Colin Cotterill - Disco for the Departed

The spirit of Mrs. Nuts had a marvelous sense of timing. Even as Siri stared at the girl, she seemed to change to a different gear. She smiled and giggled once as a four-year-old, then continued where she’d left off in the voice of a grandmother.

“Oh, I say.” Siri raised his bushy old eyebrows and watched in surprise. “We seem to have a few wires crossed here.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I’m not sure I can. If she were a radio we could just twiddle with the antenna a bit. But this isn’t going to be easy. Not easy at all.”

Mr. Woot-the spy, the bounty hunter, the chicken counting Khon Khouay representative for the region-was sitting in the office of the local Insurgency Intelligence Unit five miles from Vang Vieng. He still had that Darkie toothpaste smile on his face, just like the minstrel on the tube, but it was beginning to fade. Woot’s capture of the day was safely in his cell, and all Woot wanted now was his bounty money. Once he was paid, he could return to the streets to hunt down insurgents, discover double agents, and weed out Royalist sympathizers. But the unit director still hadn’t handed over the reward.

“Woot,” he said. “You know? I don’t think I can sell this tale to Vientiane.”

“What are you talking about?” Woot said indignantly. “I caught him red-handed taking notes at the airfield.”

“You didn’t bring me any evidence.”

“Ooy, I told you. Before I could get to him, he’d swallowed the paper. I wasn’t about to reach down his throat and fish it out, was I now?”

Captain Bounyasith was an old drinking buddy of Woot’s and he got a percentage of all the bounty money he handed out to his field agents. He was trying very hard to make the story fly, but it was still too heavy to get off the ground. “Plus,” he said, “there’s the fact that the airfield down there hasn’t been used since Air America left.”

“Reconnaissance, comrade. Reconnaissance. The insurgents have obviously got it earmarked as a future invasion site. Come on. Work with me on this, brother.”

“I’m just telling you what Vientiane’s going to say to me. That’s all.” The tired old captain sighed and dipped his Vietnamese biscuit into his tea. All but the pinch between his fingers broke off and sank beneath the surface. He swore under his breath. It was a crumbly, soggy type of day all around.

“Okay,” Woot conceded. “But we do have the actual insurgent locked up.”

The captain fished around in the tea with his pen. He could find no evidence at all that the biscuit ever existed. “Have you not noticed what he is?” he asked. “Don’t you think they’ll notice that at the interrogation?”

“It’s a front.”

“A front? You mean he’s pretending to look the way he does? You mean he doesn’t actually have speech and hearing problems? You mean he doesn’t have flaky skin and flat feet and stink like a field latrine?”

There were a few seconds of silence.

“He’s good, I’ll give him that.”

Captain Bounyasith leaned back and emptied his tea out of the open window into the yard. They heard the

chickens cluck toward it in a frenzy. “No, Woot. It isn’t going to work. Nobody’s going to believe it.”

“Shit!” The spy, who everyone in the province knew without any doubt was a spy, stood up and cursed his luck. “What are you going to do with him?”

“Give him a bite to eat and let him go.”

“Did he have any money on him?”

“Not a brass kip.”

“Shit. I can’t even get my petrol money back. What a day.”

Mrs. Nuts’s village was only three miles from Vieng Xai but there was no road to it. To get there, Siri, Dtui, and Panoy had followed their guide along a narrow track that wound slowly through a gentle valley, past rocky outcrops that poked up like fingers making rude signs. The village itself sat ridiculously on top of a high knoll as if, one day in its distant history, it had fled there to escape a flood. The final fifty yards of pathway seemed to climb vertically. Panoy weighed no more than a wish, but Dtui had carried her all the way and she was certain this final stretch would be the death of her. Fortunately, the girl who had daubed Mrs. Nuts’s feet with blood recognized the big nurse and came running down to relieve her of her burden.

They were welcomed with some confusion by the villagers and led to the hut of the shaman, where they discovered him swaying in one corner. He flapped his arm slowly as a gesture for the strangers to come in. He was a man of around forty, muscular and kindly. But he was so laid-back, Siri and Dtui almost fell asleep listening to him. He had apparently invented a cocktail of local herbs that, he claimed, dispensed with the need for food if taken three times a day. It also left him in a state of perpetual bliss, one which he was reluctant to disturb with work.

“You see?” he said in a slow drawl. “Organizing an exorcism takes many, many, many days. Weeks sometimes. Years.” He obviously didn’t know to whom he was speaking. Dr. Siri understood only too well that given the right frame of mind, an exorcism could be patched together in an hour or so. He just had to elicit that frame of mind from the stoned shaman.

“Great and respected witch doctor,” Siri said. “Of course, you’re right. But here in your village you have a poor unfortunate lady wrapped in betel-nut leaves who can’t be cremated until her soul has been reunited with her body. And we have brought that soul to you in the body of this little girl. It’s barely an exorcism-more like replanting a yam in a different garden. It couldn’t be any easier.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be quite that easy, but all Siri needed was for the shaman to bring together the tools of his trade and Yeh Ming would probably oblige with the rest. The shaman sighed long and deep and started to list the difficulties. Siri didn’t really have time to hear them. He decided it was necessary to give the man a small prod. He reached for his hand and gripped it firmly. All those present noticed a change come over the shaman. He seemed to be witnessing events nobody else could see. It was as if he were being filled with information like a tire slowly pumped full of air. But, before he could burst, Siri released his grip.

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” The shaman smiled. “Welcome.”

Within an hour, the paraphernalia was ready. The shaman was dressed in red and had a hood pulled back from his face. It was a humble affair. Apart from the two main participants, the shaman, Siri, and Dtui, there were three witnesses. One of these appeared to be the shaman’s wife, who played various percussion instruments, making them all sound like kitchen utensils rattling together in a drawer. Ordinarily he would not have cared but now something within Siri bemoaned this lack of rhythm.

Siri had seen this all before on a much grander scale, but it was Dtui’s first paranormal ceremony and she wished she’d had the presence of mind to bring the morgue camera. She studied the tray of assorted stones and ornaments, the dagger, the offering of food and cigarettes. The cone of banana-leaf origami she’d seen often at weddings and funerals, but never decorated as lavishly as this. Threads of unspun white cotton looped down from the display and were long enough to drape across the supine bodies of Panoy and Mrs. Nuts. For everyone’s sake, the village women had treated the old lady’s body with musky oils and scents. These had the effect of dulling the putrid stink of death for long enough for the ceremony to take place.

For twenty minutes, the shaman sat cross-legged in front of the display, chanting a well-worn series of mantras. A ceremonial dagger jutted from the lightly packed earth at his feet. Siri held his amulet lightly. A tingle of nervous apprehension climbed the back of his neck. At his last exorcism, the Phibob had killed the shaman and all but drained the life out of Siri. He was better prepared now, but still hoped the malevolent spirits weren’t tuned in at such an early hour.