She laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re handling murder inquiries for the insect community now. You know, we don’t have a lot of chemicals left for these tests.”
“Then let’s make it count.”
And count it did.
? The Coroner’s Lunch ?
5
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 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
The
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 centre of that area, we have the honour of allowing him to set up his office here.” The way he said ‘honour’ 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 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 them with 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 odour. 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 sites
“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 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 keen to resume 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?” he 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 speak when the photos of the corpse were shown.
“Traditional Vietnamese tattoos. Very distinctive.”
“Yes, very distinctive indeed,” Siri agreed. He was surprised at just how clear they were. “At what point was
