Colin Cotterill - Anarchy and the Old Dogs

“I had to wake up the watchman to open the door. I almost came directly to your room.”

“I’m a married man.”

“You’ll see me in a completely different light when I tell you what I found out.”

“I doubt that, but I’m desperate enough to believe anything. Tell!”

Before Siri could begin, the cook came over and asked if they were ready for breakfast. To Civilai’s disappointment, Siri ordered them fried eggs, bread, and coffee.

“We’re going to need something solid inside us today,” Siri told him.

“Well, we’re in the wrong place for that. How did your visit to the fishing village turn out?”

“Oh, heck. How could I have forgotten that? It was amazing. The whole community was mourning for the boy. I’ve never seen anything like it: marvelous spirit, lovely people. Poor as river mud yet devoted to each other. Remember the way country life used to be? No, perhaps you don’t. Of course, I’d arrived there thinking the mother was overreacting. A drowned child is a drowned child. But once I saw the body I knew she was right. Something very abnormal had happened to that boy.”

“How so?”

“Well, first, yes, he had indications of a drowning: some froth in the bronchi, water in the lungs. Nothing conclusive really, as he’d been in the water for so long. It was the other inconsistencies that made it so odd. I don’t really know how to describe it. It was as if there were two parts to him. As if the maceration of the bottom half of his body had happened faster than that of the top half.”

“That doesn’t sound very logical, Siri.”

“I know. I immediately understood why the river people were unhinged by the sight. His arms and face were covered in mosquito bites but there were none on his legs. Then there were the splinters.”

“Wood splinters?”

“Yes. There were these enormous splinters, about ten of them, in his back and the backs of his legs. I can’t imagine how they got there.”

The cook appeared and plonked down two plates and a basket of gray bread in front of the guests. The eggs seemed to float like flat tropical fish in pools of grease.

“Coffee’s coming,” the cook said. To Civilai’s ears, it sounded like a threat. He pushed his plate away and turned to Siri.

“Tell me, didn’t this boy wash up in Muang Khong or somewhere?”

“Sri Pun Don.”

“All right. So what? A hundred miles from his home after I don’t know how many hours of being thrashed about by the river. Surely he would have brushed against submerged logs, tree trunks?”

“I thought of that,” said Siri, spooning the egg goop into his mouth as if it were food. “So had the family. But think about it. The flow of the Mekhong hasn’t yet built up any pace. Logs that have been submerged for months, years? They’re soft wood already. You need dry timber to get splinters. And if the damage was caused by the river, surely the splinters would be all over, not just on his back.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know. Obviously, our priority here is the fact that our country may soon be plunged into anarchy. Nonetheless, I’ve promised the mother I’ll do a little rooting around. The community gave me half a dozen mud carp for my troubles.”

“I love mud carp.”

“Me, too. That’s why Daeng and I ate them all last night, sorry. As I say, we have bigger fish to fry, and, to that end, we’ve made a breakthrough.”

Civilai had managed to spear his fried egg with his fork and was holding it above the plate, watching the grease drip. “We have?”

Siri told him everything: the Devil’s Vagina tree, the refugee camp connection, the mail service. Yet even as he was telling it, he realized the story lacked the same certainty it had held the previous night. Civilai echoed his thoughts.

“Your friend Daeng did a good job. But don’t you think you might be a little too desperate to make a link between all these spare parts? Myths and legends and postal networks don’t necessarily spell out a camp-based insurgency, Siri.”

“I know, but we’ve been here almost a week. Do we have anything better? Has all your clandestine networking actually turned anything else up? Be honest now. I’ve seen how frustrated you’re getting. You haven’t achieved much, have you?”

“Not a lot.”

“Then this is better than nothing. What do we have to lose?”

Civilai gave up on his egg and let it splash back onto the dish.

“Nothing at all. Let’s go with it. I’ll get in touch with my contacts in Vientiane and see what they can dig up. I imagine we have people placed in all the camps keeping an eye on things.”

“Spies, you mean?”

“Observers. They’d know if there was a major plot being arranged. Lots of gossip in the camps. Don’t forget we have to be careful who we share this with. I think your friend Daeng should be the end of the grapevine.”

“Well…”

“What?”

“Daeng and Phosy.”

“How on earth could you get word to Phosy between last night and now? You’ve only just crawled out of bed for heaven’s sake.”

“I was excited. I wrote him a note. Daeng said she could have it on the 6 a.m. bus to Vientiane. She knows the conductor. She was going to get him to drop it off at the morgue when he arrived.”

“The morgue? So Dtui’s in the loop as well.”

“Come on, old brother, if we can’t trust them, who can we trust? They’ve been involved in this from the beginning.”

“It’s not their reliability I’m concerned about. It’s their safety. This is a nasty situation, and they have a not-unwarranted reputation for acting recklessly. Let’s just hope they don’t do anything silly.”

The refugee couple waited until dark before attempting to cross the ink black Mekhong to Thailand. The ever-present cloud had obscured the moon, so only one or two pricks of light from far downriver gave them any sense of space or distance. Without them the couple would have been suffocated by the darkness.

The journey from Vientiane on the dusty, potholed road had left them bruised and parched and particularly grumpy. Of course, Phosy had been in a mood long before the couple had climbed onto the bus in the capital. He’d already been fuming while he waited for the fake laissez-passers at temporary police headquarters. He was a man used to getting his own way and somehow he’d let himself get talked out of his own harebrained scheme and into someone else’s. He knew it was madness. He was sure to lose his job. But then again, if they failed in this mission, there might not be a job to lose. There might not be a life to ruin.

As far as that went, Dtui had been right. And, yes, she’d been right, too, about the fact that a couple would draw less suspicion on the Thai side than a single man. Refugees escaped in family groups or in large numbers. A man on his own might be a spy, a communist infiltrator. Alone, he was far more likely to be shot by the Thai border patrol. In fact, Dtui had been right about everything, which was the main reason he was sulking. She’d acted so smug as she ticked off all the logical reasons she should go with him to Ubon, and he couldn’t argue against one of them. All she’d left him with was the perennial policeman’s fallback: “Because I say so.”

She’d laughed at him then, laughed in his face, made him feel as small as the roaches that scurried around their feet in the cutting room. She’d shown him the letter again: scrawled writing, almost incomprehensible to anyone who hadn’t spent a year deciphering her boss’s notes. It was garbled, as if he was on medication, but there was no doubt to whom he had written:

“Dear Dtui,” it said and “Please pass this message on to Phosy.” Siri and Civilai obviously saw her as the senior contact. Wasn’t that humiliating as well? He really had no choice. The letter hadn’t exactly told them they should go to the camp; in fact, it told them not to do anything until they received further instructions. But just how long were they expected to sit around waiting?