Colin Cotterill - Thirty-Three Teeth

In 1939, with Hitler already making reservations for the trip to Paris, Siri and Boua boarded an airplane belonging to the fledgling Air France Company that took them to Bangkok. He held his new medical certificate. She held a nursing diploma and a letter of introduction from the French Communist Party to one of its founder members: Ho Chi Minh.

So, there it was in a nutshell. Poverty led him to religion, religion to education, education to lust, lust to communism. And communism had brought him back full circle to poverty. There was a Ph.D. dissertation waiting to be written about such a cycle.

Through the scratched window, he saw the sun reflect golden from half a dozen temple stupas. Two rivers converged, and a white shrine, like a delicious meringue, sat on top of a hill overlooking the old royal palace. This had to be Luang Prabang.

In a small dark room behind the Luang Prabang district office, something was wrapped up in an old U.S. Army parachute. The unfriendly local cadre walked across the dirt floor and forced open the shutters. The afternoon shone directly onto the gray silk.

“That’s them,” he said pointing at the heap. “They don’t smell as bad as they used to, but they still turn my gut.”

The man, Comrade Houey, was one of those who had never learned the maxim of not saying anything at all if you have nothing positive to say. He was the provincial chief: the head communist honcho of Luang Prabang, and he had long since foregone politeness and manners as a waste of good grumbling time. Siri disliked his type.

“How long have they been here?”

“Couple of days.”

Siri leaned over and slowly started to unwrap the bullet-holed tarpaulin. Inside, two carbonized corpses were slotted together in fetal position. He looked up at the fat man whose brow was permanently scowling.

“Thanks for taking such good care of them.”

“Good care? What do they want, coffee and room service?” He laughed at his own sarcasm.

“You could have made some effort to keep them separate. If you really wanted an accurate autopsy, you should have-”

“Just as well, then. I don’t want an autopsy at all. You’re here for one reason and one reason only. We just want to know where these bastards come from.”

Siri lowered his head and looked up at the man through the mat of his eyebrows. “You surely don’t mean their nationality?”

“I certainly do. They told me in Vientiane you were some tit-hot genius when it came to solving puzzles. Well, here’s a puzzle. Solve it.”

“Now, wait. It isn’t as easy as that. How the hell am I supposed to know where they came from?”

“You’re the expert.”

“I can probably tell you what killed them, but …”

“Doesn’t take a genius to tell that. Look at ‘em. It wasn’t bloody lung cancer. Just get on with it.” He turned and walked to the door.

“Hey.”

“What?”

The man stopped and looked back.

“Where am I supposed to look at them?”

“What? You don’t like a little bit of dirt? Just put some of those newspapers down if you’re afraid of getting your nice white coat dirty.”

Siri was an amazingly calm man. If he ever raised his voice, it was generally a deliberate ploy for the benefit of the misguided person in front of him. He considered it his duty to teach good manners to those whose parents had omitted doing so. He took a deep breath.

“You will find me a clean room-”

“I’ll do no such thing.”

“-and if you interrupt me again, I promise you’ll be very sorry.”

This was a showdown. The man’s alcohol-suffused pores began to turn his bloated face the color of a gibbon’s backside.

“Who do you-?”

“You’ll find me a clean room with a table and-”

The man was fit to burst. He trembled. It was obvious he’d never been spoken back to.

“Don’t … don’t you know who I am?”

“‘Who’ doesn’t matter. I know what you are. And what you are is rude. From now on, I shall tell you exactly what I need, and you’ll arrange it for me. Perhaps it’s you who don’t know who I am, or who I have lunch with every day. I am the national coroner, and as such I deserve more respect than you’ve shown so far. Off with you, and find me a room.”

Siri sat on the pile of books beside the corpses and folded his arms. He could see indecision on the fat man’s face mixed with rage, yet Houey tried one final volley.

“You’ll be sorry for this. I’ll-”

Siri stood up very quickly and stepped toward him. There was no intent of malice, but the man saw it as an attack and hurtled himself out of the shed and across the yard. Siri stood in the doorway and watched him go. He knew the district chief would return with either a loaded pistol or news of a vacant room. He hoped the reference to his lunch companion was enough to make it the latter.

The room had once been a kitchen, but there was a large tiled concrete slab in the center that was ideal for the autopsy.

Siri was alone in there. The two corpses were so crisp, there were unlikely to be any delicate organs to weigh, or stomach contents to analyze. There certainly wasn’t going to be a national emblem tattooed anywhere.

He wrote his observations in a notebook. From the breadth of the skulls, Siri was certain these were males. The smell told him they’d been engulfed in a petroleum fire. It had been intense enough to cremate them rapidly. They had assumed the same attitude, one that suggested they’d been in a sitting position when the flames first hit them. There was no trace left of their feet.

Remarkably, although their bodies and faces had been reduced to carbon, the top quarters of their heads were comparatively unscathed. Their hair was singed but in place, and a line of skin, free of soot, followed the hairline of each man.

With a blunt scalpel, he began to probe at the outer layers that were now a fusion of skin and clothing. With no microscope and no laboratory he’d have to get samples from various locations to take back to Vientiane before he could be absolutely sure of what he was seeing. In the meantime he had to trust his nose. The scent of burned leather was oddly distinct from that of burned skin. He found traces of it at the truncated ankles and at the waists.

This suggested to him that both men had been wearing high-top leather boots and belts. If he ever got to the site of the fire, he’d probably find buckles there to confirm his theory. He also discovered traces of some thick synthetic material welded to the left shoulder and chest of one man and the right shoulder and chest of the other.

He was about to cut into the bodies when he was disturbed by a light tap at the door.

“Come in.”

The door opened slightly and a middle-aged woman with a pleasant face and long healthy hair put her head through the gap. She was deliberate in not looking in the direction of Siri or the bodies.

“Dr. Siri. I’m Latsamy. Comrade Houey has assigned me to take care of you while you’re here.”

Siri melted at the sound of her musical Luang Prabang dialect. There was no tune more erotic in the whole of Laos than the spoken song of a Luang Prabang girl. “Do you need anything?” she asked.

“Perhaps you could just stand here and talk to me for a few hours.”

It was unlikely. She still wasn’t able to turn her head in the direction of the corpses.

“I would like to avoid such a thing if I could, Uncle.”

“Am I that unpleasant?”

“Not you, Uncle, them. I’d be as sick as a vomit bird if I had to look at those things. I don’t know how you can do it. Would you like some tea or anything?”

“Tea would be very nice, thank you.”