Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

certainly is.”
    “You seen this before?”
    “Seen? No. Not with my own eyes. But I have heard of it. The most famous example of it was in the 007 film, Dr. No . They thought they had dispatched the villain with a bullet through the heart. But it wasn’t there.”
    “That’s a movie. They make those things up.”
    “In this case, no. It’s a real condition called dextrocardia and we have a perfect example of it right here. Mr Geung, the camera please. I think this deserves a photograph. We may never see anything like this again.”
    Geung took one photo in close-up of the victim’s chest and one of Siri and Dtui crouching by the misplaced organ. Naturally, Mr Geung wanted to have his photo taken too with the right-sided heart but they were able to convince him not to make a V sign. All three apologised to the corpse but they felt she wouldn’t have objected.
    “Do you think she knew?” Dtui asked.
    “Hard to tell. It doesn’t look as if she’s had any major surgery. They might have mentioned it to her during medicals but, given the overall standard of nursing skills here it’s quite possible nobody noticed. Present company excepted, of course. It probably didn’t affect her physically, in fact she looks in very good shape. Less inconvenient than being born with two thumbs on the one hand, I’d guess. But one thing’s for certain, the perpetrator certainly couldn’t have known. And that could explain why she didn’t die immediately.”
    “You mean, the sword didn’t kill her?”
    “Let’s take a look. If it didn’t puncture the lung she might have survived the wound.”
    Siri was right. There was no puncturing of the lung, not so much as a nick. The sword had passed behind the ribs and through the no-man’s-land where her heart should have been. There was damage to muscle and tissue but nothing life-threatening. The blade had slid in front of the lung and out the side of her body. Hard as it may have been to believe, the sword through her chest looked much worse than it was. It hadn’t killed her. The Z signature on her thigh had.
    “It must have confused the heck out of the killer,” Dtui said as they washed up. “He pins her through the heart and starts to cut her thigh and there she is wandering around like the living dead. He probably had to chase after her to finish it. No wonder it was messy. Doctor?”
    Siri was deep in thought, going back over the crime scene in his mind, the bloodstains, the footprints.
    “Doc?”
    “Yes, sorry. I was just trying to organise a few things in my head.”
    “It’s all explained, isn’t it?”
    “What? Yes. All explained.”
    “Good, so I can go? I have a daughter who thinks the creche worker’s her mother.”
    “Yes, of course. Get out of here. I don’t want to be the…”
    He was going to say, “the cause of a family break-up.” It was supposed to be a joke but something about the past few days made him think it wouldn’t have been all that funny.
    “Be the what, Dr Siri?”
    “Be the evil employer who forces his staff to work all night.”
    “Oh, I don’t mind. And…I’ll apologise to Geung on my way out. I understand. I’m stuck in mothering mode, venting my frustrations on the poor dear.”
    “Thank you. I – ”
    “OK, I’m gone.” And she was. Their serious talk would have to wait.

7
BLACKBOARD SINGEING IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
    S iri sat on a bench in front of the office of Judge Haeng at the Ministry of Justice. From his seat, if he leaned forward, he could see the windows of the office of the new minister, a man who’d spent his entire life fighting for the socialist cause. So occupied had he been with this struggle that a law degree – or even a college education – had been out of reach. This was a fact that Judge Haeng, the possessor of an authentic, if abridged, law degree from the Soviet Union, never failed to point out. While the figurehead sat in his air-conditioned office, Judge Haeng performed all the active duties of the ministry. All right, perhaps he passed most of them on to his assistant Manivone and her staff, but at least he spoke to people, he delegated, he diligently signed whatever Manivone put in front of him. At least he was still alive. He had no idea what was happening in the newly furbished upstairs room. He often got his new clerk to pass along the corridor once a day to see if he detected a pungent smell of decay coming from the room.
    Judge Haeng was a bitter man. The only good news