Colin Cotterill - Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

Civilai accepted a glass of rum and soda from Madame Daeng with an overly polite nod. No Thai hooch this but genuine Bacardi he'd brought along himself, courtesy of the president. He sipped at his drink, smacked his lips and said, "Which brings me finally to the groundsman, Miht. I'd seen him around often but never had cause to talk to him. He turned out to be a very knowledgeable fellow. But he couldn't come up with a memory of a Lao?Vietnamese couple with a daughter who trained with the American doctors. He was, without a shadow of a doubt, lying to me."

"What makes you think that?" Phosy asked.

"Well, he isn't the only survivor from the old to the new regime. There are two or three more who stayed on to ring in the new. One of them is called Comrade Tip, the washing lady. She maintains the small laundry at K6. My wife used to take our bedding there because our line isn't strong enough to hold up all those wet sheets and covers. Comrade Tip knew exactly who I was talking about. She couldn't remember the mother's name but the father was a cook?handyman called Rote. Their daughter was a precocious girl called Jim. She'd done really well in school, charmed the Americans, and ended up in a mission hospital in Nam Tha."

"And did she recall where this couple worked?" Siri asked.

"As clear as day." Civilai smiled and sipped his drink. "At the Jansen house. The house with the sauna."

This revelation led to a frenzy of questions and qualifications and hypotheses. But mainly it caused a single headache that throbbed in the temples of everyone present. What did it mean? The parents of victim number three, Jim, had worked at the house where victim number one was killed. Siri tipped onto the back legs of his chair and let the spirit beam arrest his fall. He'd imagined the case in more simple terms; the victims met a bad man who had clearance at K6 and he killed them. Now it seemed the crime had a history. It was like planning a red theme and having delivery after delivery of drastically yellow books.

"Damn," he said. "Phosy, are your findings going to make this any more complicated?"

The inspector hadn't accepted a drink. Recently he'd become Phosy the temperate. Siri wondered how he would ever elicit secrets from a sober man.

"I looked down the list of bookshop patrons you gave me," Phosy said. "All three victims had subscribed to receive journals in their respective fields, paid for by the embassies that sponsored them. I showed the clerk Polaroids of the victims and he was certain he'd seen all three utilising the reading room. He said that Saturday afternoon was the most popular as Saturday was a half-day for most workers. There might be seven or eight customers in there at a time. People even sitting on cushions on the ground. I doubt they were all engrossed in the malt yield of the Ukraine. It was a sort of informal reading club. Of course, there's no guarantee our killer put his name down to subscribe to anything, but we're working our way down the list. It's the best lead so far."

After the meeting, Siri wasn't of a mood to sit and drink with Civilai. He had a room full of books and a limited number of years to get through them. But Civilai had insisted in that belligerent way of men who are starting to lean too heavily on the bottle. He seemed more out of control than usual. He didn't even know he was putting on old clothes to go visiting. Only a man living by himself would be allowed to make such a mistake.

"Where's Mrs Nong?" Siri asked.

"Surely you mean, how's Mrs Nong?" Civilai said. They were sitting at the gingham Formica tabletop. Madame Daeng had gone upstairs. Phosy had left, presumably to pursue his nefarious late-night habits. A large purple gecko hung boldly from the far wall like an ornament. It had interrupted the conversation several times with its rude burps.

"No, I mean 'where'," Siri confirmed. "She wouldn't have let you out in this state."

Civilai laughed.

"Am I in a state, Siri?"

The doctor remained silent and stared at his friend. Even the gecko held its breath.

"She's visiting her sister," Civilai said at last.

"Her sister lives in Khouvieng," Siri reminded him. "That's a twenty-minute trip from your house."

"I mean she's staying there for a few days. She's not well. The sister. The sister's not well."

Siri continued to stare. Rain dripped and splashed from the rear window shutter.

"She likes to stay there sometimes," Civilai added.

Stare.

"Quite a lot of times lately, in fact. She's been gone a couple of weeks now. I'm starting to wonder, you know, wonder if she's planning to come back at all."

He delivered it like a joke but neither of them laughed.

Stare.

"I do wonder, since that little bit of political hoo-hah we went through last year, I mean, since the…since my retirement, I do wonder whether I've been even more difficult to live with than usual. All this baking. Goodness, she's barely been able to get into her own kitchen. I'd snap at her if she tried. She probably goes to her sister's just for the opportunity to cook something. I wonder if I've been awful about a lot of things."

Stare.

"I'm planning to get my act together. And you don't have to tell me this stuff doesn't help." He symbolically pushed the glass away. "Alcohol is an ally to the contented but a foe to those with heavy hearts. Not sure who said that. I probably made it up myself. Damned good, I think. I still have flashes of the old genius every now and then. Moments of lucid thought. Increasingly cantankerous though. I imagine she'd say that."

He ran his finger across the cool plastic table top tracing the squares.

"I'm going to see her, of course."

The gecko clicked like a clock.

"Tomorrow seems as good a day as any. Don't you think?"

Stare.

"Hmm, well, you've certainly put a damper on this party, Dr Siri Paiboun." He lifted his wrist to look at a watch he'd forgotten to put on. "And just look at the time. I have shirts to wash." He scraped back his chair, abandoned his drink, blew his young brother a kiss and meandered unsteadily between the tables to the open shutters.

"Don't forget to put your lights on," Siri shouted as his friend slipped behind a curtain of rain. He sighed. Was it the weather? Did the constant grey turn everything negative? Why was everybody having so much trouble getting along? Half the world not finding love at all, the other half not knowing how to hold on to it. Or had it always been like this?

"Things have to be sorted out before it's too late," he told the gecko.?

Siri read until one a.m. The second Soviet strip light, newly installed in the second-floor library, had illuminated his book with such enthusiasm that he could see the flecks of wood fibre in the paper. His mind could have stayed up all night but his body craved sleep. He apologised to Monsieur Sartre and went to bed. For once, Madame Daeng didn't stir when he joined her and, as soon as the ghost of his missing left earlobe hit the pillow, he was thrown into that nightmare. The same boy, wearing Siri's talisman around his neck. The same moment of indecision. Would he laugh and walk away or would he pull the trigger? The moment dragged through time, allowing the panic to take hold. Will he blow off the doctor's head tonight, or not? The finger twitches, then relaxes. The boy smiles and walks on. A sigh. Head on night. And in the distance he hears the voice. The melodic voice of love and promise. A sound so enchanting Siri is drawn to it like a night moth to the bright fire trail of a jet engine. No good can come of it. He reaches into his own dream and grabs for his stupid music-following self. "Don't do it," he calls, and he finds himself just in time and throws his arms around himself and drags himself out of his nightmare.

And his pillow was wet with sweat because he knew that if he were to ever find the singer, all hope for mankind would be lost.