Colin Cotterill - The Coroner's lunch

“The hospital’s that way, brother Siri,” she reminded him.

“I’m playing hooky. Don’t tell the director.”

“You should play hooky with me sometime.”

He laughed.

She laughed.

There was something.

He walked along the river and turned onto one of the small dirt lanes. The Lao Women’s Union was housed in a two-storey building whose frontage was overgrown with flowering shrubs. They’d been tended to look natural but were kept under total control. The Union sign had been freshly repainted. A slight dribble of white descended from one letter.

He walked into a bustling foyer where everyone seemed to have urgent business, and he wasn’t part of it. He had to throw himself in front of one fast-moving girl to ask his question.

“Do you know where I can find Dr. Pornsawan?”

She was flustered. “Oh, she’s around somewhere. Do you have an appointment?”

“No. Do I need one?”

“You should have phoned. It’s chaotic here today. The wife of the president of Mongolia’s coming.”

Siri felt like he’d come to a strange foreign land. So much speed. So much activity. Appointments. Telephones. He didn’t feel like he was in Laos at all. His wasn’t an appointment culture: you’d turn up; you’d see if the person was there; you’d sit and wait for an hour if he was, go home if he wasn’t.

Who were they, these women of the Union with their alien ideas? And why was there so much excitement about the wife of the president of Mongolia?

After flustering two more busy women, he finally found Dr. Pornsawan in the canteen putting up decorations hand-made from plastic drinking straws. There was a huge banner behind the stage that said WELCOME TO OUR FRIENDS FROM MONGOLIA in Lao and French, two languages the president’s wife probably couldn’t read.

Pornsawan was less flustered and more accommodating than her sisters. She’d heard of the famous Dr. Siri and had some unaccountable professional respect for him. But she still forced him to tie cotton threads to blue and red drinking straws while they spoke. She was a slender lady in her thirties, and she had no eyebrows. She’d briefly entered a nunnery where they had been shaved off and hadn’t ever grown back. She was so devoid of vanity, she didn’t bother to have new ones tattooed or even to draw them on. It left her with a very clean look.

“You’re here about Mrs. Nitnoy.”

“Yes. You were at the table with her when she died?”

“Directly opposite.”

“And she ate from communal plates?”

“Ah. Now, this is intriguing.”

“What is?”

“You’ve done the autopsy and you still think she was poisoned.”

Siri’s cheeks become a little more flushed than normal. “I don’t have any idea.”

“Of course not. Sorry.” She smiled at the straws in her hand. “She ate the same food as all of us, and we’d already started when she got here. She took a few mouthfuls of sticky rice, dipped in chili and fish sauce. At about the second or third mouthful, before she could swallow it, her eyes seemed to cloud over. She spat out the rice, dribbled slightly, and collapsed onto the table.

“I tried to resuscitate her, but I believe she died very suddenly. She didn’t choke, didn’t turn blue. She just died. I tried to massage her heart, gave her mouth-to-mouth, but I didn’t feel there was much hope.”

“Do you know anything about gnathostomiasis?”

“Yes. I’ve lost enough patients over the years to parasites. But that’s not what killed Mrs. Nitnoy.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a very painful death. It comes upon you suddenly, but the last few minutes are agony. Mrs. Nitnoy was perfectly normal until a few seconds before she died.”

“You’re quite right. You seem to have noticed a lot of detail.”

“I was talking to her all the time.”

“Do you know if she had a headache?”

“Why, yes. It’s strange you should ask. That’s what we were talking about. She had a horrible hangover. Mrs. Nitnoy liked her beer, and there had been a reception the night before. She’d had a little bit too much and woke up with a splitting headache. If it hadn’t been for the preparations for today’s visit, she’d probably have taken the day off.”

“Did she take anything for it?”

“She had a bottle of painkillers.”

“Does she have her own desk here?”

“She had her own office, but you won’t find the pills there. She kept them in her handbag.”

“That didn’t come to the morgue with her.”

A supervisor glided through the room yelling urgent instructions.

“No. It was here, but a serious-looking army officer in dark glasses came by to pick it up during the afternoon.”

Siri raised his eyebrows. She responded in kind, only to a lesser degree. “He said she had some sensitive documents in her bag and he’d been instructed to come and pick it up.”

“By?”

“His superiors. I didn’t get any names.”

“Did he take anything else? Anything from the desk?”

“No. Just the bag.”

“I don’t suppose you had a chance to look in that bag?”

“Dr. Siri. What type of woman do you take me for?” She climbed on the chair and hung another chain of decorations. The stage was starting to look like a marquee that had been shredded in a monsoon. “Our design specialist assures us this is all beautiful. Do you think it is?”

“I think it shows a great deal of failed initiative.”

She laughed. “I take it your tact got you into the position you find yourself in today.”

“Very much so, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t be afraid. We need more people with the courage to say what they feel. It’s getting rarer.” She stepped down. “Slippers.”

“What?”

“She carried her slippers around in her bag. The Party insisted she wear black vinyl shoes with heels for public engagements. She hated them. They gave her blisters. So she had these soft slippers she put on whenever she could.” Siri smiled. “What is it?”

“Nothing. What else did she have in there?”

“Now you think I’m a snoop.”

“Snooping’s good for the regime.”

“Really? All right. Little stuff, mainly. Address book. Keys. Smelling salts. Balm. Name cards. That was about all.”

“Did you look at the name cards?”

“Doctor Siri.”

“Sorry. No makeup, lipstick?”

“Frowned upon, and quite expensive now.”

“So, apart from the address book, there wasn’t really anything in there that could be called ‘sensitive papers’?”

“No.”

“And it was all carried off by the serious officer.”

“…Yes.” It was neither a firm nor an automatic “yes.”

“Dr. Pornsawan?”

“Almost all.”

“Apart from?”

“Well, the reason I know what was in her bag was because I went into it to borrow her headache pills. One or two of the ladies were traumatized by what happened to Comrade Nitnoy.”

“And you didn’t put them back.”

“Medicines are hard to come by. And in all the rush….”

“But the ladies you gave the pills to didn’t suddenly collapse on the table, so….”

“So we may eliminate the pills as potential causes of death.”

“I’d like to take what’s left, if you don’t mind. There may have been some allergic reaction. Not that I have the resources to find out what that might have been.”

“I’ll go and get them. Can I ask you why you thought she might have had a headache?”

“During the autopsy I noticed the smell of Tiger Balm. It was concentrated around her temples. That usually suggests a headache.”

“Excellent. You know, this is all rather exciting. Could you hook this last chain up over the stage? Afraid we haven’t got any balloons.” She ran off and left him to hang the decoration.