Colin Cotterill - Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

"Good job, Sihot," said Siri.

"Thank you, Comrade."

"Any background information on our prowling wolf Vietnamese major?" Siri asked.

"Getting military information from the Vietnamese is like getting blood from a crab," Phosy told him. "There are channels. But the wheels are in motion. We'll have to be patient."

"Did anyone ask him at the interview…?"

"If he was a fencer? Yes. He said no. He said no to most of the questions. But we found out he was in Czechoslovakia for eighteen months of military training. He forgot to mention that as well. We're chasing that up with the Czech embassy. They owe us a favour."

"All right, Phosy," said Siri, leaning back on his chair. "That just leaves you."

"And our real fencer, Jim," Phosy said. "All I got from the files was that her parents were 'casual staff'. It's the catchall phrase for everything from day labourers to hotel bellboys. The records didn't say where they'd worked. In the old days, everyone not in government service who could write, put 'casual staff' on their documents. Her mother was Vietnamese and probably didn't have any official status here, so I doubt there's anything on record anywhere. We only know she was Vietnamese because Jim wrote it on her application for the eastern bloc. No permanent address. No personal details about the parents.

"We do know Jim enrolled aged sixteen as a trainee medic with the American refugee hospital in Nam Tha. She was one of the star pupils by all accounts. When the Yanks fled, our people found Jim running one of the clinics without any supervision. They all called her 'doctor' up there. Our own medical officials were so impressed with her skills and her dedication that they overlooked the fact she'd been selected and trained by Americans and made a scholarship available to her in the Soviet Union. They wanted her to qualify as a real doctor. There was an awful shortage. But she refused that and two other scholarship placements. Cited pressure of work. Not ready to leave. But then a scholarship post came up in East Germany and she finally agreed. She spent a year studying German, picked it up without effort, then launched on the first year of pre-med. It was one of those accelerated courses the Europeans put on for third-world countries. They assume we don't have the brains to attend regular medical schools and that our people don't get as sick as theirs so we don't need seven years of study."

Phosy looked up from his notes to find both Siri and Sihot smiling at him.

"What? It's true. It is. Anyway, Jim sailed through her language classes and the first two semesters of medicine. Top of her class in everything. Then something went wrong. She failed her first year final exams. Not just failed but bombed completely. They let her do a supplementary exam and she failed that as well. Under the terms of her scholarship they had no choice but to send her home."

"That's weird," said Siri. "And nobody knows what happened?"

"No."

"Anything from her classmates?"

"There might be, but don't forget they're all still over there studying. I've written to the Lao student union representative in Berlin. But even with express delivery it could be two or three weeks before we hear back from them. I don't have an international telephone budget."

"Any chance of finding her parents, Inspector?" Sihot asked.

"I'm on it, Sergeant. But I get the feeling they're old regime. Just the fact their daughter got work on a US medical mission makes me think they had some American connections."

"And that could bring us back to K6," Siri said. "I think the locations of the killings are important. It can't be a coincidence that two of the girls were murdered right there under the noses of the Vietnamese and Lao security services. The killing at Sisangvone primary school doesn't fit in any respect so I think we should put that on the back shelf and focus on K6. I'm wondering whether Jim's parents might have been on the staff there before seventy-five."

"And jumped ship with all the others," Sihot agreed. "It might explain why Jim didn't want to go into too much detail about what her parents did. It might have affected her application to study."

"I met a fellow who tends the grounds out there," Siri recalled. "His name's Miht. He's one of the overlappers. He'd probably remember a Vietnamese?Lao couple with a smart daughter from the American days. In fact, you might want to check him out as a suspect as well. I can't give you a good reason why. It's just a feeling I have in my gut that he's connected in some way. He seemed to be…observing. I know observing's a Lao hobby but he was making an art out of it."

"I'll look into it, Doctor," said Sihot.

"Let's not forget, whoever killed the two women at K6 had a right to be there," Phosy added. "We should consider all the staff suspects. With the cabinet members living out there, it isn't the easiest place to get in to. How many people are we talking about, Sihot?"

A stony-faced girl in a faded uniform came trotting in dripping water all over the place from her umbrella. She handed Phosy a sheet of paper, giving Sihot time to reshuffle his pack.

"Including domestic staff," Sihot read, "labourers, soldiers, security personnel, and all the politicians and their families…just over five hundred, Inspector."

"Better odds than having the entire country to search through," Siri reminded them.

"And the odds might have improved even more," Phosy said, reading the sheet.

"What's that?" Siri asked.

"It's the Electricite du Lao work roster for rewiring the east side of the compound. The names of the workers with security clearance. And whose name do we see right here at the top?"

"I only know one person who works for Electricite du Lao," Siri said. "The husband of Dew."

"No?" said Sihot. "Comrade Chanti? I don't believe it. Twice we talked to him and not once did he mention he was working out at K6."

"Perhaps we didn't ask the right questions," Phosy growled.?

Once the meeting was over and the next round of interviews scheduled, Siri asked Phosy if he could walk him to his motorcycle. The rain hadn't stopped. There were those beginning to believe it never would. It was falling wheezily now, catching its breath before the next major expectoration.

"What is it, Doctor?" Phosy asked with an almost irritated tone.

"There doesn't always need to be something, son," Siri smiled. "With all the nastiness we've been dealing with, we sometimes forget to find a minute or two to pass the time of day, take an interest in each other."

Phosy stopped. "What do you want, Siri?"

"Ah, well. If you insist. Are you having an affair behind Dtui's back, Phosy?"

Phosy's smile was as drab as the day.

"Anything else?" he asked.

"That's all."

"Then I'll see you tomorrow."

Phosy turned and started to walk away.

"Are you just going to leave me standing here in the rain without an answer?"

Phosy ran up the wooden steps and into his office, swerving to avoid a jet of water arcing from the broken roof tiles.

"It certainly would seem so," Siri answered himself.?

"So, what do you think it meant?" Madame Daeng asked later that evening. She and Siri were putting up shelves in the room they were now whimsically calling The Dr Siri Memorial Library. Daeng was the carpenter in the family. Siri just handed her nails when told to. He was impressed at how well her late-afternoon sawing was fitting neatly together.

"I thought perhaps you'd know," he replied.

"I wasn't there, was I? Nail! I'd need to have been there. Was it an embarrassed smile? A 'don't be ridiculous' smile? An ironic 'wouldn't you like to know?' smile? Nail!"

"It was just a…you know? A smile."

"Then you have to ask him again. And next time, read the smile."