Colin Cotterill - Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

The list of Electricite du Lao employees involved in the project sat on the front right-hand corner of Sihot's desk held down by half a cluster-bomb casing. The third name on that list was Somdy Borachit.

Inspector Phosy had been focusing on the returnees who'd subscribed to magazines at the government bookshop. He was attempting to trace the names on the list. As they hadn't been obliged to provide their addresses, it was a laborious process. He had been sidetracked at one stage after interviewing one bookshop customer: a member of the Women's Association recently returned from Moscow. She had, she said, filed an official complaint against the bookshop clerk for making 'improper advances' towards her. Phosy's enquiries led to the discovery that the poor man had merely asked her if she'd be interested to attend a cultural event with him. That was as far as the advance went and Phosy hadn't seen anything improper about it. Unattached single man approaches unattractive single woman with hopes of romance. A flirtation. He wondered whether the complaint would have been made at all if the clerk had been better looking. He let it pass.

Phosy had been receiving responses too from his Eastern European contacts. The Czech embassy had discovered that Dung, the Vietnamese major, had taken a course in fencing in Prague as part of the physical education component of his course. In fact, his Czech instructor had given him an A and commented that the Vietnamese was a natural swordsman. The major had lied at the interview. As a result, his name was moved to the top of the list of suspects. Over the years, Phosy had come to believe that when all the arrows pointed to one person, that was invariably your man.

To Phosy's surprise, word came back from East Germany via the embassy's diplomatic pouch with regard to the third victim, Jim. Early reports were that she had been a friendly but studious woman who had impressed all her lecturers. She was the perfect student, doing extra research outside the curriculum, not wasting her time with nightlife or parties. Some of her classmates recalled that there had been a man interested in her but nobody remembers seeing him. They only knew from Jim that he was a student on a government scholarship. Jim had once commented with a smile how flattering it had been to have such an attractive man throwing pebbles at a girl's window.

As they'd approached the first round of pre-medical examinations, Jim's comments had begun to sound more desperate. On one occasion, she'd told a classmate, "I'm starting to get a little impatient. He doesn't take no for an answer." Some of the Lao had jokingly suggested she invite her 'boyfriend' to one of the weekend balls and she'd become very agitated. "Really, there's no relationship here. Just an annoyance." Then, even nearer to the exams a classmate had found Jim walking around outside at midnight in the snow. She'd been crying. She'd said, "He really won't leave me alone. He won't let me study."

The classmate had suggested she tell the student representative but Jim had refused. The Lao student said she became concerned for Jim's well-being after that night but Jim wouldn't let her get close. And it was around then that Jim's future came tumbling down. She failed her exams, but more than that it was as if she'd become an entirely different person. One girl commented, "She'd lost all her warmth. She didn't speak. Didn't answer any questions. Something terrible had happened to her. We thought it must have been him, whoever he was. We didn't know what he'd done to her but she was clearly terrified of him."

Phosy had gone through the translation two or three times, astonished at what a transformation had come over the woman. Something had happened in Berlin to change a bright, straight-A student with a brilliant future into a frightened failure. In Phosy's mind the killer had taken on a new, more sinister guise. What happened in Berlin might have been unrelated to the K6 murders but he didn't believe so. He immediately demanded a list of all foreign students studying in East Germany in 1977.

Apart from confirmation that victim two, Kiang, had taken no physical education classes and that victim one, Dew, had at one stage been selected to compete in a regional fencing tournament in a very small town in Bulgaria, no other information had arrived to bring him closer to his killer. His desk was a monument of paperwork; his own notes, interview transcripts, and telexes. But, on the front left-hand corner was the list of subscribers at the government bookshop. It was on the top of a pile, weighted down with a tiny plaster cast of Malee's left foot age one month. Eleventh down that list was the name Somdy Borachit.?

"Sh…sh…she didn't come back today."

"Who's that, Geung?"

Dtui was sitting on a stool facing the freezer controls with the Russian-Lao dictionary open on her lap. Mr Geung was using a long-handled broom to sweep cobwebs from the ceiling.

"The Down's Syndrome. She didn't come b…back."

"Must have been a mirage, hon."

"No…no…no. What's a marge?"

"A mirage is something you think you see but it isn't really there."

"I saw her."

"Ah, but did you? What if you wanted to see her so much that you made her up?"

"Eh?"

"You made magic and she came."

"I…I…I can't make magic."

"If you want something badly enough, you can."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Look at Malee. I really wanted Malee in my life and there she was."

"No. You had s…sex and you made a baby."

"OK, right. That helped too. But it all started with a dream. And then I wished."

"I wouldn't w…w…wish for a Down's Syndrome to come."

"Why not?"

He put on a deep voice.

"That lot are f…feeble minded."

"Yeah? Who said that?"

"Judge Haeng."

"Oh, yeah? Is that the same Judge Haeng who had you sent way up north?"

"Yes."

"And you found your way back to the morgue all by yourself?"

"Yes."

"Then, you tell me which one of you is feeble minded. Look, Geung, you've been giving this woman a hard time since she started here. And, as far as I can see, she hasn't done anything wrong. I'll tell you how to look at this. There are times when you feel…out of it, right? When people make you feel like an outsider."

"Yes. Lots."

"But you have me and Dr Siri, and Civilai and now you have Malee. And we all make you feel better at those times. Right?"

"Yes."

"Well, maybe, this woman, if she exists, maybe she feels like you do sometimes. But she hasn't got a morgue full of family to make her feel better. People who love her. Maybe she'd appreciate just a friendly 'hello' sometimes and she wouldn't feel like an outsider."

"Just a hello."

"That's all. Then she'll start to feel like you do."

"That's all?"

"Right. But I still don't believe there is a Down's Syndrome girl. Nobody else has seen her. I think she's a joke you're playing on us."

"No. Sh…sh…she's real. Her name's Tukta."?

On the eve of Siri's departure for Phnom Penh via Peking, he had a bit of trouble getting home from the morgue. As was often the way, he'd sat around for most of the day fine-tuning his report on the epee murders, scratching about for something to keep himself busy, a case, a phone call, a body, a visit, some splattering of bureaucratic foolishness for him to complain about. But there had been nothing until four in the afternoon. Then everything happened. At one stage, Mr Geung came running into the office and spent several minutes catching his breath, attempting to filter out a word or two. Siri had rubbed his friend's shoulders and calmed him down, and finally he was able to say…

"She…she's back."

"Who's that, Geung?"

"The Down's Syndrome. Sh…she…she's a part-time staff in the can…the can…in the canteen."