Anarchy and the Old Dogs

The 220-Volt Bathtub

After a disappointing breakfast of Vietnamese lentil soup and stale baguettes, Siri and Civilai walked from the Pakse Hotel into another overcast, steamy morning. The same type of stodgy cloud they’d left behind in Vientiane was hanging over them like soft bread. The whole country had become a sandwich. The town’s reluctance to turn itself into a real city that welcomed visitors was evident in its lack of footpaths and its abundance of deep holes. The only buildings that didn’t look like they might blow down in a strong gale were government departments housed in Franco-Chinese blocks with thick walls and gaping windows that threw forth their wooden shutters like bat wings. Nothing was really white-not the whitewash on the temple walls or the street signs, or the eyes or teeth of the dowdy people they passed. Bullock carts and small pony traps overtook them in the street, and both the drivers and the beasts they drove glanced back discreetly at the two old men. Civilai in a peaked cap and dark glasses looked like the undernourished older relative of a Cuban revolutionary. Siri bounded along beside him.

The Pakse Bureau de Poste was housed in a small concrete building covered in flaking gray paint. What had apparently once been a neat, well-cared-for garden hugging the wooden fence had grown wild and unlovable. Thorny sprigs reached out for the old men from between the palings. It was here Siri and Civilai parted company, Siri to fulfill his obligation to the Justice Department, Civilai to see whether the post office could shed any light on the origin of the dentist’s letter. They agreed to meet for lunch at the ferry crossing, where they would pass on the morning’s results.

When Siri arrived at the police station, he failed to disturb the duty officer from the delicate task of removing chin hairs with a pair of tweezers. The officer didn’t even look up from the little round hand mirror he held in front of his face.

Siri said, “Excuse me” and waited for a “Yes, sir. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

It didn’t come.

“Well,” Siri said, “either you have a hearing problem or I became invisible overnight. Which is it?”

The officer nipped and plucked once more before lowering the glass and glaring over it at the intruder.

“And who do you think you are?” he asked. His voice rasped like a man who’d consumed too much spirit the night before.

“I think I’m Dr. Siri Paiboun from the Justice Department, but I confess I haven’t checked my identification papers for a few days.”

There were places where a mention of the Justice Department would snap a government official into a respectful state of mind. Pakse was certainly not one of those places. The officer fished around under his desk for a wastebasket and swept his pluckings into it with the side of his hand. Having done so, he yelled at the top of his voice, “Hey, Tao!”

A middle-aged man in police trousers and an off-white undershirt poked his head out of an office three doors down. He was about Siri’s height but three times his girth. His short gray hair had receded to a point beyond the crown of his head, leaving behind one small circular atoll of bristle at the front.

“What?” he said, apparently suffering from the same throat affliction as his colleague.

“Your Vientiane guy’s here.”

“Good.”

There was no hello. Tao ducked back into the room and left Siri hanging there like crematorium smoke. They’d warned him in Vientiane that in Pakse he might not find the same poor standard of public officialdom that he’d become accustomed to in the capital. They’d told him he should lower his standards even further.

For any northern cadre, a posting to the deep south was the Lao equivalent of a Russian’s banishment to Siberia. The south was still a hotbed of anticommunist feeling. After dark, the authorities could only guarantee security as far as the outer city limits. Beyond that, Royalist insurgents operated with impunity in the villages, spreading dissent and recruiting new troops for the guerrilla war against the socialists. It was an exact reversal of the situation six years earlier when the CIA and Royalists had barricaded themselves inside Pakse, and the Pathet Lao and Vietminh had ruled the roost in the countryside. Pakse always proved to be a burning pot handle for any faction that tried to hold on to it. So police officers transferred from the north had invariably offended somebody in authority or had shown themselves to be unfit for employment anywhere else.

Tao emerged from his office wearing a police hat that was too small for his head and a leather jacket twice his size. He obviously hadn’t noticed how hot and clammy the day was. He strode past Siri and slapped him on the back.

“Come on, old fellow,” he said. “Where’s your car?”

“What car?”

Tao stopped and turned back with an angry look on his face. “They didn’t arrange your transport? I thought you were government.”

“I just work for them, like you.”

“All right. We can go on my bike but you’ll have to pay for the petrol.”

He marched through the large open frontage of the building and out to the dust bowl in front. He’d reached his motorcycle before he realized the Vientiane guy wasn’t following. Siri, smiling, was leaning on the counter.

The pudgy policeman called out, “Oy. Come on. They’re waiting for us. What are you, crippled or something?”

Siri took a small plastic jar of aniseed balls from his top pocket and slowly unscrewed the cap. Tao marched back inside already glossy with sweat. “What are you playing at?”

“Your name’s Tao, right?” Siri said, offering him a handful of aniseed, which was rejected.

“Yeah?”

“Well, Tao. You’re probably the type of man who believes he’s been sent to work in the worst place on the planet. Am I right?”

“I’ve got no time for this. What’s your point?”

“My point is, this is far from the worst place on the planet. There are much worse places than this. Even in Laos there are worse hellholes. There are postings so horrible, Pakse would seem like the Tiger Balm Pleasure Gardens by comparison. And not only do I know where those postings are, I can arrange for people to be sent there.”

“I don’t-”

“So here’s the deal, Officer Tao. I’m going to be here for a few days. While I’m in town, you’re going to call me ‘doctor’ or ‘comrade’ or even ‘sir,’ if you like. Because even though l don’t wear a uniform, I outrank you about twentyfold. When there is a need, you will ferry me around on your decrepit motorcycle without any extortion attempts. It is your duty and you receive a budget to do so. By showing me respect, you’ll see that I can be a very useful contact for you, Officer Tao. Do we understand each other yet?”

Tao looked over Siri’s shoulder to see whether the duty officer had been a witness to his dressing-down, but they were alone at the front desk. He seemed to weigh the offer in his mind, but it really wasn’t that difficult a decision to make.

“All right.”

“All right, what?”

“Doctor?”

“Very good. Shall we go?”

Once the roles were established, Officer Tao became a very jolly little man. He chatted amiably on their journey across town and made it clear to Siri that if there was anything he needed while he was in town, Tao was his man. It took only ten minutes to get to the deputy governor’s house behind the sports stadium. A Land Rover was parked in front, and a large man in a safari suit was sitting cross-legged on the porch.

“You’re honored,” Tao said. “The governor’s here to meet you himself.”

They pulled up beside a lemon ghost tree and Tao removed his hat respectfully. “Governor Comrade Katay, this is Dr. Siri from the Justice Department.”

If he hadn’t been told this was the governor, Siri would have mistaken the nervous-looking character for a janitor. When he stood, it was as if his suit were filled with crumpled newspaper rather than a body. He held out his hand to Siri, who shook it and smiled. There was no power in the governor’s handshake and no confidence in his voice.

“It is you,” the governor said. “I thought it might be. You don’t remember me, do you?”

Siri stared at the large man, trying to place him. If they’d met, it must have been long ago and… Then it came to him.

“The school at Tum Piu,” Siri said. “You taught-what was it? — Lao language?”

Yes, Siri remembered him, a nervous, paranoid teacher, suspecting this student or that of having rightist sympathies. He’d been fed well since those days but the tic below his eye had followed him from the northeast. Siri had been the resident surgeon in the Piu cave hospital, a place now renowned for a Nomad Fighter rocket attack that had cremated all the staff and patients. The school further down the valley had housed the children of the hospital staff and the surrounding villagers. Overnight it became an orphanage. In one of the many quirks of fate that had saved Siri’s life over the years, on the day of the attack he’d been called to Xam Neua to tend to the president.

By all accounts, Katay had been a competent teacher and a dedicated Party man, but Siri was shocked to find him here as governor. Of course, there had been numerous positions to fill around the country when the Pathet Lao took over and a limited number of trustworthy cadres to fill them. But he was hardly governor material.

“Lao language and ideology,” he said proudly as if that was the pinnacle of his career and things had gone downhill since. “Now look at me.”

“You’ve come a long way, Comrade.”

Katay laughed with embarrassment and lowered his voice. “No doubt they’ll replace me soon enough. There are plenty of young chaps being trained in the Eastern Bloc.”

“Meanwhile…?”

“Meanwhile I’m running a renegade province and I have a limited number of workers under me whom I can trust. There are spies everywhere here, Siri, and assassins. That’s why I was so glad when I saw your name on the telegram. I enjoyed our political debates at Tum Piu so much. I know you’re a man after my own heart.”

Siri vaguely recalled that their “debates” had been mostly him listening and Katay spouting a stream of conspiracy theories.

“So, what do we have here?” Siri asked.

Katay looked sideways at Tao, who was standing by the Land Rover talking to the governor’s driver. He put his arm around Siri’s shoulder and led him onto the front porch. There Siri detected a familiar odor. Katay’s voice was almost a whisper now and he was leaning close into the doctor’s face.

“I’ve had a suspicion for a long time,” he whispered, “that the Soviets are trying to undermine the Vietnamese influence in Laos. I believe their ultimate objective is to overthrow our government and take over the country.”

Siri was afraid to ask why the hell they would want to. So he kept quiet and nodded.

Katay continued. “Of course, they have to be discreet. Eliminate our key personnel one at a time. I was curious as to how they might go about it and then it happened-bam! My deputy, assassinated in his own bath.”

“You’re positive it was an assassination and not, say, an accident?”

“Look at the facts, Siri. The facts. His first night back from Vientiane after meeting with the Russians. His first bath using that fiendish Soviet water heater. It had to be rigged to kill him. That’s why I needed you here.”

“Actually, I’m more of a doctor than an electrician. You might need to bring some technical person in to prove something like that, comrade.”

“But you’re the coroner now. You can tell whether he was murdered. Right?”

“Not always. But let’s see. Where’s the body?”

“Inside.”

“In his house? Still?”

“Right. I had them lock the place as soon as I heard. His wife phoned me when it happened and described the scene to me. I told her to leave and touch nothing. She brought me the key and went to stay with her mother.”

“So, the body is…?”

“Still in the bath, I presume.”

“What? After two days? My God. I hope she removed the plug. We’ll have beef stock in there if she didn’t.”

“I told her to pull the circuit breaker.”

“Thank goodness for small mercies. You have the key?” Katay held it up. Siri called to Tao and asked him if he’d like to join them.

“Not really,” Tao shouted back.

“Officer!”

“Coming, Comrade.”

The three men recoiled when the door shutters were pulled back and the stench of death hurried to escape. Siri felt no spiritual presence. No hovering grievances looking for revenge. They walked through to the back kitchen where Deputy Governor Say lay naked in a zinc bath. Only his head remained above the surface of the now tepid water and it carried a peculiar frozen smile like that on the face of a ventriloquist’s dummy. His body was pink and hairless.

“All right. I’ve seen it,” said Officer Tao. “Think I should be heading back to-”

“Tao, it’s your crime scene,” Siri reminded him. “Take some notes.”

“Notes? Right.” Tao looked around for a pen and paper in the cluttered kitchen. Siri approached the bath and knelt beside it. The brand-new Russian water heater was hooked onto the side of the bath and its element hung below the surface of the water. The lead of the heater looped down to join an extension cord that snaked across the floor to another extension. This was a junction to which a dozen other cords were connected, an octopus of accidents waiting to happen. The skin of the corpse was unmarked.

Siri called to the governor, who remained in the kitchen doorway. He put a handkerchief over his nose and walked forward.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“I presume your deputy was a reasonably intelligent man.”

“Why, yes. He was an old student of mine. Quite brilliant. I recommended him for the position.”

“So we’d have to assume he wasn’t the type of man who’d climb into a tin bath full of water in which dangled a live electrical element.”

“Certainly not.”

“… him for the position,” came a voice from behind them. Siri turned to see Tao attempting to write down the governor’s words.

“Officer Tao,” Siri said. “This isn’t an article for the Pasa-son Lao news. I think it would be sufficient for you just to summarize the things that I say.”

“Very well, Doctor.”

“We’ll have to assume then,” Siri continued, “that once Comrade Say’s big toe touched the surface of the water, he would have received a jolt powerful enough to send him flying across the room.”

“I would imagine that’s true,” the governor agreed.

“Why then is he sitting submerged in the bath?”

“I don’t know.”

“I would have to guess it’s because the water heater was placed in the bath after he sat in it.”

“But that would be…”

“If Say wasn’t of an unsound mind and dunked a live element in his own bath, we’d have to say premeditated murder, Comrade Governor.”

“That’s outrageous. Are you getting all this down, Tao?”

“Almost, Governor.”

“As the police officer handling this case, what would your next step be?” Siri asked Tao. “Next step? Er… interrogation, sir.”

“Of whom?”

“Everyone. Anyone who had a grudge against the deceased and all his house staff, friends, and relatives.”

“Good,” Siri interjected. “But that’s likely to be a lot of work.”

“It’s worth it,” said Katay. “This was the deputy governor of Champasak.”

“I’m not suggesting there shouldn’t be an inquiry,” said Siri- “But perhaps I could suggest a method of eliminating the suspects.”

“I’d be grateful for any help,” Tao said.

“Then do you think we could fingerprint the handle of this heater to see who the last person to touch it was? That would certainly have to be the person who put the heater into the water.”

“Excellent idea,” said Tao. “How exactly would we go about that?”

“How? Surely they taught you fingerprinting at the police school?”

Tao snorted a laugh through his nostrils. “Dr. Siri. I’m just a soldier in a new uniform. Soldiering and policing are interchangeable as far as my bosses are concerned. All the real policemen-I mean the trained ones-either hopped it across the border or they’re up with your friends attending seminars. We’re hard-pressed just to keep the peace. We’re a few years away from doing any actual investigating. Sorry, Governor, but it’s the truth.”

Katay shook his head. “Don’t apologize, Tao. These are desperate times.” He squeezed Siri’s arm. “Doctor, can you do anything?”

Siri’s emotions were mixed. He bemoaned the lack of expertise in his country and wondered how long it would take to educate its youth to become proficient in even the most fundamental skills. But, on the other hand, where else would a seventy-three-year-old amateur get a chance to play detective as he often did? He had a Maigret mystery right there up his sleeve. The intrepid French detective on holiday in a remote town. A break-in at a small art gallery. No crime laboratory around, so in order to check for fingerprints on a discarded frame, Inspector Maigret turns to basic chemicals: a simple gray powder of magnesium and chalk.

This was how Siri would have gone about proving the identity of Deputy Say’s assassin. While the governor’s driver was out hunting for magnesium, Siri and a reluctant Officer Tao removed Say’s body from the bath and took an impression of the right index finger using a square of carbon paper. All they needed then was to compare it to that on the handle of the heater to determine whether Say had committed suicide and, if not, to start the murder inquiry. Then would begin the arduous business of fingerprinting anyone who had access to the deputy’s house on the night in question. But the god of unnecessary paperwork intervened. Even before they had the powder, the crime solved itself.

Officer Tao had gone to the home of the mother of the deputy governor’s wife in order to obtain the addresses of her staff and close friends. She was an uncomplicated woman. Like many of the nouveau powerful in Laos, Say had gone into the villages and found himself a pretty but uneducated wife to complement his new lifestyle. Tao told her of the magic of fingerprinting and how they would be able to determine the identity of the murderer even without torturing the suspects. To his amazement, the woman burst into tears right in front of him and dropped to her knees.

“It was me. It was me,” she sobbed. “I didn’t realize. ‘Bring me some more hot water,’ he shouted. And there he was, all round and ruddy from all them Soviet pleasures: the vodka and the food and the big-boned women I wouldn’t wonder. ‘Bring me some more hot water.’ What on earth did he want a hot bath for? It’s humid enough to bathe standing up with all your clothes on this time of year. He was just showing off that he’d been given a water heater. That was all. So, I thought, what’s the point of having it if you still have to lug heavy pails back and forth across the kitchen? I took the heater out of the bucket, hooked it on the side of the bathtub, and dropped it into the water.”

She sobbed then for a full minute, unable to speak. Tao stood over her with a rather embarrassed look on his face.

“I didn’t know it’d kill him,” she went on. “Just thought it might singe him a little bit and teach him a lesson. But he sort of sizzled and shook and this big grin spread over his face like he was enjoying it. I didn’t know what to do. I jumped back and watched him fry. Next thing I knew he was dead.”

It was 11:45 a.m. when Tao related the story to Siri and the governor. Say’s wife was locked up in the Pakse police station and the case was solved. The Soviet Union was exonerated, the governor placated, and the widow allowed to purge her demons of guilt all with fifteen minutes to spare before lunch. It was Siri’s fastest ever conclusion of a case but he was still a little upset that he hadn’t been given the opportunity to eliminate the suspects one by one through the magic of dactyloscopy.