Colin Cotterill - Slash and Burn

Siri and Yamaguchi had unfastened the major from the door handle, a feat made easier by a slip knot device tied into the rope. This should have been the major’s escape route; a tug on the loose end and the noose gives way. But, on this occasion, the old soldier hadn’t been fast enough. They enlisted the aid of Phosy to lift him onto the bed. He was as heavy as a jeep. As the erection had failed to go away, they covered the body in a sheet for Peach’s benefit. All the indicators pointed to death by hanging. There was a clear ligature impression between the chin and the larynx. The face was pale and the eyes protruding. Saliva had dried around the mouth. As for the erotic element to the death, both Siri and the American had seen such a thing before. Siri had witnessed it only once; the death of a deviant neighbour in his Paris apartment. A middle-aged man, dressed in pajamas, had hanged himself from a coat rack in a closet. The rail had given way and he had fallen to the floor, waking everybody up. Yamaguchi, it turned out, had seen post mortem autoerotic accidents on numerous occasions, making them sound as common a pastime in Hawaii as Frisbee. Siri decided Western perverts had too much time on their hands. Although he was convinced that the major had accidentally killed himself, there seemed to be something troubling the American. Yamaguchi retreated to his room to look through a reference book he’d brought along for a little light reading.

Breakfast was laid out on the tables as usual but after the events of the morning few people had an appetite. Sergeant Johnson and Gordon went into town on Toua’s ponies to phone the consulate and inform them of events. Judge Haeng, not about to trust his fate to a wild beast, had them send back one of the trucks so he could be driven comfortably into town to pass on the disturbing news to the ministry. At the Friendship, word had spread rapidly and the buzz around the hotel was that this tragedy would surely mark the end of the mission. They knew that as soon as the smoke cleared they’d be on their way back to Vientiane. Only Auntie Bpoo saw the major’s demise as “a heroic way for a pervert to go.” Other opinion ranged from disgust to pity. Civilai arrived late for breakfast, weighed down with a thunderous hangover and oblivious.

“He what?” he said, after receiving a rushed description of the death.

“I doubt he intended to kill himself,” said Siri. “He was involved in a session of autoeroticism.” (He’d resorted to French as there was no Lao equivalent for such a concept.) “You do know what that is, I assume?”

“Of course I do,” Civilai replied. “It’s when you make love to your car. I’m quite fond of my Citroen.”

“Civilai!” said Daeng.

“Sorry. Bad time for a joke. Bad joke for the time.”

“Tact has never been your forte,” said Siri.

“But I very much doubt the major was capable of anything erotic last night,” Civilai said. “Sex, even with oneself, is an act of passion. I’m scouring my memory here but I seem to recall it comes at a time of heightened awareness. You become stimulated to the point when you need release. When I saw him he was dead to the world, snoring like a wild boar.”

“When you saw him where?”

“In his room. I went there last night.”

“You told us you’d forgotten,” said Daeng.

“I had to say that. I could hardly announce that the head of the mission was so drunk he couldn’t unlace his own boots. That he’d thrown up all over the floor.”

“You cleaned him up?”

“And took his boots off.”

“How did you get in the room?” Siri asked.

“The door wasn’t locked. I knocked and tried the handle.”

“Are you sure he was drunk and not ill?”

“Come on, Siri. I know what drunk looks like. He smelled like a whiskey distillery. He looked a lot like you the night Madame Daeng accepted your proposal of marriage.”

“That bad?”

“He was slurring so much his tongue kept flopping out of his mouth.”

“But it was only, what, seven o’clock when you went to his room,” Daeng reminded him. “Seven thirty at the latest. How does a man with Potter’s drinking track record manage to get that sloshed in such a hurry?”

“I’ve never tried it myself,” Civilai told her, “but I imagine knocking back a bottle of eighty-proof Scotch whiskey in an hour might just do it. The empty bottle was in his hand.”

Siri nodded. “What exactly did you do when you found him?”

Civilai broke the end off a baguette and dipped it in a very cold and runny egg yolk before filling his mouth with it. Siri and Daeng waited patiently until Civilai had washed the mouthful down with coffee.

“He was on the bed on his front, face to his left,” Civilai began. “He had the empty bottle in one hand and was reaching for his boot laces with the other. I went over to help him take the boots off and I noticed he had whiskey and sick all down his shirt. Once I’d pulled off his boots I took off his shirt. No mean feat, I can tell you. He’d very obligingly thrown up on the bedside rug rather than the bed cover so I took the rug and the shirt and threw them in the shower, added a little disinfectant from under the sink, and let the water run on them. I may be a kind Samaritan to drunks but I stop short at scrubbing their clothes.”

“And you left him there on the bed?” Siri asked.

“It was cold in the room. Both the windows were wide open. So I pulled the quilt over him. He was already snoring by then. I turned out the light, flicked the lock catch on the inside and shut the door. As I say, I can’t imagine him coming out of a session like that and feeling amorous.”

“Me neither,” Siri agreed. “Unless he took some stimulant when he came round. Something got him excited. He was sexually aroused when we found him.”

“Perhaps Americans recover faster than us,” Civilai suggested. “Out of it one minute. Into it the next.”

“It’s all wrong somehow, my brother. None of it makes sense.”

The senator had been consulting with Dr. Yamaguchi and Rhyme the journalist, and Secretary Gordon. Their thoughts were being passed on by Peach to General Suvan. Suddenly the group separated and Vogal banged a spoon on the table top to get everyone’s attention. Silence took a while.

“My colleagues, brothers and sisters,” he began. Peach stood and took great delight in providing a simultaneous translation. It obviously threw the senator out of sync to have someone speaking at the same time as him but, to his credit, he persevered.

“I would like, personally, to express my regrets over the events of last night,” he said. “This is an embarrassment for my fellow countrymen which I sincerely hope you will not take as an insult. Major Harold Potter was a great soldier and patriot. Like many of us who suffer personal traumas in the field of battle, he carried around his own personal devils. The major’s devils defeated him. As soon as we can, we will return the body to his loved ones. But I’m certain that Major Potter would have wanted this mission to succeed. He was a fighter who never gave up in the face of adversity. I know his spirit is looking down at us now and urging us to honor his memory by returning, not empty-handed, but with news of the downed pilot. On behalf of the United States senate I urge you to continue the search. Forge ahead, my Lao friends.”

He acknowledged some unheard applause, performed another silly-looking nop , sat down and started eating. The Lao picked at their food.

“Another one who’s accountable to Wall Street,” said Civilai. “The sponsors of today’s event are on his back to come up with results. A little thing like the death of a great soldier and patriot won’t stop him. I bet he’s got a speech worked out for each of us, just in case.”