The Merry Misogynist

girl. She told me the story again exactly as she’d heard it: a mirror of our case. I followed the trail. We found the girl who’d told our girl and the boy who’d told her, and on and on. At last we arrived at a rather shy, quiet lass who’d started the whole ball rolling. She was from Luang Nam Tha in the north. The lycee’s still pretty exclusive, but she’d been awarded a Cuban scholarship from Comrade Castro. She was reluctant to tell us where she’d heard the story, but teacher Oum bullied her into giving up her source. It appears she’d heard it from her sister, and her sister’s a nurse.”
    “In Luang Nam Tha?”
    “Yes, which attaches a grain of truth to the rumour.”
    “You have the sister’s name?”
    “And address. Am I not the complete detective?”
    “You’re Inspector Migraine incarnate.”
    “It’s Maigret, Phosy. But thank you. Should I leave that avenue of investigation to you?”
    “Of course. Siri, I can’t believe this animal has committed the same atrocity more than once.”
    “Fortunately we live in a place where things like this are so scandalous people continue to talk about them.”
 
    It was the first chance to meet and speak in relative privacy. Phan had done his duty the previous evening. He’d charmed the immediate and extended family. The grandmother, eleven sheets to the wind, had declared him ‘a very jolly boy who would be a great asset to the family’. The father had translated proudly for Phan. The others had shushed her and told her there was no such plan in the works but Phan knew they were all thinking the same thing. His foot was in the door. His was a skill many men yearned to possess and he had it in droves. He was now ready for the prelude to the kill .
 
    “You shouldn’t be here,” she said.
    Phan had driven the truck up a particularly troublesome hill to arrive at Wei’s school from the far side. The track from the village was too narrow to navigate so a huge detour had been necessary to arrive there in the vehicle. But the old Chinese truck was a vital player in this drama. Phan arrived just as the bell sounded for the end of the day’s lessons. The children gathered around the truck like ants on a wounded caterpillar. He did tricks for them: produced boiled sweets from their ears, made gooseberries vanish. He was the Messiah. Wei had walked out to meet him.
    “I know. I apologize,” he said. “I finished work early. I didn’t have anything to do. I remembered your mother saying you’d hurt your toe. She said it was painful for you to walk.”
    “It’s only half a kilometre along the track.”
    “Even so, I thought you might like a ride.”
    The other teacher had come out to watch the show with a big smile on her face.
    “It…it isn’t appropriate,” she said. Wei’s cheeks were as stained as rose apples.
    “I mean you and the children, of course.”
    “By road, you have to go all the way around the mountain.”
    “I have to anyway. Look…” He leaned closer so the children couldn’t hear. She smelled grease on him and some kind of disinfectant soap. “I didn’t want to embarrass you, really. I just…I just thought I could help. If you prefer, I’ll leave you to walk.”
    She looked at the children gathered expectantly around the truck, then back at him. So tall, so polite…so interesting.
    “All right, for the children’s sake,” she said at last. “They don’t get many opportunities to ride in a truck. It will be nice for them.”
    They screamed all the way back to the village. Wei sat in the passenger seat with a smile on her face that wouldn’t go away. Their countryside, the scenery she knew too well, was suddenly unrecognizable. From the window of his truck it had become…magical. A feeling had come over her she couldn’t understand. Part of it was physical, as if she needed to wee but knew she wouldn’t be able to. Her insides danced. It was all part of the spell. She had suddenly been whisked up in a hurricane that blew through her world.
    The children from outside the village were dropped off individually at their huts. They strode proudly from the truck as if a private limousine had delivered them. Phan saluted like a chauffeur when they thanked him. They would remember the experience for years. He dropped the children who lived in the village at the hand-pump diesel stand in the dead centre of town. The provincial roadway that passed through the village was barely two dirt lanes wide. Buses and