The Coroner's Lunch (8 page)

“She had a bottle of painkillers.”

“Does she have her own desk here?”

“She had her own office, but you won’t find the pills there. She kept them in her handbag.”

“That didn’t come to the morgue with her.”

A supervisor glided through the room yelling urgent instructions.

“No. It was here, but a serious-looking army officer in dark glasses came by to pick it up during the afternoon.”

Siri raised his eyebrows. She responded in kind, only to a lesser degree. “He said she had some sensitive documents in her bag and he’d been instructed to come and pick it up.”

“By?”

“His superiors. I didn’t get any names.”

“Did he take anything else? Anything from the desk?”

“No. Just the bag.”

“I don’t suppose you had a chance to look in that bag?”

“Dr. Siri. What type of woman do you take me for?” She climbed on the chair and hung another chain of decorations. The stage was starting to look like a marquee that had been shredded in a monsoon. “Our design specialist assures us this is all beautiful. Do you think it is?”

“I think it shows a great deal of failed initiative.”

She laughed. “I take it your tact got you into the position you find yourself in today.”

“Very much so, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be afraid. We need more people with the courage to say what they feel. It’s getting rarer.” She stepped down. “Slippers.”

“What?”

“She carried her slippers around in her bag. The Party insisted she wear black vinyl shoes with heels for public engagements. She hated them. They gave her blisters. So she had these soft slippers she put on whenever she could.” Siri smiled. “What is it?”

“Nothing. What else did she have in there?”

“Now you think I’m a snoop.”

“Snooping’s good for the regime.”

“Really? All right. Little stuff, mainly. Address book. Keys. Smelling salts. Balm. Name cards. That was about all.”

“Did you look at the name cards?”

“Doctor Siri.”

“Sorry. No makeup, lipstick?”

“Frowned upon, and quite expensive now.”

“So, apart from the address book, there wasn’t really anything in there that could be called ‘sensitive papers’?”

“No.”

“And it was all carried off by the serious officer.”

“…Yes.” It was neither a firm nor an automatic “yes.”

“Dr. Pornsawan?”

“Almost all.”

“Apart from?”

“Well, the reason I know what was in her bag was because I went into it to borrow her headache pills. One or two of the ladies were traumatized by what happened to Comrade Nitnoy.”

“And you didn’t put them back.”

“Medicines are hard to come by. And in all the rush….”

“But the ladies you gave the pills to didn’t suddenly collapse on the table, so….”

“So we may eliminate the pills as potential causes of death.”

“I’d like to take what’s left, if you don’t mind. There may have been some allergic reaction. Not that I have the resources to find out what that might have been.”

“I’ll go and get them. Can I ask you why you thought she might have had a headache?”

“During the autopsy I noticed the smell of Tiger Balm. It was concentrated around her temples. That usually suggests a headache.”

“Excellent. You know, this is all rather exciting. Could you hook this last chain up over the stage? Afraid we haven’t got any balloons.” She ran off and left him to hang the decoration.

While he was up on the rickety chair hooking the straws over some convenient nails, he thought about what she’d said. It really
was
quite exciting, this inquiry. He had to admit he was enjoying the cloak-and-daggery of it all. He was glad to be out of the morgue talking to live people, exceeding his very limited authority. It was the first time since the job began that he could feel his adrenaline pumping.

“There are only three left, I’m afraid.” Puffing and blowing, Dr. Pornsawan held out a small brown bottle. “That probably isn’t a wise choice of chair, the legs aren’t glued.” Siri got down in a hurry, leaving a strand of straws dangling above the podium. But it was too late to do anything about it.

The frenzy at the Lao Women’s Union grew to a riot. Siri and Pornsawan looked to the door where a small army of men in ceremonial uniforms was slowly seeping into the almost-ready dining room. The men took up positions along the walls.

“Oops. Looks like our guest is early. You may have to join us for lunch, Doctor.”

“I’d sooner not. Why all the fuss about the wife of a Mongolian president?”

“They’re giving the LWU a sizable grant to develop education for girls in the provinces.”

Siri wondered what the Mongolians would be getting in return, but didn’t let his cynicism show. He thanked Dr. Pornsawan and headed toward the one set of doors leading into and out of the canteen. In the confused scrum at the doorway, he ran into a small woman whose features had all gathered at the center of her face. She was surrounded by larger people in suits and silks. The small woman, assuming, as he was a man, that he had to be someone important, reached out to shake his hand.

Siri transferred his baguette to his left hand and returned the handshake. She had a good grip for a president’s wife. She looked beside her at the interpreter and asked him a question. He asked a similar question of the Chinese interpreter beside him, who finally asked the Lao/Chinese interpreter, who asked Siri who he was.

“I’m the official food taster. You can never be too sure.” He bowed politely and walked on. By the time the Chinese whisper had made it back to the President’s wife, he was already out under the warm mid-day sun.

As he was quite a way from his riverside log, and hungry, he walked down to the nearest point on the Mekhong and found a shady spot under a tree where he could eat his baguette in peace. He particularly enjoyed his lunch that day. He was overcome with a peculiar feeling that, as he didn’t feel the way he normally did, he probably didn’t look the same either. He imagined himself to be in disguise.

During his stay in Paris decades before, he’d taken delight in the weekly serializations of one Monsieur Sim in the
L’Oeuvre
newspaper. They followed the investigations of an inspector of the Paris police force who was able to solve the most complicated of mysteries with the aid of nothing more lethal than a pipe of tobacco.

By the time he got to Vietnam, Siri was more than pleased to learn that Monsieur Sim had restored his name to its full Simenon, and that Inspector Maigret mysteries were now appearing as books. The French in Saigon had shelves of them, and a number found their way north to be read by those communist cadres who’d spent their formative years in France.

Siri had been able to solve most of the mysteries long before the detective had a handle on them—and he didn’t even smoke. Now, below the swaying boughs of the
samsa
tree, he felt a distinct merging. The coroner and the detective were blending. He liked the way it felt. For a man in his seventies, any stimulation, should it be kind enough to offer itself, had to be grasped in both hands.

He walked back along the river, but when he reached the intersection that would have taken him back to his morgue, he responded not to obligation, but to instinct. He flagged down a
songtaew,
one of the dwindling number of taxi trucks plying the Vientiane streets. He told the driver where he wanted to get off, and squeezed amid the zoo of villagers already crammed inside. The
songtaew
followed the river east, away from the town. It was never so full it couldn’t pick up more passengers.

Twenty minutes later, Siri was helped down by a strong girl who held a cockerel under her other arm. He paid his fifty liberation
kip
to the driver, crossed the road, and stood for a moment in front of the newly christened Mekhong River Patrol, wondering what he was doing there. The MRP, a navy of sorts in a landlocked country, had the near-impossible task of policing the long river border.

The pilots of the hurriedly converted river ferries were army men, trained in two weeks to operate boats that were so noisy you could hear them a mile off. Anyone crossing the river illegally, unless they were stone deaf, could easily hide themselves until the armor-plated craft chugged on by.

Siri was directed out back to the boat captains’ dormitory. There, the night-shift skippers sat playing cards, or stood in circles kicking a rattan ball back and forth. He was in luck. Following an unfortunate accident, the person he sought had been transferred to the night patrol. Siri found Captain Bounheng rocking back and forth on a cane chair, like an old man. He was only in his twenties.

Siri introduced himself and shook the young captain’s hand.

“Do you mind if we take a walk?”

Bounheng was confused but followed Siri out across the dry rice fields. “Is this normal?”

“For a coroner to follow up on cases? Oh, yes. It happens all the time. I spend as much time interviewing as I do looking at dead bodies. It’s all very mundane. Reports. You know.”

Bounheng seemed a little more at ease after that. “He never should have been there.”

“The longboat man?”

“We were docking. He was fishing in an illegal spot.” The captain was deliberately striding ahead of Siri, who was hard pressed to keep up with him.

“I understand. The old fool. These fishermen are an ignorant crowd. Never do what they’re told.” He jogged round in front of the fleeing man. “Can I ask about you?”

“Me?”

“Yes. How long had you been…in control of your boat?”

There was a long hesitation. “I mean, this is a new unit. Only just been set up.”

“I understand. So? Months? Weeks?”

“A week.”

“And I imagine it’s really stressful work.”

“Stressful?”

“I’d say so. Patrolling against attacks from anti-communists from across the river.”

Bounheng laughed involuntarily. “Dr. Siri, I’d been up-country fighting hand to hand for two years. This is a holiday cruise compared to that. No anti-communist in his right mind’s going to launch an armada across the river in a built-up area. The most stressful thing we ever see is villagers swimming across to Thailand. With the river this low, there are plenty taking their chances.”

“So what you’re saying is that it’s a bit of a slack posting.”

“It’s very peaceful.”

“How fast do you travel?”

“Ten knots. That’s the rule.”

“What a good job. I should apply.”

Bounheng laughed again a little nervously.

“But I….”

“What?” the captain asked.

“No, it’s not important. I’ve got enough for my report. It doesn’t matter.”

“No. Come on.”

“Well, if you were traveling at ten knots and coming in to land….”

“Yes?”

“Why didn’t you have time to stop when you saw the longboat man?”

Bounheng immediately broke eye contact and set off again on his escape across the fields. “Like I said, he shouldn’t have been there.”

“But you’d have had a pilot, watching. Right?”

Bounheng was obviously used to having a wristwatch that had somehow taken leave of him. He looked at the back of his wrist and swore unnecessarily and loudly when he noticed it was missing. “I’ve got to get back. Like you say, you’ve got enough for your report.”

“Of course, I’m sorry to keep you so long. Thanks for your cooperation.”

On the walk back, Bounheng slowed down a little and regained some of his composure. That was until he noticed Siri was no longer beside him. He turned back to see the doctor standing stock-still in the middle of the dead paddy, looking down at the unwatered stubble.

“What is it, Doctor?” He went back to see what Siri was looking at. But the doctor wasn’t actually looking at anything. He was putting together a hypothesis. When he started to chuckle, the captain felt uneasy. “Doctor?”

Siri gazed up at him, and then looked him directly in the eye. “All right, son. Here’s my theory. It may just be the foolish imagination of an old man, but hear me out. It seems to me, there’s a lot of smuggling goes on across the river. Most of the cigarettes and liquor we get in Laos come from Thailand.”

“What are you…?”

“Just listen up.” Siri noticed how the remaining friendly color had bleached from Bounheng’s face. He stood with his hands on his waist. “I believe you boat captains are…tempted to turn a blind eye from time to time. Maybe even change your schedule.”

“Are you suggesting…?”

“I’m suggesting for every two hundred crates of whisky you don’t see cross over…” Bounheng turned his back on Siri “…one crate may very well find its way aboard the river patrol boat as a sort of thank-you. I’m suggesting that on the evening the longboat man lost his legs and his life, the crew of your boat and its skipper were pissed as newts. I’m suggesting you were all so drunk, you had not a brass
kip
of control over your vessel; over the boat you’d only learned to operate a week earlier.”

He saw a slight shudder pass across Bounheng’s young shoulders and walked closer to him. “I’m suggesting the longboat man wasn’t in the wrong place, but that you were. And by the time you realized it, you were so close to the wall of the bank that you had no time to pull up. I’m suggesting Mekhong Whisky killed the old fisherman.”

He turned to see Bounheng’s face. Tears were rolling down his cheeks and his mouth was contorted with pain. Siri stood there, silent and overwhelmed at his own revelations. The adrenaline had sunk to his stomach, and it fluttered there like moths trapped in a jar. It was some minutes before the young man was able to speak. He couldn’t look at Siri. “Which…which one of them told you?”

“Them?”

“The crew.”

“No, son. I haven’t talked to your crew, or to any witnesses.”

Bounheng faced him, his eyes red with tears.

“It was the longboat man himself that told me.”

The captain dropped his head and sobbed as if the weight of the river were crushing his chest. Siri, too embarrassed to merely stand back and witness the man’s suffering, stepped up and put his arms around him. He felt Bounheng’s body throb with grief, and could understand how much the boy had already suffered for his foolishness. There was nothing to be said.