Colin Cotterill - Curse of the Pogo Stick

The table he was searching for stood back near the serving hatch. Had there been a national lottery, this certainly would have been the scene of the grand prize-winning victory party. Defeated plates were piled high at its center and empty bottles were crammed onto the white tablecloth like penguins on a rapidly melting iceberg. Around it sat characters with faces as red and expressive as the villains in Chinese operas.

Civilai and Madame Daeng conspired on the far side. Mr. Geung, famous for becoming intoxicated on half a glass of straw-fruit juice, was glowing like a New Year’s lantern. Phosy was laughing at the joke of some gentleman in uniform. Only one person sat sober, relishing the atmosphere and popping spring rolls into her mouth. It was Dtui who first caught sight of the doctor.

“Dr. Siri!” she announced to the whole restaurant and, presumably, to the Thai military opposite. The cheer from his colleagues prompted the Europeans to raise their own glasses and toast the newcomer. His friends gathered around him and patted his back and dragged another chair across for him to join them. He was placed between Daeng and Mr. Geung. Daeng took hold of his hand.

“Did somebody’s birthday slip my memory?” Siri asked. His relief at finding them alive filled him with joy.

“We’ve been to court,” shouted Civilai. He put his arm around the soldier. “This learned gentleman is our barrister.”

The table cheered again, raised their glasses to the barrister, and ordered more beer. The soldier saluted, inadvertently poking himself in the eye as he did so. The party had evidently been going on for some while.

“Well, the verdict was obviously in your favor,” Siri decided.

“It was never in doubt if the truth be told,” Phosy slurred.

A fresh plate arrived and Siri was plied with a little of everything that was left over.

“I trust you’re going to tell me all about it,” Siri said, opting for beer with ice cubes, a rare luxury.

“All in good time,” said Civilai. “First a toast to our returned hero. To Siri, for completing a perfect day.”

All of them filled, then raised, then emptied their glasses.

“Good to see you back, Doc,” Dtui said, raising her green Fanta bottle. She refilled Siri’s beer glass with the other hand.

“And now,” Phosy announced, “Dr. Siri will tell us all about his abduction.”

“I’d rather…,” Siri began but was drowned out by another cheer and the clinking of cutlery on empty bottles.

And so, for half an hour, Siri recounted the highlights of his adventures in the northeast leaving out his shamanic journey to the Otherworld and not mentioning General Bao at all. The audience managed to be spellbound and raucous at the same time. He had them crying with mirth as he described Judge Haeng’s exploits and he saw tears in Dtui’s eyes when he told them of the plight of the Hmong. Daeng held on to him the whole time and stared into his gorgeous green eyes.

Once he was drained of stories, he insisted they tell him why they were celebrating. But the curfew beat them to it. The taped music stopped midsong and already policemen on bicycles sat by the roadside, more of a reminder than a threat. Drinking large amounts of alcohol night after night begins to form a chemical chain that eventually turns into one long state of fuddlement. All Siri had needed to do was top up his alcohol reserve. He was as drunk as any of them when they stood to leave on uneasy legs. Madame Daeng’s shop was a mere two riverside blocks away so they all agreed to make their way there. Siri wisely left the motorcycle in front of the restaurant, but as he walked away he heard…

“Uncle! Uncle!” Their middle-aged waitress came clopping down the steps after him on cloglike sandals. In her arms she had a parcel. “You forgot this.”

What nightmares Siri could have looked forward to if he’d left the remains of Danny and Eric under a seat in a beer hall. He’d never want to go to bed again. He thanked the waitress with a tip and refused to tell her what exactly the parcel contained.

At Madame Daeng’s the general feeling was that they’d all had more than enough to drink so why not have some more. She opened two bottles of rice whisky and set about boiling water for coffee. The food was settling in the stomachs of the revelers so the mood was slightly less playful although there wasn’t a moment when someone or other wasn’t raising a laugh. The barrister, it turned out, wasn’t a barrister at all. He was a driver, which Civilai pointed out was far more useful than a barrister. He was attached to the Security Division and he had to return their truck in one piece. So he opted for coffee as did Dtui and Mr. Geung.

“Right,” Siri shouted at last. “Is anybody going to tell me where the funding came from for the overindulgence tonight? I know you didn’t dip into the morgue budget cause that wouldn’t have covered the first plate of river shrimp.”

“It was a sort of… donation,” Phosy said.

“Our benefactor told us to go and have a good time,” Dtui added. “So we did.”

“And who was that?”

“The woman who tried to kill you when you weren’t here,” Dtui told him, bringing a sobering coffee to everyone at the table.

“I… I did… n’t kill the auditors,” Geung stated proudly.

“You certainly didn’t,” Dtui told him. She patted his hand. At last his conscience was clear.

“Why on earth not?” Siri asked. “I would have.”

“We know you would,” she laughed. “That’s why they sneaked in while you were away.”

“You know”-Siri was getting frustrated-”why don’t we just start at the beginning and tell old Uncle Siri exactly what he’s missed.”

And so they did. Like puzzlers putting together an enormous jigsaw, they provided Siri with the pieces of their story. Siri’s head flicked back and forth as they each contributed their parts, adding missing details and color, and, in Civilai’s case, the odd fabrication. At one stage the driver excused himself and left. But the story continued to the point where Phosy and Dtui were in the kitchen surrounded by geriatric villains with guns. Siri, a mystery devotee, was captivated.

“So, don’t stop,” he pleaded. “What happened?”

“Ah, well,” Civilai said. “For the sake of prolonging the tension, we’ve omitted one or two small details. With your permission, ladies and gentlemen, I shall fill in the gaps.”

He stood for effect.

“You see? At our meeting the previous evening, the one where Mrs. Bounlan so conveniently showed up…”

“Dropped onto our plate like the answer to a prayer, you might say,” Phosy added.

“Thank you. At that meeting, we had agreed to treat anything out of the ordinary as a potential threat. We knew how clever the Lizard could be and we had to be just as devious.”

“If we hadn’t come to that decision when we did,” Madame Daeng called from the hearth, “we might have gone along with Bounlan’s story.”

“She was most convincing,” Civilai agreed. “While she was still there we even made the mistake of deciding that Phosy and Dtui would go out to Dong Dok the next day. I’m sure she was delighted. They’d expected us to follow that lead blindly. The Royalists destroyed all the student records before they fled so it was unlikely we could be sure who had been enrolled in which courses. But they didn’t destroy the financial files. The Department of Education has records of all the courses they offered in the year Bounlan mentioned. I paid the records office a visit first thing the next morning and the clerk was only too pleased to go through the files with me. They were somewhat mildewy and rat gnawed but still in order.”

“There was no in-service course for external teachers in 1964.” Phosy interrupted.