The Merry Misogynist

to Champasak to make inquiries about the missing girl, and Phosy and his most senior investigator, Tham, were at the scene of a murder, an old murder.
    Once he was certain there had been more than one abduction, Phosy had dispatched the Lao equivalent of an APB. This involved sending wires to the larger cities and towns, then relying on the passing along of documents through police couriers to the more remote stations. It might be up to a month before he could-be sure everyone had received a copy of the memo. That’s why he’d been surprised to receive the call at eight that morning.
    “I’d like to speak to Inspector Phosy,” the voice had said.
    “I’m Phosy.”
    “I got your note about the girls.”
    “And who are you?”
    “I’m Sergeant Oudi from the police box at Kilometre 38 on the Bolikham Road intersection. But I’m calling from the bank in Pakxan. The manager lets us use – ”
    “I’m listening, Sergeant.”
    “All right. Well, they were fixing the bridge down at kilometre 10 last year, and one of the workers went to take a leak in the bushes, and he ran across these bones.”
    “Just bones?”
    “Yes, Comrade. And no particular order to them, all scattered around this tree. I went to take a look, just for curiosity’s sake. They could have been an animal for all I knew, but I found this long human hair. So I figured it was a dead woman, and the beasts had laid into her. Nothing to suggest there’d been foul play, and there hadn’t been any reports of missing persons. So I buried the remains just to keep her spirit happy, you know? And I wrote out the report and sent it in with the ledger. Didn’t hear anything more about it.”
    Phosy hadn’t been surprised there was no follow-up. They barely had enough staff to stack the ledgers, let alone read them.
    “All right,” he said. “So what makes you think this could be connected to our case?”
    “The ribbon, Inspector. There was pink ribbon around one of the bones.”
 
    While Sergeant Oudi and his colleague dug up the bones he’d so lovingly buried six months earlier, Phosy and Tham rummaged around the tree.
    “You’re sure this is the right place?” Phosy called to the local policeman.
    Oudi held his hand against the amulet at his neck for the tenth time. Spirits didn’t take too kindly to having their bones dug up.
    “Yes, Comrade,” he said. “All around there, they were.”
    “And apart from the hair and the ribbon, you didn’t find anything else out of the ordinary?”
    Phosy had withheld the most awful component of the murders from his memo. He believed it would be beneficial to have that one vital piece of evidence held in reserve in case they had a suspect.
    “I mean anything at all,” Phosy pushed. “No matter how irrelevant you think it might be.”
    “Yes, Comrade. Oh, wait. There was something.”
    “Yes?”
    “A pestle.” Phosy’s heart clenched. “I found this pestle while I was gathering up the bones.”
    “And what did you do with it?”
    “It was a good one, Comrade. I took it home for my wife.”
 
    Police headquarters had found it in its heart to provide Phosy’s department with a jeep. It was a 1950 Willys, and Phosy liked the solid feel of it around him. It had a limited petrol ration, so it spent much of its time sitting idle under the corrugated tin carport. But this trip to Pakxan had been so urgent the inspector hadn’t thought twice about filling the tank and putting two spare containers in the back. The cans stood either side of the remains of the poor woman now wrapped in a green groundsheet: the strangler’s fourth suspected victim. The pestle, removed amid a scene of consternation from the kitchen of the sergeant’s wife, was wrapped in the package along with the ribbon and hair. It was Phosy’s intention to take all of it directly to the morgue and go through it with Siri.
    Investigator Tham was driving. He was in his fifties, somewhat sedentary but a good soldier, more of a follower than a leader. Phosy took the opportunity to thumb through the notes he’d received from the ladies at the Lao Patriotic Women’s Association. He was looking for the anecdotal account of the wedding he’d heard about from Siri. He needed to confirm the location. If it was within driving distance from Pakxan he might be able to tie the two together.
    “Here,” he said.
    “What’s that, sir?” Tham looked to his right and saw his boss pawing through all the junk in the flapless glove