Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

yesterday. Through the heart.”
    “When did you – ” Siri began.
    “Two hours ago. The head teacher at Sisangvone primary school went in early to prepare for the Sunday Junior Youth Movement meeting and he found her in the room skewered to the blackboard.”
    “Through the heart?” Siri considered the scene. “So she was standing? Held up by the sword?”
    Phosy nodded.
    “That must have taken a lot of strength,” Daeng thought aloud.
    “Is she still there?” Siri asked.
    “No,” said Phosy. “We took her over to the morgue. We got Director Suk out of bed and had him open up for us. Sorry. I know this is your family day…”
    “I can’t understand what’s happening to this country,” Daeng sighed. She had already abandoned her breakfast, along with her hope for mankind. “It’s not even May and we’ve had seven murders in the country already this year. And all women. It’s almost as if Laos is doing its utmost to keep up with North America. Vientiane is turning into New York City.”
    “Madame Daeng,” Phosy said. “Seven murders in New York would be one slack afternoon. We have a long way to go before things get that bad.”
    “I’m sorry, Inspector,” she said. “But seven murders is seven murders too many as far as I’m concerned. We’ve had our wars. We’ve killed our brothers because this or that politician or general told us to. But it’s over. Can’t we enjoy our peace yet? Can’t we stop all this insanity?”
    “I agree,” Phosy said, rising from his seat and wiping his mouth with a tissue. “And there’s no time like the present.” He drained his glass of juice and nodded. “Thank you for breakfast. Doctor?”
    Siri hurried upstairs to change and followed Phosy to the morgue on his Triumph. As Phosy’s Intelligence Section had used up its petrol allowance for the month, Phosy was on the department’s lilac Vespa. For once, Siri thought it wise not to make fun of the policeman about his effeminate mount. This was a different Phosy from the man he’d befriended two years earlier, from the cheerful policeman who’d married Siri’s assistant, nurse Dtui. Something had happened. A peculiar intensity had landed on Phosy like an enormous blot and suffocated his sense of humour. Siri wondered whether it was the job, whether it had started to infect him. Confronting the face of evil in so many dark corners had to have an effect; dealing daily with the depraved. For a man who’d grown up believing that the Lao were inherently good and kind, it must come as a shock to learn that his fellow man and woman were just as capable of committing atrocities as the foreign devils.
    When Siri arrived at the morgue, Mr Geung, Phosy’s Sergeant Sihot, and nurse Dtui were there in the office waiting for him. Phosy followed the doctor inside and was obviously surprised to see his wife there.
    “Where’s the baby?” he asked Dtui accusingly.
    Dtui smiled. It was a smile which usually made people feel at ease but it apparently had little effect on Phosy.
    “She’s at the Sunday creche,” Dtui said.
    Siri noticed Phosy jerk his head towards the door as if he wanted to talk to his wife out of earshot of the others. Everyone noticed the gesture, including Dtui who chose to ignore it. Phosy, obviously frustrated, was forced to resort to a strained laugh and a warning couched as a joke.
    “You do know our daughter’s only three months old?” he mumbled to the woven plastic rug.
    “And what better time to start socialising?” Dtui said.
    It was clear that if they’d been alone, a serious domestic dispute would have exploded at this point. Siri, it was, who snipped the red wire.
    “We have a body in the cutting room,” he said. “It’s Sunday and everyone’s irritable, especially me. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can return to our loved ones.”
    It almost worked. Everyone snapped into action apart from Mr Geung who stood rocking in the corner by his desk. This was peculiar given that he usually led the charge into the examination room.
    “Mr Geung?” said Siri.
    “I…”
    “Yes?”
    “I…I don’t have.”
    “Have what, Geung?”
    “A…a loved one.”
    There was no sadness in his words. It was merely a statement like not having a bicycle or change for five hundred kip . He lived in a dormitory with three other male hospital employees and hadn’t seen his distant family for a year. Siri could have ignored the comment and joked about it, but,