Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

somewhere, it was very likely vying for the role of ministry because it was frighteningly prolific and without shame. At the entrance to the lane leading to Vientiane’s largest mosque was a board encouraging everyone to breed pigs. Not twenty metres from the Lao Patriotic Women’s Association was another board proudly boasting ‘WOMEN – DEVELOPING OUR COUNTRY AS MOTHERS AND LABOURERS’. Siri had hoped the rains would erase all the silly propaganda and let the population think for itself. But they were standing up to the weather better than the leaning front fences and posts.
    Inspector Phosy and Sergeant Sihot were waiting for Siri beneath the arch at the mouth of the lane that led into the hospital. The water was ten centimetres deep there and both men had their shoes in their hands and their trouser cuffs rolled up.
    “Couldn’t you have found a drier place to wait?” Siri asked.
    “Your hospital’s under water,” Phosy complained. “Anywhere else and we’d need oxygen tanks. Are you ready?”
    “Ready for what?” Siri asked.
    “We thought you’d like to come out with us to visit the crime scenes,” Sihot said.
    “You have permission from K6?” Siri asked.
    “Must have been good wine,” Phosy said.
    It was fortunate that the Intelligence Section’s Willy’s jeep had a high wheelbase and four-wheel drive because the road out to K6 was porridge. Phosy drove slowly and Siri sat in the rear seat with Sihot, catching up on the news of victim number two. Sihot was a solid, military type, more chipped out of rock than created. You wouldn’t want to hit him on the head with a mallet for fear of damaging the mallet. He lost one page of his notebook in a stormy gust of wind but he assured Siri it contained nothing of any importance.
    “Victim number two,” he read, shouting above the roar of the troubled engine, “named Khantaly Sisamouth, nickname, Kiang. Age thirty-two. Single. Born in Xieng Khaw, way up north. Taught primary school in the liberated zone for ten years then was sent to Bulgaria to study library science.”
    “Who did she offend to get that assignment?” Siri asked.
    “It sounded like hell to me, too, Doctor.”
    “Library science in Bulgarian. Poor thing.”
    “She was there for two years and came back with what they call a certificate in information technology.”
    “And how did you identify her?”
    “Her mother, Doctor. Said her girl hadn’t come home on Saturday night. She filed a missing person report at the local political office and they contacted us. She identified her daughter from our Polaroids.”
    “Did she know where Kiang went to on Saturday night?”
    “She had no idea, Comrade. Told the mother she was off for some exercise in the evening. She was all dressed up in her tracksuit. Mother’s just recovering from hepatitis so she went to bed early. When she woke up the daughter’s bed hadn’t been slept in.”
    “Any connections between the two victims?”
    “None that we’ve found apart from them both studying in the eastern bloc.”
    “Lovers? Friends? Fencing connections?”
    “We’re looking into it. Right now, that’s all we’ve got.”
    As if to emphasise the point, the next half-empty page flipped from his notebook and curled away in the slipstream of the jeep.
∗
    At K6, a very reluctant Comrade Phoumi was there to meet them. The rain had started again, a depressing northern European sprinkling. The guards from the PM’s protection team were lined up in front of the sauna. But, with so much military testosterone on display, there wasn’t one umbrella between them. Dr Siri, who had fewer problems displaying his feminine side, emerged from the jeep hoisting a bright yellow umbrella with orange toadstools and lime-green goblins. No words were spoken.
    Phoumi and Major Dung led the way to the door of the bungalow in whose yard sat the carport and the sauna. The windows were all open to ventilate a house that had obviously not been occupied for some time. Phosy and Sihot sat at the kitchen table with their notepads and it was agreed the security personnel would come to be interviewed one by one. As had been hastily arranged, Comrade Viset, a Vietnamese-speaking Lao attached to military intelligence, was to act as translator. As the first two interviewees were Phoumi and Dung, an atmosphere of belligerence and non-cooperation was established early on.
    Siri was not privy to the events in the front kitchen. He had been encouraged by Phosy to