Colin Cotterill - The Coroner's lunch

“Sit down, will you? Drink?”

“No.”

Siri pulled his chair around to her side of the desk and spoke quietly. “When we were talking this afternoon, what made you say Mai didn’t kill herself?”

“Because she…she didn’t care.”

“About what?”

“About anything. Nothing worried her. It was all a big game.”

“What was?”

“Life, work, love. Everything.”

“Did she come to Vientiane for love?”

“She come looking for it.”

“You don’t think she might have followed someone down here? Someone she was having an affair with in Sam Neua, for example?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. We talked about everything. She come to Vientiane ’cause I was here. She come to find herself a rich husband. She was pretty enough.” Her eyes had reddened and Siri could see the ceiling lightbulb reflect in the tears waiting there. “She wasn’t short of fans. It was one of them set her up in the room. She wasn’t whoring, don’t get me wrong. It was all strict romance.”

“Do you know who he was?”

“The room? Just one of the horny bastards that was after her.”

“Did she talk about him?”

“She talked about all of them.”

“Was there someone special? An older man? Someone important.”

“There was some ancient old codger…no offense. He was chasing after her.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

“No. My man doesn’t let me go out. This is different tonight, ’cause this is a hospital. I told him I was having the baby checked out. He dropped me off. But with Mai, I only ever got to talk with her when she come over to see me. I didn’t meet any of her fellows.”

“Does your man know you’re taking her back to Sam Neua?”

“No.”

“You coming back?”

She smiled. “You know a lot, don’t you? No, I ain’t coming back. He ain’t what I’d want for my baby’s father.”

“That’s very brave of you.”

“It’s in the blood. We was both really stubborn, me and Mai. You’ve looked already, haven’t you?”

“Yes. I’ve looked.”

“She didn’t, did she?”

“No.”

She sighed with relief, and the sigh unlocked tears. They rolled down her cheeks, and sobs heaved in her chest. Siri ripped some tissue from the roll on his desk, and she blew her nose.

“Thank you. What happened?” she asked.

“Someone strangled her. Then they set it up to look like suicide.”

“I knew she wouldn’t.” She seemed somehow relieved. It was as if she could cope with the idea that her sister had been murdered far better than if she’d killed herself.

“She’s with an embalmer I know. She’ll make your sister look presentable for your family, and I’ll arrange for the body to be shipped up north.” He started to write down Mrs. Nan’s address, then stopped. “Can you read?”

She shook her head. “No, sir.”

“Okay. I’ll get Nan to come to your shop. When everything’s ready, she’ll find a way to let you know.”

She took both of his hands in hers, which was the most generous thank-you she could give. She didn’t mention revenge or ask about justice, perhaps because she’d never known any herself. But Siri wanted her to believe in it.

“I’m going to find the man who killed your sister. I promise you and your family. Can you remember anything about her men that would help me identify them?”

“I can’t think right now.”

“I understand. If anything comes to you, you know where I am. But, in the meantime, you aren’t to say a word to anyone about murder. Not anyone. ”

“Don’t worry.” She ripped off more tissue and wiped her face. “How do I look?”

“Beautiful. Really beautiful.”

She smiled, unconvinced but happier, and walked from the office. Siri collapsed back into his chair. Encounters with the living always drained him more than those with the dead. And women most of all. Give him a dead man over a live woman any day.

There hadn’t been a day of his marriage that he hadn’t loved Boua. But the last three years of her life had stretched that love to its limit. She’d always been stronger than he in many ways. The few arguments he didn’t lose because he deserved to, he lost because it was wise to do so. As she got older, her fuse got shorter.

She couldn’t contain her frustration over the tortoise pace of her revolution. It was as if she’d opened the chest where all her girlhood dreams were kept, dreams of a world full of fairness and logic and happiness. And all she found in there were the shriveled remains. Once she started to believe her army had neither the commitment nor the unselfishness to form an administration solely for the people, she changed.

She didn’t seem to notice it herself, but she began to punish Siri for her disappointments. He never raised his voice to her, or defended himself in public when she belittled him. He was a doctor and she was a woman with an infirmity. There were no drugs to calm her anger, so he had to use the most natural therapy he could find: compassion.

During her last year, he’d accepted more missions away from their camp. It was a deliberate ploy to spend time apart from her. Perhaps his being near her was a catalyst to her anger. Two days before her killing, he’d gone to Nam Xam to help set up a field hospital. There’d been no exchange of niceties between doctor and wife. There was no kiss goodbye; not even a token “I love you.” He just told her he was going, and she nodded.

The one person he’d always searched for in his dreams had never come. Boua died believing he didn’t love her. She died hating him. He wanted a chance, just the briefest contact: enough time to put everything right with her. But she didn’t ever come.

The cicadas drowned out his thoughts, and he used the tissue to dry his own damp face.

He took his shoulder bag with the Vietnamese file inside, turned out the lights, and locked the door. He said “good evening” to a flock of nurses arriving for their shift, and walked boldly through the gates of the hospital. It wasn’t until he reached the dark riverbank that he remembered how perilous this journey might be.

He turned around, passed the hospital again, and walked toward home along comparatively bright Samsenthai Avenue. But even here the yellowish lamps turned every doorway into a lurker’s cave. Every person he passed, he watched from the corner of his eye. When he was beyond them, he strained his ears to listen for their footsteps doubling back.

He reached his block from the opposite direction from the one he was accustomed to, and had to cut through the temple grounds. He could see the monks in their chambers doing their final chores by candlelight. He stood in the shadows of a small champa tree and looked up at his window. It gaped back at him blackly. No movement inside. Or, perhaps? No, just the gentle wave of the curtain in the breeze.

He didn’t hear the man approach.

“Something wrong there, brother?”

Siri jumped out of his skin. The silent monk had sneaked up behind him, with his rake poised to defend himself. Siri caught his breath and smiled at his own foolishness.

“No. Just enjoying the peace. That’s my room up there.”

“Oh, sorry.”

“Good night.” He walked off.

“Good night, Yeh Ming.”

Siri turned, but the monk was already on his way back across the yard.

It took Siri half an hour to attach the hasps with his old tools. The little girl from downstairs came up to watch him, and to escape bed. She was six, and precocious in the nicest sense of the word.

“But why?”

He didn’t want to frighten her with tales of burglars, so he ventured off into the type of epic lie that always comes back to catch you.