Colin Cotterill - Thirty-Three Teeth

“Have you heard about the senator’s visit?”

“The only way I hear anything is through you, Comrade.”

“Well, we’ve had a delegation from Washington.”

“They want their bombs back?”

“They’re insisting that we give them access to look for mia’S.” “What’s an mia?”

“It’s a military person who gets lost in battle.”

“Wait. I thought they claimed they didn’t have any combat troops in Laos.”

“That’s right.”

“So how did any soldiers get lost here?”

“Perhaps they had their maps upside down.”

“And do we actually have lost Americans here?”

“I haven’t seen any. But you can never tell what the lpla will get up to. The Yanks say they’ve got evidence that there are mia’s held in camps up on the border.”

“And they’re insisting …”

“Yes. There’s a lot of political pressure over there to bring their heroes back home.”

“Well, if they insist, I suppose we’ll have to cooperate.”

“That’s right. Wouldn’t want them to start a war or anything.”

“What do we get out of it?”

“Aid.”

“They’ve offered us aid?”

“Yes.”

“See? I told you they’d have guilty consciences.”

By the time they’d plowed their way through the sandwiches and were enjoying some fruit, both men were in their undershirts and seriously thinking about joining Rajid in the murky water.

“Any interesting dead people this week?”

“Well, I’m sure you heard about the chap from Info and Culture.”

“I read the first installment of the report. Can’t see any reason for the fellow killing himself, though.”

“I think something happened up there that drove him to it. It’s the archive department. Do you know of anything official concerning the Royal Family?”

“You mean, apart from stripping them of their titles, humiliating them in public, kicking them out of the palace, and stealing their money?”

“Yeah, apart from that. Something concerning the dsic.”

“Why do you ask?” “There was a trunk up there with a royal seal. It was angry.” “An angry seal?”

“No, the trunk was angry. I don’t know what was in it, but I felt an incredible force.”

“Enough to throw a man off a roof?”

“Could be.”

It was two that afternoon when a second man found himself in a hurry to get away from the Ministry of Sport, Information and Culture. Despite falling four flights of stairs and landing on his head, Constable Nui somehow managed to cheat death. Much of him was broken, and there was some serious internal bleeding that needed emergency surgery to stem. But by five, it looked like he might make it through the night.

Siri and Inspector Phosy stood at the end of the bed watching the constable’s wife and sisters setting up camp around him. With so few nurses available, families were encouraged to stay the night and look after their own. If they brought bedding, food, and any medicines they could lay their hands on, all the better.

“We won’t be able to talk to him tonight,” Phosy whispered.

“What was he doing up there?” Siri asked.

Phosy led the doctor outside into the hall. “We’d just finished checking out the office. The only thing left was that box of yours. There wasn’t a keyhole or a catch or anything like that. There didn’t seem any way of opening it. So we sent Constable Nui off to get a crowbar.”

“Risky.”

“What would you have done?”

“Left it well alone.”

“Well, we couldn’t do that. This is a possible murder inquiry. Anyway, as we were on our way out, Nui passed us on his way in. I told him to open the chest and bring whatever was inside to the station. Next thing I hear, he’s face down on the fifth-floor landing.”

“Did he get the chest open?”

“No. There are splinters where he tried to force in the metal bar, but he didn’t make any impression on the lid. The trouble is, now none of our men are prepared to go anywhere near it. They say it’s jinxed. So it looks like I’ll have to do it myself.”

“Phosy, can I ask you to leave it alone for a while? You’ll have to trust me about this. Give me some time to find out what’s in there, will you? Please?”

“I shouldn’t.”

“It’s really important.”

Phosy thought about it. “I’ll give you three days. I can’t bluff beyond that. I’ll tell the boss it’s a national treasure and we have to wait for the key.”

“Thanks.”

They walked out of the stuffy hospital building and into an early evening sunshine that still dazzled and blasted them. They stood in the shade of a large henna tree, but there was no breeze to cool them down.

“Hot, isn’t it?”

“Damned hot.”

“Phosy, can I ask you a silly question?”

“Sure.”

“Have there been any reports of … any sightings of … well, wild animals around town?”

He assumed Phosy would laugh, but instead he answered very matter-of-factly.

“Only the bear.”

Siri looked at him, astonished.

“There’s a bear loose?”

“That ragged old heap they kept at the back of the Lan Xang. It got out somehow a few days ago. I’m surprised it had the legs to make it to the wall, let alone over it. Someone reported they’d seen it up by the memorial. God knows how it got up there. There are a couple of army people out with a net looking for it.”

He noticed Siri’s troubled expression. “You got a reason for asking?”

“I think you’d better come to the morgue and take a look at something.”

Siri rode his old motorbike slowly along Lan Xang Avenue on his way home that evening. Families sat by the roadside hoping to catch some breeze from passing cars, waiting for the night to bring relief from the stifling day. Siri was so deep in thought, he’d forgotten to turn on his lights. When suddenly the shadow of the Anusawari monument loomed up in front of him, he flicked the switch and drilled a little hole of light into its base.

On the strength of what he’d seen in the morgue, Phosy had phoned police headquarters and suggested they get an armed unit on the streets looking for the bear. There was now a shoot-to-kill order out on it.

Two things troubled Siri. First was the gap in his knowledge of wild animals. In all his years of jungle campaigns, he’d never seen a live bear. He’d seen several dead, with bullet holes, tied to wooden staves. He’d eaten their meat. But none of that really educated him about the lifestyle of the animal.

He’d read stories of North American grizzlies and polar bears ripping people to shreds. Yet in all his years, he hadn’t once heard of an Asian black bear attack. Perhaps the victims didn’t live to tell the tale. Then again, with all the maltreatment this old girl had suffered over the years, she could have been out for revenge.

After work, he’d stopped at the Lan Xang and seen the state of the cage she’d been kept in. He talked to one of the long-term chambermaids, who told him how cruel people could be to her. He needed to find an animal expert. He wanted to know just what this sad creature was capable of.

He rode through the permanently open gates into the huge flat concrete yard that five months earlier had been the site of the That Luang Festival. Thousands of people had jostled and laughed and flirted there. Now it was like some large school playground during exams.

He pulled up beside the lonely white memorial dedicated to the Unknown Soldier. At the far end of the ground, the custard-yellow stupa of That Luang, in need of some attention, stared back. Some hundred meters away, a little boy in underpants kicked a tin can. Its noise echoed loudly back and forth between the two monuments.