Six and a Half Deadly Sins (24 page)

They walked across the crusty earth to a point beyond the trees. There were the remains of three bamboo sheds.

“Well, they were obviously here for longer than the three days,” said Siri. “You don’t bother to build a hut unless you’re staying for a while. For just three days they’d use tents or sleep under the stars. They must have used this base for other work around Muang Sing.”

“If they were here long enough, they might have used the pipe segments to line a well,” said Daeng.

“Possible,” said Civilai. “But they were here because there was too much water. I doubt they needed to dig for it.”

“Look,” said Siri.

He was crouching down. The others came over to look. There at the doctor’s feet was a spent bullet, slightly buckled. There was another a few meters away. Over the next twenty minutes, they found five more.

“They’re the same caliber as the one we found in the hem of the
sin
,” said Daeng. “I wonder what they were shooting at.”

“If they stayed for a while, they’d have to get permission from the headman in Seuadaeng,” said Siri. “He might be the person to ask. Let’s pay him a visit.”

“Ah, yes,” said the headman after handing Civilai back his well-used
laissez-passer.
He was the rosy brown of chestnuts. “I remember the crew. They were here for three weeks. They fixed our road, then went off on other day trips.”

“Did you have any trouble with them?” asked Civilai.

“Trouble? No. Goodness me, no trouble at all. Very polite they were. You know, they were all Lu, like us. From China, but the same language. Same culture. We look after our brothers and sisters. It’s like me, you see? I’m from a Lu village down south. Our beloved government transferred me up here to be headman. And look … I accepted immediately, no worries. I have great friends already and an industrious wife.”

The wife looked up from her scrubbing, a baby strapped to her back and another at her feet. She looked drained as a result of her industry.

“Did anything … unusual … happen on the night they struck camp?” asked Daeng.

“Unusual in what way?”

“Did you hear any shots fired?”

“Shots? Well, of course they were hunting down there. There’d be rifle fire from time to time. But nothing out of the ordinary. What exactly is your purpose for being here, comrades?”

Civilai butted in. “The Chinese road program is being phased out,” he said. “Our beloved government would like to identify workers who were particularly conscientious in their endeavors to assist us in the development of our nation. We have medals to give out.”

“I see,” said the headman. “Then you’ve come to the right place. You won’t find anyone better than the man who ran that maintenance team. The Chinese recognized his diligence. He went from head of that small team to become the head foreman of the entire workforce.”

“His name wouldn’t be”—Siri looked at his paper—“Guan Jin, by any chance?”

“Yes, I believe that is his full name,” said the headman. “A most helpful and intelligent man.”

“Do you know whether he’s still around these parts?” Daeng asked.

“Why, yes, comrade. In fact I saw him just yesterday. He’d be easy enough to find. Just ask anyone where you might find Goi.”

“Goi?”

“That’s right. It’s his Lao nickname.”

The visitors exchanged glances. Another piece had slotted into place. They gave their thanks and returned to the jeep. As they were climbing in, the industrious wife ran out with a basket of fruit. The headman looked on proudly from the doorway. The woman put the basket on Daeng’s lap.

“Thank you,” said Daeng.

“Thank you for visiting,” said the woman. She kept a tight grip on Daeng’s wrist. “The night they finish camp,” she said hurriedly and with a tremor in her voice, “there are shooting and scream. Twenty-six shot. One—one—one—one, like that.”

“So where to?” asked Civilai.

“Back to the camp,” said Siri.

“Goi,” said Daeng. “The little finger himself.”

Goi
was a common word for the smallest of the litter. As soon as the headman mentioned the foreman’s nickname, they’d all remembered the severed pinky. Had the first clue been the identity of the perpetrator?

“You do realize the headman is, in some respect, in cahoots with this Goi?” asked Civilai.

“Yes. But he won’t expect us to go back to the camp,” said Siri. “He thinks we’re after the foreman.”

“There’s just the one road. Anyone passing would see us parked.”

With that the jeep veered across the road, careened down the embankment and began to bump over the dried paddy fields.

“Four-wheel drive,” mouthed Siri into the rearview mirror.

“I believe Madame Daeng with her natural padding would be better placed on this backseat,” said Civilai. “The springs have all but given up on me.”

With that he took off, his head hitting the canvas roof.

“That will teach you not to insult a full-figured woman,” said Daeng.

They parked behind the small oasis of vegetation and went back to the area where they’d found the bullets. They each sat on a slice of tree that had been placed around a hearth. For several minutes they sat still and contemplated. It was Daeng who spoke first.

“Twenty-six shots,” she said. “Thirty-one names on the work roster.”

“And not a gunfight,” said Siri. “The shots were spaced out. An execution. What do you suppose happened that night?”

“We are reading quite a lot into a brief statement from a miserable woman,” Civilai reminded them.

“She was shaking,” said Daeng. “She was terrified. I get the feeling she was taking a chance to talk to us at all.”

“Come on,” said Siri. “We’re all thinking the same thing.”

“It’s just so … so obscene,” said Daeng.

“It would fit in with the missing supplies,” said Siri. “Twenty-six bodies buried in soft earth would be found soon enough. Dogs or wild animals would dig them up. The floods would wash them out. If I were about to make twenty-six bodies disappear forever, I could think of no better way than to bury them in cement in concrete pipe segments.”

“And they’d even dig their own graves,” said Civilai. “None of them would question a foreman who told them to dig wells in the middle of nowhere. Probably think it was some long-term plan.”

“But why?” Daeng asked.

“Money,” said Civilai. “Eventually everything’s about money.”

“But these workers were earning peanuts. It would be like stealing rice from a beggar.”

“On an individual basis, perhaps,” said Civilai, “but look at the mathematics. You wipe out a maintenance team, and you collect twenty-six salaries. Add to this the earnings they have in their bedrolls or their money belts. It was 1976. There were no banks. No money transfer agencies. They wouldn’t trust anyone to take the money home for them. They’d do a six-month stint in Laos and carry their salaries around with them until it was time to go home. They might even ask the paymaster to hang on to their money until they left the job. If you eliminated them after they’d been here for several months, you could make a nice little income.”

“And there would be no accounting for losses,” Siri added. “They’d been recruited by an agent on the Chinese side, brought to a remote area in a foreign country at a time when nobody knew who was in control. An illiterate foreign laborer disappears. The family back in China waits a year for him to come home. They make a complaint to their local cadre. A slow and indifferent inquiry is conducted, and the findings come out something like, ‘Look, lady, your son ran away from the road crew. He found a local girl and married her.’ End of story. This is outlaw country where people like Goi reign. Nobody cares.”

“Somebody cares,” said Daeng. “Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to get us involved. Whoever put together this chain of clues knows what happened here. They understand they can’t tell the local authorities, and they’d be very unlikely to interest anyone in Vientiane. But someone knew about you, Siri. Perhaps they had dealings with you somewhere down the line. They knew you wouldn’t be able to resist a mystery like this. You were their only hope.”

“What can I do?” Siri asked.

“Collect enough evidence to bring Goi to justice,” said Daeng.

“We don’t even have any bodies,” Siri reminded them.

“Then let’s start digging,” said Daeng.

“But let us dig intelligently,” said Civilai. “I for one would prefer to use an implement rather than scratch around with my bare fingers.”

“Fear not,” said Siri. “We have a Willys.”

Clamped to the underside of the jeep were a spade and a pick. Admittedly they were suitable for diggers of short stature, which under normal circumstances would have included Siri. But Daeng forbade him from physical labor.

“Look at you, Dr. Siri,” she said. “You’re in no fit state to stand up, let alone dig.”

The normal Dr. Siri would have argued, but the unwell Siri recognized his limitations. He was ill. Very ill, and in need of rest. “In that case, I shall show you where to dig,” he said, and climbed into the jeep.

The earth in the dell was soft from the seasonal floods, and Siri began to drive up and down the gully. Civilai and Daeng sat on the log sections and watched him for some ten minutes. The dirt sank beneath his wheels with every run, all but in two spots where slight mounds appeared.

“He exhibits signs of cleverness from time to time,” said Civilai.

“He married me,” said Daeng by way of confirmation.

Siri cut the engine and leaned back in the seat. “I’d have a go over there if I were you.”

Civilai and Daeng did as they were told, but they were a meter down in one of the mounds and still had no evidence of a burial. They were about to give up and divert their attention to the other mound when Civilai’s shovel hit something solid. Together they cleared away the dirt with their hands, and sure enough, there was a large round table of concrete beneath them. So slapdash was the finishing that the fingers of a human hand protruded from
it at one corner. Only one finger was missing: the pinky of the left hand.

“Shit,” said Daeng. “It’s true.” She sat back on her haunches and shook her head.

Siri left his seat and came over to see what they’d found. “I’d wager this isn’t the only site,” he said.

“How many times do you think they got away with this?” Daeng asked.

“How many
sin
s were there?”

“Seven. You don’t think …?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we found a burial ground like this at every site we visited,” Siri said. “Everywhere Goi and his associates set up camp with his maintenance crew. I bet he massacred every last one of them and stole from them. That was his initial funding for bigger and worse things. I imagine the skeletons in our new friend’s killing fields lay far and wide.”

There really was no other choice but to proceed to the site at the end of the loop, the Thai Lu village eleven kilometers down the Nam Tha River where the seventh
sin
was produced. It wasn’t the type of place you’d have to search for because it sat quite boldly beside the road to Luang Nam Tha. The village straddled the river, but there was no bridge. Villagers had become used to wading the wide shallow water course to visit friends or shop or run to meet guests who stopped on the roadside high above.

“It would appear they’re expecting us,” said Civilai.

A throng of children had scaled the steep hill and were huddled around the jeep. “It’s him,” said one child, pointing at Siri as if he were a pop star.

There was a group “Ooh” and a lot of incomprehensible Lu, and the girl who had recognized Siri said in Lao, “This way, Grandfather. Follow us.”

“This is peculiar,” said Civilai.

By now, Siri barely had the strength to walk. Daeng and Civilai propped him up on either side. They followed the children down to the river valley, across the pleasantly cold water and up the far bank to the schoolroom. It was
a bamboo-and-straw affair with a dirt floor. But there were enough decorations and flowers to suggest it was a well-loved building. A blackboard message shouted
WELCOME
,
DR
.
SIRI AND OTHER RESPECTED GUESTS
in chalk. Some of the children showed the guests to their benches, and others brought them cool drinks.

“Do you suppose they do this for anyone who happens to stop on the road?” Civilai asked.

They sipped at their drinks and watched through the large classroom window as a group of adults gathered downriver and began to walk up along the track. Most of them were women. It didn’t take long before first one, then two others became recognizable. There was Nang Uma, the young woman who ran the riverside guesthouse in Luang Nam Tha. Beside her was Auntie Kwa, the grumpy weaver they’d met at the morning market in Muang Sing. But to their utter surprise, behind them, as neat and presentable as ever, came Madame Chanta from the Women’s Union, the woman who’d first pointed them northward on their hunt for the source of the severed finger. They walked into the classroom and immediately went to their guests.

“Congratulations on uncovering all our clues,” said Madame Chanta, walking from visitor to visitor and shaking their hands. “Dr. Siri, I have a letter here for you from your Nurse Dtui. Oh, my. What on earth is wrong with you?”