Colin Cotterill - The Merry Misogynist

"There are army barricades that take down plate numbers, but they tend to ignore anything that isn't privately owned. We're checking with the military posts down there anyway. All they do at the migration checkpoints is slowly and painfully copy down all the information on the laissez-passer and write the date in an exercise book. That information goes to the central registry in Pakse, where somebody else copies it out of the exercise book and into a bigger book — "

"So on ad infinitum," said Civilai.

"Well, it turns out that the registrar who noted the information was out drinking one night with a couple of mates from the Champasak Forestry Department — "

"Which I believe is now officially known as the Champasak Deforestry Department," Civilai cut in again.

"Are you going to let me finish, Comrade?"

"Sorry."

"He told his drinking friends that he'd noticed Forestry had a bigwig from Vientiane in town. They said they hadn't heard about it. They mentioned it to their regional boss, and he confirmed there weren't any visitors from anywhere around the date noted in the book, hence the fake laissez-passer complaint. After further investigation they found that the impostor had checked out of the province at the same checkpoint two days later. Don't forget it takes a while for the checkpoint information to reach the city. These were exactly the dates the parents of the missing girl claimed her suitor was in town. He was calling himself Khamphan this time, by the way. There aren't that many non-military strangers hanging around so the Pakse police put two and two together."

"Brilliant," Siri said. "And what did they do about it?"

"Nothing," Phosy confessed. He stirred the coffee and condensed milk together in the glass. It was barely liquid. "They thought it was just a lover's tryst, that the fellow faked the pass so that he could marry his fiancee. They didn't see it as very important."

"That's more like the police force we know and love," Siri decided. "So the story ends there?"

"Yes. We're gathering information about any ongoing projects within a day's drive of Attapeu town over that period. We're going back to all the same ministries. You see, Phan told the parents he was heading north to Vientiane on the night of the wedding. But he didn't cross the northern border. He crossed back into Attapeu. He'd told the parents he'd arranged a laissez-passer for his new bride but there was no mention of her in the ledger at the police checkpoint."

Civilai whistled. "So he killed her in Champasak because it was easier than getting her across the border."

"Either that or he just snuck her across after dark when the police were partying or fast asleep. He could have bribed his way through the barrier with her."

"I'd go with the first theory myself," said Siri.

"Me too," Phosy agreed.

Despite its heat, Siri cradled his glass between his palms, putting off the drinking for as long as possible.

"So," he said, "what we have here is a nasty piece of work who's travelling around the country on some official business. It's work that involves returning after two weeks to — I don't know — to follow up or something. He has influence because he's able to falsify documents that pass cursory inspection. He has a truck, which suggests he's at least the head of a section or department."

"With a very generous gas allowance, judging from all the travelling he's been doing," Phosy added.

"Quite. So it's a project that's far more important than the usual road measuring or rice testing — 'Let's look like we've actually done something' — mission. He goes out to the countryside some way from his actual project site and assumes a false identity. He woos a country girl, takes advantage of her naivete, and she falls in love with him. He promises to come back and marry her. Two weeks later he's in the village bamboozling everyone with all the paperwork he's put together. He convinces them he's registered the marriage and arranged travel documents, and he whisks her off on their wedding night."

"To a honeymoon in hell." Civilai sighed.

"You aren't wrong, brother."

"Then why would somebody so smart be so sloppy?" Civilai asked.

"How do you mean?"

"Well, he was clever enough to fool the regional cadres, and parents and village elders, and then he left the bodies no more than twenty metres from a main road where anyone might stumble across them."

"I think that's the point," said Phosy. "He wants the bodies to be found."

"Exactly," Siri agreed. "It completes the humiliation of the women."

"Who is he, Doctor?" Phosy asked. "I mean what's going on in his head? What are we looking for exactly?"

Siri stood his spoon in his coffee and let it go. It didn't fall to the edge, just stood there, trapped.

"Well," he said, "my psychology training was two semesters, fifty-odd years ago, and it leaned rather heavily towards Freud. And Freud would probably have suggested that our strangler had problems with his mother, or at least a woman in his past. The symbolism of the pestle doesn't take a great deal of imagination to work out. I wouldn't be surprised if he was impotent. All I can be certain of is this: for him to go to so much trouble, something happened to make our Phan hate women with a vengeance."

Siri and Daeng sat across from the closed noodle shop on the high bank of the river. They were perched on two old rattan chairs that creaked more than they did. They were well down a bottle of rice whisky, and they both agreed it was pretty damned good stuff. They held their glasses in their outside hands while their inside hands were clasped together. They stared across the tar black Mekhong, which reflected the little lights on the Thai side. The breezes that skipped off the water suggested the rains might come on time this year and spare the earth any more suffering.

"Dr Siri…?" Daeng began.

"You know I'm always tempted to call you Noodle-seller Daeng whenever you say that?"

By this time of night even their slurring was compatible.

"I wasn't referring to you."

"There's another Dr Siri?"

"That handsome young fellow I met in the south. I was a peanut in those days."

"You were never a peanut."

"I was. You just don't understand. You know how peanuts live in their own little shell chambers, and they can see the peanut next door every day, but the gap between them's too narrow to crawl through?"

"I have to confess I've never really thought about peanuts like that."

"Well, I was that peanut. There you were with Boua, and you were in love then, and you were perfect together. And I was so close every day…but I couldn't touch you. I couldn't get through the gap. And once you both left, I never got over how close we'd been. Eventually I found myself a husband. He was a good man, a rebel like us. And we were content. But every time I saw a peanut it made me sad."

Siri laughed. "Daeng, you're starting to sound like Judge Haeng."

"Don't laugh at me. You know I have trouble expressing myself when I've had a drink or ten. I'm serious."

"How can you be serious about a peanut?"

"Siri!"

"I'm sorry."

"All I want to say is, even if you hadn't been with Boua then, we were too important, too big for our own lives. If we'd tried to be together it wouldn't have worked. It could never have been like this. But over the years we got smaller, and I crawled through to your chamber, and now we are…"

"The happy peanuts."

"Exactly."

"My love, you're so poetic when you've had a few drinks I should keep you sloshed all day."

"And all day I'd tell you how happy I am with you and thank you for taking me in."

They leaned their heads together.

"Your turn," she said.