Colin Cotterill - Disco for the Departed

Dtui massaged the patient’s arm until a faint bluish shadow appeared, which she speared with the hypodermic. Within seconds the patient was connected to his drip and she steered the intern outside.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Drowned,” he confessed.

“You and me both. Just keep a score of the ones you save. That’s how I do it. Don’t count the others. They would have gone anyway.”

“All right. Thanks.”

“I wanted to ask you about Mrs. Duaning.”

“Is she dead yet?”

“Weak, but holding on. What I was curious about was the blood on her feet.”

“Ah, that. It’s an old superstition. If there’s something seriously wrong, the relatives daub blood on the feet.”

“Medically wrong?”

“Sometimes, or sometimes mentally. It keeps the evil spirits out.”

“But this blood appears all by itself.”

Meej laughed. “No, it doesn’t.”

“You know something I don’t.”

“The young girl’s been here since the day before yesterday. I don’t know if she’s a relative or just someone from the village who was looking for the old lady. She’d wandered off one day. The girl found her here, spent a minute with her, then ran off home. She came back a few hours later with three pigs and a machete.”

“How come I haven’t seen her?”

“She isn’t comfortable with white medicine. She stays hidden out back. Her role’s just to keep the old woman’s feet bathed in blood until it’s all over.”

“Does she know what’s wrong with the woman?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“Yes.”

“Can you bring her to me?”

“Well…”

“What’s wrong?”

“Could you change out of your white uniform? She’s quite certain you’re a ghost.”

Dtui looked down at the only uniform she’d thought to bring with her and smiled. It wasn’t exactly white anymore. “They have ghosts this big up here? All right. Bring her into Mrs. Nuts’s room and I’ll change out of my ghost disguise.” She covered her white uniform with green surgical scrubs.

Ten minutes later, Meej prodded a girl of about ten into the little ward block occupied only by three heavily drugged patients and Mrs. Nuts. The girl was carrying a jam jar in the bottom of which was a fresh batch of blood. Dtui smiled but the girl recoiled at the sight of her even white teeth. “Do you speak Lao?” Dtui asked.

The girl looked at Meej. “She doesn’t,” he said.

“Then can you ask her why she ran home to get the sacrificial pigs?”

He did. Dtui noticed that all the questions were long and the answers short. “She says the woman’s possessed.”

“How can she be so sure?”

The girl pointed to the woman’s mouth, still repeating her weakening chorus. “That,” she said.

“That what?”

Mrs. Nuts was still repeating the same words, over and over, in perfect northern Lao dialect.

“She said the old lady can’t speak Lao. Not a word of it.”

Dtui raised her eyebrows in surprise and whistled softly. “I see.”

“And there’s something else,” Meej told her.

“I doubt it could get any weirder.”

“It does, Nurse Dtui. She said this voice, the voice the old lady’s using-it doesn’t belong to Mrs. Duaning. Someone else is speaking through her mouth.”

Comrade Lit arrived at the guesthouse in the middle of the afternoon and found Dr. Siri on the veranda. “Good health, Comrade Doctor.” They shook hands. “I heard about your miracle cure of our… houseguest today.”

“Nice to see that the grapevine is still up.”

“I’d like to thank you. It would have been quite difficult if anything had happened.”

“It was nothing, really.”

“Nevertheless, the Party offers its sincere thanks, and…”

“Out with it.”

“It would be greatly appreciated if the identity of our visitors remained confidential.”

“Darn, and there I was just about to make an announcement over the national radio network. Who in blazes am I going to tell?”

“Particularly, I think it would be beneficial”-he lowered his voice-”to keep it from your nurse.”

“She’s already a security risk?”

“Not… no, she… Please.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Now, you have some news for me?”

“More than I expected to have,” the tall man said, seating himself opposite the doctor. Siri poured him a cup of tea from the thermos and left it to cool.

“I’ve just been speaking to the Immigration Police in Hanoi. I called them yesterday and gave them the names of your Cuban interns. It’s taken them all this time to go through the files. You know what it’s like. It appears neither man left on the flight he was booked on. In fact, there’s no record of their leaving at all.”

“But they were shipped to Hanoi?”

“They made it that far. They had a military escort. I talked to the driver. He remembers it clearly.”

“So may we assume they turned around and came back?”

“I don’t know. If they did, someone must have noticed. I’ve got my men asking around.”

“Anything about the Vietnamese colonel?”

“His name was Ha Hung. I’m afraid I’ve come to a dead end on that investigation-literally. The colonel was killed three months before the cement path was laid.”

“What were the circumstances?”

“Hmong ambush.”

“And what happened to his daughter?”

“I don’t know. They told me his family went back to Vietnam after the old man’s death. They won’t be easy to trace.”

“Could you try for me?”

“Certainly. Anything else?”

“Dr. Santiago will be dropping by here on his way to Kilometer 8 Hospital. I’ve asked him to take a look at our mummy. See if he recognizes him.”

“Hmm. I doubt even the great Dr. Santiago could identify what’s left. He’ll probably be too busy chasing around young girls barely old enough to be his granddaughters.” Siri noted his animosity but wasn’t really interested enough to dig down to its roots. Lit looked around. “I can’t help but notice the absence of Nurse Dtui at our last two meetings. I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with my setting her straight the other day.”

“Son, let me put it this way. You may very well be able to domesticate a gibbon by repeatedly whacking it over the head with a hammer, but people respond less kindly to concussion.”

“One of my duties is to educate.”

“You don’t beat people up with a philosophy, young fellow. You introduce them to it, gradually.”

“You think I was a little too heavy-handed?”

“I’m sorry to say you’re mired in the shattered cranium school of mentoring. Take it a little easier in future and I’m certain you’ll have more success.”

“Was Nurse Dtui upset? Is that why she isn’t here?”

“Dtui’s got a much thicker skin than that. No, she’s helping out at Kilometer 8 until the new Cuban doctors get here.”

“She is quite remarkable.”

The comment surprised Siri. “I thought you didn’t like her.”

“On the contrary, Doctor. I’ve been more than impressed from the very beginning. I admit she lacks discipline, but…”

Siri waited for the “but” to go somewhere but it just dangled. “I’ll be sure to tell her when I see her this afternoon.”

“You’re going out there?”

“I’ll go with Santiago. I’m interested to see where the Cubans were billeted, and I’d like to ask around about them.”

“And you’ll be sure to let me know if you find anything?”

“Of course.”

“The Central Administration was most distressed to learn the victim might have been Cuban. Their delegation naturally wants this cleared up as soon as possible. There’s a politburo member coming from Havana for the concert. I’d like to have the culprit locked up by then. I think I should come by and see you this evening so you can tell me what you found out.”