Dr Siri Paiboun 01; The Coroner’s Lunch

infirmity. There were no drugs to calm her anger, so he had to use the most natural therapy he could find: compassion.

During her last year, he’d accepted more missions away from their camp. It was a deliberate ploy to spend time apart from her. Perhaps his being near was a catalyst to her anger. Two days before her killing, he’d gone to Nam Xam to help set up a field hospital. There’d been no exchange of niceties between doctor and wife. There was no kiss goodbye; not even a token I love you. He just told her he was going and she nodded.

The one person he’d always searched for in his dreams had never come. Boua died believing he didn’t love her. She died hating him. He wanted a chance, just the briefest contact: enough time to put everything right with her. But she didn’t ever come.

The cicadas drowned out his thoughts, and he used the tissue to dry his own damp face.

He took his shoulder bag with the Vietnamese file inside, turned out the lights, and locked the door. He said good evening to a flock of nurses arriving for their shift, and walked boldly through the gates of the hospital. It wasn’t until he reached the dark riverbank that he remembered how perilous this journey might be.

He turned around, passed the hospital again, and walked home along comparatively bright Samsenthai Avenue. But even here the yellowish lamps turned every doorway into a lurker’s cave. Every person he passed, he watched from the corner of his eye. When he was beyond them, he strained his ears to listen for their footsteps doubling back.

He reached his block from the opposite direction from the one he was accustomed to, and had to cut through the temple grounds. He could see the monks in their chambers doing their final chores by candlelight. He stood in the shadows of a small champa tree and looked up at his window. It gaped back at him blackly. No movement inside. Or, perhaps? No, just the gentle wave of the curtain in the breeze.

He didn’t hear the man approach.

“Something wrong there, brother?”

Siri jumped out of his skin. The silent monk had sneaked up behind him, with his rake poised to defend himself. Siri caught his breath and smiled at his own foolishness.

“No. Just enjoying the peace. That’s my room up there.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Good night.” He walked off. “Good night, Yeh Ming.”

Siri turned, but the monk was already on his way back across the yard.

¦

It took Siri half an hour to attach the hasps with his old tools. The little girl from downstairs came up to watch him, and to escape bed. She was six, and precocious in the nicest sense of the word.

“But why?”

He didn’t want to frighten her with tales of burglars, so he ventured off into the type of epic lie that always comes back to catch you.

“Because I’m very handsome.” He told her he was bolting the door because so many women wanted to marry him, they disturbed him day and night.

“No you aren’t. You’re old.”

“Aha. To somebody who’s six, I may look old; but to an older lady, somebody over ten, for example, I’m terribly handsome.”

“Manoly?” The mother had noticed she’d lost this one.

“Shh. Don’t tell. She’s up here, Mrs Som.”

“Ooh, you meanie. I wouldn’t marry you.”

Once he was locked in his room and the desk was against the wall, away from the open window, he felt secure. Not safe, exactly, but secure. He washed his hands and face at the basin, and started to make coffee. There was a new package of beans, unopened on the shelf. The padlock hadn’t come a moment too soon. Miss Vong was slowly moving in.

He pulled the Vietnamese report from its temporary hiding place under the floorboards and sat at the desk. Nguyen Hong’s handwriting was neat, but Siri still needed to refer to his Vietnamese dictionary a few dozen times.

There wasn’t really anything new in the report. Like the earlier Tran, Hok had been tortured with the same electric current applied to the nipples and genitalia.

But it was in his personal notes at the end that the Vietnamese turned Siri’s thinking around completely.

Just from my observation, it appears that the current used is somewhat excessive for the purpose of torture. The men would likely have become unconscious before they could offer up any secrets, which seems to defeat the object. It could very well have been enough to kill them. This applies to the other two, also.

In two of the victims, our Tran and Hok, there seems to be little positive vital reaction. Odd as this may seem, the suggestion is that the electricity may have been applied postmortem. But at the moment, this is completely conjecture on my part.

“Post-mortem?” Siri drained the last of his coffee and went to make another. He knew that ‘vital reaction’ was a reddening of the skin beyond the burn marks where the body begins to repair the damage. If there were none, the body hadn’t been doing its job. “Post-mortem, eh? If that were the case, it would lead us completely away from the idea of the Lao torturing Vietnamese, and more into the realm of someone setting it up to look as if we had done so. Now, if we could only prove that, somebody’s hard work would be completely wasted. I can see that being reason enough to kill me.”

He returned to the desk, ducking low as he passed the window. He missed the natural breeze that skimmed off the jasmine bushes, but he would have missed his life more. He read the final paragraph.

I think I may have identified a cause of death. (See photo A.) It was so well concealed, we needn’t be ashamed we missed it earlier. But it isn’t something I can confirm without more research. I have to leave with the embassy entourage tomorrow. I’ll try to get transport down to Ho Chi Minh city as soon as I can. I may find my answer down there. I’ll try to call you at the hospital when I get back. Have faith, my friend.

There was a Polaroid snapshot stapled to the back of the file. It was a groin shot of the second Tran. The epidermis around the inner thigh had been peeled back. Apart from the charring from electricity, there appeared to be a very distinct circular bruise about the size of a thumbnail. Nguyen Hong had marked it with an A. On the back, he had written:

Once we confirmed all three bodies were ours, your people released them to us. This instant photo is the best I can do to show you what I mean. I couldn’t find your autopsy photos. Check them and you should see they all have the same mark. Could be important.

Siri laughed to himself. Perhaps he could phone Sister Bounlan’s granny and ask her if she had noticed anything odd in the wedding photos. Although there wasn’t yet anything that could be called evidence in the report, there was a speck of hope. It might slow down the warmongers on either side who hadn’t had enough of killing.

He took out a pad of paper and a pencil and began to draw up an alternative scenario based on conjecture and half-truths. Two hours later, he’d convinced himself that he was on the right track. There were still several gaps in logic that he needed to fill in before he could show it to anyone. But the sooner he shared, the less likely he was to be shot. He needed a little help. If they weren’t busy, he wouldn’t mind a visit from Tran, Tran and Hok in his dreams that night.

? The Coroner’s Lunch ?

15

Succubus Terminal

The Vietnamese couldn’t make it, but Siri certainly wasn’t left alone. Before going to sleep, he lay back on his thin mattress and took the white amulet from its pouch. He looked at the worn characters that had been rubbed for luck so many times, he wondered if there could be any left in it.