Colin Cotterill - The Woman Who Wouldn't die

After a round of cheek sniffs and handshakes and present giving, Siri and Daeng sat with Monsieur Seksan at a large wooden table in the chef’s residence. A solid teak door at the far side of the room with several broken padlocks lying beside it opened on to a staircase which in turn led down to the cellar. The sign, Passage Interdit , had been ripped in half. Siri, Daeng and Monsieur Seksan were sampling the ambassador’s personal 1958 Latour Pauillac. Siri found it rather amusing. Daeng said it was piss weak. Seksan could only laugh.

‘What exactly do you plan to do when the embassy staff return and find the cellar empty?’ Siri asked.

‘Blame you bastards,’ said the caretaker with a chuckle. ‘Here I was, sitting down having my petit dejeuner one day when a gang of soldiers marched in and cleaned out the cellar. I’ll show them the powder burns on my upturned palms where I tried to protest. “Take me but spare the wine of my ambassador,” I had shouted. But to no avail.’

‘We’d better set about clearing that cellar before the bastards get here,’ said Siri.

‘ Avec plaisir ,’ said Seksan.

Perhaps unwisely, Siri had decided not to tell his wife anything he knew, or thought he knew, about the Frenchman at the market. He wanted to introduce the subject gently and observe her reaction. After all, there might have been nothing sinister about the visit at all. What if he was an old boyfriend who wanted to get in touch? Nothing wrong with that, he thought, although his teeth may have clenched at the idea.

‘So, there aren’t that many French tourists around town for you to look after,’ he said.

‘One or two might sneak in,’ said Seksan. ‘But we soon sniff them out and send them packing.’

‘Oh, some survive,’ said Siri. ‘In fact our restaurant’s maitre d’ spied one at the market today.’

‘Geung didn’t tell me that,’ said Daeng.

‘You work the poor man so hard I’m surprised he has a chance to speak at all,’ said Siri. ‘He told me during his down time while I was applying balm to the lash marks on his back. He’d seen a man about your age, he said. Tall. Good looking.’

‘We’re obviously starved of entertainment if the sight of a Frenchman at the market is the highlight of the day,’ said Daeng.

‘Ah, but Geung wasn’t so impressed with his nationality as he was with the star over the man’s right eye.’

There it was. Slight but you could make it out if you knew what you were looking for. Daeng had what they called in the West a poker face. Unless you studied that face the way Siri had every morning as he lay beside her, memorizing her tics and twitches when she spoke, you would never have noticed it. A shadow passed over her at pace and in under a second it was gone. But in that fraction of time, his wife had clearly travelled three hundred kilometres and thirty years.

‘A star? What, you mean like a tattoo?’ asked Seksan.

‘No. Geung said it was more like a scar. I’ve seen a number of smallpox scars that resemble stars. I think that’s what impressed Mr Geung.’

‘What made him believe the man was French?’ Daeng asked.

‘Some of the market women told him,’ said Siri. ‘Why?’

‘I might know him,’ she said.

Siri felt a pang of jealousy as he watched the blood fill in his wife’s cheeks.

‘Perhaps he’s come looking for you,’ said Seksan.

‘Perhaps,’ said Daeng.

‘I wonder if we can get in touch with him somehow?’ Siri asked.

‘I wonder,’ said Daeng.

‘Well,’ said Seksan, ‘we have nothing to do with the visas they hand out in France. In the days when there were people here to read them, the Lao embassy in Paris used to wire a list of the names of successful applicants and the projects they’d been invited to consult on. They’d get the odd tourist here but the visa process in Paris took so long it left everyone feeling Laos didn’t want them. Which, in fact, is true. The Lao have put up a lot of red tape to make life hard for French entrepreneurs and opportunists to get in. The casual visitor would have fallen at the first hurdle.’

‘So my friend at the market …?’ said Daeng.

‘Would have come in some official capacity or paid baksheesh to sneak in.’

‘Who handles consular matters for the French now the embassy’s closed?’ Daeng asked.

‘The Germans.’

‘Do you know anyone at the German embassy?’ Siri asked.

‘Everyone,’ said Seksan. ‘They’re big party animals.

When they found out I spoke German, they-’

‘You speak German, too?’ Siri asked.

‘I have an ear.’

‘I have two ears, but … Well, technically I have one and a half, but my language bank was full after Vietnamese.’

‘The Germans?’ said Daeng with some urgency.

‘They’re all as depressed to be here as I was,’ said Seksan. ‘I consoled them with a few bottles of Beaujolais.’

‘So if we wanted to get hold of our mysterious Frenchman’s visa details …?’ Siri asked.

Seksan smiled, reached for the telephone and dialled. After a baffling gabble of German language he put down the phone and said, ‘We’ll need another glass.’

Twenty minutes later, Stephan Bartels, the First Secretary of the Federal Republic of Germany’s embassy, was banging on the side gate. He arrived with a large grey envelope and a bottle of Korn Schnapps for later. He was so frightfully handsome Siri edged closer to his wife. Seksan went through some sort of German greeting ritual and, in no time, a glass of white appeared in front of the visitor. Stephan gave them a brief introduction to himself through Seksan. He spoke fluent Spanish, he said, for which he’d expected a posting to South America. And he was fluent in English, and quite competent in Kiswahili which they agreed was as useful in Laos as a can opener in a coconut grove. This was why they were speaking through an interpreter.

Stephan opened the envelope in front of him and produced a fax. He explained the complicated process of obtaining a visa for Laos with the embassy in Paris closed. The applicant had to travel to another country which had an active embassy and apply from there; in this case the applicant had travelled to Thailand. But, due to strained relations between Laos and Thailand, the Lao embassy in Bangkok was not currently offering consular services. The French embassy in Thailand had to apply directly to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vientiane if one of its citizens wished to travel to Laos. A copy of the application would be sent from there to the German embassy. Siri and Daeng were getting bored.

‘So, is his photograph on the fax?’ Daeng asked as she reached for the file.

‘Sort of,’ said Seksan. ‘They have a Russian fax machine at the ministry. It makes all the photographs look like Jesse Owens. You’d certainly never forget this character if you saw him walking down the street.’

Daeng stared at the picture trying to see through the smudge of ink. It was true. He looked like the character on the Darkie toothpaste tube. You wouldn’t recognize your own mother in a MoFA fax.

‘According to the application, his name is Herve Barnard and he’s a consultant on the Swedish roads project down in Takek,’ said Seksan. ‘Judging by the date of the first contact he’d been waiting in Bangkok for his visa for almost a month. He’s French, born in Marseille. Age sixty-six. Engineer. Single. Any of this ring a bell, Madame Daeng?’

She was still staring at the photograph.

‘Where’s the original application?’ she asked.

‘At the French embassy in Bangkok, I’d imagine.’

‘Would they do a better job of faxing it here?’

‘No doubt. I’ll call them in the morning if I can get a line out.’