The Coroner's Lunch

The Hairdresser’s Bruise

Siri got back from lunch at 1:30. His arrival coincided with several unheard-of examples of Lao punctuality.

As Dtui reached the door of the morgue from one direction, three monks with cloths around their noses, carrying a rolled coconut mat, arrived from the other. Geung walked out of the office at exactly the same time. He was in a terrible state.

“Doctor S…S…S…” He was too flustered to get beyond that. Siri massaged his shoulders and focused him on his breathing while Dtui ushered the monks into the examination room.

“Mr. Geung. What’s wrong?”

“Your o…o…office is…is broken.” He grabbed Siri’s hand and led him to the office door. Sure enough, the room had been turned over pretty thoroughly. Dtui, from a very polite distance, was seeing off the monks.

“Dtui. Could you come here, please?”

She stood between the two men and looked at the mess. “Ooh.”

“This happened in the last three hours. How’s the examination room?”

“Normal, and the storeroom.”

“So, they were obviously after something in here.”

“Oh, no. My comics!”

“Listen, Dtui, Geung, this isn’t a joke. This is all part of the danger I told you about before I left. This is why we all have to be very careful from now on. Do you both understand?”

“I understand. I understand,” Geung said, very seriously.

Dtui nodded her head. “Yes, Doctor.”

“That’s good. I’m afraid the only officer I trust is away right now, but we’ll have to tell the police about this. Before we do, I want us to go in there and get an idea what’s missing, if anything. We’ll try not to disturb too much.”

Only one thing was gone: Dtui’s notebooks had been taken from her desk. All the notes, from every autopsy they’d done together, were missing. While they searched through the debris, Siri told them everything he knew about the Vietnam case, including the attempt on his life.

They came to the same conclusion, that whoever had ransacked the office had been looking for Nguyen Hong’s report.

“Dtui, hiding it was inspired thinking. Well done.”

“W…well done, Dtui,” added Geung.

“Give me a raise.”

“From now on, you two have nothing to do with the Vietnam case at all. I’ll take the file home and go through it. Wait, what about the photos? Did they get the autopsy photos?”

Dtui looked skyward. “No, they didn’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Well, because they’re in Sayabouri.”

“Sayabouri? What are they doing in Sayabouri?”

“Well, you remember how it was Sister Bounlan’s wedding and we used the end of one film and the beginning of the next for the ceremony?”

“Don’t tell me.”

“She sent them all home to her family. They were in the same packet. Someone was leaving for Sayabouri and she wanted them to take the pictures. She came and picked it up from my desk when I was out. She didn’t have time to check.”

“I can imagine how much granny enjoyed that.”

“She didn’t. They were all as sick as dogs. They put the packet in the post the next day. Should be here by now.”

“You see? Even when you mess up, it’s perfect.”

“It is?”

“Certainly. If our visitors here wanted the notes so badly, I’m quite sure they’d have loved those pictures too. Maybe the pictures can tell us what these people are so afraid of us finding out.

“Mr. Geung?”

“Yes, Doc…tor Comrade?”

“Dtui and I will get ready to look at our new guest. Would you be so kind as to go and tell Mr. Ketkaew and the hospital administrators about what happened here?”

“Yes, I would.”

Siri and his team were in the examination room. Two uniformed officers were sifting through the wreckage in his office. They worked with the unrequested and unwantedly loud assistance of Mr. Ketkaew. The officers had white hospital masks to keep out the smell from the next room. Ketkaew had a small bottle of smelling balm he snorted every few seconds. He was feeling bad; a major crime had taken place barely ten meters from where he sat working.

Neither team felt obliged to interfere with the other. When the police were finished, they left without saying goodbye.

“You don’t suppose they’re reading my fan magazines in there, do you?”

“Dtui, will you please concentrate?”

“Sorry.” Mr. Geung giggled as he weighed the heart on the butcher scales suspended from the ceiling.

“Right. What unusual signs have we seen so far?”

Dtui closed her notebook and answered from memory. “One. There’s only one deep slash on each wrist.”

“And that’s odd because…?”

“Because wrist-slashers usually take two or three attempts to build up the courage to cut deep enough.”

“Good. Two?”

“Two. Hypostasis on the back of the victim suggests she was in a supine position after she died.”

“So?”

“So, she couldn’t have arranged herself leaning forward, with her arms in a bowl of water, without help.”

“Three?”

“Three. Face pale, body dark blue.”

“Indication of…?”

“Of asphyxia.”

“Wonderful. I think I’ll retire.”

“Before you go, tell me just how sure we are that she didn’t kill herself.”

“I’d say we’re 92 percent sure. But just in case we need a few more percentage points, let’s take a little look in here.” He’d peeled back the epidermis from the neck and was cutting down through the muscle. He held open the folds and showed Dtui the larynx.

“Hmm. Hemorrhage.”

“And up here, my dear assistant, we have some hidden signs. Bruises that had vanished from her skin are still lurking beneath.” Discoloration of the tissue structures showed distinctive prints of what could very likely have been hands. “Conclusion?”

“The poor bitch got herself strangled.”

“Ha.” Mr. Geung snorted. “Poor bitch.”

“That’s enough, you two. Show some respect for the dead.”

“What do we do now?”

“We write this all up so clearly that even a judge can understand it. Then we keep our mouths tightly shut, and wait for Inspector Phosy to come back tomorrow. Dtui, dearest, we’ll need a third copy of this, for security. Can you get one more layer of carbon through that typewriter?”

“The words might be a bit flatter, but I think so.”

“Good. We’ll put this nice lady back together and send her to Mrs. Nan, the embalmer. I’ll start clearing up the office. We have a guest this evening.”

At 6:15, Siri was alone at his desk. He’d stopped earlier at the little room they called a library and taken out the Vietnamese file. It was in his shoulder bag now, on top of the old green cabinet. As the sky darkened, he felt suddenly vulnerable again. He had the walk home ahead of him, and he’d be carrying evidence someone was willing to kill for.

Before vegetable-and-fruit duty, Geung had ridden over to the market and bought the biggest padlock they had, and two sets of hasps. The salesman told Geung people had stopped buying them, but those people obviously weren’t getting shot at.

His reverie was disturbed by the flap of rubber sandals on the concrete step. The pregnant sister entered nervously. Siri rose to escort her in.

“Thank you for coming. Your husband didn’t come with you?”

“He’s playing cards.” Siri wondered about his priorities. “And he ain’t my husband.”

“Is this his?” Siri pointed to her round belly. It poked out like a knot in the bark of a tall young tree. She nodded without enthusiasm.

“Sit down, will you? Drink?”

“No.”

Siri pulled his chair around to her side of the desk and spoke quietly. “When we were talking this afternoon, what made you say Mai didn’t kill herself?”

“Because she…she didn’t care.”

“About what?”

“About anything. Nothing worried her. It was all a big game.”

“What was?”

“Life, work, love. Everything.”

“Did she come to Vientiane for love?”

“She come looking for it.”

“You don’t think she might have followed someone down here? Someone she was having an affair with in Sam Neua, for example?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. We talked about everything. She come to Vientiane ’cause I was here. She come to find herself a rich husband. She was pretty enough.” Her eyes had reddened and Siri could see the ceiling lightbulb reflect in the tears waiting there. “She wasn’t short of fans. It was one of them set her up in the room. She wasn’t whoring, don’t get me wrong. It was all strict romance.”

“Do you know who he was?”

“The room? Just one of the horny bastards that was after her.”

“Did she talk about him?”

“She talked about all of them.”

“Was there someone special? An older man? Someone important.”

“There was some ancient old codger…no offense. He was chasing after her.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

“No. My man doesn’t let me go out. This is different tonight, ’cause this is a hospital. I told him I was having the baby checked out. He dropped me off. But with Mai, I only ever got to talk with her when she come over to see me. I didn’t meet any of her fellows.”

“Does your man know you’re taking her back to Sam Neua?”

“No.”

“You coming back?”

She smiled. “You know a lot, don’t you? No, I ain’t coming back. He ain’t what I’d want for my baby’s father.”

“That’s very brave of you.”

“It’s in the blood. We was both really stubborn, me and Mai. You’ve looked already, haven’t you?”

“Yes. I’ve looked.”

“She didn’t, did she?”

“No.”

She sighed with relief, and the sigh unlocked tears. They rolled down her cheeks, and sobs heaved in her chest. Siri ripped some tissue from the roll on his desk, and she blew her nose.

“Thank you. What happened?” she asked.

“Someone strangled her. Then they set it up to look like suicide.”

“I knew she wouldn’t.” She seemed somehow relieved. It was as if she could cope with the idea that her sister had been murdered far better than if she’d killed herself.

“She’s with an embalmer I know. She’ll make your sister look presentable for your family, and I’ll arrange for the body to be shipped up north.” He started to write down Mrs. Nan’s address, then stopped. “Can you read?”

She shook her head. “No, sir.”

“Okay. I’ll get Nan to come to your shop. When everything’s ready, she’ll find a way to let you know.”

She took both of his hands in hers, which was the most generous thank-you she could give. She didn’t mention revenge or ask about justice, perhaps because she’d never known any herself. But Siri wanted her to believe in it.

“I’m going to find the man who killed your sister. I promise you and your family. Can you remember anything about her men that would help me identify them?”

“I can’t think right now.”

“I understand. If anything comes to you, you know where I am. But, in the meantime, you aren’t to say a word to anyone about murder. Not anyone.”

“Don’t worry.” She ripped off more tissue and wiped her face. “How do I look?”

“Beautiful. Really beautiful.”

She smiled, unconvinced but happier, and walked from the office. Siri collapsed back into his chair. Encounters with the living always drained him more than those with the dead. And women most of all. Give him a dead man over a live woman any day.

There hadn’t been a day of his marriage that he hadn’t loved Boua. But the last three years of her life had stretched that love to its limit. She’d always been stronger than he in many ways. The few arguments he didn’t lose because he deserved to, he lost because it was wise to do so. As she got older, her fuse got shorter.

She couldn’t contain her frustration over the tortoise pace of her revolution. It was as if she’d opened the chest where all her girlhood dreams were kept, dreams of a world full of fairness and logic and happiness. And all she found in there were the shriveled remains. Once she started to believe her army had neither the commitment nor the unselfishness to form an administration solely for the people, she changed.

She didn’t seem to notice it herself, but she began to punish Siri for her disappointments. He never raised his voice to her, or defended himself in public when she belittled him. He was a doctor and she was a woman with an infirmity. There were no drugs to calm her anger, so he had to use the most natural therapy he could find: compassion.

During her last year, he’d accepted more missions away from their camp. It was a deliberate ploy to spend time apart from her. Perhaps his being near her was a catalyst to her anger. Two days before her killing, he’d gone to Nam Xam to help set up a field hospital. There’d been no exchange of niceties between doctor and wife. There was no kiss goodbye; not even a token “I love you.” He just told her he was going, and she nodded.

The one person he’d always searched for in his dreams had never come. Boua died believing he didn’t love her. She died hating him. He wanted a chance, just the briefest contact: enough time to put everything right with her. But she didn’t ever come.

The cicadas drowned out his thoughts, and he used the tissue to dry his own damp face.

He took his shoulder bag with the Vietnamese file inside, turned out the lights, and locked the door. He said “good evening” to a flock of nurses arriving for their shift, and walked boldly through the gates of the hospital. It wasn’t until he reached the dark riverbank that he remembered how perilous this journey might be.

He turned around, passed the hospital again, and walked toward home along comparatively bright Samsenthai Avenue. But even here the yellowish lamps turned every doorway into a lurker’s cave. Every person he passed, he watched from the corner of his eye. When he was beyond them, he strained his ears to listen for their footsteps doubling back.

He reached his block from the opposite direction from the one he was accustomed to, and had to cut through the temple grounds. He could see the monks in their chambers doing their final chores by candlelight. He stood in the shadows of a small champa tree and looked up at his window. It gaped back at him blackly. No movement inside. Or, perhaps? No, just the gentle wave of the curtain in the breeze.

He didn’t hear the man approach.

“Something wrong there, brother?”

Siri jumped out of his skin. The silent monk had sneaked up behind him, with his rake poised to defend himself. Siri caught his breath and smiled at his own foolishness.

“No. Just enjoying the peace. That’s my room up there.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Good night.” He walked off.

“Good night, Yeh Ming.”

Siri turned, but the monk was already on his way back across the yard.

It took Siri half an hour to attach the hasps with his old tools. The little girl from downstairs came up to watch him, and to escape bed. She was six, and precocious in the nicest sense of the word.

“But why?”

He didn’t want to frighten her with tales of burglars, so he ventured off into the type of epic lie that always comes back to catch you.

“Because I’m very handsome.” He told her he was bolting the door because so many women wanted to marry him, they disturbed him day and night.

“No you aren’t. You’re old.”

“Aha. To somebody who’s six, I may look old; but to an older lady, somebody over ten, for example, I’m terribly handsome.”

“Manoly?” The mother had noticed she’d lost this one.

“Shh. Don’t tell.”

“She’s up here, Mrs. Som.”

“Ooh, you meanie. I wouldn’t marry you.”

Once he was locked in his room and the desk was against the wall, away from the open window, he felt secure. Not safe, exactly, but secure. He washed his hands and face at the basin, and started to make coffee. There was a new package of beans, unopened on the shelf. The padlock hadn’t come a moment too soon. Miss Vong was slowly moving herself in.

He pulled the Vietnamese report from its temporary hiding place under the floorboards and sat at the desk. Nguyen Hong’s handwriting was neat, but Siri still needed to refer to his Vietnamese dictionary a few dozen times. There wasn’t really anything new in the report. Like the earlier Tran, Hok had been tortured with the same electric current applied to the nipples and genitalia.

But it was in his personal notes at the end that the Vietnamese turned Siri’s thinking around completely.

“Just from my observation, it appears that the current used is somewhat excessive for the purpose of torture. The men would likely have become unconscious before they could offer up any secrets, which seems to defeat the object. It could very well have been enough to kill them. This applies to the other two, also.

“In two of the victims, our Tran and Hok, there seems to be little positive vital reaction. Odd as this may seem, the suggestion is that the electricity may have been applied post-mortem. But at the moment, this is completely conjecture on my part.”

“Post-mortem?” Siri drained the last of his coffee and went to make another. He knew that “vital reaction” was a reddening of the skin beyond the burn marks where the body begins to repair the damage. If there were none, the body hadn’t been doing its job. “Post-mortem, eh? If that were the case, it would lead us completely away from the idea of the Lao torturing Vietnamese, and more into the realm of someone setting it up to look as if we had done so. Now, if we could only prove that, somebody’s hard work would be completely wasted. I can see that being reason enough to kill me.”

He returned to the desk, ducking low as he passed the window. He missed the natural breeze that skimmed off the jasmine bushes, but he would have missed his life more. He read the final paragraph.

“I think I may have identified a cause of death. (See photo A.) It was so well concealed, we needn’t be ashamed we missed it earlier. But it isn’t something I can confirm without more research. I have to leave with the embassy entourage tomorrow. I’ll try to get transport down to Ho Chi Minh city as soon as I can. I may find my answer down there. I’ll try to call you at the hospital when I get back. Have faith, my friend.”

There was a Polaroid snapshot stapled to the back of the file. It was a groin shot of the second Tran. The epidermis around the inner thigh had been peeled back. Apart from the charring from electricity, there appeared to be a very distinct circular bruise about the size of an American dime. Nguyen Hong had marked it with an “A.” On the back, he had written: “Once we confirmed all three bodies were ours, your people released them to us. This instant photo is the best I can do to show you what I mean. I couldn’t find your autopsy photos. Check them and you should see they all have the same mark. Could be important.”

Siri laughed to himself. Perhaps he could phone Sister Bounlan’s granny and ask her if she had noticed anything odd in the wedding photos. Although there wasn’t yet anything that could be called evidence in the report, there was a speck of hope. It might slow down the warmongers on either side who hadn’t had enough of killing.

He took out a pad of paper and a pencil and began to draw up an alternative scenario based on conjecture and half-truths. Two hours later, he’d convinced himself that he was on the right track. There were still several gaps in logic that he needed to fill in before he could show it to anyone. But the sooner he shared, the less likely he was to be shot. He needed a little help. If they weren’t busy, he wouldn’t mind a visit from Tran, Tran, and Hok in his dreams that night.