Colin Cotterill - The Coroner's lunch

“You don’t have to hurry back. You could stay and rest up for a day or two,” Kumsing said.

“I think three days of sleep’s enough rest. And who knows when our charming Soviet friends will be back this way again? I have to take the opportunity while it’s here.”

“Siri, about the reports….”

Siri laughed. “If your bosses are anything like mine, I think the last week will have been very mundane. I took a couple of days to do the autopsies. Then I came down with a mild bout of….”

“Malaria.”

“Malaria, that’ll do, and I had to rest up until it passed. I don’t recall anything about any Hmong, do you?”

“Not a thing.” They shook hands. “Siri, how do you feel?”

“About what?”

“This whole bloody circus. I know I can never be normal again after all that’s happened, and I was just an observer. You must be-I don’t know-confused?”

“How could I not be? I’m a man of science and I have not one sensible explanation for what I went through. And yet it happened. You saw it. I felt it. How can I ever go back to being Dr. Siri, the downtrodden, after that?”

“I admire you.”

“Because?”

“Just think how interesting the world will be from now on.”

“I’m seventy-two, boy. I was planning on gradually losing interest in the world, not acquiring it. What I’m hoping is that this will all go away once I leave Khamuan. Frankly, the thought of taking Yeh Ming back to Vientiane frightens the life out of me.”

Their conversation was drowned by the sound of the airplane bouncing along the strip with its motors roaring. Once it was almost stopped, the Yak opened its door, coughed out one passenger, and sucked in Siri and two forestry specialists. It pivoted, accelerated, and was airborne again all in the space of ten minutes.

Through one small porthole, Siri could see the captain walking back to the truck. A crow with a brown crest, unmoved by the noisy aircraft, sat on a log not five meters from it. The driver ran at the bird, expecting it to fly off, but it sat defiantly and the driver gave up. When the truck drove off, the crow followed.

The shirtsleeved forester was very helpful in pointing out the project site to Siri as they passed over it. The doctor was overwhelmed by its scope. Hectare upon hectare of prime jungle had been shaven bald. The devastation extended in each direction as far as his eye could see. He pressed his nose up to the scratched glass and shook his head slowly.

“Shit.” He noticed how his hand had involuntarily reached into his pocket and was holding the leather pouch. Hemumbled an apology to the Phibob and the other displaced souls. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”

“What was that?” The forester leaned over to hear him better.

“Nothing, just a little prayer.”

“Afraid of flying, are you?”

“Afraid of going back down to the ground, more like. Listen, comrade. You wouldn’t happen to know exactly where this timber goes to in Taiwan, would you?”

Siri’s fear of landing was justified in this case. The Yak didn’t have any problems outside of its bad manners. But as soon as it set him down at Wattay, all the suspicion and apprehension he’d left behind awaited him. The invincible Khamuan warrior had apparently missed the flight.

He nervously eyed the visitor’s balcony at the old terminal. Every one of the onlookers could have been holding a gun. The officer who checked his travel papers seemed to stare at him longer than he needed to. When the samlor driver mistakenly took a wrong turn on the way home, Siri interrogated him till he was almost in tears. He got off a block from his house and walked the rest of the way, being careful to pause at the corner of the lane and scan the houses opposite his own.

By the time he reached his front path, all his instincts were honed. He was prepared for every eventuality-that is, apart from the eventuality that actually eventuated. To his utter amazement, Saloop looked up at him from the front step, smiled, and waddled toward him. The dog’s tail was flapping away like the national flag in a monsoon. It nuzzled up to his legs and craned its neck as if expecting affection in return.

The pink sky signaled the end of the day, and Miss Vong walked over to her curtains to light her lamp and close the shutters. Never could she have expected to witness the sight of Siri patting Saloop’s stomach as the animal lay on its back bicycling the air. She stood with her mouth wide open.

Siri looked up and laughed. “Evening, Miss Vong.” And under his breath: “Don’t you get any ideas now.”

Still flabbergasted by his new relationship with Saloop, he stopped off in the downstairs bathroom and got some water boiling for a hot bath. He deserved that much.

He could tell someone had been in his room. He could also guess who. There was an unmarked envelope on his desk. Its deliverer, unquestionably some spinster from the Department of Education, had taken advantage of her excuse to enter his room by dusting, sweeping, washing up, and disorganizing his books into neat regiments. It was time, he decided, to invest in a padlock. Some things were worse than crime.

He went down for a leisurely bath and soaked his hair in the left-over rice water they all used as shampoo. He inspected his well-worn body for evidence of the battle he’d just fought, but, if anything, he looked better now than he had when he left. Clean and refreshed, he returned to his room, wrapped himself in a dry loincloth, and waited for the pot to boil for coffee. He carried the oil lamp across to the coffee table and blew the steam from his cup. Not until then was he ready for his letter. He checked the seal of the flap. It seemed untouched, no evidence of steaming or soaking. He slit it open with an old scalpel and pulled out the two sheets it contained.

Turning first to the signature, he saw it was penned by “a fellow crime fighter,” an indication that Phosy also feared it might be tampered with.

It began with a jolt.

My dear Maigret,

The hairdresser’s dead. My first suspicion upon hearing that was probably the same as your own. But comK was away at the time and this had all the hallmarks of a suicide. I was in the station when the case came in. The officer who’d gone to her apartment found the body, together with a suicide note. She’d slashed her wrists with one of the cut-throats from the salon.

Her arms were in a bowl of water that I assume had been warm at the time of the suicide. This is a way to stop the blood from clotting. She was paper-white, so it was quite obvious she’d bled to death. It’s unfortunate you were away, as the body would naturally have gone to you. As it was, the temple was eager to get her in the ground for all those religious reasons I’m sure you understand better than me.

The note confessed that she’d been desperately in love with comK, that she was jealous of the wife but couldn’t see him leaving her. She decided to do away with the competition. Access wasn’t a problem. One little detail I’d forgotten to check (sorry, I have been growing vegetables for a year) was that the salon she worked at was the same one where Mrs. N had her hair done. I guess it wouldn’t have been so difficult for her to add the Cy. to the headache pills while she was under the toaster or whatever it is women do in those places.

I interviewed comK. He appeared to be distraught. I got the feeling he really had a soft spot for the girl. I’ve got one or two thoughts about all this. I haven’t submitted a report on anything other than finding the suicide victim. I’ll get your views when I’m back from the north (seminar). 1. comK is off the hook as far as I can see. 2. The murderer has already been tried and sentenced by her own conscience. 3. I wonder whether it’s to anyone’s advantage to make any of this other stuff public.