“Siri? Dr Siri? Is that you?” Siri nodded his head. “Siri?”
“Nguyen?”
“Good God. What’s wrong?”
“Ex…ercise. You…talk.”
“What? All right. I believe this is what happened. I believe the men didn’t die as a result of the torture. Two of them, I’m quite sure, died of air embolism.”
“Of what?” He didn’t know the term in Vietnamese.
“They had air injected into their veins.”
“We didn’t see any evidence of that.”
“That’s just it. After seventy-two hours, most of the indications are gone. There’s a slight chance you’d notice something on an X-ray, but we didn’t have one at our disposal. Plus we weren’t really looking for it. It’s going to be very difficult to prove. I may have found puncture marks in one of the veins, but they’re all very badly deteriorated.
“All three men have that same round bruise under the burning. I believe it’s the mark from the nozzle of some kind of pump, or a very large syringe. They would have had to punch it in to penetrate the muscle. Even then, it demanded a great deal of skill. I’m thinking they used the excessive electrical burns to cover up the marks.”
“So why do you say only two died from this air embolism?”
“Tran, the driver. He certainly died from the internal bleeding we found around the aorta. Perhaps because he was fatter than the others, they had trouble locating a vein. I still don’t know what caused the bleeding.”
“I might know. Look into the possibility that he fell from a height, perhaps from an aeroplane.”
“Do you know something?”
“Just guessing right now, but I’ve got a friend checking reports of unauthorised air traffic three or four weeks ago around the reservoir. And listen, do you know where you can find Tran’s wife? Tran the colonel?”
“His wife? I can find out.”
“Try to talk to her. Ask her about her husband’s tattoos.”
“What specifically?”
“Get her to describe them. Maybe you could show her the photos. Ask her if there’s anything different about them. Whether they’ve been altered in any way. I imagine he – ”
The line was cut. That wasn’t such an unusual thing in those days, but in the current atmosphere of suspicion, he was ready to assume the worst. He waited another half hour, but Nguyen Hong didn’t call back.
He walked slowly back to the morgue, weighing the new information against his hypothesis. In his office, he found Inspector Phosy waiting for him.
“You look exhausted,” the inspector told him.
“Hello, Phosy.” They shook hands. “I’m afraid the last few days have started to catch up with me. It’s hard to get my mind around everything. You just get back?”
“No, I got in early this morning. Went home and caught up on some sleep.”
“Seminar?”
“They like to keep reminding me how lucky I am to be in the socialist system. But it wasn’t so bad. Did you get my note?”
“Your note? Oh, goodness, yes. That seems so long ago. We have a lot to talk about.”
“Good.”
“You thirsty?”
“Always.”
? The Coroner’s Lunch ?
17
The Disappearing Room
Phosy bought a full bottle of Saeng Thip rum from the delighted bar mama, and commissioned a whole bucket of her magic ice. They sat at a table, away from anyone else.
“Did you win the lottery?”
“What’s the point of earning this huge policeman’s salary if you can’t go out and spend it every now and then?”
“No. That doesn’t work. Our salaries are posted by our departments. Everyone knows how much you earn.”
“Darn. Well, in that case, I did a bit of shady business up north.”
“That’s more like it.”
Mama fixed them generous drinks, and they told her they could take care of themselves from then on. She left them to their secrets. A fisherman in a huge hat was knee-deep in the water casting and recasting his weighted net. They watched him untangle the small fish from the mesh and put them in a plastic bag tied around his neck.
“So, what’s the big news you have to tell me?”
Those were the last words Phosy spoke for half an hour. He could only sit in silence, sipping his drink as he listened to Siri’s tales. First was the account of the assassination attempt, then the whole trail that uncovered the truth about Mai’s murder. At the end of it, Siri reached into his bag and handed the policeman his autopsy report and recommendations.
He sat back on his rickety chair and took his second sip of a drink whose ice had melted long before. Phosy looked down at the file and up at the smiling doctor.
“How’d I do?” Siri asked.
“That really was astounding.”
“Thank you.”
“I really had no idea you were…”
“…a brilliant detective?”
“Exactly. I raise my hat to you.” He lifted his imaginary hat. “Really. I’m very impressed.”
“You don’t look very happy.”
“I don’t? Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that I’d hoped this whole thing was over with, not just beginning. Were you able to estimate a time of death?”
“No. Impossible. I didn’t see her until three days after she died.”
“All right.” He finished his drink and poured another. “The game’s back on. Have you given Judge Haeng the original?”
“No. I’ve been waiting for you to get back and tell me what to do.”
“Good. Don’t do anything. I’ll ask at the girl’s apartment building and see who’s been hanging around there.”
“Do you suppose Comrade Kham got someone to set it all up for him and left Vientiane to establish an alibi?”
“It’s possible. But what do you say you leave a little bit of policing for me? Don’t forget, we still don’t have an iota of evidence that he’s in any way connected to either murder. The only way we could possibly implicate him would be by finding Mai’s killer and getting him to talk. Who else knows about this?”
“My staff, me, and you so far.”
“You haven’t told anyone else?”
“No. Well, the sister. She’s taking the body back to Xam Neua. But she’s just glad Mai didn’t kill herself. She isn’t going to say anything to anyone.”
“We can’t be sure. If she mentions it to anyone up there it could get back to Kham. His people are all from Xam Neua. To tell the truth, we can’t be sure of anything. We’re back to the beginning. First thing we have to do is put the original report and the photos of the autopsy somewhere safe. Are they at your office?”
“No, they’re in the hospital library.”
“
“Nobody ever goes there. Since they burned all the foreign books, there’s only rubbish up there. It was Dtui’s
