The Merry Misogynist

an allergy to sunlight?”
    “Without sun she’d have to supplement the lack of vitamin D somehow. Her skin’s very pale, but there’s no evidence of an allergy in her pigmentation. I can read up on it, see if I’ve missed a condition. Failing that, it appears she just wanted to stay out of the sun. The only part she wouldn’t have been able to cover was her feet. I suppose rubber boots might have worked.”
    “I’d bet she tried that for a while until she realized how many diseases you can pick up in sweaty boots in this climate. I tried it myself for a while when I was little and ended up with every skin disease you can imagine.”
    “It is odd, though. If it isn’t an allergy, there has to be some other reason we haven’t thought of. I’ll work on it. Have you heard from Phosy?”
    “I got a message from him last night. Said he’d give you a ring later this morning. Didn’t sound like he’d found much out.”
    “All right, let me just get this autopsy report finished for Director Suk.”
    “Are you sure you’re all right?”
    “Yes, why?”
    “You really do look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
    Siri smiled, but he was starting to believe that what he’d seen wasn’t merely a ghost. It was an omen.
 
    Phosy rang at ten thirty. The clerk from the administration building trotted downstairs, across the forecourt, and into the morgue to let Dr Siri know he had a phone call. By the time Siri had walked briskly back to the clerk’s office (his trotting days were behind him) the connection had been severed. It was half a cup of tea later before Phosy managed to get through again. Siri was beside the phone.
    “Siri speaking. Any luck?”
    “I went to the crime scene and looked around,” Phosy told him. “The only thing I found there was a circle of candles: the red ones with short wicks you get at temples.”
    “How large was the circle?”
    “Diameter of about four metres.”
    “That’s interesting.”
    “We’ve shown the photo all over the district. You’d think someone would recall a pretty girl like that. But no joy.”
    “Phosy, have you been to the farms?”
    “Some, but mostly around town. Why?”
    Siri explained their shrouded-rice-worker theory. Phosy seemed sceptical.
    “It would have been unbearable,” he said. “How could anyone work the fields wrapped up…and why?”
    “If it did really happen,” Siri said, “there’d have to be a good reason for it. You might want to ask if anyone’s seen a girl like that working the fields.”
    “All right. Anything from the stomach contents?”
    “I’m just about to take them over to teacher Oum at the lycee. She was away at a seminar all weekend. It’s the first chance I’ve had. I hear they’ve released the chemicals from customs.”
    “The ones the Soviets donated?”
    “The Vladivostok Schools Cooperative.”
    “You mean they’ve been at the docks for a year?”
    “It’s an improvement. My new French forensic pathology textbooks have been stuck there since early ‘76. By the time they’re cleared you’ll be able to use them on me.”
 
    Siri put the double plastic bag of stomach contents into a cloth shoulder bag and set off on his motorcycle. Teacher Oum’s chemistry class was the closest thing Siri could get to a lab. In his breast pocket he had his Chiang Mai University toxico-logical colour key pamphlet. It contained a rather limited range of tests that, with a bit of luck, might give clues as to any poison or drug remaining in the system. More often than not, they didn’t work. He wasn’t feeling particularly lucky today. In fact, the more he considered the spectres of that morning, the more he felt as if his luck was about to run out. He wanted to go for a ride in the countryside to improve his mood, but the contents of the bag needed to be refrigerated as soon as possible. He turned right in front of the old French governor general’s mansion that held court at the start of Ian Xang Avenue. Its grounds had been ignored since the arrival of the Pathet Lao, and all the exotic plants and expensive flowers and shrubs had gone to seed. It was a petty revenge for sixty years of colonialism. Even towards lunchtime there was scant traffic on the main avenue. With its own Lao Arc de Triomphe, Ian Xang had delusions of being the Champs-Elysees. At its widest it could accommodate ten and a half cars or fifty-seven bicycles but today it welcomed only Dr Siri and a small pack of dogs, all dusty.
    He passed two