Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

the kids on her mother’s lap and washed her hands of them four years earlier. The neighbour didn’t see Dew or the husband come to visit that often. On the positive side, Dew’s mother and her husband, aged sixty-three and sixty-five respectively, gave me the impression they had a genuine affection for their grandchildren. I couldn’t say the same for their relationship with Comrade Dew.”
    “Which begs the question,” Siri said, “what were Dew and her husband doing together in the first place?”
    “My question exactly, Doctor,” Sihot agreed. “They didn’t appear to invest a lot of time and effort in their children’s upbringing. The grandparents got some money every month from the father but that was all.”
    The wooden shutters on either side of the large room were open and a sudden gust passed through taking two of Sihots sheets with it. He was about to run after them then realised what the wind had taken.
    “No problem,” he said. “Old case. I still have Comrade Dew here.”
    “We’re relieved to hear it,” Phosy grumbled.
    “I went to see the clerk who registered the marriage back in 1973 when the couple moved to Vientiane. I discovered that both husband and wife had been in the military at the time of their marriage. They came from Phongsali which is where the original certificate was issued. I have the name of the military witness who co-signed the certificate and I’m attempting to get in touch with him.”
    “Good job, Sihot,” said Siri.
    “Thank you, Comrade.”
    “Any background information on our prowling wolf Vietnamese major?” Siri asked.
    “Getting military information from the Vietnamese is like getting blood from a crab,” Phosy told him. “There are channels. But the wheels are in motion. We’ll have to be patient.”
    “Did anyone ask him at the interview…?”
    “If he was a fencer? Yes. He said no. He said no to most of the questions. But we found out he was in Czechoslovakia for eighteen months of military training. He forgot to mention that as well. We’re chasing that up with the Czech embassy. They owe us a favour.”
    “All right, Phosy,” said Siri, leaning back on his chair. “That just leaves you.”
    “And our real fencer, Jim,” Phosy said. “All I got from the files was that her parents were ‘casual staff’. It’s the catchall phrase for everything from day labourers to hotel bellboys. The records didn’t say where they’d worked. In the old days, everyone not in government service who could write, put ‘casual staff’ on their documents. Her mother was Vietnamese and probably didn’t have any official status here, so I doubt there’s anything on record anywhere. We only know she was Vietnamese because Jim wrote it on her application for the eastern bloc. No permanent address. No personal details about the parents.
    “We do know Jim enrolled aged sixteen as a trainee medic with the American refugee hospital in Nam Tha. She was one of the star pupils by all accounts. When the Yanks fled, our people found Jim running one of the clinics without any supervision. They all called her ‘doctor’ up there. Our own medical officials were so impressed with her skills and her dedication that they overlooked the fact she’d been selected and trained by Americans and made a scholarship available to her in the Soviet Union. They wanted her to qualify as a real doctor. There was an awful shortage. But she refused that and two other scholarship placements. Cited pressure of work. Not ready to leave. But then a scholarship post came up in East Germany and she finally agreed. She spent a year studying German, picked it up without effort, then launched on the first year of pre-med. It was one of those accelerated courses the Europeans put on for third-world countries. They assume we don’t have the brains to attend regular medical schools and that our people don’t get as sick as theirs so we don’t need seven years of study.”
    Phosy looked up from his notes to find both Siri and Sihot smiling at him.
    “What? It’s true. It is. Anyway, Jim sailed through her language classes and the first two semesters of medicine. Top of her class in everything. Then something went wrong. She failed her first year final exams. Not just failed but bombed completely. They let her do a supplementary exam and she failed that as well. Under the terms of her scholarship they had no choice but to send her home.”
    “That’s weird,” said Siri. “And