The Woman Who Wouldn't Die

12

‘But he knew,’ said Phosy.

‘Keep your voice down,’ whispered Dtui. ‘I’ve finally got her to sleep.’

‘If he knew’ — his voice was lower but no less angry — ‘why in hell’s name didn’t he tell me?’

‘Well, firstly because you were off in Vieng Xai at one of your midweek junkets.’

‘It was a training course. And that’s irrelevant. He could have left a note. He could have told you.’

‘Secondly, there wasn’t actually anything to tell. The Frenchman wasn’t a menace at that stage. Siri was making enquiries because an old friend of Madame Daeng was trying to get in touch.’

‘You think Siri would go to all the trouble of talking to the German second secretary and the head of the Roads Project if he wasn’t suspicious? They were tight-lipped about it until I told them what their lost tourist had achieved in a few short days. That’s when they put me on to the caretaker at the French embassy. He admitted Siri had been there to look at the archives. He said he didn’t know what the doctor had found and he wouldn’t let me go in to take a look. Said I needed a higher level of clearance. And he was jumpy. He was hiding something. I know he was.’

Dtui turned her smile towards her sleeping child. She and Madame Daeng had few secrets. She knew exactly what the caretaker was hiding.

‘So what do we have on our evil Frenchman?’ she asked.

‘Just his fake name and the fact that he forged his travel documents and his work placement. The French embassy in Bangkok faxed a photograph. I’ve sent copies of it everywhere. Nobody answering to that name has left the country by air or by ferry so I’m working on the theory that he’s still around. He’s gone to ground. We’ve searched every boat out of the city. Road blocks on every track heading west. If he’s on his way to Pak Lai he must be on foot. And if that’s the case, Siri and Daeng will be back anytime soon.’

‘So you keep saying. Civilai will bring them back. Sergeant Sihot will bring them back. Where are they then?’

‘I don’t know, Dtui. I don’t know.’

It hadn’t been so hard. A fistful of American dollars and a modest fishing boat became a moonlit ferry. You could get shot from either bank of the Mekhong but even soldiers had to sleep. You picked your moment. The fisherman was nervous about rowing across on such a clear night with sentries dotted along the bank. The nerves were misplaced. He should have been focused on his passenger. That’s where the real danger lay. Twenty metres from Thailand and the tyre iron had sent the wiry brown man to the bottom of the great river.

He knew they’d be watching for him on the way to Pak Lai. The west was closed to him. But the south was hospitable. Thailand needed its tourist dollars and it honed its Thai smiles and its few words of English to suck out every last coin. Foreigners were shown respect, even the ones who deserved none. Barnard had no entry permit, but nobody asked. Transport was efficient and trouble free. He took the local bus to Chiang Khan and on to Bo Phak. And in under six hours he was in Boh Bia staring at a line of forest which the locals told him was the border with Laos. You could pick your spot. More dollars bought an unnecessary porter and a guide and three asses. It seemed no time at all before they had negotiated the heavily wooded trail through Sanyaburi and arrived at the Mekhong at a spot upriver from some madness of a festival. Cancer will take you the moment you yield to it, but he had that one motivating factor that could drive the terminally ill — that kept them going against all the odds. For some it was love. Family. For some it was a simple thing like adding to the count of bird songs and sunrises. For Barnard it was the dream of leaning over the dead body of Madame Daeng with the blood still warm on his tyre iron.

‘It could easily take us a few months, you realize?’ said Madame Daeng.

They sat dead centre in the longboat of the Uphill Rowing Club. It had taken the crew only five minutes to lose their first heat of the day which sent their average to zero points. Despite the generous atmosphere of a Lao boat race, losing every event and causing damage to others meant that you were disqualified from even the losers’ wooden spoon race in which both boats won a prize. The URC was just about to return home with nothing to show for its efforts until Madame Daeng made them a proposition.

‘If we asked them to pull in their oars and let us row we’d be there in half the time,’ said Civilai. ‘They do realize that only sailing boats have a need to tack, don’t they?’

‘Where else were we going to find a boat to take us upriver?’ Daeng asked. ‘And look at them. They’re all so happy.’

‘They’re on something,’ said Civilai, who spoke from experience.

When Daeng and her team had first approached the URC and suggested a journey upstream, she’d expected to haggle a price. But the crew was so pumped with adrenalin from the races, it was up for anything. They’d booted out half a dozen rowers who seemed not to care in the least and made space for the guests. Against the current they barely caused a breeze but Ugly’s tongue unfurled above the cool water as he scanned the bank ahead for hostiles. Daeng leaned back against Siri’s chest. Mr Geung rehearsed the words he’d use to placate his fiancee. The crew was passing around several plastic bottles from which they swigged with great enthusiasm.

‘I could use some of that,’ shouted Civilai.

A housewife handed him one of the containers and winked. He took a swig and spat it out. Coconut water.

‘This is all you’re drinking?’ he said with amazement.

‘Of course,’ said the old village headman.

‘But you all seem so … stoned. How can that be?’

‘We work hard,’ said the old man. ‘We don’t have a lot of chance to play, but when it comes, we play hard too. We don’t need stimulants.’

‘Remarkable,’ said Civilai.

‘Adrenalin,’ said Siri. ‘If only you could mix it with soda and ice.’ He watched the elderly lady in front of him who paddled with gusto even though her oar was too short to reach the water.

‘Has anyone considered what we might do when we get there?’ Civilai asked.

‘We might ask someone whether back in 1978 they remember seeing a naval vessel full of engineers,’ said Siri, prompting laughter from his shipmates.

‘Then perhaps there’ll be enough time for someone to explain why the elephant thing was so relevant,’ said Daeng.

‘The elephant,’ Civilai began. ‘A noble creature used for hundreds of years as a pack animal. Its courtship has been compared by many to the politburo. Much show and trumpeting but you don’t see any results for two years. Moody beasts whose strength is all in the neck with a surprisingly weak back. They were gradually replaced by asses and ponies and trucks. During the war — hard times — some were eaten. Nutritious but a bit like chewing on one’s favourite shoe. The population dwindled but you’ll find more here in Sanyaburi than any other province. That is largely because it’s one of only two border provinces you don’t have to swim to from Thailand. A lot of our most profitable smuggling of goods takes place right here and much of the jungle is only accessible by elephant. Lesser pack animals are easily spooked and unwilling to cut new swathes through dense undergrowth.

‘Once the Thailand trade was squeezed out by the Party and diverted to the Vietnamese border, business over on the west flank changed direction. Export switched to import. Black market goods flooded in across this porous border with the tacit knowledge of the local administrators. The things we lacked — which are many — they had. But it’s very much a one way trade. Empty elephants to Thailand. Full elephants to Laos. So, the question is, why have fifteen elephants been showering and frolicking at the riverside for three days when there’s smuggling to be done? It can only be because they’ve been booked. They’re waiting for a delivery. Something to take to Thailand.’

‘It could be something completely unrelated,’ said Daeng. ‘The sleazy governor might be exporting something.’

‘Very true, Madame Daeng,’ Civilai agreed. ‘But the governor has to maintain his position. Has to show his loyalty to the Party. He’s not going to blatantly load up fifteen elephants in the middle of the boat races with all us outsiders around. No, I’d say this is a private booking and I bet you it has something to do with your witch. For some reason, she’s prepared to risk everyone seeing and I bet it’s because she has a very narrow aperture of opportunity. This has to be done now. There’s something they want to ship to Thailand in a hurry.’

‘What?’ asked Daeng.

‘I think that’s a question we might get answers for if ever we catch up with the cruiser,’ said Siri. ‘And, brother …’

‘Yes?’

‘You did so well with the elephant question, here’s your bonus history question for two hundred points.’

‘I’m ready.’

‘What of significance happened in this country in 1910?’

‘1910? Let me see, France and Siam were busy slicing us up and winning parts of us like poker chips. Sanyaburi found itself back in French hands.’

‘I wonder if that’s got anything to do with it?’ said Siri.

‘The resident general experimented with making the whole country a free trade area. No notable battles, births or deaths as far as I know.’

‘Boring. That’s all?’ said Daeng.

‘It’s quite a significant amount,’ Civilai pointed out. ‘And I’ve given you more than you’d learn at a Convenient History 101 course you might study at Dong Dok College. The world began in 1975 as far as they’re concerned. What did you want exactly?’

‘I was hoping for a key,’ said Siri. ‘1910 was the clue.’

‘I still think it’s a phone number,’ said Daeng. ‘1910.’

‘Not an active one,’ Civilai told her. ‘Numbers 1000 to 2000 were decommissioned after the takeover. That was the French network.’

‘There it is,’ said Siri. ‘The French connection again.’

‘So we’d not be able to discover which department or household used that number before it was decommissioned?’ asked Daeng.

‘Not on a leaky boat in the middle of the Mekhong,’ said Civilai. ‘When we get back to Vientiane we can go through the files at the central post office.’

‘No. It’s a date,’ said Siri. ‘I’m sure of it.’

The rowers at the front of the boat were yelling excitedly. They’d seen something in the water. Some tried to stand to see over the heads in front but the movement unsettled the fine balance.

‘What is it?’ Civilai asked.

‘No idea,’ said Siri.

The URC boat was steered without a rudder through some group osmosis which explained why it spent so much time zagging. But somehow it found its way to the left bank and defied the current that was so eager to send it home. Ugly barked. Everyone stared to the right. Nobody spoke. There was no breeze, no cloud, seemingly no weather at all.

‘My heavens,’ said Siri.

‘It … it’s waving,’ said Mr Geung.

Despite the fact that nobody was rowing, the boat held its place in the river and angled towards the open water where a hand protruded, its fingers splayed. It seemed to be telling them to stop.

A cacophony of sound drummed through Siri’s head: screams and gunshots and loud Chinese music. He pressed his palms against his ears, closed his eyes, and straight away he knew whose hand this was.

‘Grab it,’ he shouted.

They all looked at him as if he were mad. Nobody in their right mind would invite the Siren of the water to drag them down into the depths. Nobody would take hold of that dead hand and allow the evil spirits to escape into a live body. Reluctantly they rowed towards the hand. Siri dared touch it. He reached over the side of the longboat, lunged but missed. But Daeng behind him was more successful. She caught hold of the wrist with two hands. To everyone’s shock the hand arrested the flow of the heavy teak vessel like an anchor. The longboat wheeled around and Siri scurried back to help his wife. He took hold of the slender hand.

‘Row to the bank,’ he cried.

And row they did, as hard as they were able. But the hand in the river was stronger. Siri and Daeng held on with all their might but the boat was going nowhere.

‘Put your backs into it,’ Civilai shouted.

Every man, woman, amputee and child leaned into their oars if only to get away from that horrifying hand. After several minutes, the rowers were panting but the hand held firm.

‘It … it must be a very heavy hand,’ said Mr Geung.

‘Again,’ Civilai shouted.

The oars dug in with unprecedented coordination. The boat lunged. The hand conceded. It took some ten minutes to reach the bank. If the team had put this much effort into the races they would certainly have fared better. At the bank, the water they bailed out of the craft was half sweat.

Siri and Daeng were out of the boat and up to their waists in the river. Still they held the delicate hand between them.

‘This is who I think it is, isn’t it?’ said Daeng.

‘Yes,’ Siri replied.

Two of the few crew members under fifty jumped from the boat and, careful not to touch the body, they ducked below the surface. When they re-emerged, one of them said, ‘It’s no wonder we had trouble. She’s roped to some bloody great hunk of machinery.’

The two men dragged it to the bank and Siri and Daeng found Madame Peung’s body much easier to slide up on to the grass. Her ankle was tied by a short rope to an air compressor. Daeng told them she’d seen it the night before, stowed to the stern of the frigate. Siri could see no wounds. There were no bloodstains on her clothes. If her raised arm was a conscious effort, he had to assume she’d died from drowning. Yet in most cases, the victim’s face would be contorted in agony. Madame Peung seemed almost to be smiling. Even in death she was beautiful.

‘Awfully bad luck,’ said Civilai, who leaned from the longboat. ‘Fancy her getting her foot tangled up in the rope just as the compressor was about to fall overboard.’

‘You’d think she’d have seen it coming,’ said Daeng, and winced at her own insensitivity.

Siri felt a good deal sorrier for the death of Madame Peung than he had been for the loss of his books. She’d been kind to him. He liked her. But, quite clearly, the villains had no further use for her. If the water at that spot had been just twenty centimetres deeper, they’d have passed her by. But had she made some supernatural afterlife effort to raise her arm? To be seen? To have her body put down with respect so her spirit might move on? He wouldn’t have put it past her.

With the compressor as their reward — thirty kilograms of scrap metal — the two men agreed to sit with the corpse until the longboat passed on the return journey. They kept their distance from her. Siri had considered it disrespectful to go into battle with a body on board. Daeng and Geung took the two empty paddle spots and joined the uncoordinated splash upriver. Siri had several excuses for not picking up an oar, not least of these his injuries sustained in a run-in with the Khmer Rouge. Any other man would have enjoyed the three months of bed rest the doctors had recommended. Siri had been repainting the bathroom Wattay blue after only a week. A bathroom that was now in ruins. A good enough reason not to waste time painting bathrooms. Civilai cited the loss of his right earlobe as the reason why he didn’t rush for the vacant paddles.

The conversation amongst the rowers had taken a more serious tone. The discovery of the body had shifted them into a superstitious frame of mind. There was speculation that the great naga had taken another soul because the race organizers had banned the final party. This was where everyone took to the river in anything that could float to thank the great serpent for not flooding them the previous year. There would always be a lot of drinking and at least one near-fatality.

‘Civilai?’ said Siri.

‘Yes, brother?’

‘We’re heading after a boat with a machine gun attached to it and ten armed soldiers on board.’

‘It won’t come to that, Siri.’

‘If we happen to round a bend and there they are, they might come at us.’

‘And?’

‘And I think we should at least explain to our shipmates what we’re doing here.’

‘They didn’t ask when we set off.’

‘They hadn’t seen a dead body tied to an air compressor when we set off. We might need their help.’

And so, with the oars raised and their chests heaving, the crew listened to Civilai’s abridged version of why they were pursuing a Lao naval vessel.

‘Where would they be heading?’ asked one shirtless fat man with stomachs piled on his lap like hillside paddy fields.

‘It’s a point exactly twenty-two kilometres upriver,’ said Siri.

This was followed by a mass exchange of nods and a soundtrack of ‘Oh, yes.’

‘Sharp bend in the river? Rock cliff?’ asked the fat man.

‘Well, yes,’ said Siri.

Smiles. Chuckles. Knowing looks.

‘Frenchy’s Elbow. Might as well just leave your Vietnamese to it,’ said the old lady with the short oar. ‘They’ll be taken care of, all right.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Daeng.

‘It’s started,’ said the headman. ‘One body already and they haven’t even arrived there.’

‘Is there something at this place?’ Siri asked, although he knew there was.

‘Not something you could poke in the eye with a stick,’ said one woman. ‘But something just the same.’

‘Are there bodies there?’ Siri asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ said the headman. ‘Plenty. But your minister won’t be finding his brother at Frenchy’s Elbow.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the boat at the bottom of the river there went down about the same time your minister was born.’

A shudder ran up Siri’s neck. Nobody was rowing. The river was running fast from the floods in China. Yet they were floating at some speed … against the current.

‘Frenchmen?’ Siri asked.

‘Ah, there’s one with the gift,’ said the old lady.

‘Well, here’s one without,’ said Civilai. ‘What are we talking about here?’

‘Everyone in these parts knows the story,’ said the fat man. ‘It was the year of our Lord Buddha 2543 …’

‘Of course, it would be,’ said Civilai. ‘Better known as 1910.’

‘You can’t get reliable intelligence these days,’ said Siri.

‘The French bastards convinced the King of Luang Prabang that he should lend them his crown jewels for some world fair over in Europe somewhere,’ said the fat man. ‘In fact it seems pretty damned obvious that they were stealing them. But, what can you do when you’ve got a dozen muskets pointed at your head? They loaded it on a French gunboat called La Grandiere, guarded by six French soldiers, and they set off downriver to Vientiane. But that treasure was cursed. They say a whirlpool surged up out of that deep water and swallowed the boat down in a spot they now call Frenchy’s Elbow. Drowned, all of ’em. In the early days you could see the hull from the bank. Locals passing it on the river would swing by to take a look. They might dive down to see if there was anything to salvage. But every one of them that tried suffered personal or family ills straight after. Deaths or sickness or crop failure. They say one boy got all the way down there into the cabin. It was dark and he was feeling around and his hand fell on the face of a man. He fought the urge to flee and took the man’s hand. He helped himself to a ring. Perhaps that was what triggered the curse. ’Cause when he first dived down there he was just a lad, but when he surfaced with the ring in his hand, he was a grey-haired old man. That was the last time anyone went down there.’

‘And he had a unicorn horn sticking out of his back,’ whispered Daeng to her husband. She too had noticed their upriver floatation.

‘You not buying any of this?’ Siri asked her.

‘The Curse of Frenchy’s Elbow? Come on, Siri. Everyone living near water goes nutty eventually. Loch Ness monsters and Sirens and Great Nagas. It’s a symptom of water vapour inhalation.’

Civilai crawled back to join them.

‘Have you noticed we’re floating against the current?’ he said.

Siri ignored him.

‘What about my dreams?’ said Siri. ‘The naked Frenchmen. You don’t think there could be a boat laden with the crown jewels of Laos down there?’

‘Whether there is or there isn’t,’ said Daeng, ‘some silly curse isn’t going to stop that unit of engineers from digging it out. But I’ll tell you one thing. If there is treasure down there it all makes a lot more sense than a search for a minister’s dead brother. A lot of effort has gone into organizing this and we can’t leave it up to your spirit friends to stop them shipping our treasure off to Thailand.’

‘Irrespective of the fact our old kings pilfered it from some other old kings in the first place?’ said Civilai.

‘It belongs — through the statute of limitations on the possession of regal booty — to Laos,’ she told him.

‘You just made that up,’ said Civilai. ‘It’s extortion paid by vassal states to a tyrant. At the worst they’re stolen goods.’

‘And they’re our stolen goods and I’m not handing them over to the Vietnamese without a fight. Siri?’

‘Yes, my love?’

‘What are you grinning about?’

‘It’s not a grin. It’s a smile of admiration. There’s nothing “used to be” about you. The fire never burned out. You’re as much in love with Laos as you were back then.’

‘And you, old man?’ she said. ‘Are you tired of fighting for this nation of lotus eaters?’

‘Never.’

‘Then let’s not invest all our faith in this stupid curse. Let’s put together a plan B.’

‘I think a plan B might involve a lot of sleeping under trees,’ said Civilai. ‘Digging a boat out of sixty-eight years of silt is no easy matter.’

Like the north-easterly monsoons and feather-duster salesmen, Inspector Phosy was relentless. If something was blocking his path he would chip a way into it until a breakthrough could be made. There were two large rocks currently sitting in front of him and he hadn’t made much of an impression on either of them. The Housing Department had confirmed that Comrade Koomki was missing. The inspector had collected a good deal of evidence that Dr Siri was a mortal enemy of the Housing Allocations head but nothing at all to tie the deceased to the Frenchman. One more setback was that Sergeant Sihot was stuck in a clinic in Xanakham with chronic diarrhoea. He didn’t make it to Pak Lai.

Phosy had also heard back from Vietnam. The reply came via their Intelligence Unit. They had a sprawling complex behind their embassy but seemed to operate independently. Nobody knew what intelligence was being gathered there or why they’d been allowed to set it up in the first place. Phosy recalled that Civilai had lobbied without success to have it shut down.

One result of the recent agreement of friendship and cooperation signed with Hanoi was that the Vietnamese were reluctantly obliged to be friendly and cooperative. This extended to a relationship between law enforcers in both countries. The fax he held in his hand was a perfect example of ‘minimum cooperation’:

Madame Saigna Peung, a Lao citizen, was in possession of a multiple laissez-passer to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In the past twelve months she has made eight visits. Her papers were cleared each time at Hanoi International Airport. Before this last trip the average time of her stay was three days. Her last recorded visit was in July 1978 and she was in the country for eighteen days.

Madame Saigna Peung had dealings with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam trade office and was involved in importing goods to Vietnam. There is no record of appointments after the third day of this most recent trip. No more information is available.

Signed, Dac Kien. Hanoi Police and International Cooperation and Friendship Representative.

‘No more information is being released, more like it,’ thought Phosy as he walked up the hill to Madame Peung’s luxury house with a view. And what was she doing there for such a long time on this last trip? He doubted she wouldn’t have been followed at least some of that time. It was the socialist way. Surely she hadn’t just disappeared. Phosy had said his hellos in the village, told them he’d be interviewing them individually later, but declined company to visit the house. His first action was to sit in the wooden recliner on the veranda looking down at the village and across the fields to the mountains of Ban Elee. Marx had said, ‘The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.’ Phosy felt the rich on his back as he sat there in front of the big house. What happened to the even distribution of wealth they’d crooned about at the seminars?

But this was not his concern today. He stood and asked the building what had happened on those two weird nights of August. There was no evidence of a break-in at the front door. In fact, you’d probably have needed an armoured car to get through it as the iron latch on the inside had apparently been welded together by a team of swarthy blacksmiths. The rear door had the same impressive apparatus. The windows were all barred. The widow was clearly afraid of losing her money. But there was no evidence anywhere of a forced break-in. He thought about the live-in girl. Whether she might have opened the door for her boyfriend and made up the whole story about being asleep when it happened. On his way to Ban Elee, Phosy had stopped off at the district administration office. He knew a young girl with no travel papers wouldn’t be very far from her residence. In fact she was still registered in her grandmother’s house and hadn’t applied for transit papers. The house was only four kilometres away. He would visit her next.

But, for now, he sat in the main bedroom where a killing had purportedly taken place there on the double bed. The mattress was uncovered now and a bloodstain had taken a huge bite out of it around the area of the pillow. This meant that the victim was either asleep or calmly lying back in her bed when she was shot. So it was unlikely she’d opened the door to her killer, and more likely that the door was unlocked or the killer was in there with her.

The distance from the door to the bed was only four metres, yet there was no bullet embedded in the wooden wall behind the bed. Again it was conceivable the bullet bounced around inside the skull and did indeed go to the pyre with the victim but so much blood suggested an exit wound. There should have been a bullet.

Finally, back on the porch. Here it was that the drugged robber had supposedly dragged the widow to the front steps and, in front of the entire village, shot her for the second time. ‘The bullet went into the wooden post,’ they’d said. The village headman had retrieved a.45 bullet and given it to the policeman as a souvenir. Phosy found the hole. It was a teak post so the bullet hadn’t sunk deeply into it. It would have been retrievable with a penknife. But there was something far more telling than the bullet: the hole itself. He turned back towards the house but something odd on the wooden step caught his attention. It was a second hole, easily missed, neat, the same size as the one in the post. And, after a few minutes of gouging with his penknife, it was here that Phosy found a second bullet. It was a.45.

A picture was forming in Phosy’s mind. A scenario so bizarre no fiction writer would insult his readers by offering it up as a plausible plot. To make it credible, there had to be more, much more, going on here in Ban Elee than a meeting with the supernatural. Madame Daeng’s instincts had been fired by accounts of events that appeared to be impossible. Now, Phosy was charged with the task of proving that the impossible wasn’t so hard after all. Down in the village, his questions were simple. Did Madame Peung shop at the market? No, not since her husband died. She’d become something of a recluse. She sent her live-in girl. Did anybody else have cause to go to the house? No. Apart from the fact that she suddenly had a Vietnamese accent, did you notice any changes between Madame Peung and Madame Keui? Perhaps she’d put on a little weight. Oh, and she’d started using more make-up. She’d always liked to slap on the colour but she’d never used that much before.

Phosy was on his way to meet the live-in girl but he was quite sure he knew what had transpired there in Ban Elee. The only thing he lacked was a motive.