The Merry Misogynist

“This is the thing that gets me,” she said. “Look at her pale skin. It’s beautiful. No sun damage, no blemishes. It’s so white, nearly opaque; it’s almost as if she had a vitamin deficiency. She’s like an advertisement for Camay soap. But then we come down to these creatures.”
    The girl’s feet and ankles were dark and rough. It was as if she were wearing grubby brown socks. The skin was sun rusted but her toenails were bleached almost pink and the soles of her feet were puckered and soft as tofu. Siri left his perch to take a look.
    “You’re right,” he said. “That is most odd.”
    “Any idea what could have caused it?” Dtui asked.
    “Not a clue. See anything else?”
    “Well’ – Dtui returned to the girl’s hands – ’it isn’t as spectacular as the feet but look at this.”
    She lifted one of the girl’s arms. The back of the hand was as pristine as the rest of her, but the palm was a mass of calluses and blisters. The skin was as tough as pomelo rind.
    “That’s odd too,” Siri agreed. “So far, this young lady is a compendium of contradictions. Do you see anything out of place when you compare the body with the cadre’s report?”
    Dtui looked at the paper again but nothing leaped out at her.
    “No, I don’t,” she confessed.
    “The ribbon?” Siri prompted.
    “No, I…wait!” She lifted the hand one more time and was obviously annoyed with herself having missed it. “No welts on her wrists,” she said.
    “And that tells us…?”
    “That she was tied up when she was unconscious, or after she’d lost the will to fight.”
    “Or?”
    “Or he tied her up after he’d killed her.”
    “I think it’s time to see whether she has any deeper secrets to tell us.”
    The autopsy proceeded as usual although Siri was loath to defile such a beautiful young lady with his scalpel. She had been in very good health. Siri envisioned a diet with little sugar or starch and a healthy supply of fruit. Photos of her lungs and liver might have graced a Department of Health THIS COULD BE YOU poster.
    Up to this point it had been a strangulation case, no less horrific for its simplicity but not a difficult diagnosis. Yet murders by strangulation were almost unheard of in Laos. The ability to kill a person with bare hands was rare. Many believed if a person was holding a body when the life drained from it, that person was likely to provide a conduit for the spirit of the corpse and be haunted for eternity. For that reason, few Lao were prepared to handle the dead. Siri and his team were extraordinary in many respects. To physically squeeze the life out of another human being, the killer would have to be a peculiar type of monster. Yet even this far into the autopsy, Siri had still to learn just how evil the girl’s murderer was.
    They had suspected sexual assault of some kind but the absence of blood around the mons had made a closer inspection a lesser priority. They didn’t have the facility to test for semen other than the senses of the eye and nose but Siri was obliged to take samples. It was obvious as soon as he began the examination of her vagina that the opening and surrounding flesh must have been thoroughly cleaned. He looked up at Dtui, who involuntarily took a step backward. There was evidence of severe trauma deep in the vaginal passage, evidence that the membrane of the hymen had been newly ruptured, and then – 
    Siri heard a gasp emerge from his own lips. He looked up to see Dtui cover her mouth and run from the room. Mr Geung had held his ground but his eyes were full of tears. Both he and Siri stood looking in disbelief. Buried deep inside the girl was a black stone pestle. It must have been inserted while she was still alive. The silence in the morgue was broken by Geung, who was sobbing uncontrollably. “This is v…v…very bad.”
    “Yes, Geung. It is very bad indeed.”
    Siri’s own emotions did not show in his light green eyes or in his voice. But inside himself he felt a terrible rage that wrung his stomach muscles. He immediately promised himself that he would not leave the earth until the perpetrator of this heinous crime had been dealt with in equal measure. This death was not the result of an inevitable act of war; it was not the destruction of an enemy. It was the cruel and sadistic defilement of a beautiful young woman for reasons that a soldier or a nurse or a reluctant coroner could never begin to understand.
    When Dtui returned to the