Colin Cotterill - The Merry Misogynist

Investigator Tham was driving. He was in his fifties, somewhat sedentary but a good soldier, more of a follower than a leader. Phosy took the opportunity to thumb through the notes he'd received from the ladies at the Lao Patriotic Women's Association. He was looking for the anecdotal account of the wedding he'd heard about from Siri. He needed to confirm the location. If it was within driving distance from Pakxan he might be able to tie the two together.

"Here," he said.

"What's that, sir?" Tham looked to his right and saw his boss pawing through all the junk in the flapless glove compartment.

"Any idea if there's a map in h…? Ah, yes."

"Want me to stop?"

"No, keep going. I'll manage."

Phosy unfolded the map and quickly homed in on the location where they'd just found the bones. He then traced his finger along the highway until he found the village he was looking for.

"Damn! It all fits," he said. Tham turned to him again and plummeted into a deep pothole. "Don't feel obliged to look at me, Tham. You concentrate on the road and I'll work the map."

"OK."

"The wedding was held at Paknyun. It's forty kilometres from the intersection. Given the state of the road, he was probably able to drive there in a couple of hours. It's just far enough away to be under the jurisdiction of another police force. So if the parents did make a complaint about a missing daughter, the news probably wouldn't make it to our Sergeant Oudi. He's very smart, our strangler. He's got it all worked out. Tham, I want you to stop at the next village on the main road and wait for the bus going back out to Bolikham."

"That'll take me away from Vientiane," Tham said.

"That's right. Any problem with that?"

"I promised my wife I'd pick up some big head catfish on the way home."

"Right. And I promised the parents of a beautiful girl in Ban Xon that I'd catch the maniac who killed their daughter. See any difference in priority there?"

"Yes, sir. Sorry."

"You'll stay on the bus till you get to Paknyun. I need all the information I can get from the people who attended the wedding. Don't tell them we might have found the missing daughter. It's possible we won't be able to identify these bones. I don't want to upset them unduly."

"But you think it's her?"

"Yes, Tham. I do."

When the police jeep pulled up outside Daeng's noodle shop, it was already three p.m., and Madame Daeng was sitting outside on a rattan chair. She was dressed in her thick gabardine workers' trousers, a loose-fitting blue shirt, and boots. Since her move to Vientiane she'd worn her hair short and wild. Now she'd greased it back, and at first glance Phosy thought she was a man. He jumped from the jeep and looked behind Daeng to see a CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE sign on the shop shutter.

"Madame Daeng, what's so urgent?"

"What on earth kept you, Phosy? I've been waiting for hours." She threw a pack into the back of the jeep.

"I just got back," he said, eyeing the bag. "I dropped some bones off at the morgue. I didn't get the message till I met the clerk."

"Are you alone?"

"I dropped Tham off at a bus stop. Why?"

"I think you're going to need to pick up one or two officers on the way."

"On the way where?"

"To the Thon River." She walked past him and climbed up to the passenger seat.

"What are you talking about? I've just driven all the way from Pakxan. What's at the Thon River?"

"Your murderer, Inspector. Siri left already. He has a three-hour start on us."

"What's all this 'us'? If you're serious about the murderer being at Thon, I'm certainly not going to take an elderly lady with me. It would be more than my job's worth."

"Well, Phosy, that would be a terrible shame, because then you wouldn't get to hear about it. Dr Siri will be massacred, the killer will claim his next victim, and you will have — dare I say it — egg on your face."

"Madame Daeng, listen! Withholding evidence is a serious offence. It's not a game."

"I'm not withholding anything. I'm just planning to tell you on the journey."

Phosy slapped the fender of the jeep and hurt his hand.

"You aren't going to bully me into this. Besides, you can't go to the Thon River. You don't have a laissez-passer to leave Vientiane Prefecture."

"But you have one. Nobody's going to notice a frail old lady. I'll scrunch down on the floor under a blanket. They won't search your vehicle. You're a policeman. Now come on. It's getting late."

"Madame Daeng, I — "

"You're wasting valuable time."

Phosy was still fuming as they neared the intersection at Sangkam. The road was in an awful state. Daeng sat beside him on the passenger seat and the two young officers he'd requisitioned from HQ sat in the back. She'd told him the entire story as Siri had told it to her, and he didn't like it one tiny bit.

"How could you let Siri go after him?" Phosy asked.

Daeng laughed. "How could I stop him? You know Siri as well as I do. I could say, 'Siri, please don't go' and he'd go anyway, and we'd both feel bad. Or I could give him my blessing and a bag of noodles for the journey, and only I'd feel bad."

"You're each as ornery and obstinate as the other," he yelled above the drone of the engine. "When you first suspected it might have something to do with the Census Department you should have contacted me straight away. I'm sick of you two playing detective."

"You weren't here. Your office was empty. Somebody had to play policeman."

"There were other officers around."

"Like them?" Daeng nodded to the rear-view mirror. Phosy looked at the hairless faces of the two young men he'd snatched from headquarters. They were still twenty kilometres from their destination, and they already looked as if they might wet themselves with fear. "What would they have done?"

"And what, tell me, is a seventy-three-year-old man going to do?"

"You have a short memory, Phosy. Just how many of your cases have been solved by the doctor?"

Phosy didn't answer. He sulked all the way past the intersection. The window wipers smeared an omelette of insects across the thick glass. The jeep listed left and right as it negotiated the deep truck furrows. Eventually the policeman deigned to speak.

"I think he's got this one wrong," he said.

"Why so?"

"The girl up in the north — the case I went up there to investigate — it happened way back in '69. The Census Department was run by the old regime in those days. There's nobody left from that era."

"I've been thinking about that too, Phosy. Siri placed this man Buaphan's accent as from the central region, and cultured. I can't work out what someone like that is doing working for the Republic on an official project. The doctor suggested he might be from an influential family that had bought him a position. If that's so, he might well have spent time up north with the Royalists during the war. He might have been an engineer or something. Plus she might have been his first victim. If he started his killing spree back then he wouldn't have needed the Census Department job as a pretext to move around and attack these girls. There was chaos. He would have had ample opportunity. He liked it so much he got a job with the new regime so he could continue his hobby."

"You think somebody high profile would take such a gamble?"

"Why not, Phosy? You've seen how arrogant he is. He believes he's better than all of us. He's planned it all so carefully. He can't imagine anyone catching him. In his mind, he's God."

Phan sat naked and cross-legged beneath the tree he'd selected on his previous visit. He welcomed the ravenous red ants and vampiric mosquitoes that chewed at his flesh. Eventually they too would learn he was invincible. By the light of the candles he looked through the documents one last time: the registration of marriage, the housing certificate, the laissez-passers, permission from the Social Relations office, bank statements, a police letter verifying that he was unmarried and not wanted for any crimes, birth certificate, Party membership record, and, just for icing on the cake, a full curriculum vitae.