Colin Cotterill - Disco for the Departed

“What did you take as weapons?” the captain asked.

“We all had knives. A couple of the men had crossbows for long distance.”

Siri mentally slapped himself for not thinking of this. Of course there was no bullet in Odon’s wound. It hadn’t been caused by a gun at all. If he’d been hit by a crossbow bolt, the attacker would have pulled it out, leaving a wound identical to that of a bullet. He looked at Dtui to see if she’d also worked it out, then realized she was sitting in ignorance, listening to a language she’d never had cause to learn.

Lai continued. “We went into the military caves from both ends. The lead man in each team had a lamp with a red filter. The team that entered through the auditorium saw her first. After all the searching, it was heartbreaking. I can’t begin to tell you how infuriated we were at that sight. She was dead, sir.”

“Miss Hong Lan?” Siri asked, although he was an outsider at this military tribunal.

“Not just dead, Doctor. Gutted. She was lying there in a wet grave with her insides hanging out. Carved up, by the look of it. But you’d have to stick in the knife and move it around to get the size of wound she had on her. It was sick, really sick. It had to be the damned Cubans who did it.”

“You only saw the one body?” Siri asked.

“One was enough.”

“Sergeant Major, this is important.” Siri knew he was hijacking the inquiry but there were a number of questions that had to be asked in a hurry. “Where exactly was the body?”

“In a grave. There was that little stream running through the cave and the hole was just beside it.”

“But there was only the one grave.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And was it completely uncovered?”

“Not exactly, Doctor. Her legs were covered in sand, and there was a little spade there, like we’d disturbed the Cubans before they could finish the job.”

“And the water had washed the blood from the body?”

“That’s right.”

“Was there any blood anywhere else? Any suggestion there’d been a fight of some kind?”

“Didn’t notice any. But don’t forget we were using torches with red filters.”

“What happened next?” the captain asked.

“We went looking for the bastards. We didn’t think it was just that they should get away with it. We figured if they’d heard us coming and run off, they couldn’t be that far away. The Hmong scout picked up a track outside the concert cave, running feet.”

“Just the one track?”

“Yes, sir. We figured the Cubans had escaped in different directions. We searched I don’t know how long. An hour? Two? Then we found one of them up there in front of the president’s old cave. He was singing, sir. I swear he was singing. He was wearing just this pair of old football shorts and dancing and goddamned singing. Sir, people like that don’t deserve a fair trial. We got him with a crossbow, but it didn’t finish him off. He was still staggering around. We were on him, all of us. I tell you, he was strong, strong as an ox. But we hadn’t planned on the cement thing.”

“But you had planned to kill him,” the captain said.

“Not really, sir.”

“You took knives and crossbows.”

“Just for self-defense, sir.”

“I don’t believe you. Go on.”

“Sir. Well, the cement was there and it was still wet. When we pushed him under, he sort of came out of a trance and realized what was happening. He fought like a tiger- scratching, kicking. Then he went quiet. The archer pulled out his bolt, we smoothed the cement, and got the hell out before anyone could come and see what all the singing and screaming were about.”

The men around the table sighed audibly when he stopped talking.

“Sergeant Major,” the captain asked, “did you find the second man?”

“No, sir. We went back the next night but there was no trace.”

“And what did you do with the girl?”

“We filled in the grave, took her out to the truck, and

brought her back to the camp. The lieutenant got in touch with the mother in Hanoi and explained what had happened. We thought she’d travel back or ask for her daughter’s body to be shipped there for a funeral, but she didn’t. She just told us to give the girl a decent burial and send her a lock of her hair.”

“Where did you bury her?” Siri asked.

Thangon was a small enough village for everyone to know everyone else and their business. Even the people on the ferry had recognized young Geung. He’d been a celebrity, after all, one of the town crazies, for eighteen years of his life. Mr. Watajak hadn’t exactly been delighted to see his son, but he put on a show for all the neighbors. Geung’s father was alone now and getting old. His wife had left her drunken husband long ago. All the kids had grown up and gone to the city. Apart from his monthly trips to Vientiane to coerce money from his offspring, he stayed in or around his little hut. This was the same hovel in which Geung had been born and lived before his move to Mahosot.

When Geung had emerged from his exhausted sleep that first morning, and seen everything as he remembered it, it was as if everything he’d experienced-Vientiane, the morgue, Dr. Siri, Dtui, the trip to Luang Prabang-had all been part of his coma. None of the dream had really happened, and he was still a teenager in Thangon. He called to his brothers and sisters, called to his mother, but only his father came. Except his father was much older than he should have been-and the house was dusty and empty.

The neighbors came by regularly to bring food and drink and put balm on Geung’s dry skin. He remembered their faces. He remembered the old midwife, who had been old when she birthed Geung and was still old today. She used a syringe to drain the fluid from Geung’s ears, a duty she’d performed regularly while he was growing up, and as ever, hers was the first voice to enter his head when his hearing returned.

“It’s lovely to see you back, young Geung.”

Hearing brought him back to reality. He could make out questions now from the curious visitors and answer them. In a place with no electricity and no other entertainment, people came by to listen to his memories of the hospital and Dr. Siri’s morgue-the cases they’d worked on. Of course, his version was simplified and left out some rather vital details, but for the simple people of Thangon, that was probably not a bad thing.

There was no way he could know what was slowly happening there in his old home. His father, the wise seer, in order to feather his own financial nest, had turned out children with the same regularity as a factory producing meatballs. The people of Tnangan had said, “How clever he is, that Watajak. Seven kids and he’ll never have to work again.” And here he was today sitting in the shadows like a fool. Who respected him now? Who listened to him? He watched as people came to hear the wise words of his son. The moron had become a genius.

The people from Vientiane had already arrived in Vieng Xai to set up for the concert. The following day, the flight from Hanoi would bring the entertainers. There’d be a day for rehearsals, then, on the Sunday morning, the delegates and Party chiefs would start to arrive. Comrade Khong was therefore most insistent that Dr. Siri should move the body out of the concert hall kitchen immediately.

Comrade Khong was a severe man with a large chest and menacing eyes. No earthquake, no invasion, and certainly no autopsy would stand in the way of his carefully charted preparations for the Friendship and Cooperation Concert. The housekeepers were equally indignant about the slices of dismembered mummy littering the president’s meeting room. They, too, had to go. Absolutely barred from Guesthouse Number One, which was undergoing a top-to-bottom spring clean, the two Cubans were returned to the scene of the first act, the Kilometer 8 Hospital.