Colin Cotterill - The Woman Who Wouldn't die

‘Oh , monsieur, ’ you say .

‘Oui?’ he grunts .

‘Did you know that in a passionate state, pain inflicted in the area of the groin does not reach the brain for a full minute?’ (Of course my speech isn’t quite as eloquent as that but men rarely give thought to syntax at such a moment.)

‘What are you …?’

You hold up the blade in front of his eyes until he can focus. In your other hand the orange-bloody plums can only be two things. There is a moment of horror frozen on his face. He rolls to one side and looks down to where the crushed orange looks like the after-effects of a machete attack. He staggers bow-legged to the bathroom giving you time to adjust your clothing and leave the room, your dignity intact .

Of course, you are then looking for another job but it’s worth it .

They sat under one of the recycled parachute tents by the river; Siri, Daeng, Mr Geung, Comrade Civilai and Ugly, drinking truly horrible coffee.

‘All right,’ said Civilai. ‘Forget the fact that your boat has gone without you. Let’s look at the positives.’

‘All right,’ said Siri. ‘I’m looking. No, it’s dark. What are they?’

‘For one, we have time to strategize.’

On the walk from the guest house — a walk during which Daeng apologized numerous times to Geung for curling up in his bed that morning — they had briefed her on the horrors that had occurred in Vientiane. Like Siri, she’d taken the news quite calmly. In fact she seemed more interested in the drama unfolding upstream than in her lost livelihood.

‘What is it with you two?’ Civilai asked.

‘So, this is the way it looks,’ said Daeng, ignoring the question. ‘The cruiser has indeed headed upstream, presumably with Madame Peung who has a Vietnamese accent and her deaf and dumb brother who may or may not whisper in Vietnamese late at night, and a unit of Vietnamese soldiers, but without their unbiased medical observer. I take it everyone has spotted the Vietnamese connection here.’

‘Did you get anything from the cruiser’s Lao captain?’ Civilai asked.

‘All I could tell was that he’d been briefed privately by the minister. He was under the impression they were there to retrieve the remains of Lao soldiers trapped in the hull of a boat. The minister’s brother was one of them. They’d bring out all the remains and have the coroner sort out who was who. He was told not to interact with the Vietnamese engineers which wasn’t that hard considering he couldn’t speak Vietnamese and they can’t speak Lao. He was angry about being the taxi service.’

‘Then that would suggest the minister believes that’s why they’re here,’ said Civilai. ‘What news from the engineers?’

‘They think it’s a boat rescue too,’ said Siri. ‘They were instructed to free a small vessel from the mud at the bottom of the river and winch it to the bank. They have sub-aqua equipment. They aren’t particularly happy about it. They were complaining about all that effort and manpower just for a few Lao bones.’

‘So, there you have it,’ said Civilai. ‘What’s the mystery here? It all fits. Brother. Bones. Ancestors. Happiness. Wife stops nagging. Minister gets some sleep.’

‘What do you make of it, Geung?’ Siri asked.

Mr Geung’s insights were invariably right on the money. Except he hadn’t spoken since his confession to the doctor that he’d slept with his wife. It was obviously worrying him. He had yet to stop blushing. There was, of course, nothing to be embarrassed about. Madame Daeng returns home after a late-night tipple with the navy to find two men asleep in her bed. Neither is her husband. She goes downstairs. Geung’s room is unlocked. She crawls beneath the mosquito netting, curls up in an empty space on the vast mattress and sleeps like a babe. Had she been less tipsy she would have considered Mr Geung’s fragile emotions and the fact that he had a fiancee back in Vientiane. Mr Geung, being Mr Geung, would have no choice but to tell Tukda of his indiscretion and the relationship would be on shaky ground.

‘You have to pun … punish Madame Daeng,’ said Geung as if the party in question were not sitting there in front of him.

‘I promise. I shall,’ said Siri.

‘She was bad.’

‘I know she was. I shall take the leather thong to her this very night.’ (She kicked him under the table.) ‘But in the meantime we’re working here. We are presented with a mystery which appears not to be mysterious. Given all we’ve been through, that in itself is mysterious. If everything is going as expected, why do we all feel so uncomfortable? Something is wrong, Geung. Tell us what it is.’

Geung looked away from the doctor and stared out across the river. The new day’s races were about to start but he wasn’t focused on the boats. He was quiet for so long they thought he was still sulking, until he said, ‘The ele-phants.’

‘What about them?’ Civilai asked.

‘Why are the elephants here?’

They all looked at the small herd, all bloated with water and the mahout rocking in the breeze in his hammock.

‘Of course,’ said Civilai. ‘That’s it.’

‘But he knew,’ said Phosy.

‘Keep your voice down,’ whispered Dtui. ‘I’ve finally got her to sleep.’

‘If he knew’ — his voice was lower but no less angry — ‘why in hell’s name didn’t he tell me?’

‘Well, firstly because you were off in Vieng Xai at one of your midweek junkets.’

‘It was a training course. And that’s irrelevant. He could have left a note. He could have told you.’

‘Secondly, there wasn’t actually anything to tell. The Frenchman wasn’t a menace at that stage. Siri was making enquiries because an old friend of Madame Daeng was trying to get in touch.’

‘You think Siri would go to all the trouble of talking to the German second secretary and the head of the Roads Project if he wasn’t suspicious? They were tight-lipped about it until I told them what their lost tourist had achieved in a few short days. That’s when they put me on to the caretaker at the French embassy. He admitted Siri had been there to look at the archives. He said he didn’t know what the doctor had found and he wouldn’t let me go in to take a look. Said I needed a higher level of clearance. And he was jumpy. He was hiding something. I know he was.’

Dtui turned her smile towards her sleeping child. She and Madame Daeng had few secrets. She knew exactly what the caretaker was hiding.

‘So what do we have on our evil Frenchman?’ she asked.

‘Just his fake name and the fact that he forged his travel documents and his work placement. The French embassy in Bangkok faxed a photograph. I’ve sent copies of it everywhere. Nobody answering to that name has left the country by air or by ferry so I’m working on the theory that he’s still around. He’s gone to ground. We’ve searched every boat out of the city. Road blocks on every track heading west. If he’s on his way to Pak Lai he must be on foot. And if that’s the case, Siri and Daeng will be back anytime soon.’

‘So you keep saying. Civilai will bring them back. Sergeant Sihot will bring them back. Where are they then?’

‘I don’t know, Dtui. I don’t know.’

It hadn’t been so hard. A fistful of American dollars and a modest fishing boat became a moonlit ferry. You could get shot from either bank of the Mekhong but even soldiers had to sleep. You picked your moment. The fisherman was nervous about rowing across on such a clear night with sentries dotted along the bank. The nerves were misplaced. He should have been focused on his passenger. That’s where the real danger lay. Twenty metres from Thailand and the tyre iron had sent the wiry brown man to the bottom of the great river.