Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

2

Dr Siri and his good lady waltzed in through the double doors with such confidence and aplomb that the quiet usher didn't dare ask to see the tickets they didn't have. There were polite, nostalgic greetings from the old politicians who stood in the side aisles mingling. There wasn't one of them who hadn't tangled with Siri at one time or another, so their offers of, 'We must find some time to get together so our wives can become acquainted' had as much life expectancy as storm ants. The women looked down their noses at Daeng's ankle-length phasin skirt. There was an accepted socialist mid-calf standard these days which supposedly allowed freer movement to labour for the Party. Daeng had refused to cut her beautiful old skirts and, had anyone asked, she would have reminded them you couldn't do much hard labour in a skirt whatever its length.

Had he been a more diplomatic sort, a man of Siri's calibre would have soared heavenward through the ranks of these old soldiers. A forty-eight-year Communist Party membership and a degree in medicine from Europe had to count for something. But there wasn't a person in the room he hadn't belittled or insulted. A man with no mind to compromise is condemned to sit in the back stalls watching the stars on the screen. So, after a few brief and unnecessary bites at conversation, Siri and Daeng seated themselves in the eighth row chewing on sweet chilli guava and waiting for the show. There was a mumbled comment from the projectionist and the audience, very noisily, took to its seats. Civilai arrived late. As it was impolite to push his way along the rows to an empty place, he accepted a supplementary fold-up chair from the usher and sat to one side. He didn't seem particularly surprised to see Siri and Daeng. Siri casually mentioned to Daeng that their friend had his shirt buttoned incorrectly.

Although the gathering was missing a president, a prime minister and three politburo members, if a person happened to have anti-communist leanings and a large bomb, this would have been a particularly fruitful place to explode it. The room was a Who's Who of leading cadres, high-ranking officials, ministers, Vietnamese advisors, and foreign ambassadors. Judging from the turnout, it appeared there was a large population of dignitaries starved of entertainment.

The main feature was a Chinese film entitled The Train from the Xiang Wu Irrigation Plant. The cultural section of the Chinese embassy had gone to a good deal of trouble in first translating, then applying Lao language subtitles to several of their popular films. In a back room, half a dozen Russian-language spectaculars, also with Lao subtitles, lay waiting for their opportunity to bedazzle the Lao leaders. For the cinema fan, being a political ping-pong ball had its benefits.

The lights were doused and a small window someone had forgotten to board over was quickly patched. The conversations subsided to a mumble. Siri held his breath waiting for that magical sound that announced the coming; the clack, clack, clack of the film through the projector. And there it was. The screen was blasted with light and the film leader numbers began to flash before them. If Civilai had been beside him, they would have counted aloud together, "eight…seven…six."?

Following what feels like a day and a half of credits, the film finally opens in a busy urban train station. The vast majority of extras milling about on the platforms are in uniform. Everything on the screen is either spearmint-chewing-gum green or stale-tobacco brown. Even the train standing in the station seems to have been spray painted to reflect the green?brown ambiance of the scene. Suddenly, there's a flash of red, a small communist flag rises above the heads of the sombre crowd. We pan down to see a hand clutching the bamboo stick that the flag is attached to. It works its way forward like a bloody shark-fin churning through a green-brown sea. At last we see that holding the flag is a stomach-curdlingly beautiful young lady, Ming Zi, in the uniform of the Chinese People's Revolutionary Army. She anxiously scours the faces of the passengers alighting from the train. A slightly off-key string orchestra is somewhere behind her, lost in the crowd. Her face is a live pallet of clearly recognisable emotions: elation, frustration, false hope, disappointment. Until we finally cut to her alone on a porter's cart. We zoom in to a close-up of the flag on her lap. Tears fall onto it like raindrops, staining it drop by drop — through the magic of special effects — from brilliant red to chewing-gum green. To add insult to her injury, the porter steps up to Ming Zi and reclaims his cart. The brokenhearted girl walks forlornly along the deserted platform as the sun sets in the sky behind her. It is an uncommonly chewing-gum green day in Peking.?

Siri squeezed Daeng's hand, his eyes already damp with sympathy for his heroine. It promised to be an eleven-tissue movie. But they were barely ten minutes into it when a side door opened and a uniformed Vietnamese entered the theatre. He walked brazenly into the bottom right-hand corner of the screen and stood there like an extra staring into the audience. Some of its members told him to sit down. But he was obviously not interested in the film or the admonitions. He located the person he'd been searching for, pushed along the row and leaned into the ear of a broad man with a tuft-of-grass haircut. By now, all eyes but Siri's and Civilai's were on the drama in silhouette. Ming Zi had been abandoned. The seated man nodded and turned his head to search the audience. The Vietnamese stood to attention mid-row caring not a jot that he was ruining a perfectly good film. But, by now, everyone sensed the urgency of his mission. To Siri's utter dismay, the broad man pointed to the doctor and rose from his seat. The soldier shouted in Vietnamese above the soundtrack, "Doctor, come with us."

Siri remained in his place, attempting to concentrate on the story on the screen. There was nothing he detested more than not being allowed to watch a film to its natural conclusion. In his mind there was no emergency so great as to deprive a man a cinematic climax. The broad man and the soldier had pushed their way to the far aisle where they both stood looking at the doctor.

"Doctor Siri," the broad man barked.

"I think you'd better go," Daeng whispered in Siri's ear.

"And insult the director?"

"Well, darling, we're only ten minutes into the film and I'd wager the director's artistic integrity has already been compromised by Chairman Xiaoping. And, besides, it might be a medical emergency."

Heads were beginning to turn in Siri's direction.

"Damn it," he snarled. "All right. But I expect a detailed blow-by-blow account of the whole thing later."

"In colour," she promised. Siri huffed and bobbed and bowed his way to the end of the row.

He followed the two men precariously across a walkway of wooden planks on bricks that criss-crossed the flooded sports field. The two men introduced themselves as they walked but neither could be described as friendly. The stout man was called Phoumi, and he was the Lao?Vietnamese head of security at K6. He insisted that he'd met the doctor before but Siri had no recollection. The uniformed Vietnamese officer said his name was Ton Tran Dung and that he was the officer in charge of the Prime Minister's team of bodyguards. Following six assassination attempts, the politburo had decided to assign an elite ten-man Vietnamese army unit on twenty-four-hour watch over the Lao leader. They were supported by a counterpart team of ten Lao People's Liberation Army personnel. Siri had sought out none of this information and wasn't all that interested. His mind was still firmly entrenched in the mystery of how the lovely Ming Zi was ever going to find her lost fiance.

But, as they walked through the American streets of K6, he soon became enthralled by this small corner of Lao Americana. Forty acres of suburban USA had been plonked down in the middle of rice fields and fenced in to keep out (or, Civilai argued, in) the riff-raff. There was certainly a cultural force field around the place. During the height of the Vietnam War, the United States Agency for International Development had four hundred personnel in Laos, three times that if you counted the CIA, but nobody ever did. Their role was mostly economic, juggling five-hundred million aid dollars. There were some showcase development projects, and seemingly endless refugee relief programmes.

Over a million Lao had been displaced by the civil war in the north and the royalist ministers, spilling in and out of the rotating door democracy, had been too busy amassing fortunes to find time for actual aid work.

So, USAID served as a surrogate Ministry of the Interior, and where better to return to after a hard day of running a country than a little slice of the American dream right there in the third world? K6 had its own high school, commissary stables, scout hut, tennis court, and youth club. But most of all, K6 had gardens; neat napkin lawns and pretty flowerbeds and fences around houses that would be perfectly at home in the suburbs of Los Angeles. The christening of K6 had always baffled Siri given that the place had been planned, designed and built by and for Americans. He'd always expected they'd call it Boone City or Tara or Bedford Falls. But no, K6 it had been named and K6 it remained today.

Once the Americans were evacuated in seventy-five, almost the entire Lao cabinet selected themselves a home on the range and moved in. Other regimes might have burned the compound to the ground as a show of anti-US sentiment, but the Pathet Lao retained an admirable practical streak. Initially it was an act of arrogance as much as a desire for western living, although some of the politburo members seemed to be getting a little too comfortable with their washing machines and barbecues. Some had rescued the rose bushes and tomato plants and weren't ashamed at being seen mowing their own lawns.

Siri and his guides turned left on 6th Street whose sign was far more pretentious than the street itself. The words 'No Thru Road' were stencilled on a short board opposite. The drainage system was doing a good job of keeping the roads flood-free. There were only four ranch-style houses on the cul-de-sac. Each of them was undergoing repossession by Mother Nature. It was into the first of these jungle bungalows that Dung led Siri and the security chief. Twice, Siri had asked what it was all about and twice he'd been ignored. He wasn't in the best of moods. The constant drizzle had soaked into his bones. They walked through the open front gate and turned, not to the house, but towards the carport. An overhead fluorescent lamp flickered and buzzed like a hornet in a jar. It was mid afternoon. Siri wondered why they hadn't turned it off.

At the rear of the carport was a small wooden structure, two-by-two metres, two-and-a-half metres tall, with a sloping concrete tile roof. A Vietnamese security guard stood at ease in front of it with his pistol holstered. Major Ton Tran Dung nodded at the soldier who produced a torch from his belt and handed it to his superior officer.

"There's a light inside," Major Dung said, "but the bulb appears to have burned out. It was the smell that alerted our patrol." Siri had picked up on it even before they turned into the street. It was an odd combination of jasmine and herbs and stewed blood.

"Our protocol is that if anything odd comes up, they're to contact me directly," Dung said. "So I was the first one to go into the room. I came over as fast as I could, noticed the heat and the scent of blood, then I opened the door and that's when I found her."

Chief Phoumi grabbed the torch from Dung and grimaced as he did so. Siri noticed a bandage beneath the cuff of the man's shirt. Phoumi used his other hand to pull the wooden handle. An overpowering stench appeared to push the door open from the inside. Siri felt a wave of warm air escape with it. Inside, the box was dark, lit feebly by what light could squeeze through a small air vent high in one wall. But it created only eerie black shapes. Phoumi turned on the torch and he and Siri stepped up to the doorway. The beam immediately picked out the naked body of a woman seated on a wooden bench. At first glance, she appeared to be skewered to the back rest by a thin metal pole that entered her body through the left breast. A trail of blood snaked down her lap to the floor.

"Do we know who she is?" Phoumi asked Dung.

"Yes, sir. Her name is Dew. She was one of the Lao counterparts on the bodyguard detail. New girl. She went off shift at seven yesterday evening. Didn't report in for duty this morning. And — "

The major gestured that he'd like to talk privately.

"Excuse us, Doctor," Phoumi said, and walked towards the house where he huddled with the Vietnamese. He'd taken the torch with him so all Siri could see by the natural light through the door was a bloodied towel, crumpled on the floor at the girl's feet. Instinctively, he knew it was important in some way. The two men returned and Phoumi handed Siri the torch.

"All right, Doctor?" was all he said.

Siri was fluent in Vietnamese and he was used to the brusqueness of the language, but he was struck by how unemotional these men had been.

"Yes?" Siri said.

"Perhaps it would be appropriate if you inspected the body. Just to be sure, you know?"

"To be sure she's dead, you mean?" Siri smiled. "She's got a metal spike through her heart. I think you can be quite sure she won't recover."

"Then, time of death, physical evidence, anything you can come up with will be useful."

Siri shrugged and walked carefully into the room.

Although he'd suspected as much, it was obvious that this was a sauna, albeit a small, hand-made variety. He'd sampled one himself during a medical seminar in Vladivostok. In a Russian winter the sauna had been a godsend, but, in tropical Laos where a five-minute stroll on a humid afternoon would flush out even the most stubborn germs, it seemed rather ludicrous. An old Chinese gas heater stood in the middle of the floor surrounded by a tall embankment of large round stones. A bowl of dry herbs and flowers sat beside it on the wooden planks. Siri presumed it had once contained water or oil but, if so, the liquid had evaporated away. Moisture and pungent scents still clung to the ceiling and the walls.

There were two benches — one low, upon which the body now sat, and one opposite about fifty centimetres higher. Siri placed the torch on the floor and knelt in front of the victim. He put his hands together in apology before beginning his examination. The weapon, which from outside had appeared to be a metal spike, was in fact a sword, to be more exact, it was an epee. Siri knew it well. His high school in Paris had provided after-hours classes in swordsmanship. It was a course the doctor had failed — twice. He hadn't been able to come to grips with all that delicate prancing and twiddling when the underlying principle must surely have been to kill the opponent or be killed. Despite the fact that he'd continuously overpowered his sparring partners, he'd ultimately been expelled from the class. The instructors had cited his two-handed running charge and his cry of "Die, you bastard," as reason enough to deny him a passing grade.

Yes, the weapon here with its broad-bulbed hand guard was certainly an epee. He couldn't recall having seen one in Laos before. It entered the woman's chest between the fourth and fifth ribs. It had most certainly punctured her heart. The trail of blood had drained from the wound, down her stomach, across her thigh and into a large puddle on the wooden floorboards at her feet. He felt her joints. Rigor mortis begins to show after two hours and peaks at twelve. Judging from the stiffness, it was Siri's educated guess that the poor woman had died somewhere between ten a.m. and two a.m. As he seldom carried his rectal thermometer to the cinema, that was as close as he could get for now.

He reached behind her and confirmed that the sword had been thrust with such force that it had impaled her against the wooden bench. The serene expression on her face and her relaxed sitting position told Siri that she was either looking forward to the experience of dying, or that the attack had come as a complete surprise. There were no indications she'd been shocked to see the weapon, or made any effort to save herself. Her eyes were closed and there was a curl at the corner of her mouth that could once have been a smile. He was about to turn away when he noticed a fresh scar on the inside of her right thigh. There was very little bleeding, which suggested it had been inflicted after her heart had ceased to beat. It was in the shape of an N or a Z, hurriedly carved on her skin.

Which brought him back to the towel that lay at her feet. It was stained with blood but the corners confessed to its original whiteness. Siri couldn't see how it fitted into the scenario. Whose blood was this? Did the assailant attempt to staunch the flow? Or, during the attack, did the murderer injure himself? Siri turned to the seat opposite. There were no bloodstains. This was presumably where the murderer had sat, he and his victim both naked, enjoying a sauna on a rainy Friday night. He tried to imagine the scene. They would have put their clothes outside under the carport to keep them out of the steam. In that case, the carport light would have been turned off or they'd have risked being discovered. So why turn it back on again when it was all over? And where were her clothes? And, the twenty-billion-kip question, where, in a box with two benches and a gas heater, would you conceal a ninety-centimetre-long sword? He began to test the wooden slats of the walls to see if there was a secret compartment, but Phoumi poked his head into the room.

"Doctor? Have you finished examining the body?" he asked.

"Yes, I was just — " Siri began.

"Good. Then I think you can tell us your findings and we'll handle everything else."

Siri shone the torch into the security chiefs face.

"I assume, by 'handle everything' you mean contact the national police force so they can conduct an inquiry?"

Phoumi laughed rudely.

"They'll be informed of the findings, of course," he said. "But this whole area is under my jurisdiction, and the victim is a member of our security team. We'll take care of it."

Siri abandoned his search and stood in the doorway.

"This may look like a foreign country," he said. "But the fact remains we are still in Laos and the victim is a Lao."

Phoumi's smile, his body language, and especially the way he reached for Siri's arm and squeezed it were all so condescending Siri had a mind to knee him.

"Then, if it is indeed a Lao problem," the chief said, "I suppose we should let the Lao Prime Minister decide what is appropriate. You will take his word on it, I assume?"

"He's home?" Siri asked.

"His house is a few blocks from here."

Siri knew where the PM's house was. He'd been there a number of times. But that wasn't an answer to the question he'd asked. He walked out of the sauna and sat on the step.

"Well, of course, the word of the Prime Minister is more than enough for me. Let's go and see him."

He swore, if Phoumi laughed again…If he flashed those 'everybody's friend' perfect teeth just one more time, Siri would run inside, remove the epee from the corpse and find a warmer scabbard for it.

"Doctor, surely even you understand that the PM can't just receive unscheduled visits," said the security head. "Even with an appointment it could be two or three days. I tell you what, I'll go and see him and bring his response. That good enough for you?"

In fact, Siri understood a lot of things. He understood, for example, that the PM had given up his ticket to the movie that afternoon because he was on an unannounced visit to the USSR. He'd left for Moscow the previous day. It helped to have a man on the inside even if it was only Civilai.

"Then I think you should go and talk to him," Siri agreed. "I'll wait here."

Phoumi was incensed.

"I hadn't realised how much more complicated you'd make things for us. I wanted a medical opinion, not a standoff," he said. "Couldn't you just take my word for it that your leader will ask us to take care of this? Do we really need to disturb him?"

"I think so," Siri smiled.

Phoumi and the tall, lanky Major Dung hesitated, then walked off with great reluctance to their fictional meeting with the absent prime minister. Siri was left alone with the sentry. The soldier looked uncomfortable. Siri decided to take advantage of the fact nobody had introduced him and act like someone of importance. He walked to the edge of the carport where the rain fell in strings from the corrugated roof. He washed his hands under them.

"Been a long day, I imagine," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"Were you on the detail that discovered the body?"

"I was, sir."

The boy hadn't looked once into Siri's frog-green eyes.

"Must have been a shock. Did you know her?"

"She's new. Didn't speak a lot of Vietnamese. Friendly enough though."

"And nice looking."

"Not bad, sir. Not really my type."

"I gather your patrol was just strolling past and somebody smelt something odd. Is that right?"

"Not exactly, Comrade. There was no patrol scheduled. The major sent us out specially."

"Major Dung?"

"Yes, sir. I gathered there'd been a report of something odd over in this sector. He sent half a dozen of us down to take a look."

"That's a lot of men — I mean, just for taking a look."

"Probably thought there was a security breach."

"I imagine."

"And we got down here and we could all smell it; sickly, sweet smell."

"Who went in first?"

"None of us. We knew the stink only too well. One of the men went back to get the major. The rest of us hung around outside. When he arrived, he went to the door and took a look inside. I was standing behind him. I saw the girl. Shocking, it was."

"When was this?"

"I don't know. About half an hour ago…an hour?"

"And Major Dung went straight over to the cinema to find security chief Phoumi?"

"So it seems. He sent the other men back to the barracks and left me here to watch the crime scene."

"Good. Very good. And, apart from the major, nobody else went into the box?"

"No, sir."

"Any idea who reported the 'something odd'?"

"You'd have to ask the major that."

"I'll do just that. I imagine he'll be back very soon. I just have to go and see someone for a minute. Tell him I'll be right back."

"I will, sir."

"By the way, was this overhead light on when you got here?"

"Yes, sir."

Siri walked out into the drizzle and headed across Sixth Street. He had a cinematic urge to take out an umbrella and dance in the puddles but not the stomach for it. He also had a very strong feeling that he'd just been lied to.?

They've transferred the manacle to my left hand and put a restraint around my ankles: two parallel metal bars with chains as heavy as doom that keep my feet forty centimetres apart. They came a few hours earlier, the boy guards, and nailed plywood across all the windows. Since then the fluorescents have been burning continuously and I have no idea of time. I'm covered in flea and mosquito bites and it's taking all my will power not to scratch myself raw. In fact I should have paid more attention at the temple when I was a novice. In a situation like this I really could use an off switch. This would be a good time to step outside my body.

The teenage guards bring me rice gruel that tastes of motor oil and vomit. But I have to eat. Bad nutrition is better than none at all. They bring a bucket too, as if I can perform here and now. The first time that happened, I started to explain the natural process of excretion, that the body needs seventy-five hours to process food. But one of the boys rammed the butt of his pistol into the side of my foolish head and I was suddenly flapping around inside an aviary of bats and blackbirds. When I came round, the bucket and the unruly youth were gone. I can feel my head now. It's swollen to the size and shape of a pomelo. At first I thought I might be enjoying one of my fabulous nightmares. But the lump and the pain and the blood on my shoulder aren't imagined. Of course, that doesn't make this any less of a nightmare.

Behind me on a long, scratched and partially burned blackboard there are ten chalked sentences that I can't read. When my ex-roommate first arrived, they forced him to recite the sentences aloud. The man was barely able to see through his swollen black eyes. They kicked the words out of him. I closed my eyes and diverted my mind from the awful sounds by thinking about language. I'd always thought of it as a friend. It's guided me through life and shown me new directions. Each new language I learned added to me. I'd become richer. But a language you don't know, sir, that is one mean, unfriendly son-of-a-bitch. It's rude and secretive and it pushes you away, keeps you on the outside. And that's where I am now, on the outside. Not knowing what's going on makes my teeth curl in frustration. I've been grovelling for a quote about language to make myself feel more secure, but nothing comes to mind. It was true what the clerk said. I don't have any thoughts of my own.

At some time when I was asleep or unconscious, they took out the corpse. I'm alone now. I mean, in body. As you know, in spirit it's getting a bit crowded in here. Look at you; old, far too young, pregnant, bedraggled, innocent, pleading, but all of you unmistakably confused. You sit cross-legged staring at me, you spirits of the dead, as if expecting me to entertain you, expecting me to have answers. But forgive me, I'm not on top of things enough to know what the questions are. I don't yet understand why I'm here or what's expected of me.

The smiley man came this afternoon…or evening, whichever it was. He was so polite I was certain this was all some terrible mix-up.

"You must be in pain," he said in basic high school French. "Never mind. You'll feel better soon. I'm so sorry for all this inconvenience."

The words dribbled with insincerity but that brief sharing of language buoyed me. It allowed me to step briefly back inside. He left me a pencil, not sharpened to a point, and a sheet of lined paper torn from a school exercise book. I fired questions at the man's back: his name, where he'd learned French, what he did, where we all were. But, once the smiley man had given his oh-so-polite speech, his duty was done and he clicked the door latch quietly behind him. I remember you smiled then, you spirits — ironic smiles, every one of you.

They're still here, the pencil and paper, untouched on the chequered tiles by my right hand.

"Your story," the smiley man said. "Just tell us your story and you'll be free to go."

I sit with my back against the wall, staring at the door. I sigh. I reach for the pencil, angle the paper towards me and begin to write,

"Once upon a time there were three little pigs…"?

Dr Siri sat beneath the blazing white strip lights in the morgue at Mahosot. Soviet funding had led to the rewiring of a number of the old French buildings and the three technical advisors who'd come to install the lights insisted that it was vital in a hospital to have a minimum of 73 RNO or BZF, or some such twaddle, of visibility. He had no idea what that meant apart from the fact that if the Great Wall of China was visible from space in daylight, the Mahosot morgue would be a glittering beacon at night, visible from even the most distant solar system. He wore his old sunglasses to reduce the glare and decided that, on Monday, he'd borrow the hospital stepladder and remove two of the parallel tubes before everyone received third-degree burns.

Fortunately, he wasn't called upon that often to work at night. Even for the living, nothing was that urgent in Vientiane. The dead could always keep for another day. But this had been an exceptional day, and an exceptional case. The poor lady who lay on her side on the cutting table in front of him had been the centre of a political storm for much of the afternoon and evening. Siri had, of course, called Inspector Phosy from the nearest telephone he could find in K6. The inspector was the man responsible for all police matters concerning government officials. Phosy and two of his colleagues had jumped into the department jeep and sped to the scene of the crime.

There followed an unpleasant stand-off during which both the Vietnamese security personnel and the Lao National Police Force had stood toe to toe insisting that they had jurisdiction over the crime. Until it was sorted out, Sri wasn't allowed to remove the body to the morgue and the victim voiced her discontent by smelling violently. The Vietnamese called in reinforcements from their embassy. The police called in the military. It was starting to look as though 6th Street would be the scene of a new Indochinese war were it not for one simple fact. The movie ended and the polit-buro members, strolling off their stiff legs, came upon the stand-off.

"Don't be ridiculous," they said. "Of course this is a Lao matter. Enough of this nonsense."

Broken Vietnamese faces notwithstanding, the matter was finally resolved. On their way back in the jeep, police inspector Phosy had appeared to be as annoyed with Siri as he was with the entire nation of Vietnam.

"Did I do something wrong?" Siri had asked.

"No."

"Come on, Phosy. Something's eating you with a fork."

"You didn't get my message last night?"

"The 'need to see you urgently' message?"

"Yes, that one."

"Not until early this morning. Madame Daeng saw it as an amber rather than a red alert."

"Oh, did she? And this morning?"

"I had a swimming lesson."

"Don't make fun of me."

"I'm serious. The Seniors' Union has a class on Saturday mornings. They cleaned all the gunge out of the Ian Xang pool."

"You're learning to swim, at your age?"

"I've found the god of drowning is particularly insensitive to the age of his victims. I've had one or two narrow escapes in water lately. I thought it was time to master the element. And if I suddenly have the urge to swim across to Thailand, I could — "

"And your swimming lesson took precedence over my request to see you?"

"Phosy, you have to admit you've become a little oversensitive since you became a father. You've had me drop everything and rush to the police dormitory for…for what? A little wind? A touch of diarrhoea? A small — "

"You can never be too careful."

"Your wife's a nurse. And she's a very competent one. She can handle all these things."

"Dr Siri, Dtui comes from a bloodline of disaster. Her mother lost ten children during or shortly after birth. Our country has a horrible record. Twenty per cent of kids don't make it to their first birthdays. Forty per cent don't reach eleven."

"And I guarantee not one of them had a mother who was a qualified nurse and a father who could afford to put regular meals on the table. The only danger little Malee has, as far as I can see, is that her father's going to coddle her to death. Tell me, what was last night's emergency?"

"If you aren't going to take it seriously…"

"Come on. I'm listening."

"She's yellow."

"All over?"

"It's hepatitis."

"What does Dtui say?"

"She doesn't know. She's got other things on her mind."

"What does she say?"

"She said it's the light through the curtains."

"What colour's the curtain?"

"White."

"Phosy?"

"Creamy white."

"It's yellow, Phosy. I've seen it. Yellow with cartoon dogs or some such."

"The baby still looked yellow when I took her outside."

"Then stop taking her outside. Goodness, man. It's the rainy season. She'll catch a real disease. Then you'll have something to complain about."

Phosy hadn't appreciated the lecture. He'd sent two of his men with Siri to offload the corpse and retreated to his office to write his angry report. Madame Daeng had taken the motorcycle home from K6. Siri would be a little while settling poor Dew in at the morgue, then he'd walk back. He wished he could be home with his lovely new books but he needed time alone with the corpse to organise his thoughts. Dew still had a lot of talking to do, he decided. She knew her killer. That much was certain. Their midnight sauna pointed to the possibility that they were lovers. This rendezvous, he decided, was passion. The type of passion that makes you crazy enough to risk your career and your freedom for a few moments of pleasure. When he was young, Siri had known that passion himself.

He hadn't had time to search for a false compartment in which the killer might hide a sword. But he was convinced he wouldn't have found one. If you were planning to kill a lover, there were far more convenient — and much shorter — weapons that would have been easier to conceal. It was almost as if the epee was symbolic, perhaps even part of the ritual. He wondered if the epee was the message itself. What if it wasn't hidden at all? What if the girl knew she was about to die? Had she wanted to be killed? Had she brought it herself?

As often occurred in these confusing, ghost-ridden years of his life, Siri felt a familiar anger. He was the host, like it or not, of a thousand-year-old Hmong shaman by the name of Yeh Ming. It was like a gall-bladder infection, but of the soul. There was nothing tangible inside to operate on. He was stuck with this presence and still hadn't mastered the art of living with his ancestor. He'd wondered often whether the fault lay in his failure to grasp the true essence of religion. If he'd been a better Buddhist perhaps he could beat the eight-fold path to his spiritual back door, burst into the projection booth and catch old Yeh Ming tangled up in a thousand years of celluloid. Couldn't they then have sat down together, organised everything into reels, and canned and labelled them? Neither of them would have been confused. Then perhaps, just perhaps, he'd have some control over the spirits that flickered back and forth across his life. Perhaps Dew's soul could stroll up the central aisle and calmly explain why she was lying before him with a sword through her heart.

But, as it stood, Siri's connection to the afterlife was held together with old string. And, once again, he had to resort to the resources of his own mind, cover the dreams and premonitions in a blanket, and look at the facts. See what was right there in front of him. He used a pair of salad tongs to pick up the towel from its steel tray. That towel had worried him since he'd first seen it. What was it doing there on the floor covered in blood? No, not covered exactly. He laid it out across the second gurney and looked at the pattern. It was less saturated than he'd first thought. The blood had gathered at the centre like an ink blot test and all the corners but one were white. It didn't make sense to him. If it had been used to clean up after the murder, the stain would be patchier, streaked. This looked as if blood had merely seeped into it from one corner.

If he'd been in France or England he could have taken samples of the woman's blood, and samples from the towel, rushed them off to Serology and had a result — match or no match — before dinner. But he was in Laos and what Mahosot Hospital classified as a blood unit was old Mrs Bountien and an antique microscope. And she had a market garden of yams to look after so she only came in on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Siri considered walking over to the dormitory and inviting Mr Geung to help him with the autopsy but he decided to let his assistant enjoy his leisure hours in peace. Siri turned on the noisy Russian air-conditioner, put on his attractive green Chinese overalls and his rubber gloves, and turned towards his corpse. Dew had the build of a short, 48-kilogram-class weightlifter. She was attractive but not classically pretty. She was strongly built, not unlike Siri's first wife. He got the impression she could have looked after herself in a struggle. He took hold of the handle of the sword and was beginning to wonder whether he'd have the strength to remove it.

"Y…you'll hurt your b…back."

Siri turned and smiled. The Mr Geung radar never failed. Siri only had to stroll past the morgue on a weekend and Mr Geung would know. He'd be there like a shadow beside him. The morgue and the life and death it contained was Mr Geung's home.

"Mr Geung," said Siri. "Looks like we have a guest."

"You didn't…didn't call me."

"What for? You have the nose of a dog, my friend. I knew you'd be here."

"Ha, I have a dog nose." Geung sniffed like a bloodhound and walked to the storeroom to put on his apron. Canine sniffs and grunts and laughter emanated from behind the door. His condition was really only a problem to other people, those who felt uncomfortable around him, people like Judge Haeng. But Mr Geung pottered around inside his Down's Syndrome taking pleasure from simple things, enjoying the love he felt from his morgue family, doing his job. And his job was to assist Dr Comrade Siri. But the doctor couldn't help but notice there was something oddly different about Geung today. He decided he would bring it up once their work was done.

Siri held on to Dew's shoulders while Geung, in one glorious Excaliburic flourish, grabbed the handle bowl in both hands and yanked the epee from her chest. Siri looked at the congealed blood trail that led from her heart. He picked up the towel and spread it across her groin, lining up the stains like a piece of a large puzzle. It fitted but it didn't solve anything. He was almost convinced the blood on the towel had come from the deceased. It had clearly been on her lap at some stage. But, what he couldn't explain was why the towel was stained but had not been saturated by the considerable flow of blood that would have gushed from the wound. Nor could he imagine why it was on the floor when they discovered the body. There had been no blood on Dew's hands.

The autopsy took the standard two hours and produced no astounding revelations. She was fit, healthy, and had, at some stage, given birth. She had been killed almost immediately the sword pierced her heart and she had probably felt little pain. The murderer had either known exactly where to find the heart, and been skilful enough to impale it, or he had been very lucky. The shallow N or Z mark on her thigh was another matter. Siri knew it had not been inflicted by the sword as there had been very little bleeding, barely a trickle. The epee must have killed her first. But this meant the killer must have used a different weapon to sign his work. From the width of the cut and the condition of the skin, Siri assumed a small flat-bladed knife had been used, perhaps a sharp penknife. But it was a hurried, botched job. A last-minute thought perhaps? No. The killer had gone to the trouble of bringing the knife. Why hurry the final touch? Was he disturbed? Frightened? Disgusted at what he'd done? Siri hated autopsies that left more questions than answers.

For want of a police forensic investigation unit, Siri took the liberty of dusting (as they called it overseas) for fingerprints. He had a fine mixture of chalk and magnesium prepared for just such an eventuality. Despite the fact that he and Geung had been very careful not to touch the sword handle, it yielded no prints. Either it had been wiped clean or the killer had worn gloves. Perhaps a lesser investigator might have given up at that point, but Siri, guided by the guile of his hero Maigret of the Paris Surete, continued his curious dust down the shaft. And there he found it. One clear print at the top of the blade. He was proud of himself but had no idea what to do with his find. There may have been some simple way of recording the print but he hadn't yet learned that skill. So he put the epee on the top shelf in the storeroom and hoped the ceiling lizards wouldn't lick away his evidence.

Two tasks remained. Firstly, he would return to the scene of the crime and search for a hiding place for both a sword and a knife. Secondly, whilst there, he might even have another conversation with the Vietnamese guard who'd been given sentry duty in front of the K6 sauna. And then there was one more, very serious matter, not related to the murder. He walked to Geung who was scrubbing the overalls in the deep tub.

"Mr Geung," he said.

"Yes, Comrade Doctor?"

"Your hair."

Geung smiled. "I…I'm very sexy."

"Who did that to you?"

"It…it…it's a permanent wave. Nurse Dtui put it o…on my hair."

"And you let her?"

"I'm very ss…sexy."

"Irresistible."

"Thank you."

"I think we need to have a word with Nurse Dtui."