Colin Cotterill - Thirty-Three Teeth

He wrapped a makeshift bandage around Rajid’s head which seemed to simultaneously stop the bleeding and turn him into a Sikh. He dropped the Indian at the hospital, left a few kip with the reception nurse, and confirmed that the split would need some seven stitches. It wasn’t till a patient behind him let out a startled scream that he realized his back was drenched with blood.

When the crazy Indian had first grabbed him, their heads had clashed and then the bleeding began. They’d fallen to the ground with Phosy unable to shake off his attacker. At that stage, he’d still been fearing for his life until he smelled the odor of the unwashed and heard the familiar giggle. That’s when he knew it was no attack. It was a gesture of friendship; a joke, if you like. Who could tell? When you befriend a man whose mind lives on a distant star, you deserve whatever you get.

By the time Phosy had persuaded his friend to get the hell off, he was already soaked in blood. They sat together on the lip of the fountain, Phosy binding the wound, Rajid going through his impressive repertoire of amphibian impersonations.

Phosy stopped off at the station to change his shirt. There were four or five policemen there who listened spellbound to his story of how he’d fought off the giant grizzly. Then he told the true story and they booted him out.

It was an hour after the first attempt that he arrived at the Ministry to give it another go. As he parked his scooter, he looked up at the seventh floor. It seemed to glow like the elements in a toaster. He took four paces to his right and looked again. The light was gone. This was the penultimate night of the full moon. It hung large in the cloudless sky. From certain angles, it reflected from the glass windows of the building. It was time to be sensible, but he didn’t retrace those four steps and look again.

His master key unlocked the main door and he stepped inside. His footsteps echoed around the empty foyer. The windows were all shuttered down there. The beam from his flashlight was so straight and slim, it only illuminated what was directly in its path. All else around him was charcoal black. He picked out the teak steps and went toward them.

There came a creak from above that he rapidly assumed had to be the old floorboards stretching out after a day of work. He hurried upward. After the first flight, the steps were coconut wood and they, too, groaned under each step.

He browsed, but didn’t stop, at the first three levels. The moonlight through the odd unshuttered window cast long clawing shadows that unnerved him. But at the fourth floor he was drawn by a sound. It was faint, yet he could tell it had nothing to do with the natural aches and pains of an old building. It was melodic.

He strafed his light across the large central area and shone it into the doorway of each office. All were ajar but one. He walked toward it. The closer he got, the more clearly he heard the sound. It was definitely traditional music. If it were not for the hour, he would have assumed a careless employee had forgotten to turn off her radio. But national broadcasts stopped at nine and, given the current state of animosity, he couldn’t imagine the Thais entertaining their neighbors with Lao country music.

He stood at the door and instinctively reached for a gun he didn’t have. Under a recent directive, inspectors had to apply for weapons from the armory on an “as needed” basis. A total of nine signatures was called for. Uniformed officers still carried guns, but they had to get thirteen signatures if they wanted to put bullets in them. Their weapons were for show. God help them if there was a spontaneous firefight: there were guns everywhere in this country fresh from civil war.

Anyway, what good was a gun against music? He continued to annoy himself with his lack of control. He took a deep breath and threw open the door. His flashlight picked out a desk, a chair, and a cabinet: not a musician in sight. But the refrain was plainly there, hanging in the air. He walked around the desk in search of its source and came to an insulated pipe that ran from the ceiling to the ground. Perhaps in the time of the French it had carried water to the top floors, but the insulation had frayed and at one point the metal had rusted away completely. It left a large gaping hole from which leaked the sounds of a Lao harp, a xylophone, and a pipe.

As the lower floors were silent, he knew the music had to be coming from above. He had a nasty feeling that he knew from which floor. Siri’s warning rang in his ears along with the wooden sounds of the instruments, but this, like it or not, was his duty. He had to lead the men through example. If he didn’t arrive at the station the next day with the contents of the chest, they’d know he was as chicken as the rest of them.

He arrived at the fifth floor just as the moon went out. Where that one huge gray cloud had come from on such a clear night, he couldn’t begin to explain. But he could imagine, and tonight his imagination was by far his worst enemy. The blackness dropped on him like a burned creme caramel, and all his willpower went into keeping the flashlight steady.

His hand trembled as he unlocked the door that would lead him to the top two floors. The tape across the frame was still stuck securely and confirmed that nobody had gone up since the second “accident.” But as soon as he opened the door, that same mournful dirge oozed down the stairwell to greet him.

He took a step back.

“All right. There’s music. So what? Pull yourself together and stop talking to yourself. There’s nothing threatening about music, and there’s likely a very logical reason for it.”

But rack his brain as he did, that reason didn’t come to him. Slowly and deliberately he followed the quivering beam up the stairs to the seventh floor. The discordant strains filled the darkness around him, growing louder and more forceful. He could almost feel the vibrations of the hammers against the wooden tiles of the xylophone.

At the top door he put his hand on the knob and it seemed to shimmer.

“Phosy, you’re a policeman,” he reminded himself and wished to the devil he’d taken the time to collect those nine signatures. “You are not afraid.”

Voices. He heard them clear as anything beyond the door, deep mumbled male voices beneath the music.

“Go back down, Phosy. Go get support. Bring back a unit of men. And tell them what? You heard music? They’d laugh at you. Stop talking to yourself.”

There was only one way to go. He squeezed the doorknob, took one more deep breath, and strode into the room.

Crockery shards crunched beneath his feet, and a scream came from all around him that was no human sound. Although his flashlight was clearly still on, it illuminated nothing. He held it up to his face. The bulb burned brightly but it no longer shed the type of light that could reflect. It had been disarmed.

“What …?”

In the otherwise absolute blackness, four pinpricks of light punctured the dark. His eyes slowly learned to read the blurred shadows in front of him. Each light was a flame on a yellow candle. They formed a square in front of the royal chest. Hidden within a thick fog of taper smoke, two white figures sat cross-legged on the ground. One looked up angrily at the intruder.

“Good God, boy. What kept you?”

Phosy finally took a breath.

“Siri?”

“That’s a relief. I was sure you were already a goner. Get your bum over here. We need one more.”

Phosy crunched over to the misty square of candles.

“I don’t …”

The second white figure was deep in prayer, oblivious to anything else.

“This,” whispered Siri, “is Inthanet. He’s going to open your box for you. Sit yourself down.”