Colin Cotterill - Thirty-Three Teeth

He also took note of the parallel shoes on the floor beside the overturned desk. With all the broken crockery around, it was unlikely the man would have taken them off before the jump. So the chaos had apparently not yet occurred. Phosy stuck his head out the window and looked either side. There was no way an assailant could have left the room via the window and escaped without a parachute. He turned back to see the others starting to clean up the mess.

“All right. Nobody touches anything till my people have had a chance to look around. Now, Mr. … what’s your name?”

“Santhi.”

“Mr. Santhi. Who works in this office?”

“Mrs. Bounhieng. She’s off having another baby. And Mr. Chansri. He’s the director of the archives. And Mr. Khampet.”

“And do either of those two gentlemen fit the description of the chap in the morgue?”

“Oh. Mr. Khampet. Definitely. Mr. Chansri’s an older gentleman, and a little overweight.”

“And where might we find the director of the archives?” Santhi shifted uneasily and looked at the ground. “Did you hear the question?”

“Yes.” “Well?”

“He could be at Tong Kankum market.”

“I take it he isn’t on ministry business.”

“He sells fish.”

“Right.”

“I probably shouldn’t have told you. But you understand. We don’t get paid a lot here, so some of us supplement …”

“Mr. Santhi. I’m not a government inspector.” Phosy looked across to see Siri on his haunches looking beneath the heavy wooden workbench. “What’s that?”

“You see this?”

The detective walked across and looked under the bench.

“An old chest.”

“No. It’s a lot more than an old chest. Look. It has the royal seal.”

Embossed onto a solid teak box, an improbable three-headed elephant stood on a podium like some circus freak at the That Luang Festival. It sheltered beneath a multi-tiered umbrella. Only time had removed its glitter. Siri lowered his voice. “The chest has a lot of energy, too. Whatever’s in there is giving off a lot of aggression.”

“Siri, you aren’t having one of your supernatural moments?”

Very few people knew of the extent of Siri’s mystic connections. In fact, only Civilai, Dtui, and Geung, in his own way, knew just how weird the doctor was. Siri had only recently become aware of his gifts himself. On the same visit to his birthplace in Khamuan when the Phibob had been roused, he’d been informed of something remarkable. In truth, he still didn’t believe all the things he’d heard. According to the elders of one small village, Siri was the re-embodiment of Yeh Ming, a powerful Hmong shaman who had lived over a thousand years ago. Since the discovery, Siri had become aware of amazing powers that lurked somewhere deep inside him. As yet, he was unsure of how to use them, and in many ways they frightened the daylights out of him. He’d never directly informed Phosy of his unbidden gifts, but the policeman’s instincts told him all he needed to know.

Siri reached out his hand toward the chest, and then withdrew it suddenly as if a shock had warned him off.

“I’d tell your people to be very careful of this, if I were you. Very careful.”

Siri’s dream that night didn’t answer any questions for him. Mr. A, now positively identified as Khampet, was floating slowly down through the air toward Nam Poo fountain. He floated like a hawk but had a look of horror on his face. The ends of long staves of wood were nailed to his hands and feet. Another entered the back of his neck and appeared to go up into his head. But these didn’t seem to worry him. He was more concerned about what was behind him, and whatever that was, it didn’t appear in the dream shot. The occult cameraman wasn’t giving anything away.

But just for a brief second, not long enough to be certain, Siri may have seen a line of witnesses on the roof above. They seemed happy-or perhaps satisfied would be a better description. In that brief second, he had a feeling they were old performers, the type that wore thick makeup and traditional Lao costumes. They may also have been applauding, but it’s possible that Siri had been trying so hard to see something, he’d imagined the whole thing.

That’s what he believed when he awoke. As was common after he’d had one of his dreams, he found himself in a state that may have been consciousness, or may have been a continuation of the dream. These were the scary moments when the visitors felt so real they could have been in the room with him.

It was quiet. The stars were still blurred by the heat rising from the hot earth, so he was certain he hadn’t been asleep long. He was on the veranda behind his mausoleum. The mosquito net shimmied from a rare puff of summer breeze. It moved again. And again. It was swaying gently in time to some slow but regular stimulus.

Siri turned his head and looked into the darkness, and into the dull eyes of a bear. It was so close, its breath moved the net. It was close enough that Siri could see fresh blood at the corner of its mouth; close enough for him to smell the decay on its teeth.

It was sitting, watching the doctor. He felt its power over him. But Siri wasn’t fearful. Yes, he believed this was unreal in some way, but he also had an instinct that the animal wasn’t there to hurt him. The creature, its inspection over, rose painfully, turned, and walked off into the mobile jungle.

When Siri next awoke, it was certainly morning and the sun was threatening to rise over Miss Vong’s well-scrubbed house. Before he could forget it, and before the government loudspeakers could begin their obnoxious prattle, he reached for the notebook on the table beside the cot. He lit the cooking-oil lamp and wrote down his dream.

Saloop dragged himself toward the light like some obese moth and put his head on the cot. Siri scratched it.

“You didn’t happen to see a bear in the yard this morning, did you?” Siri asked.

As always, Saloop kept his secrets to himself. He’d neglected his duties. He’d been off romancing the bitch at the ice-works. He smelled the intruder when he got back, sure enough. It wasn’t a scent he’d come across before. But it was something big and terrifying.

Mr. Geung was sweeping the deceased cockroaches from the morgue when Siri arrived the next morning.

“Morning, Mr. Geung.”

“G … good health, Comrade Doctor.”

“Any new guests today?”

He was expecting a “no” in response. Geung laughed and looked to the sky as if Siri’s consistent question were the most wondrous greeting a man could receive. He never tired of it. Siri often considered climbing inside his friend’s mind to enjoy some of his simple pleasures.

“New guest in r … r … room one, Comrade Doctor.”

“Oh, no.” Siri moaned. “Isn’t it getting a bit crowded in room one?”

There was only the one freezer. The last Siri had known, Mr. A and Mr. B were already bunked in there on makeshift bamboo rafts that doubled the occupancy potential.

Geung snorted a laugh. “N … n … no. Mr. A and Mr. B went home already.”

“Somebody came for them?”

“Yes.”

Siri walked into the office to find Dtui at her desk poring over the pictures in one of Siri’s old French pathology textbooks. As she studied the black-and-white photo of a man who’d been sliced in half by a locomotive, she chewed on a rice snack wrapped in pig intestine.

“Do you recall the good old days when I’d come in here and find you reading Thai comics?” Siri asked.

“Good health, Doctor.”

“Good health. I hear A and B have left us.”

Dtui put down her greasy snack, wiped her hands on a surgical mask, and picked up the police report.