Six and a Half Deadly Sins (6 page)

“So Judge Haeng decides she’s getting a little too clingy for him and passes her on like an Olympic baton. One day he announces she’ll now be the minor wife of a married government official. She’s shocked and suddenly realizes that all the promises and plans had just been part of Haeng’s politicking to keep her happy. Miss Singxay plots revenge. She is given to snooping. She finds the addresses of Haeng’s two other concubines and decides that all of the players in the drama deserve to suffer.”

“See what happens when you educate a woman?”

“Miss Singxay had been secretly taping her trysts with the judge on her cassette recorder. All their intimate moments. I doubt the objective was blackmail. Just a young girl’s infatuation. At one point she had the judge saying, ‘I’ve got a surprise for you, darling. You can expect this on a regular basis.’ ”

“I dread to think what he was referring to.”

“Miss Singxay has a younger suitor, a less-than-brilliant boy who’d do anything for her. At one stage she’d stolen Haeng’s key ring and sent it off to make copies. The judge is apparently particularly clumsy when it comes to security. I imagine at that time she’d had no concrete plan as to what she’d do with the keys. She just collected memorabilia from her darling. But now she has a purpose. With her young paramour
in tow, she goes to the rooms of the two other women in the dead of night. Unlocks the doors. Clicks
PLAY
on her cassette recorder. ‘I’ve got a surprise for you, darling. You can expect this on a regular basis.’ Her boy, drenched in Judge Haeng’s favorite aftershave, runs in and beats the girls unconscious. When they come to, all they can recall is the darkness, the judge’s voice, the aftershave and the beating. One of them finds the address of the other suspiciously dropped at the scene of the crime. They contact each other and compare notes. The Lao Women’s Union had been campaigning for abused women to come forward, so the two women tell their tale. And voilà. The Union has a ready-made case against an influential man. With so many wives of ministers on the committee enthused by the supposed equal-opportunity policies of our grand politburo, this was their chance to show how much power they wielded.

“The police interviews concluded that the two witnesses hadn’t actually seen the face of their attacker. After a little more investigation, the judge’s story that he had been at home with chronic diarrhea on the night of the attacks was substantiated by his private physician, who had been dragged from his bed to attend to the drainage problem.”

“He has a private physician?”

“I accepted the fictitious role retrospectively when I discovered that on the afternoon of the attacks he had been sent a box of sweets by Singxay. A simple microscopic sample confirmed that the Thai strawberry teardrops contained a particularly high concentration of intestinal parasites. The gift was obviously intended to keep him home while she went about her wicked business that night. She naturally didn’t want the actual judge turning up at any of his nighttime love nests.”

“She sounds like my type of girl.”

“So all that remains is for Judge Haeng to be reinstated
and send Daeng and me to Luang Nam Tha to assist Inspector Phosy in his case.”

“There are those who might consider your assistance to the judge mercenary.”

“I doubt I made any friends at the Women’s Union, but there’s a sizeable difference between philandering and grievous bodily harm.”

The men gave the noodles a little of the silent respect they deserved, but soon the clatter of spoons on stainless steel could be heard across the river. Ugly was devastated.

“Another masterpiece,” said Civilai. “Have I mentioned that your wife is wasted on you?”

“Ad nauseam. And how is your otherwise boring life progressing?”

“This Vietnam/Cambodia thing is creating such a lot of paperwork.”

“Yes, I’ve heard invasions can be administrative nightmares. I’m sure that’s the reason half the world’s incursions fail to take off—not nearly enough clerks. But what’s that got to do with you?”

“I’ve been named Chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on Lao/Chinese relations.”

“You’re retired.”

“It’s a hobby.”

“You hate the Chinese.”

“I didn’t say Lao/Chinese ‘good’ relations, did I? With the Chinese still backing Pol Pot, there’s a lot of vitriol being spat back and forth between Peking and Hanoi. The Chinese had supported Ho Chi Minh to the tune of twenty billion dollars over twenty years leading up to the war with America. They somehow thought they’d bought themselves a little bit of respect. They’re miffed that Hanoi’s still acting like an independent nation rather than a colony. The Vietnamese were instructed not to interfere in Cambodian internal affairs,
but when the Khmer started stretching their bloody empire across the Vietnamese border, Hanoi decided they’d had enough. Wallop! Three weeks down, and they’re already in control of all the major cities apart from Pailin. We only saw the tip of the bloodberg when we were over there, Siri. There are unconfirmed reports that two and a half million people have been annihilated.”

“And China doesn’t have a problem with that?”

“The numbers wouldn’t worry them so much. A million’s a
dim sum
queue in Peking. They win wars by sending in wave after wave of expendable militia until the enemy runs out of bullets. It’s like Stalin said, ‘One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.’ No, it’s a matter of principle. Ho was rude. Pol Pot was polite. He sent thank-you notes.”

“And we get stuck in the middle again,” said Siri.

“It’s not like we’re completely innocent,” Civilai reminded him. “We have four hundred thousand Vietnamese troops stationed here. We let them launch offensives into Cambodia. We’ve aided and abetted. Vietnam doesn’t have that many friends. They’re pressuring us to tell the world we love them. I’m afraid our senile leaders are going to do something silly.”

“Like?”

“Declare war on China.”

Siri slapped his knee and let out a hoarse laugh. “Well, that’s one war that wouldn’t last long,” he said. “We’d be out of bullets shortly after morning tea on the first day. We’d be forced to throw sticks. And they might interpret that as sarcasm. No war was ever won on sarcasm.”

“You’re a peculiar man, Dr. Siri.”

“So you agreed to host this think tank to come up with alternatives to being overrun by angry Chinese?”

“In a way.”

“Any luck so far?”

“We’ve convinced the Khao San Phathet Lao newsletter to
print a photograph of our illustrious president eating dinner in the Chinese restaurant on Samsenthai. It’s symbolic.”

“It would have to be. It certainly isn’t edible.”

“It doesn’t matter. The Chinese will see the photograph as surreptitiously siding with them.”

“While simultaneously contracting food poisoning.”

“You really have no aptitude for diplomacy.”

Inspector Phosy had followed slowly behind the Chinese truck driven by Toothless and the man-mountain, who were leading him to the police station. He’d needed time to think. Luang Nam Tha was a remote province. The police office had a staff of four. The real policemen from the old regime had fled the country, been sent for re-education in the north or had taken on new lives denying any links to law enforcement. They hadn’t been any more honest, but they were disciplined and subtle in their indiscretions. The senior sergeant here by the name of Teyp had gone to Vientiane a year earlier to learn skills. Phosy had met him there and attempted to convert Teyp from a battle-hardened soldier to a logical, law-abiding policeman. It had been a daunting task, and given the lack of qualified candidates across the country, Teyp had been plucked from the tree long before he was ripe.

Phosy knew Teyp and his constables would yield to any authority. Money, power and threats would leave a no-hope public official very little choice. Out here in the wilds, these country policemen were easy pickings. Taken for a drink here. Bought a new tape player for New Year. And suddenly there were obligations. They had to live side by side with villains, and everyone knew where your house was. The inspector was on his own.

He’d really only had one choice. According to his map,
Luang Nam Tha’s new town was laid out like a grid. The main road was the eastern-most axis. The Chinese truck had been about to turn left a hundred meters ahead. It had slowed down to wait for him to catch up. Instead, Phosy had slammed his foot on the accelerator, swung into the next small lane on two wheels and gunned the motor.

And here he was twenty minutes later, heading back in the direction he’d come from the previous day, south and away from Dodge City.

Hours passed, as they often did in the PDR Laos where, apparently, nothing happened. Where no announcements were made. No changes evident. No signs of time having served any purpose at all. Yet during that apparently non-moving period, China had been able to amass a quarter of its available ground troops on the Vietnamese border. On the day the Lao Prime Minister was on the radio announcing projections that two-thirds of the nation’s farms would be collectives by mid-1980, China invaded Laos’s number-one ally—Vietnam. As there was no announcement of this on Lao bulletins, and the news had apparently not reached the Thai media, Siri and Daeng had no reason to reconsider their vacation to the northern border.

The only trip they’d taken in all that non-moving time was a visit to the shrine of the people they’d killed. It was a monthly pilgrimage. The Party would have frowned on such foolishness—the shrine, not the killings. That was why Siri and Daeng had found a place remote from the city. They’d selected a tree many times older then themselves and decorated it in ribbons and spun cotton. They’d asked its spirits to accept the souls of the men and women who currently resided only in their consciences.

The old couple had fought for independence from the French, then fought again against a Lao royalist army pumped up with US aid dollars. Being a guerilla for three decades had made it impossible to avoid death. Daeng’s kills had been too numerous to recall names. So apart from one or two particularly satisfying homicides, she’d opted for a sort of blanket forgiveness; a package apology to the relatives of everyone who’d died at her hand. She’d killed in battle, in self-defense and in the interests of the Party. There was nothing she regretted, but her victims deserved respect.

Siri could count his ghosts. His business had always been the preservation of life. There had been unavoidable deaths in battlefront surgery tents, and he had his own way of dealing with those. The victims came to see him often and bore no grudges. He had killed four human beings deliberately, three with his own hand in do-or-die situations. One, a woman—a royalist spy they called The Lizard—had been put to death as a result of his evidence. Not murder, perhaps, but culpable homicide once removed. Though he’d fully expected a visit from The Lizard’s tormented spirit, there had been no contact. It was impossible to put a soul to rest unless she showed herself.

Like Daeng, Siri felt no compunction but often wondered what might have happened if he’d joined the other side. His victims then would have been his erstwhile comrades, his friends. And so he felt no hatred and believed they deserved a small suburb in the spirit world where they might graduate to another life. It never hurt to mix beliefs. Siri and Daeng left an open bottle of soy milk and a mango at the base of the tree, along with two burning jossticks, and Siri dropped in a hushed Hail Mary for good measure.

There had been no news from Judge Haeng, the Lao Women’s Union or Dtui. The past twenty-four hours had been thicker and slower than any twenty-four hours Siri and Daeng
could recall. They were reaching their brick wall of desperation. Madame Daeng’s opium tea was becoming more of a sedative against life than against pain. Siri was rashly betting and losing more cups of husked rice in his late-night poker games. Ugly was snapping at everyone.

Then at last, the world began to rotate again. It was kickstarted by a postcard with the stamp stuck to the photo and a large smiley face on the reverse. At the bottom was one of Mr. Geung’s hearts, which resembled a suet pudding. Obviously, their lab assistant’s romance was progressing well.

Within minutes, Nurse Dtui stopped by. Her cold was thick, and it made her sound like a heavy-smoking gangster. She’d come to return the finger and to tell Siri that the half
pha sin
was with Ou at the
lycée.
The lab teacher was working through the basic color tests to identify the chemicals they could smell on the material. Ou’s sense of smell was phenomenal, but she too had come down with the dreaded flu and could no longer trust her nose. They’d tested the finger and had indeed found evidence of formaldehyde. Somebody had gone to the trouble of preserving the severed digit. But the formaldehyde wasn’t alone there. It was one of Dtui’s hunches that led to the discovery of the second compound. She had noticed how the ink stain from Siri’s leaky pen had faded rapidly overnight. This anomaly, combined with the ashen pallor of the skin, had caused her to suggest they test for bleach. And sure enough, there were high concentrations.