Colin Cotterill - Thirty-Three Teeth

“I’m sure there are many such chests of looted royal treasures in Vientiane.” She bit her tongue.

“I’ve imagined faces,” he continued, “white unemotional faces with extreme makeup and elaborate headgear. There’s also some connection with tobacco smoke and alcohol.” Her face showed some recognition. “Does that remind you of something?”

“In Luang Prabang, in a house on Kitsalat near the palace, is a man called Inthanet. Go and see him if you have a chance. He might be able to help.”

The sun was rapidly burning through the morning mist that loitered along the river and the surrounding hills. The pony was still tethered to the front steps of the house, but Siri’s groin ached from the previous day’s journey. Much of his trip back to the city was beside, rather than on top of, the relieved little horse.

When they finally reached Luang Prabang, he returned the pony to Miss Latsamy’s brother and repaid his kindness by lancing and treating a boil on his shoulder. He needed to remind himself occasionally that he still had the ability to solve the problems of the living.

He walked along Photisalat, past the squat two-story buildings squashed together like uneven books on a library shelf. Their bindings were all sunburned browns, dusty yellows and greens. A grandmother on one upstairs balcony smiled through a bloody betel-nut mouth when he winked at her.

He paused in front of the old Royal Palace, reluctantly donated to the State as a museum. Its tall lush palms still stood at attention beside the dirt drive. Above the portal, the same royal emblem he’d seen on the chest at the Information Ministry stood out in gold relief from a red background. It was partially masked by the new national flag but not yet defaced. He wondered where his gardener friend might be at that moment, whether he’d ever see the inside of his palace again.

He would seek out Mr. Inthanet, but not yet. He walked away from the modest downtown, and trees soon became more common than buildings. He stopped two monks in brown woolen hats and asked for directions to That Luang temple. They steered him there via lefts and rights at this type of tree and that type of bush. All the royal street signs had been taken down.

When he arrived at the whitewashed wall of the small temple, an armed guard at the gate stopped him by waving in his face.

“The temple’s closed, Comrade.”

“Of course. I know,” Siri said confidently. “I’m here to see the crash site. I’m from the Department of Justice in Vientiane.”

“Oh.”

Siri produced his foolscap id. The boy didn’t look much further than the letterhead, and the doctor wondered whether he could read.

“Nobody told me.”

“Comrade Houey sent me.”

“Oh.”

Siri put his paper back into his cloth shoulder bag and walked past the guard as if everything had been sorted out. He gave the boy a friendly nod and went up the steps to the mound upon which Wat That Luang sat. At the top, the dry earth yard was shaded by lush old pagoda trees, and the temple buildings were quaint and sadly run down. There were no monks around. Siri could see that an area of the grounds had been cordoned off by a tall wall of blue plastic sheeting nailed to bamboo poles. He walked through the flap in the plastic, and an astonishing scene presented itself before him.

To one side, a trail of blackened debris gouged through the yard and settled at the crumpled and burned-out wreck of a helicopter. To the other, a large old elephant was harnessed to twelve meters of thick chain. The rusting metal looped down, then up, around the waist of a badly damaged black stupa that leaned sideways like the great Tower of Pisa.

Two mahouts were securing the chain to the elephant’s sides. A man in a paper-thin white shirt stood pointing in the direction he intended the stupa to fall. Two more armed guards stood behind him. Siri walked confidently up to the man and smiled.

“It was damaged by the crash?”

The man turned but didn’t seem all that surprised to see Siri. They shook hands, and the white-shirted man nodded toward the precarious relic.

“The helicopter apparently caught it as it was coming down. You from the town hall?”

“No. I’m the coroner. I’ve been working on the pilots. You aren’t from around here?”

“I’m sent by the Buddhist Sangha Council. I just got in this morning on the bus. I’m here to supervise the demolition of this here stupa. It’s dangerous like this. We wouldn’t want it to fall on some little child, would we? All alterations to temple structures, be they as a result of planning or of acts of the Lord himself, have to be cleared by the Council.”

It was one of those unnecessarily long answers you get from someone feeling guilty about something.

“This is quite a security force for such a little stupa.”

“Well, there’s the-how can I say it? There’s the historical implication of this moment, and of course there’s the danger of pillaging.”

“Bricks?”

“Goodness, no. A lot of these very old stupas, particularly up here in the north, contain a good deal of-” he lowered his voice “-treasure. As you know, the slaves of capitalism often gain merit by donating large sums of gold and jewels to temples. In the olden days, the abbots used to keep their treasures safe from invading armies by entombing them within the structure of the stupa.”

“Oh, I see.”

Cynical, Siri wondered whether the Buddhist Council would have shown this enthusiasm if the helicopter had toppled a wall or a temple roof. But he gave the man the benefit of the doubt.

“Good luck.”

He walked over to the crashed helicopter and used a spine of metal to ferret through the ashes. The fire had been hot enough to melt the windshield and parts of the fuselage. All that remained of the seats were the stubs of springs.

As he suspected, there was nothing new to be learned there. He found the melted clip of a seat belt, and slivers of tin around the site that were obviously from exploding petrol cans. Everything confirmed the findings from the autopsy. He just wanted to announce quietly to himself how clever he was. Being right can be a very satisfying experience.

Surprisingly, the craft wasn’t armor-plated. There were several bullet holes in the fuselage, and it obviously wasn’t a military vehicle. Siri assumed the pilots had invested all their hopes in getting in and out and away with the minimum of fuss. They certainly hadn’t been expecting the barrage they got, and had had no defense against it. For some reason, the military had been expecting them.

Job done, he went back to the treasure hunt. The elephant was secured and one mahout was on its neck. The other stood behind, jabbing a large wooden spike into the animal’s rear end. The links of the chain groaned and the crunch of four-hundred-year-old brickwork disturbed the previous silence of the temple. But still nothing, neither the elephant nor the stupa, showed any noticeable movement. It was a frieze with sound.

Siri stood behind the white-shirted official.

“You’ve probably noticed already …”

“What’s that, Comrade?”

“The skid marks behind the helicopter.”

The chain groaned once more. “Yes?”

“Well, if that were indeed the trajectory, and it does appear that it worked up a good head of speed before it stopped, I don’t see how it could possibly have nicked your stupa on the way down.”

The man’s amicable nature seemed to retract like the head of a turtle. “Those were the official findings submitted in the official report from the Luang Prabang regional office, sir. They are far more knowledgeable than you or I on matters such as this. Surely you aren’t suggesting this is a coincidence? What else could have caused it?”