Six and a Half Deadly Sins (11 page)

Auntie Kwa handed him a pair of shears as big as his chest. Daeng laughed. “Could you just pick the hem for us?” she asked the woman.

Reluctantly, Auntie Kwa took hold of the cloth and began to pick with a thin blade. As in most markets, this small but significant break from early morning tradition had attracted a silent gathering of curious onlookers come to see what the outsiders were doing. Shoppers in blankets tied at the waist with string or in ex-army trenchcoats crowded in on the old couple.

“I didn’t do this. I didn’t do this,” Auntie Kwa mumbled. She didn’t dare look inside even when the opening was wide enough. She handed the skirt to Siri, who probed into the hem with a pair of tweezers from his morgue kit. He withdrew the object slowly, but it wasn’t a finger he found in there. It was a bullet of a type he didn’t recognize.

“That’s not a finger,” said Auntie Kwa.

“It’s no less incriminating,” said Siri. “It could be the bullet that killed the owner of the finger, for all we know. I think you’d better tell us everything.”

“I had nothing to do with this,” she said. “There’s nothing to tell. I sold one of my
sin
s to some woman. She gave me twice what I asked for it. Then she handed me this plastic bag and told me an old man would bring back my
sin
one day, and I was to give him the bag—this one. I never even opened it.”

“When was this?” Daeng asked.

“About six weeks ago.”

“What did she look like?” asked Siri.

“Normal. Nothing special. Not tall, not short. About my age.”

The gathered onlookers had begun a mumbled translation for their fellow tribesmen.

“Lao?” asked Siri.

“Far as I could tell. I didn’t check her ID.”

“How was she traveling?” asked Daeng.

“Just turned up on foot here, like you two.”

“Do you know anyone who’s missing a finger?” Siri asked.

“No, I do not,” Auntie Kwa replied.

“All right,” said Daeng. “Then that brings us to the original question. Where was this second
sin
made?”

“Really, I don’t know.”

“Look carefully,” said Siri.

“It’s a cheap rip-off,” she said. “Poor quality. A Lu design, but nothing personal about it. We Lu take a pride in our weaving. It’s a family-based tradition in the villages. This was probably made over the border in a sweatshop. That’s why nobody buys my high-class
sin
s anymore. They go for the cheap ones.”

“Over the border?” said Daeng. “You mean, in China?”

“Yes. No, perhaps not China. You see this fabric? The green hem beneath the brocade? That’s Burmese. Here in Muang Sing we only produce black, indigo and blue.”

“And is there a trade in green fabric between Muang Sing and Burma?”

“No, too far. Not enough interest. If we needed it, we could get it cheaper from the Chinese.”

“So if I wanted to buy Burmese cloth …?”

“You’d go to Chiang Kok, on the Mekhong.”

“Do you know any Lu weavers over there?” Siri asked.

“There’s only the one. Her name’s Peu Jin. She lives by the river.”

“No, wait,” said Daeng. “That doesn’t make sense. You say they don’t produce green cloth here. But the
sin
that was sent to us—the
sin
you wove—has a green hem. So doesn’t that make it Burmese?”

“No, sister. That’s why I said yes and no when you asked me if it was mine. I did weave that cloth, but I used good
old-fashioned Muang Sing spun cotton. Someone’s dyed the hem green, and a shoddy job they made of it too.”

“Why would they do that?” Siri asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine, old man.”

Inspector Phosy had spent the night in his jeep on a remote hill. He’d found paranoia had saved his life on several occasions. In this case, it was more like a shivery touch of the inevitable that kept him away from his boardinghouse. He’d broken the face of probably the most influential villain in the province. Following his initial interviews at the Yao village, Phosy had driven his Chinese guests back to the border crossing at Pang Hai. From there they’d found their own transportation to the trade commission in Meng La.

Lieutenant Tang on the Lao side had been interested to hear of the inspector’s run-in with Foreman Goi. The lieutenant had collected a good deal of information about the toothless one. His interest had been piqued following a visit the foreman had paid him a year earlier. Goi had quite openly suggested mutual rewards in turning a blind eye to certain imports and exports. Ninety times out of a hundred, such a deal would have been accepted, and a Lao military man on five dollars a month could have himself a very cozy life. But Lieutenant Tang was no ordinary soldier. He was one of those rare devout communists who detested capitalist doctrines and the selfish pursuit of money. He could most certainly not be bought. He slept in a rattan hut, drank in moderation and wrote daily to his wife and children. Phosy liked him.

Over coffee, Phosy heard that toothless Goi was actually called Guan Jin. He was Thai Lu but born on the Chinese side of the border. Like the Lao, the Lu race had been cut in half by a random demarcation. Goi had studied engineering in Peking and risen to the rank of sergeant in the
People’s Liberation Army. He had been accused of some unlisted infringements that were never proven, but he had been kicked out of the military. Soon he was managing engineering crews as a civil engineer in the southern provinces. There his language skills made him invaluable to the monolingual Chinese. His personal record was clouded with accusations of violence, cruelty and profiteering, but his professional accomplishments were many. His teams were always the most efficient and effective. His projects were concluded under budget and to the satisfaction of the regional cadres. Once the Chinese road program was launched in Laos, Goi was given instructions to get the job done without draining the limited resources of the People’s Republic of China. It appeared nobody looked too deeply into how he achieved that.

Rumors were a national pastime in Laos, and nowhere were they more extravagant than along the border. But even if rumors about Foreman Goi were greatly exaggerated, they all pointed in one direction. The man was criminally insane. There were stories of executions, of beatings and torture. Goi had become a dark legend in the north, and his name spread fear in the hearts of those who worked for and with him. Phosy had felt that manic energy, and there was no doubt in his mind that Foreman Goi was a dangerous man. To make matters worse, his influence extended beyond Luang Nam Tha all the way to the capital. He had to have contacts in Vientiane to have been able to gather information about Phosy’s wife and child. Those same contacts proved a constant threat to their lives. Phosy could have called for backup from Vientiane, but he felt he’d need a small army to compete with Goi and his road builders. And waging war against a warlord had never proven wise or successful.

Phosy and Tang might have been able to glean more information from Vientiane about Goi’s record, but
communication had been down for twenty-four hours. The border post was completely cut off from the outside world. Even their shortwave signals had been blocked. And, for some reason, traffic into Laos from China had halted completely.

“They do it every now and then,” said Tang. “The Chinese. They get a new directive from Peking and shut border crossings. Then they show off with their technical skills. It’ll all be back to normal in a day or so.”

With no observers and no police escort, Phosy returned to the Akha village at Ban Bouree. He parked well off the main road behind a patch of untidy banana trees. From there he walked along the track leading to the village. At one point, he passed a small gaggle of women dressed in threadbare costumes that didn’t seem to represent any clan he’d ever seen. The women were carrying baskets of firewood on their backs. The basket straps formed a band across their foreheads. Phosy nodded. The older women ignored him. The younger ones giggled and probably made some ribald comments in their language, because everyone laughed.

It was a young girl at the back of the group who caught his attention like the tongue of a cartoon frog lassoing a fly. She was stunningly beautiful, but not in a modest girlish way. She was about fifteen, sweet and ripe as an orange mango, and she walked as if she’d learned the arts of grace and poise at a finishing school. He stopped to watch her pass. She looked back, smiled, rolled her hips and licked her lips. Phosy’s heart bunched like a fist.

It had been a brief encounter, the details of which he would most certainly not be sharing with his wife when he returned to Vientiane. He was disturbed by how the girl had made him feel. Phosy was not a flirtatious man, and very rarely was he excited at the sight of a teenaged girl, no matter how pretty.
But this young vixen had made a papaya salad of his hormones and thrown in a handful of chillies. Any other man would have been flattered and stimulated by such a show. But the inspector was embarrassed. He thought he was past such adolescent weaknesses. He was still unsettled when he arrived at the village.

Most of the adults were out cutting sugarcane. The girls of ten or eleven had been entrusted with the care of the younger children. They were playing with toddlers or rocking babies on hips not yet fully formed. One of the girls remembered him from his visit the day before. She waved. She’d tied a tin can on a string to the tail of a young pig and set her three small charges the challenge of being the first to strike the can with a stick. The pig, quite naturally, kept its distance from the stick, and the game seemed unending. The girl had probably played the same game when she was three or four. With the exception of the pig, it seemed to thrill everyone.

“Hello, Uncle,” the girl said.

“Hello, little mother,” said Phosy.

She laughed. Her teeth already showed signs of a sugarcane diet. Phosy sat on a tree stump and watched the game. “You’re a policeman,” she said.

“Yes. Do you have anything to confess?”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“You see that one?” she said, pointing her chin at a chubby child who was throwing clods of earth at the pig. “He makes me angry. I might kill him.”

Phosy laughed. Had there been schools up here in the wilds, this girl would get the education she deserved and become the Minister of Culture. There was no doubt about it. As it was, she would dutifully await marriage at far too young an age and fade out of the landscape of potential. “Do you suppose someone got angry at Headman Panpan?”

“No.”

“Really? It looked like someone didn’t like him.”

“Only Headman Mao.”

“Headman Mao didn’t like Headman Panpan?”

“They used to be best friends. Then one day they broke up. They started arguing a lot.”

“What did they argue about?”

“Don’t know. They only ever argued in Lao. I don’t speak Lao.”

“Can you think what might cause two men who were close friends to suddenly stop liking each other?”

“Mama said it was the potion. When a man drinks the potion, he doesn’t know what’s right.”

“What kind of potion was it?”

“Don’t know. Mama said I’m too young to drink it. I’m guessing it’s like Coca-Cola. I drank a bottle once, and it made me throw up.”

“Did your headman ever fall over and say silly things when he was drinking this potion?”

“No, you’re thinking of rice whiskey. That just makes people drunk. The potion makes people stupid.”

Phosy didn’t get any further with the potion theory. He thanked the girl and told the chubby kid to be good. The chubby kid threw a clod of earth at him.

“Go ahead,” Phosy told the girl.

The inspector walked down the winding path that led to the clearing. He passed along tight jungle tracks where the leaves reached out to caress him on either side. Where anything could have been lurking around the next bend. Where the sounds of birds and insects took on human form. Reaching the crime scene came as something of a relief.

He sat again on the log. The clothes had been removed now. The sharpened bamboo poles were gone. He’d told Sergeant Teyp and his men to take everything to the police
office. They’d looked at him as if he were mad when he handed them the plastic gloves and insisted they touch none of the evidence without wearing the gloves. Many of Dr. Siri’s methods stuck. So now Phosy had only the crime scene and his skill at visualization. It had been early morning when the men died. No signs of alcohol. A meeting in a place where there was no work to be done. It’s cold in the morning, yet they removed their shirts and hats. What could …?

“The potion,” he said aloud. All of a sudden the parts fit neatly together. He was embarrassed that it had taken him so long. Dr. Siri would probably have worked it all out in his sleep.

It was a tragedy, but the important point was that the scenario he’d arrived at had nothing to do with the Chinese road builders. He could sign the statement now with a clear conscience. China was innocent.

Phosy walked through the forest toward the work camp, not with the intention of announcing this fact, more to burn up the adrenaline that pumped through him when a case was solved. It still remained to be seen why toothless Goi had been so keen to clear China’s name. Given the man’s record of illicit dealings, Phosy doubted the motivation was purely, or even partly, political. But that was a larger issue and one he wasn’t about to tackle.

When he arrived at the camp, it was deserted. The shanties stretched out before him, but there were no people. He assumed he’d come before the end of the work detail, that the men were still at the road site. But as he walked from hut to shack, he saw no personal effects. No bags. No bed mats. The volleyball nets had been taken down. There were no pots in the mess tent. In the twenty-seven hours since he’d last seen them, 1,117 Chinese road workers had disappeared.