The Coroner's Lunch

The Chicken Counter

On Friday morning, the mystery of the loud-voiced man was solved. Siri and the team were closing up an old lady who’d drunk toilet bleach to relieve her family of the burden of having to look after her. Because it happened in a hospital bathroom, there had to be an autopsy.

The hospital director, Suk, came to the door and called Siri into the office. The loud-voiced man was standing there with his arms folded high on his chest. The director was another administrator who’d been given authority too young in life and felt obliged to use it. He, too, was threatened by Siri’s disrespectful personality.

“Siri, this is Mr. Ketkaew.” Siri held out his hand but the man refused to shake it. “I assume you’ve noticed the new structure at the rear of your building.”

“No.” There wasn’t much need to go round to the back of the morgue when there had been nothing but a deserted lot.

“Then I suggest you come and take a look.”

The three of them marched around the corner of the morgue building, where they were confronted by a small bamboo hut. It contained a desk, a chair, a filing cabinet, and a blackboard. Over the door was a hand-painted sign that read KHON KHOUAY REPRESENTATIVE.

The Khon Khouay were the neighborhood spies, lovingly known as “chicken counters” by the locals. It was their function to keep a rein on affluence and extravagance. Usually, they were part-timers who accepted their role reluctantly on top of other responsibilities. That Mr. Ketkaew had his own office and a real sign suggested he was taking his position seriously.

“Mr. Ketkaew has been assigned to area 18. As the hospital is in the center of that area, we have the honor of allowing him to set up his office here.” The way he said “honor” suggested to Siri that it was anything but. The hospital, far from being wealthy, was struggling to make ends meet. The last thing it needed was a chicken counter, particularly an enthusiastic one.

Ketkaew spoke up. He was a man with no volume control. “So I’m not having any more of those stinks coming out of your place. You understand?”

Siri didn’t really know how to react. He’d seen these officious little men before, sampling their first taste of power. At best, they could be annoying. But there were times, if you got on the wrong side of them, that they could be downright dangerous. “Mr. Ketkaew, perhaps you could suggest to me how to stop dead bodies from smelling bad.”

Ketkaew had to think about it. “Can’t you spray themwith something?”

“You mean like air freshener?”

“Something like that.”

Siri laughed. Even the director suppressed a smile. “I’m afraid we aren’t legally allowed to do that. The law clearly states you cannot spray anything sweet-smelling on a body that affects the natural odor. It’s an infringement of human rights.”

“Well, I suppose you’ll just have to close the windows then. I can’t be expected to work with such a damned stink.”

“You want us to close the windows? In that case, we’ll have to spend scarce hospital money on an air conditioner. You do want us to breathe, don’t you?” Ketkaew shrugged his shoulders as if he didn’t care. “The best solution would be for Director Suk to move your office somewhere else so you don’t have to put up with it.”

Suk cut in. “No. No, I’m afraid this is the only spot we can provide in the hospital grounds. There are one or two sitesoutside the-”

“Absolutely not. I insist on being on-site in order to do my job to my maximum efficiency.”

It all became clear to Siri, then. The hospital didn’t want Ketkaew there, but couldn’t really refuse. So they put him behind the morgue, hoping the smell would drive him out. As far as he could see, Siri was likely to be the one to suffer most. Why did these things always happen on Fridays! He began to observe them creeping up on his calendar with feelings of dark foreboding. And he still had Judge Haeng to look forward to.

It was difficult for Judge Haeng to discuss Siri’s “attitude” at the second burden-sharing tutorial because they weren’t alone. In the second guest chair sat a dapper man in his forties who probably hadn’t looked much different in his twenties. He had an amusing, softly handsome face and was built for speed. He didn’t say much.

Judge Haeng introduced him formally. “I should like to introduce to you Inspector Phosy of the National Police Force. The inspector has just returned from a very successful training period in Viengsai. He is now ready to return to his responsibilities as a senior investigator here in Vientiane.”

Siri leaned over and shook Phosy’s hand. It was a long handshake that seemed to be extracting information from him. Most people shook hands in Laos, and a person developed a sense of what to expect from different types of shakes: sincerity, impatience, weakness. Siri wondered what he’d just given away.

He thought about the policeman. “Away for training in Viengsai” meant re-education. All of the students at the Police Academy and their superiors had been invited to the north for training when the Pathet Lao took control, partly to establish where their loyalties lay. If Phosy had only just returned, he’d been in the camp for a year. Siri wondered how that would affect a man. So far, he’d laughed at all Haeng’s jokes and agreed with everything he said. It was starting to annoy Siri. Haeng coughed.

“I wanted to have you both here to talk about the bodies that were retrieved from Nam Ngum,” Haeng started.

“Bodies?”

“Yes, Doctor. There were two.”

“Nobody told me that. Why did we only get one at the morgue?”

“All in good time, Siri. Phosy, did you get the copy of Siri’s report that I sent to your department?”

“Yes, Comrade Judge. It’s right here. It was very thoughtful of you to send it.”

“It was no more than the courtesy we expect between different arms of the legal mechanism. If I’d got it earlier, so would you have.” He glared at Siri who smiled, undamaged.

“Excellent, sir.” Siri was beginning to wonder how long it would be before the policeman walked over and polished Haeng’s fly buttons.

“Where’s the other one?” Siri asked.

“At the Vietnamese Embassy.”

“I didn’t know they had a freezer there.”

“They don’t. I believe they have him on ice.”

“What for?”

“Until their own coroner can get here.”

“Their own…they don’t trust me?”

“It isn’t a question of trust, Siri. If they find the same evidence of torture on their man as you did on yours, this could become a very embarrassing international incident.”

“What makes him ‘their man’?”

“This.” Haeng held out a small folder, expecting Siri to come and get it. Instead, the puppy-dog detective leaped to his feet and handed the file to Siri. He remained standing at Siri’s shoulder and was first to comment when the photos of the corpse came into view.

“Traditional Vietnamese tattoos. Very distinctive.”

“Yes, very distinctive indeed,” Siri agreed. He was quite surprised at just how clear they were. “At what point was he rerouted to the Vietnamese Embassy?”

“Someone at the dam recognized the tattoos. They called the embassy, who sent one of their advisers.” There was no shortage of Vietnamese “advisers” around the capital. Cynics-and Siri was one of the founding fathers of cynicism-suggested that there was so much advice from Hanoi being passed around, it wouldn’t be long before the official language changed to Vietnamese. “You can imagine how delicate the matter is,” Haeng droned on. “A Vietnamese national being interrogated and tortured in Laos. The cabinet discussed it yesterday. We’re going to request that you be allowed to observe their autopsy and compare notes.”

“Request? Why request? This is Laos. Shouldn’t we be insisting?”

“It isn’t as easy as that.”

“It should be. We aren’t her next province yet, you know.”

“Siri, if you’re going to spend time with the Vietnamese, I suggest you watch your mouth. They aren’t quite as understanding as we are.”

The meeting went on longer than usual, as Haeng felt obliged to outline all the cases that he and Siri had “cooperated” on. But as long as the doctor kept his mouth shut, it was comparatively painless. Things seemed to be winding down-Siri looking toward the door and escape-when Haeng coughed again.

“I’ve been thinking, Doctor. Now that the work of your department is being recognized by the police, I believe it’s time for you to get rid of the moron.”

Siri shuddered. “The moron? Oh, I don’t know. I know he has his off-days, but I don’t think that’s enough reason to kick Director Suk out of his job. He has a family. Please give him another chance.”

“Director…? Goodness, no, Siri. I’m talking about the retard you have as your morgue laborer. I’m prepared to offer a full salary for that position now.”

“I’m so pleased. Mr. Geung will be delighted when I tell him he can have a living wage.”

“Pay attention. I’m telling you to get rid of him and hire a normal person.”

“I can’t get rid of him. He’s the only one there who knows what to do.”

“He’s mentally deranged.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“I’m beginning to wonder in your case, Doctor.”

Siri sighed. “Judge Haeng, Mr. Geung has a mild strain of Down Syndrome. His condition makes him ideally suited for repetitive work. My predecessor spent a good deal of time teaching him his job. He isn’t going to forget it. He isn’t dangerous or clumsy, and his condition isn’t likely to offend any of the clients we get passing through our place.

“He’s been at the morgue for three years, so when I say he knows the work better than I do, I’m not being facetious. He’s constantly reminding me of procedures I’ve forgotten, and where things are stored. He has an amazing memory, and my nurse Dtui and I love him very much.”

Haeng was becoming agitated. He tapped his pencil on the table so hard the lead broke. “I’m overwhelmed with emotion. I can barely keep my eyes dry. But now let us return to rational thought for a second. Can you imagine how this would look if a visiting dignitary came to tour the hospital?”

“And I wasn’t wearing my plastic shoes, and Dtui forgot to put on her underwear-”

“Doctor!”

“Visiting dignitaries don’t go anywhere near morgues; and if by some miracle they did, they’d be struck by the compassion our great and farsighted republic shows by hiring three minority groups to work together in the same office. You have women, retarded, and horribly old people, all there on show.”

Phosy, who had been silent and unflinching throughout this embarrassing confrontation, suddenly cleared his throat loudly and offered: “I have a Mongoloid cousin. He doesn’t do any harm. He even fries us bananas every Friday. Most of the time we even forget he’s nuts.”

Siri and Haeng turned to look at the policeman, who wasn’t making eye contact with either of them.

That simple comment poured oil on the troubled waters in Judge Haeng’s office. It also let the judge know he was outnumbered. He agreed that Geung could stay on, pending an external assessment, but that he certainly wasn’t qualified for the raise Haeng had mentioned.

With that, the meeting ended. Siri and Phosy shook the judge’s hand and walked to the door together. But before following Siri into the hall, Phosy turned back.

“Comrade Judge, I feel compelled to tell you that today’s meeting has been a great inspiration to me. I hope it won’t embarrass you too much if I say that my confidence and my faith in the socialist system become re-ignited whenever I meet people such as yourself. I’m so happy that my country has figureheads like you to look up to.”

Hearing this from his spot in the hall, Siri felt like throwing up. When the policeman eventually joined him, they walked in silence along the concrete passageway to the carpark. This was the man they’d given Siri to work with, so, like it or not, he had to be polite. He watched him put his notebook into the pannier at the front of his old French motorbike.

“So, does your cousin live with your family?”

The policeman looked down at his boots. “What cousin’s that?”

“Your banana-frying Mongoloid cousin.” There wasn’t a reaction. “You haven’t got one, have you?”

Inspector Phosy straddled his bike. The slightest of smiles creased his lips. “I’ve got a sister with hemorrhoids.” He kick-started the bike four or five times before it engaged. There was a fearsome noise from the engine. Black smoke belched from the exhaust and neither rose nor dissipated.

Siri, in its midst, threw his head back and laughed, and at that second he made a decision. It was the fastest and potentially most dangerous decision he’d made for a long time. “I need to talk to you about a case.”

“It can wait till Monday.”

“No. No, it can’t.”

The inspector looked deep into Siri’s green eyes and nodded. “I’ll come to your rooms this evening.”

“You know where I live?”

“I’m the police.”

Without bothering to explain, Phosy sped off through a shoal of bicycles, leaving the riders choking in black smoke.

Phosy somehow managed to negotiate the stairs to the landing outside Siri’s door without making a sound despite the loose boards. So when he knocked, Siri jumped. “Come in.”

The policeman let himself in. He’d already left his shoes outside. He was casually dressed and was holding a bottle. You couldn’t help but respect a man who turned up at your door with a bottle. Siri looked at it. “I hope that isn’t a urine sample you want analyzed.”

Phosy came inside, quickly located the glasses and started pouring. “It’s only Thai brandy. I should have asked if you drank.” He handed a glass to Siri, who nodded to his generous guest.

“Is this a service of the new police force?”

“I was taught to show respect to my seniors.”

“You don’t have to suck up to me, you know.”

“I know.”

“Good luck.”

“Good luck.” They both drank.

“It seems you learned a lot at that camp.”

“It was a valuable experience. I can recognize seventy-three varieties of vegetables. I could tell you how old a rice shoot is, or how many months pregnant a buffalo.”

Siri laughed. “Good luck.”

“Good luck.”

They finished the first drink, and Siri took the bottle and poured a second round.

“So, they didn’t convert you to communism?”

“They made me aware of the values of the socialist system and the worthy eff-”

“Okay, okay, I won’t ask you any more questions about the camp. Tell me about Phosy the man.”

Over the next hour, Siri learned that Phosy had been married and had two children. While he was in the north, they fled across the river; he hadn’t heard from them since. He came back to a house empty of family and furniture, and was currently living in one room.

Phosy learned that Siri had been married and faithful to only one woman in his life. She had been unwilling to interrupt her contribution to The Cause, so they had never had children. This made loneliness all the more difficult when, eleven years earlier, she’d been killed under mysterious circumstances, leaving Siri with little enthusiasm for life, work, or the furtherance of the Communist Movement.

It was amazing what two strangers could learn in a short time with the aid of Thai brandy. Interesting, too, that each had weighed up the other so quickly and decided he was tobe trusted.

“So, did you really have a case to discuss, or were you just hoping I’d turn up with some booze?”

Siri knew he’d gone too far to back out now. He lowered his voice. “I can tell you, but I don’t know if you’d be interested in doing anything about it.”

“Why not?”

“It could get you in trouble.”

“What about you? Aren’t you afraid of getting in trouble?”

“I’m permanently in trouble.”

“Who told you you could trust me?”

“Your Mongoloid cousin and your hemorrhoidal sister.”

They laughed and drained the last dregs from their glasses.

“You don’t want to believe them. They’ve got big mouths. You got any coffee?”

While Siri prepared the aluminum filters and spooned in the rich coffee, he reviewed the official version of Mrs. Nitnoy’s passing for Phosy. But when he’d put the steaming cups on the table, he went over and closed the window shutters.

Mr. Ketkaew’s arrival at the hospital had reminded him there were ears everywhere: in the temple, in the house, in the next room. The Junior Youth League was being trained to listen to the idle talk of their parents and report it. Area security monitors like Ketkaew were lurking by open windows, listening for treason and Thai radio broadcasts. The Lao had been the most easy-going people in the region, but this mistrust was slowly turning them paranoid.

Siri dragged his chair over beside Phosy’s. His story had arrived at the Tuesday tests. He spoke in a whisper. “There wasn’t a shred of evidence in the brain that she’d been killed by parasites. Nothing. To go that suddenly, there should havebeen cysts.”

“Couldn’t the parasites have set up home somewhere else?”

“If they had, she would have been in agony for some time. The brain was the only location that might have caused her to switch off suddenly like that. So we did tests at the high school. We found a high concentration of cyanide in the stomach.”

“Cyanide?” They were both sobering up quite quickly.

“A lethal dose. I’d siphoned off some stomach fluid for the records but hadn’t kept any solids. The waste was all thrown out on Monday. By the time it became clear it could be useful, it had all been incinerated.

“My guess is that not all of the tablet had dissolved in her stomach. What hadn’t been absorbed into the blood before she died gave off fumes in the furnace. It isn’t airtight. The janitor who does the burning was off sick the next day. He showed distinct signs of cyanide poisoning. I found some dead roaches around the furnace and we tested them. They were positive.”

“Why do you assume the cyanide was in a tablet?” Phosy was leaning forward. He hadn’t touched his coffee. Siri told him about Mrs. Nitnoy’s hangover and the pills.

“I was hoping we’d be able to find traces of cyanide in the bottle but, actually, we struck oil.”

“Another pill?”

“There were three tablets left in the bottle. One of them was cyanide. It had been filed down to look exactly like the others. The other ladies at the Women’s Union had been very lucky.”

“So, someone put two cyanide tablets into a bottle of headache pills. They didn’t know when she’d take them, but I suppose that wasn’t important. Have you told Comrade Kham all this?”

“Ah, now, this is where things start to get complicated.” He told Phosy about the comrade’s visit to the morgue on Monday and the disappearance of the report. He didn’t mention that Mrs. Nitnoy had briefly come back to life.

The detective whistled long and low and drained his coffee cup. “This is a fine mess.”

“I was thinking of waiting to see whether my unfinished report turns up as the official statement.”

“Was it signed?”

“Not when it left me.”

“Good, yes. That would be very incriminating. I don’t think you should make this official until we know more about it. The Justice Department doesn’t have a great deal to do these days. Something like this would float up through the system in no time. What do you suppose your friend Haeng would do with it?”

“That’s just it: I don’t know how anyone would react. When we were in the north, justice sort of took care of itself. There was an honor system. But now that we’ve become civilized, a lot of people seem to be assuming roles left over from the old regime. I don’t know who to trust.”

After another coffee, the two men went downstairs. Saloop was on the night shift. It was eleven and he was wide awake. He bounded up to Siri’s leg and barked at it with his nose inches away from a potential kick in the jowls. He seemed unaware of the danger.

“What’s with the dog?”

“Doesn’t like me. Loves everyone else. Dogs have always had a problem with me. Never known one that didn’t act like this.”

“That’s odd.”

He looked up. The wooden shutter of the front bedroom window creaked shut. Siri followed his gaze.

“Night, Miss Vong.” She didn’t answer. He knew she’d want to get a look at whoever had been getting rowdy with Siri upstairs. If she had any romantic yearnings at all, she would be impressed by this good-looking policeman.

As he was getting on his old bike, and the dog-howl chorus struck up in the streets around them, Phosy leaned close to Siri’s ear. “Give me some time to think about this case before we do anything.”

“We?”

Both men smiled as Phosy kicked the motorcycle to life and sped off. Siri was left alone in the middle of the lane in a bank of smog, susceptible to dog attacks. Despite all the threats, he’d never been bitten by a dog, not once. Miss Vong’s shutter was slightly ajar again.

“Night, Miss Vong.”

“Go to bed, Dr. Siri.”

On Saturday, Siri was deservedly dull-headed. The chair squeaked when he leaned back from his thick forensic pathology text. He put his hand on his forehead and scoured the French department of his memory for a word. He knew it was in there. He’d put it in almost fifty years before and hadn’t had cause to remove it. But for the life of him he couldn’t find it.

Tearing in the main chest artery could be caused by high speed collision, or precipitation. What the hell was precipitation?

The pages of his French dictionary had become welded together after a typhoon the previous year, and he hadn’t been able to get his hands on a new one.

“It’ll come,” he said. He leaned back as far as his chair would go, with his hands behind his head. “It’ll come.” He looked to the doorway and was startled to see a thin person in a much larger man’s uniform standing there. It was a uniform he knew very well, that of the ex-North, now entire, Vietnamese army. But he couldn’t recall seeing one so sparingly filled. It brought to Siri’s mind the monster body suits he’d seen in Japanese science fiction films. The man’s neck emerged from a collar that had space for three other necks. The rest of the uniform hung off him as if it were suspended from a hook. He spoke to Siri in Vietnamese.

“I’m looking for Dr. Siri Paiboun.”

Siri’s Vietnamese was heavily accented but otherwise fluent. He’d spent fifteen years in the north of that country, training at first to be a revolutionary. But finally, when they realized his limitations as a guerrilla, they had him working in field hospitals with the Viet Cong.

“You’ve found me.”

The man smiled with relief and walked uncomfortably over to the desk. He blushed and shook Siri’s hand. “I have to apologize for the….” He looked down at his own chest.

“The uniform? Did you lose a bet?”

The Vietnamese laughed. “No. It was the only one they had available at the embassy.”

“So why wear it?”

“I was brought in as a military adviser. The ambassador’s afraid that if I walked around in civilian clothes I could, technically, be shot as a spy.” Siri laughed. The story was even funnier than the uniform. “I’m Doctor Nguyen Hong.”

“Then drape yourself over that chair and tell me what I can do for you.”

Nguyen Hong smiled and sat opposite Siri. “I believe you had an alleged drowning victim in here this week.”

“Ahh. The twin. You’re a forensic scientist.”

“Just an old coroner, actually.”

In the doorway he hadn’t looked so old, but close up Siri could see the hair was a little too black, and the teeth were a little too large for the mouth. He was probably the same age as Siri, but with some renovations.

“What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping I’d be able to take a look at your victim. I suppose there’s an official way of asking, but I prefer the ‘front up and try’ method.”

“Me too.”

“Good. There is every reason to believe your chap’s Vietnamese as well. But without the tattoos we had no right to claim him. I don’t suppose you’d know what a fuss this is all causing back in Hanoi.”

“What kind of a fuss?”

“The story’s going around that you’ve kidnapped and tortured our citizens. They’re eager to find out how official it was.”

“Why would anyone assume it was official? It could have been a drug deal or-”

“We’ve identified our man. He was a government representative, Nguyen Van Tran. He was part of a delegation that disappeared after they crossed the border into Laos at Nam Phao. They were on their way here to Vientiane, but never showed up. Their mission was top secret.”

“How many of them in the delegation?”

“Three. Two officials and a driver.”

“And you ID’d your man from the tattoos?”

“No, we have fingerprints and dental records, and there was a ring.”

“He was still wearing a ring?”

“Yes. His father’s name was engraved on the inside. There wasn’t anything about the tattoos in his military file, so he must have got them after he enlisted.”

“Do you have the records of all three men?”

Nguyen Hong folded back his long sleeve and reached into his satchel. He produced three manila folders and put them on the desk in front of Siri. “Help yourself.”

Siri opened the three files and looked at the photographs. The second was familiar.

“I reckon this is ours.”

“Then that’s the driver. His name is Tran as well.”

“All right, Doctor. I suggest we take our respective files and reports to the canteen, have a bite to eat, and swap stories. I don’t suppose you’d like to shed that uniform and borrow a white coat, would you?”

“I’d love to.”

Nguyen Hong changed, and Siri put together his carbon copy of the autopsy report. Then the two set off for a real coroner’s lunch in the canteen. Given the topic of their conversation, they were guaranteed a table to themselves.