Love Songs From a Shallow Grave (29 page)

Phosy had reached the item on Siri’s list which asked,
What was the timing of Neung and Jim’s respective arrival in⁄departure from Berlin?
To answer that he needed to check the transcripts on his desk. It should have been a flying visit, but his return to police headquarters rendered all his other avenues of inquiry null and void. He would never get around to answering Siri’s question. Sihot was at his desk with a banana fritter suspended in front of his mouth between his stubby fingers. He was so engrossed by the book open in front of him that he’d apparently forgotten it was there.

“Am I disturbing something?” Phosy asked.

His voice would normally have alarmed Sihot but the sergeant’s head remained bowed over the text. The battered banana hovered.

“Sihot!” Phosy yelled.

The sergeant looked up, slowly.

“Yes, Inspector?”

“I trust what you’re reading has some bearing on the case?”

“I don’t think there is a case any more, sir.”

Phosy approached the desk and saw what had taken control of Sihot’s attention. It was a thick exercise book whose pages were filled with small, neat handwriting.

“This arrived from the East German embassy just after you left, Inspector,” Sihot said. He flipped the notebook closed and Phosy stepped behind him to read the front cover. In Lao were written the words ‘MY GERMAN DIARY’ then something written in German followed by the name ‘SUNISA SIMMARIT’. This was Jim’s journal.

“Evidently it arrived a few days ago in a box of personal items Jim had sent from Germany,” Sihot said. “She’d sent it surface mail addressed care of the East German Embassy, Vientiane. They didn’t realise what it was till they’d opened it.”

“So why are we only just getting it now?”

“Jim wrote in German. When he realised what it was, the attache took the liberty of translating the lines he thought would be relevant to the case. I have to say they’re very into this investigation, the Germans. He said if there’s anything else they can do just get in touch with him. The diary starts off pretty basic, he said, but as she gets more confident with the language, she starts to write more about her thoughts. The lines they translated are nearer the end.”

Phosy took the notebook to his desk and flipped through the pages. The first translation he found was about ten pages from the end. It was written in red ink. The corresponding German was underlined.

Z has asked me again. He’s very persistent
, it read.

Two pages on was the line,
I know that Z really wants me to be his lover here. He makes no secrets about it. He pretends to be interested in teaching me fencing but he makes comments often about my looks and my figure. I should be flattered but it makes me uncomfortable sometimes
.

The next page.
I know he’s married but he comes to me almost every day now
.

And the next.
What do I have to do or say to persuade Z I’m not interested? He was here again today
.

Phosy looked up at Sihot who smiled. The inspector skipped a few pages until he was almost at the last entry. The red ink was everywhere now, in the margins and above the original lettering. Z had clearly begun to dominate her life. The entries had become less girlish, darker.

Please stop. Please stop. Please stop. I can’t accept you. Your passion is killing me. I can’t think. I can’t study. Your shadow is darkening my life
.

Then the last entry.

Z has taken my virginity. I am spoiled. He forced himself on me in the most awful way. He was inside me. I begged for him to stop but I was a delicate flower pressed beneath him. His strong muscular body was too powerful for me to resist. I still smell him on my skin, his aftershave, his sweat, his passion. It is all over. This country is stained with the memory of this event. I have to leave here. My soul can never be free as long as he is in my world. But what if he follows me back to Laos? How can I ever escape him? He is the devil and he has ruined my life. I fear what he has turned me into
.

At the bottom of the next empty page was a signature and a note in red from the attache saying that this was a certified translation and offering further help if there were any more questions. Phosy looked up and tapped his fingers on the page.

“Bastard,” he said.

“Her life must have been hell there at the end,” Sihot agreed with a mouth full of banana fritter. “And then he does that to her. A lot of sick people in this world.”

Phosy looked at the piles of paperwork on his desk, the charts, the pages of hypotheses, the interview transcripts. Until this moment they’d been shards of pottery that didn’t fit together into any sensible shape. There was always one piece too many or one too few. But now, as he reread the last entry of an unfortunate woman’s diary, all those fragments clicked into place and formed a most beautiful solution. The case of the three épées was solved.

LOVE SONGS FROM A SHALLOW GRAVE

W
hen the unscheduled China Airlines flight touched down at Wattay Airport at two in the afternoon, the pilot was surprised to see a crowd of people waiting beneath a colourful copse of umbrellas in front of the dismal little terminal. If he’d known them, he would have recognised Dtui and Malee, Mr Geung and Mr Bhiku, Mrs Nong and Madame Daeng. But he didn’t, so he was only left to wonder how news of the flight had made it around Vientiane so quickly.

It was a Lao whisper which, unlike a Chinese whisper, becomes more coherent as it’s passed on. Somebody from Agriculture went home for lunch at K6 and was out feeding the chickens and mentioned to the neighbour that she had to hurry out to Wattay to receive a parcel from Peking. The neighbour was a secretary at Foreign Affairs. She knew that there weren’t any flights scheduled from Peking and guessed it might have been the representatives returning from Phnom Penh. She was a friend of Mrs Nong, Civilai’s wife who had recently returned from a stay at her sister’s. The secretary rode her bicycle to Civilai’s house and told Nong that her husband might be arriving on a flight sometime after lunch.

Mrs Nong finished unpacking her suitcase, inspected a spotlessly clean kitchen, and walked along the street to Comrade Sithi’s house. The maid knew her well and let her use the telephone. Mrs Nong called the Mahosot Hospital and had the clerk pass on word to Dtui that her boss could be arriving on an early-afternoon flight from Peking. The message Dtui received said, “Siri arriving 2 a.m. Wattay.” And so it continued. It had been almost a week since the two old fellows had left on their Kampuchean junket. That wasn’t such a rare thing in the region. Flights were unpredictable and communication was poor. But it didn’t stop friends and family from feeling anxious.

So there they stood in the rain. None of them was really sure why they’d come. Siri and Civilai had flown back and forth, hither and thither countless times without so much as a crow on a fence post to see them off or welcome them back. But as they gathered, the welcoming committee agreed there was something different this time. None of them could explain what it was but they had all felt the same energy that inspired the decision to make the arduous journey through the mud to the airport.

The Shaanxi Y-8 touched down at exactly two a.m. It skimmed along the runway like a flat stone across a pond, then turned abruptly and taxied towards the terminal. Everyone watched as a portly middle-aged man in a plastic jacket, shorts and bare feet wheeled the portable steps to the plane. In an instant, the passengers began to disembark. A flock of Chinese somebodies alighted first and were met on the tarmac by ministry people with umbrellas. Then came Lao and Chinese in dribs and drabs. Then a pilot with a small suitcase. And only then, once those waiting had all but given up, Civilai poked his head from the aeroplane doorway and walked down the steps.

It took him thirty seconds or so to reach the terminal but, for the entire time, all eyes remained trained on the exit of the plane. Even when Civilai stood directly in front of them, dripping, he still didn’t have the reception committee’s full attention. Madame Daeng hadn’t looked at him at all.

“Welcome home,” said Mr Bhiku.

“Forget somebody, uncle?” Dtui asked.

“What?” Civilai replied without looking surprised at the question. “Oh, Siri? There was a slight hold-up. Diplomatic thing. He’ll be catching a later flight. Decent of you all to come out to meet me on a day like this, though.”

His words were a little too rehearsed. His smile too politician. His overacting seemed to chill the crowd more than the rain. It was as if he’d spent his entire time on the flight composing a light greeting.

“They didn’t come to meet you,” said Mrs Nong, stepping forward to brush raindrops from his shoulders. “I was the only one daft enough to come to welcome you back. This lot’s all here for the doctor. Now they’ll have to make the trip again tomorrow.”

There was an awkward moment of silence.

“No, Madame,” said Bhiku at last, “I am equally as joyful to greet elder statesman Civilai.” He handed over the lotus he’d been holding and somehow the evil spell that hung around them was blown away. They smiled and patted Civilai on the shoulder. They all milled around him and spoke at the same time but, as they walked to the taxi rank, first Dtui, then Daeng looked back at the plane.

∗

It was late afternoon and Civilai and Nong were sitting at their kitchen table sampling the sugared dumplings he’d been given before leaving Peking. Nong had described her sister’s attempts to grow straw mushrooms in her backyard. How the place smelt like a stable the whole time she was there and only two collar-stud-sized mushrooms to show for all that manure. Civilai had talked about their arrival in Peking and the food and their act for the hidden camera. He was delighted to see that his apology and promise to be a better husband had brought his wife home to him, but neither of them had been able to speak about the subject that smouldered in the background. Until suddenly there was no choice.

“Anybody home?” came the unmistakable voice of Madame Daeng. Neither of them was surprised by this visit. In fact they’d expected it earlier. Daeng’s gauzy figure stood outside the mosquito-wire door.

“How did you get out here?” Nong asked.

“Siri’s Triumph,” she replied, kicking off her shoes and pushing past the flimsy door. “The idiots made me leave it at the gate. That one walked me over here in the rain.”

She indicated the armed guard standing at the front fence. He nodded to Civilai and went on his way.

“They always get super vigilant after a bombing or a murder,” said Nong. She accepted Daeng’s bag of
longan
with a nod of thanks. “I suppose that’s always the way, isn’t it? Putting the lid on the basket after the snake’s out.”

“Have you talked about it yet?” Daeng asked. There was obviously no space for preliminaries.

“Not yet,” said Civilai.

“Then, where should we sit?”

They opted for the outside lounge suite with a view of the gnomes and the two-foot windmill. A plastic sunroof overhead showed the faint outlines of flattened leaves. Rain clung to low clouds. Daeng refused both small talk and a drink. Her determined eyes bore into Civilai’s like steel drill-bits.

“I’m not supposed to – ” he began.

“I don’t care,” she said.

“I know.”

He leaned forward and rested his skinny elbows on his skinny knees. He began his story with their visit to the Lao embassy in Phnom Penh. That was the last time he’d seen Siri. He reached the May Day reception without interruption. He hesitated then, not for effect, but more like a visitor at the Devil’s front door. Daeng egged him on with her eyes.

“It was obvious the guide knew something,” he continued. “And I pushed him as far as I could to get it out of him. But all he’d tell me was that there’d been an incident. He led me down to the reception. I thought I might get some information there. The Lao ambassador was in the room but the minders were shepherding the crowd. They were deciding who should stand where, who should talk to who. I had my Lao-speaking guide all to myself and he’d obviously been told to stick to me. I was introduced to a couple of bigwig Khmer but I couldn’t tell you who they were. They were as focused on not answering questions as the guide was on not translating them. They paraded us all through to the dining room and sat me at a table with people I didn’t know, and, for the most part, couldn’t communicate with. I doubt they could even – ”

“Civilai!” said Mrs Nong, firmly.

“Yes, sorry. I wanted a chance to talk with Ambassador Kavinh alone. I could see him on the diplomatic table on the far side of the room. He made eye contact often. But there followed an hour of interminable speeches. Once they were over and the food was to be served, all us weak bladders made a run for the toilets. I saw Kavinh head that way and I followed. I thought my boy would insist on coming with me but he didn’t. The ambassador was in the bathroom. There was a crowd in there, including the ambassador’s minder. Kavinh greeted me and asked me how the afternoon went. He shook my hand. As he did so he palmed me a note.

“He was a very nervous man. Even jumpier than he’d been that morning. I got the feeling he feared for his life on a twenty-four-hour basis. He used the urinal and left. I queued for a cabinet. Once inside I read the note. I only had time to go through it once but the gist was this:

“Your comrade knows the truth about this place. He broke out of the embassy compound. They’re looking for him. If they find him they’ll kill him. Only diplomatic channels can save him. Tell the Chinese as soon as you get out of the country. It’s your only hope.”

“Oh, Siri, no,” Daeng said, quietly.

“I was in a panic. I destroyed the note and went back to the reception. There were Chinese everywhere but I hadn’t met one who could speak Lao or French or who would admit to speaking Vietnamese. I can’t speak a word of Chinese. I honestly didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know who to trust. It’s hard to describe to anyone who hasn’t been there. There was an oppressive charge in the air like science fiction. The Khmer Rouge weren’t…they weren’t human. You couldn’t talk to them. They were frightening robots.