Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

said they could arrange for a permanent visa, perhaps even citizenship if she made the grade.”
    “But she didn’t go for it.”
    “She was good but I could tell her mind wasn’t in the sport. The difference between competence and greatness is in the heart. She didn’t have a heart for fencing.”
    “Odd, considering she’d obviously put a lot of effort into it.”
    “That’s what I thought.”
    “Do you recall her talking about another man? A boyfriend. Someone who might have been showing an unhealthy interest in her?”
    Neung put his fingers against his face as if he were raking for a memory or two.
    “I don’t remember anything specific,” he said. “But I did get the feeling there was something troubling her. She’d lose concentration now and then as if she were on another planet. It was a little bit worrying when you’re playing around with swords. It might have been because of a boyfriend but I don’t know. It wasn’t the type of thing I talked about with my students. We really weren’t that close.”
    “Did you see her again after Berlin?”
    “Once. Recently, in fact. I was surprised to see her back in Laos so soon. I thought she’d be in Germany for another four years. She was outside the bookshop when I came out one Saturday. I asked her what was wrong and she told me she’d failed her exams and they’d sent her home. She didn’t seem that upset about it. In fact, I got the impression she was happier than I remembered seeing her in Berlin. Being back in Laos seemed to have freed her soul somehow. She said there was some matter she needed to discuss with me, urgently. She was always asking this or that question, usually about things that weren’t really important, so I didn’t take it too seriously. She gave me her number at Settha Hospital. I meant to call, but with all the work out at K6 and family life…”
    “And Kiang.”
    “And Kiang, yes. I forgot all about calling Jim.”
    Neung’s brow arched as a realisation seemed to drop over him. “I wonder, if I’d phoned…” he said. “If she’d wanted to talk about her problem. I wonder if I could have prevented her death.”
    “I wonder.”
    Siri sat silent. It was a great line. Convincing. The doctor wasn’t about to be sucked wholly into Neung’s version of events, but he’d earned himself a second hearing.
    On his way out of the station, Siri woke up Phosy at his desk and told him, “Tomorrow, when you’re feeling fresh, I’d like you to go and listen to that boy’s story one more time. Just listen.”

14
A HINT OF ROUGE
    T he Shaanxi Y-8 lifted off from Vientiane’s Wattay airport three hours after the scheduled departure time. No plane, no bus, no donkey cart ever left on time in the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos. Timetables were in the same section of the government bookshop as legends and folklore. They were fictional beasts that lied without trepidation. Yet, despite this knowledge, no passengers ever came prepared for a wait. Nobody ever brought books or puzzles or letters to write or darning or weaving or embroidery to fill in the hours. It was as if, deep down, the Lao believed that today would be different. A miracle would happen. Today, a flight would leave on schedule. So they sat staring hopefully at the runway, at the rain on the window, at the other passengers, and then they dozed. And they awoke with a refreshed belief. Always disappointed.
    Siri had arrived with stories to fill the hours. He’d informed Comrade Civilai in great detail of the neat slotting of engineer Neung into the evidence of the épée case. He’d left nothing out, neither fact nor feeling. Civilai, in clean but not necessarily ironed clothes, had sat nodding as he watched an incoming aeroplane break through the pudding clouds and splash along the runway like a stork in pursuit of a giant snakehead. Unlike his usual self he had nothing to ask, no clarifications to seek. Siri had done a very thorough job. The doctor was just about to tell his friend about the meeting with Neung at police HQ when a Lao Aviation official stood in front of the eleven passengers with a megaphone and yelled an announcement that flight CAAC23 would be leaving in twenty minutes. Passengers were invited to bring their luggage out to the runway and to help the pilot load it into the hold.
    Siri and Civilai travelled light. What you wore today you washed tomorrow. All being well, it would be dry by the following day. The only thing of any