Dr Siri Paiboun 01; The Coroner’s Lunch

His heart leaped, and he swung the flashlight beam to his left from where the voice had come. “Mrs Som?” He crawled across the debris until he could make out the shape of the girls’ mother kneeling, facing the bedrolls where the children had slept below the open window.

Despite the dust, she seemed very neat. She was dressed in her best phasin and her hair was pulled tightly back from her face into a bun. She turned her head to him and smiled. He smiled back to show his relief.

“You’ve been lucky. Come. We have to get out of here before this ceiling comes down completely.” She didn’t move.

“Dr Siri. I’m worried about my girls.”

“No. They’re fine. Come now.” He reached out a hand for her.

“I’m afraid they’ll be lonely.”

His hand dropped. He knew right away what she meant. He understood, and his stomach turned.

“Oh, no, Mrs – ”

“I was often cross with them. I shouted at them a lot. Perhaps they won’t understand that was a mother’s way to show how she feels. Can you be sure to tell them I love them?”

He lowered his head. “I’m so sorry.”

The large crowd gathered at the front of the house gasped and muttered when Siri appeared at the front door. He’d carried Mrs Som’s crushed body as far as Vong’s room and left it there. He didn’t want the girls to see it or to raise their hopes she might be alive. He wheezed a few orders here and there to the neighbours, made sure the couple upstairs had been brought down, then collapsed inelegantly in the vegetable patch.

? The Coroner’s Lunch ?

18

A Hospital Without Doctors

He awoke in one of the few private rooms available at the hospital. His eyes were so sore, it was like looking through greasy windows. The walls and ceiling were Wattay blue. There was one unshaded strip light on the ceiling. A Thai ploughing calendar was the only decoration. It was a room devoid of therapy.

“Welcome back.” Dtui was beside the bed, fussing around with several trays of roots and powders. The hospital budget could no longer stretch to foreign-made pharmaceuticals, and they had fallen back on natural remedies. In most cases, the patients could be thankful.

“What am I doing here?”

“Sleeping, mostly. You breathed in about a kilo of dust last night while you were being a hero. You passed out. They had to give you oxygen.”

“Last night? Right. It’s getting so I don’t know what’s real and what’s a dream these days. I was hoping that was one of the imaginary disasters.”

“No. Your house really blew up. It fell down completely after you got here.”

“How are the little girls?”

“Sorry. Don’t know. I just came to work this morning and they told me you were here. I didn’t get a lot of information from your bodyguard.”

“I have a bodyguard?” He coughed up phlegm into a cloth Dtui had waiting.

“Two at the moment. I believe they’re from the Security Section. One’s got a nice smile. He wants to talk to you when you come around. Have you come around?”

“I’m a bit weak, but we should get this over with.”

“I’ll tell him. I’ll bring you some breakfast when he’s done with you. I’ll have to get it from outside. There was a fire in the kitchen last night. The food’s so bad, it was probably started by the patients.” She went over to the door. “Oh, Dtui. Has Phosy been by the office yet?”

“The policeman? Not while I was there. Why?”

“He’s coming to pick up the original of the report and the autopsy photos. You’ll have to show him where they are.”

“I’ll tell Geung. He’ll have to wait for the pictures, though: they aren’t back from the photograph shop yet.”

“And tell him,” he started another coughing fit. “Tell him I’m in here.”

“Yes, my leader.”

¦

The young man from the Security Section was very polite and very thorough. He’d already been briefed on the information Siri had given Civilai, but he wanted it all again, in Siri’s own words.

Talking gave Siri problems, and he had to take gulps of oxygen from time to time. It was during one of these resuscitation sessions that Civilai arrived.

“Hey. Take it easy with that stuff. It costs money. You can’t just pluck it out of the air, you know.” The security lad saluted and fell back.

“Hello, older brother. I see you didn’t get blown up, too, last night.”

“Slept like a baby. May I ask why you weren’t safely in your own bed when it was blasted to Jupiter?”

“I was down by the river.”

“Aha. With some little kitty, I suppose.”

“A dog.”

“Well, never mind. At your age, you have to take what you can get.”

“How are the little girls from downstairs?”

“Stunned. I think only the older one really understands. She’s a smarty. We found a family to look after them till the father gets back. We’re trying to get word to him. He’s going to have his work cut out for him, looking after those three.”

“Do you know what happened yet?”

“A mortar. Hand-held type. Damned big one. May have even been two. We assume they were thrown through the window. They’re still searching the rubble. The only incriminating thing they’ve found so far is the remains of a transistor radio. Don’t suppose you know anything about that?”

Siri coughed. “The bastard must have thrown it in with the mortar shells.”

“That’s what we suspected. I’m afraid there wasn’t much left of your stuff.”

“No problem. There was nothing there of any value. I’ve spent too many years owning only what I could carry. I may miss the books, I suppose. I assume nobody saw anything?”

“Not a thing. How you feeling?”

“Lucky.”

“Too true. Somebody up there’s watching over you. No question about that.”

Civilai went off to a committee meeting and left the Security lad to finish his interview. It was very relaxed and friendly, interspersed with Siri coughing his guts up from time to time. Dtui kept the boy amused while they waited for the doctor to finish coughing.

The lad was in his early twenties, tall, with ears like ping-pong paddles. But Siri had to admit, he did have a good smile.

“I think that’s about all for now, Comrade Doctor. I’ll get this all typed, and I’ll be back late this afternoon with my boss. And Nurse Dtui, my dear” – she blushed – “you’d better keep your jokes to yourself when he’s here. He doesn’t appreciate jokes. He had his sense of humour shot off when he was fighting the French.” She saluted. “And, Doctor, we’d like to know as soon as your Vietnamese coroner gets in touch again. We really need some solid evidence.”

“They’ll have to invent a telephone you can carry around with you if they want me to talk to him while I’m in this state. It would take me a week to get to the office.”

“H’mm. I’ll see what we can do about that. Bye, sir, and thanks. Bye, miss.”

“Miss? What makes you think a pretty thing like me is a miss? What makes you think I’m not married to the Lao national football team’s centre forward?”

He smiled. “Married women don’t blush.”