Colin Cotterill - Anarchy and the Old Dogs

“Oh, my. Poor woman.”

“There was a pool of it near the couch, and a trail leading to the back door. I went through the place. Glean as a flute. No rifled drawers or cupboards. No overturned mattresses. Whoever hit the old lady hadn’t gone there to rob her. At least I don’t think so. There were odd pieces of jewelry upstairs but I didn’t find any money. And no personal documents for either of them.”

“No identity cards, house documents, licenses?”

“Not a one. But they might have had them stashed away somewhere else for safety. I didn’t find a purse or handbag, so whoever it was might have taken that stuff when they dragged the old woman’s body out.”

“You think she was dead?”

“There was a hell of a lot of blood, Doctor. I’m not sure she could have survived a wound like that. I brought you some.”

“Some what?”

“Some of the blood.” Phosy produced a small sauce bottle from his shirt pocket. “I think I cleaned the sauce out pretty thoroughly.”

“What in hell’s name do you expect me to do with that?”

“I don’t know. You’re a coroner. I thought you might be able to tell me something from it.”

“Like how she died? What she had for breakfast on the morning of her attack?”

“I don’t know. You’re the expert.”

“I’m a very little expert, and certainly not a magician. And I’m an expert only in the absence of real professionals who have the benefit of a laboratory and technicians and years of training-people who might know what they’re actually talking about. This isn’t Hollywood. There, I believe, they can tell you a victim’s shoe size from a sample of blood. Given my present state, I can barely tell you what color it is.”

Siri took the bottle from Phosy and shook it.

“How did you get it into the bottle?”

“Just scooped the bottle through the puddle.”

“It was that deep?”

“Deep enough.”

“Then I imagine your old lady hadn’t been gone long.”

“Why so?”

“In this heat, on a parquet floor, blood would dry in-I don’t know-an hour at the most.”

“That means they must have taken her body out in daylight. That’s odd. I asked around. None of the neighbors remembered seeing anything. In a little place like that, you’d notice a body being removed.”

“That’s one more thing that doesn’t make sense,” Siri said. “Let’s look at motive. Say someone wanted to keep the messages a secret. They knew we were nosing around and that she’d seen the contents of the notes. They couldn’t risk her disclosing what she knew. So killing her I can understand. But what could be gained from taking the body away? Delaying the discovery?”

“Not likely.” Phosy began to wash his hands and face in the small sink in the corner of the office. “If you’re going to all that trouble, you’d clean up the crime scene. At the very least you’d shut the front door. Whoever did this wanted us to know that she’d been the victim of a violent assault.”

“That message would have been clearer if they’d left her body there. They could even have made it look like a housebreaking.”

“But this way leaves us in doubt. Maybe she didn’t die. It leaves us wondering what else they could be doing to her.”

“A kind of warning, you mean? To us?”

“Possibly. We might be well advised to spread around what we know to others. As long as we’re the only ones privy to the information it wouldn’t be that difficult to contain the damage by eliminating us,” Phosy cautioned Siri.

“I talked to Civilai. He thinks he has people he can trust. He’ll spend the afternoon setting up a network.”

“Dtui and I will have to be in on it.”

“We’ve already discussed you two. You have your parts. But we can’t arrange anything for certain until we’ve nosed around in Pakse.”

“We? Civilai’s going with you?”

“He insisted.”

“Hell, Siri.”

“What?”

“He isn’t exactly low profile, is he? Do you think you can root around discreetly in the south with a politburo member at your side?”

“Don’t panic. He’s going south to ‘convalesce after a minor operation.’ It’ll be very hush-hush. It’s just a coincidence we’ll be there at the same time.”

“Who’s going to believe that?”

“Phosy, he knows people down there. He can get us information I probably wouldn’t have access to. He knows what he’s doing.”

“I should go with you anyway.”

“No, son. You need to be here. If we can trace the letter, we’ll need someone here to follow up on it. I’ll phone and leave messages at my house as to my progress. You can pick them up there via Dtui. That will avoid the official government phone lines and the official government phone tappers.”

“What makes you think your phone isn’t bugged, too?”

“I’m sure we can put together a little jiggery pokery of our own, a simple code that will baffle the Security Division. It can’t be that difficult. We aren’t beyond a little espionage of our own.”

“Dr. Siri, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“As I believe I’ve told you before, I’ve never been sure of anything in my life. But it’s worth a try. It’s even a bit exciting, don’t you think?”

As Siri had anticipated, the Soviet ambassador did indeed make the Yak 40 available for the trip south. It helped that a politburo member had also requested passage. Civilai was driven directly to the plane and made every effort to stagger bowlegged up the steps so anyone watching might sympathize. Hemorrhoids were no laughing matter.

Despite the short notice for the flight, there were eight other passengers on board. Siri sat on a wooden bench nurturing his paranoia. He looked at the men opposite and tried to match their faces with an identikit for traitors he carried in his mind. He dismissed the four Russian education experts on their way to the teachers college. The two forestry officials had been too vocal as they sat behind Siri in the waiting room. They’d spouted precise figures to demonstrate how many millions of kip per day the government was losing as a result of the Thai logging embargo. The two army officers, however, sat composed and apart amid the spin-dryer vibrations of the old Soviet war craft.

Just a coincidence? Siri wondered. They wore their uniforms proudly and sat erect, like men who had acquired their self-discipline in a place other than the jungles of Laos. He’d smiled at them when he’d first climbed on board and one of them had nodded back. The other, a thin man whose skin was stretched over his cheekbones like melted cheese, had looked away, pretending not to notice. In the din of the ancient Yak there was no conversation to be had, but Siri committed the stern sunburned face to memory. For the entire journey the soldier sat still, unconcerned by the discomfort of the seat, staring ahead at portholes too small to see through.

Civilai, being an aristocrat of the politburo, was seated behind the bored Ukrainian pilots. Not first-class accommodation, except that it gave the VIP a marvelous view of the lightning that slivered and danced above the low clouds. It was like a grand plot of the weather, secretly stirring up its storms, bringing its witches’ brew of monsoons to the boil, holding back its life-giving rains till the last second. Civilai knew it would break someday soon. All this power would be unleashed, drenching the delicate earth below. His people, who for months had struggled to survive the drought, would find themselves struggling to survive the storms. Unfair really, but there was no more chance of stopping the weather than there was of… He shuddered as he considered the enormity of the task ahead of him.