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 realised 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 apologise 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.
? The Coroner’s Lunch ?
6
Autopsy Envy
“Word’s on the streets, I go away and leave you for a couple of days and you’re already in bed with the Vietnamese.”
“I knew you’d be jealous.”
It was Monday, and Siri and Civilai sat on their log washing down their rolls with tepid southern coffee. They looked out at the sleek white tern flying just above the surface of the river. It swooped down for a fish, thrust its beak in too deep, and crashed, somersaulting with the current.
“I bet that hurt.”
“Does the committee have a problem with me consorting with the Viets? They are still our allies, aren’t they?”
The battered tern, its feathers flustered, broke triumphantly through the surface of the water with the fish in its beak. The two old friends put down their plastic cups and applauded.
“There are allies and there are allies, Siri. There’s how we see them and how they see themselves. To us, the advisers are resources we can use or ignore as we see fit. They believe they’ve been allocated to this or that department to steer our policies closer to their own, to make us more dependent on them.
“The more advisers we allow in, the more Hanoi sees us as an appendage. That’s why we have a deliberate but unofficial policy of ignoring forty per cent of what they tell us.”
“Even if it’s good advice?”
“We don’t throw it out completely. Rather, we store it away until the chap’s gone off, frustrated at our non- compliance; then we dig it out and pretend it was ours all along.”
“How does my flirtation with the Vietnamese coroner fit into your unofficial policy?”
“Well, as long as we’re getting something out of it…He
“Everything he knows, I know. The only problem is that we have different results for our two bodies.”
“That’s undoubtedly your mistake. You aren’t really very good, are you?”
“I assumed I’d messed up when I saw his results. My fellow was apparently the driver, Tran. He was in worse shape than the Tran they had on ice at the Vietnamese Embassy.”
“Are they all called Tran over there?”
“Only the ones that aren’t called Nguyen. Anyway, our Tran had been laid out at the local temple for a couple of days while they worked out what to do with him. But then they found the other Tran, the one with the Vietnamese tattoos, so naturally they contacted the Vietnamese Embassy.
“Once a body’s out of the water, it deteriorates quite rapidly, so my Tran was in a horrible state when I got him. They packed their Tran in ice and waited for Nguyen Hong to come and take a look. The ice made a mess of their corpse too. So neither of us had optimal material to work with.”
“Excuses accepted. Did you two agree on anything?”
“We’re both quite certain they didn’t die from drowning. We also agreed they’d been weighted down.”
“So they weren’t supposed to be found?”
“That depends on whether you adhere to the Dtui theory.”
“Which is?”
“If they’d really wanted the bodies to stay down, they would have used flex or wire, something that doesn’t dissolve that fast.”
“Brilliant. So if we accept the Dtui hypothesis, whoever dumped them in the water wanted them bobbing back up. Do you know what they died of?”
