The Merry Misogynist (24 page)

He had wrested possession of the truck from the imbecile and left him doing some inane, unnecessary task. Than would spend this night here in the bridal suite remembering each detail of the honeymoons he’d enjoyed with his five wives and the pleasure he’d given them. He’d dream of tomorrow’s wedding and the seduction of the bright and beautiful teacher, Wei, and he’d sleep the sleep of a man – a real man
.

Phosy drove into Natan at nine a.m. He stopped once or twice to ask directions to the house of the resident government cadre, but it wasn’t really that difficult to spot: the largest wooden building on the main street. They parked opposite and stepped down from the jeep to stretch like waking cats. It had been a bone-jarring ride, and they were exhausted. For Phosy it had been a day of particularly slow hours. The administrator came out of his house before they could knock or shout hello. He was a young man relying on one or two chin hairs to lend him an air of authority.

“Can I help you, Comrades?” he asked. Phosy and the policemen showed him their identification papers.

“We are here on a very serious police investigation,” Phosy told him. “We need to contact the team collating the census data immediately.”

“You mean immediately now?” the cadre asked.

“Unless you know of any other type of immediately.”

“Well, that might be a problem.”

“Why?” asked Phosy.

“The census people did pass by earlier, and they presented their credentials. But after they left here they were due to split up. They said they’ve got data to collect from twenty districts in two days. The only way they can do that is to set up three bases to make it more convenient for the collectors to get to.”

“Presumably they told you where they’d be based?”

“My deputy, Comrade Sounthon, organized it for them. But he’s off on a night hunt with the locals. You know? Headlamps, shooting lorises and other nocturnal game.”

“Animals too drowsy to run away,” Daeng remarked.

“Does anyone else have any idea where we can find the census collators?” Phosy asked.

“One or two people, Comrade Inspector, but they’re all out on the hunt.”

“Damn.”

“Have you had an old fellow on a motorcycle here this evening asking the same question?” Daeng asked.

“Not that I’ve heard, Auntie, and I hear most things.”

Daeng involuntarily squeezed Phosy’s arm.

“What time are you expecting your deputy back?” the policeman asked.

“Sun-up usually.”

Phosy looked at his weary passengers.

“All right. Then we could use a few hours’ sleep. Can I trouble you for accommodation?”

“Guesthouse is just around the corner, Comrade. Turn left at the tyre repairers.”

What the cadre had described to be the cheapest rooms in the province had every right to be. The kapok mattresses smelled of sweat and worse, and the stuffing had coagulated into lumps. The patter of tiny feet on the tin roof hinted at an all-night squirrel hoedown. Phosy had long since given up the thought of sleep. He sat on the veranda steps drinking weak tea from the communal thermos and waited for the sun. He hadn’t said anything to Daeng but he was worried about Siri. Out here they weren’t far from the Thai border. Rebels occupied the hills and insurgents crossed the river to create havoc. Bandit gangs and renegade gunmen often hijacked lone vehicles. A Triumph motorcycle in good condition would be quite a catch. He hadn’t thought to ask at the police boxes they’d passed whether they’d sighted the doctor, and now, deprived of sleep and mad at everyone, he imagined all the fates that might have befallen his friend.

“Can’t sleep, Inspector?” Phosy turned his stiff neck to see Daeng behind him in the candlelight. She came to sit beside him on the step, and he poured her tea.

“The kids up too?” she asked.

“No, they’re made of putty. They could sleep on a pile of jackfruit.”

“Jackfruit sounds quite comfortable compared to the beds in there.”

The indigo sky had begun to pass through less depressing hues on its journey to blue, and the sounds of happy voices hummed in the distance.

“I wonder if that’s our hunting party returning,” Phosy said.

“I do hope so. I would like to get away early.”

Phosy smiled. “Oh, no, Madame Daeng. You blackmailed your way onto the jeep yesterday. You aren’t going to get away with that again.”

“Inspector, you wouldn’t leave a girl alone in the wilds?”

“There’s a good restaurant on the main street. You can swap noodle stories with the owner. This is a police inquiry, not a tour. You’ll stay in town and we’ll pick you up on our way back.”

“You’re sure you can’t use an extra gun?” She patted her fat handbag.

“If I thought for a second you’d brought a weapon with you, I’d have you in handcuffs right now.”

“Why didn’t I get offers like that before I got married?”

“Madame Daeng!”

“All right. I’m joking. I’ll swap recipes and crochet while you’re away doing manly things.”

“Good.”

The voices had become louder now, and a small posse of happy hunters loomed through the morning mist along the unlit street. At first it appeared they were dressed in large animal suits, but it was merely that they were festooned with carcasses. If there was a more frightening gallery of rare, beautiful, and bleeding creatures, Daeng hadn’t seen it.

“Have a successful night, boys?” she called.

“Fantastic, auntie,” said one.

“Half of them just fell out of the trees from the shock of hearing gunshots,” said another. They all laughed.

“Bravo,” she clapped.

“Which one of you is Sounthon?” Phosy asked.

A short, plump man wearing a lei of big-eyed lorises stepped forward. “I am.”

“Well, I’m Inspector Phosy from National Police Headquarters, and I need the locations of the three census takers.”

“Comrade,” the man laughed, “I’ve just come back from – ”

“Look! I don’t care whether you’re just back from the northern front full of bullet holes. I want the locations and I want them ten minutes ago.”

Sounthon had arranged accommodation for the visitors in three villages that were central to the collection zones. They were thirty kilometres apart and formed a perfect triangle on the map. But the deputy had no information as to which collector was staying at which location. They’d have to go and see for themselves. Phosy and the two young officers were nine kilometres from the first site, a village called Ban Noo. It was only the absence of vegetation and a thin layer of sand that distinguished the road from the surrounding landscape. The journey had been more rock than roll.

“What do we do if he’s there?” asked one of the fearful officers.

“We talk to him,” Phosy said, concentrating on keeping the jeep on the track. “We ask a few pertinent questions. We check out his attitude. We say we’re just making a few inquiries and we’d like his cooperation. We start with things like work, his routines, marital status, family – the usual. Then we hit him with something direct like, “Have you ever met a woman called Ngam in Ban Xon?” We look into his eyes and see if there’s a reaction. And we take it from there.”

“Then we shoot him,” came a voice. Madame Daeng’s smiling face loomed in the rear-view mirror as she rose from behind the back seat. Phosy slammed on the brakes and ran into a tall clump of swollen-finger grass. All three men turned to see her, large as life, clutching the roof.

“Madame Daeng? What the…?” Phosy yelled.

“I told you I could scrunch up to almost nothing,” she smiled.

“But where were you?”

“Under the tarpaulin behind the back seat.”

“There’s barely ten centimetres down there.”

“I’m pliable.”

Phosy was furious. “Get out!” he said.

She laughed. “What, here?”

“I told you to stay at Natan.”

“You want me to walk all the way back there on my arthritic legs?”

Phosy hammered his fists against the steering wheel.

“Madame Daeng, if you were a man I’d punch you on the nose, I swear I would.”

“If you did, even if I weren’t a man, I’d punch you back.”

The young officers laughed.

“You two can wipe those smiles off, right now.”

“Listen, son,” she said, “believe me, I can help. If I thought I’d hamper your investigation I wouldn’t have come. Really I wouldn’t.”

“I know your history. But that was…”

“Then you know I can only be an asset. Siri’s up here somewhere and, brave as he is, I want to be around to…to support him. That’s what couples do. And, Phosy, a steering wheel can only take so much abuse.”

Phosy gave one last punch then put his hands on his head. He knew when he was beaten.

“Let this be a lesson to you boys,” he said to the policemen. He left it there, and they didn’t ever learn what the lesson was. Phosy reversed out of the grass and drove in silence to Ban Noo.

Comrade Ying Dali, the one-time North Vietnam region 6 boxing champion, now gone to seed, sat beneath a camouflaged tarpaulin receiving piles of paper from two colourful characters: one with a cheroot hanging from her lip, the other with a crossbow strapped to his back. Phosy killed the overheated engine and watched.

“According to Siri’s description, he’s one of the two junior officials,” Daeng said. Phosy kept quiet.

They waited until the boxer was alone before strolling across to him. They were in a village so basic the main house was a thatch of twigs. They were well-plaited twigs but really nothing to stop a good wolf puff. It was a picturesque place with a stream, like an illustration for a month on a calendar: heaven, unless you had to live in such an isolated place with no power or sanitation or medicines. The boxer stood when the strangers reached his lean-to.

“Comrades?” he said.

Phosy introduced himself and his men, ignoring Daeng completely. He announced that they were investigating a murder in the district. It was a small untruth only in that the offence had not yet taken place. He hoped he wasn’t tempting fate.

“Can you tell us exactly how your system here works?” he asked Ying.

“Well, it’s quite simple,” Ying began. “We draw up an area into grids. We come in and identify literate people. We pay them a few
kip
, and they take our questionnaires off to the surrounding minority villages. We come back two weeks later, and they bring us the results. We check that everything’s in order, pay them the rest of their fees, and give the documents to the section head to collate.”

“Comrade Buaphan?” Phosy asked, consulting an imaginary list in his notebook.

“That’s right.”

“How do you get them to him?”

“Depends. If he’s busy he sends the driver. But he prefers to drive himself. He’s a bit touchy about his truck.”

“And is that the only communication you have – the truck? I mean you don’t have walkie-talkies or such?”

“No, they don’t work over these distances, and the mountains block shortwave signals as well. So we rely on the truck to ferry messages back and forth.”

“So for long periods you wouldn’t know what the other two men are up to, whether they’re at their bases or not?”

“Well, that’s true. But I mean, we can tell. If the work’s not done we know who’s been slacking off. Comrade Buaphan’s always efficient.”

“Do you know anything about Comrade Buaphan’s personal life?” Phosy asked.

“No. He’s a bit of a loner. When we aren’t on the road – I mean, outside office hours – we never see him.”

“Does he have family?” Daeng asked from her rearguard position out in the sun. Phosy turned and glared at her.

“He had a wife once, I believe,” the boxer replied. “Somewhere up in the north. She passed away.”

Phosy took a step to his left to eclipse Madame Daeng. “Have you seen him with any women? Girlfriends? Doing any socializing on these trips?”

“No, but like I say, apart from the journey out and back we don’t see each other that much. Why? What’s he done?”

Phosy ignored the question. “How do you get along with him?”

“He’s all right. He can be really charming at times. He knows some funny stories when he’s in the mood. But I don’t get the feeling he’s in this type of work for the social contact. I think it’s the isolation he likes, being up here in the hills. It can be addictive, I have to admit.”

Madame Daeng had sidled around to get shade from a cow’s-earring tree. She was biding her time until Phosy ran out of questions. Her chance came sooner than she’d expected.

“Well, thank you…” Phosy began. Daeng put up her hand. “What?”

“One last question,” she said and smiled too sweetly for him to refuse.

Phosy waved her on.

“There are women at your office?”

“Yes, about half a dozen.”

“How does Buaphan act around them?”

“Act?”

“Yes, is he friendly? Does he flirt?”

Ying laughed. “One thing I could never imagine is Comrade Buaphan flirting with the women at the office. If you wanted a playboy you couldn’t go past my office mate, Nouphet. He’s the charmer. But Buaphan, no ma’am. He’s really not that type.”

“What type is he?” Phosy asked.

“Well, he’s…don’t get me wrong. I get along with him OK. But Buaphan can be a bit…self-important. It’s as if he thinks he’s better than other people. It doesn’t worry me, but I know the clerks and the cleaner and the drivers complain about him treating them like servants. They gossip about him a lot.”

From Ying, the boxer, they learned at which of the three locations Buaphan was based. In order to get there they had to return along the track they’d just taken and go all the way back to the intersection with the main road. There they were to head north, away from Natan, until they arrived at the small village of Nahoi, where Comrade Nouphet, the playboy, was billeted. The village was at a second turn-off that led up into the mountains to the remote outpost where Buaphan had chosen to spend his time.

Phosy had yielded the driving to one of his men, who had his nose up against the windscreen studying the rocks ahead. Phosy sat in silence, riding the bumps.

“I could drive if you get tired,” Daeng said.

“No!” snapped Phosy, still deep in his huff.