A Corpse in the Koryo

7

The floor lady at the Koryo was not happy to find me back in the room.

She tugged at the sleeve of her dress. She refused to look me in the eye. It wasn't hard to see that by now she had been talked to by someone who had warned her that it was a bad idea to answer my questions. There was no sense in pressing her at this point. I told her that I'd call her later. She was relieved. "I'm busy this morning," she said. "A bus load of Romanian basketball players is arriving. Some friendship tournament. They are the worst. Tall, skinny, they all think because they have such long legs they are comedians. You should see what they do to the rooms.

With luck, they'll go to twelve and above." She backed into the hall and slipped away like a shadow. Real quiet, well trained.

I went through the room again inch by inch. Pak had said his first priority was finding out the victim's identity, but that would only be a process of elimination. There were a limited number of foreigners in the country; each provincial unit would make an accounting based on the entry cards and then be told to do it again. Eventually, someone would come up one short, and that would be our man. Or rather, our corpse. My real problem was to figure out who did it, and we were drifting backward on that. So far, all we knew was that the body had been found in this room in the Koryo. Though we hadn't nailed it down as a fact, I was almost sure he was a Finn. At the very least, he was a European, but I pretty much ruled out southern Europe. He wasn't a Slav, either. According to the initial inventory report, all the clothes were from stores in Vienna. If that checked out, then it probably meant he worked for an international organization. Lots of nationalities did. So what made me think he was a Finn? A blue button. But I didn't even know it was his.

None of his clothing had buttons like that. Maybe it belonged to his killer.

Maybe the murderer was a Finn. But I didn't think so. I'd been through the hotel records. The room had seen scores of Koreans from Japan, a few Americans, and plenty of Chinese. Also newlyweds from Turkistan. There were no signs in the room of any of them, unless that button was part of a Turkistan wedding night custom. I doubted it.

The floor lady knocked softly on the door sill. "There's a call for you downstairs."

"You clean these rooms yourself?"

I could see her deciding whether this was the sort of question she could answer. It was. "Yes, each of us is responsible for an entire floor.

Two actually. We used to work in pairs, but last year they cut the staff.

We have to make a profit, they said. So I do all the cleaning myself here and on nine."

"The Turkistani couple, the honeymoon couple."

She rolled her eyes. "I don't talk about guests." I was into questions she'd been warned not to answer.

"When you clean, you clean the whole room?"

"Why not?"

"I ask, you answer. Try to remember that." I gave her what was meant to be a friendly look. "You're pretty busy. Two floors to clean.

Easy to miss a spot."

She smiled tightly.

"Okay. So you never miss a spot. But if you did, where do you think it would be?"

"Believe me, this room was spotless three days ago. I came in twice to make sure." She paused and gave a little frown. "Anything in here since then came with…" She didn't finish the thought.

"I'll get that call now." turned toward him. "We're trying real hard to run a good hotel here."

He paused. "This won't help."

The first law of capitalism, I thought. Corpses are bad for business.

I tried to sound friendly and serious at the same time. "As soon as I get what I need and can clear out of here, I will. But if this isn't solved soon, you'll have a reputation, if you know what I mean. Bad for the honeymoon tours."

He thought a moment. "The eighth floor is hard to sell." I noticed his hands. They were folded. His knuckles were white, as if he were holding his fingers too tight.

"Thanks for the use of your phone." I got up and wrote down my number on a scrap of paper. "You probably won't remember anything.

Don't strain yourself."

The phone was in the manager's office behind the reception desk. The manager was sitting on a wooden folding chair at a small table, sipping tea, not even pretending to go through his papers. His teacup was cracked down the side. I thought about asking him to leave, but it didn't matter. All the hotel phones were tapped anyway.

It was Kang's voice on the other end. "You free tonight?"

"Depends."

"I'll buy dinner."

"No goat meat."

"That doesn't leave much."

"You'll think of something. Fish, maybe."

"How's life at the Koryo these days, Inspector?"

"Fine." It was clear that he knew who talked to the floor lady. "Best hotel on the peninsula."

"Nine o'clock, if that's not too late. I'll swing by your office."

"You do that." I hung up.

The manager cleared his throat and gave me a sour smile when I 8

Kang showed up shortly past nine. He stopped in to see Pak for a few minutes. Then he came down to my office. "No dinner. Pak forbids it."

I put my feet on the desk. A headache was creeping up the back of my neck. "I knew it wouldn't happen. You're here. What do you want to say?

"Remember our friend Chong?"

"The stone head?"

"His body disappeared. They don't even know he's dead. They've convinced themselves he's planning to skip into China, if he hasn't already.

Kim is fit to be tied. He's put all of his people along the border on alert. He can't afford to have one of his men defect. Screws up the discipline."

"Bad for his reputation, too, I would think."

"We can hope. Meantime, he's distracted. He doesn't know you were up in Manpo."

"He must know by now."

"Then why have they issued a lookout for a guy from Wonsan, first name unknown, last name unknown?"

"What about the goat lady?"

"She won't help them much. All she knows is you were a little fuzzy about fish and flashed food coupons."

"That's what you came here about? Chong's corpse?" The headache had found itself a good home and was going to spend the night. I'd brought back a bottle of aspirin from Berlin but had used the last one a few weeks ago. Pak didn't have any; I checked.

"No. Your corpse. Kim's people talked to the Koryo staff."

"Thanks for nothing."

Kang started to say something, then stopped.

"What?"

"Not much. Only, Kim isn't mean, he's psycho. If he puts you on his list, there's not much I'll be able to do. He's watching me, waiting to move."

"So get out of the way."

"Not that easy."

"Why? One night, you just disappear."

"I can't, not yet."

"Well, whatever it is, it's your problem. Just keep it clear of me from now on, alright?"

"If it were just my problem, I wouldn't be here, Inspector. A word of advice." He paused.

"I'm listening."

Kang tore a page from that nice little notebook of his and wrote down one word. He pushed it across my desk and then walked into the hall. My headache heard the door slam. The word on the paper was what I expected. "Finn."