Colin Cotterill - Disco for the Departed

He and Nurse Dtui arrived at the hospital at their usual time. It was Monday morning and their stay in the northeast already felt like a different time in an entirely different country. Siri parked his motorcycle in his regular spot and Dtui unlocked the morgue doors. There was a stale smell inside rather than the familiar stench of bleach and disinfectant. They assumed this was the smell of a morgue unused for ten days. At least it was clean and everything was in its place, just as they’d left it.

They opened the windows to allow the hot air inside to change places with the hotter air outside. They sat at their respective desks, ready to collate their fragmented recollections of the Huaphan case. It was likely to take them the better part of a day to put it into a form that even Judge Haeng would be able to make head or tail of.

At twenty minutes after eight o’clock Mr. Geung staggered through the doorway like a drunkard. He hadn’t even stopped to take off his boots. Siri and Dtui looked up to see him silhouetted there, swaying. The only thing keeping him up appeared to be the uneven smile on his face.

“Hello, Geung honey,” Dtui said. “What in blazes has happened to you?” She stood and began to walk toward him.

Before sinking to his knees and crashing onto the concrete floor, Geung heard the doctor’s voice. It was such a wonderful sound-a sound he’d been afraid he’d never hear again. He’d imagined this meeting as he staggered painfully through the outer suburbs and across the city, as he fell into and out of trances beside the busy streets. He’d dreamed of seeing the faces of his workmates, and here he was-the morgue and his promise intact. He couldn’t have been happier. This, too, was his destiny.

“Mr. Geung,” the doctor had said, looking at his watch. “You’re late.”

As head of the National Department of Justice, Judge Haeng could, technically, have found a lot of things to keep him busy every day of the week. Yet, by hanging on to senior staff who knew the workings of the department far better than he, and by not initiating any new projects, he managed to arrange many large gaps in his daily schedule. These he filled with visits to his family fish farm, afternoon trysts with colorful nightclub singers, and, his particular favorite, just kicking off his shoes and taking nice long naps. If napping had been an event at the Asian Games, Haeng would certainly have been the Lao national champion. He had everything under control and was proving to everybody that he could capably fill the shoes of those corrupt Royalist rogues he’d condemned so often at village seminars.

He became particularly upset, therefore, whenever the politburo gave him tasks that took away his three-hour lunches and “just-say-I’m-in-court” afternoons. The signing of the Vietnamese treaty had turned his life into a hellish succession of meetings and formal dinners and interminable speeches, many his own. The Hanoi judicial delegation had been particularly irksome. They’d insisted upon seeing the inner workings of the Lao legal system. Not only was that mechanism lacking oil, it was also missing a number of irreplaceable spare parts. But he could hardly confess this. So Judge Haeng had set about orchestrating an elaborate deception.

He moved men from outlying police posts to fluff up the two stations visited by the Vietnamese and stage-managed a fake trial at the central courthouse. He shifted four brand-new microfiche viewers from the old USAID compound and set them up at the criminal records department. As none of the Lao records were on fiche, and nobody knew how to operate the equipment anyway, on the day of the delegation’s visit there was a sudden and mysterious power outage, which meant the visitors had to leave without seeing the system in action. The judge was exhausted and thanked the heavens that the Vietnamese only had one more half day before he would be rid of them.

One member of the group was a doctor-a coroner, of all things-who had convinced his compatriots that a review of the justice system could not be complete without a visit to the morgue. Judge Haeng had argued against this with all his might-the smell, the sight of blood, the heat-but they all seemed to be in agreement with the annoying little Vietnamese doctor. It occurred to Haeng that perhaps every country had the thorn of a difficult national coroner in its side. But he had no choice. On the evening of the last day of the visit, following a farewell banquet at the old presidential palace, Haeng had his driver take him out to Dr. Siri’s house, deep in the new suburbs behind the That Luang shrine. It would be his first visit to the place. It would also be the first time he’d seen Siri since his trip to the northeast, and since the removal of his moronic henchman from the morgue.

On the car journey there he took a number of deep breaths and prepared retorts for the complaints sure to come his way. Siri was insolent but occasionally competent.

The old man had done a reasonable job in Xam Neua. Haeng would begin by telling him so, get him in a good mood, inform him of how satisfied the Party was with his work. He would not allow the doctor to bully him about the missing moron. He was, after all, the head of the Justice Department and Siri was just a worker. But still he felt his hands tremble as he walked through the tall front gate and into a well-tended yard. The front door of the house was wide open, and he could see Siri in the back kitchen. Haeng clenched his fists and called Siri’s name, but was totally unprepared for what happened next. Siri raised his arm in greeting, smiled, and trotted out to welcome him. He was so polite, so friendly, that Haeng wondered whether Siri had confused him with someone else. But taking the judge’s arm, Siri led him inside.

It was an awful place, a menagerie: old people, invalids, brats running amok. Siri had turned perfectly good government housing into a slum. There would be a report made to the housing division about this, no question, but there was a more pressing issue. He hurriedly acknowledged the introductions and immediately dismissed the names of Siri’s gang from his mind. As soon as he could, he herded Siri and Dtui onto the front step. He asked for assurance that they would be neatly turned out for tomorrow’s visit, white coat for the doctor, crisp white uniform for the nurse. It was also vital that there be no-what he referred to as “patients.” Siri asked whether he meant dead bodies, and Haeng acknowledged that was his meaning. If there were any bodies in the freezer, Siri would have to get there early and clear them out.

Siri had been so bold as to ask where they should dump a body, were it to arrive before the delegation turned up, but Haeng didn’t give a hoot what they did with it as long as the morgue was spotlessly clean and presentable. Siri and

Dtui assured him there would be nothing dead to spoil the reputation of the national mortuary. They assured him it would be a day like no other. Haeng drove home that night with a lighter heart. The only possible flaw that might spoil an otherwise exemplary picture of Justice Department efficiency had been removed. And, miracle of miracles, there had been no mention of that matter. This Siri character was proving to be trainable after all. Haeng lay back in his seat and smiled for the first time all day.

The entourage of shiny black Zil limousines pulled up in front of the morgue at nine fifteen the following morning. The hospital director was there to meet the delegates. He had a speech written and planned to give each of them a wrist garland of orchids. But it was a stinking hot day, and the cars had kicked up a mist of dust. The Vietnamese wanted nothing to do with the director’s foolishness. They wanted merely to get the final pointless visit over with and head off to the airport. They’d all been in Laos far too long already. They pushed past the director and a chorus of applauding nurses, and headed for the shade of the morgue entrance. The director recognized at least two senior Party members, a judge, and two police generals as they shoved him out of the way. But his camera still hung by his side, and he had no photographic evidence that his hospital had been so honored.