri smiled, “that was a brilliant piece of detective work. There I was, afraid an innocent man was about to be shot, but you had it all worked out. If I’d known, I could have concentrated on my incarceration with a lighter heart.”

  Phosy wore a glow, not only of illegally imported Mekhong Whisky, but of a policeman’s pride. It suited him.

  “But I was still a pace or two behind the amazing Dr. Siri, wasn’t I?” he said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “You worked it out without the benefit of the diary or information from Germany.”

  Siri blushed and lowered his voice. Two Thumbs had been edging his chair closer to keep up with the conversation.

  “I had nothing conclusive,” Siri admitted. “Just a series of hunches.”

  “Like the towel?”

  “Like the towel, yes. Covering Dew’s lap with the towel after killing her seemed really incongruous. If you hate someone, you don’t give a damn about their modesty. It seemed like a gesture of apology. ‘I’m sorry I had to kill you.’ And it seemed to me to be a particularly feminine act. That’s when it first entered my mind that the encounter in the sauna might have been a homosexual one and that the killer might have been a woman.”

  “The Vietnamese security people were convinced of it,” Phosy said. “The Vietnamese girl on their bodyguard unit had quite a reputation for … lady to lady … you know. Someone had seen her together with Dew earlier that evening. When they found Dew’s body in the sauna, they were sure it was their girl who’d killed her.”

  “Which explains why they were so keen to cover it up.” Siri nodded. “Now I see. And Dew’s inclinations would also explain the relationship with her husband. Her parents had wanted her to get married and have children to continue the family lineage. It’s really important for some people. They knew they’d be raising the children by themselves. It’s all about face. Oh, I don’t doubt they thought being married and having children might shake those silly gay ideas out of their daughter but it didn’t work. I feel sorry for Comrade Chanti. He was duped all the way along the line. Can’t say I blame him for shopping around for a new wife. “

  “Do you think Dew and Jim were actually … ?”


  “I doubt it. It was more likely Jim, the medic, found out about Dew’s leanings and decided she could take advantage of the situation. Her husband was Neung’s boss. It was as good a start as any. The first nail in Neung’s coffin. She had a narrow avenue of time to work in. She found out Neung’s wife was away for the weekend and he’d be stuck babysitting. He wouldn’t be able to run around building up alibis. It wouldn’t surprise me if Jim had built up a list of other potential victims, all of whom could be tied to Neung.”

  “But Kiang had to be at the top of the list.”

  “She’d certainly have to be one of her victims. I imagine Jim met Kiang at the bookshop and became friendly with her. She would have talked about fencing, perhaps suggesting that any man who fenced would be impressed with a woman who knew the fundamentals. Something like that. She offered to teach Kiang and said she’d be in touch when she was free. That way she could bring Kiang into play at any time. ‘Hello, Kiang, I’m free this evening. Would you like a lesson?’ We’ll never know for certain how it all came together, but there had to be a lot of planning involved.”

  “And all for revenge. And she didn’t even have the opportunity to sit back and gloat. You’d think a murderer would want to observe. To see whether her plans worked out.”

  “Well, I …”

  “What is it?”

  “I mean, I read your report. It was very thorough. Very well done.”

  “But?”

  “My conclusion wasn’t exactly the same as yours.”

  “About what?”

  “It’s really a very small thing.”

  “About what?”

  “Your opinion was that Jim had committed suicide.”

  “She ran a sword into herself. That’s not suicide?”

  “It’s only suicide if she dies as a result. I believe she didn’t intend to kill herself.”

  “Dr. Siri, you’re a real pain in the backside, you know that? How do you impale yourself on a lump of metal and not … ? OK, go on. This better be good.”

  “All right. I’ll do my best. Yes, she impaled herself with an épée. But she did so very carefully. Look at the other victims. ’Epée straight through the heart. Jim knew her heart was on the wrong side. She must have. If she wanted to do away with herself she could have run the épée straight through her right breast. But she went to great pains—pains against which she took a large slug of morphine—to insert the specially sharpened sword in such a way that it looked as if it had been aimed at her heart. She’d studied medicine. She knew where her lungs were. The blade passed in front of her lung and out the side. The marks on the wooden upright suggested she’d steered the blade by pushing herself against the sword. It was like a very large-scale injection. It looked awful and probably hurt like hell despite the elixir, but it wasn’t life threatening if she got to the hospital in time.

  “Her mistake was the Z cut in her thigh. On the others she’d used a knife, made the cut after death. But for her own murder she had no time to conceal a second weapon. So she had to write with the tip of the épée. Don’t forget, she’d sharpened it to a fine point. It had no edge. She’d been wary of slashing a lung so she’d smoothed down the blade. Cutting into her thigh would have been like slicing across an orange with a needle. It would have been very messy and bloody. I imagine the morphine had started to work and she didn’t notice how deep she’d made the cut. She certainly didn’t notice how much blood she was losing until it was too late. She was intent on getting the blade inside her. My guess is that she envisaged a complete recovery and the opportunity to give evidence against the man who’d rejected her. She wanted to drain every last drop of revenge out of it. I think her own death came as a terrible disappointment to her.”

  Phosy downed his drink but didn’t reach to refill the glass. “I hear they’re looking for laborers at the salt farm,” he said.

  “I heard it plays havoc with the complexion. Do you have a point to make?”

  “Not really. Just that I should be looking for a new line of work. I complete what I believe is my finest investigation, I free an innocent man, and I get a rare handshake from the minister of justice, but you still manage to trump me with a hidden ending.”

  “Hardly worth giving up a career for. It’s all academic anyway. No murderer to build a case against. No witnesses. And without corroboration this is all conjecture. In fact, I’m surprised you were able to present enough hard evidence to convince Judge Haeng to drop charges against Neung. Haeng isn’t known as a man in possession of an instinct.”

  “Ah, but you see? We did have hard evidence. Evidence that put Jim at the scene of the first crime.”

  “There was no …”

  “I admit I had to break into your morgue to requisition some property you’d stolen.”

  “The épées?”

  “Correct.”

  “And what possible … ? Oh, Phosy. The fingerprints.”

  “Can’t argue with modern science.”

  Siri laughed. “The prints I couldn’t identify on the first épée belonged to Jim, didn’t they?” Siri said. “Of course. I didn’t check those prints against those of the other victims. Eureka!”

  Siri raised his glass and howled like the ghost of his dead dog. Two Thumbs and most of the drinkers turned their attention to the old man with a cancellation scar across his forehead.

  “Good luck,” Siri shouted.

  “Good luck,” everyone repeated.

  “So finally it worked,” Siri laughed. Only a hundred years since the invention of fingerprinting and Laos uses it to solve a case. Who knows? In under ten years we’ll be comparing blood samples. The heated rush of technology.”

  “What are you two so excited about?” came Daeng’s voice from the plank-board walkway leading from the market. She and Dtui, with Malee at her hip, ducked beneath the few erect umbrellas, took off their sandals, and sat down with Phosy and Siri on the grass mat.

  “Science has triumphed over superstition once more, madam,” Siri told her.

  He took one of the plastic bags from his wife, removed the boiled duck eggs, and put them on the plate in front of him. Daeng upturned a second bag of lethally spicy papaya salad into another. Two Thumbs had no food so patrons were encouraged to step into the market and buy their own. He was, however, extremely generous with plates and cutlery.

  “Eating then?” Two Thumbs called. Such was the color and depth of his repartee. Phosy took three eggs and presented them as an offering to the proprietor. Daeng and Dtui clinked their empty glasses together, a signal for Siri to do something about it. He set to his task.

  “When we planned this, we actually had something a little bit more extravagant in mind,” Dtui said as Siri poured the tea-colored Thai brew into their glasses.

  “You mean like brunch at the Bangkok Oriental?” Daeng asked.

  “More like a nice restaurant with tables,” Dtui lamented.

  Siri handed the ladies their filled glasses.

  “You said we could choose,” he reminded her.

  “Yes, I know. But you chose the cheapest place you could think of.”

  “And where’s the fault in that?” Siri asked. “You go to some fancy, overpriced place and with every spoonful, every glass, you feel wretched with guilt at all the necessary things you could be spending the money on. You worry so much you end up burning all the calories you’ve eaten and by the time you get home you weigh less than you did before you left.”

  “And we love it here,” Daeng added. “It’s like a second home to us.”

  Phosy rejoined the group. He had a new bottle of Mekhong.

  “Was that in exchange for the eggs?” Siri asked.

  “Charity isn’t in Two Thumbs’ vast vocabulary,” Phosy told them and sat beside Dtui. She put baby Malee into his lap and the youngster grabbed at his shirt button.

  “Any more news of Mr. Geung and his lady love?” Siri asked.

  “More chance of the national football team going ninety minutes witho
ut giving up a goal from what I hear,” Phosy told him. “Isn’t that right, Dtui?”

  Dtui was still sulking.

  “We wanted to take you somewhere special,” she said.

  Daeng put her hand on Dtui’s knee.

  “Special is where friends are,” she said.

  Siri laughed. “You got that from one of my old greeting cards.”

  “I know. So what? The point is it’s the being invited that’s important. The place doesn’t matter.”

  “OK,” Dtui conceded. “In that case, we have something to say. Phosy?”

  “Why me?”

  “It’ll mean more coming from you cause you’re a policeman.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means nobody expects you to feel anything. It’s shock value. You say something from your heart and it traumatizes people. They never forget it.”

  Phosy frowned.

  “In that case …” He put both hands on Malee as if she were a conduit. “What we want to say,” he began, “is … well. I suppose it’s …”

  “You’re doing great so far,” Dtui told him.

  “Give me a minute. I want to say this right. Dr. Siri, Madame Daeng, Dtui and me … we didn’t … we were so sure we didn’t deserve to be loved that when it came along we didn’t believe it was really there. It took you two to make us see sense. Thanks.”

  “Thanks?” Dtui laughed. “That’s it?”

  “I think I’ve covered the main points,” he told her.

  “And I say he did a splendid job,” Daeng agreed.

  They toasted the moment.

  “I want to add one thing,” Dtui said. “We were all—I mean, all of us—for five weeks we were living a life that we believed didn’t have a Dr. Siri in it anymore. And it wasn’t the same life. It was lonely and empty. It was missing something important. So …” She raised her glass. “Thanks for not dying, Doc.”

  They toasted Siri’s not dying and refilled the glasses because the best was yet to come. Daeng reached into her shoulder bag and produced an envelope.

  “This came for you yesterday,” she said. “I sneakily held it back. I thought this would be an appropriate occasion for you to open it.”