Six and a Half Deadly Sins Page 7

When they pulled up in front of the police station, there was an NJ-130 truck parked out front. Behind the dirty windshield was the man-mountain Phosy recognized from the previous morning even without his AK-47. The man’s ears perched squarely on his shoulders. Beside him sat a woman-child with a powdered face and lipstick. She could barely see over the dashboard. Nobody sat in the driver’s seat.

  Phosy climbed down from his jeep and walked past the open window of the truck. The big man let out a sort of growl. The inspector grinned and proceeded to the open front of the police office.

  He was confronted by toothless foreman Goi on his way out. The toothless one put his hand on Phosy’s chest. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  Phosy looked at the hand and took a half step back. “I already warned you about the stick,” he said. “I feel even more uncomfortable about greasy hands. If your granddaughter wasn’t sitting there in the cab watching, you’d have a broken wrist by now.”

  Raging red bonfires burned in the foreman’s eyes. Had he teeth, he would have bared them. Phosy recognized the signs. This man had killed. The power of life and death, the impunity that came with holding a knife to the jugular of anyone standing in his way, had made him invulnerable. But the difference between this creature and a drunk who took a broken bottle to all comers in a brawl was that this man had a brain and cunning. He planned. He wasn’t impetuous. That was what most frightened Phosy.

  Foreman Goi looked over Phosy’s shoulder as Xiu Long stepped from the jeep, and he nodded at the Chinese man. Goi may have smiled too, but expressions on his face were all a matter of conjecture. He took another step forward and reached out again with his hand. This time he began to brush dust off the detective’s shirt with his fingertips.

  “Clever Vientiane,” he said, not loud enough for anyone else to hear, “you’ve managed to temporarily plug a few gaps in your leaky life.”

  “No idea what you mean,” said Phosy.

  “You know your Chinese backup can’t be here forever. And I see your wife and child have left on an unexpected vacation. But you’d be surprised what a small world this is. How easy it is to trace a person. We can—”

  Phosy pushed past him, causing the foreman to take a step back. Goi’s heel hit a pot of dead flowers, and he toppled backward and thumped into the dust. It was a more dramatic fall than the inspector had planned. He decided to take advantage of the moment.

  “Who the hell is this man?” shouted Phosy to the policemen standing in a line on the office step with their mouths open. One of them went to help the foreman but got a slap for his trouble.

  Foreman Goi struggled to his feet. “Get off me,” he yelled.

  “Inspector, you really shouldn’t—” Sergeant Teyp began.

  “I asked you his name,” said Phosy.

  “It’s Foreman Goi,” said Constable Nut.

  “And what’s Foreman Goi doing here?” Phosy asked.

  Sergeant Teyp looked apologetically at the toothless foreman, then equally apologetically at Phosy. “Foreman Goi has been very helpful with supplies and transportation lately,” he said. “He’s offered to accompany us to the Yao village.”

  “He’ll do no such thing,” said Phosy. “If I see him anywhere near that village, or here for that matter, I’ll arrest him. You understand that?”

  “On what charge?” asked the sergeant.

  “We’ll start with assault and threatening a police officer, then work our way down to driving without a Lao plate.”

  The foreman was walking a wide circle around Phosy like a wily bird in a cockfight looking for the vulnerable spots on his opponent. The man-mountain had stepped down from the truck and had his hand under his shirt. Phosy decided he probably wasn’t scratching a tick bite.

  “Then we’ll see if there’s anything in the books about him not wearing his false teeth in public,” Phosy went on. “If his orangutan pulls that gun out of his belt, we’ll have them both for possession of an unlicensed weapon. You name it. We can just make it up as we go along. What’s the big guy’s name?”

  “Silo,” said Constable Buri.

  “I won’t forget that in a hurry,” said Phosy.

  Foreman Goi had reached the truck after his orbit and was climbing into the driver’s seat. He was seething.

  “Go on, get out of here,” Phosy shouted. He was aware of every nerve in his own body. His fists were clenched to stop his hands from shaking. His legs were wobbling, and his stomach rolled. He’d had no choice but to mark his territory, however briefly. Foreman Goi was right. Soon Xiu Long would be gone, and the allegiances of the Luang Nam Tha police force would return to the status quo. Phosy would be mincemeat. But at least there was this one small stand that might be remembered in dispatches to Vientiane when his body was returned to the capital. Something for Malee to boast about to her friends at school.

  Foreman Goi turned the key, pulled the ignition knob and revved the engine. Before taking off, he reached for the woman-child in the seat beside him and kissed her full on the mouth. She didn’t pull away, just hung there like a cloth doll all of thirteen years of age. The foreman grabbed the steering wheel and drove forward in a trajectory that would sideswipe the inspector. Phosy’s step was not backward to avoid it, but forward, forcing the driver to either hit him or swerve and skid on the loose dirt road. Goi obviously wasn’t ready to kill him just yet. After a second of slithering across the red dust, the truck righted itself and sped off in a cloud of red dust.

  Phosy exhaled. He’d been holding his breath all this time. With that first gulp of air came a feeling of stupidity. Like the opium addict who’d climbed into the bear cage at Hanoi Zoo, Phosy knew he was just begging to be ripped apart.

  The youngest of the police officers whistled. There were smiles on everyone’s face—apart from that of Sergeant Teyp. But even he seemed to have adopted a reluctant expression of admiration. Xiu Long looked delighted. He turned to Mrs. Loo and asked something, but she was too stunned to reply. Phosy was a temporary star, if not of the show, then of one short scene. He stood in the middle of the road, watching the dust settle, but he wasn’t waiting for an ovation. His legs wouldn’t move at all.

  By the time they landed in Luang Nam Tha, Siri and Daeng were both feeling poorly. At first they put it down to the rocking and bucking of the flight initially to Luang Prabang, then the connecting prehistoric Li-2 to Luang Nam Tha. It didn’t help that the temperature was dipping deep in the low-Arctic twenties. The porters who gathered around the plane were dressed like Sherpas in balaclavas and socks with flip-flops rather than climbing boots. Their friendly banter had lasted only until they realized the old couple really didn’t have anything for them to carry. But in the spirit of opportunism, they offered to piggyback Daeng to the guesthouse. Siri told them that the only man who’d have contact with his wife would be him, although he didn’t offer to piggyback her himself. Instead he took her arm, and they walked slowly across the field beside the runway where goats grazed and little black pigs ran around their ankles like puppies.

  The walk took longer than Madame Chanta’s hand-drawn map had suggested. Siri coughed most of the way. On three occasions, Daeng took a rest in front of strangers’ huts. On each occasion, she was treated by the householder to local sweet sticky rice and tea. So they reached the Nam Tha River in good spirits. Although there was no sign to announce it, the small wooden guesthouse perched on the riverbank looked exactly as Madame Chanta had described it. The owner was a Thai Lu from a village eleven kilometers upstream. His wife had been a weaver there before they got a taste for innkeeping. Her name was Nang Uma, and she was a close friend of Chanta. She apologized that her husband was away and not able to see them, then welcomed the guests and read Madame Chanta’s letter of introduction with joy.

  “What fun,” she said in heavily accented Lao, even before they were shown to their room. “Show me you piece.”

  Siri pulled the half-sin from his pack and removed it from the plastic. Nang Uma took it from him
and opened it up. She looked a little confused at first but then smiled. “Is one of Auntie Kwa’s,” she said.

  “How can you tell?” Daeng asked.

  “Well, it clearly Lu,” she said, “and weaver here in Luang Nam Tha have own pattern. Is not so—how you say?—not detail like other tribe but easy recognize. We so close to China, the weaver here like to sew in ribbon from China make stripe. Ribbon make on machine. We no have. Sometime overlap ribbon make brocade look pretty. Auntie Kwa go to border often barter for silk. She love the pink too much. See that?”

  “And where can we find Auntie Kwa?” Siri asked.

  “She up in Muang Sing. Everybody know her up there. And you lucky. Have three bus every week go to Muang Sing. Today have bus. It stop here outside twelve o’clock. Give you time eat lunch before you go.”

  “So soon?” said Daeng. “In fact, we were hoping to catch up with a friend of ours. A policeman. He’s working on a case here in Luang Nam Tha.”

  “You know where?” asked Nang Uma.

  “Not the name of the village,” said Siri. “But I imagine he’ll be lodging in town somewhere.”

  “Okay,” said Nang Uma. “We do like this. You not get the bus today, you have to wait Saturday for next one. Muang Sing fifty kilometers. Use to take almost one day. Now have new road, take couple hour. I say you catch bus today, visit Auntie Kwa. Do what you have to do. If you finish, come back on Saturday bus. You can write letter to you police friend, and I take bicycle to new town and give to policeman at police station. He have a car?”

  “A jeep,” said Siri.

  “Okay. Good. He can drive Muang Sing meet you there.”

  “He won’t know where we’re staying,” said Daeng.

  “Muang Sing, not Peking, Madame. He find you.”

  During their early lunch, Siri and Daeng composed a note to Phosy. They mentioned that Dtui had stopped by to see them before they left Vientiane. She’d received Phosy’s wire from the Chinese border and had gone somewhere “perfectly safe” with little Malee. They were at a place he knew well.

  Siri offered to help with Phosy’s case even though the doctor was aware the request for forensic assistance might have been invented by Judge Haeng. Either way, Siri would be delighted to tag along as a Dr. Watson to the great Sherlock Phosy. Phosy had spent many hours listening to Siri’s renditions of Holmes’s clever detections. In the note they explained why they were going to Muang Sing and hoped he could find time to visit them there. If not, they’d probably be back at the guesthouse on Saturday.

  The twelve o’clock bus arrived at two, which Nang Uma told them was normal. She waved them off and took the note in its sealed envelope back into the guesthouse. Her husband was sitting at the communal table. “They’ve gone,” she said.

  She sat opposite him and used a table knife to open the envelope, then handed him the note. He read it once, screwed it into a ball and threw it off the balcony into the gently flowing Nam Tha River.

  Phosy’s visit to the second village was entirely different from the first. He appeared to be getting more respect and cooperation from the local police. Constable Nut even offered to carry the inspector’s briefcase. Ban Bouree was an Akha village, and Phosy could speak passable Akha. He’d neglected to mention this fact when they set off that morning. But by the time he’d met the village elders, introduced himself and told them the Akha produced the best rice liquor in the country, he owned the village. The fact that nobody in his entourage had any idea what he was saying was a tremendous advantage. He’d allowed them to sit in on the meeting but provided only scant and selective translated feedback.

  “How’s your relationship with the Chinese at the road camp?” he asked the middle-aged man, Ahpah, who had taken on the mantle of spokesman. He was a weedy specimen whose hair had never seen a comb.

  “Very good, sir,” Ahpah said without enthusiasm.

  “Have you had any dealings with them?”

  “They came to buy eggs or pigs in the beginning. But we don’t have much. After a couple of days, they knew we couldn’t provide their groceries.”

  Mrs. Yoo interrupted, “I’m afraid I have to insist on a translation.”

  “Preliminaries,” said Phosy. “Just breaking the ice a little bit.”

  “Preliminaries,” said Xiu Long. His smile had never been brighter. Phosy wondered how a man who understood so little could be so content. The Chinese man winked at the inspector, who wasn’t sure what to make of the gesture. He opted to ignore it and return to the elders.

  “Any problems at all?” he asked. “With the Chinese, that is.”

  “What do you mean—problems?” asked the spokesman.

  “Come on. There are a thousand-plus men camped over your back fence. No drunkenness? Threats? No attempts to flirt with your young ladies? No burglary?”

  “No,” said the spokesman.

  “No to which part?”

  “To all of it. They’ve been most polite.”

  “What about your deceased headman’s dealings with them?”

  “Just the initial negotiation.”

  “About what?”

  “Renting the land. The fields back there belong to our two villages.”

  “Do you have land documents to prove that?”

  “No. The provincial governor knows what land belongs to which tribes. That is our shared land. We all agree.”

  “And the road builders were okay with that?”

  “Of course. Both the headmen attended the meeting.”

  “And who negotiated on behalf of the road people?”

  “Their foreman, Goi.”

  Phosy felt a prodding in his ribs and a fluttering in his stomach.

  “Inspector Phosy,” said Mrs. Yoo. “Really …”

  “A lot of ice here,” said Phosy. “A veritable glacier. But it won’t be long.” He noticed Sergeant Teyp whisper something to Constable Nut, who stood to leave. “Stay!” said Phosy.

  Nut sat like a trained terrier.

  “So the two villages got a fifty-fifty split of the rental,” Phosy concluded.

  “Down the middle,” said the spokesman.

  “And what amount are we talking here?”

  “A quarter of a million.”

  “I assume you aren’t referring to US dollars.”

  “Lao kip.”

  Phosy hummed. For a quarter of a million kip in 1979 you could get a very nice wall calendar. So money was hardly a motivating factor in the killings.

  “All right then,” said the policeman. “Can you tell me why your headman and the Yao headman were meeting on neutral ground at sunrise?”

  Until that moment, every response to Phosy’s questions had been succinct and apparently honest. But this question produced a good deal of eye contact amongst the Akha. It was brief, almost imperceptible, but to a policeman with a keen eye it was as loud as a Tannoy conversation.

  “No,” said the spokesman. His first lie.

  “No, you can’t tell me?”

  “No—we … I don’t really …”

  In Phosy’s dealings with the Akha, one characteristic had always floated to the surface. Telling an outright lie was a truly uncomfortable experience. They could be annoyingly direct and blunt to the point of cruelty, but untruths seemed to curdle their blood. Phosy rephrased his question. “Why did the two men meet?”

  “A matter.”

  “What kind of matter?”

  One of the elders, a ginseng root of a man who had thus far remained silent, stood and stretched and cracked several bones in his fingers. “I think it’s time to get to the fields,” he said.

  And with that, the meeting broke up. The elders left the hut, being sure to shake the hands of the visitors before leaving. Phosy smiled and said to his baffled observers, “Well, I think that went very well. Don’t you?”

  The seven-hour bus ride to Muang Sing had been delayed by Mother Nature and haunted by the ghosts that lurked in machines. The single Look Up tree that lay across the ro
ad at kilometer eighteen shouldn’t have presented the problems it did; it was no more than sixty centimeters in diameter, but that was high enough to serve as an impassable buffer to the old bus. There were no axes or machetes on board, and the nearest village was half an hour’s walk. The driver said the situation was hopeless and started to perform a sixteen-point turn on the skinny road.

  It was Siri who solved the problem. On the roof of the bus was a basket of cooking pots to be collected by its owner in Muang Sing. The passengers took the pots and filled them with rocks and earth from the roadside embankment. With these they constructed a ramp on and off the log. Naturally, Dr. Siri, a hands-on educator, was wheezing pathetically by the time the bus landed on the far side.

  The bus continued its journey. There were several stops for maintenance, which the driver seemed to have mastered from experience, but the cracked piston was another matter. Ten kilometers from Muang Sing, the engine suddenly had no moving parts and the bus became a landmark. So it was that Siri and Daeng arrived in Muang Sing on a cart pulled by a small pony. The animal and the passengers were coughing loudly. The twelve-year-old driver was not. Dr. Siri examined himself and his wife and announced that they had undoubtedly caught Dtui’s cold. He wasn’t carrying any cold remedies. There was one pharmacy in Muang Sing, but it was dark and shuttered as the pony clopped past. 8 P.M. was well past the town’s bedtime. The travelers couldn’t even find a guesthouse.

  At the recommendation of the cart driver, they went to the house of the local cadre in charge of visitors. He checked their laissez-passers. His own residence was already full of Chinese dignitaries, he said, but he led them to a two-story wooden building at the intersection of Muang Sing’s main streets. It had no rooms and, of course, no electricity. The cadre, keen to get back to his more important guests, left them a beeswax lamp, a bucket of drinking water, bedding and four kapok mattresses that smelled of mothballs. The bathroom was way out back, and there was a good deal of wildlife between them and it.

  But vermin or no vermin, if old folk have to go, they have to go. Each wrapped against the cold in an embroidered counterpane, Siri and Daeng coughed and spluttered to the outhouse, did their business by lamplight and almost stepped on a rat on the way back.