Colin Cotterill - The Woman Who Wouldn't die

Barnard had pushed his luck far enough. He was starting to question his strategy. It was Monday morning and he knew they’d be missing the car soon. He couldn’t sit there indefinitely. He assumed that if the old couple was in Vientiane they would have come by to inspect the damage. So they must be away and he needed to find out where. He was used to having people around him who could gather information. Spies who could move about unnoticed. Technology that would allow him to listen to private conversations and interpreters who could fill in the gaps. But here he was alone and conspicuous and he had little to fall back on but experience and the fact that he had nothing to lose.

The short man had told him that the husband was a doctor at Mahosot Hospital. Siri, his name was. That would be the next move. He removed the lighter fluid from his bag and sprinkled it around the interior of the limousine. He wound down the window, opened the door, and stepped out into a blinding sunshine. He looked up and down the deserted road, struck a match and tossed it into the car which was puddled with petrol from the slashed feed pipe. No point really but old habits died hard. He was a block away when he heard the petrol tank explode.

The hospital had been built by the French and all the signs were still posted in the French language. But as he didn’t know in which section this Dr Siri worked, he had no choice but to ask. He produced his most charming smile and stopped an elderly nurse.

‘I am looking for Dr Siri,’ he said, in French.

She shook her hands as if to wave off this foreign attack and hurried away. But then, her steps slowed. She seemed to have gleaned something from the question. She turned.

‘Dr Siri?’ she said.

He nodded.

‘ La morgue ,’ she said.

It took Barnard only five minutes to find the small building, its impressive French name plate with La Morgue written in comic green and red letters over the door. He reached into his bag and took hold of the tyre iron. It should take him far less time to beat the information he needed out of the staff there.

The preliminary heats of the boat races started early. Two boats would start together to the sound of a pistol shot. They travelled five hundred metres to a point where the judges sat on a tin barge anchored midstream. For the finals the teams were dressed in gaudy almost-matching uniforms and an array of straw hats. As the Peace Hotel blocked the view from the administration buildings, the governor and all his guests invited themselves to Siri’s balcony. The only good news was that they arrived with several crates of beer. The close proximity to Thailand meant the governor had a healthy supply of exotic foods and drinks on hand. The size of his gut suggested the Singha Beer importation was not a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence. The man had no shame. He stood at the railing with his bottle in his hand saluting the peasants below like some red-nosed Mussolini. A month earlier he’d announced to these same peasants that the boat race festival would be dry this year. Due to the rice harvest disaster, no rice had been diverted for the production of whisky. Anyone caught moonshining would be arrested. Yet, to the trained eye, it was clear the boat crews and their cheerleaders were ‘on’ something.

The guests had brought along a few dozen stackable chairs but Siri and Madame Peung had grabbed two of the comfortable deckchairs and were deep in conversation, ignoring the races below. His wife, Madame Daeng, hovering a few metres away, squeezed the paper cup that contained her beer until a little tsunami of foam splashed over the rim. The previous evening, with her husband locked in conversation with the witch at the dinner table, she’d been forced to listen to the other Siri amusing his hand-picked guests with bawdy stories. The thought of it brought about another involuntary squeeze of the cup. Another spill.

‘Steady, old girl,’ came the overly familiar voice of the governor from behind her. ‘That stuff doesn’t come cheap, you know?’

‘Sometimes I don’t know my own strength,’ she told him without looking around.

‘So, are you going to tell me, or not?’ he asked.

She turned towards his ruddy face.

‘What do you need to know, Comrade Governor?’

‘What this top secret mission of yours is all about. I’d ask your husband but I can never tear him away from his girlfriend.’

‘There is no mission,’ she said angrily. ‘We’re all just here to enjoy the races.’

‘Bull. There’s more to it than that. A week away from race day and I’m requested … no, I’m bloody ordered to give up my two best rooms to important people from Vientiane. I even have to give up another room to a moron. None of you seem to be reaching into your pockets as far as I see. Where am I supposed to get the budget to cover the lost tourist revenue, eh?’

She eyed the distance to the railing and wondered whether he weighed as much as he appeared to.

‘And after all this generosity,’ he went on, ‘I’m not even let in on the secret. Clandestine flights upriver. Special transportation requests. Hushed Vietnamese conversations late at night. And now I’m told to expect a unit of army engineers that I’m supposed to feed and billet somewhere. Again, I ask, where’s the bloody money coming from?’

She turned square on and pulled back her shoulders.

‘You have resources, you slimy man.’

‘What did you …?’

‘Illegal smuggling, for one. A thriving import business no doubt paid for from illegal logging. Perhaps the odd gem. I’ve seen all those crates in the chicken shed. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve been trafficking girls over the border to brothels on the other side. That would be your style. But, we’ll get you. When my report goes in you’ll-’

‘Listen, you …’

‘Yes, I know what you’d like to say but, how sad, you can’t say it because you don’t know just how VIP we are, do you? You’ll just have to suck up to me for another day or two. And that includes making sure I have enough to drink.’ She was about to turn away but had an afterthought. ‘And this is a “love me, love my dog and my Down Syndrome friend” deal. If I hear of you kicking either of them, I promise you there will be a full-scale enquiry into where all this booze came from. You do understand what I’m saying, don’t you?’

She smiled at him. His mouth was ajar enough to see the brown roots of his teeth. He most certainly was not used to being spoken to in such a manner. She could see the rage in him. He wanted to kill her. That was a particularly common male way of solving a problem. But she knew she held the bloody plums in her hand.

‘Were they women’s voices?’ she asked.

‘What?’ He wiped the drool from his lips.

‘The hushed Vietnamese voices. Were they female?’

‘I don’t … Yes. One was, I suppose.’

‘Good boy,’ she said, and turned her back on him. ‘You can leave me alone now.’

She marched across the balcony on heavy legs to where her husband was sitting. She could see him transfixed by the face of the beautiful witch, adoring her words. It was disgusting.

‘Excuse me, dear Madame Peung,’ she said in Vietnamese. ‘I am in need of a husband.’

She hooked a finger into the neck of Siri’s collarless shirt and yanked. He laughed, apologized to Madame Peung and took Daeng’s hand as they walked across the crowded balcony. Their room was filled with even more strangers so they kept going out the door and down the staircase.

‘What’s so urgent?’ Siri laughed.

She didn’t speak until they reached the landing one flight down.

‘Siri,’ she said, stepping up to his face. ‘Do you trust me?’

‘Absolutely not. You’d kill me as soon as-’