Colin Cotterill - The Woman Who Wouldn't die

The fact that such a logical man as Siri claimed to see ghosts had always been a mystery to the inspector. Phosy had no personal contact with the spirits. He didn’t pay homage to his ancestors or apologize to the land spirits for cutting down a tree. On his trip out to Ban Elee, he had encountered ten villagers who claimed to have witnessed a reincarnation. He knew uneducated people were given to animist beliefs and leaned on the side of gullibility. But what did they have to gain by inventing this bizarre story? What would be the point of setting up such an elaborate scam? No, unlike Siri and Dtui who were prepared to accept such events as paranormal, Phosy was an investigator. He would investigate until there was nothing left unexplained and only then would he be prepared to join the ranks of the unhinged.

‘The facts,’ he said out loud, then internalized the rest when he saw the clerks were looking at him. The wife of a royalist general most certainly had a security file and he’d gone in early this morning to dig it out. It sat beside the incident reports on his desk. He’d been through it already. It wasn’t particularly meaty. As a widow she’d continued to export timber to Thailand through old contacts in the Thai military. This with the blessing of the Party. The wealthy had not been summarily shipped off to re-education and stripped of their belongings. The Pathet Lao had a country to run and they needed this back-up capitalist base to be able to afford to do so. Not all the successful business people fled across the Mekhong. Many were courted and encouraged.

Madame Peung was one such socialist socialite. A few years ago she’d been introduced to similarly well-heeled capitalists in Vietnam and import-export deals had been signed. Following her last business trip to Hanoi she was shot and killed. This is where the personal information file ended. There was a police report paper-clipped to the cover. The killing had been investigated by a cadre called Ekapat, serving as district police officer at kilometre fifty-six. Phosy had Ekapat’s file at hand also. He had been transferred from military unit eighty-seven in Houaphan. He had spent most of his army service in the catering corps and attended the rapid conversion course to make him a policeman just four months earlier. To his credit, he did travel a great distance on his bicycle to reach Ban Elee. These were his findings:

‘The murder took place at about one a.m. The attractive maid said she heard two shots some two minutes apart but I didn’t see any bullets at the scene. They were probably still in the victim’s head. I didn’t look. She didn’t see the intruder so there was no description I could post. Nu, the maid, who is single, said she went to the victim’s room and the door was open. It’s normally locked, she said. The victim lay in a pool of blood on the mattress. Later questioning of the villagers confirmed they too had not seen the assassin. It was not ascert … asser … as … Nobody knows what was taken ’cause they didn’t know what was in the house to start with. The maid wasn’t allowed in some rooms so she didn’t know either. But I imagine it was a robbery. I may have to interview the maid again. The end.’

Real policeman Phosy paused at this point to ask a few questions. He wondered why there had been such a gap between the first and second shots. Why the victim’s door was open. Did she open it because she knew the killer or did he break it down? If the latter, why didn’t the maid hear the sound of wood splintering? The same applied to how the killer got into the house. Did he break a window? Were there signs of a break-in around the front or back doors? Phosy wished now he’d gone up to look at the house when he had the chance.

He’d been too quick to accept Dtui’s opinion that this was an example of the supernatural. He sharpened his pencil and made a list of more earthly possibilities on the back of the incident sheets.

The widow was not killed, only injured in the first attack. The bullet did not damage any vital passages in her brain, in fact it gave her heightened sensitivity .

There was a mix-up of bodies at the temple and the person the villagers took to the pyre was not in fact the widow .

The burning of the corpse was symbolic rather than actual .

The person who was killed was not the widow but a friend who looked like her .

The widow was killed and replaced by an imposter who claimed to have psychic powers for the purpose of … (He drew a blank on that one.)

The whole thing was conspired by the villagers for the purpose of … (He had no idea how to get out of that one either.)

This was a rather humble list but it made Phosy feel better that there were straws to clutch at. And there was one more straw. The brother. Why hadn’t they seen him in the village? Was he holed up in the house that whole time, afraid to go out? He wondered whether any of the bereaved families who visited the witch had seen anything or anybody in the house. He’d need to contact them. Yes, a start. He went straight to the communications room and sent a wire to his counterpart in Ho Chi Minh. The wire would be diverted via the Vietnamese Secret Service Unit in Vientiane where it would be translated. A background check would be run on Phosy and eventually the request would be sent off to the Department of Justice in Vietnam. All this just to find out what Madame Peung had been doing on her last visit to Ho Chi Minh. Did she upset anyone enough to want her executed? It was one of Phosy’s favourite ploys to start with the paranoid and work backwards. Conspiracy theories weren’t always far-fetched. Not in this day and age.

The underground movement against the French was expanding. The Lao Issara organized acts of sabotage. We collected intelligence on troop movement through networks of observers in the villages. We lured the clumsy French militia into the jungles where they were ill-equipped to compete with nature. A platoon could often be defeated by dysentery alone and we would retreat not from the enemy but from the stench. We left the politics to the elders. Our job was to remind the French that they weren’t welcome. To let them know that Laos was no longer a cushy posting. We were angry and we wanted to fight. Once or twice our cell would meet up with the medical unit of Bouasawan and Siri. It was heartbreaking. He loved his wife so much he, couldn’t see me at all. He was the first man I’d loved and he had no idea .

The guerrilla skirmishes went badly. We suffered losses. Then came a war in Europe. The French were distracted. And suddenly there was another monster in the mix. South-east Asia was invaded from the north by the Japanese. In no time at all, that little Asian country had taken over half a continent. If nothing else, the Japanese dominance around that time showed us that Asians could be more powerful than Europeans. They gave us hope. But they frightened me even more than the French. We were told to cooperate with them but they didn’t look at us … at me, like an ally should. We were still not equals and our fighting girls were seen as fair game by the randy Japanese. I once had to kill one to remind them we had rights and we deserved respect. By then, killing had become second nature to me, but this was the first time I’d had to use my knife on what was technically a partner. I knew he would have gladly done the same to me once he’d had his way, so it was no great moral jerk. But he’d worn those three stars on his shoulder and it was suggested I disappear for a while. I became quite adept at disappearing. In fact, although I was in contact with my commanders the whole time, I only reappeared once during that period .

In October 1945 we all joined together in Savanaketh town and heard the joyous announcement that France, somewhat tired after fighting off Germany, had graciously granted us a flimsy independence. We were a sort of free nation. I kissed Nurse Bouasawan on the cheek that afternoon and shook Dr Siri’s hand. I could feel his palm in mine for many months after. It was the last time we would meet for over thirty years. I loved again after that but never as deeply or sincerely as I had with my doctor. We all celebrated long and hard and started to plan the new nation. But it turned out to be a brief freedom. With the war in Europe won, the French returned to renew old friendships. And this was when the horror years started. The Japanese were defeated. The French returned in great numbers and the clearing up of troublesome elements began. The Frenchmen still had blood in their teeth from the European campaign and they swept through Laos like angry dogs reclaiming their bones. We were scattered off to the jungle where we had to rethink, replan, reorganize. It was there that the whore in me was born .