Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

for a very long time.
    “Well, new year came and went without anyone noticing,” Siri said. “So what’s the occasion?”
    “Another solved case.”
    “You haven’t…?”
    “We have. Not only do we have our fencer, we have irrefutable connections to each of the victims and to the three crime scenes. It’s all over.” He shook the doctor’s hand. “Congratulations.”
    There were fewer and fewer places to drink of a night in a city whose sense of muan – of innocent pleasure – had been slowly wrung from it by two and a half years of socialism. The logical hot spots were roofless snack and drink stalls along the riverbank and, as long as that one unstoppable April shower persisted, they would remain closed. There was the Russian club, a bustling, beery night-eatery populated by Eastern European experts. But that was beyond the budget of a Lao policeman and a Lao doctor. So Siri and Phosy took their drinks under an umbrella at Two Thumb’s humble establishment behind the evening market. They drank rice whisky and worked through a plate of steamed peanuts in soft shells. Siri knew he should have been packing, spending the night with Madame Daeng, but she’d always understood the power of celebration, particularly when victory was the prize.
    “If we’d only checked sooner,” Phosy said. “Or if one of us had remembered the names on the lists. But, why would we? We were only interested in the team leader on the rewiring project. I doubt we gave the other names on the Electricite du Laos work roster more than a cursory glance. But I’d arrived at the name Somdy Borachit on the subscriptions list and I read it out loud. And Sihot had just worked out his schedule to interview all the electricians on his list and he asked me how it was spelt. And, sure enough, it was the same name. We had him: Somdy Borachit, who everyone knew by the nickname of Neung. We drove over to Electricite du Laos and he was there, calm as you like. Confident. And I asked him if he had an acquaintanceship with the three victims and he admitted he did. No pretence at all. He came straight out with it.”
    “That he’d killed them?”
    “That he knew them all. I asked why he hadn’t come forward when he heard about the killings and he said, “It’s complicated.” Complicated? You bet it’s complicated. We took him to HQ and questioned him. And it was as if every answer he gave tied him tighter and tighter to the murders. It was as if he didn’t understand the implication of what he was saying. Everything in this case points directly to him. Every damn thing.”
    “He didn’t have an alibi?”
    “Claims he was babysitting his son all weekend. His wife was off at a seminar. It’s just one more story that doesn’t work.”
    “Start at the beginning, Phosy.”
    “All right. You’ll never guess who Neung’s father is.”
    “Then, tell me.”
    “Miht, the groundsman at K6. And when the Americans were still there he used to go to help his father with the gardening work.”
    “So, he would have met young Jim there. Attractive girl. Got chatting…”
    “He admits it. Said he knew her before he went off to study. And where do you suppose he takes his scholarship course in electrical engineering?”
    “East Germany.”
    “Precisely where Jim was headed. And he studied not two blocks from her school. Amazing coincidence? I don’t think so.”
    “So, he could have been the mystery man who hounded her there. Followed her to Berlin then stalked her.”
    “Forcing her to come home early,” Phosy went on. “He returned at about the same time. Which brings us to victim number two, Kiang. It’s easier to do this in reverse order. In the beginning he told us he’d met Kiang at the government bookshop and they’d chatted about being overseas and he said he’d never seen her outside the reading room. Never socialised with her. And it was so obvious he was lying even Sihot could read it. I was so certain we had our killer I decided I could push as hard as I liked at that stage. But Neung didn’t take much pushing. As soon as the word ‘murder’ came up in the interview, he admitted that he and Kiang were…‘dating’, I think is what he called it. I asked him why he’d lied and he said he hadn’t wanted word to get back to his wife. His wife? Can you believe it? He’s got a wife and a child and he’s dating. And it doesn’t seem like killing the girl was nearly as important as his wife not finding