Colin Cotterill - Anarchy and the Old Dogs

By all accounts, Katay had been a competent teacher and a dedicated Party man, but Siri was shocked to find him here as governor. Of course, there had been numerous positions to fill around the country when the Pathet Lao took over and a limited number of trustworthy cadres to fill them. But he was hardly governor material.

“Lao language and ideology,” he said proudly as if that was the pinnacle of his career and things had gone downhill since. “Now look at me.”

“You’ve come a long way, Comrade.”

Katay laughed with embarrassment and lowered his voice. “No doubt they’ll replace me soon enough. There are plenty of young chaps being trained in the Eastern Bloc.”

“Meanwhile…?”

“Meanwhile I’m running a renegade province and I have a limited number of workers under me whom I can trust. There are spies everywhere here, Siri, and assassins. That’s why I was so glad when I saw your name on the telegram. I enjoyed our political debates at Tum Piu so much. I know you’re a man after my own heart.”

Siri vaguely recalled that their “debates” had been mostly him listening and Katay spouting a stream of conspiracy theories.

“So, what do we have here?” Siri asked.

Katay looked sideways at Tao, who was standing by the Land Rover talking to the governor’s driver. He put his arm around Siri’s shoulder and led him onto the front porch. There Siri detected a familiar odor. Katay’s voice was almost a whisper now and he was leaning close into the doctor’s face.

“I’ve had a suspicion for a long time,” he whispered, “that the Soviets are trying to undermine the Vietnamese influence in Laos. I believe their ultimate objective is to overthrow our government and take over the country.”

Siri was afraid to ask why the hell they would want to. So he kept quiet and nodded.

Katay continued. “Of course, they have to be discreet. Eliminate our key personnel one at a time. I was curious as to how they might go about it and then it happened-bam! My deputy, assassinated in his own bath.”

“You’re positive it was an assassination and not, say, an accident?”

“Look at the facts, Siri. The facts. His first night back from Vientiane after meeting with the Russians. His first bath using that fiendish Soviet water heater. It had to be rigged to kill him. That’s why I needed you here.”

“Actually, I’m more of a doctor than an electrician. You might need to bring some technical person in to prove something like that, comrade.”

“But you’re the coroner now. You can tell whether he was murdered. Right?”

“Not always. But let’s see. Where’s the body?”

“Inside.”

“In his house? Still?”

“Right. I had them lock the place as soon as I heard. His wife phoned me when it happened and described the scene to me. I told her to leave and touch nothing. She brought me the key and went to stay with her mother.”

“So, the body is…?”

“Still in the bath, I presume.”

“What? After two days? My God. I hope she removed the plug. We’ll have beef stock in there if she didn’t.”

“I told her to pull the circuit breaker.”

“Thank goodness for small mercies. You have the key?” Katay held it up. Siri called to Tao and asked him if he’d like to join them.

“Not really,” Tao shouted back.

“Officer!”

“Coming, Comrade.”

The three men recoiled when the door shutters were pulled back and the stench of death hurried to escape. Siri felt no spiritual presence. No hovering grievances looking for revenge. They walked through to the back kitchen where Deputy Governor Say lay naked in a zinc bath. Only his head remained above the surface of the now tepid water and it carried a peculiar frozen smile like that on the face of a ventriloquist’s dummy. His body was pink and hairless.

“All right. I’ve seen it,” said Officer Tao. “Think I should be heading back to-”

“Tao, it’s your crime scene,” Siri reminded him. “Take some notes.”

“Notes? Right.” Tao looked around for a pen and paper in the cluttered kitchen. Siri approached the bath and knelt beside it. The brand-new Russian water heater was hooked onto the side of the bath and its element hung below the surface of the water. The lead of the heater looped down to join an extension cord that snaked across the floor to another extension. This was a junction to which a dozen other cords were connected, an octopus of accidents waiting to happen. The skin of the corpse was unmarked.

Siri called to the governor, who remained in the kitchen doorway. He put a handkerchief over his nose and walked forward.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“I presume your deputy was a reasonably intelligent man.”

“Why, yes. He was an old student of mine. Quite brilliant. I recommended him for the position.”

“So we’d have to assume he wasn’t the type of man who’d climb into a tin bath full of water in which dangled a live electrical element.”

“Certainly not.”

“… him for the position,” came a voice from behind them. Siri turned to see Tao attempting to write down the governor’s words.

“Officer Tao,” Siri said. “This isn’t an article for the Pasa-son Lao news. I think it would be sufficient for you just to summarize the things that I say.”

“Very well, Doctor.”

“We’ll have to assume then,” Siri continued, “that once Comrade Say’s big toe touched the surface of the water, he would have received a jolt powerful enough to send him flying across the room.”

“I would imagine that’s true,” the governor agreed.

“Why then is he sitting submerged in the bath?”

“I don’t know.”

“I would have to guess it’s because the water heater was placed in the bath after he sat in it.”

“But that would be…”

“If Say wasn’t of an unsound mind and dunked a live element in his own bath, we’d have to say premeditated murder, Comrade Governor.”

“That’s outrageous. Are you getting all this down, Tao?”

“Almost, Governor.”

“As the police officer handling this case, what would your next step be?” Siri asked Tao. “Next step? Er… interrogation, sir.”

“Of whom?”

“Everyone. Anyone who had a grudge against the deceased and all his house staff, friends, and relatives.”

“Good,” Siri interjected. “But that’s likely to be a lot of work.”

“It’s worth it,” said Katay. “This was the deputy governor of Champasak.”

“I’m not suggesting there shouldn’t be an inquiry,” said Siri- “But perhaps I could suggest a method of eliminating the suspects.”

“I’d be grateful for any help,” Tao said.

“Then do you think we could fingerprint the handle of this heater to see who the last person to touch it was? That would certainly have to be the person who put the heater into the water.”

“Excellent idea,” said Tao. “How exactly would we go about that?”

“How? Surely they taught you fingerprinting at the police school?”

Tao snorted a laugh through his nostrils. “Dr. Siri. I’m just a soldier in a new uniform. Soldiering and policing are interchangeable as far as my bosses are concerned. All the real policemen-I mean the trained ones-either hopped it across the border or they’re up with your friends attending seminars. We’re hard-pressed just to keep the peace. We’re a few years away from doing any actual investigating. Sorry, Governor, but it’s the truth.”

Katay shook his head. “Don’t apologize, Tao. These are desperate times.” He squeezed Siri’s arm. “Doctor, can you do anything?”

Siri’s emotions were mixed. He bemoaned the lack of expertise in his country and wondered how long it would take to educate its youth to become proficient in even the most fundamental skills. But, on the other hand, where else would a seventy-three-year-old amateur get a chance to play detective as he often did? He had a Maigret mystery right there up his sleeve. The intrepid French detective on holiday in a remote town. A break-in at a small art gallery. No crime laboratory around, so in order to check for fingerprints on a discarded frame, Inspector Maigret turns to basic chemicals: a simple gray powder of magnesium and chalk.