Colin Cotterill - The Coroner's lunch

“Really? Where did you hear a thing like that?”

“This is Vientiane, not Paris.”

She was right, of course. In Laos, the six-degrees-of-separation rule could easily be downgraded to three, often to two. The population of Laos had dwindled to under three million, and Vientiane didn’t contain more than 150,000 of them. The odds of knowing, or knowing of, someone else were pretty good.

“That’s true. In Paris you don’t have rumor and scandal crawling out of the trash, or up from the drains. If Vientiane folk don’t hear anything scandalous for two days, they just make it up to keep the momentum going.”

“So, you’re telling me the stomach contents you brought to me for breakfast have nothing to do with-”

“Oum, my love. I promise if you don’t ask me that question, I won’t lie to you.”

“Then I won’t ask. Let’s get on with it. There are three color tests for cyanide in the magic book. I’ve got the chemicals to do two of them.”

Siri pulled two plastic film containers from his bag.

“I have her urine and blood here too, so we’ll need to do three samples for each test.”

“Yes, sir. You don’t have any other bits of the comrade’s wife in that bag, do you?”

He looked at her with his angriest and least convincing expression.

“Oum. If I’m right about her, the fewer people who know about it the better. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yeah. I do. Really. Don’t worry.”

It was lunchtime when Siri returned to the morgue. Auntie Lah had already sold out of baguettes and gone home, but Mr. Geung had kindly picked up the coroner’s lunch and left it on his desk. The office was deserted, so Siri went down to the log and sat alone, eating and thinking. He was surprised to hear Geung’s voice very close behind him.

“Dtui. She…she went home.” Siri turned. His lab assistant was leaning over him like a schoolteacher with his finger pointed at Siri’s nose.

“Oh, hello, Mr. Geung. Thanks for getting my-”

“You were very bad.”

“What?”

“You were very very very bad.”

“What did I do?” He felt curiously nervous.

“She isn’t…isn’t…isn’t a bubblehead. She’s a nice girl.”

“I-”

“It was very bad to say th…th…those things to her.”

Siri thought back to what he’d said. It hadn’t occurred to him anything he said could offend her. He didn’t think she was offendable. “Did you say she’d gone home?”

“Yes.”

“But she never goes home for lunch. And I had her bicycle.”

“She’s gone home because she’s sad. You made her sad.”

“I-”

But Geung was finished. He turned and walked back to the hospital.

“Mr. Geung?”

He didn’t look back.

Siri had never been to Dtui’s place. It was tucked behind the national stadium in a row of shanties that housed people who’d come down from the north to help rebuild the country. The huts were supposed to be temporary, but no one had yet been rehoused after almost a year. The senior cadres had priority for the new housing that was being built out in the suburbs. The little cogs would have to wait.

As he had no numbers or names to go by, it took him a while to find Dtui’s shed. It was latticed banana leaf with gaps at the corners and between the sheets. Lao workmen had a knack for making the temporary look temporary. There was a shared bathroom at one end of the row.

On the floor in the center of the hut’s only room, there were two unrolled mattresses with a large woman on each. Dtui was one of them. She was reading a Thai magazine.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

Dtui and her mother looked up in surprise to see the doctor at the door, but it was only Dtui who sprang to her feet. She appeared to be devastated that Siri was seeing the conditions she lived in. She didn’t say anything at first, perhaps waiting for her boss to complain about her absence from work. But he didn’t speak.

“Ma, this is Doctor Siri.”

The old lady was lethargic and slow to focus on him. She obviously couldn’t move from where she lay. “Good health, Doctor. Sorry I can’t get up.”

“Ma’s got cirrhosis. I told you about it.”

“Yes. Good health, Mrs. Vongheuan.” It seemed peculiar to be wishing good health to a woman who was clearly not healthy at all. But such was the national greeting. The woman had been ill for years from a liver fluke she had picked up in the north.

Dtui took hold of the doctor’s arm and led him outside. Knickerless toddlers ran amok and rolled in the dust. A dog growled instinctively when Siri passed it. Dtui led him up toward the stadium wall where there were no neighbors to overhear. Siri had an apology prepared, but she beat him to it.

“I’m sorry, Doc. I was up all night with Ma. I didn’t mean to lose it. I was….”

“I just came by to ask you if you’d do me the honor of being my apprentice at the morgue.”

“Ah, no. You’re just saying that because I went nutty. You don’t have to do-”

“I’m serious. I was thinking about it just before I rode your bicycle into the wall of the Presidential Palace.”

“You…?”

“I think you need to get those brakes looked at.”

“I never go fast enough to need brakes. Did you really…?”

“It’s downhill all the way from That Luang, and it didn’t occur to me to check the brakes before I set off. I shot through the center of the Anusawari Arch, and I was traveling at about 120 kilometers an hour by the time I passed the post office. It was a bit of a blur.”

“Doctor.”

“I confess I didn’t actually crash into the palace. But that was only thanks to the poor man selling brooms and brushes beside the road. I decided he’d be much softer than the wall. We both came out of it quite well: I didn’t break anything, and he sold three brooms to the morgue.”

“And the bike?”

“The Chinese aren’t very good at making shoes, but they put together bicycles you couldn’t destroy with mortar fire. So will you?”

“Will I what?”

“Be my apprentice.”

“You’re damn right I will.”

“Good. Before I leave, I may as well take a look at your mother.”

“You fancy her?”

“The cirrhosis, girl. The cirrhosis.”

On Wednesday, Siri was the first one at work again. As if Geung weren’t confused enough already, he walked out back to the furnace to find his boss on his hands and knees in the concrete trough, putting dead cockroaches into a jar.

“Morning, Mr. Geung. Any new customers today?”

“No new customers today, Dr. Comrade.” Geung laughed but stood watching Siri. “That…that’s dirty. You shouldn’t play there.”

“Mr. Geung, you’re quite right. This is where you put the bags before they get thrown in the furnace, right?”

“Yes.”

“The janitor doesn’t seem to be around. Do you know if he burned our waste yesterday?”

“He must. He must. It’s the rules. He must destroy all hospital waste no more than twelve hours from when it arrives. He must.”

“Twelve hours. So what we threw out on Monday evening would have been sitting here overnight?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Please put our little friends here in the refrigerator while I go and get cleaned up.”

“Ha. Little friends.” Geung laughed and ran off inside with the jar.

Siri showered, changed, and again left at about ten without telling them where he was going.

He crossed the road in front of the hospital and picked up his lunch from Auntie Lah. Following Dtui’s comments on Monday, he took the trouble to notice a blush in the lady’s cheeks. For a second, he believed there may have been some truth in it. They exchanged polite conversation for a few minutes, and then he said “Good health” and walked on.